title="English

Why is it taking so long to get better?

Mark 8:22-26

I want to deal with one of the biggest problems that many, many church people have in their walks with God. At the same time, it’s a problem most of us don’t talk about much in church. Here’s the problem: We all know that when we place our faith in Jesus, God declares that we are right with Him on the basis of what Jesus has done. And, God promises that he begins a work in us that he will bring to completion, i.e., that someday we will be conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8). So, have you ever asked this question or one like it? Why is it taking me so long to get better?

By that, I’m asking whether you ever wonder why you’re not finding more victory in the moral choices you are making? Or, do you wonder why you don’t feel like your knowledge of God is becoming more personal and more complete? Or, why do you not experience more of the presence and power of God?

I think our next series of messages from Mark’s Gospel will help us with this problem. This weekend, we are beginning a series of messages from Mark 8:22-10:52 that deal specifically with what Jesus said to his disciples about following him. He talked about the cost of following him. But, as we begin, we see how he dealt with this matter of the slowness of our spiritual comprehension. This week, we find that Jesus provides some help in grasping why genuine followers of Jesus still have times of doubt, blindness and failure. Personally, I find this text giving us a lot of hope.

The passage we come to today, Mark 8:22-26, provides a report about a blind man who was healed in two stages. To figure out what’s going on in this story, we need to reflect back on what’s gone on before this healing story. Mostly, what Jesus had been dealing with is how people remained so blind spiritually to his real identity as the Messiah and the Son of God (see 1:1). They should have known who he was. Jesus had been doing things that only God could do. His miracles should have declared to everyone seeing them that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God. But, the miracles alone didn’t open their eyes to him. The people loved the miracles but were blind to who Jesus was. We sometimes think, “If people saw more miracles in our day, they would believe in Jesus.” But spiritual blindness wasn’t always healed when Jesus did miracles in the Bible and I imagine the same thing is true in our day.

So, since miracles alone didn’t open most people’s eyes, Jesus had done more than miracles. For example, he taught as no one had ever taught. Much of his teaching was in stories, called parables. People often tell me that we should always use stories in sermons because Jesus used stories. But, the fact is, that stories didn’t always do the job of opening spiritually blind eyes. Sometimes, Jesus’ disciples begged him to stop telling stories and to teach them plainly.

By the time we get to our text today, there has been almost constant blindness to who Jesus was in spite of his miracles and parables – especially among his own people. You may remember that there was one Gentile woman in ch. 7 who had understood ne of Jesus’ parables. But no one else had.

All this culminated in Mark 8:21. After feeding first 5,000 Jewish people from 5 loaves of bread and then 4,000 Gentile people from 7 loaves of bread and a few fish, Jesus asked, “Do you still not see?” Well – they didn’t. Do you?

That brings us to our text today. The people just didn’t see it. Didn’t see what? They didn’t see the magnitude of who Jesus was. They didn’t see that he was more than just a religious teacher. More than simply a miracle worker. More than just a political liberator. After asking that question in v. 21 in which it became clear that people were spiritually blind, Jesus went to a town and opened a physically blind man’s eyes in a two-staged healing.

What do we learn about having our spiritual lives healed from this story?

#1: God uses others to help us see more (seeing in community) – (8:21)

In. v.22, Mark reported that unidentified persons in Bethsaida (a fishing village on north shore of the Sea of Galilee) who brought Jesus a blind man for him to heal. This was at least the second time such a thing happened in this way in Jesus ministry (see 2:1-12). I’m not sure how much those who brought either the paralyzed boy to Jesus in Mark 2 or this blind man to Jesus in Mk 8 understood about who Jesus really was. But, they seemed to know more about him than their hurting friends knew. At least, those who brought their friends had some resources to get the hurting friends to Jesus -- resources that were much needed. I’m sure a life of blindness was hard for this man. A disability always brings with it challenges. And this was especially true when many in the ancient world thought people had disabilities because of their own sins. What we now call “blaming the victim” was prevalent in Jesus’ day.

But this man had one thing going for him, i.e., a group of people who knew of Jesus and were willing to make whatever sacrifice was necessary to bring their hurting friend to Jesus. Make note of this: The man would never have seen unless his friends had brought him to Jesus.

This speaks to me in at least two ways. First, when you have met Jesus, and know something about how gracious and forgiving he is, you will want people you love to meet him too. You’ll know your faith is real when you long to have others experience God too. Of course, people will often be resistant to the church in our day – even put off by the institution they think the church is. But, if you have met Jesus, are growing in your love of Jesus and are experiencing change in your life because of Jesus, you will find that people will listen to you because they will see what he is doing in you. And they will sense that you care about them as a part of what Jesus is doing in you. Jesus makes us less self-centered and more others-centered.

