Sermon Tone Analysis

Open with the video “The Least” (It deals with spiritual blindness)

GREET EVERYONE AND BRIEFLY TALK ABOUT THE QUEST EVENT AND ALSO FILL THEM IN ON MY FATHER’S CONDITION!

This morning, I would like to talk with you about something that God placed on my heart while I was at the Quest event this past week.

Actually, as one of the men was speaking, he mentioned a particular Bible story and as soon as he mentioned it, it grabbed my spirit’s attention and said, this is for your return to the church.

DEMONSTRATE ABOUT HOW, WHEN WE CANNOT SEE, WE ARE INEFFECTIVE, BY USING A VOLUNTEER.

SHOW THEM A TASK WITH THEIR EYES OPEN AND THEN ASK THEM TO PERFORM THE TASK WITH THEIR EYES CLOSED.

(FOR FUN, RIGHT BEFORE THEY START, ALSO BLINDFOLD THEM.

THEN RIGHT WHEN THEY ARE GETTING READY TO START, ACT LIKE YOU ARE GOING TO SPRAY PAINT THEIR FACE BLACK AND THEN SETTLE ON USING A BUCKET OVER THEIR HEAD.)

The point is that when you are blind, even the most simple of tasks can become impossible!

You find yourself trying to feel your way around and hoping that along the way, you do not trip and fall and hurt yourself!

That is the key point that we are going to be looking at this morning, “Spiritual Blindness”.

Turn with me to if you would, to ,

This passage will kind of set the stage for the main set of verses as well as the theme that we will be looking at today.

The thing that Jesus is expressing to His disciples in this passage, is similar to what we find Him trying to teach them in the verses that lead into the main passage for this morning.

This issue that Jesus makes mention of here, as to having eyes and not seeing and having ears and not hearing, was written by the prophet Isaiah, as well as Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Paul mentions the same exact same thing in the book of Acts as well as Romans.

Point being, Holy Spirit put this passage we are about to read, upon my heart this past week, to stress what has been emphasized from the OT and coming forward.

The need to recognize our spiritual blindness!

Turn with me now please in your Bibles, or you can look at the screen if that is easier for you, to the gospel of ,

Now, before I jump in and start expounding more on the situation of the blind man in this passage, whom the Bible calls, “Bartimaeus”, allow me to take you backwards a little in time and show you what has taken place and what was going on that leads up to this account, as this will most definitely give more clarity and give more meaning to my point in today’s sermon.

As you move through the Mark’s gospel, as with the other gospels, you will see Jesus working with His disciples, not exclusively, but primarily and trying to teach them about faith and belief.

As Jesus performs miracle after miracle and teaching after teaching, in Mark, as well as the other three gospel accounts, it is being done, both for the benefit of those who witnessed and experienced these events, but also and more importantly for this lesson, these things were being done and explained to and for the benefit of the disciples.

(It was after all, the 12 that Jesus prayed about and hand selected to pour Himself into for some 3 1/2 years!)

Jesus was declaring before the religious leaders, the lay persons and His disciples, both of His authority/power as given to Him by His Father, as well as His bringing the Kingdom to earth and salvation to all of mankind, through His complete fulfillment of the will of God!

And as Jesus’ ministry intensified and the rebellious and hard hearted condition of men’s hearts clashed with His ministry, Jesus began to instruct and teach through the use of His parables.

In fact in , Jesus tells His disciples why He was using the parables, when He said to them,

He then tells the disciples just a few verses later, “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.

I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but they didn’t see it.

And they longed to hear what you hear, but they didn’t hear it.”

This being said in reference to the disciples witnessing the physical and miraculous coming of the Messiah as well as having the blessing of His teaching them the hidden meaning of the parables!

So, Jesus was trying to stress to His disciples the imperative nature of “seeing” and “hearing” the TRUTH of who and what He really was to them as well as for the WHOLE world!

Miracle after miracle, parable after parable, Jesus poured into the twelve disciples and yet, as we move into Mark’s gospel, chapter eight, we find the disciples arguing about something that simply floored Jesus and prompted Him to say and ask of them, the exact same thing, that He had pronounced over the heard hearted religious leaders as we just read in .

In , we read about this occurrence, as it says,

“Don’t you understand yet?”

Allow me to rephrase this question that Jesus asked them, in the context of what He is saying about their natural and spiritual perception; “DON’T YOU SEE IT YET?”

“You guys have watched and witnessed all of these miracles and you can recall the exact natural/physical outcome of them, like the amount of food that was collected, and yet, spiritually, you are blind to who and what I really am?”

There resided amongst them, a spiritual blindness!

Now, a quick question.

Was the account of blind Bartimaeus the first or only recorded person that Jesus healed from being blind in the Bible?

Absolutely not, in fact there are several others that are recorded within the four gospels.

The Bible actually mentions that people brought all manners of sickness and demonic possession before Jesus for Him to heal and deliver; this happening wherever He went.

Mark, himself, in , even states this, about Jesus and His miraculous power and authority,

That shows you some of, NOT ALL, but some of what the disciples witnessed while they walked with Jesus here on earth.

Remember what John said about all of the things that Jesus did while He was on earth, as John closed out his gospel, he said, “Jesus also did MANY other things.

If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.”

The reason that I mention this about there being many other healings and more specifically, about other blinded eyes being opened by Jesus, is that they serve as a couple of reminders for us; just as they did for the disciples back then.

When you read of Jesus healing the different accounts of the blind within the gospels, you do not see Him doing it the same way each time.

