"The Gospel Makes You See" Matthew 9:27-34 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well, many years ago, I used to coach a soccer team.

Uh it was called an ODP team, which in soccer is a kind of a select club team that players have to try out for.

And me and my coach did our tryouts and chose our team.

And I had a parent come up to me after tryouts who told me that she felt like I overlooked her son.

Her son was a very quality player and should have been on the team.

And so she invited us to go, me and my other coach, to go watch uh his next club game and see if he had what it took to be on our team.

And so, despite my better judgment, my friend and I went to watch this under 16, which like sophomores in high school play club soccer.

And uh this kid looked like a soccer player.

I mean, he had his jersey on the right way, and his you know, socks looked like he knew what he was doing and whatnot.

But then the ball touched his foot and everything changed.

Um, it consistently went from his foot out of bounds, from his foot to the other team.

Honestly, a cone on the field would have served his team better than he was doing was my perception.

Uh, and the thing that drove me craziest about him was whenever there was a punt or a goal kick coming to where he should be and we should win the ball, he would back away from it and let it come and let another player come, and then he would run to it like he was really gonna go for it.

And once I noticed that, it was just driving me crazy.

But the worst of it, and if you don't know enough about soccer, by the way, to know that that's really bad, I can't help you.

That's just really bad, okay?

After the game, the mom comes up to me with 15-year-old son in tow and says, So that was great, right?

What'd you think?

And it occurred to me he and she they don't see it.

Like they don't have the ability to perceive how inadequate the boy is at soccer.

Like they just can't see it.

And there's no way I can help them see, they just don't have the ability to do self-reflection properly right now.

So I don't know what exactly I said.

It was probably something like, oh, you could work on this and that.

And have you considered chess?

Let me move from the soccer field to the soul now.

The New Testament uses this analogy of blindness to describe people who lack the ability to perceive themselves rightly in spiritual terms.

The person who thinks that they are spiritually mature, the person who thinks that they know what righteousness is and what sin is, who thinks they know the difference between right and wrong, but they don't love Jesus Christ.

That person the New Testament describes as blind.

It borrows the physical ailment of blindness to use to describe people that reject the authority of Jesus Christ and yet fancy themselves good people.

They proclaim themselves wise.

They say that they know the truth about God, they know the truth about the world, they know the truth about right and wrong, but the truth is they can't see anything spiritual at all.

They are spiritually blind.

And oftentimes in the New Testament, God intervenes in people's lives with blindness to make this point.

Do you remember Saul, who was on his way to persecute Christians when he was converted to Christ?

And he was converted when God struck him with blindness.

And he went several days without the ability to see until another believer came and laid hands on him and prayed for him, and then the scales came off of his eyes, and then he could see.

That whole exchange was designed to show that though Paul was a religious leader, though he was a leader of the Jews, and people thought he knew what he was talking about, he didn't know anything.

He was blind.

In a twist of providence, one of the first people Paul shared the gospel with after his conversion, one of the first kings, Paul made it a pattern to pursue kings and governors and those in authority.

And the first king that was converted under his ministry was a king who was also named Paul, Paulos.

And as Saul, the Apostle Paul, was preaching the gospel to King Paul, a magician enters the room.

This is Acts 13.

A magician comes into the room to distract King Paul from hearing the gospel message, because the magician did not want the king to come to faith in Christ.

I don't know how a magician distracts people.

Smoke and I don't know, a rabbit or something.

I don't know what he does, but the magician went to distract the king.

And God then struck the magician blind.

A mist settled over his eyes, and he could not perceive barely the sun.

The sun was blazing, but he couldn't even make out the sun, the scripture says.

And then, in the ultimate twist of irony for the magician, he had to ask other people to take him by the hand and lead him home.

The magician who thought he could blind the king to the truth of the gospel ended up blind and needing others to escort him out of the room.

And that king came to faith.

I think that, by the way, is why Saul changed his name to Paul.

I think he took the name of the first king that was converted under his ministry.

That's my own view.

That's a different sermon.

But again, the New Testament takes that phrase of spiritual blindness and applies it to people outside of Christ.

First Corinthians 2.

The natural person is unable to accept the things of God because they are spiritually discerned.

A person who does not have the Holy Spirit, who does not submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and does not bow to the authority of Scripture, is spiritually blind and unable to hear spiritual truths.

