Let's read these verses 22 through
26 in Mark chapter 8. Mark 8 verse 22. And he cometh,
this is the Lord Jesus, he cometh to Bethsaida and they bring a
blind man unto him and besought him to touch him. And he took
the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And
when he had spit on his eyes and put his hands upon him, he
asked him if he saw aught. And he looked up and said, I
see men as trees walking. After that, he put his hands
again upon his eyes and made him look up. And he was restored
and saw every man clearly. And he sent him away to his house
saying, neither go into the town nor tell it to any. in the town. Now you know that the various
miracles that our Lord Jesus Christ did when he walked this
earth were to teach us various truths concerning how he works
the miracle of grace in his elect when he gives them life and an
understanding and eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart
to believe and makes them a new creation. And that's what we
have here. And I want to look at three things
here. First of all, I want you to see
this man and his friends. It says there in verse 22, He
cometh to Bethsaida, and they bring a blind man unto him, and
besought him to touch him. The first thing we notice here
is that Christ came near to where this man was. He came to Bethsaida. You find that throughout His
earthly ministry. When our Lord went to places
to work these miracles, He didn't just go to those places by accident. He went there for the purpose
of working those miracles. And it was for that purpose.
When our Lord is ready to give one of His elect children sight,
spiritual sight, He's going to draw near. And He'll be the one
who'll come to you. He'll come to you. Because it
just has to be the case. We won't come to Him otherwise.
But this also, we notice here that this was in Bethsaida. Now
this was a town that the Lord had pronounced woe upon, but
it was the same town that the Lord had called Philip and Andrew
and Peter out of. And there's something good about
that. Sin is hereditary. That means it's passed on from
person to person. This whole town was full of sinners,
born of sinners. They got to be sinners because
they were born of sinners. But thankfully, Grace is according
to God's own choosing and Him choosing whom He will. This whole
world is under the wrath of God. This whole world is, woe is pronounced
on this whole world. It's going to burn up and be
folded up into nothing. But thankfully, by God's grace,
He does have some in this world that He's calling out of this
world. And He will lose none of them. Then we see this man's
condition. It says, and they bring a blind
man. That's the spiritual condition
of everybody that's born into this world, as we're born into
this world. And there are no exceptions to
that. We're born spiritually blind. Cannot know God. Cannot know the true and living
God. Listen to Romans 3.11. There
is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after
God. That's the end of it. There is none. Paul told the
Corinthians that the natural man receiveth not the things
of God. because they're spiritually discerned,
and he can't. He can't know them. He can't
know them. They're foolishness to him in
the first place, and he doesn't want to know them, but he can't
know them because they've got to be discerned spiritually.
Now, the Lord Jesus Christ came to where we were. He came into
this earth from heaven's glory, and He redeemed His children
by His own blood. He purged the sin of everyone
for whom He died. and reconciled us to God. And
He's going to send forth His gospel, and He's going to cause
the blind to see out of obscurity, and He's going to cause us to
see out of darkness. And He says these are trophies,
these are His witnesses that He's done this. And let me show
you a scripture, Isaiah 43 verse 8. The Lord said, bring forth the
blind people that have eyes and the deaf that have ears. Let
all the nations be gathered together and let the people be assembled.
Who among them can declare this and show us former things? Who
among them can say they gave sight to the blind and hearing
to the deaf?" And he said, let them bring forth their witnesses
that they may be justified or let them hear and say, it's truth. And the Lord said, verse 10,
you're my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I've
chosen. I gave you sight. I made you to see. And the Lord,
you see, He gets more glory to His name by giving sight to those
who are totally blind, spiritually blind I'm talking about. He gets
more glory to Himself because none could do that but Him. He's
the only one that could do that and He has to get all the glory
and will get all the glory because He's the only one that can do
it. He's got to do it. So that's the first thing we
see. Then we see also here about this
man's friends. Notice here it says that they
brought this man unto him. They brought this man unto the
master. If you ever are given sight to
see Christ, to believe Him, to trust Him. What you're going
to find out is that one who kept on bringing you to hear the gospel
preached and kept insisting that you go with them, you're going
to find out they're the best friend you ever had. That's what
these friends were to this man. They brought him to Christ. If
you've got some friends that are blind, maybe they treat you
like enemies. That's how we treated Christ.
