“Jesus Came to Overcome Blindness”
(2 Cor 4:1-7)
English author H. G. Wells—famous for science fiction novels like The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds—once wrote a short story called “The Country of the Blind.” It’s about an inaccessible, luxurious valley in Ecuador where, due to a strange disease, everyone is blind. After 15 generations of this blindness there was no recollection of sight or color or the outside world at all. Finally a man from the outside—a man who could see—literally fell into their midst. He had fallen off a high cliff and survived, only to stumble into their forgotten country.
When he realized that everyone else was blind, he remembered the old adage: “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Wells writes:
He tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight. “Look here, you people,” he said. “There are things you do not understand in me.” Once or twice one or two of them attended to him; they sat with faces downcast and ears turned intelligently towards him, and he did his best to tell them what it was to see.
But they never believed him. They thought he was crazy. The man fell in love with a girl there and the girl’s father, Yacob, went to talk to a doctor about him. A conversation ensued:
[The doctor said]: “I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him complete, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation— namely, to remove these irritant bodies [his eyes!].”
“And then he will be sane?”[they asked].
“Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen.”
“Thank Heaven for science!” said old Yacob.
Wells goes on to point out that the man would not be allowed to marry Yacob’s daughter unless he submitted to an operation that would blind him. So what would the man do?
Wells writes:
He had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful with white narcissus, and there remain until the hour of his sacrifice should come, but as he walked he lifted up his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in golden armour, marching down the steeps…
It seemed to him that before this splendour, he and this blind world in the valley, and his love and all, were no more than a pit of sin. And the man who could see escaped the country of the blind with his life.
Doesn’t that sound a lot like the world we live in? A land of the blind that is proud of its science, sure of its health, and oblivious to the light? It’s not only pitiful; it’s deadly. Jesus said, “People love darkness rather than the light” and he had his own name for this country of the blind, he called it the world.
In the book of Matthew, the first thing Jesus says as he begins his ministry in Matthew 4 is from a prophecy in Isaiah: “the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a great light has dawned”. Of course he’s talking about himself.
As I said last week, Advent is a clash of two kingdoms—darkness and light. Christ is the only way that darkness can be overcome, and through him we can receive sight. His power over nature and death, his understanding of human nature, and his zeal for God conquer all that is dark.
Last week we talked about Jesus being the light and how he came to overcome darkness. Today we kind of expand on that, only now we will look at how this light overcomes blindness. Remember darkness represents death and evil, blindness now represents an inability to see the truth about God. Remember Jesus said he is the truth as well as the way and the life. Today we focus on the truth.
If anyone should know about blindness and truth it would be the apostle Paul, who we know was struck blind by Jesus himself during his conversion, in essence so that he could see the truth even though he was already a highly educated religious man. So hear what he says at the beginning of 2 Corinthians chapter 4:1-6…
So Paul was healed of his blindness after he believed, and it’s interesting that the most common healings that Jesus did were with lepers, the lame, and the blind. If you look at the symbolism of these you see that healing a leper represents purifying, healing the lame represents enabling to go and witness about God, and the healing of the blind represents seeing and knowing the truth. All of those things are necessary for a person to follow Christ.
Now I’m not saying that people with skin disorders, or disabilities or blindness can’t follow the Lord, but these things are symbolic in terms of what Christ sees as a Christian, someone who is purified by his blood and the water of baptism, someone who will serve Him and follow him, take up his cross, and someone who knows Him, the truth. All of those qualities are necessary for a disciple.
We heard last week that Jesus says he came so that no one should remain in darkness, and just before that he says that anyone who sees me sees the Father. What does this mean? It means that the truth that is the most imperative for all people, is to believe that Jesus is God in the flesh.
In fact John in his first letter that we also looked at last week, who talks about Jesus as the light, continues that passage with, “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us”. So not only do we need the light in us, but we need the truth in us, and this comes after the light illuminates this truth.
John goes on to say in the next chapter of his first letter, that if you say you know Him, but do not keep his commandments, you are a liar, and the truth is not in you. Now this is interesting about the spirit of the antichrist. We like to think of the antichrist as some sinister person who is going to come in the future as per Revelation, who is going to be controlled by Satan. But that is a faulty and unbiblical view of the antichrist.
First of all it says in that passage in 2 Corinthians that Satan, who is the god of this world, is blinding all sorts of people, everyone who doesn’t believe. Believe what? Well back to first John who says there have been many antichrists, some of whom have been in the church, and he says in verse 22 of chapter 2 that anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ (here meaning the anointed Son of God, and the Messiah), they are the antichrist. And whoever agrees that Jesus is the Son, also has the Father and has the promise of eternal life. So all unbelievers are technically the antichrist or against Christ.
Then in chapter 4 is a key passage about testing the spirits and false teachers: “By this you know the Spirit of God; every Spirit that confesses (or agrees) that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist which you heard was coming and now is in the world already”. Confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Isn’t that Christmas?
And let me just read one of the most beautiful passages of the Bible from 1 John 5 and the first 12 verses… . What is all that saying? It is saying that Jesus is divine and whoever believes this has eternal life. Everyone who doesn’t believe this is blind and does not have eternal life.
Where does Jesus himself talk about this blindness? Well it’s actually quite a rant against the Pharisees that can be found in Matthew 23 known as the “woes”. I won’t read the whole passage but starting at the end of chapter 22 Jesus asks the Pharisees “Whose son is the Christ?” They answer that he is the son of David.
