Spiritually Blind

I have your Bibles with you. Turn with me, if you would, to Mark chapter 8.

We're going to start off with verses 11 through 13. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, I pray for Amelia Turner, who will be getting a spinal infusion on Wednesday. I pray for Peter Ellsworth, who's having a stent, putting on a heart artery tomorrow. I pray for Jerry Ann Schwimm, she's experienced the death of her brother this week. I pray for Nicole Lowes, who continues to suffer with vertigo.

I pray for Jim Belk, Judy Swigart, that they might heal from their afflictions. Father, today we are looking at a passage that teaches us about spiritual blindness. When we view the religious leaders, we see blindness that is purposely embraced. It is deepened by their own sin. They don't want to see truth because they love their sin so much. Disciples have a temporary blindness.

It's not purposeful, but it happens because of faithlessness and spiritual lethargy. Lord, we're living in a culture that is more spiritually blind than our culture has ever been. We pray for your mercy. We pray that you will grant us repentance. We pray for 20-20 spiritual vision. Forgive us of our sins. Open our eyes to your truth. Keep my lips from error. And may this message exalt the Lord Jesus Christ and feed God's people. For it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. We are reading a passage of scripture today that teaches us about the dangers of spiritual blindness. I remember back in the first church that I pastored at Olive Grove in Creedmoor, North Carolina. I would get up early and before breakfast, before starting work, I would go and jog for about three miles out in my neighborhood. And one day a man lived in a neighborhood named Gary came running out and he said, Doug, I want to run with you. And I said, that'll be great. And so he started jogging with me. As we started jogging, I asked him, I said, Gary, where do you go to church? He said, I don't go to church. He said, I'm an atheist. My dad's an atheist.

And we believe there are just too many hypocrites in the church. I don't go to church. As he kept coming out every morning, I got the opportunity to start witnessing to him a little. I told him of the brevity of life. I told him about the certainty of death. He said, Doug, I told you, I'm an atheist. My dad's an atheist. We believe all this Christianity stuff is just a fairy tale.

We don't believe in it. After a few months of running with him, he called me one night and he was crying so hard I could hardly understand him. And he said, Doug, he said, my dad has just passed away with a massive heart attack. He said, I wonder, would you be willing to preach his funeral service? And I said to him, I said, Gary, I will preach his funeral service if that's what you want me to do. I said, I can say a few kind things about him and what your dad did here on this earth and maybe how he helped people and some things like that. He said, I'm going to use the rest of the service just to preach the gospel. I said, Gary, I cannot preach your daddy into heaven.

And he said, I know that. Well, I did preach that service and it was in a funeral home. The service was about to get started. The funeral director came down to the front where the casket was. He was getting ready to lower the casket down. And when he did that, he all of a sudden Gary jumped up. He said, wait a minute, wait a minute. And Gary ran to that casket. He got into the casket with his dad.

He threw his arms around his neck and he said, Daddy, I will never see you again. Next Sunday, Gary was in church. A few weeks after that, Gary, repented of his sins, trusted Christ as his Lord and Savior. I left Olive Grove right after that and went to Charlotte Southside Baptist Church there. And about five years later, I got a call from Olive Grove and they asked me if I would come and preach a homecoming service there.

And I said, I would be honored to. And I went to the service. When I got there, everybody was telling me about Gary. They said, man, he is walking with the Lord. Said, we just elected him as a deacon in our church. And then I saw Gary.

He came running up to me and he hugged my neck. And he said, Doug, I can't believe how spiritually blind I was. He said, I can't believe the spiritual blindness in my own heart. He said, my dad and I were actually proud of our atheism. And he said, now my daddy is in hell and I will never see him again.

Spiritual blindness. Someone asked me last week, said, Doug, do you believe that the end is near? Do you believe that Jesus is coming soon? And I said, I don't know for sure.

Nobody knows exactly when Jesus is coming back. But I said, I would be an absolute fool to look out and see what's going on happening in our world today and then deny the distinct possibility that that could happen. I said, the way we need to live is this.