Now, all of the miracles in Matthew 9, all of the healings in Matthew 9, are designed to show you the power of the gospel.

And they're designed to show you that the gospel has the power to change you.

And so as we look at this first miracle, let me start with this point.

The gospel can make you see your blindness.

The gospel can make you see your blindness.

The Bible really is like a mirror.

You can hold it up and it shows you where you fall short.

So the gospel has the power to help you see that you are blind.

It's even a weird sentence to say, isn't it?

The gospel can help you see that you are blind.

But that's what it does.

And as I mentioned, all of the miracles in Matthew 9 are physical miracles designed to show you a spiritual reality.

That's not true of all of Jesus' miracles.

Oftentimes Jesus just heals people to demonstrate his own authority.

But Matthew 9 is different.

The miracles in Matthew 9 are designed to teach you spiritual truth.

It uses a physical ailment or a physical description to teach you something about the reality of the gospel.

The chapter begins with the paralyzed man who, paralytic, let through the roof before Jesus.

And Jesus tells him, Your sins are forgiven, therefore you can stand up and walk and leave.

Everything in this chapter is predicated on the forgiveness of sins through faith.

This man had faith in Jesus, his sins were forgiven, so now he has the ability to leave the room and go to a life of serving Christ.

Next up in Matthew 9 is Levi, the most wretched sinner, the tax collector, the villainous villain.

And the gospel has the authority and the power to make him righteous.

It can make the lame walk, spiritually speaking.

It can make the person who is spiritually dead alive and follow Christ.

It can make the person who is spiritually unrighteous and a wicked sinner.

It can give him righteousness.

And Matthew Levi believes in Jesus and is declared to be righteous.

That's what the gospel can do.

After that, we saw that the gospel can make the unclean clean.

Remember, the woman comes up and touches Jesus' tassel, grabs onto his tassel, and her act of faith, Jesus says, Woman, your faith has made you well.

The gospel has the power to take the unclean person and make them clean.

And then after that, you recognize that the gospel has the power to raise the dead.

We saw this last week.

The girl, the little girl, had died, and she is resurrected as a picture of what happens in your life when you come to faith in Christ.

You take all this together.

And here we see the gospel has the power to make you see.

And it begins by helping you see your blinds.

As they were going away from there, verse 27 says, as Jesus left there, that there is the place where he just resurrected the girl.

And there is an army, a parade of people with Jesus.

Do you remember the chapter begins with so many people there?

There's a massive crowd.

They had to saw a hole in the roof to get one more in.

That's the crowd Jesus is bringing with him.

The Pharisees have been added on because they're rebuking him.

The tax collectors and the sinners have been added on.

They're all following along in this parade.

They go to the party at Matthew's house.

They leave that house to go minister to the woman.

You have the woman whose issue of blood was cleansed.

She's now part of this parade.

You have the girl resurrected and Jesus leaves, and the mourners who he threw out of the house, it seems that some of them have gathered on as well.

I mean, this thing is growing and growing.

John the Baptist disciples picked up the parade, also, it says.

I mean, this is just an incredible procession of people, and they are now the only thing missing is two blind guys.

And now you have two blind guys.

They hop in, verse 27 says, Two blind men when he left the house begin following him.

They were crying out.

They're going to follow him all the way from the synagogue ruler's house back to the house where Jesus is staying.

They're weaving through the streets of Capernaum.

And they're crying out, these blind people.

They're shrieking out.

That word for crying in the Greek, it's an inarticulate yell.

It's a shriek.

It's used in Mark 13 to describe a woman in childbirth.

It's not that they're saying words, it's just that they're yelling and pleading and groaning.

They begin following.

And it appears that Jesus ignores them because they're going to enter the house, which leads to the second component here.

The gospel helps you see your blindness.

Secondly, the gospel can make you cry for mercy.

It can make you plead for mercy.

These two men are shrieking out to Jesus, crying out, Have mercy on us, son of David.

Notice they do not start like the rich young ruler.

When the rich young ruler approaches Jesus, he says, Good teacher, what must I do to have eternal life?

These blind men are not trying to do anything.

They're not saying, Jesus, what can I do to have you help me?

They are just asking for mercy.

That is the command, that is the plea that comes from someone's mouth who is aware of their own sin.

Someone who realizes they're blinds.

And by the way, it is hard to know you're blind.

