God’s power over sight and sound

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 19 August 2012

We are studying now Matthew 9:27-33 and we are learning about God’s power over sight and sound. When God created man, He gave him dominion over the earth. A kingdom of wonder and beauty; but man sinned; and he lost his crown. Man's dominion was taken over by Satan; and because of this there came to be a kingdom of darkness with tears, pain, sorrow, illness, suffering, murder and war.

But almost as instantly as man fell did God promise that He would someday restore the kingdom. Someday, the kingdom of darkness would end; and the kingdom of light of glory would return. And so the Old Testament was filled with promises that God would bring a deliverer, a King that would restore the Kingdom, would wipe out disease and pain and illness, sorrow, war and death itself.

Matthew's purpose in writing is to tell us that Jesus is that Messiah. He is the One; and in order to convince us that Christ has the power to do that, in chapters 8 and 9, Matthew shows us His miracle power; and relates it all to Old Testament prophecy. And Matthew gave us three sets of miracles.

We are now in the third set of miracles that deal primarily with His power over death; in verses 18 to 26. We went over it last week. And this is precisely what Isaiah 65 says. The Messiah will have power to lengthen life; and Daniel 12:2 says He will have power to raise the dead; and if Jesus is the Messiah, then He must demonstrate that power; and that is precisely what He did in raising Jairus' daughter from the grave.

He not only has power over dead people, but even over the dead parts of a living human being, such as their eyes and their ears and their tongues. And that is demonstrated in our passage tonight and let me read you two Old Testament prophecies that prophesied this.

First listen to Isaiah 29:18, as it's speaking of the coming day of the Messiah, "In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness.” And Isaiah 35:5-6, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 6 Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing.”

The more we study the New Testament, the more apparent it becomes that Jesus gave us a dazzling display of previews of what was to come in His Kingdom. He went up the Mount and transfigured, He pulled His clothes back and showed them His glory. And now He shows us all these other miracles that culminate with His power over death.

And now we come to the miracles of sight and sound. Look at Matthew 9: 27, "And when Jesus departed from there." Stop for a second, departed from where? From the house of Jairus, it's evening by now and there is still a mass of humanity around Him. But now He has two crowds, the one that has been following Him all day and now the other crowd of mourners and paid musicians, who were holding the funeral service for that little girl.

So let us talk about the healing of these two blind men in verse 27, "When Jesus left the house of Jairus and his neighborhood, two blind men followed Him." Blindness was a common disorder in Egypt and in Israel. In fact the Gospel records include more healings of blind people than any other type of healing.

Then we notice the cry of these men as they followed Him. They're in the crowd shoving their way along, trying to stay with the group, and they are crying out, "Son of David, have mercy on us!" Now they are very bold. No doubt they had heard of Jesus.

It is always the bereft, the hurting, the unfit, the outcasts, the discouraged, the lonely, the sinful and the guilty who follow Jesus. You never find the self-sufficient people. You never find the people who think they have all the resources. These blind people were crying out in desperation and deep need, pleading and begging. That is the desperation that will result in salvation.

Why did they call Jesus of Nazareth the Son of David? Did they know His lineage from Joseph, who was of the line of David? Did they know His lineage from Mary, who according to Luke 3, also was of the lineage of David? Well, I'm not sure they knew that but the term ‘Son of David’ was the Jewish designation for the Messiah.

He is the Promised One; and in that title, Son of David, is the entire concept of dominion and Kingship that the prophets spoke of. In Luke 1: 32 the angel said, "He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give to Him the throne of His Father David."

Luke 2:4 says, "Joseph went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David; because he was of the house and lineage of David." And in Acts 2 identifies Christ as the fulfillment of the promise to David; and Paul does it in his epistles; and John does it in Revelation. Again and again, Christ is called the Son of David.

So when these two blind men came in verse 27 and said, "Son of David," they are affirming that they believe this is the long-awaited Messiah. When Jesus came along and performed all these miracles, even to the point of raising the dead, it became apparent to some, including these two, that this was One who did fulfill their expectation; and so they give Him the Messianic title.

But they also cried something else that helps us know a little about their genuineness. They said, "Son of David have mercy on us!" They had a right attitude. They felt a spiritual need as deep as they felt a physical one. They knew that they were undeserving; and that is why they asked for mercy; and that is something you will never hear a Pharisee ask for, because they felt self-sufficient.

Jesus was the most merciful human being who ever lived. He reached out to the sick and healed them. He reached out to the crippled and gave them legs to walk. He healed the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, and the mouths of the dumb.

He found prostitutes and tax collectors and those who were debauched and drunken, and drew them into the circle of His love and redeemed them and set them on their feet. He took the lonely and made them feel loved. He took little children and gathered them into His arms and loved them. Never was there a person on the face of the earth with the mercy of this One.

Once a funeral procession came by in Luke 7, and Jesus saw a mother weeping, because her only son was dead. She was already a widow, and now she had no child to care for her when she was old. Who would care? Jesus stopped the funeral procession, put His hand on the boy, and raised the child from the dead, because He really cared.

Now let’s go back to these blind men. What is interesting is that Jesus seems to pay no attention to them. He lets them just keep pouring out their heart, persistently manifesting their genuineness as a way of pulling them out from the superficial. If their faith is real, they will persist. And they keep following Him, and so He tests their faith.

In verse 28, finally He responds to them; it says, "And when He entered the house.” Whose house? We are not sure, but it might have been Peter's house in Capernaum. And look what it says, "And the two blind men came to Him." He went in the house, and they went right in the house after Him. None of us can begin to fathom what it must have been like for Jesus to have these tragic people just clinging to Him all through His ministry.

