#35 I Can See Clearly Now
Series: Mark
Chuck Sligh
November 15, 2020
TEXT: Mark 8:22-26 – “And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. 24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. 25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. 26 And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.”
INTRODUCTION
Illus. – A number of years ago our ophthalmologist informed me that I had cataracts and that eventually I would need surgery to remove them or I would progressively go blind. I wore glasses back then and I thought I saw just fine with corrective lenses. But as time wore on, there was a gradual darkening of my vision. Eventually the doctor said it was time to do the surgeries and one of the benefits would be that they would implant new lenses in my eyes, so I wouldn’t have to wear glasses for near-sightedness any longer, although I would need reading glasses occasionally for small print.
96% of cataract surgeries go without a hitch; I was the rare exception with my left eye. First, I continued to have pain and runny eyes after the surgery way past the 24-48 hours’ time it takes for most people experience an improvement. Second, everything remained blurry for about 10 days, while most people can see sharply within that 24-48 hour time period. The doctor explained that usually a cataract removal is simple—like scraping soft putty off the eye. But for various reasons the cataract in my left eye had hardened and was much more difficult to remove, causing an unusual amount of trauma to the eye. I was in the 2% who experience potentially sight-threatening problems. Eventually the antibacterial and anti-inflammatory medicines worked and slowly but surely the symptoms subsided.
As I was healing, my sight progressively went from almost sightless to cloudy and eventually, everything I saw in that eye was amazingly bright and perfectly clear. I had the surgery on my right eye a few months later and it was a soft cataract and it followed the normal course of healing and improvement of sight.
As we see how Jesus healed a blind man in our text in stages in today’s text, think of my experience. This is one of only two miracles that are not found in any of the other gospels, the other being the healing of the deaf man with the speech impediment that we saw in Mark 7. Today’s healing is the most distinctive healing by Jesus in several respects, as we’ll see. So let’s dive into this most unusual of healings…
I. NOTE FIRST THAT IN VERSE 22, CARING PEOPLE BROUGHT A BLIND MAN TO JESUS – “And he came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to him, and begged him to touch him.”
Blindness was widespread in the ancient world. The lack of understanding of proper hygiene, the unavailability of effective medicines, the exposure to the elements and the common eye problems people have when they grow older, such as cataracts, glaucoma and macular degeneration, all made blindness an all too common fate for those living in the ancient world.
Now there’s something peculiar in this text that you may not have picked up on. Notice that the blind mad did not seek out Jesus; rather some concerned friends or loved ones brought the blind man to Jesus. From everything we see in this text, the blind man seems passive and uninvolved, perhaps from unbelief. Initially there is NO initiative on his part.
Illus. – Contrast that with blind Bartimaeus we will meet later in Mark’s gospel. Sitting by the roadside begging, Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was coming. He began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”
When the crowd tried to hush him up, he ignored them and shouted again all the more, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”
When Jesus called for him, he threw his cloak aside, sprang up and came to Jesus. Jesus said, “What do you want me to do for you.”
Bartimaeus was emphatic: “Master, that I might regain my sight.”
Jesus said, “Go your way; your faith has made you whole” and Mark adds “And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the road.”
Bartimaeus was aggressive and bold in his efforts to be healed, begging repeatedly despite the rebukes from the crowd. But in our text today, it’s not the blind man who came to Jesus; it’s not the blind man begging for healing; it was his friends. It was they who had faith while there was no outward faith shown by the blind man.
This was not the kind of faith Jesus most often responded to. Normally, He would say something along the lines of what He told Bartimaeus: “Your faith has made you whole.” But though the man here in Mark 8 was apparently willing to see Jesus, he is passive and seemingly mistrusting. This may help to explain what happened next.
II. IN VERSES 23-25 WE SEE JESUS MEETING THE MAN’S NEED. – “And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands on him, he asked him if he saw anything. 24 And he looked up, and said, ‘I see men as trees, walking.’ 25 After that he put his hands again on his eyes and made him look up: and he was restored and saw everything clearly.”
Two clues tell us this had been able to see in the past….
First, the blind man said that he saw men walking as trees in verse 24. People who are blind from birth have no conceptual reference point to distinguish either people or trees at first sight. He must have been able to see people and trees at one time in his life in order to know that the people he saw moving around looked like walking trees.
Second, when his sight was completely healed in the second stage of the healing, Mark tells us in verse 25 that his sight was “restored.” – The word restore means “to bring back to an original or normal condition.”
Now several elements set this miracle apart from all other healings in the gospels…
• It’s the only time Jesus questioned someone he was healing if it was working, for He asked the man if he saw anything.
• Second, it’s the only time a healing took place in stages, for in all other healings the wholeness to the individual was instant and complete the first time.
