“The Case for Christ - Healing/Blind Man of Bethsaida” 

Tonight, we go on with our study of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Some time ago, we started with His Incarnation, and before the summer months, we were exploring His work as He ministered among men.

And, in doing so, we were able to see some of the mysteries hidden in Him - mysteries so concealed that mere human reason cannot flush them out. 

The infinite depths in Christ, in His Person and His inwrought work, remains a mystery of mysteries: we saw how the element of ‘fire’, for example, in one of our studies, works as part of the mystery of Christ.    

Through the power of His Holy Spirit, by the means of this element, the inwrought work of His incorruptible seed, is so effective it produces the good soil that protects the mystery of His godliness.  

That is only one example among others that we looked at in our study of Christ during His earthly ministry. 

Moving onward, then, tonight, let us look into another mystery of Christ in His advancement of believers by looking at the healing of the blind man in Mark 8:22-25. 

Turn in your Bibles to that passage - Mark 8:22-25 - and read along with me.

‘And Jesus cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto Him, and besought Him to touch Him. 

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 aught.

And he looked up and said, ‘I see men as trees walking.’

After that He put His hands upon his eyes and made him look up; and he was restored and saw every man clearly.’

For the most part, when we talk about ‘miracles’, we think - immediate change of circumstance - some incredible, supernatural happening - is that not so?

Now - we know that the physical body is a splendid, essential vehicle of life. But, we also must realize that the physical body must not become an end in itself.

In this present age, we have seen people who spend hours pampering themselves each day - have we not?

Of course, everyone realizes that, whether he likes it or not, if he wants to live on in reasonably good health, he does need to give the physical due attention. 

But, in this present time, the physical body is being approached as though it is the most important part of life. 

Everything else evolves around it as it is pushed to the limit, and even beyond the limit.

But - as a person pays attention to the physical, he must also realize that mind supersedes muscle - that intellect is far more powerful than brawn. Not all come to this realization, but some do.

But - that part can also be taken to the extremes. It is to the point that, in our day, the intelligence of man has taken a destructive bent that is just as stupid as overdoing the gratifying and indulging of the physical part of man.

It is rapidly deteriorating to where it is trying to usurp the place of God. You are well aware of that by now, so there is no need to elaborate. 

But - there is also another plateau of the growth of man, one beyond body, one beyond muscle, one beyond intellect - the part that is primary.

It is that which reaches to a power
     - that sees through this passage of Time     
     - that sees its need to be nourished by the invisible
     - that reaches to becoming eternal in the temporal
     - that leads into walking in Reality
     - that acknowledges and pursues the primary force of      
     life which is always spiritual
     - that knows how the spiritual, when it becomes   
     primary, always brings all of the other parts of life into   
     proper place.

The writer to the Romans wrote of it in Rom 1:17-20, but I will read only parts of that passage - Rom 1:17-20: 

‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation...[that is, the temporal into the eternal] ...For therein is the righteousness of God revealed...’ 

How? ‘...from faith to faith...’. Please note that phrase ‘...from faith to faith...’.

‘For the invisible things of Him...are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead...’.

I believe this is one of the messages of this miracle of the blind man at Bethsaida.

It demonstrates the principle of Isa 28:10 and 13: ‘For precept must be upon precept,...; line upon line...; here a little, there a little...’.

To start out, note, first of all, that this man did not seek healing from Jesus - others brought him to Jesus. That certainly was the right thing to do!

They had faith in the power of Jesus to heal so they brought him into this audience with Christ. This was a mitigating move - they wanted to see this man relieved of his blindness. Again - there was certainly nothing wrong with that!

However, there were times when Jesus was asked to perform a miracle but He rebuked such a pursuit.

He refused to gratify and indulge them in that request, making the point shown in this passage, of the ‘divine miracles’ of the body as not His primary concern.

In this case, He agreed to their request. He had a higher purpose - even though their faith looked for immediate material service: in this case, the service of a physical healing.

Let me digress here to say that faith in the direction of immediate material service only produces elementary fruit.
And, of course, again, there is nothing wrong with that.
 
But being satisfied with elementary fruit alone eventually arrests full growth of fruit.

That is, the concern only for the ‘temporal’ tends to keep faith at this level.

It is not going on into the higher spiritual priority that Jesus demonstrates in this passage.

There comes the time when faith must be developed and further strengthened by lifting it to a higher plane.

It is the necessary course toward the fuller understanding of the revelation of the inwrought Christ - of winning Christ.

It leads to the place where Paul said: ‘...I count all things but loss for the sake of the exceeding value of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for I put aside all else and count it worth less than nothing, that I may win Christ.’ (Phil 3:8)   

So - thank God - Jesus looked beyond the faith that sought only the immediate result by these friends of this blind man. 

By His grace, Jesus did honor their faith by taking him by the hand to lead him. Step by step, He took him onward.  

And He healed him in a very unusual way. It was not instantaneous, as in other cases. It was in stages. 

Now - do not think for one moment that the way He healed in this case was because of a weakening power on Christ’s part. 

Some have suggested this - even to the point of saying this two-stage healing honors Jesus less than an instant cure would have. That, of course, is nonsense!

No - please remember that, in all His works, God is sovereign - He is not tied to the use of any one means.

In all the works of Christ, there was always something different about each one! 

