Author: kezha1

The great Theologian Charles Spurgeon once penned, “Great tribulation brings out the great strength of God.” But we don’t like to confess that we are indeed weak. That’s because in today’s world, weakness is looked upon with distain, but Paul reminds us in verse 10 of this Chapter that, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” In other words, our weaknesses can become a reason to rejoice, for we see Christ’s power at work in our life. And when suffering abounds, comfort from God abounds more…and in the midst of all our struggles, there can be the peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7)…our weakness driving us to seek Christ. And thus as we rely on Christ’s power & follow His example, we can face all circumstances that come into our life. For the grace of God can accomplish His plan & purpose despite any of our weaknesses… endowing us with strength & encouragement.

The blind man’s parents feared being put out of the synagogue or excommunicated. Now the Pharisees regularly using this form of tactical intimidation to silence the people into compliance. So even if they had witnessed this miracle for themselves, they weren’t going to admit to it…too afraid that the Pharisees would pronounce one of the 3 degrees of banishment over them. The 1st degree was a rebuke declared over the offender for up to 30 days. While it didn’t necessarily mean exclusion from attending & participating in Synagogue worship… it did exclude them from all fellowship with the Congregation. A 2nd degree of banishment would stack on 30 more days onto the expulsion. Finally, the 3rd degree, and most severe form of excommunication, was a life-time ban from the Temple, loss of all civil & religious rights as a Jew, and the person would be considered dead by the congregation.

God doesn’t deny our weaknesses, nor does He remove adversity from our lives. He instead tells us not to fear. For fear is not a necessary action and only causes torment. Fear is also sinful & dishonoring to God…for it implies that we are doubting God’s love, faithfulness, and power. His all-sufficient promise of, “I will help you” should be all the assurance we need. Or as Isaiah goes on to write, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”

A parable is a narrative that compares spiritual things with natural things…making a deep impression on the attentive heart, while simultaneously concealing it from the worldly listener. Jesus used parables almost exclusively to explain spiritual truths, but for those who had already rejected Him, it was all utter foolishness & nonsense. Yet when Jesus & His disciples were off on their own, He would privately make clear & expound on what He had just taught the crowds…enabling His disciples to truly understand with enlightened minds. The Bible isn’t a book of darkness but rather the source of all light & truth, and it’s the Holy Spirit that illuminates the Scriptures for our benefit. The Holy Spirit helps us to hear, receive, and properly understand the true message of God’s Word as we read it…just as Jesus intimately did for His own.

Why should we desire to praise God? The answer is, it takes our eyes off the world & all its carnal thoughts and places them on Him instead. This particular Psalm speaks of those wandering in the wilderness…the stark, bleak, wasteland we can find ourselves in when we stray. But straying doesn’t have to mean blatant rebellion…it can simply mean allowing our emotions to control our life rather than God. For when we permit fear, anxiety, & worry to rule, our eyes are off the Lord, our songs of praise are silent, and we feel as if we’re wandering alone…which if you think about it, is true. But just as this Psalm proclaims, we need to be praising God & thanking Him in the middle of our adversity…grateful for His goodness, kindness, & mercy…for He wants to help. Or as Deuteronomy 32:10 says, “In a desert land He found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; He guarded him as the apple of His eye.”

This blind man had become a permanent fixture as hundreds of people past by him daily…his presence & poverty just a momentary observation as they hurried by. But then suddenly, here was this same man healed & able to see clearly, and the people couldn’t believe their own eyes. The Ministry of Jesus was one of Restoration & Renewal…or as Isaiah 35:5-6 foretold, the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy. This once blind man best summed it up for all the doubters when he exclaimed, “I am the man that was once blind, but now I can see.”

In this Psalm we find David hold up in a cave after fleeing for his life from Saul. The prison he writes about here isn’t just the dark, dank hiding place he’s in, but the prison of his soul caused by stress, anxiety, exhaustion, & hopelessness. And so he cries out to God to set him free from his emotional suffering… in order that he might regain God’s vision & standpoint. God is our refuge when we find ourselves in that emotional prison…for anxiety & fear cannot stop death…they only stop life, and worrying & stressing will never take away tomorrow’s trouble…they only take away today’s peace. God is the only One that can set us free from our emotional prison.

Obviously, Jesus didn’t need to resort to a physical prop in order to heal this man. For instance, in Matthew 15:28 and Luke 17:12-14, Jesus simply spoke healing into the person. But nor was this occurrence of spreading saliva laced mud on someone unique to just this particular man…Jesus healed the deaf & mute man in Mark 7:33 and the blind man in Mark 8:23 in a similar manner. So why did Jesus choose to heal this way? One idea is that in the day both Roman writers & Jewish Rabbis considered saliva to hold “healing properties”…and so Jesus may have used it to communicate His intention to heal the man’s blindness before He actually did it. The other consideration of why Jesus healed this way comes from Genesis 2:7 which says that the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground & breathed life into him…thus Jesus was paralleling His Heavenly Father’s original creation of man. Whatever the reason, Jesus anointed the blind man’s eyes with mud & his sight, both physical & spiritual, were made new.

When the disciples questioned Jesus, they were falling back on their Hebrew studies and the only two possible reasons that this man had been born blind. The first came from the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:5) which said that God would judge sin to the 3rd or 4th generation, (which usually represented the longest span within any given household living under one roof together.) The other was the old familiar proverb, “The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?” (Which was the Jewish exiles way of blaming the previous generation’s sins for all their current problems.) But Jesus instead offers a 3rd and extraordinary option…that this man had been born with a congenital defect in order that God’s glory might be shown through him that very day…a miraculous healing that no one who knew him could ever deny.

All consolation & encouragement in the world has its origin in God. And God’s sovereign purpose of this is that in our times of trouble, He comforts us, so that the compassion & mercy we’ve experienced in Him we can in turn console & encourage others in their times of trouble. In other words, we take what we’ve encountered & exhibit it to those who need it most.