Every one of the healings we've seen in this chapter involves persistence, and that is how Jesus drew out true faith. That's why all the healings we see so far are not only physical healings, but spiritual conversions, as well. The paralytic, his friends, in order to get him healed, had to literally tear the roof apart. That's real persistence.

And the ruler persisted even though his daughter is dead. And then there was the woman of the issue of blood who grabbed His tassel, and Jesus didn't let it go at that. And here He makes these blind men follow Him all the way to the house and in the house before He turns to them.

And in verse 28 Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” Why does He ask that?" Well, the purpose of the question was not to deny their faith, or to question whether they believed that He had the power to do it. Jesus knew they believed. The reason He asked them was to hear the affirmation of their faith in their own confession.

The apostle Paul said in Romans 10:9, "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God had raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved." Jesus is drawing out a verbal confession, an affirmation of that faith that it might stand as a testimony to what is necessary for genuine conversion. He said, "Do you believe I'm able to do this?" And they said, "Yes, Lord."

Now, the Gospels are full of times that Jesus healed where people didn't have any faith. Jesus wanted to separate these blind men from all those people who were looking for a political deliverer; for a man with charisma or just for a miracle worker. So He said do you believe that I represent the power of God to heal your blindness?

Real faith is necessary for conversion; and He wanted to bring these men all the way their faith would take them; and when a man says, "I need mercy," and says, "You are the promised Messiah," and says, "I believe You have the divine power of God," and says, "Yes, Lord", that is a saving faith; and Jesus was drawing them to that.

So we move from that to, fourthly, the conversion of the men. Verse 29 says, "Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it done to you.” 30 And their eyes were opened. And not only were their physical eyes opened, but, at that moment, their spiritual eyes also opened and their faith blossomed and they became children of God.

Jesus often touched people showing His divine tenderness. He touched their eyes and in that instant their sight burst returned. Notice the phrase the end of verse 29, "According to your faith, be it done to you." Well, how much faith did they have? Did they have enough faith to be saved? Yes.

Faith is the bucket that dips into the well of salvation. Faith is the purse which, in itself, is not the riches, but contains the riches. Faith is that by which we receive what God gives, and He says: your purse is big enough to receive all that I have to give. Your bucket is big enough to gather the waters that I provide of the well of salvation.

Now listen to the command that He gives them in verse 30, "And Jesus sternly warned them, “See that no one knows about it.” How we going to do that? Shall we just pretend that we are still blind? The people who know us are going to know. What is He saying here?"

First of all, the proclamation that the blind men had made was ‘Son of David’, and that was a Messianic title; Heir to the throne, which could really create some problems. The Jews wouldn't understand it, because He didn't come through the Jewish establishment; and the Romans wouldn't understand it either, because Caesar was the only king.

And, in the end it was this very affirmation that Jesus was the King that brought Him to the cross; and what He's saying now is, "It's not time yet for that thing." God is on His own divine timetable. And people had a tendency to see Him only as a miracle worker, which gave everyone the wrong impression.

You remember back in John 6:26 when Jesus fed the 5,000, they immediately wanted to make Him the king? And Jesus said to them after they followed Him all over, "you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled."

Jesus wanted people to come and see for themselves and make their own conclusions rather than make judgments based on what people would say and think. We might doubt whether those blind men were genuinely children of God if all they did was run out and disobey immediately His command, but let us see what else they did.

Verse 32, "As they went out, behold, they brought to Him a man, mute and demon-possessed.” It is translated in Matthew 11:5 as deaf, probably meaning deaf and dumb. This would have been one of their friends. This is the commitment of these blind men, they brought one of their fellow beggars. His deafness is specifically identified in verse 32, he was possessed with a demon.

And so we find in verse 33, "And when the demon was cast out, the mute spoke. And the multitudes marveled, saying, “It was never seen like this in Israel!” It says nothing about the man's faith. There's nothing about his salvation; but what we do find is that the two blind men immediately become useful to Christ because they are involved in bringing others to Him.

Simple story; but it's one of the most beautiful analogies of salvation. Their blindness becomes an analogy of spiritual blindness. First of all, they had a need. They were blind, and they knew that. That's where salvation begins. Nobody comes to God unless he senses a need. He has no resources, no hope. He cannot discern the truth, there's a sense of desperation.

They found out who Jesus was; and they knew that He was the Messiah, the Son of David. They sought to know and they found the truth. Proverbs 8:17 says, "And those who seek Me diligently will find Me.” And that is followed by a sense of sinfulness. They said, "Have mercy,” we need something that we don't deserve.

And then comes their confession, "Do you believe?" "Yes, Lord," the affirmation of the Lordship. And then comes their conversion, "According to your faith be it done to you.” And you know what often follows conversion, weakness and disobedience.

Why? Because when they are born again, they are a newborn babe in Christ, right? And babes don't know how to discern, they can be tossed to and fro. They don't know yet the deep things of God, and there's a certain susceptibility to disobedience.

But, intermingled with their disobedience was their desire to bring somebody else to Jesus Christ. That is so often true of a new Christian. They don't know all that's involved. Jesus healed the man to show those two blind men that they were useful to Him in advancing the Kingdom.

How about you? Are you useful in advancing the Kingdom? Are you willing to bring your friends to Christ? Are you still a newborn babe or are you a mature Christian willing to put Christ above everything else? Let us pray.