Introduction
Have you ever felt like God spit in your eyes? We’re going to read today about a man for whom that was a literal reality - Jesus spit in his eyes - and it was the best thing in the world for him.
Let’s set the scene: Jesus had fed the four thousand down in the Decapolis, and then traveled by boat back to the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Upon arrival, the local Pharisees come down and start interrogating Jesus, and demanding that he provide them with some definitive sign from heaven that he had authority to teach and act in the manner which he did. He flatly refuses their faithless and hypocritical demands, and then he and the disciples get back in the boat. But on the boat ride across to the eastern side of the sea, it becomes clear that the disciples themselves still are quite blind to the reality of who Jesus is. It’s reminiscent of the words spoken to the prophet Isaiah:
8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” 9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people:
“ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.” (Is 6:8–10, ESV)
The people of Israel were made hard hearing the word of the Lord through Isaiah. Now the nation of Israel was largely being hardened under the direct voice of Jesus, and even the disciples themselves were blind to who was in their boat.
Text
22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.” (Mark 8:22-26, ESV)
Explanation
The disciples and Jesus come to shore at the city of Bethsaida. Scholars debate exactly where Bethsaida was located, but it was probably either right on the Sea of Galilee, or possibly a city on the Jordan river about a mile in from the Sea. This is the city that Phillip was originally from, as well as Andrew and Peter (John 1:44). If you remember the feeding of the 5,000 from chapter six, that miracle had happened pretty close to here, and then Jesus sent the disciples by boat in this direction before they were blown adrift by the storm.
So this is a city where people are very familiar with Jesus and his miraculous power, which explains why they bring this blind man to him immediately upon landing. And they are begging Jesus, strongly entreating him, asking that he would bring healing. But then Jesus doesn’t heal him immediately. Instead, what Mark tells us is that Jesus takes the man by the hand, and brings him out of the village.
Throughout Mark’s gospel, though Jesus often does public miracles, we see that he is also frequently pulling people aside and telling them not to make known what he has done. There is a secrecy theme which pulses through the book. Like the deaf man with a speech impediment, whom Jesus pulled aside from the crowd (7:33), Jesus takes this man away - presumably even away from those who had brought him to Jesus in the first place.
Then Jesus goes back to using spit - Jesus spits in his eyes, and then lays hands on him (v23). If you remember from chapter seven, when he spit on the tongue of the man with a speech impediment, it was common for healers in the ancient world to use saliva, and it seems here that this is what Jesus is doing. It’s interesting that Matthew and Luke never record Jesus doing so. But we have these two stories in Mark where Jesus used saliva, and then there is the story of the man born blind in John 9, where Jesus spit on the ground to make mud, and then anointed the man’s eyes with that spitty dirt.
But here, unlike anywhere else in the gospels, the miracle doesn’t seem to “take” at first: Jesus asks if the man can see, and we who have read of Jesus' miracles are waiting for shouts of praise. But instead we get this curious description: “I see men, but they look like trees, walking” (v24). Apparently this man had not been born blind, but lost his sight at some point in life, because he knows what trees look like. But then it is also interesting that when Jesus asks what he can see, he can kinda see. He’s no longer completely blind. But he isn’t actually surrounded by walking trees. So Jesus touches his eyes again, and completes the miracle. “He opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly” (v25).
Then Jesus picks back up the secrecy: he tells the man to go home, avoiding the village. Jesus isn’t interested in more crowd ministry, he’s heading north with the disciples toward Ceasarea Phillipi.
Significance in Mark
So, what gives with this slow-rolled, multi-stage, healing? Did Jesus lack the initial power? Was the man so faithless that Jesus had to try twice? Had Jesus forgotten to “get prayed up”? Or is there another significance?
It’s important when reading these healing stories in the gospels to remember that the gospel writers weren’t simply recording history, or assembling a random collection of Jesus stories. John tells us that if everything Jesus did or taught had been written down, the world itself couldn’t contain the volumes (John 21:25). What that means is that each writer was very careful: not only in what they wrote, but how they wrote it. Each of the gospel narratives is carefully constructed to draw our attention in. When we’re looking at the miracles they included, we need to ask “how does this single story move the Big Story forward?”