It is after that that Jesus launches into his tirade in chapter 23 where he calls them blind five times, and that word blind is interchanged with hypocrite many times throughout the passage. So Jesus is clearly associating religious hypocrisy with blindness, and it begins with not knowing who Jesus really is.
And that is basically what John is saying in his first letter where a few times he says, “If you say so and so, and don’t do such and such, you do not know Jesus. If you say you know Christ and don’t follow his commands, if you say you have no sin, you are a liar, if you say you love God and do not love your brother or sister… If you say any of those things and it’s not followed up with action, you don’t know God and are therefore not a child of God; the truth is not in you, and Jesus calls you a blind hypocrite.
So you see why it was vital for Jesus to come and overcome this blindness. Now how did he do this?
I. Jesus has authority over nature
If the Milky Way galaxy were the size of the entire continent of North America, our solar system would fit in a coffee cup. Even now, two Voyager spacecraft are hurtling toward the edge of the solar system at a rate of 100,000 miles per hour. For almost three decades they have been speeding away from Earth, approaching a distance of 9 billion miles.
When engineers beam a command to the spacecraft at the speed of light, it takes
13 hours to arrive. Yet this vast neighborhood of our sun—in truth, the size of a coffee cup—fits along with several hundred billion other stars and their minions in the Milky
Way, one of perhaps 100 billion such galaxies in the universe. To send a light-speed message to the edge of that universe would take 15 billion years.
And yet, Jesus has authority over this vast creation. He is literally holding it in the palm of his hand, and at any moment he chose, he could just go like this… and the entire universe would cease to exist. Yet he comes to earth as a human baby, subjecting himself to a horrible life on earth. Why indeed is this God mindful of us?
We see His authority in the healings and the miracles, the stopping of the storms, even stopping the sun, and of course in his virgin birth and resurrection. And he flat out says in the great commission, that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
II. Jesus’ zeal for God shows why he can bring sight to the blind
That little baby Jesus has no tolerance for irreverence amoung the self-justified. This is seen when he grows up and overturns the money changers tables in the temple and says it is written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
Jesus was righteously angry but he didn’t always react this way to sin, we usually see him reach out to sinners. But again he is angry with people who say they worship God, but approach him without reverence. And if I may say, there are probably many tables he would overturn in the church today. Reverence and zeal for the things of God are sorely lacking in our day.
Jesus in his prayer in John 17 says, “Glorify your son that the Son may glorify you”, and “I have glorified you by accomplishing all the work which you have given me to do.” We are to follow Jesus, so does it not make sense that our goal should also be to glorify the Father by doing what he has asked us to do.
Has our zeal for God dissipated out of fear of man, more than fear of God, or even love for God, which Jesus equates with obedience? It is not popular to have zeal for God in our culture. Our culture will try to squelch every attempt at zeal, calling us crazy or intolerant. And Jesus would say, yeah, so what.
III. Jesus power to rise from the dead shows how he can bring sight to the blind
In John 2 again, Jesus says “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”. They didn’t understand what he was saying at the time but they did in hindsight.
This is where it all hinges folks. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then he would have been a crazy liar. Paul puts it beautifully in 1 Cor 15:12-14, “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection from the dead? But if there is no resurrection from the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”
Why do we know that Christ told the truth and is the Son of God? Because he made impossible claims and made good on every single one, and has hundreds and thousands of eye witnesses to prove it. And finally:
IV. Jesus perfect understanding of human nature shows why he can bring sight to the blind
Jesus was born a human being with God living in His human body. He could understand every aspect of being human from having a dirty diaper, to experiencing hunger, thirst and intense physical and emotional pain.
He knows that in the face of self-sacrifice, surrender, repentance, bearing a cross, and death, most people will pack it in and be fair-weather followers. I was reading CS Lewis and I heard it said that only Christ really knows what temptation is all about, because he is the only one who has gone through it to the other side. Most of the rest of us don’t really know the power of temptation because we usually give in to it eventually.
That is why forgiveness is at the core of God’s plan, because he knows humanity, he became human in Christ. He knows you, he was you in a sense, and still he tells you that he wants you to be like he was while he was in one of these bodies led by the Holy Spirit. One of the truths that we are sometimes blind to is that we can be like Jesus. He made that a possibility by sending the Holy Spirit after he died and was raised, to make us justified in God’s sight, and empowered by that Spirit. He said you will do even greater things than me.
Why else would God come to earth as a human being if it wasn’t to provide us with an example, and the encouragement needed to follow him by showing us what a Spirit filled human is capable of? His early disciples did it.
Let’s close by going back to our original passage in 2 Cor 4. “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God”. The Bible says we are also created in the image of God, we lose that image through sin only to regain it when we are born again. Jesus showed us what that means in a human body. And it is perhaps at this season no more better time to display his image to the world by showing extreme love, and generosity, and obedience to tell people the truth about what this holiday season is all about. That this little baby is the Saviour of the world. That’s the truth that this blind world needs to see. Where did we ever start believing that this Christmas that just about everyone in our culture celebrates, was about something else?
Let me just share an article I read in closing today. Here's the story: while Christians are making the news for refusing to tip restaurant wait staff, an anonymous believer has launched a strategy to encourage biblical generosity. Its Instagram account displays the simple mission:
