Talk 24 Mark 8:22-26 The Healing of a Blind Man at Bethsaida
Welcome to Talk 24 in our series on Mark’s Gospel. Today we’re looking at Mark 8:22-26 where Jesus heals a blind man at Bethsaida. Jesus healed many blind people during the course of his ministry. Luke 7:21 tells us that he gave sight to many that were blind and the healings of Bartimaeus in Mark 10 and of the man born blind in John 9 are well known examples. But this incident, which is found only in Mark’s Gospel, is particularly interesting because it’s the only occasion where Jesus needed to lay his hands on someone twice before they were completely healed. So let’s begin by reading the passage together.
22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spat on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” 24 He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” 25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t go into the village.”
The first thing I’d like you to notice in this story is that some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. Of course, it’s understandable that a blind man would need others to bring him to Jesus, but what’s most significant here is that it is the people, not the blind man, who beg Jesus to touch him. This is quite different from the healing of Bartimaeus who is discouraged by the people as he seeks healing from Jesus and who calls out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, and to whom Jesus says, Your faith has healed you (Mark 10:46-52).
In fact Jesus uses this expression on several different occasions in the Gospels:
· After giving sight to Bartimaeus (Mark 10:52)
· When speaking to the woman who touched the hem of his garment (Matthew 9:22, Mark 5:34, Luke 18:42)
· to the grateful leper he had cleansed (Luke 17:19).
· and to the woman who poured perfume on his feet and received forgiveness for her sins (Luke 7:50)
It’s exactly the same Greek expression on all these occasions, and it shows the important role personal faith plays in receiving forgiveness and cleansing and healing. But there are other occasions in the New Testament where it’s the faith of other people that brings about the healing:
· The faith of the four friends who brought the paralytic to Jesus (Mark 2:5)
· of the Centurion for his servant’s healing (Matthew 8:10)
· of the SyroPhoenician woman for the healing of her daughter (Matthew 15:28)
· and the faith of the elders when anointing the sick with oil (James 5:15).
And here in today’s passage it’s the people who bring the blind man to Jesus who are begging him to heal him. It’s by no means clear how much faith the blind man had, but it seems safe to assume that he was in full agreement with his friends’ request.
The second thing we notice in this story is that Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village (v23). We’re not told why Jesus did this, but it reminds us of the deaf and mute man that Jesus healed in the last chapter. Jesus took him aside away from the crowd (Mark 7:33). We suggested there that he may have done so because he wanted to get the man’s full attention, to show him that he was not just one of the crowd, but an individual he cared about personally, or that perhaps Jesus himself felt the need to get away from the crowd, to get a moment of quiet when he could hear what God was saying about how to deal with this man’s need.
And on this occasion Jesus may have done so for similar reasons. However, in this case it seems that Jesus might have had a further reason for taking the man out of the village. Notice that, after he has healed him, Jesus says, Don’t go into the village. We have seen on several other occasions in Mark’s Gospel how Jesus tells those he has healed to tell no one about it, and it’s possible that this is just another such occasion. Jesus was concerned that his miracles
should not be the focus of people’s attention. They were signs to confirm the truth of his message. He wanted people to hear what he said, not just to see what he did.
But the fact is, we simply don’t know why he led the blind man out of the village. What we do know is that Jesus only did what he saw his Father doing (John 5:19) and the reasons for Jesus’ specific actions were related to what God was telling him to do, and to the individual needs of the person he was ministering to – a principle we should all be aware of when we are praying for the sick, and which is particularly relevant to the next thing Mark tells us:
When he had spat on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”
We’re not surprised that Jesus put his hands on him, but spitting on the man’s eyes is not what we might have expected. Of course, we remember how, when he healed the man who was deaf and mute, Mark tells as that Jesus spat and put his fingers in the man’s ears. We may also remember how, when he healed the blind man in John 9, Jesus spat on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes (v6).
There were no doubt specific reasons why Jesus used saliva in each of these three cases – one suggestion, for example, is that the man in John 9 was born without eyes and that Jesus was creating eyes for him from the dust of the ground, as God did when he created Adam. But, in the absence of any clear explanation in the Scripture, it would be unwise to jump to conclusions. It’s all right to suggest what the reasons might have been but beware of people who are over dogmatic on such matters.
As far as following the example of Jesus is concerned, we can learn from this that the Holy Spirit might lead us on rare occasions to do something out of the ordinary when ministering to the sick, but we need to be very sure that we are hearing God correctly, and we should remember that the New Testament authorises two main ways of ministering healing, the laying on of hands (Mark 16) and anointing with oil (James 5). But even with these, the important thing is to hear what God is saying. The New Testament offers no formula for healing.
Notice next, still in verse 23, that Jesus asks the man, Do you see anything? There is, of course, a simple explanation for this. It’s not immediately obvious to anyone except the blind person who has been prayed for (or treated medically for an eye condition) whether or not they can see. We have to ask them. But surely Jesus would have known. He was God, wasn’t he? Yes, but he was also man.
