Blind See

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Mark eight, twenty-two through twenty-six.

And they came to Bethsaida, and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him.

And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village.

And when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, Do you see anything?

And he looked up and said, I see people, but they look like trees walking.

Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes.

His sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

And he sent him to his home, saying, Do not even enter the village.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Let's give a round of applause to Zack as he's preaching.

Yeah.

Let's slow down.

So I um I never realized how much of a purse a guitar is.

Some of you understand that.

Um yeah, it's a it's a nice thing to hold a guitar.

So if I like turn around and just pick it up, just like roll with it, we're just gonna sing.

Um good morning.

Um my name is Zach.

Um I'm the worship pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And I'm speaking today.

So um thanks.

So the text we're in today is Mark 8, verses 22 to 25.

Mark 8:22–25

Um, thank you, Paulina, for going through that and reading it.

Uh let's pray and then we're gonna get started.

God, you've been wildly faithful to our church.

And just the encouragement of uh feeling anxiety and then hearing the bride of Christ behind me declaring things like, We believe in God the Father Almighty.

What a comfort it is to stand in a room where we don't share everything in common, but we share the most important things.

I pray that those would um be the things that bind us together as we learn about you today.

I pray that your word would be um clear this morning.

Um that uh whatever you need to do to get your word across, you would do um to remove distraction, to make uh to make your message clear to us today.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So uh Mark 8, 22, Jesus walks into a town with his disciples.

The town is called Bethsaida Julius.

Besssaida Julius is the same town where the heat or the feeding of the 5,000 recently took place.

Um, and so the people in this area are familiar with Jesus.

Um it's a group of people, and they bring a blind man up to Jesus and they're asking him to heal him.

Uh now, throughout the Gospels, Jesus walks a tightrope when it comes to the miracles he's performing.

On one hand, uh he's in this same town feeding 5,000 people, and he's doing it for the masses, um, and he's healing people in town squares.

But on the other hand, it's not unusual for Jesus to perform a miracle and ask people to stay quiet about it.

Um, and there's a lot of reasons for this uh that we see throughout the New Testament.

Some of it is practical.

It's really hard for him to get into the house of the paralytic because it's so crowded.

And so there's times where he's asking people to stay quiet just for uh to keep the masses of people down.

In this particular story, we're not told why he says that at the end to keep quiet.

Um, but we can see that for the people in this village, uh, they were confusing the signs that Jesus did, uh, which is the miracle, for the thing that it signified, which is that this is God Himself.

They wanted the gift of Christ's healings, they didn't want the giver.

Uh, they wanted table banter, they didn't want food.

Um, so in this story, Jesus heals a blind man.

Uh, this is not the only blind healing that Jesus does.

He does it quite a few times throughout his ministry.

But each time you see a blind story in the New Testament, um, pause and try to notice the sim the uh the uniqueness about it.

Each one of these stories carries with it a particular significance.

Um, this story uh is actually only recorded by Mark.

None of the other evangelists record it.

It's not in any of the other gospels.

Um, and so that tells us something.

It's telling us that for whatever reason, this story really matters to Mark, that there's a reason he's putting it into his gospel, um, that it really actually kind of gets to the theme of Mark's gospel, um, which is this Jesus reveals himself to us in a process that's for us, and it demands participation from us.

I'm gonna repeat that.

Jesus reveals himself to us in a process that's for us that demands participation from us.

We're gonna work through that more clearly in a bit, but we're gonna use the text to get us there.

Um, so we're gonna start today in verse 22.

And they came to Beth Zeda, and some people brought to him a blind man and they begged him to touch him.

So a group of the people from the village, they bring this blind man to Jesus and they're begging him to touch him, as we just read.

Um, frankly, they're looking for a spectacle.

They want to be amazed, they want to be enamored.

Uh, they believe that Jesus can heal, clearly, but they don't see anything beyond that.

They miss the godness of Jesus.

Um, he's not their Messiah.

So this time around, and in this particular story, Jesus does not let them witness the miracle.

Now, interestingly, the blind man didn't come to Jesus of his own volition.

There's no faith expressed in this story from the blind man.

He's not the one to ask Jesus to heal.

