Good morning, church. My name is Andy Henderson. I am the pastor of counseling ministries here at North Hills. As was read a little while ago, our text for this morning is Matthew 20:29-34. You can open up there if you would like, as we make our way through that story here in just a little while.
As Matt just prayed, the psalmist prayed in Psalm 119:18,
“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18).
The remarkable thing about this prayer is he’s not praying for new revelation. He’s not asking God to tell him something that he has never known before. He’s asking God to help him see clearly what has already been revealed in his Word.
Charles Spurgeon wrote of this verse that the veil is not on the book. The veil is on our hearts, and that’s the issue. The problem is not that God has hidden the truth. The problem is, we often do not see it clearly.
That’s not just true for unbelievers. That could be true for us as believers as well. We can know truth, we can believe truth (or say we believe truth), we can defend truth, we could pass the systematic theology test on truth — and yet still something essential about it is missing. Some people call these blind spots.
There is an eye condition called macular degeneration. Many here this morning may actually suffer from macular degeneration. People who have it are not completely blind. They can still see shapes. They can see movement. They can see much of the world around them.
This is — You can see that — We know this is a road. We know that there are mountains and there are trees. There’s a bridge. We understand that. We can see that, but the problem is the center of their vision becomes blurred or dark. They may be able to see a room, but they may not clearly see the face of the person standing right in front of them.
Spiritually, something very similar can happen. Partial sight may see a lot. We can affirm certain biblical truths, but we may be missing something essential. That is exactly what was happening with the disciples here in Matthew’s gospel. They could see the kingdom, but as John spoke about last week, the cross was still in their blind spot.
In an article written several years ago, Ed Welch highlights three big life questions, and they’re really the three big questions that we’re asking ourselves on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not:
Spiritual blindness and partial sight come when we answer one of those questions incorrectly, or maybe even more on a normal basis, insufficiently.
When our understanding of God is distorted, our understanding of ourselves is going to be distorted. When either or both of those are off, our response (how we live) will be off as well. These three questions give us a diagnostic grid for spiritual sight.
So here’s the big idea of the text this morning, and what we’re going to be learning:
True spiritual sight sees the Lord clearly (who he is), sees ourselves honestly (who we really are), and responds submissively.
We see this dynamic play out throughout Matthew’s gospel. The Pharisees saw Jesus’s miracles. They heard his teaching, and yet, in their blindness, they concluded that Jesus was empowered by Satan.
They saw Jesus as an imposter. They saw, but they completely misinterpreted what they saw. Their answer to the question, “Who is God?” was fundamentally wrong, and so was their view of themselves.
They viewed themselves as righteous because of their own accomplishment. In fact, they thanked God that they were not like other people. This impacted the way that they responded. They were condescending toward people. They rejected Jesus, and they, in fact, played a key role in having him murdered. They were, as Jesus called them, the blind leading the blind.
The disciples, on the other hand, were not completely blind, right? They knew things. They believed rightly that Jesus was the Messiah. But when Jesus spoke about his suffering and his death, they resisted it, sometimes strongly.
I remember back in Matthew 16, Jesus asked his disciples the question, “Who do people say that I am?” And Peter, as he did often, spoke up and said, “You are the Christ. You are the Son of the living God.” Jesus commented, “Flesh and blood didn’t reveal that to you. The Spirit of God revealed that to you.”
Then Jesus went right in and said, “And here’s what’s going to happen to the Messiah…” And immediately, like two verses after, Peter makes this great proclamation, he then rebukes Jesus: “This is never going to happen to you.”
The disciples had a category for a Messiah who would reign. They would say he was the Messiah. They had a category for that. A category for a Messiah who would reign, but not for a Messiah who would suffer. They expected a coronation. They didn’t expect a crucifixion.
Because they expected a coronation, that distorted how they saw themselves. “If Jesus is going to reign, who better to reign alongside him than the 12 of us?” They saw themselves as worthy, and they argued consistently about which of them was the greatest.
And you would think that the passage that we studied last week—with James and John’s mom coming and asking if they could sit on either side of Jesus when he comes into his kingdom—you would think that would actually end that discussion. But it takes place again, of all places, at the Last Supper.
They responded by attempting to place themselves in the best positions for the most glory. That is why, just before our passage, they’re asking for positions of honor. They see the King, but they do not see the cross clearly. That’s partial sight. This was a blind spot that followed the disciples throughout their time with Jesus.