Imagine trying to explain blindness to a blind person, someone who has never been able to see before.

And blindness, by the way, was very common in the Roman Empire.

Very common.

Because it was a it was actually a sexually transmitted disease, that is, children were born, they picked up the disease in their eyes, and they were maybe born with the ability to see, but after a few days, their eyes have developed this bacteria, and their eyes corrode and seal up, and they lose the ability for sight.

And that kind of blindness was so common in the Roman Empire, and that disease had spread even among the Jews, more common in the Roman Empire than in the even the Old Testament days, likely because of the sexual immorality of the Romans.

That kind of blindness is almost entirely eliminated from the world today, by the way, because babies have their eyes treated with antibiotics or little eye drops when they're born.

It's basically eliminated from the world today, but it was so common in the life of Christ.

And these two people have it, and they are aware of it.

Again, it's so hard to even know you're blind.

Because how you can't see, but imagine trying to explain to a blind person what sight is.

Like, hey, this is what we can see things and we can tell the differences, and like you can hear differences, we can actually see those.

A blind person's not aware of what you're describing to them.

And that's the situation with these two people.

They know they're blind, they're aware of it, they're aware they're deficient, and they they can't do anything to fix it.

And so they're pleading for mercy.

Who are they pleading to?

Well, they're pleading to the son of David, it says.

Have mercy on us, son of David.

That phrase son of David is a very specific phrase in the Gospel of Matthew, very important in Matthew's Gospel.

It begins in Matthew 1.

This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, who is the son of David.

It's a messianic title.

Not all descendants of David are the son of David.

The son of David is a particular word that is used to describe the Savior of the world, because he'll be the king on David's throne.

He will be the son of David.

Not all of David's descendants are the son of David.

Only one is, and that is the name for the Messiah.

So Matthew begins his gospel with that phrase.

You don't see that phrase again until Matthew 12, where these two blind people identify Jesus as the Son of David.

Nobody else has.

The crowds haven't.

The disciples don't get yet that Jesus is the son of David, but these two blind people do.

In Matthew's gospel, there are three other people that call him the son of David, it is individuals.

One will be a Canaanite woman, I think Matthew 15, a Gentile woman, and the other two are two more blind people in Jericho.

So there are five people in Matthew's gospel that call him the son of David.

Four of them are blind, and one is a Gentile woman.

It's fascinating that these blind people can see spiritual truth more effectively than all the Pharisees and all the so-called religious wise people.

They couldn't see that he was a son of David, but the blind people could.

And by the way, when Jesus descends into Jerusalem for Passion Week, do you remember what the crowd was chanting?

Hosanna in the highest, praises to the Son of David.

So the crowd, by the end of Jesus' life, figured it out, and that was enough for Jesus to be killed.

Even before he was betrayed, the day his last day of public ministry, Wednesday in the temple, he's teaching, and he asked the Pharisees the question.

Remember, he asked the Pharisees, Who do you say that the Son, whose son is the Savior?

Whose son is he?

Now, you know, the Sunday school answer to all questions, the Sunday school answer to all questions is always right.

Well, the Saturday school answer to all questions is David.

That was a Jewish reference there, the Saturday school.

The standard Saturday school answer to a question is David.

So Jesus asks the Pharisees, Whose son is the Savior?

And the Pharisees say, Why?

David's son.

And Jesus responds by saying, If the Savior is David's son, how can he also be David's Lord?

And the Pharisees could not answer that question.

They went away stumped and purposed to put him to death.

Well, these blind men could answer the question.

They identify Jesus as the Son of David and as the Lord.

Notice that they barge into the house, verse 28.

They've been following Jesus through the streets.

Jesus has ignored them, likely because they're calling out Son of David, and that's a very provocative phrase.

I mean, that would produce a riot if Jesus identified himself as a son of David.

I mean, it would be all over.

When he is finally identified as that, they do put him to death.

And so Jesus is ignoring these two blind men.

He goes into the house, closes the doors, the picture here, and the blind men then barge in.

I don't know how they found the door, they had help, but they get in.

They burst into the house, find Jesus in the house, and present themselves before him.

And Jesus now talks to them.

Jesus asks, Do you believe that I am able to do this?

Jesus does not ask, What do you want?

He doesn't say, What are you looking for?

That's obvious, they're blind.

He asks, Do you believe in me?