Um, Jesus, and Jesus didn't go around just healing people indiscriminately, he did it for a purpose.

So sometimes the healings we see Jesus do are in response to sincere and overt expressions of faith, like with blind Bartimaeus, who's kind of like irritatingly yelling, and all the people are telling him to shut up, and Jesus goes and heals him because he expresses faith, or the woman who reaches out and touches his garments.

Um, these are overt expressions of faith that Jesus responded to.

Um, but at other times, uh, we see healings are used to teach something to the bystanders that are watching.

So in John 9, for instance, Jesus tells the disciples that a man was born blind that the works of God might be displayed in him.

So God gave this blind man an affliction so that he could heal him to show the power of God to others.

So the healing we're considering today in Beth Saida, it has a similar shape.

This man expresses no faith.

He doesn't ask for healing, but Jesus moves to heal anyways.

And there's a reason.

So moving on to verse 23, it says, and he took the blind man by the hand and he led him out of the village.

And when he had spit on his eyes and laid hands on him, he asked him, Do you see anything?

Notice the very first thing Jesus does is he takes the man's hand.

He leads him away from the village.

This is unique among the blind healings of Jesus.

Uh, when we look at the other healings that he did, he often just did them on the spot in a moment.

But in this one, he grabs the man's hand and he walks him away from the crowd of people.

Um being blind, this man was used to being guided around.

Um, and we can see that he had people around to help him.

Indeed, uh, a group of people brought this man to Jesus.

But Jesus takes his hand regardless and moves him away from the group.

He's effectively telling the man and the group, I'm gonna be his guide.

You've got to see the healing that was about to take place.

It was for a man.

It was for a particular man.

And he wanted to share something with a group of people which happens to be his disciples.

So he removes the man from any potential distraction.

He didn't want this guy to be distracted by the awe of the masses in response to another miracle.

Um, so this was personal.

And we can see that in this that the attention of Jesus is precisely and surgically individual.

So then Jesus spits on the man's eyes and he lays his hands on him.

Why is there so much spit?

Um, we don't really know.

There's definitely a bunch of reasons.

Uh, we're not in this passage told exactly why.

Um, but as I was studying through this, there's a lot of little clues that are in the text that paint a pretty beautiful picture of what the spit may have been doing this time around.

Um, so many commentators agree that this guy in this story was not born blind.

He was born with the ability to see.

We're gonna talk about why they think that in a minute.

Um, but we believe that he probably had some sort of infection or a disease that was like active in his eyes.

So there's some agreement that the spit served uh a purpose of being a sign to this man that Jesus was about to heal him.

So culturally, um there was uh there was some belief that spit could actually be healing.

Um so that that's probably part of it.

Um, but it's probably more likely that because this man had not been born blind and because he had some sort of disease or infection, that his eyes were just gummed up and crusted over.

So that in addition to his blindness, he couldn't open his eyes.

Um think about it like this.

Uh, when you were a kid and your mom licked her thumb, there's something like that going on here.

Jesus like uses spit to simply help this guy open his eyes so that when the healing occurs, his eyelids aren't getting in the way.

One of the often overlooked blessings in Jesus' miracles is this visceral embracing of humanity, like just as it is.

With all the messiness, even when it's crusty and gummed up.

Next, Jesus lays his hands on this man and the healing starts.

Notice this is a gradual healing.

It doesn't happen in one moment.

Jesus chooses to drip his power onto this guy.

He doesn't drown it with him like he does with others.

So as the healing starts, he asks a simple question.

Do you see anything?

Do you see anything?

This is the only healing we see in Jesus' ministry that is completed gradually like this.

It was done in process.

And the way Jesus asks this question of the man implies that he wants the man to participate in his own healing.

As if Jesus is saying to the man, I'm doing something and I want you to lean in.

You may not know what's going on, but I want you to lean into this.

Moving into verse 24.

And he looked up and said, I see people, but they look like trees walking.

Um we just pause and notice how bizarre this is.

Um in my mind as I was studying this week, uh, I just I kept getting like images of Pixar movies where like the character, like, you know, the screen kind of opens like an eyelid um and and and everything's just wrong.

Everything's upside down and backwards.

