Blindness and Light

Verses 31 through 43 through the end of the chapter.

Encourage you to turn there.

And if you don't have a Bible with you, there should be one located there right in front of you in that little shelf.

And you can find the scripture passage there on page 878.

So we'd love for you to turn and read along as I lead us.

And also I want to encourage you, and we remind you each week of this.

If you don't own a Bible, please take that one home as your own, as our gift to you.

We want you to have it, to read it and study it, and we'll replace it for next Sunday.

So please take that home at the close of our service this morning.

Luke chapter 18, beginning in verse 31.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

And taking the twelve, he said to them, See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.

For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon.

And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.

But they understood none of these things.

This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.

As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging, and hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant.

They told him, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.

And he cried out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent.

But he cried out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me.

And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him.

And when he came near, he asked him, What do you want me to do for you?

He said, Lord, let me recover my sight.

And Jesus said to him, Recover your sight, your faith has made you well.

And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God.

And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

This is God's word.

Jesus now turns his attention to the twelve and begins to talk to them once again, telling them what was about to happen.

Others had been there in the conversation up until now, but now Jesus is focusing his attention on his disciples, on the apostles.

This is the third direct, explicit foretelling that Jesus gives of his impending murder.

He had alluded to it at other times, giving reference to it, but he had explicitly stated that to them on two other occasions.

And Jesus says, see, we're going towards Jerusalem.

We've seen now in Luke's gospel that Jesus is on a relentless march towards Jerusalem to fulfill the purpose for which he came.

He was on a mission.

He had set his face to Jerusalem.

He was undaunted, unhindered.

And now we are coming, moving towards the climax of the Bible and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

He knew that he would suffer.

He knew that he would be betrayed.

He knew that he would be mocked and crucified.

He knew that he would be murdered.

And he knew that he would rise again.

More than anything, he knew that he would take upon himself the full penalty for sin.

That he would experience within himself the punishment that you and I deserve.

That he would experience within himself the sense of abandonment by the Father.

And knowing all of that, knowing what lied before him, he continued to move forward towards Jerusalem.

Jesus tells them that they're going up to Jerusalem so that everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.

The entire Old Testament points to the person of Jesus and to his work.

And there's a danger sometimes when we come to the Bible of dividing it up and missing the reality that there is one story in the Bible.

That everything in the Old Testament points towards Jesus.

This was God's plan before the foundation of the world.

And for we on this side of the cross, we look back to Jesus.

He is the culmination and the central figure of all of human history.

And so there's a danger of us coming to the Old Testament and not realizing that everything in there that God is telling and God is doing, He is moving towards Jesus.

In fact, Jesus tells us this in John 5.39.

He says, You search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life.

It is they that bear witness about me.

Or later we'll see in Luke's gospel at the uh after the resurrection, when he's on the road to Emmaus and he's talking to these two men, he says, When they don't understand what had just happened, he says, Oh, foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken.

Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

So we must not miss Jesus and the gospel in the Old Testament.

From beginning, from the beginning, God was relentlessly moving history towards the culmination in the person and work of Jesus.

And so Jesus tells them here that everything that is written about the Son of Man is going to be accomplished.

Well, what did the prophets say?

And uh one author writes this, and this is just a sample of what the Old Testament says.

He writes this, and Jesus studied the scriptures.

As he read the words of men like David and Isaiah, he saw that the Son of Man would be forsaken by God.

Psalm 22, mocked by his enemies, Psalm 22, 7, tormented by thirst, Psalm 22, 15, pierced through his hands and feet, Psalm 22, 18, despised and rejected by men, Isaiah 53.

Wounded for our transgressions, Isaiah 53, 5, and crushed for iniquity, until he was finally poured out unto death, Isaiah 53, 12.

Jesus says, It's there, it's about me, and it will surely happen.

When we read this passage, we see the certainty of what Jesus says.

He says, Everything that is written will be accomplished.

Not one penstroke in the Old Testament was going to be left unfulfilled ultimately through the person and work of Christ.

All that was said, God is going to do.

And this is what Jesus reminds them of.

He says it will be accomplished.

And there's a confidence that we need to have when we go to God's word.

We go to God's word and we see the prophecies of Jesus in his first coming.

