Believing Without Seeing

“And when the men of that place had knowledge of Him, they sent out into all that country round about, and brought unto Him all that were diseased; And besought Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.”  Matthew 14:35-36

Jesus and His disciples had just crossed the Sea of Galilee into the land of Gennesaret which was located west of Bethsaida and Capernaum.  The Sea of Galilee is also known as the Lake of Gennesaret, and, in the Old Testament, it is known as Chinnereth.  One of the difficulties I find in Bible study are all the name changes not just from the Old to the New Testament, but within the Old Testament there are many who are called by different names.  However, that is only a minor problem and can be solved by diligent research.

As happened many times, when the people heard that Jesus was in their vicinity, everyone dropped what they were doing and immediately sought Him out bringing all who were diseased to Him for His healing power.  How many folks today would drop what they were doing to go see Jesus in person?  These folks were not like their neighbors who had told Jesus to leave their town after He had cast devils out of two men into a herd of pigs who ran into the water and drowned (Matthew 9:28-34).  Rather than being excited about the healing of these men, they were upset at losing their livelihood, one in which they should have not been involved for they were Jews, and pigs were unclean to them.  The people of Gennesaret were excited to have Jesus among them.  They had obviously heard about the miracles that Jesus was doing and desired for all of their sick folks to receive healing.

Matthew Henry, the 18th century Bible commentator wrote that “Christ is trusted as far as He is known.”  In other words, those who do not know Christ, who have made no effort to know Him, do not trust Him.  Those who do know Him, trust Him, and the more people know Christ, the more they trust Him.  We get to know Christ more intimately through the study of His word.  We are blessed and privileged to have the written record of Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God and handed down throughout all generations so that we can “know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Philippians 3:10).  Sometimes we place our trust in fellow human beings only to discover that they were not trustworthy, and we have suffered because of it.  Not so with Christ.  He always has our best interest and benefit at heart.

The people who gathered around Jesus wanted to get close enough to touch the hem of His garment for healing.  They had likely heard about the woman with the issue of blood who touched His garment and was healed immediately (Matthew 9:20-22).  Some of the garments of the men in those days would have tassels or fringe sewn on the hem.  The Greek word used here for “hem” is “kraspedon”, which means fringe or tassel.  However, I picture the garment of which Jesus wore as likely rather plain because He had chosen to become a humble servant wearing the cloak of the common man instead of a royal robe of which He so richly deserved.  Whichever way His garment appeared was not important.  What was important was the faith of the people who believed He had the power to heal even from a touch of His garment.

Every person who touched Jesus’ garment was restored to health.  It was the faith that the people had in His power and not faith in the garment itself.  One of the men in scripture who displayed a very strong faith was the Roman centurion, a Gentile, who felt unworthy for Jesus to come into his home to heal his servant, and believed all Jesus had to do was speak His word remotely to heal the servant.  Jesus spoke, the servant was healed, and Jesus even marveled at the faith of this centurion (Matthew 8:5-10).  Imagine having the kind of faith that would make Jesus marvel!  We’ve all seen news stories in which some folks think that they see the face of Jesus on a tree trunk, pizza, or some other inanimate object.  This news spreads and soon people are flocking to this supposed image and almost worship it.  How do they know that image is what Jesus actually looks like?  They seek for an outward sign of Christ, some sort of physical proof rather than relying on faith and trust in God’s revelation of Christ as found in scripture.  Faith is believing without seeing (Hebrews 11:1).  Jesus said that those who have not seen Him, but still believe are blessed (John 20:29).