Sermon Tone Analysis

Title: The Compassionate Provision of Christ: Part 3

Christ gives us what we need to serve others; If we are to have the compassion of Christ needed to serve, we must also have the focus of Christ.

He is the only one who makes our focus clear.

He is the one who gives focus to His church.

That focus must be on Him.

Thesis: If our focus is not on Christ, we have nothing to do with His compassionate provision.

Intro:

Last week, I began by saying we must see Christ for who He truly is.

This week I’d reiterate that and clarify...

A partial vision of Christ is not good enough

Mark is, in a sense, shifting gears on us.

He has changed the scenery.

We knew this was coming, if you recall last week’s message, the text indicated Jesus left the Pharisees and got in the boat with His disciples, to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

It was in the boat they had their discussion about the loaf of bread, the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, and what Jesus was really concerned with was their hearts, not what they were going to eat.

Well, now we see where this “other side” was, specifically.

It was the town of Bethsaida - If you recall, back in chapter 6, this was the intended landing spot for the disciples after the feeding of the 5,000.

Mark 6:45 “Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side to Bethsaida, while He Himself was sending the crowd away.”

Of course, they weren’t going to make it to Bethsaida at that time, because of the wind was against them (Mark 6:48), and ended up blowing them so far off course, they ended up landing at Gennesaret.

But Jesus likes to go to Bethsaida for some reason.

It’s one of the few places, in fact, He tries to go to get some peace - it’s where He ended up feeding the 5,000, if you recall.

Of course, the confusion doesn’t help that there were at least two places called Bethsaida, but this was likely the same area, the place he keeps trying to go to get some peace.

Now, this story is going to begin a trend in Mark that we’re going to begin to observe - up until this point we have seen Jesus operate openly, in the public’s eye.

He has done miracles throughout Galilee, He has operated openly...

But this is the last public miracle Jesus will do - in fact we’ve seen this coming if we’ve been astute readers - Jesus is becoming more and more private in His miracles.

This is definitely the point we begin a Second Act, as some call it, of Mark.

Up until this point, Jesus has been public, now His ministry goes more private, more just Jesus and the disciples, and the third act will be His passion as He starts treading towards the cross.

But for now, we are once again in the town of Bethsaida, Jesus and the disciples landed there, and, as I said, again He has a group of people come to Him.

They come bearing a blind man.

Now, pretty much every modern English translation says they “brought” the blind man to Jesus, but the actual word is feronsin (φερουσιν) - which means they bore him.

They were his crutches.

They had to lead him.

The man was blind, after all.

He wasn’t going to find his own way to Jesus - and this tells us the severity of his blindness.

He saw nothing, so the crowd must lead him.

And they implore, they beg, they plead with Jesus to touch the man.

Now, in some cases they just want Jesus to do just that.

To merely touch, to show affection, to bless...

Not here.

The word for touch used is the Greek word aptetai (αψηται) - which means into physical contact, yes, but it can also be translated to bring light to darkness.

In some useages it can mean to “kindle a fire”.

This man opened his eyes every day and he saw NOTHING.

Just darkness.

And they come to Jesus, and they say, in a sense, could you bring light into his world?

This is nothing for Jesus, by the way.

John tells us John 1:4-5 “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”

John 1:10 “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.”

and later in 1 John

1 John 1:5 “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”

Since Creation, God has been bringing light into darkness:

Genesis 1:3 “Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.”

This is what God does, and Jesus is God.

This is not too big of a thing for Him.

But it is His to do, His light to give, His miracle to perform - so the people come and they ask.

Taking - the Greek is epilabamenos (επιλαβομενος) which means to catch, or to take hold of - see the man needs help so Jesus takes over helping Him.

He is now being led by Jesus.

And He takes the man out of the village - now Luke will refer to Bethsaida as a city in Luke 9:10.

So was it a city or was it a village - well here’s the fascinating thing about this: the answer is both.

The town of Bethsaida had, at one point, been kind of a small town, but Philip the Tetrarch had invested a ton of Roman money into it - he beautified it.

He made it a fortified outpost.

He built it up into a city.

Philip had seen it’s value - and Josephus tells us that in the time of Jesus it had grown to be somewhat of a bustling Metropolis.

Jesus, therefore, leads the man outside of the town - why?

Because He is, as I said, becoming more private with His ministry.

With His miracles.

In fact, Jesus is still technically in the Galilean region, and this will be the last miracle He performs in that territory.

At least chronologically speaking - Jesus is moving further and further out, away from His base of operation.

So He takes this man out of the town, and after spitting on his eyes - why does He do that?

It’s not some form of process of healing.

Jesus isn’t giving us a “magical step-by-step guide to miracles” that involves your saliva here.

We’ve seen Jesus spit while performing a miracle before: back in chapter 7 - in fact that process seems familiar:

Mark 7:33 “Jesus took him aside from the crowd, by himself, and put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, He touched his tongue with the saliva;”

But again, Jesus isn’t giving us a method here for healing - PLEASE DO NOT SPIT ON YOUR NEIGHBOR AND TELL THEM YOU THOUGHT IT MIGHT MAKE THEM FEEL BETTER.

This man can’t see, so Jesus likely does this with His spit to give the man reassurance that Jesus is about to heal him.

Elsewhere we see Jesus perform a different miracle, spitting into some mud, then making clay and healing a man’s eyes.

That’s in John 9:6 “When He had said this, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes,”

Here, it is done so that the man has some way of sensing Jesus is doing something.

Then Jesus lays His hands on the man, and during this process, either the spit or the hands, we’re not told, the man begins to be healed.

So Jesus asks Him, “Do you see anything?”

The man looks up, and says he sees men - some translations say “people” but that Greek word is not neutered, it’s masculine - and the man says these men look like trees.

Well, what does this tell us?

Immediately, we understand he was not a man born blind.

He knew what trees looked like!

Something has befallen this man, that has caused his blindness.

Something has occurred that has taken his vision!

And of all Jesus’ miracles, this is the only one that ever takes place in stages.

In all of Jesus’ miracles - and it’s only recorded here in Mark - we never see Jesus ask someone if they’re healed, or “how healed they are”.

So why does He do it here?

It’s because as much as this is a healing, it is a lesson for those men who were just in the boat with Jesus.

At one point, they boldly got out of their fishing boats, and followed after Jesus with reckless abandon.

They followed their teacher absorbing everything they could.

But somewhere along the way, their hearts had become hard.

Somewhere along the way they stopped understanding.

Maybe they didn’t like the fact that Jesus was telling them eventually He’d be killed.

Maybe they were getting impatient that this kingdom He was talking about wasn’t making them rich.

Maybe they were getting tired of the constant travel, of not seeing their families as often as they’d like (They’ll bring that up in chapter 10: Mark 10:28 Peter began to say to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You.”)

But the disciples had been so anxious to see, but lately their focus has been blurred.

Mark says the man “looked up”, and that doesn’t tell us much because if a blind person looks up you don’t know if they can see or not.

The Greek implies he looked up as if to see.

It’s the Greek word anablepsas (αναβλεψας) which literally means to look up to receive sight.