And Jesus says that everything about him will be accomplished.

And we go to Scripture and we see the prophecies of his second coming, and he says, everything about me will be accomplished.

And so we can have the certainty and the confidence that everything that we read will be done.

That God will do what he has said.

Even as we look at the person of Christ in his first coming, God did exactly what he said.

And he provided Jesus.

And so the disciples here, the disciples here are told what's going to happen.

Jesus tells them that this is about me.

Interesting in this passage, with both the apostles and the beggar, we have blindness and sight.

We have blindness and sight with both the apostles in verses 31 through 34 and this blind man in verses 35 through 43.

First of all, we have the apostles seeing but blind.

The apostles, first of all, they're seeing, but yet they're blind.

Look at what Jesus tells them.

He tells them explicitly what's going to happen.

This isn't the first time that they've heard this.

He says in verse 32 that he will be delivered over to the Gentiles.

This is a further explanation of what's going to happen, that Jesus Christ is going to be given into the hands of the Gentiles, that he is going to be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon.

They're going to beat him and he is going to be murdered.

He tells them in plain language exactly what's going to happen.

And then he says, and on the third day, he will rise again.

It's unmistakable what Jesus is telling them here.

He's speaking in plain language.

He's telling them exactly what is in the Old Testament concerning him.

And the apostles are clueless.

The apostles hear it, they see it, and yet they're blind to what Jesus is saying.

The apostles are absolutely clueless to what Jesus is saying.

Look at what it said in verse 34.

But they understood none of these things.

They understood none of these things.

The things that Jesus had just once again told them for the third time.

Seven or eight times if you count the other allusions to it.

And yet they were clueless.

Why were they clueless?

Why did they not see what Jesus was saying?

Let me quote one commentator, an old commentator, John Calvin, on this.

I just love his phrasing on this.

This is what Calvin writes on this.

What stupidity was this?

Not to understand what Christ said to them in plain and familiar manner, on a subject not too lofty or intricate, but on which they had, at their own suggestion, entertained some suspicion.

But it is proper also to bear in mind what I have formerly observed, the reason why they were held in such gross ignorance, which was that they had formed the expectation of a joyful and prosperous advancement, and therefore reckoned it to be in the highest degree absurd that Christ should be ignominiously ignominiously, thank you, crucified.

Shamefully crucified.

Here's what Calvin says.

Even if I can't pronounce that word.

I did when I practiced it, by the way.

The Messiah was going to be a conquering king, coming on a war horse to overthrow the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire, and they were waiting with joyful anticipation for the unfolding of what they were expecting.

And all of this talk of dying didn't fit in their preconceived ideas, so they just didn't see it.

And there's a danger for us.

We can come to Scriptures over and over again, and we can hear God's word presented to us and preached to us and told to us and spoken to us, but we can come with our own preconceived ideas so much so that the very plain words that are presented, we miss.

And that was the case with the apostles at this point.

Jesus could not have been more explicit.

He could not have been plainer in his words of what was about to happen, but they absolutely missed it because of their preconceived ideas.

Because of their sin and their hardness of heart and their preconceived ideas and their unwillingness.

They were willfully blind to the truth of what Jesus was saying.

But there's a second reason given here, a little more difficult for us to process.

But notice what it says here.

It says they did not understand it.

In the end of verse 34, they did not grasp what was said, but right in the middle of verse 34, it says, This saying was hidden from them.

And this is hard for us to grasp, but the Bible says it is God who hides truth and reveals truth.

This is what the Bible tells us.

God hides truth and reveals truth to us.

Remember in Luke 10, earlier when we were studying that in verses 21 and 22, Jesus says this, in the same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

Or in Matthew 11, 27, Jesus says this All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

This is why Jesus spoke in parables.

We think that the parables were there to make things plain and obvious to everyone who heard, but that isn't what Jesus says about the parables in Matthew 13, 10 through 12.

This is what Jesus says.

It says, The disciples came to him and said, Why do you speak to them in parables?

And this is what he answered.

He said, To you has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

For the one who has more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but the one who has not, even what he has, will be taken away.

Or think of Matthew 16.

We have the in the and after the Mount of Transfiguration, there Jesus is talking to his disciples.