We treated Him as an enemy. But if you've got friends who,
loved ones, they don't know God, they don't know the gospel, they're
without God, they're without Christ, they're without sight,
without hearing, without an understanding, the best thing you can do for
them is bring them to hear the gospel. or give them a CD of
the gospel. Do something to get the gospel
to them. This man's friends knew Christ
could heal him, and so they brought him, brought this blind man unto
Christ, because they knew this is where healing is. I hear people
all the time, all concerned about their children, and you know,
my child doesn't know, and my heart's breaking for him, but
then they don't show up to hear the gospel preached. And because
they don't think it's necessary. And they're more blind than the
person that they're weeping over. We need to hear the gospel. It's
necessity that we hear the gospel. But look at this, his friends
did something else too. It says there in verse 22, they
not only brought the man unto him, they besought the Lord to
touch him. That's what we do for those that
we love. We pray that our great physician will heal them. We
do everything that he's given us to do. He's told us to come
to him, to bring him. We bring him to hear the gospel.
And the only other thing we can do is pray to the Lord and ask
him to touch him. Ask him, if he would, to make
him whole. And that's what we're given responsibility
to do, is to do that. Well, now let's see what the
Lord Jesus Christ did. Alright, here's the second heading,
what he did, verse 23. And he took the blind man by
the hand and led him out of the town. And when he had spit on
his eyes and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw aught. Now the master took this blind
man by the hand. The Lord did for him what the
blind man couldn't do. The blind man's blind. He couldn't
reach out and take Christ by his hand because he couldn't
see. But the Lord reached out and took him by the hand. This
is the same hand of the sovereign God who in Isaiah 40 says He
holds the waters of this earth in the hollow of His hand. This
is that same God right here. that he said he will gently lead
those that are with young. This is him taking one of his
own and leading him out. This is the same one whose hands
were, he said, his hands were pierced for those he's everlastingly
loved. He said, behold, I have graven
you upon the palms of my hands. Your walls are forever continually
before me." He said, they were entrusted into His hand in eternity
by the Father, and He's been holding them in His hand ever
since. And He's going to come to everyone, and He's going to
take them by the hand, like He did this man right here. In our
heart, He's going to make us new, take us like He did this
man, and He's going to lead us. And when He takes you by the
hand and begins to lead you, He don't ever let you go. He
won't ever let His people go. He said, I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of My hand. This is His hand. He took this
blind man by the hand. And then the next thing he did
was he led him out of town. He led him out of town. Turn
over to Hebrews 13. Hebrews 13. While you're turning
there, I want to read a scripture to you. Back in Isaiah, he said,
I'll bring the blind by way that they knew not. I'll bring the
blind by way that they knew not. And he said, I'll lead them in
paths that they have not known. I will make darkness light before
them and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them
and not forsake them. This is the Lord's promise concerning
his people. Now when our great shepherd comes to one of his own and calls
them out, he calls them out of this world. He draws us without
the camp. out of our way into His way,
out of our vain opinions of God and what we think of God into
truth. He leads us out of the town of sin and rejection, and
He leads us into submission to the Lord our righteousness. He
leads us out from everything that would separate us from Him,
and He keeps us separated from everything that would separate
us from Him. Look here at Hebrews 13 and 11.
The bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary
by the high priest for sin are burned without the camp. Wherefore,
Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood,
separate them, make them holy, that he might sanctify them,
make them pure by his own blood. He suffered without the gate,
outside of the town, outside of the gate. And now here's the
command. Let us go forth therefore unto
him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no
continuing city here, but we seek one to come. That's what
the Lord's showing us here by taking this man out of that city.
