What Does It Mean to Be Spiritually Blind?

The Healer of the Blind

Good morning, everyone! Ever since our church in Mt Pleasant started our sermon series through the gospel of Mark several months ago, we’ve been seeing – the main reason why this account of Jesus’s life was written for us, was because the Holy Spirit wanted to tell us, through Mark, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. He’s the rescuer of mankind, chosen by God. And he’s divine. Many of the passages we’ve seen – perhaps even the majority of them – have been filled with events where Jesus’s supernatural authority has been on display. And for his twelve closest followers – his disciples – you would think that at this point, they would have a crystal-clear understanding of Jesus’s significance. But as we get into our text today, you’ll see that for Jesus’s disciples – things were still fuzzy. Frankly, they didn’t understand Jesus in the way that they should’ve. In one sense, you could say that they’re blind.

Many people today – they’re like the disciples. They’ve been around Jesus for a while. They know a number of things that Jesus has done. They have a high regard for Jesus’s abilities – and yet when it comes right down to explaining why Jesus is one-of-a-kind, why Jesus’s life-work is so necessary and wonderful, many people have a hard time explaining that. In fact, many people aren’t even quite sure what they even believe about that.

But in our text this morning, we’ll see how it’s possible for people to see Jesus without believing him. And we’ll also see how people blind to Jesus can be given sight. And so if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Mark Chapter 8. I’ll be reading verses 1 through 25. But before I do, let’s pause and let’s ask the Spirit of God to give us insight & understanding as we hear from His Word. Let’s pray:

[Pray and Read Text]

Hidden in Plain Sight

It’s a common scenario for many of us – we’re rushing around the house. We should have left 3 minutes ago. But we can’t find the car keys. We’re looking on the key hook, on the dining room table – for those of you who have a purse – you might look in your purse. Or you’re tapping your coat pockets. But as you’re about at your wit’s end, you suddenly notice that right in the middle of the kitchen counter – which at this point, you’ve walked by it a dozen different times – the keys are right there. They’ve been there the whole time. But somehow, you were so flustered, so focused on looking for keys in the wrong place, that you missed the car keys when they were right there in front of you.

But, of course, this type of thing doesn’t just happen with physical objects, like car keys. But this also happens with important truths or spiritual realities, that are right in front of us. God’s wisdom and instruction might be staring us in the face. And yet we walk right past because we’re too busy looking for truth in the wrong places. Our natural passions and assumptions are twisted to the point that we end up being blind to the realities that God wants us to see.

And so as we look at our text, one of the things we’re supposed to see is that, in these verses, there isn’t just one man who’s blind. Yes, only one man is physically blind. But Mark points out that there’s a spiritual blindness that’s even more serious. We’re supposed to understand from these verses: our corrupt human nature results in us being spiritually blind and unreceptive to Jesus and His Word – even when his greatness is displayed right in front of us. And only Jesus, according to his ability and timing, can make us well.

And with God’s help, I’ll aim to break down this big idea by working through the Scripture here under four headings. In verses 1 through 10, we’ll see renewed encouragement to trust Jesus. In verses 11 through 13, we’ll see an excuse given for unbelief. In verses 14 through 21, we’ll see an issue with seeing that Jesus’s own disciples have. And then in verses 22 through 26, we’ll see an intervention from Jesus to deal with blindness. These will be my four main points: An encouragement to trust, an excuse for unbelief, an issue with seeing, and an intervention to deal with blindness.

An Encouragement to Trust

So first, an encouragement to trust – an encouragement to trust in Jesus. (Just as a heads up, this will be my longest point, and the other three will be shorter). You may remember from last week, when we last heard about Jesus’s location, we were told that he was in the Decapolis region, a region of Gentiles – non-Jews. And many of the Jews considered these people to be unclean and unacceptable to God. Period.

And yet Jesus didn’t have the misconception. Certainly, it’s true that most of Jesus’s work took place among the Jews. After all, God had made himself known to these people in a special covenant relationship. And God’s design was for the Jews to have special access and proximity to the fulfillment of his promises. And yet Jesus recognized – in a way that many Jews didn’t – that the blessings of God were intended to reach beyond the Jews, to people of all nations. This was actually a promise God had made way back toward the beginning, in Genesis 12[:3]. The ultimate plan wasn’t for the Gentiles to be excluded and rejected – but for God’s special kindness to be announced and extended to them.