The Old Testament says that only God can cure blindness.

Only God can make the blind see.

Only God can make the mute speak.

Only God can make the lame walk.

Only God can give life.

Who do you believe that I am?

This is like a church membership interview, isn't it?

Somebody interviews for membership and we say, Tell us your testimony.

And you say, I once was blind, but now I see.

And then we say, What do you believe about the gospel?

What do you believe about Jesus Christ?

It's a baptism testimony where you get in the waters and you talk about how you were blind and now you see.

And then you say what you believe about Jesus Christ.

This is where Jesus starts with these people.

He looks at these two blind people and he asks them, What do you believe about me?

That is the definitive question of all time.

What do you believe about Jesus Christ?

A spiritually blind person rejects his authority.

But a spiritually perceptive person recognizes that he is David's son and David's Lord.

And look at the blind person's answer.

They say to him, Yes, Lord.

Now that word Lord can be a polite phrase.

It's not meant polite here.

It's with all of the messianic baggage.

These blind people are declaring what the Pharisees couldn't see that Jesus is David's son and he is David's Lord.

He's their Lord.

And they recognize that.

And so then Jesus heals them.

And he heals them by touching them.

By touching them.

We are not a touchy people, Americans, but Jesus was.

By touching them.

Our culture, Americans don't touch people.

When I went to Rwanda this summer, everybody touches everybody there.

I get off the plane, and Pastor Charles, who many of you know, grabs my hand and holds my hand from the where I went through customs all the way to get my bags, and then other people are holding my hand and my bags and all the way to the car.

Three weeks in Rwanda, and somebody was always holding my hands.

Show up to church to preach, and they have a guy called the armor bearer who meets me at the door and takes my Bible, and they have the armor bearer's wingman, and they put their arms around me and take my hands and lead me down to the thing and set my Bible down.

Always being touched.

Come back to the United States.

We don't do things like that here.

I went to lunch with Jordan once, and we get out of the car together, and I put my arm around him.

I'm fresh back from Rwanda.

I put my arm around Jordan.

And he just stopped and said, What are you doing?

All right.

Not in Rwanda anymore.

Americans are not touchy people.

You know what?

Neither were the Jews.

They were not touchy people.

And the Jews segregated everything in this world between clean and unclean.

And the Americans don't view the world like that.

We're happy with neutral things.

Like we don't think in categories of clean or unclean.

If something is super clean, we won't touch it because we don't want to make it dirty.

If something's super dirty, ooh, that's gross.

Jews divide everything, every person, every chair, every piece of food, everything, every day, every moment is clean or unclean.

And they would never touch something unclean.

Ever.

It defiles them.

And Jesus consistently touches unclean people.

In Matthew 8, he heals the leper by embracing him.

He didn't need to touch the leper.

The next miracle, he's going to heal the centurion slave from a distance.

He's not even going to go into the house.

But with the leper, he embraces him.

The deaf mute in Mark 7.

Jesus puts his fingers in the guy's ears.

That's weird.

And then he spits and touches the guy's tongue.

He puts his fingers in his ear and then touches his tongue.

Don't touch my tongue.

But that's what Jesus does.

He's touching these people who have who've not been touched, who have not been in love, they haven't been shown any affection, and he touches them.

The dead body that we saw just last Sunday here.

The girl who had died, a dead body is unclean.

And Jesus raises her from the dead by taking her hands.

The point here is that when we touch something unclean, we become defiled.

When Jesus touches something unclean, it shows his compassion and his love, and the unclean becomes clean.

And here are these two blind men with the bacterial infection in their eyes, Jesus touches their eyes and they can see.

And then this story just keeps getting more and more remarkable.

Verse 30, Jesus sternly warned them, sternly I say, see that no one knows about this.

Don't tell anyone.

Well, there's a massive crowd outside that two blind fellows just push their way through, barge into the door, and they're gonna walk out of the house with their eyes opened.

So, not really sure how Jesus was expecting this to go.

But he says, don't tell anyone.

And I think what he means by that, there's this whole messianic idea, messianic secret commentators call it, where over and over again, especially in Mark's gospel, Jesus tells people whom he healed not to tell other people.

And that's because he didn't come as a healer, he came as the Savior.

He didn't come to be known as someone who does all these miracles.

And it's not that he does his miracles in private, he did them in public.