Turn to 2 Corinthians 6, and let's look at verse 16. What agreement has the temple
of God with idols? There is absolutely zero agreement,
zero unity, zero communion between the temple of God and idols. There's no agreement. There's
no harmony there at all. Now look at what the Lord says,
You're the temple of the living God. As God hath said, I will
dwell in them, and walk in them, and I will be their God, and
they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among
them, come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the
Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you.
and will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and
daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." Whenever somebody is given true
God-given sight, they see what dung is, and they renounce dung. and they repent from it, and
they leave it, and they flee to Christ and lay hold of Him
by faith. That's what true repentance is. That's what it is. And as
long as we have agreement with idols and can go on with unbelievers
who are going through a charade worshiping the God of their imagination,
we haven't been granted repentance yet. That's just simple. It's just that simple. You can't
hear somebody speak lies about the God you love. You just can't. A believer can't bear that. He
just can't do it. So he took him out. He took him
out of town. And then look what he did to
this man. It says there that he This may come as an odd thing
to some, but it says there in verse 23, he spit on his eyes
and he put his hands upon him. He spit upon his eyes and he
put his hands upon him. What does that represent? Look
over at Revelation chapter 3. Revelation chapter 3. I read
this to you the other day, this scripture, but I want you to
see this and read it for yourself. Revelation 3 verse 18. You see, he says, he's speaking
here of what we are by nature, wretched, miserable, poor, blind,
naked. In verse 18 he says, I counsel
thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest
be rich. And white raiment, that's his
righteousness. That gold tried in the fire is
what Art just read about. It's that faith that's more precious
than gold. We're going to have faith that's
going to come from him. The gospel, the righteousness
of God is revealed from faith to faith, from Christ the faithful
to those he gives faith. We're going to get it from him.
And he says, and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed.
That's the white raiment of his perfect righteousness. And he
says, that the shame of your nakedness does not appear. And
he says, and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest
see. This is the gospel. It's through
the gospel that command comes and the law becomes alive to
us, and we hear the law, what it says, and we see that we are
sin, and it shuts our mouth. It's through the gospel that
this Holy Spirit of God shows us the things that are freely
given to us of God. And through that gospel, we behold
the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. We see the light.
We see Him. and because therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. The righteousness of God is only
revealed in the gospel of Christ. There is a lot of gospels that
claim to be the gospel of Christ, but they're another gospel because
there is no righteousness revealed in them. Any gospel that declares
that Christ died for everybody without exception, and then those
men will turn around and be sent to hell one day, that's not righteousness. If you could show me where there's
righteousness in that gospel, I would tell you that's the gospel.
But there's no righteousness in that gospel. Our courts, as
crooked as our courts are, we don't try a man twice for the
same crime. If He's innocent and He's been
made innocent, we don't charge Him again. He's innocent. Everybody
for whom Christ died, He justified them. He completely, totally
made reconciliation for us as yet we were enemies to Him. He
made reconciliation. He brought us, reconciled us
to God. Now he did that for somebody
individually. And because he did that for somebody
individually, every one of them will have this eyesalve brought
to them and applied to their eyes. That's what we see here
in him carrying this man out away from that town and getting
him out there, and he spit upon his eyes. That word has to come
out of his mouth. This eyesalve comes from his
mouth. It comes from him. It's his gospel. It's his word. It comes from
him. And then the other thing He did
is He touched him. If He doesn't touch us, when
this gospel is going forth, if He doesn't touch you, that's
His almighty, powerful hand that effectually, irresistibly makes
this gospel grow up in the life within us. And if He doesn't
touch us, the gospel, we can't make this happen with this preaching. It's got to be accompanied by
His power, by His hand. All right, let's go back now
to the text and let's see. Do you see that? You see the
salve, the eye salve? He spit upon his eyes and He
touched him. And then He asked him something. The Savior made
this man tell what he saw. In verse 23, He spit on his eyes,
