Thank you, Lindsay and worship team. Open your Bibles to Mark chapter eight. That's where we are. I start with a little bit of a confession: I suffer from blurred vision, and I mean that literally. I am near-sighted. So if I take my glasses off, all I see is very, very blurred images of each of you. But even with my glasses on, you know, my sight isn't so great from this distance.
In fact, some people say to me sometimes, you know, after a sermon, "Were you looking at me?' And, you know, on one hand, I want to tell them yes, I was, you know, to make sure that they were alert and listening. On the other hand, if I tell them the truth, here's the truth: you could be sleeping as long as you don't fall over and I don't see the movement of you falling over. I won't see it. Because I have blurred vision. Even corrected, I have blurred vision.
So that is not an excuse to sleep, but you know you won't get me asking afterwards about that. But here's the ongoing confession. I not only suffer from blurred vision physically; I suffer, I realize, especially working through the text this week, that I suffer from blurred vision spiritually. And I wonder if you do, too. In fact, I bet you do. I bet many of you do, at least. That is the picture that we get in our text.
We see in this latter half of chapter eight this week, we see a picture of literal, physical, blurred vision that Jesus actually uses as an illustration of spiritual blurred vision. And let's take the literal, the physical picture of blurred vision first, and that is the blurred vision of the blind man in Bethsaida that we see in chapter eight starting with verse 22. Jesus and his disciples, they come to Bethsaida. That's on the north side of the Sea of Galilee.
"They--" the people in that area-- "they brought him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And Jesus took the blind man by the hand and brought him out of the village, spitting on his eyes and laying his hands on him. Jesus asked him, 'Do you see anything?' The man looked up and said, 'I see people, and they look to me like trees walking.'" So let me stop there. The story goes on. You may know that, but let me stop there. Let's picture that scene there.
Jesus and this man outside the village are probably surrounded by, I'm sure, his disciples, maybe other people. And this man who has been blind begins to see, but really all he can make out at that point of the disciples or whoever it was, is they look large objects, like trees moving. If you are a fan, like I am, of Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, I instantly think of the Ents. You know, these large creatures that are actually trees, but they move around.
That's, you know, growing up, what I thought of when I read this passage. But when I think about it logically, it's pretty much like if I take my glasses off, and I see people moving around in the back, and all I can see is it's something tall, and it could be a tree, but it's moving, so it's probably not a tree. You know, this presumes that this man knew what a tree looks like, and he knew what people look like, so this man was probably not born blind.
He probably became blind at some point in his life. But what else stands out from this, without reading the rest of the story? What stands out to this is Jesus has touched this man to heal him, and the healing has begun, but the healing is not complete. In fact, what really stands out here is this is the first and, as far as I can find, the only occasion where Jesus' first touch did not heal somebody fully and instantaneously. And yes, the story will go on, and we'll see that.
But note at this point, the first touch of Jesus begins to bring this man his sight. But what do we see? He has blurred vision. He has blurred physical vision. What he can make out of people looks like trees walking. Now before we finish that story, because it is related in the way Jesus uses this as an illustration, let's jump back to the proceeding section, verses 14 through 21.
And I've intentionally taken these out of order this morning, and the reason I've done so is because many Bible scholars believe, and I believe with them, that Mark intended this healing of this blind man at Bethsaida, this picture of this healing that was not at least initially full and instantaneous, to be an illustration of spiritual blurred vision. The spiritual, blurred vision of the disciples. But I would posit to you this morning it's a picture of my blurred spiritual vision.
And I bet I'm not alone here this morning. Let's pick it up in verse 14. This is where Jesus and his disciples, they have just left their confrontation with the Pharisees following the feeding of the 4,000. They're in a boat. They are in the boat working their way across the Sea of Galilee to Bethsaida. We pick it up in verse 14. "They--" the disciples-- "had forgotten to take bread and had only one loaf with them in the boat. Then he--" Jesus-- "commanded them, 'Watch out.
Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod.'" And do they reflect on that? No. Verse 16: 'They were discussing among themselves that they did not have any bread." "We have lunch coming up. There's 13 of us. We only have one loaf of bread." "Aware of this, Jesus said to them, 'Why are you discussing that you do not have any bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Is your heart hardened? Do you have eyes and not see? Do you have ears and not hear?
And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of bread did you collect?' '12, they told him.' 'When I broke the seven loaves for the 4,000, how many large baskets full of pieces of bread did you collect?' 'Seven,' they said. And he said to them, 'Don't you understand yet?'" Mark includes this account of the man with blurry vision in Bethsaida as an illustration of what's going on here in the boat, of the blurry spiritual vision of the disciples.