He just didn't want the word to be that he heals everybody because the full message that needed to go to the world was that he rose from the grave.

So before his resurrection, he tells people, don't tell everyone, don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone, and they ignore him anyway, but he keeps saying it.

After the resurrection, it's no longer shh, after the resurrection, it's go into all the world and tell everyone.

Everyone under creation needs to know the good news.

That's after the resurrection.

But for now, he says, Don't tell anyone about maybe it's also the Son of David title that, you know, I mean, again, that's going to provoke a riot.

And so he's telling them, Don't tell anybody.

But look at verse, the next verse, verse 31.

They went away and spread his fame throughout all that district.

So Jesus says, I'm serious, don't tell anyone.

They say, okay, and then they go and spread his fame everywhere.

So that happens.

Now, I love just the way it's phrased.

They spread his fame throughout all the district.

And that is the natural response.

It's the natural human response to receiving mercy from the Savior, is you want to spread his fame.

Which leads us to the third point.

The gospel makes you see your blindness, the gospel makes you plead for mercy, and the gospel makes you tell the world.

And because these blind people were forbidden from speaking, they did anyway, they're not the best picture of this.

The best picture of this third point is really the next miracle.

And I think that's why it's placed here.

Verse 32.

As the blind guys were going away, formerly blind guys, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to Jesus.

That word mute there can mean a deaf mute, and this was another, it wasn't as common as a blindness in the Roman Empire, but it was not entirely unusual.

And if anyone was to be pitied in the Roman Empire, it would be a deaf mute.

Because there's no little baby hearing tests back then.

A baby is born without the ability to hear.

You can't diagnose it.

You can't diagnose it.

A first-time parent, I I read recently the first-time parent might not recognize their baby's ailment until the baby is like nine months or ten months old.

They would figure out they're blind.

If you had other children before, you figure it out much quicker because you know, oh, normally the baby would roll over, normally the baby would look at me, but this baby doesn't because the baby can't hear.

The word mute in English implies that their vocal cords don't work.

No, their vocal cords would work.

They could cry like a normal baby.

They could make normal baby sounds, but what they can't do is say words because they can't hear words.

So they're totally unaware of speech.

They encounter other people and people are speaking to them and they can't hear them.

They see lips moving.

Their brain is a hundred percent there.

There's nothing wrong mentally with these with these people, but they sense frustration.

Really, the only human emotion they know is frustration because around the time of nine, ten months, they're starting to recognize that every time someone interacts with them, that person is disappointed, that person is angry, that person is upset because they don't know what's being said.

They don't know what speech is, they just know what anger is.

Now, in the Roman world, what would happen to these kind of kids is that they would be murdered.

They'd be left to die, they'd be abandoned and killed.

That's what you would do with one of these kids.

The Jews would not do that.

They wouldn't murder them.

The Jews built insane asylums for them, declared that they were demonically possessed and that they were mentally insane and locked them up and feed them until they died of whatever kind of age they lived to, totally deprived of the world.

That's what happened to them.

But again, nothing is mentally wrong with them.

This particular instance here in verse 32, it says that he was demon-possessed, so it was a demon that had done this to him.

But these people were locked up since really one year old, two years old in the Roman world, I mean the Jewish world.

So it appears that while Jesus is healing the blind guys, somebody goes and fetches the deaf mute, one of the deaf mutes from one of their insane asylums, and brings him to Jesus.

As I mentioned, this story just keeps getting more and more outrageous.

After the blind guys leave, behold, a demon-possessed man who's a deaf mute is brought to Jesus.

And Jesus, it doesn't even say how, just cast the demon out of the man.

And here's another miracle: the mute man spoke.

I mean, that is incredible.

Today, if a person who's a deaf mute, there is a hearing aid invented for them, or is the ability for them to be able to hear and make out words, it would take a year or two at least of speech therapy to get the person to be able to speak.

But this guy goes from knowing nothing about language to fully proficient in language immediately.

He has the ability to hear, and he walks out speaking Hebrew.

That's, I mean, that's his own miracle right there.

He probably spoke Hebrew and Aramaic and Latin and Greek and all.

I mean, way smarter than any American.

We know half of English.

And this guy walks out fluent in languages.

And the crowds, verse 33, marveled.

That word means they were astonished.

It could even be translated, they were afraid.

They were stunned.

They were gobsmacked.

