Daily Devotional For Monday, July 8, 2024

Well, your weekend has come and gone and magnificent Monday is here. For many of you, it is back to work and I pray that your weekend was restful and relaxing. We are still looking at questions asked in the Bible. Some are asked by people and some are asked by the Lord. As I told you several days ago, Mark 8 is a chapter with many people and the Lord asking questions. We come to the next question in Mark 8 and it is asked by Jesus after He takes a blind man away from the people and heals him of his blindness.

The story itself has confused some people and caused others to totally misinterpret what happened. So, let's go to the passage and first look at the question asked by Jesus and then look at the total context, okay? Look at Mark 8:22-26:

“And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to Him a blind man and begged Him to touch him. (23) 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?” (24) And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” (25) Then Jesus laid His hands on his eyes again; and He opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. (26) And He sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village”(ESV).

To some people, they think that Jesus had a problem healing this man of his blindness. Let me tell you right up front, they are wrong. First, let’s break it down. Jesus was not short on power. He did not need to recharge His batteries. There is a lesson He wants His disciples to learn. Jesus brought His disciples to Bethsaida, the hometown of Peter, Andrew, Philip, and possibly Nathanael. Look at John 1:44-45:

“Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. (45) Philip found Nathanael and said to him, `We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph’” (ESV).

You have to think that these specific disciples may either have been glad to be in their hometown. If four of the 12 disciples were from Bethsaida, maybe they thought, “Finally, a home cooked meal.” I know that when I came home from college, my mother fixed all my favorite foods and meals for me. Woooo, I can still smell her homemade biscuits to this day. And if you remember, the town of Bethsaida was very near where Jesus had performed one of His greatest miracles. He fed over 5,000 men, not counting the women and children. Mark 6:41-44 records this:

“And taking the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And He divided the two fish among them all. (42) And they all ate and were satisfied. (43) And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. (44) And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men” (ESV).

And it is possible that when word got out that Jesus was back in town, word spread, especially among those Jesus had fed. And as word spread quickly, so did people rush quickly out to Jesus and His disciples wanting to be healed or have someone they loved healed. We are told that someone, either relatives or friends or both brought a blind man to Jesus to heal. God in the Old Testament Law had special provisions and warnings about the treatment of the blind:

• Leviticus 19:14,"You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the LORD”(ESV).
• Deuteronomy 27:18, “Cursed be anyone who misleads a blind man on the road” (ESV).

And we know that Jesus healed many blind people during His ministry. Look at Matt. 9:27–31; 11:5; 12:22; 15:30–31; 20:30–34; 21:14; Mark 10:46–52; Luke 4:18; 18:35–42; John 9:1–12. As in our story, those who were born blind or became blind later, were limited, helpless and reduced to begging. And in that day, Jews believed if you were born with any kind of disability — blindness, deafness, a deformity, or later experienced this, this was due to some sin in your life and God was punishing you for it. We see this in Jesus’ own disciples in John 9:1-2:

“As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. (2) And his disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (ESV).

This kind of belief made this stigma harder to bear. Mark says the people who brought this blind man to Jesus begged Him to heal him. The Greek New Testament word is [παρακαλέω, parakaleo] and it means “to call to one’s side, to summon, to admonish, to implore and to beg.” People knew by this time that Jesus would not only heal, but even heal and touch those considered unclean of their illnesses. The scriptures demonstrate Jesus doing this with lepers and/or taking someone’s hand and raising them up from some illness or even death. 

And in doing this, Jesus was teaching His disciples a lesson that the “religious leaders” would never do. The Lord’s willingness to touch the sick and suffering demonstrated His compassion, mercy, grace, and loving-kindness to the untouchable. The proud, hypocritical and self-righteous religious leaders would avoid touching some people at all costs for fear of being considered ceremonially unclean due to some physical touch defilement. Jesus NEVER kept His distance and He reflected to His disciples how they and we are to be with people and how a simple touch is powerful. 

We read that Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village for more privacy. Mark records two miracles by Jesus that the other Gospels do not. This one here and one with a deaf man in Mark 7:32-37, and in each case, Jesus used His own saliva in the miracle. Pastor and author John MacArthur writes this:

“Jesus used saliva to symbolize the transfer of healing power from Him to the man. Obviously, the saliva was not some sort of magic potion. The Lord did not need any props to accomplish His miracles, but it symbolized His healing power for a blind man who could feel the spittle on his eyes” (Source: John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, “Mark,” p. 408).

After Jesus did this came Jesus’ question to the man in Mark 8:23, “Do you see anything?” Mark says this in Mark 8:24, “And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking” (ESV). The word translated as “looked up” is the Greek New Testament word [ἀναβλέπω, anablepo] and it is the exact same word used in other situations where Jesus healed someone of blindness. Look at Mark 10:51–52; John 9:11, 15.

The fact that the man saw men looking like trees, walking around implies that the things he saw were badly out of focus. He understood that he could see other people, but they were so fuzzy that they were indistinguishable from the trees. The men whom he saw were probably the disciples, who had accompanied Jesus and the blind man out of Bethsaida.

Then Jesus touched the man’s eyes a second time and this time it was the man “looked intently”, which is from the Greek New Testament word [διαβλέπω, diablepo]. This word means “to see through” or “to see with a penetrating gaze.” Meaning the fog was gone. His vision was perfect and he was able to see with sharp 20/20 clarity.