And I'll go a step further. This is a picture of my spiritual vision, my blurry spiritual vision, and maybe you'll recognize it this morning as a picture of your blurry spiritual vision. How do we see this in ourselves in this text? Well, first consider Jesus' warning in verse 15 about the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. What is that all about? I think leaven, I think yeast. If you're going to bake bread today, you buy those little packets of baker's yeast. It's fresh. It's safe to use.
You don't even think about it when you bake bread using that yeast. But they didn't have that at that time. And so they used a rising agent called leaven, and what they would do is they'd break off a piece of the dough, they'd make their dough, and they'd break off a piece of that dough. It's kind of like a sourdough starter if you make sourdough bread. Or awhile ago in one of my churches, this thing was going around called friendship bread, and it was the same idea.
You break out a little piece of the dough. Now when we do that for sourdough bread or friendship bread, we refrigerate that. You know, we keep it from going bad, but at that time they didn't have refrigeration, and they actually added some juices to make it ferment.
And then they would take that fermented bit of dough the next week, when they're making their next batch of dough to make bread for the week, and they'd work it into the dough, and that fermenting leaven now would permeate that lump of dough. And every loaf that was baked out of that would be, would have that leaven in it.
The problem was without refrigeration, sometimes that leaven became tainted, and tainted leaven mixed into a batch of dough would, guess what, taint all the loaves that were baked out of that dough. And the taint often made people sick, sometimes even killed people as a result of this. That was leaven in the ancient world. So leaven did not have the good, safe connotation that yeast does today. So with that image in mind, what is the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod?
Well, Mark doesn't tell us exactly, but I think we can put some of this together. What have we seen Jesus really focus on with the Pharisees leading up? What would be their leaven, or the word I might put on it to sum up everything we've seen is hypocrisy? These are men who were concerned about their external appearances and had all their works down and knew how to stay within the rules, but their interior, their heart, could be totally rotten, could be totally tainted.
That's what we think of when we think of hypocritical. What's the leaven of Herod? Herod Antipas is the leader that's being referred to. Jesus hasn't had much to say about him, but we saw him appear in chapter six when John the Baptist confronted him. And what was it that John the Baptist confronted him? Herod had some belief in God but didn't want to live within the boundaries that God put in his life.
So when Herod saw that his brother's sister, or brother's wife, was desirable to him, romantically and sexually, Herod took her, broke God's boundaries, broke God's rules, and took her as his wife. And then when John the Baptist challenged him on that, Herod again went outside the boundaries and had John the Baptist killed. So what can we say of Herod? We could say, I think, like James says, he has, he has one foot in, maybe, you know, wanting to follow God, but he has another foot in the world.
He's really governing, he's really infected with the leaven of worldliness, giving into what he desires. He's infected with the leaven of secularism. "What does the world tell me is okay?" So how does that have to do with your and my blurred spiritual vision? Well, Jesus is warning his disciples, and he's warning me, and he's warning you: that can be you and me, that our vision of Jesus, our vision of the Kingdom of God, can be infected with the leaven of hypocrisy. I know that's true of me.
I can so easily get caught up in that treadmill, that pharisaical treadmill of works. "Am I doing everything I need to do? How do I look? Am I appearing as a good Christian? Am I appearing as a good husband, a good father?" I can fall into that leavening influence of hypocrisy, the pharisaical influence of hypocrisy.
But I also, like James warns, I can find myself, and have found myself many times in my life, with one foot in the world and secularism and the influences of the culture around me and another foot in the kingdom, wanting to follow Jesus, but not wanting to let go of the things that the world tells me will make me happy and make me fulfilled. And that is like a leavening influence. And Jesus is telling me that that blurs my vision. That blurs my ability to see him clearly.
That blurs my ability to see what he's doing in his kingdom. And I'm guessing I'm not alone in that. My spiritual vision is blurred by these things. How about yours? Verse 16: they were discussing that they did not have any bread. Here's another way that my spiritual vision I think is blurred. They were discussing in the boat that they did not have any bread. Do you remember what happened just a few verses before this?
I mean, literally, it had to have been hours before, maybe a day, but what had they just witnessed? Jesus had taken seven loaves, and he multiplied those seven loaves to feed more than 4,000 people. Do you think he could take one loaf and multiply it to feed 13 men? But it's like they have group amnesia.
