Spiritual Blindness – II

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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Spiritual Blindness – II

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 3 November 2013

Last week we were taught that everyone in the world is blind to spiritual reality. Everyone, whether you are a non-Christian or a Christian, our humanness traps us in a world that is blind to spiritual reality. We learned about the blind who will never see, and now we are studying the blind who will be made to see. They are the ones who embrace Jesus Christ and now have Him as eyes, ears and truth-teacher.

And when we met the blind who will never see; we pointed out the things that are characteristic of those blind people. They seek fellowship with the darkness rather than light. Then they also cursed the Light. Their whole intent in coming to Jesus Christ was to discredit Him. And then we noted about them is that they only plunge into deeper darkness.

Then the last characteristic of one who is blind and will never see, is that he is abandoned by the Lord. The Lord says, "I'll give you no sign," and, "He left them and departed." So those who are blind and will never see are so because they run from the only hope they have.

Now, let us look to out text tonight Matthew 16:5-12, “Now when His disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. 6 Then Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” 7 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “It is because we have taken no bread.” 8 But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, “O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? 9 Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? 10 Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? 11 How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?—but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 12 Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

Now here we see the other group who will be made to see. Equally blind, because humanness in itself is blind to spiritual reality, these are dependent on the sight given to them by Jesus who comes alongside to help. And here are those characteristics of the blind who are made to see; they seek the Light, receive greater Light and are taught by the Lord.

So let us study those who are made to see seek the Light. Look at verse 5, "Now when His disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread.” The Lord Jesus Christ has been around the Sea of Galilee, and He keeps going back and forth across the lake. After feeding 4,000 men plus women and children in Decapolis, He got in a ship and arrived back at Magdala, and was confronted immediately by the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

And He is followed as always, by His disciples. It says, "His disciples also came to the other side.” And here you find the mark of one who really will come to see, he seeks the Light. The disciples pursued the Light. Now, they were standing at the crossroads; because they had been raised in a Jewish society; and they had learned to respect the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

And when Jesus came along, He was the antithesis to everything they taught. He talked about freedom, not law; and all the things the Sadducees denied, Jesus affirmed; and so it was very clear to see that He was the very opposite of them. But when Jesus came to the other shore, they were there too; and that's what always marks out someone who will be made to see. He seeks the Light.

The Scripture is full of statements like Jeremiah 29:13 and Proverbs 8:17 saying, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” And so these disciples were seekers. They sought to know the truth. Jesus was not a light to be seen; He was a Light to be followed; and they sought that Light continuously.

Not all of them who originally were interested in the Light were faithful to follow. In John 6:66-68, when Jesus began to speak of the real commitment which He required for a disciple: “eating His flesh, drinking His blood,” and it says in verse 66, “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. 67 Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” 68 But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” You see, they followed the Light.

They knew they needed help in seeing. Psalm 119:18 says, “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.” Verse 33, "Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes." And then verse 73, "Your hands have made me and fashioned me. Give me understanding.” In other words, they knew they couldn't know by themselves; so they sought the Light.

Also they are the eager learners. They are the ones who, when asked, "Will you go away?" answered, "No Lord, there's nowhere to go. You have the Words that we must hear." And so they followed; it isn't that they had some innate ability to be able to see on their own. It isn't that they're any better or any different than the rest.

Now, it is important to note that the disciples indeed needed help in believing and understanding. Jesus gave them that speech of “you of little faith,” on several occasions. They needed help in seeing spiritually, they seemed unable to understand the things the Lord was saying.

Go back to Matthew 13 for a moment, and in verse 9, the Lord had given the parable of the sower and the seed and the soils; and of course He closes the parable by saying, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." In other words, "If you have the spiritual hearing capacity, then hear it.”

Verse 10, “And the disciples came to Jesus and they said, "Why do You speak to them in parables?” Why do you use veiled sayings, things that aren't clear on the surface? And He said in verse 11, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”

And down in Matthew 13:15, Jesus says, “For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.”

But verse 16-17 says, "Blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear. 17 for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” And you know what's amazing about that? They didn't understand the parable any better than the Pharisees did or the other people who were there.

But the point is then in verse 18, Jesus says, "Hear therefore the parable of the sower," and He explains it to them. You see, the difference between the blind who will never see and the blind who are made to see is not that the blind who are made to see all of a sudden get some innate ability to see in their humanness. The difference is the Lord teaches those that are His. That's the difference.