And that’s why in this segment of Jesus’s ministry, Mark records a string of miracles that Jesus does among the Gentiles – first, one in Sidon, and then a couple in the region of the Decapolis. Last week, Jesus healed a deaf man, a Gentile. We saw that last week. And now, Jesus is still in the Decapolis, surrounded by what’s probably a non-Jewish crowd, or possibly a mixed crowd. And Jesus performs another miracle, that gives evidence of God’s interest in the repentance and faith of the Gentiles.

And of course – this miracle that we see, of Jesus feeding a crowd, it may seem like déjà vu if you’ve been with us for the last couple months. Because very recently in his ministry, Jesus did a similar miracle, which we saw in Mark Chapter 6. Certainly, there are similarities. In both situations, Jesus had been teaching a large crowd by the sea, in a rather desolate place. And he ends up miraculously multiplying a limited number of food items to feed everybody, with baskets full of leftovers.

But notice, there are a few differences. When Jesus was with the Jewish crowd, in Mark Chapter 6 – Jesus’s disciples – his followers – were actually the ones who were concerned about sending their fellow Jews away hungry. But here, for this Gentile audience, the disciples don’t have the same concern – even though the crowds have gone even longer without food. You’ll notice that Jesus is the one who finally speaks up, here, out of concern for these hungry Gentiles, in verse 2. He says, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they’ve been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will be faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.”

Now, remember, it wasn’t so long ago that Jesus fed the 5000. And so you’d expect the disciples to respond to Jesus with reference to that event – perhaps to suggest, “Jesus, should we go see what food we have? Can you multiply bread again?”

And yet, for the disciples, that previous event doesn’t seem to register for them at all. In verse 4, his disciples answer by saying, “How can one feed these people with bread, here, in this desolate place?” They seem clueless about what to do? How could this be?

Well, there are perhaps two things going on here. For one thing, some of the disciples probably assumed that God was only interested in helping Jews, like them. Yes, Jesus had fed a crowd with bread from heaven before, but that was a crowd of Jewish people, in the Holy land. But now this crowd is filled with Gentiles, in a Gentile land. It wouldn’t be surprising if the disciples simply decided that God wouldn’t be interested in helping people like this – that nothing could be done for people so idolatrous and wicked. We might be tempted to have similar assumptions – that certain people are too far gone to get help from God: communists, fascists, advocates of unbiblical gender ideologies – people who have mental illness, or drug abuse problems, or criminal histories. We might be looking at people like this, or we might be people like this – and like the disciples, we might assume – God wouldn’t help people who are so dirty and guilty.

But even though this may be part of what the disciples were thinking, there was another issue beyond this. A number of Jesus’s twelve closest disciples – they simply seem to have forgotten what Jesus had done in the past. Somehow, they seem to have missed who Jesus is, and what he’s capable of. Even after their long history of traveling with Jesus, seeing miraculous sign after miraculous sign – somehow these disciples are still limping along with almost no confidence whatsoever in Jesus and his power.

And so when Jesus raises the idea of feeding the crowd – when he invites his disciples to remember, and to express their trust in him – the disciples do the opposite. They respond, saying, “How can one feed these people with bread, here in this desolate place?” It’s a very plain statement of disbelief. In fact, the disciples here are acting just like their forefathers had acted, nearly 1500 years earlier. You may remember from the book of Exodus, God raised up Moses to lead the Jews out of their slavery in Egypt. But as God led his people through desolate places and wildernesses, the people grumbled because they were low on food. And they didn’t trust God to provide for them. But the LORD did. For forty years, he provided special bread from heaven for them, called Manna. And yet, now, the disciples, with Jesus standing right there beside them – they can’t even trust God to provide bread for one afternoon meal.

But Jesus is patient with them, and he takes things slow again. It’s a good encouragement for those of us who are parents, to be patient as we remind our children what the right way to live looks like. Jesus patiently asks in verse 5, “How many loaves do you have?” – the same question he asked them when he fed the Jewish crowd of 5,000. And after investigating, the disciples report back and say, “Seven.” Seven loaves. And Jesus gives instructions for the crowd to sit down – to prepare for a meal – he gives a blessing, and again the bread distributed to feed the crowd – a crowd of 4,000 people. And there are seven baskets of food leftover.

