Matthew 9:18 While he was saying this, a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, “My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.”
Some people struggle to understand what faith is, what it looks like in everyday terms. But we exercise faith every moment of every day. The question isn’t about faith itself, it is about the object of our faith, who or what we trust.
We trust the builder of our house. Or we would run out of the door right now because we wouldn’t know they had built it strong enough to stay up. We certainly couldn’t drive a car, because driving a car means we trust people we don’t even know to follow the rules, not be homicidal. We would never marry, because marriage requires a level of trust.
Matthew is a genius with delivering his message. Our chapter began today with the religious leaders calling Jesus a “blasphemer,” a term used when someone disrespect God in what they say or do. It happens when someone downgrades the greatness, holiness, power or majesty of our good God. The religious leaders do this by not recognizing that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins.
But Jesus does, and He proves it by healing the man who was crippled and couldn’t walk. They showed a lack of faith in Jesus. And the remaining parts of this chapter show us a series of people who demonstrate faith in Jesus in different ways.
Matthew, the tax collector shows faith by responding to Jesus’ call to “follow me” and the invitation to have Jesus join him and his friends for a meal. Faith meant abandoning his official duties as an agent of the Roman state. He risked his job, and perhaps prison or worse to obey Jesus.
We have the synagogue leader, a religious leader, defy the odds and the objection of his peers to ask Jesus to come and heal his daughter, bring her back to life actually. His faith made him the target by stepping out of his crowd and going against what others were doing.
We have the woman with the bleeding issue who, despite being unacceptable for personal contact, risked it all to touch Jesus clothes knowing she would be healed. We have two blind men calling out and declaring that Jesus is the Messiah, the Promised One, because they knew Jesus could restore their sight. We have some friends who bring a demon-possessed man to Jesus to be delivered, and he begins to speak.
And right after this Matthew wraps up the narrative with the religious leaders again rejecting what Jesus is doing. They commit blasphemy by saying that Jesus is doing these things by the power of Satan himself. The very thing they accuse Jesus of doing, these religious leader do.
Faith takes many forms, as we can see from this chapter. But Biblical faith is always trusting Jesus, always trusting God to do what He has said. It is responding with a “Yes!” when He tells us to do something. It involves being willing to be singled out as the different one, the one who goes against the crowd in your trust of Jesus.
The Arnold Journey 