In other words, in one account, Jesus speaks and the blinded eyes see, or in another, He touches the eyes and they are opened, or He spits on the eyes and then touches them, or He spits and makes mud and puts it on the eyes and then has the person go and rinse off in the pool of Siloam.

My point is this, there was no “cookie cutter” method of healing that Jesus used.

It was different per person and specific as to the need of and the over all spiritual impartation that would be given.

And guess who was calling the shots for the specifics about each of these different healing methods?

GOD THE FATHER, through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ!

You have to remember that Jesus, Himself, plainly stated this, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself.

He does only what he sees the Father doing.

Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.

For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing.

I don’t speak on my own authority.

The Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it.

And I know his commands lead to eternal life; so I say whatever the Father tells me to say.”

Jesus only SAID and Jesus only DID what His Father told Him to do!

So, every healing that Jesus performed, He listened to and carried out the instructions that His Father gave to Him, via the Holy Spirit!

And here is your and my little take away from this part of today’s lesson.

Are you ready for this?

YOU AND I SHOULD NOT DO ANYTHING A CERTAIN WAY JUST BECAUSE IT WORKED ONCE BEFORE, OR JUST BECAUSE YOU SAW IT WORK FOR SOMEONE ELSE, OR BECAUSE YOU READ OF IT WORKING!

We are to move and act and speak and pray and most definitely, TO HEAL, only as guided by Holy Spirit within us!

If you want to know how far you can get by acting on past actions and on head knowledge and without the power and authority of Holy Spirit working within you, just look up the sons of Sceva and see how it worked out for them!

OK, so for clarity, should you be praying over people and doing things based upon the way that your favorite TV evangelist does it and copying what you see work for them?

Who are you going to listen to?

SAY IT AGAIN!

REPEAT IT AGAIN!

The other reason that I mentioned to you about the different accounts of Jesus healing the physical blindness in people, was to point out an area that existed in the lives of the disciples that Jesus wanted healed and made right.

The disciples walked with Jesus, watched and witnessed first-hand, the miracles of Jesus.

They listened to and were amazed by the knowledge and authority of Jesus’ teachings.

They could recant and spout off all that they had visually witnessed with their natural eyes about Jesus and yet, they were still spiritually blind as to who He really was and what He had came to do!

It was Peter, who had the great spiritual revelation from God, as to the true identity of who Jesus was, when Peter answered Jesus’ question and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

And yet, Peter turned right back around and showed that he was still operating out of a wordly mindset and rebuked the Messiah for Jesus saying that He was going to be persecuted and killed.

Peter, had once again, fell into spiritual blindness and reacted out of it!

Spiritual blindness is something that we must all keep on our guard about!

Although the healing of Bartimaeus was a natural/physical healing by Jesus, when you look at all that was going on that lead up it, you can see a spiritual lesson that is derived!

In , we read of Jesus and the disciples coming into Bethsaida and while they were there, Jesus heals another blind man.

This particular healing is only mentioned by Mark and it has a very unique twist with it, that many believe took place the way that it did to show a spiritual lesson of lack of faith and incomplete spiritual vision on the disciple’s part.

Jesus had just chastised the disciples in this same chapter while in the boat and told them that they were spiritually blind and now this miracle takes place, one verse later.

RECANT THE STORY OF JESUS LEADING THE MAN AWAY FROM OTHER PEOPLE AND HEALING THE BLIND MAN BY SPITTING ON HIS EYES AND LAYING HANDS HIM, ONCE AND THEN AGAIN.

Jesus could have instantly healed and restored the blind man and yet there is a reason why He and His Father did this the way that they did.

By Jesus giving this man his vision back in two stages, dimly and blurred the 1st time and then perfectly the second, it possibly served to show the disciples of how they were missing the acuity and clarity of Jesus and His earthly role as Messiah.

In the natural, the modern optometry world recognizes what

They saw a blurred vision of who He was and what He was here to do from His having touched them and their lives, but they were still off in their perception of Him and so in the coming days and weeks and months that would follow, Jesus was going to continue to address this with them and once again, it would come down to another blind healing, to validate for them the truth of who He was and why He was there!

From chapter 8 through chapter 10, Jesus and the disciples are making their way back towards Jerusalem, for what would there final trip there together!

Along the way, within the course of these three chapters, Jesus tells His disciples three times that He was going to Jerusalem to die and that He would rise again.

Yet, each time that He tells them, they completely miss it and refuse to accept this, because they had their own pre-conceived idea of who He was and what He was there to do.

(i.e.

Become the messiah who would deliver them out of Roman rule and forever establish a kingly reign that would prosper Israel forever!)

Not the guy who was going to die under the hand of the Roman government and fade away!

And throughout this time period, the disciples continue to show that they have missed the mark as to who Jesus was and what He was there for.

They showed lack of faith and belief in Him, they sought after pomp and heir within this new coming Kingdom that he kept talking about, they sought after exclusivity from their pride and tried to deny others from participating within the kingdom since they were not one of the elite 12, they chastised parents for trying to bring their children to Jesus, the very ones Jesus, Himself, said that all must become as in order to enter the kingdom.

They even brazenly asked Jesus for the highest positions of authority within the coming Kingdom and all the while, they missed that He was trying to instill into them a heart to serve, not to be served!

They were spiritually BLIND!

They had their own idea of who Jesus was based on their senses and perception of Him, much in the same way as the story of the blind men and the elephant.

Most of us have heard this story in one version or another but it is the story of six blind men who try to learn about the elephant.

Each one examines a different part of the elephant and each comes away with a different conclusion.