Jesus Predicts His Death a Third Time
31 Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, "We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. 32 He will be delivered over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; 33 they will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again."
34 The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about.
A Blind Beggar Receives His Sight
35 As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. 36 When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. 37 They told him, "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by."
38 He called out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"
39 Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"
40 Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, 41 "What do you want me to do for you?"
"Lord, I want to see," he replied.
42 Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has healed you." 43 Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they also praised God.
Dig Deeper
I recently saw a post-apocalyptic movie called “The Book of Eli.” I was hoping that the movie would be as good as the previews looked but it was somewhat of a disappointment. The movie is set a generation or so after a terrible calamity and war of some type has destroyed the world as we would know it. It also alludes to some cryptic nuclear event that left almost all people who were alive at the time of the event blind. At the time that the movie is set nearly everyone is younger and can see, but they never lived through or know much about the world before the great destruction event. The handful of older people that were still alive knew what life used to be like and could be like but they are marginalized for the most part because of their blindness. Eli seems to be an older person that is an exception to that as he makes his way through this incredibly dangerous and violent world in an attempt to preserve what is perhaps the only surviving copy of the Bible. At the end of the movie, though, we are let in on a major twist that changes everything about the movie that you just watched. Eli was in fact blind as well. He lived, moved, and fought in a world of people who could see physically but who could not see the reality of the way things could be in any way that mattered. Eli was blind and yet he was the one person who seemed to be able to really see what was going on and what things could be like. It was a deeply ironic and profound element.
As we have followed Jesus along on the road to Jerusalem, it has gotten increasingly intense and we get the sense that things are coming to a boiling point soon. The journey has been filled with people who could not or did not want to see what Jesus was brining to bear in a lost and fallen world. God’s new creation, the reality of his future age, was actually breaking into the present age through the ministry and kingdom message of Jesus but most were too blind to see what was going on. Even Jesus’ disciples, although they wanted to see and understand, were having a hard time seeing everything that Jesus was up to. That is why it is so deeply interesting that Luke describes a scene here in which someone finally does seem to grasp important aspects of who Jesus is and what he is capable of doing. It would be one thing to have a description of one person who somehow seemed to fathom some of the depths of what was swirling about all around them, but it is deeply ironic and profound that the man who could see what almost no one else could, was blind. He could see what the sighted could not.
Jesus had been clear throughout his journey to Jerusalem that it was not going to end in the way that people thought. Messianic expectations were so ingrained to look for a conquering hero who would drive out the Romans and all of the pagans, who would re-establish God’s reign from Jerusalem over the whole world, and inaugurate the age to come, that it was next to impossible for them to fathom how him suffering shame, being rejected, and even killed could possibly fit into that. Even Jesus’ disciples were having a hard time reconciling Jesus’ vision of his vocation with what a Messiah should be in their minds. It was as confusing as if a great athlete declared that they were going to win a championship but first he must suffer terrible losses and be knocked from the playoffs. How can you win a championship if you’re knocked out of the playoffs? Jesus must have meant something other than the clear literal meaning, his disciples evidently thought, because it didn’t make sense. In the same way, how could the Messiah that was supposed to free Israel from her enemies be rejected and killed? The Messiah was supposed to be defeating Romans not dying a shameful death while under the complete control of those Romans. Jesus must have meant something else because this just didn’t make sense.
Yet, he tells them here as plainly as he could possibly do what would happen to him. He would be turned over to the Gentiles to be mocked, insulted, spat upon, flogged, and eventually killed. But he would rise on the third day. How could the meaning of this be hidden from them? How could they not understand such a clear statement? It was because it sounded like such a category mistake. The Messiah suffering and dying just did not fit with anything they knew.