We need to live like every single day that we get up. That that is the day that Jesus is coming back. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, the apostle Paul said, For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And then we who are caught up together with him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. And in chapter 5 he says this, Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

While people are saying there is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. You are all of children of light, children of the day.

We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. What does it mean to be sober? To be sober means to be spiritually awake to what God is doing.

It's the opposite of spiritual blindness. That takes us to the passage that I want us to look at today, and I've got three points that I want to share with you. Number one, the permanent blindness of the Pharisees. Look with me at verses 11 through 12. The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign?

Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation. And he left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side. In the companion passage to this, over in Matthew chapter 16, we are told that it was not just Pharisees that were there, but there was also a group of Sadducees that joined together with the Pharisees to argue with Jesus. Now the Pharisees were a rigid, hard-hearted, stubborn, just mule-headed bunch of people who believed that they were always right, and they lived by more their man-made traditions than they did the Word of God.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, were liberals. They didn't believe in the existence of angels. They didn't believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ. They didn't believe in the immortality of the soul. These groups usually hated each other, but for this cause they joined forces because they wanted to destroy Jesus.

They wanted to destroy his reputation, and they wanted to see him die. Jesus was interfering with their corruption. They would go to the temple, and they were there in the temple exchanging money, and they were doing it in a corrupting way, and they were getting rich doing that. Jesus put a stop to that. So they marched up to Jesus, and they began to argue with him, and they began to question him, and then they said, We want to see a sign.

Give us a sign from heaven. Had they not seen enough? I mean, what in the world had Jesus done? He had healed thousands and thousands of people of diseases.

He had fed 5,000 people, probably 20,000 counting women and children, with a little boy sack lunch. He had cast out demons. He had raised the dead, and yet they say, Give us a sign. We want a sign from heaven.

Let me tell you something. They're going to get a sign from heaven one day. And that day when Jesus comes in all of his glory, and he speaks the word, and his enemies will be destroyed.

But they wanted one right then. The Scripture says here that Jesus sighed deeply in his spirit. First time I read that in English, I thought, Well, that just means that Jesus was sad. In the Greek, that's not what it means at all.

It means that Jesus' patience was coming to an end. Folks, people often sin. They give in to a temptation. And when there's no immediate consequences, they say, Good. This is great.

I got away with it. God is unending in his patience. I want you to know that's not true. And in Genesis chapter 6, verse 3, God said, My spirit will not strive with man forever. So Jesus turns to these wicked religious leaders, and he says to them, I will give no sign to this generation. Now, if you go over and read the companion passage in Matthew, he adds a phrase that I think is very important. He says, I will give no sign to this generation except the sign of Jonah.

And what did he mean by that? He said, Well, as Jonah was in the whale's belly for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. And the whale vomited up Jonah. Jonah ran from there all the way to Nineveh and preached a powerful message of repentance to the Ninevites. Well, what does that have to do with Jesus? How does that relate to Jesus? Jesus was in the grave for three days, and then he was raised from the dead. But Jesus said, You want a sign?

Here it is. Kill me. Crucify me. Nail me to a cross, and three days later I will rise from the dead.

He said, You want a sign? Look at the resurrection. Let me just say something here. I have known a lot of pastors in the past that have looked at the story of Jonah as a silly little child story that the Lord uses in the Bible to just teach a spiritually didactic message. I want you to know that is not the truth. In 2 Kings 14, verse 25, the Scripture tells us that Jonah was a servant of God, a prophet of God, and he was the son of Amittai. But Jonah was not some fictional character in a parable. The story of Jonah is absolutely true. Jesus used the story of Jonah in and out of the whale to teach us about him being in and out of the grave. So would Jesus have used a silly fairy tale to illustrate the most important event that's ever taken place on the face of this earth? The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ?