They had never seen anything like all these miracles.

I mean, it's one after another.

The paralytic walking, the tax collector getting saved.

I mean, that itself is outrageous.

The woman who's unclean for twelve years who's cleaned, the dead girl raised to life, the blind people seeing it now, a deaf mute walking out, quoting Shakespeare, Josephus, I don't know who.

Nothing like this has ever happened before.

In fact, that's what the crowd says.

They were astonished, verse 33.

Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.

Take out the word Israel and put in the universe in that.

This has never happened before.

And what happens when this goes on?

These guys walk out, the deaf mute walks out speaking, the blind people walk out preaching about the greatness of Jesus Christ.

Now, as I mentioned, all of this is a picture of salvation.

And I hope you see your own testimony in this.

Listen, if you're here today and you have never surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, I hope you appreciate the argument the Bible is making to you is that you are spiritually blind.

And when it comes to spiritual truths, you're spiritually mute.

In other words, you cannot perceive spiritual truth because you don't serve Christ.

It's not that Christian, it's not like the Bible is saying Christians are smarter than non-Christians.

That's not what it's saying.

But it's saying there is a spiritual kind of wisdom that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

And absent that faith in Jesus Christ, you're blind.

You can't see spiritual truth.

That doesn't stop people from getting degrees.

That doesn't stop smart people from doing smart people things.

A person can get their PhD in astrophysics, but if they don't know Jesus Christ, they are spiritually blind.

They can chart a spaceship to Mars, but if they don't know Christ, they do not have the capacity to see spiritual truth.

And it's so difficult to explain that to them, to try to explain to this otherwise smart person that they are in fact blind.

And they will, even Americans will say things like, I don't need the gospel because I am a relatively good person.

Like the rich young ruler.

I don't need Jesus because I can keep the law.

And you can even go through the diagnostic questions with a person like that.

A person says, I don't need the gospel because I'm a good person.

You could ask, have you ever lied?

Have you ever stolen anything?

Have you ever been angry at someone?

Have you ever looked at someone with lust?

You recognize that you've committed all of these sins.

Do you see that?

And they're like, Yes.

That means you're not a good person.

No, it doesn't mean that, they say.

They're blind, they can't see it.

I think of children fighting and being unkind to each other and stealing things from each other.

And you ask, are you being kind to each other?

And they say, Yes, we are.

Then why is your brother yelling at you?

Why is your brother screaming at you if you're being kind to him?

I don't know.

Because they can't see.

That goes all the way into grown-ups.

All the way into grown-ups.

Where they say, I am spiritually perceptive.

I'm spiritually wise.

I'm spiritually mature.

But I don't know Jesus.

Let me help you.

The Bible's in the mirror.

Hold it up to you.

Do you see that you can't see?

Because the Bible's trying to reveal to you your sinfulness.

And it transfers to muteness.

Just because someone's spiritually blind doesn't mean they don't talk about spiritual things.

The opposite's usually true.

They're eager to talk about spiritual things.

They'll wax eloquently about morality and right and wrong and whether or not they believe in God and all this, that, and the other thing.

But what is coming out of this otherwise intelligent person's mouth is spiritual gibberish.

This is Romans 1.

The person thinks they're wise.

They award each other PhDs in their own worldly wisdom, but they do not know Jesus Christ.

They are fools and they proclaim that they are wise.

They proclaim that they're wise.

And what happens when a fool talks?

He says foolish things.

Somebody who is spiritually mute still speaks, and what comes out of their mouth is the kind of gibberish noises that would come out of the mouth of a deaf mute.

Let me give you an example.

Look at the next verse, verse 34.

The Pharisees say he cast out demons by the prince of demons.

What?

What does that mean?

It doesn't mean anything.

It's gibberish.

In fact, in Luke's gospel, Jesus responds to that by saying, that doesn't make any sense.

Can a house divided against itself not fall over?

I mean, let me get this straight.

You're saying, just go through the chapter.

You're saying that it is the devil that can make an unclean woman clean?

It's the devil that would raise a dead person alive.

It's the devil that would give a blind person their sight.

It's the devil that would help a mute person speak.

That's the devil?

It's the devil that would call Levi righteous and forgive him of his sins and give him a new heart and change his life.

The devil saves sinners?

It's the devil that would make a lame man walk.

It's the devil that would forgive a lame man his sins.