That's this guy's experience of Jesus healing thus far.

Um He's with the man that fed the 5,000.

The man laid his hands on me.

He spit in my eyes, he did all the things to tell me that he was gonna heal me, and I just opened my eyes.

And why do guys look like trees?

Um yeah, it's also kind of alarming.

Like, think through the rest of your life.

Like, that's what this, you know, where this guy's head's gonna be.

He's like, what is going on?

Not to mention he didn't ask Jesus to do this.

He just finds himself here.

Um so this is why uh scholarly they assume this guy wasn't always blind.

So he knew that men didn't look like trees, and he knew that trees don't walk like men.

Um so that's where we kind of get the idea that, okay, there's some sort of disease going on.

Now his sight has not been fully restored, it's only partially.

And this is such a wonderful image of what it's like walking with Jesus.

The blind man finds himself in the process of being healed, yet he is wholly unaware that there's a process at all.

He's probably heard the stories about the other people.

Those things happen right away.

And now we're sitting here going, okay, what are those guys seeing?

For this guy, he's with the healer, but all he can see are men.

And he look and they look like trees.

Now, this man and Jesus, they weren't alone.

The disciples were with them.

They were overhearing and watching this whole thing take place.

Uh, after all, we have this story in Mark's gospel.

Um, so this is one of those miracles, we talked about this at the beginning, that was done for the bystanders, for those people that were around.

Jesus is healing this blind man very personally, uh, but he's teaching the disciples.

Um, this isn't just about this man's eyesight.

He's demonstrating something about his nature and the nature of being creatures to his disciples.

And here's the insight.

Um this is the insight that he's giving his disciples, an insight into what it is to be like us, which are creatures under him.

Jesus is saying that seeing and discerning are not the same.

Seeing and discerning are not the same thing.

As creatures, we're by nature submitted to God.

There's no getting around that.

Now or later, we will be confronted with the reality that he was always resolutely in control.

Yeah, he gives us sight, he doesn't always give us discernment.

Um take heart.

When we submit to God as creatures, we rest knowing that he is at work in us and in the world.

Even when we don't know exactly what his work is.

Being people under God, we get to rest knowing that God is at work in the world, but we don't get to rest knowing exactly what his work is.

That's not for us.

Sometimes he gives us his sight into it, sometimes he doesn't let us see things that way.

This is what it is to be in the shape of a creature.

So willingly or unwillingly, we're submitted to God.

But if we don't get to know what he's up to, we're left with a question.

What do we get to know?

And why does it really matter then?

We spend a tremendous amount of time trying to know things that are beyond us, trying to answer the unanswerable.

We do it for comfort, a sense of control.

Um, I want to pause here.

Um in the last year, no, let's back up.

In the last two years, how many people have been on WebMD?

Super helpful, right?

Super clear information.

Um in the last few years, we've learned a lot about people.

One particular thing that we've learned is that there's some people who really like data.

Are there some of you?

I am.

And then there are some people that really like to hate data.

We're no different.

It's not about data at all.

The whole time we've been swindling ourselves saying, oh no, no, this is about objective truth.

We don't get to know that stuff.

We toy around in the world pretending we're little gods.

But sooner or later we're often confronted with the reality that we don't get to play that game.

That's not our seat.

Some of us will take great pain to ensure that we move into roles in our offices that give us enough power to make us feel comfortable.

Some of us will take great pain to go and serve people around us until we're blue in the face and exhausted because it gives us some meaning.

Some of us will take great pains to make sure that nobody ever abandons us or walks away.

Because we get to feel a little bit safer in the world.

We're responding to this thing all the time.

We're creatures and we don't get to know everything that's going on.

It's very, very human for us to do that.

But the question we need to start asking in that moment when the discomfort sets is where are we taking refuge?

Are we looking beyond ourselves?

Are we looking to God for comfort?

Like I can't tell you this morning when we were reading the creed, like I'm usually up here and I've got like very noise-blocking headphones, and so I don't get to hear people say it.

It sucks, actually.

Sometimes I pull them out.

Um the experience of just hearing you guys say, we believe this, was like profound.

Um really, really profound.