We’re going to see at the beginning of the next chapter, chapter 21, that Jesus is now entering Jerusalem.
Tucked in between the disciples completely missing Jesus’s mission last week and Jesus entering Jerusalem in the next passage, Matthew includes this story about healing two blind men. This placement is not an accident. They weren’t just trying to find a random place to put this story.
In his commentary on Matthew’s gospel, James Boyce writes,
“The healing of the blind man is included at this point as an illustration of the disciples’ spiritually blind condition.”
As always, as we look at this story of two blind men, let’s not miss the drama in this scene. Sometimes we just read through in a couple of seconds, and we miss it.
Jesus is leaving Jericho. He’s inching ever closer to Jerusalem. There was a great crowd following him, the text says. This would have been natural because many of these people would be going to Jerusalem for Passover week. This is a big time. There were most likely hundreds of people surrounding Jesus as he traveled.
So he’s walking through, and as was also common in those days, there were blind people, crippled people who would sit by the side of the road begging. And so here we find two blind men, sitting on the side of the road, begging.
Empathize with them for a moment. Imagine what life must have been like for them: Every day in darkness. Every day, dependent upon others for survival. Every day, sitting probably in the same place, hoping for just enough generosity to make it through another day. Then it would start all over again the next day. That was their life.
Then on this particular day, they heard something unusual. The crowds were a little bit bigger. There was more noise than normal. They begin to ask what’s happening, and somebody tells them, or people in the crowd tell them, “Hey, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And immediately everything changes. Their only hope is walking by.
Then we see in this text, in these few verses, how they answered those three ultimate questions that we just talked about: (1) Who is God? In this case, who is the Son of God? (2) Who are we before this God? And (3) how do I live before this God? How do I respond?
Who is God?
How did they see this? They saw the King. They began to cry out, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David.” That title is incredibly significant. “Son of David” was not just a polite way of addressing Jesus. It’s a declaration. It’s a recognition that he is the promised Messiah, the King who was to come through David’s line, the one who would fulfill God’s covenant promises.
Two chapters from now, in Matthew 22, Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees about the coming Messiah (whose Son he was), and the Pharisee responded, “Oh, he’s the son of David.”
Here in the very next chapter, at the early part of chapter 21, people would line the streets of Jerusalem and say to Jesus, “Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Who the crowd saw as a wonderful teacher, physical healer, these blind men saw as the Savior. The crowd refers to him as Jesus of Nazareth, but these blind men call him the Son of David. They see something that the crowd does not fully see. They recognize who he truly is.
Isn’t it remarkable that the people here with the physical blindness are the ones who see the most clearly spiritually? Someone once asked Helen Keller, “Isn’t it terrible to be blind?” She responded by saying, “Better to be blind and see with your heart than to have two good eyes and see nothing.” So that’s how they answered the question, “Who is God?” They saw him as King; Jesus is King.
Who were they before God? They recognized their neediness.
The next words are really important. What did they ask of the Son of David? “Have mercy on us.” They don’t ask for status or recognition. They don’t ask for positions in a kingdom. They ask for mercy. Why? Because they understood who they were.
They understand their condition. They understand that they are helpless. They are utterly dependent. They cannot fix their blindness. They cannot change their situation. Their only hope is the mercy of the Son of David.
This stands in stark contrast to what we just saw with the disciples, again, a few verses before. The disciples ask for thrones. The blind men ask for mercy. One group sees themselves as deserving of honor, the other sees themselves as desperate for grace.
True spiritual sight will always include an honest understanding of our need, who we are before the Lord.
How about the third question?
How were they to live before God? Here’s how they responded: They responded in faith.
The crowd tries to silence them. I’m always slightly amused at this part of the story. Why would these blind men care at all what a crowd thinks about them?
They were desperate. They were desperate for Jesus. They were desperate for healing. They’re not worried about being socially acceptable. They know their need, and they know their only hope. So they cry out.
The more the crowd tells them to stop, they cry out all the louder. Just think about that: With hundreds of people around, and you hear these blind men crying out, “Son of David,” and Jesus stops. That is remarkable. It really is.
On his way to Jerusalem, on his way to the cross, he stops for two blind beggars. He calls them to himself, and he asks them a really interesting question: “What do you want me to do for you?” It would seem like the answer to that would be obvious, but he still wanted for them to say.
Interestingly enough, that was the same question that James and John’s mother asked of Jesus in the passage before. When she came to Jesus, Jesus said, “What do you want me to do for you?” The answer to those two questions is quite telling.