And he's asking them, Who do you say that I am?

And who do others say?

And others say, Well, John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets.

And then Jesus says to them, Well, who do you say that I am?

And Peter answers, and he tells them that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And in verse 27 of Matthew 16, uh, when it says that when Peter had made his great confession, Jesus responded, says, and Jesus answered him, verse 27, Blessed are you, Simon Barjonh, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

Well, what does this mean for us?

Well, it means that we cannot work our way to God through philosophy and observation.

It is God's word that must be preached, and God's spirit that must apply it in our hearts and our minds.

God's spirit must illumine our minds, or else we remain in darkness.

So the apostles, they saw and yet they were blind.

Jesus was as plain as could be and yet they missed it.

They missed it because of their own preconceived ideas, and God withheld it from them for his purpose.

But now we see the opposite.

We saw that seeing they were blind, but now we see blind and yet seeing.

We see this man.

This is a shocking reversal when we compare these two passages of what just happened with the disciples and what is going to happen with this blind man.

Because he is blind and yet he sees.

Jericho was an old town.

We know Jericho from the Old Testament.

It lied in ruins, but Herod the Great had received from Caesar Augustus, he had obtained Jericho and he built a new city within walking distance, within a mile of the old city.

And so Jesus here is walking away from the ruins of Jericho into the new city that's inhabited by people.

And it's at this time that this encounter happens with the blind man.

The other gospels record some other differences.

One that one of the other gospels records that there were two blind men, but but Luke records focusing on the one who speaks, the one who is the leader of the two, and all of the attention is on this blind man.

This blind man that begins to speak to Jesus.

So we read that we begin this encounter, and there's a blind man who's sitting by the roadside begging.

He's doing the only thing that he can do.

He doesn't have a livelihood.

Apparently, there are few people who are caring for him.

Perhaps somebody brings him to the side of the road every day, and he begs in order to survive.

And he was probably in his normal location.

Perhaps he moved there for uh knowing that there was an event going on, we don't know, but he's sitting on the side of the road and he begins to hear a commotion.

He begins to hear the crowds in the distance as there's this procession, this entourage, as Jesus is now moving forward towards Jerusalem.

And he hears the crowd going by and he begins to ask.

He can't see anything, but he hears the chatter, he he hears the the cacophony of sounds, and he says, What's going on?

What's happening?

And they tell him, verse 37, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.

So they they tell him that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.

And he he has heard about Jesus.

He knows the stories, he's heard the miracles, he he has understanding of the significance of who Jesus is because he begins to cry out.

Verse 38.

He says, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

The blind man sees his condition.

The blind man recognizes that he is helpless.

We don't know how long he's been blind.

Maybe he was blind from birth.

Maybe something happened to him.

There was an accident, there was some tragedy, maybe there was a disease, and progressively he lost his sight.

We don't know what happened, but the man is blind.

There's nothing that he can do about it.

He can't change his situation.

He is helpless to change his life.

No amount of work, no amount of effort is going to change his situation.

He can't try any harder.

There's nothing that he can do.

He is helpless, he is blind.

That is his circumstance, that is his lot in life, he is powerless to effect change.

He can't change himself no matter what he does.

And he realizes he needs mercy.

He cries out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.

What is mercy?

We use the word a lot, and I think we have a slightly uh wrong definition.

We're mistaken in what we think mercy is.

Maybe you've said this.

I know I have in the past, we and it's an easy thing to remember.

We say grace is God giving us what we don't deserve, and mercy is God not giving us what we deserve.

And we uh maybe you've heard people say that, um, but there's an there's a key aspect that's really missing in that saying about mercy.

Mercy is more than God not giving us what we deserve.

Mercy, as one theologian writes, mercy is God's goodness towards those in misery and distress.

If you were to trace out in the Old Testament and look at cries of mercy, they were when people were in distress and misery, and God has pity on the person in his misery.

Let me give you one example in 2 Samuel 24, 14.

David cries out, I am in great distress.

Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great.

And so there's this idea traced out in this in the concept of mercy, of pity of those in misery and distress.

And this man is in misery, he's in distress, so he cries out for mercy.

The blind man sees his situation.

But more than that, the blind man sees Jesus.

It may pass us by what he says here, but I don't want you to miss what he cries out.