He put His hands upon him and He asked him if he saw alt, if
he saw anything. Now, when the Lord starts, when
He gives somebody sight, and He gives you sight to see Him
and behold Him and believe Him, He's going to require confession
from us. He's going to require us to confess
some things before Him and before men. It's not a one-time thing
either. It's all our lifetime. Look at
Romans 10. Romans chapter 10. You see, the righteousness that
we have to have is Christ. He's the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believes. That means those who believe
on Christ possess the very righteousness of Christ, the very righteousness
needed to enter into the glorious presence of God. But now look
at what the law says, Romans 10.5. Moses describes the righteousness
which is of the law. And here's what that righteousness
that's of the law is. It says that the man which doeth
those things shall live by them. That means if you're going to
try to come to God by your righteousness, accomplished by your law keeping,
before you confess Christ or after you confess Christ, if
you're doing it for justification or you're doing it for sanctification,
either one, you're trying to come to Him by the law. to be
justified or by the law for sanctification. Either way, you're going to have
to do all of it. Every bit of it. And if you do,
if you do every bit of it, you'll live by that law. You'll live
by it. God will receive you. If you never have an unrighteous
thought, you never have an unrighteous deed, you never have an unrighteous
word come out of your mouth, God will receive you. He'll receive
you. But this is, that's impossible. But this is, verse 6 says, but
the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise.
Look at verse 8. What saith it? The word is nigh
thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart. You see, that's where
it starts, is in the heart. And then it's in the mouth. That
is the word of faith which we preach. That's what I'm preaching
to you, is the word of faith. I'm telling you, God will receive
you through faith. He won't receive you trying to
come with the righteousness of your own. But look here at what
he says here, that if thou, verse 9, that if thou shalt confess
with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, confess with your mouth the Lord
Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved. That's a whole lot easier
than having to keep every jot and tittle of that law. How can
I believe Him in my heart and confess Him with my mouth and
be saved apart from keeping the law? Because He came to keep
the law for His people. He came and fulfilled everything
written in the law for His people. That's what Paul means at the
end of Romans 3 when he says, do we then make void the law
through faith? It does not mean what lawmongers
want it to mean when they say, see, by faith, that doesn't mean
we cast the law aside. Now we try harder and harder
to keep the law. That's not what it means. It
means by faith, we don't make void the law. By faith, we fulfill
the whole law. It goes, we trust in Christ who
did it. We trust in Christ who fulfilled it. So that's what
he looked here. For with the heart, man believeth
unto righteousness. You see that? With the heart,
man believeth unto complete and thorough keeping of the law and
precept and penalty. It's done when you lay hold of
Christ. We believe unto righteousness. And with the mouth, confession
is made unto salvation. Look over at Matthew 10. Matthew 10 and verse 32. Somebody will say, well, I believe,
but, you know, I just never have confessed it publicly, and I
don't, you know, I don't want to do that. I think He'll receive
me if I don't. He won't. He just won't. He won't. This
is what the scripture says, Matthew 10, 10-32. This is the Lord speaking. He said, Whosoever therefore
shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before
my Father which is in heaven. And he's just been talking here
about not living for this world. He's been talking about here
about men despising you and rejecting you for his namesake. And he
says, He said, but whosoever therefore shall confess Me before
men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in
heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him also will
I deny before My Father which is in heaven. Now that's the
Lord speaking. That's the one with whom we have
to do business. That's Him speaking. confess
Him. If we believe Him, we will confess
Him. We confess Him in baptism. We
confess Him in our walk. That's what we do. And we confess
our sins to Him. We confess our sins to Him. 1
John 1.9 says if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just
to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Don't go down to a preacher and confess your sins or to a priest
and confess your sins. He ain't going to be able to
help you. He can't do a thing for you. Go to Christ and confess
your sins. Go to Him. He's faithful and
just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Don't go to Him bragging about your righteousness. Go to Him
confessing your sin. Go to Him confessing your sin.