The blind beggars respond, “Lord, let our eyes be open.” We’re going to see in a little while, that is a remarkable request. “Let our eyes be open.” It takes a lot of faith to ask for that.
In Mark’s version of the story, he only mentions one of these blind beggars. He mentions him by name. You’ve probably heard his name, Bartimaeus. He adds an interesting detail that reveals his faith even further. It says, when Bartimaeus was called, when the blind men were called, Bartimaeus threw his cloak to the side and came to Jesus.
For us who see, who live in 21st-century America, that might seem like a little bit of a throwaway statement (he threw off his cloak, and he came to Jesus), but nothing would have been more valuable to a blind man than his cloak. That’s all that he had.
If they lost that, they would have been unable to withstand the elements. If they laid it aside, they ran the risk of being unable to find it again. But Bartimaeus seemed to know something or see something here. He seemed to know that he would find it again, because he fully expected to see after his encounter with Jesus. That’s what he expected.
Immediately, the text says, these two blind men received their sight, and then Matthew tells us something really, really important: They followed him. They didn’t just receive their sight, they went on and followed him. They became his followers, his disciples.
Where is Jesus going? He’s going to Jerusalem, he’s going to suffer, he’s going to die, and they apparently followed him.
True sight does not merely recognize Jesus, it leads to following him.
We can say true things about Jesus, but if it doesn’t end up in us following him— “Any person who would come after me must take up his cross and follow me.” If it doesn’t end up there, then there’s something wrong with our sight.
If we step back for a moment, we need to ask what it would look like to answer these three questions rightly in our own lives.
What does clear spiritual sight actually see?
Any of these truths I’m about ready to mention is broader than we could possibly cover in one sermon. There are whole books, even series of books, written on the answer to these questions. But here’s a snapshot:
Who is God?
Who is he to us? Who is God? To see clearly is to recognize that God is not vague or distant, but that God (Father, Son, and Spirit) is perfect in holiness, power, wisdom, and love.
God the Father is the sovereign Creator and sustainer of all things, who rules over everything perfectly, with perfect authority, control, and purpose, even when it is hard for us to see that.
God the Son is the eternal Word who became flesh, the promised Son of David, the King of Kings, who reveals his Father perfectly and who accomplishes redemption through his life, death, and resurrection. He loves his people with a love that cannot be measured. That’s who he is.
God the Spirit is the active presence of God who opens blind eyes — applying redemption, and transforming.
This God is not only powerful, he is holy beyond all comprehension, in all of his ways, and yet abounding in steadfast love and mercy. Perhaps nowhere is his character more clearly seen than at the cross of Christ, where justice and mercy meet perfectly.
True spiritual sight does not see God as we prefer him to be, but we see him as he has revealed himself to be, a God who is infinitely glorious and astonishingly gracious.
Who are we before God?
To see clearly is to understand ourselves rightly before this God. All of us are made in the image of God. Everybody you look at in this room is made in the image of God. But on one hand, due to the fall, we are profoundly broken.
I am not merely flawed. I’m a sinner by nature and by choice. Spiritually blind and unable to rescue myself. We are far more needy than we often realize, and far more dependent than we would like to admit.
But for those who are in Christ, that’s not the end of the story. Through union with Christ, we are not only forgiven, we are actually made new, into new creatures, new creations. We are united to him, counted righteous, adopted as sons and daughters, and brought near to God. That’s who you are in Christ. Our identity is no longer defined by our sin. It’s no longer defined by our failures and our weaknesses, but by our relationship to Christ. We are at the same time more sinful than we’d like to admit and more loved than we ever imagined.
True spiritual sight holds both of those realities together. It produces deep humility and deep confidence because our standing is in Christ. So we don’t see ourselves as self-sufficient or deserving but as needy recipients of grace who now belong to God. That’s who we are.
How are we to live before God?
To see clearly is to understand that the only fitting response to this God and this new identity is a life of faith: dependence, obedience, and worship.
We’re not called to earn God’s favor. I could never do that, so I don’t go day in and day out trying to do that, because it’s impossible. I already have it. I cannot gain more of God’s approval than I have right now in Christ. We live out the grace that we’ve already received, and we do not live for ourselves, but for the one who loved us and gave himself for us.
This means a life marked by ongoing repentance, active faith, and humble dependence. It’s a life shaped by the cross where greatness is actually found in servanthood, where strength is actually found in weakness, where joy is actually found in surrender.