Um and pointed me back to um, I don't know, just gave me a different picture of what it looks like to take refuge in Jesus.

So at the very beginning, I talked about the theme of Mark.

We're back there now.

We use the text we got back here.

Here's the theme of Mark: take refuge in Jesus as he reveals himself to us in a process for us, but he commands participation from us.

We're going to find ourselves in moments of discomfort or even agony, unending conflict with spouse or a friend.

We're going to wrestle with familiar sin.

We're going to wrestle with managing our money against our wants.

We're going to wrestle with exhaustion.

We're going to wrestle with fears over the state of culture.

We're going to wrestle with trauma.

Or perhaps our agony can become more existential.

We begin to ask ourselves deeper questions.

Did God make a mistake when he made me?

Why don't things ever work out the way that I planned?

Why am I so angry?

Or anxious or depressed?

Why don't I like myself?

In these moments, we're stuck in a creaturely limbo.

We know we're being stretched and pulled, but we don't know why.

We may even tell ourselves there is no reason why.

This is why it's pointless to follow God.

This blind man, like him, in those moments, all we see are trees.

And we know we're not supposed to see trees.

We've got a lot of questions, a few answers.

Here's the challenge.

Make these moments where things are difficult, light bulb moments.

Set a marker in your mind so that when you kind of reach the end of yourself, when you're exhausted, that you stop and you remind yourself that you're in a process that Jesus designed precisely for you.

To show you something of himself as he heals you and forms you.

Growing hurts.

We should not be surprised when that's the shape of life.

We certainly should not be surprised that when the Spirit is leveling his power against our wills, that it hurts.

We're strong-willed people.

For God to work himself into our lives, he has to break us down.

Good luck.

Yeah, I wish I didn't say that from experience.

There's a word for all of this.

I don't know if you've noticed, but pastors, we like to throw words around a lot and just pretend that everybody knows what they mean.

So this word is sanctification.

Sanctification is a process of us being conformed over time into the image of God.

We see a lot of references in the New Testament to the gospel and salvation, not being moments in time, not being just moments of like, oh yeah, this was the moment I accepted Jesus.

We see things more often like to those who are being saved, who are being saved over time.

We see references to things like now we see through in the mirror dimly.

These are references to our place in the world that God reveals himself to us over time.

Now, when God is cranking up this sanctification dial, when our stress is peaking, we respond once again by trying to become little gods.

We trick ourselves into thinking we can objectively know what's going on.

We do it for safety or for comfort or for control.

So we become impatient and obstinate, demanding that those around us conform to our curated belief systems.

We pretend they aren't curated.

They are.

Sidelining them if they don't come around.

Then we impose onto God who we want him to be.

Making sure that the God we follow feels nice to us.

And we silence that still small voice, the voice of our Creator that's speaking into our ears.

This is from Deuteronomy 32, verse 1.

Deuteronomy 32:1

Says, Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak.

And let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

May my teaching drop as the rain, and my speech distill as the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender grass, and like showers upon the herb.

We don't plant gardens, water them once, and expect growth.

Some of us buy prepotted succulents and do that.

We water consistently over time.

We go on vacation, so we pray for repeated rains and storms.

And only when the work is completed does fruit come.

If we take a moment and pause to look at the way that the created order works, we can see that growth is built into it.

And that growth takes time.

Yet when it comes to the way that the Spirit works in our lives, we are tremendously impatient.

Just get it over with.

And it's in our impatience that we begin to fight, we push back.

And that's usually when we start to make pretty bad decisions.

That's usually when we start to convince ourselves of things that are not true.

That's usually when we begin to grasp for control.

In the uncomfortable place of unknowing, when we're thirsty, the challenge of Jesus in this text is to lean into the process, is to lean into the process, to remind ourselves that, hey, this time is expected.

This is how it works, being a creature.

This is what it looks like when I don't get to control the narrative.

And look for what he's showing us about himself.

We can only come to Jesus in faith, saying, I believe you're in this.

Can you help me see?

Starting in verse 23, the second half.

So the man, or Jesus says, Do you see anything?

And he looked up and he said, I see people, but they look like trees walking.

Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes, and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

You know what I mean?

You guys, every once in a while you read commentaries.