You see, when He took this man out there and He asked him, now
what do you see? This man told what he saw. He told what he saw and he couldn't
see clearly. He needed the Lord to do everything
for him. He needed the Lord to continue
to give him light and to give him sight. And he was confessing. That's sort of an illustration
of confessing. Lord, I need you. I can't do
anything without you. I can't even see if you don't
give me sight to see. I can do nothing. So we confess
him. All right, here's the third thing.
Here we see that the light of God's grace sometimes comes gradually. Our sight comes gradually. Look
at verses 24 and 25. And he looked up and said, I
see men as trees walking. After that he put his hands again
upon his eyes and made him look up and he was restored and saw
every man clearly. This man was given sight gradually.
Now every sinner that's saved, we trust the same Savior, we
experience the same grace, we believe the same gospel. But
we don't all experience grace the same way. Blind Bartimaeus
was given sight all at once. That blind man in John 9 was
told to go wash in the pool of Siloam and he came away seeing.
But this man was gradually given sight. At first he looked and
he saw with very blurred vision. He saw, he had sight, he had
light, but he saw in a blurred way. But the Lord continued to
work in him and for him, and he got more sight. He got more
sight. Some of you are sitting here
right now, and you may be seeing like this blind man saw when
he first looked, and he said, I see me and his trees walking. I see it's blurry. Things are
blurry. Well, he saw. He did see. He
didn't pretend to see something that he didn't see. He didn't
lie about what he saw. He said what he saw. And that's
confessing what you see, what you know. And that's what the
Lord does. He had light and he saw something.
You may first, you see sin and you see it as being, sin being
what you do, being your deeds and your acts and things like
that. And then as more light comes,
you begin to see sin's what I am in my heart. That's when you
begin to cry out, woe is me, I'm undone. You may first start
out and you start seeing that Christ is the fountain open for
sin and forgiveness. And you see that. You understand
that. But then you get that peace in your own heart of knowing,
He's forgiven me. You begin to see something of
His righteousness. And that's the key. This is the
light by which all other doctrine is made to be clearly seen. This
is what every believer has always seen. Every believer has had
this light that the righteousness of God is the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's His person. And what He did accomplished
the righteousness of God. He justified His people and at
the same time reconciled His people. He executed His people
in justice and at the same time saved His people in mercy. And
that He did in Christ Jesus when He went to that cross. That's
why God set Him forth. He set Him forth to be a propitiation,
to be atonement, satisfaction through faith in His blood. He
set Him forth to declare His righteousness, that God is just
and He is the justifier. This is what we... We're going
to know this. This is going to come to us.
We may not know all the rest of the doctrine, but we understand
that. And when we really understand this light is when we understand
He did that for me. He did that for me. He justified
me. He put my sin away. He reconciled
me to God. And that's when we cry out to
Him in faith and we've been made willing in the day of His power
to be reconciled to God. We want to be. one with him. And that's when we've been made
one with him. And then, because you understand this righteousness,
you understand this business of righteousness, then when you
start considering a doctrine like the doctrine of election,
you understand that's got to be true. It's got to be because
he successfully accomplished the purging of the sins for everybody
he died for. He didn't just do this randomly
and hope somebody would take advantage of it. He did it. So
He had to have gone to that cross with the sins of somebody on
Him and put those sins away. And so you see through this righteousness,
you see that doctrine so. And you learn a little bit more. You think about the doctrine
of predestination. And you understand it from the
light of righteousness. You understand that everything
that took place was predetermined. Everything that took place was
predestined to happen just the way it happened. And God's always
been in control because His righteousness It's got to be manifest. Nothing
could stop that from happening. And also you understand that
everybody that he foreknew that he elected, he predestinated
for them to be conformed to the image of his son. And you know,
that's got to be so because I'm like this man, I'm blind. I can't
come to him. I can't reach out and take him
because I can't see him. I don't know where he is. I don't
understand him. So he had to predestinate The time and the
place where He would cross my path with this Gospel and take
me by the hand through this Word and apply this Gospel affectionately
in my heart and make me to know Him and believe Him and trust
Him. And you understand it in the light of the fact it had
to happen because that righteousness had already been accomplished
for me. You see, everything's understood in light of what Christ
did at Calvary, who he did it for, why he did it, and who it
is that did it. Everything is understood in this
book from that light. You might not have all that light
at the beginning, but you'll get that light of who Christ
did and what he did. And why He did it. And you'll
understand this righteousness that He accomplished at the cross.