Now, what might seem strange about this miracle is that when Jesus fed the crowd in Mark, Chapter 6. He fed more people (5,000 men, plus women and children). He did it with fewer loaves of bread – only five in that case. And there were more baskets leftover. Twelve. And so on all accounts, this miracle in Mark Chapter 8 is actually less impressive. It’s almost like a College Basketball star draining 15 three-point shots in a game (which is the current NCAA record), and then in the next game he makes 9. Certainly, nine three-point shots in a game is still incredible. But it seems like a step down.

But when Jesus feeds the 4000, here, he’s not taking a step down. The number of people, and loaves, and leftover baskets communicate something significant – especially given Jesus’s Gentiles audience. Certainly, we want to be careful about reading too much into numbers that are mentioned in the Bible. We shouldn’t assume that any time a number is mentioned, it has some sort of cryptic meaning, or it’s code for something. But later on in Chapter 8, as Jesus reminds his disciples of this event, it’s implied that at least some the numbers in these miracles had intentional significance.

Take the number 4000. Feeding 4000 people would have been significant, because the number four was often associated with the four corners of the earth, or the four winds. And 1000 was considered a vast multitude of people. So this miracle, affecting 4000 people, demonstrated Jesus’s ability to feed multitudes from the nations, from every remote region of the earth. And for many people – both Jews and Gentiles, the number seven was considered to be a number of completeness – just think the seven days of creation. And so the seven leftover baskets gave an indication of how perfectly Jesus is able to care for the Gentiles, in a similar way that the twelve leftover baskets in Mark 6 gave an indication of Jesus’s perfect care for the twelve tribes of the Jews.

And so Jesus’s miracle, here – it gives evidence that Jesus’s rescue mission for sinners isn’t just Israel-focused, but it’s international. This sign, of miraculous provision from God – isn’t just extended to the Jews – but it’s also repeated emphatically in the presence of the Gentiles. And as Jesus again demonstrates his ability to fill his people, using ordinary means, coming from ordinary people – this miracle is intended to encourage people’s faith.

It was intended to encourage the faith of that crowd of 4,000 mostly-Gentile people, so that they’d look to the God of Israel as their provider and Savior. It was also intended to encourage faith in the disciples. Jesus wanted them to reject their self-reliance and self-righteous prejudices. And he wanted them to remember his power, and to rely on his mercy. But then, of course, even these two thousand years later, this miracle was even given to encourage our faith in Christ especially since this sign foreshadowed Jesus’s mercy going global, to the four corners of the earth, and we now live in a day and age where we see that this has come to pass! There’s a fullness in Jesus’s saving power that has reached cannibals and criminals and to the lowest, most miserable types of people. His saving power has spanned the centuries. And his good news has been announced from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The world has been given bread from heaven. Crowds of people in desolate places have been filled from Jesus’s fullness. And still, there’s grace leftover – there’s still more mercy from God for you, for me, and for generations to come. Be encouraged by this great sign – believe.

An Excuse for Unbelief

And yet, in spite of this great sign – and the various other miracles Jesus has done – we continue to see evidence of people being blind and failing to see the goodness of Jesus. After Jesus leaves the Decapolis, in verse 10, to go to the Jewish region of Dalmanutha – we see that he’s approached by a group of Pharisees – Jewish religious teachers. And as we’ve already seen so far in Mark – the Pharisees are offended by Jesus’s teaching. And they’re skeptical of his authority. As they draw near to Jesus, here – they aren’t hoping to find evidence to believe in Jesus. But instead they come with an excuse for their unbelief. And this brings us to my second point, an excuse for unbelief.

In verse 11, we’re told that, “The Pharisees came to and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.” In other words, the Pharisees were essentially saying, Jesus – how are we supposed to believe that you’re a messenger from God? You need to prove it! You need to give us an undeniable sign from God, or we won’t be able to trust you.” That’s what the attitude of the Pharisees was.

And, of course, what’s so exasperating about this is that Jesus’s ministry so far has been filled with all kinds of supernatural signs. Healing the paralyzed, rescuing the demon-possessed, curing the sick, miraculously feeding crowds with a few loaves of bread, calming storms, walking on water, raising the dead – don’t these count? Have the Pharisees been living under a rock? There have already been countless signs from heaven to confirm the legitimacy of Jesus!

And yet, the Pharisees are blind to them. It’s not because there’s any deficiency in the quality or quantity of Jesus’s miracles. But it’s ultimately because there’s a deficiency in the Pharisees. The problem isn’t that there isn’t enough evidence to believe. The problem is that the Pharisees don’t want to believe. And that’s why the Pharisees are so blind to these signs from heaven that Jesus has already done. They don’t see them, because they don’t want to see them. They reject them, because they invent excuses for why those proofs are unreliable, or unconvincing.

From what we see here, the Pharisees had come up with some sort of manmade standard of what a true sign from heaven should look like. And they were telling Jesus – if you’re really from God, you need to do a sign that meets our conditions. You need to do a miracle our way. It should be really obvious to us how arrogant and irreverent these guys are, as they’re bossing Jesus around – claiming that God needs to jump through the hoops they’ve invented.

And yet this attitude is so common. Across America – across the world, there are masses of people who have the same perspective as the Pharisees here. They insist that in order to believe in God, God needs to give a special sign, God needs to meet their personal expectations, God needs to successfully make it through the obstacle course of their objections and unbelief – and then, only then, will they change their mind. Of course, that’s what these people say.

But God has given evidences. We see evidence of God’s supernatural power in the complex universe he created, and in the existence of our moral consciences, and our capacity for language. We see evidence for him in his historical dealings with the people of Israel, in his ongoing life-transforming work in people’s lives today – and we supremely see evidence of God in the eyewitness testimony we’ve been given concerning the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is no shortage of evidence. The issue is not that we need a sign from heaven. The issue is with us, that we often don’t want to receive the evidence that God has supplied us with. We don’t believe, because in our selfishness, we don’t want to give our lives to God. We make ourselves blind, because we don’t want to see.

And so as the Pharisees demand a sign from Jesus, notice what Jesus says in verse 12. He sighs deeply in his spirit – he grieves and groans over the wrongness of their hearts. And he tells them, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” Just to clarify, Jesus isn’t saying that he’s going to stop doing miracles. But he’s simply insisting – he’s not going to grovel before these Pharisees, to try to meet their demands. Because he realizes – even if he jumped through all the hoops, these people would just come up with new excuses to defend their unbelief. And no matter how many miraculous signs Jesus continues to perform over the course of his ministry – he understands that the Pharisees won’t be able to appreciate or accept any of them. For as long as the Pharisees desire to stay blind – they won’t be able to see Jesus’s signs. That’s why Jesus says that no sign will be given.

And this should cause you and I to stop and consider what our attitude toward God is like. Are you humble as you come to the Bible, and as you hear about what God has done throughout history? Are you willing to accept that God may work and reveal himself in ways that are different than you’d expect? Or like the Pharisees, are you trying to be the judge over Jesus? Are you fooling yourself into thinking that you don’t have to listen to him, if you can just find a reasonable enough excuse? Friends, that’s a wicked way to live. Having an arrogant, stubborn heart attitude against God and his Word is deadly for your soul.

An Issue with Seeing

And this spiritual condition of the Pharisees is such a danger – we see that Jesus brings it back up in conversation in our next set of verses. He talks to this disciples about it, because he recognizes that his own disciples also have an issue with seeing. And this brings me to my third point in our text – an issue with seeing.

As Jesus gets in the boat, and crosses the sea again with his disciples – who have forgotten to bring much bread, as Mark points out in verse 14 – Jesus begins to speak to his disciples about the Pharisees. Look at verse 15: And he [Jesus] cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” Jesus’s point is that the Pharisees and Herod – these people are outwardly religious. They imagine themselves to be blessed and better than everyone else. But they’re unwilling to humble themselves before God and to admit their need for forgiveness. And because of their arrogance – they’re unwilling to accept the Chosen One God has sent to save them.

Jesus says beware. Because this pride and self-righteous arrogance – this reliance on outward religion instead of faith in God – it’s like leaven. It’s like a tiny amount of yeast, that gets mixed up in dough. All it takes is a little bit of yeast, and the whole loaf of bread is affected, and the dough expands and is changed. All it takes is a little bit of stubborn pride, a little bit of ungodly self-importance – and it not only spoils that one person’s soul, but it runs the risk of affecting the whole body of God’s people.

That’s Jesus’s warning. He cautions his disciples about the danger of spiritual pride, here. But as we see in our text – the disciples have an issue with seeing. From what we can tell, the disciples couldn’t see how the attitude of the Pharisees or Herod was spiritually dangerous. They totally missed what Jesus’s words of caution were about. Instead – notice, in verse 16 – the disciples assumed that Jesus must be mentioning leaven (or yeast), because they had forgotten to bring bread. And so they were discussing – oh, bother – what will we have to eat? We have a problem on our hands. We won’t have enough bread!