Mark 8:22-26 is a transitional text. Let’s think about what has just come before.
Last week we looked at the first half of this chapter, spending a substantial amount of time on the spiritual blindness of the disciples in verses 14-21. That’s a clue, then, as to why Mark would place this story about a physically blind man directly after this discussion. In general, physical descriptions are absent from the Scriptures. When they are included, we should perk up our ears and take notice. In 1 Samuel you might remember Eli. Eli had become blind and extremely fat. That was significant, because he had tolerated his sons’ theft of the fat from the sacrifice, so he had probably become fat through spiritual malpractice, and he had become blind spiritually as well.
Here in Mark, the disciples have the Living Word of God with them in the boat, and yet seeing they do not see. Like the people of Israel in Isaiah’s day - and their own - they had the word of God and yet had not grown soft and sensitive thereby, but their hearts had been hardened. But after years of teaching, witnessing the miracles of Jesus, and rebukes for their slowness, they do start to get it - at least a little bit.
This is a transition we see in the next segment of verses, from verses 27-30. There, Jesus has the disciples far north of where he had previously ministered. And while strolling through this region, named for Caesar - who, it was claimed, was the son of a God - Jesus asks the disciples who people said that he was. “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets” (v28). Of course those answers are all wrong. So Jesus turns the question more personal: “But who do you say that I am?” And praise the Lord for big mouth Peter, who gets it right: “You are the Christ.” He gets it. He has received spiritual sight, right?
Well, then we read v 31-33.
31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
Does Peter see correctly when he says that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah? Absolutely! Mark’s gospel begins: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ: the Son of God” (1:1). But Peter's vision is not yet clear. When Jesus starts to unfold what that entails, concerning his suffering and death and resurrection, Peter rebukes him. Jesus returns that favor by calling him “Satan.” Peter is beginning to see, but it’s like trees, walking around. He doesn’t have clear vision yet. Even after the Transfiguration in chapter 9, where James and John and Peter sees Jesus in his glory, Peter starts babbling building some tents (v5). He still isn’t quite getting it. Things won’t come clear for Peter until after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. After the Spirit is poured out at Pentecost, then Peter boldly stands up and preaches about the necessity of Christ’s death and resurrection, and how repentance is needed for our wickedness and sin, and salvation readily available through this Jesus - the crucified and risen Christ.
The disciples were blind. By the latter part of Jesus' ministry, at least some of them are getting a dim vision. But it wasn’t until after Jesus had finished his work on earth and poured out the Spirit that they gained full spiritual sight.
And even at that, there is still a sense of waiting involved for spiritual sight to be completely clear. 1 John 3:2 says that when Christ returns we will be like him because we shall see him as he is. The obvious implication: we still look through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12). We can now truly see who Jesus is, by the power of the Holy Spirit. But to see with unveiled face is a privilege still future.
In Your Life
So, we can see that this text serves as a transition point, concluding the section of the gospel where the disciples seem to be, like everyone else, blind to who Jesus is. From here the narrative will pivot to where they begin to see dimly, and only after the events of the gospel fully unfold will they have fully gained spiritual sight. But does it have anything to say to us today?
I think one of the chief lessons we can learn when reading this text is that Jesus sometimes chooses to do things in stages. He sometimes doesn’t - and by sometimes doesn’t, I mean almost never - works on our timetable. Think about this in terms of your own coming to Christ. Did it happen all at once? Whether you realize it or not, the answer to that is a resounding no. I’ve had the chance to hear the testimony of most of the people in this room. But I’ll just use myself for the sake of illustration. I grew up in a Christian home. We went to church every Sunday. I went to Sunday school. I went to VBS. I was encouraged to read the Bible on my own. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t comprehend, at least at some level, the basic facts of the gospel: that God had created, I had rebelled through sin, but I could be forgiven because God had sent his Son into the world to live a perfect life and die an atoning death in my place, and that that same Son, Jesus, had risen from the grave and promised not only forgiveness but eternal life to all those who trusted in him by faith. I’ve always known that. I prayed a prayer to “receive Jesus” when I was two, I was baptized when I was nine. I don’t remember ever consciously not believing.