• Third, it is the only time Jesus ever directly spit on someone to heal them – In the healing of the deaf man with the speech impediment, Jesus spit on His hands and then touched the man’s ears with those hands, but verse 23 of today’s text states that Jesus spit directly on the blind man’s eyes.
What are we to make of this baffling healing? Let’s look at the passage verse by verse to see if we can better understand Jesus’ strange actions.
Note first that verse 23 tells us that Jesus took the man by the hand and led him out of the town of Bethsaida. Jesus led the man away from the throng just as He had done in the healing of the deaf and stammering man. With both men, their cases required time alone from the crowds so Jesus could establish a personal relationship with them and to be able to adapt His actions to both men in order to increase their faith.
But there’s another reason that we should consider as well. C.I. Scofield and other commentators point out that in Matthew 11:21-24 Jesus had already pronounced coming judgment on the town of Bethsaida because of its unrelenting unbelief. So He would not now or ever either perform a miracle in that city or allow further witness there as we’ll see by something Jesus does later in our text after the healing had taken place.
Nevertheless, though He withheld His blessing from the town as a WHOLE, He would extend His compassion to INDIVIDUALS. This reminds us of when God was going to bring down judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. – God’s judgment was against the inhabitants of the two cities, but He would extend His mercy to Lot and his family because they were righteous before God.
Notice also in verse 23 that since this man exhibited passivity and showed no overt evidence of faith in Jesus’ power to heal him, Jesus spit on His eyes. This appears to be mean or hateful to us today, but as we pointed out in the case of the deaf man with the speech impediment, the saliva of holy men was thought to have healing powers.
There was no biblical basis for this, of course, but once again Jesus adapted His actions to frail human understanding to increase faith in someone. Jesus only spit on His hands to increase faith of the deaf and stammering man because he could see what Jesus was doing to increase his faith. Obviously, the blind man could not see what Jesus was doing but spitting directly on His eyes was a tangible indication to the man that Jesus, this holy man, intended to heal his blindness.
The fact that the man was not fully healed on the first go-around had me stumped… I mean, did Jesus just have an off-day that day? Did He wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Had He not had His morning coffee? Or was there something else going on here?
The consensus of my commentaries is that Jesus was using the healing of this man as a visual aid to the disciples. The two-stage healing, according to this view, suggests a PROCESS of revelation as much for the DISCIPLES as for the blind man.
This makes sense when you look at the previous portion of Mark where Jesus asks a series of penetrating question of the disciples because of their inability to really understand anything beyond the most rudimentary facts of who He was and what He was about. Exasperated, Jesus asked them in verses 17-18, “Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened? 18 Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear?”
This helps us understand why Jesus healed the blind man in two stages. James R. Edwards put it this way: “We are immediately struck by Mark’s emphasis on sight in the present miracle as opposed to the emphasis on blindness and lack of comprehension in the previous story (8:14–21). The juxtaposition of the two stories is a clue that the lingering blindness of the disciples may also be relieved, as is the blindness of the man at Bethsaida, by the continued touch of Jesus.”
This view has support going all the way back to the early church fathers.
Another view, and both could be true, is that this man was impassive because he was faithless, and after Jesus spit on his eyes, a glimmer of faith rose up in him and came to full fruition with the second touch from Jesus.
Ultimately, who knows why Jesus chose to heal the man in this way. Who can decipher the mysterious ways of God? Who would try? Maybe Jesus healed this man this way to throw us off the trail…to teach us that He does not work in predictable ways!
III. LAST, IN VERSE 26 WE SEE A MOST UNUSUAL WARNING. – “And he sent him away to his house, saying, ‘Do not even go into the town….’”
Why was the blind man forbidden to go into Bethsaida? Perhaps Jesus was still trying to tamp down stories of His miracles so He could continue His mission with fewer distractions and less scrutiny from the religious authorities.
But I believe that another reason is more likely. I think it was because Bethsaida was under the curse of Jesus. As I pointed out before, Jesus gave a woeful curse upon the town in Matthew 11. We saw in an earlier chapter that Jesus could not continue to minister in His hometown of Nazareth because of their unbelief. The curse upon Bethsaida was for the same reason. Jesus had offered them the gift of His grace and compassionate deeds, but they spurned Him. He would have no more to say or show to the people in Bethsaida.
CONCLUSION
What are some lessons we can see in this story in Mark’s Gospel? Three leap out at me:
1) First, don’t try to put God in a box.
We have a tendency to normalize how we think people have to come to faith in Christ based upon our own conversion story or even from stories in the Bible, or upon some theological stream of thought we have been taught. But God cannot be boxed in. If Jesus wanted to heal this blind man in this most unusual of ways, that was His prerogative.
I’ve heard so many amazing and unusual stories of salvation over the years that I no longer think God can work only along certain experiential or cultural tracks or according to the demands of certain doctrinal schemes. If He had wanted, Jesus could have healed the man by standing on His head—and who would have a right to question God in human flesh.