That doesn't make any sense.

The devil doesn't do any of those things.

But again, these people are so in their mind spiritually mature and spiritually smart, they don't even realize they're blind.

They don't realize that the sounds coming out of their mouth when they talk about spiritual things are nonsense.

And so they say things like, Oh, I can't believe in Jesus because I think Jesus is actually doing the same thing as the devil.

It's the same kind of line.

I think all religions are the same.

What they s they're they're contradictory.

They're not all that does not make any sense.

And saying it with authority doesn't mean that you are suddenly speaking with any kind of intelligence.

And that can sound rude to a non-Christian.

I I mean, there's no polite way to say somebody is spiritually blind and spiritually mute.

But that's where this chapter ends.

And Jesus goes down this in his ministry too.

When he goes to Jerusalem, do you remember I said this earlier?

He asked the Pharisees, whose son is the Savior?

And they say, David's son.

And Jesus says, Well, how can he be David's Lord?

And they don't know how to answer him.

And do you remember what Jesus does to them next?

He says, Oh, you blind fools.

You're so blind.

You don't know that the temple is greater than the gold of the temple, because the Pharisees taught that the gold of the temple was, you know, more precious than the temple.

Jesus says, You're so blind.

You're blind men because you don't know that God gives heaven its glory, not heaven gives God its glory.

They're okay going to heaven without God.

And Jesus says, you're blind.

You're so blind you don't even see the reality of heaven and the beauty of the God who reigns in heaven.

And you think you're mature and you're blind.

You blind guides because you value tithing over mercy.

You're blind, he says.

You value the fastidious keeping of the law over the act of mercy and love to Christ.

You're so blind.

He ends this by saying, you are blind Pharisees because you clean the outside of a person and forget their heart.

You're so focused on what people do and behavior conformity and this external attitude that you are blind to what is in a person's heart.

You think God sees the outside and not the inside.

You are the one who is blind.

The reality is that life is short and that we are sinners.

The reality is that we are separated from God because of our sin, and the reality is that we don't want to see that fact.

We want to live in our life not thinking about death, not thinking about sin, not thinking about judgment.

Just let us live our life and do our thing, and we won't look at death, and we won't look at holiness, and we won't look at our own sin.

We won't see it.

We'll cover our eyes and pretend it's not there and say that we are spiritually mature.

No, that is blindness.

And we talk about spiritual things, it won't make any sense because we don't have anything spiritual to say.

That is blindness and it is muteness, and then you have an encounter with Jesus Christ.

And Jesus looks at you and he can convince you that you're spiritually blind.

He shows you his holiness, he shows you his perfections, and in contrast, you look at him and you realize that you are a sinner and you are on your way to judgment and you can't do anything about it.

And so you cry out to him for mercy and you say, Only Jesus can help me, only he can forgive me of my sins.

Which he does by dying on the cross, taking your penalty on himself, and then rising from the grave to show there is hope for eternal life that only he can provide.

And when you place your faith in him, he opens your eyes and you see spiritual truth.

You open your mouth and you can't help but tell other people what the Lord has done for you.

And then you go about your life serving Christ like the paralytic who is raised to life.

This is what the gospel can do to a person.

A gospel can make you righteous, it can make you see, it can make you speak, it can make you go, it can make you serve, and it will send you into the world to serve Christ.

Lord, we're thankful that you are a saving God who's abounding in steadfast love and mercy, quick to show grace to us.

We're so thankful that you can open the eyes of the blind, that you can make the mute speak.

This is our testimony.

We once were lost.

We once were blind.

Think of the words of the song we often sing for a thousand tongues.

That is our prayer.

We wish, we wish we had a thousand tongues we could praise you with.

We wish we had a thousand voices to tell the world of the glories of you, our God and King.

Lord, you are the one who speaks, and we hear your voice, the blind can see, the deaf can hear, the mute can speak.

And we tell the world that you are the God who saves.

The humble poor believe.

And this happens through your word, through your gospel.

So we're thankful that you are quick to speak the gospel.

We pray for those that are here today that may not know you, that have never trusted you with their life.

I pray today you would be at work in their hearts.

Today they would cry to you for mercy.

Today they would quote the blindman.

In their own hearts, they would cry out to you and say, Have mercy on me, son of David.

You are David's son, you are David's Lord, you're our Lord.

We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.