Matthew 9:21 “Have Faith”

I can remember once someone saying to me “Faith is something you’ve either got, or you don’t”. I think this is completely off the mark. If somebody didn’t have faith, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. We all put “faith” in something everyday. When you get in your car, do you not put faith in the brakes that they will stop you? When you support a football team, do you not have faith that they will win? Of course you do.

The passage I take my text from is as follows;

Matthew 9:21.

She said to her, "If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed." Jesus turned and saw her. "Take heart, daughter," he said, "your faith has healed you." And the woman was healed from that moment.

I heard a sermon on this yesterday myself however it was only 1 of the points in the sermon, but I thought I’d bring my own interpretation on here, as it was helpful to me.

Part 1 – Faith through Seeing.

Part of today’s philosophy is “seeing is believing” and if you can touch it, it’s not real. For Christians this is a difficult concept to overcome as we’re so used to being able to see the things of the world, and you are able to touch things.

But I ask you; do you believe in the wind? “Ah yes but we can see the winds effects Mike”, yes you can, but if you look in the right places you can also see the effects of God in the world. God does things in people’s lives every day, just look around you. Think about your life and when you’ve been at your lowest points, when you have felt the most alone, if you’re reading this I bet there was a turning point and you realized that God is there, and even though you cannot see him, you can see his effects in your own life.

Seeing is believing? Well you can see God’s effects so what’s the next excuse?

Part 2 – Faith through Touching.

As I’ve already mentioned, people of the world expect to be able to touch something. How many people will actually believe that something is hard or soft just based on your say so? How many children will accept that something is hot or cold just by you telling them.

We have a natural inbuilt system that allows it to feel and touch and taste things so that our brains can store this information.

John 20:25-28 so the other disciples told him (Thomas), "We have seen the Lord!"But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

You see, even a disciple who had been with Jesus right until the end would not believe until he touched his wounds. We shouldn’t loose heart if we find ourselves wanting to feel God and Touch God to make sure he’s real.

But I challenge you, if we could see God, and we could feel God, there would be no need for our faith and everyone would believe, as perfect as that sounds God’s love and forgiveness for us putting faith in him would become redundant and meaningless. It would just be something else that we take for granted in the world.

Part 3 – Faith through God.

If we refer back to passage of which I started with at the beginning of this blog, this woman, who is dying from internal hemorrhaging believes through faith that just 1 touch will heal her wounds, and even goes as far as to say that she believes that 1 touch of the end of his cloak would heal her.

How many of us can actually, truly say that we would believe the same things, bearing in mind this man was Jesus, and he was still alive and you wouldn’t have known a fraction about his purpose or his will at this point. This woman would have just heard rumors and little bits of information about Jesus, she wouldn’t have been able to travel very far as she was very ill and she would have had to rely on gossip.

But her faith is unshakeable, her love is unbounded and her belief that this man can heal her because he is the Messiah was unchangeable. I can imagine her waking up on the morning that Jesus was due to walk through the village, and I can imagine her making a plan in her head that she would just need to touch the fibers of his cloak whilst his back was turned and she would be healed.

We should be encouraged and we should be challenged by this woman. We should be encouraged that we are not in her position. Dying and having but 1 chance to be saved, we have had many chances and we are living in the knowledge of Jesus that these people couldn’t have even dreamed about!

Our challenge however should be that despite knowing so much about Christ, and despite hearing his words and being able to hear his word whenever we choose that we don’t loose our unquestionable faith that God will heal our sins, that he is there and that Jesus took away your sins on the cross.

Walk by Faith and not by Sight.

Mikey.