This cross-shaped life necessarily expresses itself in self-giving and sacrificial love for others, even those who oppose us and misunderstand us and treat us as enemies, because we have been loved by Jesus in that same way.
True spiritual sight leads us to follow Jesus (just as the blind men did), wherever that leads, even when that path includes difficulty and suffering and loss. It leads us to say, with ever-growing clarity, “He is everything. I am his, and I will follow him.”
This truth is not just about the disciples and the blind men, it’s about us. We’re often guilty of living with partial sight in common, very specific ways. There are many that I could mention right now. I’m going to name a few, and here’s why I’m naming these few: because these are a handful of the ones that I struggle with personally.
I may affirm that God is sovereign and good. I will affirm that from the pulpit, I will affirm that when I’m talking, and yet when life becomes difficult, or I experience suffering, I begin to live as if he is either distant, or untrustworthy, or even cruel. That’s how I’m tempted to live.
I may say that I am forgiven and accepted in Christ, fully accepted, and I believe that. I know that to be true, and yet I continue at times to define myself by my failures, my past, and the opinions of others. That’s where I find my identity.
I may confess that I am dependent on God. That’s part of my daily prayer to the Lord. I recognize I am fully dependent on you, “God, give us this day our daily bread,” and yet functionally live a self-reliant life, trying to carry burdens that I should be handing off to him.
I may affirm that Christ has loved me with a self-giving, sacrificial love. It may even bring me to tears, and yet I may withhold that same love from others, especially those who hurt me and oppose me.
In each of these moments, we’re not completely blind if you’re with me. We see something true. We just affirmed truth in all of those statements, but I’m missing something essential. Our understanding of God is slightly distorted, our understanding of ourselves is slightly off, and as a result, our response is misaligned. That’s the danger of partial sight.
Of course, let’s not miss the main character in the story.
Jesus’s compassion and his power are incredible.
Have you ever noticed that Jesus is never too hurried to care for those in need? He’s never too distracted to show compassion to someone. He was never hurting so deeply that he would turn a blind eye to the pain of others.
That compassionate heart was shown throughout his ministry, but it was really beautifully evidenced with some of the final words that he spoke on the cross to a thief being crucified next to him, in the most excruciating moments of pain.
In order to speak on the cross — We read these seven sayings, and we’re like, “Okay, Jesus spoke beautiful words.” But I don’t think we realize how painful it would have been to speak while on the cross.
The nature of the cross was it suffocated you slowly. You couldn’t breathe. In order to breathe or to speak, you actually had to lift yourself. So he would have had to lift himself up on nails in order to speak.
So here’s this thief on the cross on one side, another on the other. Apparently, not long before this, both of them were mocking Jesus (we’re going to see that a little bit later on in Matthew and in other Gospels). But then, suddenly, the one thief had clear spiritual sight given to him by God.
He looks at the other thief and begins to rebuke him, saying, “Hey, we deserve this. This man does not deserve this.” Then he turns to Jesus, and he says, “Will you remember me when you come into your kingdom?”
Jesus lifts himself up on the cross and says, “No, because remember means you’re not going to be with me. And today, you’re going to be with me in paradise.” In his most excruciatingly painful moments, Jesus shows compassion.
He never ignored the individual because of the immensity of the mission or the suffering that he endured. Ever. He doesn’t do it in this text. We see it right here. Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem, perhaps days away from death.
Jesus knew what awaited him in these final days. He knew that desertion and betrayal were coming his way from these men who just recently were arguing about which of them was the greatest in the kingdom.
He was going to be experiencing an unjust trial, torture, and a cruel death. But that did not stop him from listening to the voices of two blind men who needed him. His compassion is endless. Endless.
But also, I want to make sure we’re not missing the stunning power of Christ in our text. At this point in the book of Matthew, it may be easy to lose our sense of amazement a little bit when Jesus does something.
We’ve watched him heal lepers, he’s healed paralyzed limbs, he’s calmed storms, he has cast out demons, he’s raised the dead… By the time we reach chapter 20, we kind of expect it, right? Okay, he heals two blind men. We should not allow familiarity to rob us of wonder.
What would it take to actually heal someone of blindness? Think of what blindness means physically. For someone to see, an entire chain of astonishingly complex systems must work perfectly.