No way you can believe that the story of Jonah happened exactly, historically, exactly as the Bible says. Anyway, Jesus sighed deeply, his patience coming to an end, and he said, why does this generation seek a son? The religious leaders didn't need any more light. They had heard Jesus preach, preach greater than any person they'd ever heard before. They'd seen multitudes of miracles that Jesus had done.

The more light or the more truth they got, the more spiritually blind they became. People, if you're not convinced about the spiritual blindness of the American culture, then your head is in the sand. America has had spiritual opportunities and access to truth like no other nation on the face of the earth. We have seen great outpourings of God's Spirit, like in the first great awakening, the second great awakening, revivals all the way through history, where great amounts of people have come to a saving knowledge of Christ. Colleges, Christian colleges and seminaries have blossomed, and they have produced men who were filled with the Word of God and filled with the Spirit, and these men went out evangelizing and preaching the gospel, and it went to the four corners of our nation. And then missionaries. We have sent missionaries out to the four corners of the earth.

The United States has produced more missionaries, sent more missionaries out to the world than any other nation on the face of the earth. But over the last three quarters of a century, things have rapidly eroded. The nation's obsession with immorality and perversion has so blinded the spiritual eyes of Americans that there is no common sense anymore. There's just absolute lunacy.

What has happened, we have given in to a strong delusion. As Isaiah said, "'Woe unto those who call good evil and evil good, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put sweet for bitter and bitter for sweet.' And listen to this, "'Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their sight.'"

One man explained it well. He said the most egregious form of sexual abuse that exists in this fallen world is the LGBTQ movement. This movement, according to Romans 1, is not only one of the most heinous sins a society can fall into, but it is, in fact, the judgment for sin itself. Romans 1 makes it clear that the LGBTQ movement is perverse, destructive to society, and that God abhors it. And without repentance and turning to Christ, a nation who embraces it will be destroyed.

God has already proven that he will follow through with that in Sodom and Gomorrah. And this movement is desperately attempting to indoctrinate everyone into not only accepting, but celebrating and joining their lifestyle. They are entering schools, grooming children, sending the most perverse of men dressed in drag to handle, fondle, and flirt with preschoolers in schools, libraries, and even churches. This movement is subversive and aims to groove everyone from young children even to adults into believing that their movement is benign and strong. How is this happening?

I think one of the methodologies is manipulation. Did you realize that just three weeks ago the editors of Webster's Dictionary changed in their dictionary the definition of female? And now, in the new edition of Webster's Dictionary, females include males. What? Why do they do that? They are compromising with the culture. The blindness is so deep that public schools, businesses, sports organizations, and a plethora of denominations and churches have capitulated to this lunacy. In recent Sunday school classes, we have heard Andrew Brunson, who was a pastor in Turkey, who was from America, who was put in prison for nothing. For two years, he suffered in persecution there.

He's out now. He has shared with Americans, American church, that we need to be careful because the persecution of the true church in America is coming because this culture is so in love with its sin. It is so in love with perversion that if you don't agree with it and if the true church stands for truth and also the exclusivity of the gospel then there's going to be a backlash.

Brothers and sisters, we are not ready for that backlash. Matthew 16 verses 1 through 4 expounds on what Mark said. Let me read Matthew's account. And the Pharisees and the Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red.

And in the morning it will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening. You know and interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah.

So he left them and departed. The religious leaders said they wanted a sign from heaven. Jesus points up to the sky. He says you're able to look at the clouds and you know when a storm's coming you're able to read the signs of the sky, but you cannot read the signs of the times.

What were the signs of the times for that generation? Well, signs of the time had to do with prophecies concerning the Messiah. The Scripture tells us that the Messiah would be virgin born, Isaiah 7. That the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, Micah chapter 5. That the Messiah would be in the bloodline or the lineage of David, 2 Samuel chapter 7. That the Messiah would be rejected by his people, Isaiah 53. That the Messiah would be anointed with the Holy Spirit, Isaiah chapter 61.