When you see people whose life needs a touch from God, you need to have the love and courage to say, “I know who can help you. I must bring you to Jesus.” (You’ll have to find your own words but you need to say something like that if you believe it.) V.22 calls us to be Jesus’ message-bearers to a world that doesn’t see who Jesus is.

But, I think the message here is not just about witnessing to others. There is also a message to us about how we need one another in a church family to see more than we see on our own. Do you ever have the deep intuition that you have seen fully yet – that there is more to know and experience with God than you have? I believe that God gives us one another in his church family. A big part of coming together in a local church is that we can keep teaching one another what we. I’ve learned that when I take time to listen to as well as speak to people who are following Jesus -- but who sometimes are very different from me -- I grow in my own understanding of God. My church family helps bring me closer to Jesus.

Over a 24 hour period this past week, I had the privilege of talking about the healing of the blind man in Mark 8:22-26 with several people from our church. First, I spent a few moments with Bobbie Brooks. Bobbie has walked with the Lord even longer than I have and, in terms of what people see with physical eyes, is of a much more vibrant hue than I am -- so her life experience in our culture has been different from my own as a “majority person”. Bobbie and I talked about this text. She spoke to me of how it’s hard to see how Jesus is as merciful and loving to us as he is when we’ve never seen the depth of love and mercy in our world as he shows in the Bible. And, Bobbie reminded me, we cannot see all that much mercy in ourselves. She said, “If we had the power of Jesus, and then some unjust powerful person started hitting us and spitting on us, we wouldn’t say, ‘Father, forgive him.’ We’d call down legions of angels to deal with that man. How could Jesus really be like that?” Bobbie and I agreed that sometimes, we just have to tell God that we trust him to be the way God’s Word says he is.

I’d never thought of blindness in that way. Bobbie helped me open my eyes to something about Jesus that I need to see more of than I’ve ever seen before. It makes me love him more. Stand in awe of him more.

The next morning, I was talking about this text with Bryan Mayer from our church. Bryan is a part of a generation quite a bit younger than my own. When he talked about blindness among those who go to church, he helped me realize that the religious leaders in Jesus’ day were the majority voices in his society. As such, they had probably become so comfortable with the way things were that they had become blind to the fact that all their traditions were hiding the important things about God instead of opening people up to God. So, when the Son of God himself was among them doing everything that God alone could do, they couldn’t see who he was. I began to see how the same things can happen to me, i.e., that it’s easy for us in a culture in which we have big churches and lots of people can become comfortable just keeping things going as they are. Do we really see who Jesus is and that he is present with us? Do we really still believe that God can change the lives of people like Jesus did – like those who are addicts or in gangs or trapped in trafficking? Do we believe it enough to go and develop relationships and pray for the miraculous work of God to heal and set people free? Bryan helped me to see more about this text and about my own potential spiritual blindness than I was seeing on my own.

Then, very soon after my time with Bryan, I had the privilege of being with Dr. Ken Lam from our church family. I think Ken and I are from the same generation but he grew up in Hong Kong and, as a physician, has had a very different life experience from my own. He told me how his joy and fulfillment in his work as a doctor grew exponentially when he realized that his calling was not merely to treat a disease but to treat people. Yes, a disease surely keeps a person from experiencing what we long for in life. But, we can get rid of a disease and still not have a real life of shalom. To treat the person is to serve a person in such a way that the whole of the person becomes more of what God would have life to be. I began to think, “That’s what Jesus did. He was treating this person in Mark 8. Jesus wanted to do more in this man’s life than just to deal with his disability. Jesus didn’t do his work in the timing that people expected. It even looked for a while as if Jesus had botched up the healing. But, Jesus knew what he wanted to have happen in the person. And Jesus knew what he wanted to do through the person in the lives of those around him. When Jesus allows things to happen in our lives in ways we cannot understand and on a timetable that is slower than we want, we need to open our eyes to who he is. He is treating us – not the problem. He is doing something to bring about our re-creation. Ken opened my eyes up to that in ways that I had not seen before.

That’s the first thing I want you to see today. God places us in a community and when we spend time with one another and seek God together humbly and gratefully, we will see more about God than we otherwise would see. God uses others to help us to see.

#2: Jesus is ready to work in us more than once – until we see him as he is (8:23-25).