Two words spelled similarly but differently:  anablepo and diablepo. Do you “see” the difference? Some “faith healers” use this passage to claim that this passage supports incomplete healing, but it does not. None of the healings Jesus ever did were incomplete. None of the miracles Jesus ever did were partial, imperfect, or a gradual final restoration, nor did any ever require a period of rehabilitation. In a matter of minutes this man went from total blindness to total complete 20/20 sight. As in many healings, Jesus told this man not to tell anyone by saying, “Do not enter the village” because Bethsaida was known for its unbelief and stinging rebuke by our Lord against them. Look at Luke 10:13-15:

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. (14) But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you” (ESV).

By leading the man outside the town and denying him the opportunity to go back into town and show everyone, Jesus was confirming the permanent judgment on Bethsaida’s unbelief. As we saw earlier and below in Mark 8:11-13, the residents of Bethsaida were sentenced to eternal spiritual blindness:

“The Pharisees came and began to argue with Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven to test Him. (12) And He sighed deeply in His spirit and said, `Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.’ (13) And He left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side” (ESV).

So, what is the point or the lesson Jesus was teaching His disciples? The setting of this miracle  of healing the blind man comes on the heels immediately following the demonstration of the permanent spiritual blindness by the religious leaders (Mark 8:11-13) and the temporary blindness by Jesus’ own disciples (Mark 8:14-21). This private miracle Jesus did was more for His disciples than for the blind man. Jesus wanted to teach them some important truths.

• First, it taught Jesus’ disciples and confirmed for them Jesus’ deity, since only God’s power could heal the blind. We see this in Psalm 146:8, “The LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous” (ESV). This was a belief Jews held to very strictly, including Jesus’ disciples. This would also set the stage later in the next section of Mark for Jesus to ask His disciples questions about who and what they thought He was. Just a normal teacher or divine.
• Second, this gave Jesus’ disciples a glimpse of Jesus’ future messianic kingdom, when Jesus will reign from Jerusalem for 1,000 years. See Revelation 20:1-6. During these 1,000 years messianic reign, many illnesses and maladies will be reduced, including blindness. This is confirmed in Isaiah 29:18 and in Isaiah 35:5.
• Third, this one miracle starts a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. With the cross months away, Jesus would be blunt with His disciples about His and their future and His coming death (Mark 8:31; Mark 9:31; and Mark 10:32).
• Fourth, this one miracle Jesus did served as an illustration to teach the disciples about the dangers of spiritual blindness. Like this physically blind man, Jesus’ own disciples had been spiritually blind. They had been raised in the strict and legalistic Judaism with all its traditions, rules, rituals, and regulations. They had been taught all their lives to follow the spiritually blind religious leaders such as the Pharisees and Sadducee (Matthew 23:16). As a result, their understanding of Who the Messiah would be and the Old Testament truth about Him had been hopelessly blurred for centuries by their own blind religious leaders and their own hypocrisy. All this was changing as they followed Jesus and He was personally lifting the veil or the fog that kept them spiritually blind. This way, they could see with the eyes of faith, not fact. They could see with their eyes on the Savior, not on the sight of their misguided Jewish teachers. This is Paul’s point in 2 Corinthians 3:14-15:

“But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains uplifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. (15) Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts” (ESV).

In this one miracle, Jesus gave His disciples the eyes of faith, as He does for every believing sinner whom He saves. This gives them the ability to see clearly for the first time the truth. This is John’s point in John 1:9, “The true Light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world” (ESV). As I conclude, let me share these closing words from pastor and author Chuck Swindoll:

“The disciples were not stupid. They struggled to overcome two difficulties that plague us to this day. The first is the dulling influence of old paradigms. Like wagon wheels in a rut, we follow the patterns of thinking traced across the spiritual landscape by previous generations. The world system would have us think that if we don’t provide for ourselves, we will not eat. Jesus called twelve men to blaze a new trail of grace so that succeeding generations would learn the foundational principle of the new kingdom: “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these [fundamental provisions] will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33).

At times, the disciples also struggled with what I call “the hothouse syndrome.” They had been around the Miracle Worker for many months. The supernatural had become second nature. Jesus gave sight to the blind. He restored withered hands. Cleansed hopeless lepers. Opened deaf ears and loosened mute tongues. He cast out demons, changed the weather, and raised the dead. The Twelve witnessed His power so often they began to regard His miracles as commonplace.

We face this danger as well. We can be around spiritual things and scriptural teaching and Bible studies and verse memorization so long and so often that the revolutionary message of the gospel can become ho-hum. Like the disciples, we can forget that the mission and vision of Christ apply to us” (Source: Charles R. Swindoll, Swindoll’s Living Insights New Testament Commentary, “Mark,” pp. 217-218).

Questions to Consider

1. What have you been taught as “truth” but as you read and study God’s Word and hear from God, you know that you were taught false paradigms? In other words, what are you spiritually blind to today that Jesus wants to give you sight to see in that area?
2. Do you just take your faith in Christ for granted? For example you attend church, possibly have a daily quiet time, but ultimately your faith is just a routine you do and not a relationship you nurture.
3. As the “Light of the world,” Jesus came to shine God’s light of truth on everything — our biases, our prejudices, our hypocrisies, our doubts, and our sins. Where is this most true in your own life and what are you doing about it?

Scripture to Meditate On: 1 Corinthians 13:9-12, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, (10) but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. (11) When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (12) For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (ESV).

Prayer to Pray: “Thank You Jesus that You love me so much that You do not want to leave me just the way I am. Thank You for shining the light of Your truth in areas of my life where I have been spiritually blind. Thank You for lifting the fog or the veil so that I can see these areas and repent of them. I love You Jesus. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”

I love you Southside!—Pastor Kelly