He says, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

Remember what the crowd said when Jesus was passing by?

He says, Who is this?

And they say, Jesus of Nazareth.

All that tells this man is the location where Jesus is known to be from in the eyes of the people.

Jesus of Nazareth.

That'd be like saying, Bob from Grand Forks.

But but this man doesn't cry out saying, Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy on me.

What does he say?

He says, Son of David.

This is an amazing confession by this man.

Son of David is a term for the Messiah, for the promised one who is to come.

This man in his blindness saw who Jesus was.

That Jesus was the Messiah, the promised one, the one who was to come.

Kent Hughes notes in his commentary the miseries of the Greek and the Roman domination had so inflamed the Old Testament hope that an ultimate son of David, a Messiah, would come and just depose the Gentiles that during the first century, son of David was constantly used by the rabbis as a messianic designation.

This blind man cries out with a clear conviction that Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, he is the Messiah, he is the anointed, promised one that is to come, who is the Son of David, who will sit on the throne of David.

It was a dangerous statement that this man said.

Because if they had known anything about the Messiah and popular expectation, they would have thought that the Messiah was going to come to try to overthrow Rome.

The Jews could have ostracized him because this would have been a blatant heresy.

But he didn't care.

Not only does the blind man see his problem, not only does he see Jesus, but the blind man sees his opportunity and he's persistent.

The crowds tell him to be quiet.

They tell him to shut his mouth.

He's sitting there, he begins to cry out, he begins to call out, and the crowds rebuke him, telling him to be silent.

He was a nuisance.

He was a spectacle.

This man was insignificant and disregarded, and he was he he was taking attention that he didn't deserve, that was not his right to have.

So they told him to be quiet, to shut his mouth.

But the man is undaunted.

He was determined, he was persistent.

Nothing was going to stop him.

They tell him to be quiet.

And he cries out all the more.

That's what it says.

He cries out all the more.

He begins to cry.

The word here is a shriek, a loud shriek.

He's crying out.

This is his chance.

This is his hope.

This is his opportunity.

He's not going to let it pass him by.

And so he cries out even louder.

Son of David, have mercy on me.

He sees his opportunity.

And he begins to cry out.

And the blind man, he humbly receives.

Notice what it says in verse 40.

And Jesus stopped.

And Jesus stopped.

What an amazing picture.

The crowds are gathering around Jesus as he's walking.

People have heard all of the gawkers, all of the ones that just want to see who is this, who is this itinerant speaker, who is this rabbi, all of the people, all classes of society, the well-to-do.

Everyone is there.

They're walking down the road, and this blind, poor, insignificant beggar cries out, Jesus is relentlessly moving towards Jerusalem.

Nothing is going to stop him.

And yet a cry for mercy, and Jesus stops.

This wasn't an official, this wasn't a centurion, this wasn't somebody who was a politician.

He was a blind beggar.

In the eyes of the people, he was an insignificant nothing.

But Jesus is no respecter of persons.

We forget that sometimes.

We think, well, why would God pay attention to me?

Why would God focus on me?

I'm nobody special.

My life's a mess.

Why would God waste his time on me?

The world might pass you by, but Jesus will stop and hear your cry.

And that was this blind beggar.

Jesus stops.

He commands him to be called to him.

This man who was disregarded becomes the center of Jesus' attention.

Jesus hears his desperate cry.

And Jesus asks him, What do you want?

What do you want from me?

And the man says, Let me recover my sight.

In the Greek Jesus answer is one word.

To recover your sight is one word.

That's the power and the authority of Jesus.

He speaks a word and it happens.

He says to this man, recover your sight, and he sees immediately.

But we find here what Jesus says is even more than we anticipate.

He says, Recover your sight, your faith has made you well.

Literally, what it says here is, your faith has saved you.

And I believe what Jesus is saying here is more than just a commentary on his physical healing.

I think Jesus is telling him the reality that this man who recognizes who the Messiah is, that Jesus is the Son of David, had put his faith and trust in Jesus, and Jesus is telling him that his faith has saved him.

His faith had made him whole.

The faith was the means by which he came into a relationship.

The cause of it was God's grace, was mercy and pity on this man.

Sickness is interesting when you study it in the gospel accounts.

