This man was none other than Jesus Christ, himself. He walked where He walked in His boyhood days and hung out in His own neighborhood. People followed him wherever he went and under the disapproving eye of the local ministers who thought Jesus was way too weird to be one of the faithful sons of Israel. That didn’t stop others from wanting to meet Jesus and bring with them their struggles to lay at his feet.
There were two people who did this literally. The first was a group of men who picked up a friend of theirs who was a paralytic, bed and all and carried him kicking and screaming to the one man who could possibly heal him. Jesus looked at the paralytic who radiated doubt, anger, and even humiliation at his crippled state with pity and compassion. He told the paralytic that his sins were forgiven, that he was loved and then told him to pick up his bed and walk home. Imagine the bewilderment of the man who received this order and the amount of risk he put into obeying knowing that there was a chance it wouldn’t even work. Imagine his wonder and joy when he took his first steps to realize that the impossible became possible with each step as he walked, perhaps even ran or skipped home.
Another such case came in the form of a lonely woman who was shunned because she had an unknown disease that caused her to bleed incessantly making her unclean through no fault of her own. Imagine the desperation that woman must have felt because she had no insurance to help her and she put her last denarius into seeing many doctors who all told her that she couldn’t be cured. Desperate enough to have the crazy thought “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well (verse 21)”. Prostrated on the ground, she reached out so her fingertips could brush his hem. A touch so soft and as gentle as the flick of a butterfly’s wing that no one would have known. But Jesus felt it to His core and as the power left His body, her own body renewed, and a hopeless situation dawned into a situation of joy.
Not only did Jesus perform this miraculous healing, he explained why. To the woman, He said, “ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε”, “your faith has made you whole (verse 22)”. With the friends of the paralytic, the text says “καὶ ἰδὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὴν πίστιν”, “and when Jesus saw their faith”. Faith. Faith. Their faith, your faith, his faith, her faith. If Matthew 9 is about healing the underlined prescription is faith.
Now, some of you may be wondering why the heck I of all people would be talking about healing. If you are, I have to say that you’re not alone in that wondering. I have to say, in the spirit of confession and in repentance, that I did not approach this topic correctly. When I opened to Matthew 9 and the first story I read was the paralytic, I laughed hard. A cripple preaching on Christ healing infirmity? I trust that you can appreciate the irony of such a thing and I felt completely unqualified to preach on healing. I sought out the advice of a friend who had preached for many decades and he told me to go read some Paul-particularly 2 Corinthians 12:1-9.
Three times, Paul asked God to relieve him of his pain and torment. God refused and said it was for Paul’s benefit- “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness (verse 9)”. Instead of getting ticked, these words changed Paul’s outlook on his trials and instead of despair, he boasted all the louder in God’s praise because for Christ Paul was willing to endure any calamity for when he is weak, he is made strong.
So, what do we do when we beg God for deliverance from trial or illness and He doesn’t remove the bitter cup? Calvary Chapel Pastor Chuck Smith said, “many times, it takes a greater faith to not be healed than it does to be healed.” I’m not going to put God in a box, but I understand that there’s a good chance that my healing won’t take place until after my Master calls me home and I’ll be honest and say I don’t know why. But healing comes in many forms. Jesus didn’t just heal physical ailments, He also the skillful physician of both body and soul. Healing starts with faith, whether it is our faith like the woman who dared to reach her hand out to Christ, or the faith of others like the friends of the paralyzed man who carried him despite his protestations. Both stories had this in common: their faith was strong, humble and active. Through this faith, we see the remarkable instances of the power and pity of the Great Physician whose miracles were not primarily calculated for the crowd effect. Instead they were primarily done to minister to the humble needs of humble people.
When we reach out to Christ, we need to be humble. We need to have faith that He can heal us, but we also need to have faith if it is God’s will that we endure.