As in the healing of man’s physical beings, there are many agencies used to heal a physical body, so - the same holds true in the conversion and in the moving onward of men’s souls. 

He has many modes of operation for it is by the same Spirit Who works the works of Christ in a man!

And this variety is a good thing! Do you know why? It is because we humans would like to tie all spiritual things up in a neat, little, ‘easily-understood-and-easily-grasped’ package!

And, with that, we stupidly try to usurp the divine power of life!   

It is in the differences that Christ shows His sovereignty and His omniscience in knowing how to deal with each one personally.

And, in each case, He has the higher spiritual reason as His goal for every action He did and does and for His every word.

How did He show that here? There are three things to note. 

First, He led the man, step by step, to a place where He could develop a one-on-one relationship with him. 

And, in principle, is this not what Christ does for us all?
For the whole world? Did He not extend the hand of His 
Divine Life to the world through the mystery of His Incarnation? Does He not now extend His hand to each one to establish a one-on-one relationship with Himself?

Oh - yes - he does!

Salvation has come - the man is being saved and is being restored.

Step by step, he is led along - to gain trust and confidence in Jesus.

He is being given time to accommodate his thinking with Jesus’ ways. 

He is learning that Jesus is personally interested in him alone - that Jesus really has a fellow-feeling with him!  

Any doctor who is a really great doctor empathizes with his patient - he enters into the heart and mind of his patient, has a fellow-feeling with his problems, his difficulties.

So, as Jesus enters the heart and mind of each individual, so He did with this man, inaugurating in him a measure of confidence and trust. He can surrender himself to Jesus as Jesus is saving and is restoring him, step by step.

And, then, secondly, Jesus used methods that the man could understand.  
 
By that, I mean that this was not to be a display of His divine power!

No - Jesus did not go into the direction of an ostentatious show. And, that mainly, because Christ would rather have men settled firmly in His Person than be sound in body!

Instead, He stooped to using a simple, earth-bound means to heal. He used His own saliva.

Now - the ancient world believed in the healing power of spittle. 

And, of course, the man knew of this ancient belief about spittle. So this was an easy way for him to grasp what Jesus was about to do.

And in this simple way, Jesus made an important contact with him to initiate true faith in this man. 

Oh - yes! There were faint beginnings, some seeds of faith, which were leading to Christ’s underlying purpose in this man.  

Does He not do that with each one of us? We go through sorrows, hardships - one problem sometimes piles up upon another, so much so that, at times, it seems an endless stream of difficulties.

But it doesn’t stop there! It has its purpose! What is it?
  
This man must start seeing, and keep on seeing more clearly!

Jesus moistened His fingers with saliva, laid them on the man’s eyes, and asked him what he saw.

Jesus knew he saw something - He knew the healing virtue in His own simple touch! 

‘Well - I see men as trees walking,’ the man answered. In other words, he was starting to see - only vaguely, however.

We know he was not born blind since he knew what trees looked like when he compared them to people.

What he saw was not clear at all! There was nothing really distinct before his eyes. 

There are NOT too many of us who see spiritual things clearly when we are converted. Most of us, if not all, do not see clearly, even for a very long time afterward, even though we like to deceive ourselves into thinking that we do!

Actually, we understand so imperfectly - our vision is so blurred! But that is because we are so unfamiliar with this new way - this higher plateau of life in Christ!

This man started into this new way. He had placed his faith and trust in Christ’s healing power.

It was a hesitant faith, to be sure, since he did not seem very excited about even the little bit of vision he was given. 

But, again - thank God - that the heart of Jesus bowed to the man’s condition [as He bows to our condition] and He accommodated the pace of His power to the slowness of the man’s faith!

You see - Christ works on the principle, ‘According to your faith, be it unto you’ or, ‘Your reward shall be equal to your faith’, as another translation reads.

In other words, the measure of his restoration was set by this man.

The rate of the growth of his faith settled the rate of the perfecting of Christ’s work in him.

Let me say that again: the rate of the growth of his faith settled the rate of perfecting of Christ’s work in him.

But - I will leave that for another time to develop, Lord willing.

Now - we come to the third part of Christ’s healing: ‘After that, He put His hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.’

Oh - can you not see the higher lesson here?

Spiritual truth is veiled but there are stepping stones to the unveiling of the loftiest truth of Christ as the soul is led to look up, right into the face of Jesus Christ.

You see - the mistake many make in the Christian walk is in thinking the outward, the externals, are ‘it’. 

One day, these things do all pass away. Everything goes - except the void and the emptiness. That remains! 

Unless there has been that higher pursuit of life - of going after that primary thing, the apprehension of the Person of Christ, there is nothing to clasp and all has been futile!

The physical - the exercise of the muscle, the exercise of the mind -  are there in order that by the blindness these things generate, we are made to climb to the higher apprehension of the eternal - to move from faith to faith!

As the work of the Holy Spirit becomes deeper and experience matures, we shall see all things clearly, and be able to give to each part of life its proper place. 

As this man was ‘made’ to look up to see more clearly so are we led and made to ‘look up’ and made to ‘win’ Jesus.

I will close here for tonight. Lord willing, we will go on next time. 

May the eyes of our understanding be enlightened about this. 

I pray the Lord will help us all to see the excellency of the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ more clearly as we ponder this before Him this week!

Amen.

Let us pray.