It's like they never saw that happen, because here they are just hours away, verses away as we see it, and suddenly they're all consumed with anxiety that this one loaf is not going to be enough for lunch for the 13 of them. It's like Jesus was not even in the boat. I can relate. Can you? I mean, my vision is often blurred when I become distracted, when I become preoccupied with what I think I need.
And I think that's the human condition, that anxiety has a blurring effect upon our vision of who Jesus is and what he's doing in our lives. What I think I need and my struggle to find how I'm going to meet those needs has this blinding effect to what's going on spiritually around me, and I would venture to guess that I'm not the only one in the room who suffers from this.
Look at verse 18. Here we see Jesus connect the blurred spiritual vision of the disciples to their failure to remember what they've just seen, with the feeding of the 4,000. "Do you have eyes and not see? Do you have ears and not hear? Do you not remember?" I mean, it's more than just the feeding of the 4,000; they've seen him twice now, with just this little bit of food, multiply it to feed thousands.
They've been in boats with him in the middle of the storm where they have seen him still the waves and stop the wind, his power over nature. They have seen him heal the sick. They've even seen him raise the dead, and it's as if they haven't even reflected on that, like that just went in one ear and out the other, what that communicates about who he really is. And I would like to call them dense, but you know, I really can't criticize these disciples, because I have the same problem.
My vision, my spiritual vision is blurred by my failure to recognize what he's done in my life, my failures to remember what I have seen Jesus do in my life, my failures to reflect on the meaning of how he makes himself known in what he's done in my life. Can you relate? Is that you this morning?
Jesus sums it all up in verse 21: "He said to them, 'Don't you understand yet?'" You know, their eyewitness experience of all of these miracles, it's given them this unique opportunity to see he's more than a man, to see that he really is sent by God as fully God, as not just savior, which they will see him soon to be, but as Lord, as king, but they haven't fully grasped that. Have they? They haven't really understood that yet. Their vision of him is still very blurred. We're no different.
We weren't eyewitnesses, obviously, of all he did, but we have the written accounts of what he did, don't we? In our Bibles. We can read about all of these things. Not only that, we have the advantage over the disciples at this point that we're on the other side of the Cross and resurrection. We've seen Jesus validate who he is by being raised from the dead. We have the accounts of him being ascended into Heaven.
We have the promises of him returning in all of his glory, and yet we-- or at least, I'll take it, you know-- I am still often so spiritually dense as to who he really is. And so like I say in my outline up on the screen there, just being honest here, I struggle in my faith because I don't fully grasp who Jesus Christ is, and I need a clear vision of him. How about you? Well, return with me to the account of the blind man in Bethsaida. Remember, he's been touched once by Jesus.
And what has that touch done? That has begun to bring his sight back, but he's still only seeing with blurred vision. And isn't that a spiritual picture, not just of the disciples, but a spiritual picture of you and a spiritual picture of me? This man needs Jesus' continuing touch. The disciples need Jesus' continuing touch. I need Jesus' continuing touch. You need Jesus' continuing touch. No matter how long you have walked with the Lord, you need Jesus' continuing touch.
And we see him literally, physically do that. Verse 25: again, Jesus placed his hands on the man's eyes, and he saw distinctly., He was cured and he could see everything clearly. Jesus' continuing touch clears this man's blurry vision so that he can see everything distinctly. He can see everything clearly. People are people. They're not trees. Trees are trees. They're not people. They can't clear their blurry spiritual vision on their own. They need his continuing touch.
I can't clear my blurry spiritual vision on my own. I need Jesus' continuing touch. You, if you recognize this morning that you struggle with blurry spiritual vision, you can't clear your vision on your own. It's not a matter of reading enough books or hearing enough speakers or watching enough videos or psyching yourself up. You and I, like the disciples, like this man, need Jesus' continuing touch.
In all of my moments of doubt and faltering faith, what I need more than anything is Jesus to touch my spiritual eyes to help me see clearly. How about you? Does that describe you this morning? The very next thing that Mark records encourages us that maybe the disciples are beginning to get it, that maybe now they are experiencing, as a result of Jesus' continuing touch, an opening of their eyes, and their blurred vision is beginning to clear.
Look at verse 27. "Jesus went out with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the road he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say that I am?'" He's asking, "Not yet what you think, but what is public opinion about me?" "And they answer him, 'Well, people think you're John the Baptist. People think you're Elijah returned. People think you are another one of the profits.'" You know, that was public opinion. You know, he preaches like John the Baptist.
He's a social reformer like Elijah. You know, he seems like one of the prophets sent by God." And while those do seem to honor him in some respect, they seem to be complements, what they all have in common is they fall far short of who he really is. All of those make him still a man, a human. They don't get to who he really is. That's the message that you and I get. I hope there's no one who is still caught up in these messages, but all around us in our culture, that's what we hear.