This simple question to a blind man reveals one of the great mysteries of the incarnation (cf. 1 Timothy 3:16). Jesus was both God and man. Not half God and half man, but 100% God and 100% man. Our finite minds simply can’t grasp it. But a God who can be fully understood by my tiny mind couldn’t possibly be God at all, could he? But the Bible is clear that while Jesus was here on earth, as man he did not know everything. He grew in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52). Even though he never ceased to be God, when he was hungry and saw a fig tree he had to go and find out if it had any fruit (Mark 11:13).
So, here, to find out if the blind man can see anything, he asks him. There’s no need to look any further for an explanation. Neither do we need an explanation for how a blind man knew what people and trees looked like. After all, we’re not told that he was blind from birth. But what does require an explanation is why the man is not completely healed immediately. Why did Jesus need to lay hands on him twice?
Answers to this seem to fall into three main categories:
· Jesus was aware that the man was lacking in faith
· Jesus was teaching his disciples that some healings would not be instantaneous
· Jesus was illustrating his attempts to get his disciples to ‘see’ the truth about him.
Let’s consider each of these ideas in turn.
Jesus was aware that the man was lacking in faith
As we saw earlier, Jesus was constantly looking for faith in those who came to him. Sometimes it was the faith of the person who was in need. At others it was the faith of the friends or relatives who asked Jesus to help them. Whichever it was, it seems that it was the person who was bringing the request who was expected to have faith that it would be granted.
Now if this man was lacking in faith, we are certainly not told that he was. What’s more, it was the people who brought him to Jesus who made the request. And there is no mention of a sudden increase in faith before Jesus laid his hands on the man the second time, although we can imagine that his faith was encouraged by the improvement he experienced after Jesus laid hands on him the first time. However, we cannot say with any certainty that the reason why the man’s healing was not immediate was lack of faith.
Jesus was teaching his disciples that some healings would not be instantaneous
I suspect that this idea comes from the fact that healings today are often either partial or gradual. Of course we do see immediate answers to prayer for healing, especially in an evangelistic context when a miracle of healing is granted to help people come to faith in Christ (cf. Mark 16:15ff., John 20:30-31 etc.). But there are many cases where people ‘receive a touch’ of healing but are not completely healed. At other times, even when there is a full recovery, this may take some time before it is complete. And in attempting to explain the reason for these incomplete healings, it’s easy to refer to this passage as biblical evidence.
However, it’s surely clear that, in the case we are looking at, if the blind man’s healing was delayed, it was not delayed for very long! And it could hardly be described as gradual. Jesus lays hands on him, and there’s an immediate improvement. He lays hands on him again, and the healing is complete. If Jesus really wanted to show his disciples that some healings are not instantaneous, this was hardly the best example give them. Furthermore, there is no evidence of gradual or partial healings in the ministry of his disciples. That is not to say that healing does not sometimes happen gradually or in stages – there’s plenty of evidence that it does. But I think it unlikely that this was the reason that Jesus laid hands on this man twice.
Jesus was illustrating his attempts to get his disciples to ‘see’ the truth about him
The merit in this suggestion is that it takes into account the context in which the story is set in Mark’s Gospel. As we saw in our last talk, Jesus was often disappointed with his disciples for their lack of faith and slowness to understand, and only a few verses before today’s passage we hear him saying:
Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?
The disciples had physical eyes to see, but they were spiritually blind. But Jesus did not give up on them. He persevered with them. And it’s possible that Mark included this story at this point in his narrative as an illustration of Jesus’ determination to persevere with his disciples until their spiritual eyes were opened to see who he truly was.
And this makes all the more sense when we consider what follows. Jesus takes his disciples to Caesarea Philippi and asks his disciples who they think he is. And Peter replies, You are the Christ. His eyes have been opened, but not to the whole truth, for when Jesus tells them about his coming death and resurrection, Peter refuses to accept it. His eyes has been opened to part of the truth, but he had yet to see clearly the whole truth.
I confess I find this explanation very appealing because of the context in which the passage is set. However, if Mark does include the story here as a kind of living parable illustrating how Jesus will persevere with people until they come to see the truth about him, that need not necessarily mean that this was why Jesus did it in the first place. The simple fact is, we simply do not know why Jesus healed this man in this way. The evidence for all these suggestions is inconclusive. And whatever explanation we prefer, we must be careful not to be dogmatic. What we can say with certainty is that Jesus did not leave this man unhealed.
So what other lessons can we learn from this passage?
We see that:
Nothing is impossible with God
He responds to our prayers
We may not understand why he answers in the way he does
What he does he does perfectly
He keeps on working in us until we see everything (including Jesus) clearly.
Once he could see clearly, the first thing this man saw was Jesus.
One day we will see clearly. Now we see through a glass darkly, but then (when we get to Heaven) we will see face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Only a day before making this recording my darling wife Eileen went to be with Jesus.
Now she sees him perfectly. Oh hallelujah. Thank you Jesus. And one day we shall too.