When the Apostle Paul was saved, he saw a blinding light from heaven that knocked him off his feet. – But there’s not another account of a conversion experience like that I’ve ever read or heard of. I’ve seen people with spectacular testimonies of dramatic conversions, but I’ve more often witnessed people gently and quietly exercise simple faith in Jesus. I’ve seen people weep tears of joy over sins forgiven, and others just matter-of-factly see what the Bible says and trust in Jesus with no outward visible show of emotion. I’ve seen old people come to faith and I’ve seen little children come to faith and I’ve seen people of every age in between trust in Christ. I’ve known of people saved at church, at home, in parks, in restaurants, in bars, in cars, on airplanes and on boats. Every single salvation is a miracle of its own—perfectly crafted by an ingenious Savior who brings people into His Body by various and sundry ways and by multitudinous paths.
Illus. – Vance Havner speculated that if three of the several blind men Jesus healed had compared notes, they would have disagreed on how Jesus healed.
One man says, “I was blind, and Jesus touched me once, and I was healed. That’s the way Jesus works.”
The second man says, “No. I was blind, and Jesus touched me once, and I saw men as trees walking. Then He touched me again. That’s the way Jesus works.”
A third man would say, “You’re both wrong. I was blind and Jesus spit on my eyes, and I was healed. That’s that way Jesus works.”
Vance Havner said if those three men were here today, we’d have three new church denominations within a week: The once-touched church; the twice-touched church; and the spit-in-the-eye church!”
Brethren, don’t put God in a box and say He must work in a certain way! As the old saying goes: “God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.
2) The second thing I think we should see is the progressive nature of God’s illumination in each of us.
The disciples were starting to grasp who Jesus was and what He was here for, but they were slow to understand because Jesus didn’t fit in the boxes they had constructed about how the Messiah would reveal Himself and what He was on earth to do. Jesus sometimes got frustrated with their progress, but overall, He was patient and loving in nurturing them along on the path of understanding.
We too grow progressively in our own faith journeys. Remember the illustration I gave at the beginning of this sermon of my first cataract surgery? – Under the expert hands of my doctor, I went from sightless because of the complications, to cloudy sight, to perfect sight. So it was with the blind man who moved through the same three stages in our story – He meets Jesus with NO sight and at the touch of Jesus he had PARTIAL sight and then he received COMPLETE sight. So it was with the disciples who move from NONunderstanding in verses 17-21 (which we examined last week) to MISunderstanding as we’ll see in verses 29-33, to FULL understanding in at the end of Mark after the resurrection.
And so it is with you and me. We’re not perfect Christians the moment we trust in Christ. There’s a sense in which we are saved all at once: it’s called JUSTIFICATION—when God declares us once-and-for-all just and holy in His sight because of the death of Jesus Christ in our place.
But PRACTICALLY speaking, in everyday life, there is a sense in which we are being saved in successive stages. This is what is called by theologians “progressive sanctification”—the process by which the Holy Spirit forms in us the fruit of the Spirit and we progressively become more like Christ.
It’s like we start off the Christian life at the bottom of a staircase. We’re little baby Christians and we look up the stairs and see grownups up there and we want so badly to be where they are. But first we have to learn to crawl, and then to walk, and then to walk up a single step. But it doesn’t stop there; we have to go up the next step, and then the next and the next and the next.
Sanctification is progressive, slow and arduous. There is no magic bullet that will shoot you to the top of the steps. You have to grow in Christ little by little and step by step.
So if you’re a baby Christian, don’t compare yourself to an older believer; he or she is at a different place of maturity than you. Learn from those mature believers, study God’s Word, stay in church and a homegroup, listen to the criticisms and helpful comments from your spouse. Eventually you’ll grow from a tiny acorn to a mighty oak in God’s good time.
There’s a warning to us older believers too. – We need to help and guide young believers, but we also need to be patient with them as they grow in faith and holiness.
3) Third, I want you to know that Jesus wants to relate to you on a personal level.
Jesus took the blind man away from the crowd to deal with him personally. If you’ve never trusted in Jesus, I want you to know that Jesus is concerned about you, no matter how insignificant you may see yourself in this huge world of seven billion people. If you were the only person on earth, Jesus would have died for just you. He knows you; He knows your name; He knows all about you; and He wants to give you eternal life through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.
Take that wonderful verse that many know and say this in your mind as you hear me read John 3:16 substituting personal pronouns and let the magnitude of the reality of Christ for YOU sink in: “For God so loved ME that He gave His only begotten Son, that if I would believe in Him, I would not perish but have everlasting life.”
Jesus died for all of us, which means He died for YOU. You must personally place your trust in Him for your salvation. I invite you to do that today.