The Scripture tells us all of that. And then when Jesus died on the cross, on that day 33 Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled to the letter. But the religious leaders rejoiced in his death because they could not discern the signs of the times. Folks, these religious leaders had a permanent spiritual blindness.

Secondly, I want us to see the temporary blindness of the disciples. Look at verses 13 through 21. Now they had forgotten to bring bread and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.

And He cautioned them saying, Watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?

Having eyes do you not see and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves of the five thousand? How many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? They said to Him, Twelve. And the seven for the four thousand.

How many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? They said to Him, Seven. He said to them, Do you not yet understand? After Jesus was harshly attacked by the religious leaders, Jesus and the disciples got in the boat. They headed off across the Sea of Galilee. Verse 14 tells us that the disciples in the boat all of a sudden realized that they didn't have any food, or at least not much. They found one little loaf of bread and Jesus saw them panicking. And when He saw them panicking, He decided to use this as a teaching opportunity.

The boat's sailing toward Bethsaida. That area is a pretty desolate area compared to a lot of the places that they had been. And they knew in that area there are no grocery stores.

There's no restaurants around. And they knew they only had this one little bit of food and they were concerned about that. So Jesus looks at them, kind of shakes His head in disbelief at their lack of faith. He uses the situation to teach them about spiritual leaven. Now, in here, in this passage that we're looking at in Mark, He mentions two kinds of spiritual leaven. But in Matthew's Gospel, He mentions three.

I'm going to share all three of them with you very quickly. What is spiritual leaven? Spiritual leaven is a picture of sinful influence. And when you take leaven or yeast and you put it in dough, what happens to it? It rises.

It gets bigger and bigger. First of all, there was the leaven of the Pharisees that included doctrinal eras, dependence on man-made tradition, and hypocrisy. Their system of works righteousness was producing people who looked good on the outside, but were rotten to the core on the inside, so the Pharisees hated Jesus.

Then the leaven of the Sadducees was liberalism. They did not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. They did not believe in the existence of angels. They did not believe in the resurrection of the body.

They did not believe in the immortality of the soul. They went to the temple and they cheated people out of money, making themselves wealthy, so they hated Jesus. Then there was the leaven of Herod.

This is Herod Anabas. He was known for his depravity, his immoral behavior. The Herodians were atheistic. They were immoral. They were secularists. They were lovers of this world and lovers of sin, and they hated Jesus. So Jesus is teaching the disciples about spiritual leaven, and they don't get it. They just don't get it. It goes right over their head, and they start thinking that, well, Jesus realizes that we don't have enough food here, and that's what he's talking to us about.

He's talking about our lack of physical food. These disciples are followers of Christ. Let me tell you, they love Jesus. They want to please Jesus, but they're just like us.

They are far, far from perfect. So Jesus has patience with them, and he says, why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? In other words, where's your memory, guys? What happened just a few months ago when I fed 5,000 men, not including the women and children, but 20,000 people with a little boy's bag lunch, five loaves and two little fish, and I fed all of them, and they all were full to the brim. Then we had 12 baskets full of food left over.

And then what about the 4,000? When I fed the 4,000, after they had not eaten in three days, I took seven little loaves, a few little fish, fed all of them till they could eat no more, and there were seven basketfuls of food left over. He said, guys, do you think I can't produce food? Do you think I'm going to let you starve?

In other words, what's the matter with you? This reminds me of what David did. And when David was getting ready to go fight against Goliath, David was going to have to go fight against him. He had people telling him, oh, don't go, he'll kill you.

You don't go, you don't stand a chance. All that was going on, and what did David do? David rehearsed his past victories. He said to himself and he said to others, listen, I was out as a shepherd watching over my sheep and a bear attacked my sheep and God empowered me. I went and I tore that bear from limb to limb and I killed the bear and saved the sheep. And there was another time when a lion came and attacked my flock and God empowered me and I went and I fought the lion by myself and I killed the lion. So if God will give me victory over the lion and God will give me victory over the bear, then rest assured of this, God will give me victory over Goliath. Brothers and sisters, when you have doubts, that's what you need to do.