"Jesus is a great teacher. Jesus is a social reformer. Jesus is a great moral example." All of those things are true to some respect, but they all fall far short of who he really is. And so, like I have in your outline there, I need to rely less on what other people say about who Jesus is, especially what people say in our culture. I need to experience Jesus more myself. I need to experience him as he reveals himself, as his Holy Spirit works through his word. I need to be in his word.
I need to be in his Spirit and allow the Spirit to show me more and more who, really, he is if my blurred spiritual vision is going to clear. Verse 29, now he turns to them. "'Okay, that's what the public thinks, but you,' he asked them again, 'Who do you say that I am?'" You know, and that is the defining question of the gospel of Mark. Really, that's the question that Mark writes the gospel under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to answer: who do you say that Jesus is?
And really, when we think about it, when we present what we call the plan of salvation or the Gospel or whatever it is, we share our testimony, that's where we want to get to. Who do you say that Jesus is? Because if you stop at the place that Jesus was a great teacher or a social reformer or whatever it may be, you have not gone far enough. Peter correctly answers. "Peter answered him, 'You are the Messiah.'" That's the Hebrew term. Some versions use the Greek term: "You are the Christ."
And this should stand out, because up until this point in Mark's gospel, no human being has identified Jesus like this. God has said it about Jesus. Demons have said it about Jesus, but no human being. Peter is the first human being to say, "Jesus, you are more than a man. You are more than a great teacher. You are more than a great moral example. You are the Messiah. You are the Christ."
And the Old Testament concept of the Messiah is "the anointed one", the one who is of God and sent from God and anointed to be God's king. God's king over all creation, God's king over the world, over all the nations in the universe, but God's king over all of us who turn to him and recognize him as savior and Lord as well. I want to see Jesus like this.
I want to see Jesus more clearly as the Christ, as the Messiah, as the anointed one, as the king over all the universe, but particularly as the king over me and over my heart. How about you? This seems to end on a high point, but the truth is the disciples' vision, it's going to take a while to clear. You know, Peter has his moment here. He says the right thing.
He gives the right answer, but we're going to see next week, what we're going to see is he takes a step back, and his concept, his expectation of what Jesus is, as the Messiah, is a very human concept. So Peter will even falter, and he'll falter, ultimately, in chapter 14, when he denies that he even knows Jesus. In fact, for Peter and the disciples, they won't gain their fully clear picture until they see the resurrected, risen, glorified Lord Jesus Christ after his resurrection.
And here's the thing: it's the same for me and it's the same for you. We begin our lives spiritually blind. We can see nothing spiritually. And then somewhere along the way, we encounter Jesus Christ. Someone shares the Gospel with us, or God uses some other events to draw us to Jesus. And our sight begins to clear.
We're like that man who's received the first touch, but we go through the rest of our life until our death, until the Lord's return, with that continuing touch of Jesus, more and more clearing our vision, but still, as the apostle Paul puts it, what we see is a poor reflection as in a mirror. It's like looking through some old, faded mirror ,and yeah, we see some of Jesus, and we see some about the Kingdom of God, but it's so incomplete.
Paul says what we know is only in part, but here's his promise: one day we will see Jesus face to face. Faith will become sight. We'll see everything with absolute clarity, everything with absolute distinction. One day we will know him fully. And that is why I long for Jesus to return. When I think of my blurred spiritual vision, when I think of all the ways that keep me from seeing him clearly, from seeing his kingdom, from understanding what he's doing in my life, I long for him to return.
I want to see him absolutely clearly. I want to know him fully. How about you? Let's spray. Jesus, this blind man is me. Your disciples here in the boat are me. And again, I imagine I'm not the only one in the room today who sees that about themselves. We thank you, Lord, that you have given us sight. If we've come to know you as savior and Lord, you've begun to open our eyes, but we still have blurred vision, and we still are held back.
Whether it is by hypocrisy, by secularism, Lord, by our preoccupation with our needs, Lord, all of these things that blur our spiritual vision. We don't see you like we want to, like we long to. We pray for your continuing touch, Lord Jesus. We pray that your Spirit works through your Word to more and more open our eyes. And we long for your return, Lord Jesus, of all of the things that you will bring that we look forward to, this complete opening of our eyes has got to be a highlight.
Jesus, give us ever clearer vision of you. Spirit, work through your Word to open our eyes more and more, that we may see you and worship you. Amen.