And when you understand that, these other things will start
becoming more clear to you, more clear to you, more clear to you,
as He gives you more light on them. But it doesn't necessarily
come all at once. But that doesn't mean that we
get in Christ gradually. That doesn't mean that. We were
in Christ blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
by God the Father when He put us in Christ from the beginning. Him giving us light and coming
to us is the effect, it's the consequence of the fact that
God put His elect in Christ before the world began. It had to be.
He had to come to us. That's how we got in Christ.
We don't get in Christ gradually. We get this light sometimes gradually
though. But then look at what we see
too. Christ always finishes what he starts. Look at verse 25. It says, after he put his hands
again upon his eyes, and he made him look up, and he was restored,
and he saw every man clearly. He saw clearly then. You know
what Paul told the Philippians? He said, I'm confident of this
very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will
perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. The Proverbs 4.18 says,
the path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more
and more unto the perfect day. Now, Paul said, now we see through
a glass darkly. You know, don't ever be embarrassed
about not knowing a bunch, you know, and being able to articulate
things about the gospel. Don't ever be embarrassed by
that, because at best, we see through a glass darkly. At best,
we do. And that's how we see right now,
but then we're going to see face to face. When that perfect day
comes, we're going to see face to face. Now we know in part,
but then we're going to know even as we're known. We're going
to know Him fully that day. That light's going to keep shining
more and more until that perfect day. Alright, here's the fourth
thing we see here, and we've got to end with this, but Mark
8, 26. The master sent the man with
specific instructions. And he sent him away to his house,
saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town. Now, the Lord didn't forbid him
to tell others this. Turn over to Matthew 11. The
Lord didn't forbid him to tell anybody what the Lord had done
for him. The Lord forbid him to tell the Gospel to those people
in that town, to that town, to Bethsaida. Look at Matthew 11,
21. This is the Lord speaking. Woe
unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida. That's where
he was. Woe unto thee, Bethsaida, for
if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in
Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago and sat clothed
in ashes. But I say unto you, it shall
be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment
than for you. Now listen to that serious word.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is not a beggar. He's not a beggar.
If any closes their eyes to his gospel, if any refuse to hear
his word, if any reject the privileges that he's brought near, Christ
will leave them in their blindness. He'll leave us in our blindness. It shall be more tolerable for
Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you, he said. It's one thing to have never
heard the gospel and to perish in unbelief, never hearing the
gospel. That will be hell. You will go
to hell, but it will be worse in hell, a worse place in hell
to have heard the gospel and turned you back on it. That's
serious warning. Hey, the Lord told the man to
go. He sent him to his own house, but he said, but don't go tell
it in that town. Don't tell anybody in that town. I've been your
friend tonight. You know that? I have. I've tried
to bring you to the great physician. That's what I've been trying
to do. And I beseech him, I pray to him that he would be pleased
to take you by the hand and to take you out and separate you
out from all your ignorance and vain understanding and vain thoughts
and bring you out and make this word effectual in your heart.
I pray he will do that. And if He has done that, if He's
made it to where you see, you say, I don't see clearly. I see,
I see. All I know is I was blind and
now I see. I just don't see clearly. Confess
Him and walk in the light He's already given you. And He says
He'll give you more light. He'll continue to work what He
started in you and you'll get more light. He'll give you more
light. Amen.