Faith, where art thou?

Matthew 9:18-34

Have you ever wondered, like I have, why Jesus was born over two-thousand years ago and not during the twenty-first century? Wouldn’t it have been far better for Jesus to walked the earth at a time when millions of people could hear his message by simply clicking a few buttons? He would’ve been a Youtube sensation. And what about modern science. Surely, if Jesus cured a man from blindness or raised a girl back to life today our modern understanding of medicine and science could verify Jesus’ divine nature? Wouldn’t more people believe if they saw Jesus perform these miracles on the evening news?

Do you ever picture yourself as one of Jesus’ original followers. Going from town to town, watching him perform those miraculous signs, healing the sick and listening to his sermons. How convincing it would’ve been to see all of it first-hand. Perhaps it’s our modern-day hunger for verifiable facts and irrefutable evidence that leaves many people wondering why Jesus didn’t come to earth at a time like the present instead of two-thousand years ago when ninety percent of the population was illiterate.

But if our ability to know God was simply a matter of being presented with the appropriate evidence, then it would appear God didn’t want many people to know him. And where does faith fit in? Wasn’t it Jesus who said ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’ (John 20:29). And aren’t we told that ‘faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see’ (Hebrews 11:1). Evidence can only take us so far. At some point we all have to take a leap of faith.

And this is exactly where we find ourselves in Matthew 9. Jesus is roaming the country side preaching the good news and healing the sick. The author is keen point out how different people responded to Jesus’ miraculous signs. Most notably is the contrast between the faith of the sick woman and the two blind men with that of the Pharisees. To the sick woman Jesus says ‘your faith has healed you’ (v22) and to the two blind men Jesus responds to their request by saying ‘according to your faith let it be done to you’ (v29). The Pharisees, however, faced with the insurmountable evidence that Jesus had divine authority chose to illogically claim that Jesus was somehow at work with demons (v34). They refused to accept the truth.

This is a humbling part of Matthew’s gospel. The Pharisees refused to accept the truth even though that had a thorough understanding of God’s Holy Scriptures and had seen first-hand the things Jesus could do. It reminds us that those most likely to see the kingdom of heaven are those who respond in faith in spite of what is lacking in their knowledge and proof.

So if Jesus was around today, performing and the same miracles and wondrous signs, do you think more people would believe Him to be the Son of God? Perhaps, but it’s hard to say. Some might argue that we have more than enough evidence from the bible and the Holy Spirit to convince us that Jesus is the Messiah. Consequently, belief in God must ultimately come down to a decision of faith, based on knowledge, and not simply a process of accumulating enough evidence to eliminate doubt.