And this brings us to the great doctrine of illumination. When you, who know Jesus Christ, read the Word of God, you not only have the Bible, but you also have the Holy Spirit residing in you who opens to you the Scripture. You see, while the disciples were on the earth, Jesus taught them. And after He was lifted up the Holy Spirit continued that teaching. We are all blind, but those who are made to see are taught by the Holy Spirit.

When the Lord anticipated leaving them, He wanted to teach them much; and so He taught them after He rose since He was there for forty days. Acts 1:1-3 says, “Jesus began both to do and teach during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”

And as Jesus gathered them in John 14:26 He said I am going away, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” In other words, Jesus says, "When I go, the Father will send Him, and the process will continue unbroken," right?

Oh, this is a great promise. The promise is given only to the one who seeks the Light, that he will be given greater Light, because, not only will he be given the Word of God, but he will be given the indwelling Spirit of God, to teach him all things spiritually from the Kingdom.

The reality is that the Spirit of God is working in and elucidating in the heart of each one of us as He is our resident teacher. That's why 1 John 2:27 says, “But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.”

In 1 Corinthians 2:4 Paul says, "My speech and my preaching were not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power." In other words, when you hear him speak, it isn't human wisdom you're hearing. It's the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit coming to you. And so God speaks to us through the voice of His spokesman.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 1:5, “When our Gospel came unto you, it came not simply in human strength, but it came in the power of the Holy Spirit.” So we are taught by the teachers whom God has empowered with His Spirit to teach and by the resident Truth Teacher dwelling within us; and so we are led to greater understanding and greater Light.

Now, let's see how the Lord used this occasion to teach these disciples greater truth. Verse 5, they forgot to take bread. That's important; because, it's not easy in the wilderness to get anything to eat; so they needed to plan ahead on that; and they forgot. By the time they got to the other shore, Mark 8:14, the comparative passage says, "They looked around and found one bread cake," which would be like one flat cracker.

Now we can learn one of the greatest lessons in discipling. The Lord takes each moment of distress as a divine opportunity to teach truth. You really build someone to maturity by getting alongside them, and interpreting life in terms of its spiritual significance. That is how you make a disciple. It is taking the struggles, the anxieties, the situations of life and interpreting them on a divine level.

Verse 6, "Jesus says to them, “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” He is saying to them, "Look, don't be concerned about physical bread. Be concerned about the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." In other words, "Get up on a spiritual level.” Christ now is months from the cross only, and He wants them thinking spiritually.

Well, leaven is yeast. And so leaven means influence, something held over from the past applied to the present. That is why, when Israel left Egypt, they were not allowed to have leavened bread. God was saying to them, "Don't take something from Egypt and put it into your new lifestyle. It mostly means evil influence, although, in some cases, could mean a good influence.

So what is the leaven of the Pharisees? Well, Luke 12:1 tells us, "The leaven of the Pharisees is hypocrisy, phony religion, externalism, legalism, ritualism and ceremonialism. Everything is on the outside, nothing in the heart. And then beware of the leaven of Herod, Mark adds, which was political ambition, materialism and secularism.

Well, what was their reaction? Verse 7, "The reasoned among themselves." They said, "We think He said this because we have taken no bread." And so, He gives them this lesson in verses 8-10, " O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? 9 Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? 10 Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up?”

And so He says, "Have you forgotten that if it was a physical bread problem, I could take care of that? Why are you still on that?" And so in verse 11, He says, “How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?—but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

And this brings us to the next point about one who is blind but made to see, and that is that he's taught by the Lord. See how patient Jesus was with them, He really taught them. He comes right back and repeats the same lesson. Verse 11 continues, "I'm talking about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Focus on the spiritual dimension.

That's why the Christian has to read the Word of God regularly, make it a habit. Why? Because as you read it, the Holy Spirit teaches you; and as He teaches you, He elevates you out the physical dimension, where you begin to take God seriously. And after the Lord's patient teaching, just like He has to do with us, the light dawns, you will understand.

Verse 12, “Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Stay away from false doctrine. Jude 1:23 says, "Others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.”

Look at 1 Corinthians 2:9, “As it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” We are all blind, we can't perceive it. We can't know it externally and objectively. We can't know it internally and intuitively and subjectively. Spiritual reality is not available to human perception.

But look at verse 10, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.” Isn't that great? Even the deep things of God are revealed to us by the Spirit. So verse 12 says, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”

Brothers and sisters, you have in your life as a believer the resident Truth Teacher, the Spirit of God. As you open the pages of the Bible, and the Holy Spirit teaches you, you find yourself plunging into the deep things of God. We who know nothing, we who are stone blind can now begin to experience a little bit of God. Let us pray.



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