One author writes this when we think about sickness and think there, there's an analogy that we can see in a lot of sickness.

And the Bible shows many times Jesus healing people.

And there's a correlation.

It's not that the sickness is caused by sin, but there is an analogy that can be made.

Leprosy, for instance, one author writes, shows sin's corrupting power and condemning presence.

The lame, being lame, shows sin's debilitating power, just like physically, when we're lame, sin debilitates us.

Death proclaims the wages of sin.

Just as someone dies spiritually, we are dead because of our sin.

The demon-possessed shows the destructive domination that is always the result of our bondage to sin and to Satan.

And this author writes, for each miracle, there is an analogy between the physical needs of the body and the spiritual needs of the sinful soul.

And just like this man is blind physically, we can be blind spiritually.

We cannot see spiritual reality that's presented to us that's before us.

And like this man, we're helpless to save ourselves.

We can't cause ourselves to see.

But that doesn't mean we're passive.

And there's a mistake that we make.

Just because we cannot cause ourselves to see, that doesn't mean that we should be passive.

We respond to the hearing of God's word.

We're convicted of our sin in light of God's holiness, convicted by the work of the Spirit.

We can put ourselves in the place of the hearing of God's word.

That's why we're here this morning.

We may not be able to change our hearts.

We may not be able to change our lives, but that doesn't mean we can't put ourselves on the side of the road to hear Jesus when he walks by.

God's sovereignty is not incompatible with human responsibility and activity.

The Bible tells us it's the Holy Spirit that shines the light in our minds, illuminates our minds, it's the Holy Spirit that convicts us of sin and righteousness and judgment, convicts our conscience.

It's the Holy Spirit that stirs our emotions with unease and anxiety over sin and moves us to believe.

And yet we can put ourselves in the place of the hearing of God's word.

We can open God's word and cry out to God to do what only He can do.

This man could not cause himself to see, but he could put himself in the place to encounter Jesus, and he could cry out to Jesus to have mercy, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

It's the Holy Spirit who prepares our hearts.

We need to understand how God works.

And let me close with an illustration and a closing quote.

What does it mean to have our hearts prepared?

And sometimes we get it wrong.

We think we have to fix up our lives.

There's something that we have to do in order to make ourselves presentable for God to hear us and answer our prayer.

Think about it when you're selling a house.

There's two different ways.

If somebody says, Are you prepared to sell your house?

and you say, Yep, I've got it ready, I've fixed things up, I've repaired the walls, I've fixed the ceiling.

Now it's worthy for someone to buy it.

It's worthy of someone redeeming it.

And some people think that's how we have to come to Jesus.

We need to fix up our lives.

I know when I was a Catholic, that's what I thought.

You fix up yourselves, you do all of these things, you prepare yourself in order to be ready to receive Jesus.

That isn't what the Bible says.

But think of it in another way.

If somebody says, Are you ready to sell your house?

And you say, You bet.

The house is falling apart, the ceilings are leaking, the walls are caved in, the sewers are backed up, it's in disrepair, and I can't pay the mortgage.

I hope someone has mercy on me and takes it off my hands.

I have to get out now.

There's nothing I can do, but I hope somebody buys this wreck.

And you see, that's what it means for your heart to be prepared for Jesus.

It's not fixing up your life, it's to go, Jesus, I'm a mess.

I need you.

I can't do anything.

And Jesus comes in and he buys up that mess.

Someone once bluntly asked the blind and deaf, Helen Keller, isn't it terrible to be blind?

To which she responded, better to be blind and see with your heart than to have two good eyes and see nothing.

Let's pray.

Father God, we can't change ourselves, but we can cry out to you, the God of grace and mercy, whatever our situation is.

If we're lost in our sin and we know that we can't save ourselves, we see that Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins.

We can cry out in mercy and you hear our cry.

If we find ourselves as your children in desperate situations, when we cry out, you stop, you hear us.

We can't change our situations, but we can cry out to you, the God of mercy, and you hear us.

And so, Father, I pray for us.

Give us eyes to see our own situation, our own inability.

Give us eyes to see Jesus.

That we might put ourselves in a place to hear and to cry out to you.

And so, Lord, we do that now.

Do your work in our lives, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.