Sunday Sermon

"What Do You See?"
[Mark 8:22-30]
May 7, 2006 Second Reformed Church

Who do you see when you look at the records of the history of the life and works of Jesus? What do you see?

Jesus and the disciples went to Bethsaida. And there, we see they encountered what had become to them, and should be to us, a familiar sight: friends of a sick person brought the person to Jesus and begged Him to heal the person. We see this again and again in the Gospels.

Jesus and the disciples arrived and some people brought their blind friend to Jesus and begged Him to heal the blind man. They had heard or seen what Jesus was able to do. They had faith that He was able to restore the sight to the blind, and they begged Jesus to do this for their friend.

Jesus took the man by the hand and led him outside of the city gates. Why? Jesus wanted privacy; He didn't want to attract a crowd. As we have seen before, it was not yet time for Jesus to be glorified, so these healings that He did, though He did them as witnesses to Who He is, He also did not want to have throngs following after Him every moment of the day. It was not yet His time.

And Jesus led the man by the hand, showing His Compassion and Mercy. Jesus could have spoken the word, and the man would have been healed, but, instead, He chose to touch Him, to lead him, to reveal something of His Character to him.

And again, we see Jesus using physical means: He did not merely proclaim Him well, as He had done for others, but He spit, and He placed the spit on the man's eyes, and touched his eyes. Like with the deaf and dumb man in chapter seven, our Savior touched the sick; He showed that He loved with His Body. Remember, the great commandment says that we are to love God with our strength, with our body. There is a holy way to show love to God and each other with our bodies. And Jesus spit and touched the man's eyes.

And Jesus asked him if he saw anything -- not because He didn't know, but to strengthen the man's faith and to make sure the man realized just what was happening. And the man said that the saw people, but it wasn't clear, they looked like trees. So Jesus touched his eyes again, and He fully opened his eyes, and the man proclaimed that he could see clearly, very clearly. He had been completely healed.

Why did Jesus touch him twice to heal Him? Couldn't Jesus have healed him by touching him once? Yes, Jesus could have healed him completely the first time, but Jesus wanted to strengthen the man's faith and make sure that the man understood Who was healing him.

And we wonder what this has to do with us today: Jesus is not physically here; He is not going to come in and spit and lay His Hands on us. Yet God does still heal. We are right to believe and have faith that the God Who created everything is able to heal us as it pleases Him. So we ought to have that faith, based on the truth of the Scriptures -- that God can heal us now. But let us understand, God will not heal everyone in the same way, and some may not be healed in this lifetime.

Let us understand that we are right to pray for the sick. We are right to bring our friends and our concerns for our friends into the sanctuary and lift up those prayers for them to God, because God may heal them, simply by His Word, and it also shows that we recognize that He is the Healer, the One Who is able to heal.

Along with this, we ought to go to doctors. It is not a sign of a lack of faith to go to doctors. God has given us doctors and given them insight and ability with regards to disease. So, it may be that God chooses to heal through the means of doctors, just as He chose to heal through spit and touch. God may heal a person through pills, or an operation. In such a case, we have the doctor to thank and God to thank. For God is the One Who gave the doctor the ability and the knowledge to do those things by which God healed.

What we must be careful of falling into sin in attributing our healing merely to the doctors, as if God has nothing to do with it, or as if mere humans can heal without God's intervention. If we are healed after a doctor's intervention, we still also have been healed by the Hand of God.

We ought also to understand from this healing, that God may heal us in stages. For whatever reason, to increase our faith, or something else. God may heal us in stages. Or God may only partially heal us. It all depends on God's Perfect Will. Let us by patient and wait on God, believing that He knows best.

So, Jesus healed the blind man and sent him home, telling him not to go back into the city -- not to tell the people of the city what had happened to him. Why? Because it was not yet Jesus' Time.

Though Jesus' Time came, we still do well to watch our tongues, to be careful what we say about the glories of Christ, in this sense: Jesus said, "Do not give to the dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you" (Matthew 7:6-7). Jesus is warning us that there is a time and a place to discuss everything that God has revealed to us in His Word, but we must be careful and wise about when and what we say. For, there are some things, some mysteries, like the Doctrine of Election, for example that, at best, are meaningless to a non-Christian, or at worst, will cause them to blaspheme God and/or attack us. Just as we would not throw the holy things or pearls before beasts, for whom they are meaningless, we ought to be careful what we say and whom we are saying it to.

Then Jesus and the disciples left for Caesarea Philippi, and Jesus asked the disciples who the people said He was. And again, Jesus knew what the people we saying, but He wanted to see what the disciples had come to understand. So they told Him, "John the baptizer, Elijah, or one of the other prophets." Remember we said that there were some who believed that just as demons can possess a human body, they reasoned that the soul of a deceased person could also possess a human body. The people were saying, then, that Jesus was possessed by the soul of one of the great Old Testament prophets. Remember that Herod believed that Jesus was possessed by John, whom Herod had killed. They, of course, were wrong.

Today, most people, most religions, will say that Jesus was a good man, a moral teacher, a controversial rabbi, who interpreted the Torah in a new way. Of course, most people today are wrong. Why? Because Jesus makes it impossible for us to merely call Him a good man, if we read the Scripture. C. S. Lewis, of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fame, said that if we read the Scripture, we only have three options: He was either a lunatic -- claiming the He is the Son of God (Luke 22:69), or He was a liar -- on the same charge, or He is in fact Who He said He was, the Incarnate Deity, God in the Flesh, the Second Person of the Trinity.

The fact that so many people deny that Jesus is the Son of God and refuse to take one of the other two positions, is normal -- it is just what we should expect, as Paul tells us, "There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized" (I Corinthians 11:19). Paul is saying that these various conclusions as to Who Jesus is are signs to us that we might know who is a Christian -- a genuine Christian -- and who is not. We know by comparing what God has said in the Bible against what people are saying, and then, we "must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that [we might receive] instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it" (Titus 1:9). To do that, we must know the Word of God and pray that the Holy Spirit would help us to understand it rightly. And we must "in our hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you" (I Peter 3:15).

Jesus then asked the disciples what they saw Him as -- what their understand was. And good, old, impulsive Peter jumped forward and said, "You are the Christ." "You are the Messiah, the Savior, the One we have been waiting for, for four thousand years. You are the One Who provides eternal salvation for His people; You are the Mediator between God and humans. You Alone make us right with the Father."

And Jesus told them that Peter was right, and not to tell anyone, because His Time had not yet come.

Who do you understand Jesus to be? Who is He, really? If you can answer that He is the Christ, the Son of God, then God has not only opened your eyes and given you sight, but He has raised you from spiritual death to spiritual life.

John wrote, "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:30-31).

What do you see?

If you have seen the Son of God and believe in Him Alone for salvation, then our Lord invites you to His Table. And the Savior Who created everything that is, and heals us and preserves us, and makes Himself know to us through His Word, this Jesus is here, ministering to us now, and as we receive the bread and the cup.

So, let us pray:
Almighty God and Savior, Healer, Preserver, Mediator, and Word, we thank You for raising us from the dead and causing us to see very clearly, that Jesus is the Christ. Draw us to Your Word, and make us understand it. Help us to defend Your Word against unbelievers, and keep our sure Hope before us. In Jesus' Name.