With vivid detail Mark describes Jesus whisking away the blind man from the village, spitting into his eyes to heal them, and meeting with only partial success. This is the only miracle in all four gospels that proceeds in stages rather than being instant in its effect. This story describing a process of healing has baffled Bible students for many, many years.

But, when we read this individual story in the context of Mark’s whole story, I think we see something quite powerful. Jesus often did things in such ways that forced people to think more deeply about what he did or about the story he told than they otherwise would. This healing is a true story. But, as so often happened in the ministry of Jesus, he used something that happened in this world to teach a spiritual lesson. So, this episode was a miracle and a parable in one. Jesus sometimes called his miracles “signs”. They were signs pointing to something bigger than the miracle itself. And this sign pointed beautifully to the fact that Jesus does not give up on his blind followers. It pointed to the hope that someday they too would see fully.

So, this story is both an historical report as well as a parable. In my reading, it’s a very, very encouraging story for all of us who wonder how patient God will be with people like us who continue to struggle in our understandings, who sometimes have questions and doubts, and who still fall short of all God would have us to be. Hear this: God does not abandon us in our blindness and in our sinful ways. God is longsuffering with us. Jesus does this miracle at this time and in this way so that we will always know that he will not give up on us. He is ready to come in and touch his people again and again with his healing grace.

This story took place directly after Jesus had spoken of the disciples’ blindness to who he was. Then, immediately after this story, noticed what happened beginning with 8:27: Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”

I know this sounds like Peter saw clearly – but he did not. Peter had a glimpse that Jesus was the promised Messiah but he still saw unclearly. He and the disciples would struggle for a long time to understand what the Messiah had come to do i.e., to give his life as a ransom for many (10:45). They could not see any value at all in suffering. Mostly, they personally did not want to suffer but the disciples wanted to have their own needs to be focused on. What we will see as we continue to go through Mark’s account is that the thing that blinds us most in our walks with God is our strong tendency to turn everything toward ourselves. Jesus will say that he as the Messiah had come to die but the disciples again and again will say, “But what are you going to do for us? Will I be the greatest in your kingdom? Will I become rich like the rich young ruler? Will I get to be on your right or on your left when you set up your kingdom in Jerusalem?” Their greatest problem in their growth with God was always self-centeredness. Jesus would say that we find life when we serve others.” They would say, “But what about my own healing? What about my losses and brokenness? What do I get out of this?”

And, I contend that this is still the greatest problem we have with our own walks with God. Jesus will keep insisting that we find life when we are ready to be the least of all and to give our lives in service. When we always focus inward, we will not be able to look up and see Jesus.

Today, I want us to see that, in spite of their blindness and self-centeredness, Jesus did not give up on his disciples. And he does not give up on us. We need to come back again and again to confess our sins and to renew our commitment of faith in Jesus. One reason why we worship together each week is so that we together in this community can experience a fresh touch from Jesus.

I think this fresh touch begins when we give an honest answer to Jesus’ question. “Do you see anything?” If we know there are some things wrong in our lives but we pretend everything is just fine, we will go on in our spiritual blindness. What if this man had said, “Oh, I think I see just fine. Jesus, I don’t need any more of your touches.” Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones said, “He would have gone around the rest of his life cutting down people and talking to tree trunks.”

So, today, be honest and say to the Lord, “I still don’t think I have surrendered to you fully, Jesus. I’m still putting myself in your place. I know you are the Lord of the universe and I recommit to having you be the Lord of my life. I want to see right. So, forgive my sins. Open my eyes more fully to you than they ever have been before.” That kind of honesty is always a first step toward a deeper knowledge of God.

And, you will find that Jesus will touch your life again. He will continue, out of his mercy, to forgive you, cleanse you, and restore you until, as Paul put it, you are “complete in Christ.” Don’t you long for that?

Dietrich Bonhoefferstood against Nazi tyranny as a Christian in Nazi Germany. But, he often had to come back for a fresh touch from Jesus in order to find strength. He would start his prayers by acknowledging his own weakness and then move directly to the keeping and sustaining power of a God would was ready to receive his and touch him again. Listen to his words in one of his prayers:

"Who am I? A hypocrite. A contemptible weakling. There's something in me like a beaten army fleeing in disorder. Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. But, whoever I am, you know O God ‑‑ I am yours."

In my own walk with God, one of the times during which I have experienced the renewing touch of Jesus most often is when I have shared communion with my community of faith. So, today we together will go to the Lord’s Table…

 

 

 

To His glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor