A Picture of the Process
Jesus Through the Eyes of the Blind • Sermon • Submitted
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Jesus’ question, “Do you see anything?” mirrors the question he set before His disciples, “Do you not yet understand?” Just as it took time and the work of the Spirit through Christ for the blind man to see and the disciples to understand, so it will take time and power for God to accomplish His full purpose in our lives.
He who began a good work will complete it.
It is God who works in you
He makes all things beautiful in His time
How do we submit to and cooperate with the process God is working in our lives to reproduce the likeness of Jesus (who loved and lived for the glory of God) and prepare us for eternity (who can stand on our holy hill?)
Jesus was emphatically present. We need to realize that Christ is present in our day and in our need, rather than treating Him as some deistic figure from an imaginative fairy tale.
Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
I will not leave your comfortless. I will come to you.
These are more the simply cosmic environment. This is personal, intimate engagement.
Jesus makes His work both personal and private, avoiding the tendency of the world to turn grace into a circus.
Jesus demonstrates both a power and a promise specifically assigned to God in His word the significance of the healing of a deaf and dumb man in the light of Is. 35:5–6. That prophecy begins with the opening of the eyes of the blind, a work which is attributed to God also in Ps. 146:8; Is. 29:18
Jesus illustrates His purpose by process.
It is a process and it is a process completely and totally under His direction.
There is no dictation from the patient beyond the request for healing. Only utter surrender to the wisdom and grace of God and complete compliance with His instruction.
The Gospel of Mark First Healing of a Blind Man (8:22–26)
Successive examples of their failure to understand will each be followed by further re-education, but even when the journey is complete and the narrative reaches its climax in Jerusalem the disciples will be characterised more by dullness and failure than by the dynamic new perspectives of the kingdom of God.
The Gospel of Mark First Healing of a Blind Man (8:22–26)
There are, then, good reasons for believing that Mark included this story at this point in his narrative because for him it illustrated a fundamental theme of the journey to Jerusalem, the curing of the disciples’ blindness.
Why do I tell you these things? Why do I ask your attention to the actions and intent of Jesus for a blind man on a dusty road around the Sea of Galilee more than two thousand years ago? Why do I point you to a moment in time, an occasion far removed, the healing of a man who life and name remain unknown?
Here is Christ’s question: “Do you see anything?” “Do you see anything?” That is my question for you today as well. “Do you see anything?” Why focus on Christ rather than the blind man? Why speak more of the miracle worker than the miracle?
One hope undfergirds thismessage, this personal and pastoral effort this morning. I have one desire and one desire only, that you will know and love Jesus Christ.
I want you to love Christ and His patient endurance with our weaknesses, faithlessness, and sin.
‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’
Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
Christ took no offense at the dealyed healing. He expressed no frustration over the process.
“Oh, man! I give up?
“”What! It worked the first time last time! What’s going on here?”
He knew the plan. He knew what He was doign. He knew the process He took with the blind man would illsutrate the process of patient, enduring grace and love He takes with all of us!
I want you love Christ’s commitment to our restoration to holiness and reconciliation with God.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;
and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,
More than anything else in the world, what I want for you this morning, is that you will see in Christ one worthy of love, that you will see His love for you, and that you will love Him in return.
We love because he first loved us.
I want you to love Christ, because where there is no real love for Christ, there is no real salvation from Christ. If you do not love Christ, you are not saved. I want you to be saved. I want you to have your sins forgiven. I want there to be real susbtance and meaning for you in worship. I want that you willfind joy in your service and fulfilment in your obedience. I want that you will look to the future with eager anticipation, and that you willdwell in the present with empowered endurance. I want you to be free from self-centered, self-exalting sinful pride and free from slavery to fear of inadequacy, fear of failure, fear of death. All these things are the result of God’s saving grace. And the one thing that ties every single one of them together is love for Christ.
The true, redeemed, faith-filled, saved Christian is one who loves Christ. Paul said it like this, “If I have not love, I am nothing.”
Do you see anything? Do you see clearly that Christ has given you every reason, in His compasison, in His mercy, in His wisdom, in His faithfulness, in His sacrificial death, in His love for you, He has given you every possible reason to love Him?
Do you see? Do you love? Do you see the debt of love you owe Him for all He has done for you? If not, if you see Christ only dimly, “as trees walking,” then I urge you to do two things today: begi to read God’s word like you’ve never read it before. Read about your sin and God’s salvation. Read about your guilt and God’s mercy. Read about your need and God’s promise. And then pray. Plead with God, while there is still time and opportunity. Plead with God who loves you to give you His love for Christ. Ask God to give you everything you need to be squared away with Him in the new life and redemption that can only come to you through Jesus Christ.
Do you see anything? “To see your need of Christ and your amazing debt to Christ is the first step towards loving Him.”
If this morning, you can honestly and earnestly declare your genuine, pervasive love for Christ, then there is a word for you. If you love Christ with all your heart, then the time is now, like never before in our lifetime, to let the world know. If you love Christ, this is the moment to love Him out loud. Hiding our love for Jesus behind closed doors and computer screens sends the message that Jesus is a dismissable option in our lives and not worthy of self-sacrificing love. If we love Him, it is time to trust Him even with our lives, especially with our lives. We may be reviled and rejected for our love, but in love for Him, we will gladly suffer whatever the world has for us, in order to reveal His love for them in our love for Him.
“Do you see anything?” Do you see Jesus this morning? Do you love Him?