As clear as it seems to us, the reference to rising on the third day might possibly have played into their thinking that perhaps Jesus was somehow speaking symbolically. Hosea 6:1-2 declared “Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.” It seems that at least some Jews, if not most, saw the “third day” as a symbol for the time of the resurrection. Thus, when Jesus declared boldly that he would die and rise on the third day, the potential symbolism of such a statement combined with their complete lack of understanding of the true role of the Messiah, led to their complete inability to see the plain truth that Jesus was teaching them. They could understand him claiming to be the Messiah. They could even understand someone speaking of the fact that they would be rejected and killed, only to have part in the resurrection. But they simply could not imagine combining those two realities. They were just simply blind to who Jesus really was as the Messiah and what he could do.
Now that Luke has laid out a clear picture of well-meaning disciples who simply could not see what Jesus was about to do he brings us to a blind man outside the city of Jericho. The Gospel of Mark tells us, assuming that this is indeed the same man, that the blind man’s name was Bartimaeus. Like most blind people in that culture, he would have been on lower rungs of society, forced to beg for a living, and considered an obvious sinner by most, and a man whose blindness was a result of being cursed by God for his rampant sin. As Jesus approached, though, the blind man, like so many others that would have been considered to be outside of the normal and decent structure of society, took the bold step of going outside of his accepted arena and cried out to Jesus for mercy. A call for mercy in this situation could have been nothing more than a plea for alms, but based on the situation and the fact that he singled Jesus out, it seems that he had much more in mind. As he called out to Jesus he addressed him in extremely Messianic terms. He was, in fact, recognizing Jesus as the promised Son of David, the Messiah that would come and save Israel and indeed the world. What Luke doesn’t tell us is how this man knew this. What had he heard? What did he know that would enable him to have such insight? We don’t know why but we do know that he believed Jesus to be the Messiah and turned to him in utter humility and reliance. He called to him in the manner of a child just as Jesus had urged that his disciples would need to do(Lk. 18:17).
The response of the crowd to the insightful faith that the blind man was showing was to rebuke him and shut him up. Their response was probably less to do with his belief in Jesus as the promised Davidic Messiah and more to do with the danger that such a public proclamation could have incurred. To claim that someone was a Messiah meant to invoke all of the cherished beliefs about the Messiah including the fact that he would render all of the other kings of the world subserviant to him. This would not have been a popular idea in Herod’s courts, much less in Rome. This man wasn’t concerned with any of that, however.
Just like the woman that reached out to Jesus for healing despite the fear that should have overwhelmed an unclean person stepping into the realm of the clean (Lk. 8:43-48), this man had more faith than fear. Impressed by the man’s relentless faith, Jesus called him to be brought near. As Jesus asked him what the man wanted Jesus to do for him, we should stop and think again how much faith it took for the man to say what he did. He could have stopped short. He could have asked for money or a blessing, or almost anything else but he believed that Jesus was far greater than any of that and well worth the risk of ridicule from those around him. He had just one request, he wanted to see. He knew that he was blind and he somehow knew that the only way for him to see was to go to Jesus in persevering faith and ask for sight.
We can’t help but think that Luke wanted us to see that this is exactly what the disciples, the Pharisees, indeed all of Israel needed to do. They needed to recognize their inability to see, their spiritual blindness, and simply cry out to Jesus. If they did that, he would do the same for them that he did for this blind man. The man’s faith in Jesus became the channel through which he could receive his sight.
Jesus promised those that would really hold to his teachings (not our own watered-down versions of them but the real thing) would know the truth and be set free (Jn. 8:31-32). That promise is certainly as true today as the day Jesus gave it but there are still so many areas that we can be blind. We can slowly begin to think that we are something when we are not (cf. Rev. 3:17-18). We think we need God far less than we do. It is at those times that we need to be like the blind man here. We need to recognize that we are blind and that crying out to Jesus as a helpless child is the only thing that will bring us sight. We need to stop trusting ourselves and thinking we can see and just cry out to the Son of David. When we do, he will surely ask us what we want from him. If our humble response is simply to see, he will give us sight.
Devotional Thought
Spend some time praying today for God to reveal areas in your life where you have been blind spiritually. Turn to Jesus alone in faith and ask him for sight and he will surely answer that prayer, maybe not in the way or timing you would want, but he will answer.
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