Thank you.

I just wanted to be personal.

Um and I was reading through Calvin's commentaries.

Um, and uh, and every once in a while you come across a sentence and you're like, wait a second, this is out of place, this is beautiful.

Uh and he says this about this whole story.

He says, And so the grace of Christ, which had formerly been poured out suddenly on others, flowed by drops, as it were, onto this man.

He's referencing that Deuteronomy passage we just read.

May the teaching drop as rain, my uh speech distill as the dew.

Um he's getting at this point that there's a sense of patience and unknowing that Jesus is trying to show to the disciples through this teaching.

Somehow, this story, I hope, is both deeply comforting.

The way the sanctification experienced in your life is going to be painful.

Uh, know that you're not alone in that.

Know that the body of Christ hurts with you because they're hurting themselves, as God teaches us what it looks like to be more like Him.

Which means we have uh we have brethren around us to hold us up in these times.

But I also hope that this is very, very challenging.

Um you're a creature in a world that will radically affirm you for pretending you aren't.

And as a Christian, you're an alien in a world that desperately wants your citizenship.

And you're loved by a creator who formed you in your mother's womb.

Do you come here regularly?

He knows your particular frame.

He planned what redemption looks like just for you.

I say that because a lot of times I think we look into other people and we uh try to compare ourselves to their stories.

This is the way that God did things for them.

And God doesn't work like that.

Um, you know, the the beginning of our church um was uh was a lot of days wondering, like, how do we do this?

Um we still don't have any answer, by the way.

Um, but it's it's funny because you know, the church has been here for a few years now, and for some reason people are like, oh, your church is is you know, you guys are super established now.

Um and so they'll they'll send us and talk with guys who are trying to plant churches, which still just makes me laugh.

Um you know, especially me.

It's like I'm the worship pastor, I didn't do this.

There was a board, they did it.

I was, you know, I was playing music.

I was working on Wonderwall.

Um and like I hear I hear their stories and they're like, oh yeah.

So I went to like, you know, we moved to this new city and we brought 50 people with us.

They moved from Texas and like they gave us all this money, and it was like, that was not our experience.

And uh there was days in that transition where um it was incredibly frustrating to just look and compare ourselves to the way that God had worked in other churches, and it made us feel like there's zero chance that things ever gonna work.

But fast forward, and God was being faithful.

He just had a story for this church that made this church what it is.

And I know many of you have been here for a while, and and uh I think we all kind of have this keen sense that there's something in our church that we have a tough time describing, but that's very special and holds us here.

Um that's because of the particularity of the work of the gospel in this church.

When God is stretching us, hold fast in faith, knowing that this is for you, just for you.

And it may take time, that's probably gonna hurt, but that God is not gone from that.

Remind yourself that Jesus reveals himself to us in a process that he designed just for us, and we should be participating in it.

That's how we're gonna find him.

So the work and the challenge is this lean into the discomfort with all confidence.

He's in there working.

That someday we're gonna see.

Um it's not a it's not a matter of, hey, we're trying to exclude you, it's just a matter of being honest.

Um, this is for the body of Christ that we may look around and be encouraged by the faith of our uh brothers and sisters.

Um I'm gonna pray for communion and then we'll we'll move into the second half of the service.

God, the way that you choose to reveal yourself to us is tremendously mysterious.

It's sometimes staggeringly uh difficult and throws us off balance.

Um, I pray for our church and for your people here that um you would make us a people of faith who could stand in moments of unknowing when we're kind of in the midst of your healing and remember that, oh, that's what's going on.

Instead of buckling down underneath our own strength and responding in whatever way we can to re-establish control, that we would uh be able to rest knowing that you're at work in this.

That our prayers would become, can you reveal to us what you're doing?

Um, I pray that as we take part in your communion today, that we partake in your body, that you would bless it, that you would use this as a moment of revealing of sin, that you would use it as a reminder of your forgiveness, that you physically went to a cross and died as God and as man to redeem your people from sin.

I pray that we would feel the weight of that sin, that that sin would be real, not just a category or an idea, but real.

And I pray that we would be encouraged when we see that we're not alone eating this.

In your name.

Amen.