And yet, at the same time, my understanding has grown. I went through a period between around the time I was 13 and my baby brother was still born, until after my senior year of high school, when I was deeply angry with God, because I thought he owed me a better life than I had received. It wasn’t until after my youth leader and mentor woke me up early one morning - after a very late night of carousing - that I realized I wasn’t intrinsically a good person, and that I realized I really am a sinner and that the gospel really is good news, and good news that I need. It was a slow dawning of some 18 years of hearing Bible stories, sermons, lectures, and conversations with other Christians before I got to that point that I really saw what I thought I knew all along.
To pull an example from church history, I was recently reading about Augustine, one of the most influential theologians in the history of Christianity. Historians often speak of three separate conversions in his life: at the age of eighteen, after reading from the works of Cicero, he was converted to a love of wisdom, and began pursuing the truth. The second conversion, following after that, was to a life of philosophy, studying and contemplating the great thinkers in his pursuit of the truth. It was a third “conversion” that actually brought him to Christ, as he read this passage from the letter of Paul to the Romans:
13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:13–14)
It was a winding road filled with godless philosophy, chasing sexual gratification through illicit means, and finally finding these things empty that prepared Augustine to read that text and be cut to the quick by the Spirit.
Even in the life of the apostle Paul, whom we think of as being the ultimate in radical conversion, we can see this sort of slow-burning work of the Spirit: from his youth he had been a student of God’s word, training under the finest exegetes and scholars of 1st century Judaism. Even as he was blinded by his own sin to how Jesus truly was the fulfillment of all those Scriptures, do you not think that God’s word was accomplishing work in him before he was knocked to the ground on the Damascus road? God was certainly at work.
I love this quote from John Piper:
“In every situation and every circumstance of your life, God is always doing a thousand different things that you cannot see and you do not know.”
This truth should give us great encouragement as we evangelize and seek to make disciples. Jesus almost never uses methods we would deem most efficient or effective. He generally chooses to do things in a fashion that to us seems slow, inefficient, and like it’s burning an awful lot of daylight. This is one of those great mysteries where we must commit ourselves to doing things his way, even when it runs counter to human wisdom. Getting together to pray, sing, read the bible, preach the bible, and celebrate the sacraments doesn’t seem like the best way to draw a crowd. In earthly terms it seems like a silly way to try and change lives. The Lord Jesus also promises it’s going to work.
Scattering the seed of the word, telling people about Jesus, sharing gospel literature, passing along good sermon podcasts you’ve listened too; and then watering those seeds by inviting people over for dinner, speaking a kind word, praying for them when they’re struggling: this all seems like an inefficient and ineffective way to introduce people to the God of all the universe. People so often don’t respond. Or they respond negatively. Or it seems like they only get part of what you’re saying. But brothers and sisters, take heart: sometimes Jesus spits in people’s eyes more than once to get his point across.
Be Persistent
So just keep sharing. Keep loving. Keep speaking the truth in love, and trust that sometimes the very same people who aren’t getting it right now are the ones to whom the Lord will eventually reveal himself, and through whom he will do great things for his glory. So keep persisting, keep planting and watering those seeds. They will bear fruit.
He’s Patient
Finally, brothers and sisters, I think this text should encourage us in our continued growth in Christ. This kind of slow dawning and slow growth continues after we are born again. How often are you frustrated by the continuing presence of sin in your heart, your mind, and your actions?
I hope that sin bothers you. I hope you hate your sin. You cannot love your sin and love Jesus at the same time. But I also don’t want you to become depressed and defeated by the continued presence of sin in your life, because God is not depressed and defeated by the presence of sin in your life. He has chosen the foolish things of the world - you! - to put to shame the wise. He has chosen the weak things of the world - you! - you put to shame the strong. And as you are weak, and you stumble, and you go back for more forgiveness, more grace, and more help from the Spirit to put to death the deeds of your flesh, you can remember this: Jesus is at work in you. If you are walking with Christ, you are growing. He is working. Even if your vision feels fuzzy and blurry and not quite right. Keep looking at Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith, and trust that he will one day make your vision perfectly clear. And on that day, you will be like him, because you will see him as he is.