But again – it’s ridiculous that the disciples would be disturbed by this. Because remember, for the second time now, the disciples have just seen Jesus provide food for thousands of people with barely anything in his hands. Again, we see in these disciples that they’ve already forgotten Jesus’s ability to provide for them. They’ve already lost confidence in Jesus’s power and mercy. They’re fixated on material problems, despairing over their physical circumstances – instead of entrusting all their fears and concerns – materially and spiritually – into the hands of Jesus.

And in verses 17 and 18 – he calls his disciples out on this. Why are you discussing the fact you have no bread? Why is that your big concern here? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? Clearly, in Jesus’s words, here – you see that he identifies the problem of spiritual deafness, and spiritual blindness. And he reminds them of his ability to provide for the crowd of 5000, and the crowd of 4000. And he presses them – do you not yet understand? Though you claim to be my follower – do you really now me? Are you actually trusting me? Do you know what it means to be filled by me? That’s what Jesus wants for his people. He wants us to see. He wants us to understand. He wants us to live as people who are healed of their blindness, and filled with joy in his kindness.

An Intervention to Heal the Blind

And Jesus points this out in our final section of verses. We see an intervention from Jesus to deal with blindness. This is my fourth and final point. (An intervention to deal with blindness).

Soon after Jesus and his disciples land their boat in Bethsaida, some people bring a blind man to him. And the event is similar to the way Jesus healed the deaf man, which we looked at last week. These people beg Jesus to touch the blind man – to heal him. And Jesus takes this blind man out of the public eye – out of the village. And again, Jesus spits – I mentioned this last week, the Jews actually associated saliva with healing – Jesus spits on this man’s eyes, and he lays his hands on him. And he then asks the man, “Do you see anything?”

And in a strange turn of events, the man looks up and he says, “I see people, but they look like trees walking.” In other words: “Jesus, I’m not blind anymore. But I’m still in a position where I can hardly see. I’m aware that there’s light, and there are important things around me in motion – but I still don’t really know what I’m looking at.”

So at first, it might seem like Jesus has lost his touch. Maybe he’s finally encountered an ailment that he’s not able to fix. You can just imagine, the handful of people standing around Jesus – perhaps they were raising their eyebrows, starting to whisper with each other. And yet in the very next verse, right away, Jesus touches the mans eyes again, and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. It’s clear that Jesus’s ability to heal the blind wasn’t lacking in any way. So why did Jesus heal the blind man in such a clunky way? How do we explain this longer, two-step process of healing here?

And given the context of Jesus’s concern with spiritual blindness – that helps us to understand what Jesus is doing. Because as we’ve been seeing with Jesus’s own disciples – for the most part, they’re different from the Pharisees. The Pharisees are still willfully living in darkness. But the disciples can see that there’s light. They’re reaching a point where they can see that there are important things in motion, with the arrival of Jesus. And yet they still don’t really know what they’re looking at. We’ll see additional evidence of this next week.

But what we see here is that even though Jesus sometimes heals people of their problems immediately, it’s not uncommon – when Jesus is healing people of their spiritual blindness – it’s not uncommon for it to be a process, rather than a one-and-done event. In fact, it may be that some of you listening, here – you may know that Jesus is important somehow. You might recognize that he’s at work in the world somehow. And yet you may still be stumbling around with fuzzy vision. It still might not be clear why his perfect life and why his death on the cross is such good news. You may have trouble seeing and understanding what the new life is that Jesus is calling you to. But if this is you, don’t despair. Be encouraged to cast yourself on Jesus – to cry out all over again for his healing touch. If you’re confused about spiritual things – don’t draw away from Jesus out of frustration. But lean in all the more earnestly.

Jesus was stricken with the death blow of God’s justice, so that we could be healed of our evil and raised to life. At the cross, Jesus was prevented from seeing the Father’s mercy, so that we’d be given the sight to gaze on the Lord’s steadfast love and faithfulness forever. And Jesus is now placed before us, and before all nations – as the one we can trust, who can open our eyes and make us right with God. The car keys aren’t just on the counter in plain sight. But the keys have been placed in your hands this morning. Will you take the keys, and drive with them? Or will you continue to wander around the house, looking for something else? Let’s pray: