Mark 8:11–38

Bringing the sermon home:

Back in Exodus 16, God supernaturally provided bread from heaven to feed a great multitude in the wilderness. Immediately afterward, the Israelites began to quarrel with their deliverer (Exodus 17:2). In much the same way, immediately after Jesus supernaturally provided bread to feed a great multitude in a desolate place, the Pharisees began to quarrel with their Messiah. For those whose hearts are unchanged by His words, no sign from heaven will ever be enough. Jesus then calls His disciples to beware of this “leaven”, for such unbelief, if left unchallenged, always spreads through the whole lump.

The two-stage healing of a blind man pictures the spiritual state of the disciples. Unlike the Pharisees, they are following Jesus, but they are like the blind man once he has been partially healed: they still don’t understand the fullness of who Jesus is and why He came. They can see Him well enough to confess that He is the Christ, but they refuse to accept that He has come to die. Jesus explains that their minds are still set on earthly things.

Examples of confessing that Jesus is the Christ while refusing to accept His Word are all around us, from “progressive Christianity” that rejects His teaching on morality (e.g., marriage, gender, sexuality) to the “prosperity gospel” that rejects His teaching on suffering in the life of the Christian and the requirement to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him. But as with the second touch of the blind man, Jesus can heal this spiritual blindness and grant the eyes to see and believe.