First, the eye itself must work. Light must pass through the cornea and the lens and focus precisely onto the retina. (By the way, I know none of this stuff. I just read all this and I put it down on a piece of paper. I’m not scientific this way.) The retina contains millions of photoreceptor cells (rods and cones) that convert light into electrical signals. That’s first up.
Second, those signals must travel through the optic nerve to the brain. That nerve contains over a million fibers carrying visual information.
Third, the brain must interpret what the eye sees. The visual cortex must process those signals and translate them into shapes, colors, depth, and movement.
If any part of that chain is broken—the cornea, the lens, the retina, the optic nerve, or the brain itself—sight can disappear.
To restore sight, what Jesus did that day, is not simply to repair one small defect. It was the restoration of an entire biological system.
For somebody who was born blind, which we see in other places in the Gospels, it’s even more astounding. The brain may never have processed visual input before, ever. The neurological pathways for sight may not even exist yet.
In other words, healing someone of blindness would require nothing less than creative power. So let’s not take for granted the miracle we are witnessing in this text, or the faith that it took for these blind men to actually request that.
“Yeah, can you open my eyes and give me sight?” What an incredible visual aid this text is of our spiritual need for sight. The blind men could never get physical sight in their own power. They understood that.
The Apostle Paul tells us that something very similar happens when God opens our spiritual eyes in 2 Corinthians 4:6, which Jess read earlier. Paul writes,
“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness—’”
When did he say that? “Let there be light.” At creation.
“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
Do not miss the remarkable thing that Paul is saying here: For all of us who have believed and received the gospel, that is a miracle on par with creation itself. God had to say in all of our hearts, “Let there be light.”
Spiritual sight is not something we achieve, it’s not something that we manufacture, it is something God creates. He speaks, and we see. This leaves no wiggle room for spiritual pride.
There are obviously many ways that we could approach the application of a text or a subject as broad as spiritual sight, but how do we apply this today? I want to focus on a couple, just two.
1. Pray as the Psalmist did in Psalm 119:18, “Open my eyes…”
I still need spiritual sight. I need to see God, myself, and my responsibility clearly. Ask the Spirit for insight as you read the Word and experience daily life in a broken world. He is the one who gives sight, so we actively pursue asking him to provide it, and we never graduate to the place where we do not need greater spiritual insight.
Later in Psalm 119, the same Psalmist states, “I have more understanding than all of my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.” He’s saying, “I understand more than the aged ones, for I keep your precepts.” Even though he had a mature spiritual understanding, he still cried out to the Lord, “Open my eyes. I need more and clearer spiritual sight.”
2. Don’t be surprised if God answers that prayer by using other people.
That’s the hard part.
I love it when I’m sitting in a coffee shop, in a perfect environment, sipping on my coffee, and I’m reading, and God hits me over the head with a truth (maybe that I’d missed before), and it’s great.
I love those moments, but that’s not always how he does it. In fact, normally, he does not do it that way. So we should be willing, not only to ask others about our blind spots, but also to be willing to listen to others when they broach that subject without our invitation — whether it’s from our closest relationships or from people who may not like us very much.
One of the dangers of blind spots, by definition, is we often can’t see them ourselves. That’s why God has placed us in community. That is why sanctification is not a solo project. God often answers the prayer “open my eyes” by putting someone in our lives who sees what we don’t.
So we should be asking trusted believers, humbly, “Is there anything in my life that I’m not seeing clearly?” But also be willing to humbly listen when others approach us about a potential blind spot in our lives. It’s a glorious reality that there is a day coming for all of us who know Jesus when we will never experience blind spots again.
Listen as the Apostle John — the same John who had his mother go to Jesus in the passage last week and ask for a position of honor for him and his brother James. The same John whose partial sight led him to participate over and over again in this debate about which of them was the greatest. That John wrote in John 3:1-2,
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (John 3:1-2).
Right now, even as believers, our sight is still partial at times, but one day there will be no more distortions, no more blind spots, no more incomplete understanding. We are going to see the Lord fully. Until that day, partial sight may see things. It may even see a lot, but still miss essential truths. But true spiritual sight sees the Lord clearly, sees ourselves honestly, and responds submissively. Let’s pray.
Father, open our eyes that we may behold wonderful things. God, would you give us insight into the reality of our hearts, the reality of what we really believe? God, help us to see you clearly. Help us to see your Son and the Spirit clearly. Help us to see ourselves honestly, and help us to respond submissively. It is in the name of Jesus, who opened the eyes of blind men, that we pray these things, amen.
