Blind men who already had their most important sight...Matthew 20:29-34

 


A little Christmas present that keeps me a little more connected to Stephanie on those long walks through the woods where the cell towers don't reach.  It allows her to actually see where I am along the trail also at 10 minute intervals.  I tried it out last Thursday on a very snowy trail 9500 ft up and getting into deeper snow.  It was my first snowshoe hike of 2026 at 8 miles.  My goal is to get out each week and start filling in my new 2026 RMNP trail map.  I saw this fellow along the trail too.


We finished up Matthew 20 this Sunday with the healing of the two blind men in Jericho.  They actually already had the most important sight in recognizing without their physical sight that Jesus is the Son of David.  The crowd had Him pegged as a man from Nazareth and at the most a prophet, a holy religious man but the blind men cried out that Jesus was the actual fulfiller of the Davidic Covenant.  The One passing by them was the long awaited Messiah, the anointed One of God the Father.  The crowd tried to quiet them down with their chant but they cranked it up and cried out all the more.

We might have followed the instruction of the crowd but the persistence of the blind men actually has an impact on the multitude to go from "Jesus of Nazareth" to "Son of David."  The blind men received their physical sight but they already had their spiritual sight.  I imagine the spiritual sight made it very easy to follow Jesus when they received their physical sight.  Spiritual over the physical is necessary to follow Jesus with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  So many put stake on what they see like the past week and every angle being broadcast of a video of a terrible event.  These men hadn't seen Jesus but they were relying on what they had heard and tying it to what was written about Him.

We are in the same place as the blind men.  We are blind in a sense that what we have about Jesus is what we hear and what we have read.  It is God who opens our eyes to see Him as the risen Lord and Master of our lives.  We will one day see Him physically, the One we accept (see) spiritually now.  We follow Him who we have yet to see physically.  I would call this walking in faith.  Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,  the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1, LSB)  We live out this verse as Christians.  We have the assurance of seeing Jesus one day face to face and we hold onto that conviction of the bodily resurrection of the One will have yet to physically see.  

This miracle holds so much to learn prior to Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem on a foal of a donkey.  There will be other supernatural events that point to the fact that Jesus is more than just a man from the small town of Nazareth in Galilee.  Jesus is leaving evidence of who He is all the way to the cross.  We get to walk with Him on this journey and I pray that we all glean more than we have read before of something we didn't physically see.  

Adam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrWDDzatFCk&list=PLR2Yv0_zJFqnRXuQUhIG4qdEDeA5kChAe&index=1&t=2852s

A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 39th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Am I asleep to Jesus' presence?...Matthew 17:1-13...Falling in love again with His words.

Image
  The Never Summer Mountain Range is behind me.  It is always amazing to me how people will respond more quickly to a picture than to the text.  I updated our Facebook cover photo and profile picture and people are responded left and right to it.  I do not get as much response when I print text to the same group of people.  I think this bears true with the response to video presentations of the Bible over just the written text of the Bible.  But since we don't have actual video footage of Jesus (sorry Chosen) I feel it is important to not just rely on someone's artistic presentation of the text but to read it for ourselves.  The question would be, "Am I reading more than I am watching when it comes to God's words?" I have purposely not used much video in my preaching opportunities because video will steal the show, no pun intended, to the actual passage we are looking at.  I think we need to train ourselves again to rely on what we are reading rat...
Read more

Stephanie's blooming flowers...Matthew 17:24-27...Jesus the perfect fishing guide (longer post - Charlie Kirk)

Image
  Look at the color that greets us on our deck!  Stephanie sure has a green thumb.  I'm just the waterer and also diligent to keep spraying to keep the critters away.  It is also the sign here that colder weather is on the way.  There is snow on the tops of the mountains again and there was also frost on the roofs.  Summer people are headed to warmer temps and we settle in not just for the colder climate but also for the time the core has to zero in on each other.  What will come of our colder months together in light of the further developments of being a better established biblical church?  I am praying that we will develop a pathway to go from investigating SCC to investing in the ministry here, from being infrequent in attendance to being a frequent flyer with us, from just attending to one assigned to a ministry, and from the pew to being a player.  How are we assisting in this process and what does this person look like in practical ter...
Read more

The Big Feed...Matthew 14:13-21...Life around Jesus' table

Image
  This isn't 5,000 men plus women and children as in the passage last Sunday but this is our 5,000+ for the week.  It is amazing to be all around the table at once.  There are now 20 of us.  We have went from addition to multiplication in our family as each of our 4 children are now having their families.  Our 2 year reunions have been highlights of our lives and this one was spent in Colorado.  This picture featured the 20 rainbow trout the grandchildren caught at a local kids' fishing pond. Jesus is going to present 2 amazing events back to back for his disciples.  In this big feed they are ready to pass off the responsibility to someone else.  They tell Jesus to send the crowd away and their solution is that those people can fend for themselves.  They use the word " only " and calculate what was possible with the money they may have had.  The disciples were identifying and pointing at the need but they were not going to get involved ...
Read more