You need to just think back and rehearse your past victories. You need to remember how faithful Jesus was then, how faithful Jesus is now, and how faithful Jesus will be. That takes us to point three, an illustration of temporary blindness. Verse 22 through 26.

They came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. When he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked, do you see anything? He looked up and said, I see people but they look like trees walking. Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again. He opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

And he sent him to his home saying, do not enter the village. The boat sailed to Bethsaida with Jesus and the disciples. When they got there, people knew he was coming. A huge crowd of sick people came. The infirmities, diseases, sicknesses. There was one family that came bringing one of their family members who was blind.

And they brought him up and they stopped right there at the feet of Jesus. You know, blind people are always a sad situation in any society. But some people treat blind people differently than others. In America, I think we have some pity on people who are blind.

We teach them how to read Braille. If we see a blind person coming and he's got a cane or a seeing eye dog, we get out of his way or we try to move the obstacles. And then we look at people with great admiration like Helen Keller.

And we just are excited about who she was and how she forged through life, even with that tough handicap. There was not that kind of compassion in the people of Israel in that day. In fact, the blind people always had to beg for food. The religious leaders taught that their blindness was not just a physical malady, but it was a demonic problem, that they had actually been possessed by demons. So people didn't want to touch the blind people because they were afraid of the demonic. Man, what a breath of fresh air was Jesus, who came over to this blind man, took him by the hand, and walked him away from the crowd.

Walked him away so they could get away from the criticism and the sarcasm. When they got off by themselves, Jesus spit down on his fingers, and then he took the spittle and he put it on the eyes of this blind man. And he says to the blind man, can you see? And the blind man said, well, I see men, but it's like trees walking. And then Jesus touched his eyes again, and there was clarity. 20-20 vision. Before, he could only see with light, and he could see objects, but he couldn't see detail.

Now he can see perfectly. Very interesting, the Charismatics used this passage to teach the idea of the second blessing. And they say, when you first get saved, it's like you see, but it's like men, like trees walking. But then later on, you come to a time where you get the Holy Spirit. And when you get the Holy Spirit, then you have that 20-20 spiritual vision. Folks, that's not what this passage is teaching at all. Listen, when you come to know Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit of God comes to live and reside in you.

And how do you grow? How do you get closer to the Lord? It is through the process of sanctification, and it is progressive. You die to self each day, and the Holy Spirit of God empowers you and gives you what you need to live the Christian life. It's not a one-time blessing.

It is a lifetime of blessings as you die to self, and the Holy Spirit of God gives you what you need to live out the Christian life. I think Jesus was using this miracle to teach the disciples. Remember, they were all strung out because they didn't have enough food, just had one little loaf of bread. And Jesus says, guys, who am I?

You remember who I am? I am the bread of life. I'm the one who fed the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. I'm the one who fed the 4,000 with seven loaves and a few small fish.

He said, do you not think I can take care of you? Are you seeing partially, but not clearly? Now, trust in me, Jesus says, and you'll see with clarity. This is sanctification. It is progressively becoming like Jesus.

How does that happen? By faith. We clamor for his touch. We want more of him.

Will we trust him? He moves in our lives, and little faith becomes great faith. Where are you in your walk with Jesus today? You happy with it?

You happy where you are? Don't be satisfied with seeing men as trees walking. Don't stop being sanctified until your glorification, and that's when you die. Folks, we need to be clamoring for truth. We need to be clamoring for his touch. Let the living Word and the written Word give you clarity to see and to do the will of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, show us how to live for you, how to love you with all of our heart, minds, and soul. Help us to love your Word and study and memorize and meditate on it so that we would eradicate spiritual blindness. Father, give us a glorious vision of yourself that we might be humbled, that we might be useful in your kingdom, for it is in the holy and precious name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.