2  The Blind Who Are  Made to See  (16:5-12)

And the disciples came to the other side and had forgotten to take bread. And Jesus said to them, “Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” And they began to discuss among themselves, saying, “It is because we took no bread.” But Jesus, aware of this, said, “You men of little faith, why do you discuss among yourselves that you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets you took up? Or the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many large baskets you took up? How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Then they understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (16:5-12)

When he was a college student, Thomas Steward accidentally jabbed himself in the eye with a knife, causing permanent blindness in that eye. Fearing that the good eye might be harmed, the doctor recommended removal of the damaged eye. As Thomas was recovering from the anesthetic, however, it was discovered that the surgeon had removed the wrong eye, thereby plunging the young man into total blindness.

Undaunted by the tragedy, Thomas determined to continue his law study at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He completed the course at the top of his class, and his brother William was second. For four years William not only had pursued his own studies in law but had acted as his brother’s eyes, accompanying him to classes, reading the assigned material to him, and writing his tests and papers. Understandably, Thomas’s gratitude to his brother was unbounded, because without that help, his own degree and career in law would have been impossible.

Far worse than physical blindness is the reality that every person has been afflicted with spiritual blindness because of sin, and without the help of God through the work of His Son, Jesus Christ, spiritual life and sight remain forever impossible.

The famous seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was totally godless and anti-Christian. When he was about to die it is said that he loudly declared, “I am about to take a leap into the dark.” The truth was that he had been deep in darkness all his life.

The French philosopher Voltaire openly mocked God and was especially antagonistic against Christianity. When he felt he was near death, he was overcome with grief and despair. But instead of asking his believing friends to lead him to Christ, he gathered them together and told them bitterly, “Begone! Begone! It is you that have brought me to my present condition. Leave me, I say. Begone! What a wretched glory is this which you have produced for me.” Having something of a change of mind, he later hoped to allay his anguish by making a written recantation of his unbelief. For two months he alternated between railing against God and calling on the name of Christ. But his heart was too long hardened and had become impervious to God’s love and light. Among his last words were, “I die abandoned by God and man.”

It is no wonder that Jesus frequently referred to hell as “outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30), because it is the eternal perpetuation of the spiritual darkness that unbelieving man refuses to forsake while he is on earth. Matthew 16:1-4 pictures spiritually blind persons who will never see, epitomized by the unbelieving Pharisees and Sadducees who refused to receive the light and life that Jesus offered.

In contrast, verses 5-12 give a picture of the spiritually blind who, by God’s sovereign grace, are made to see. The four characteristics of these persons are the reverse sides of the characteristics of the blind who will never see: they seek the light, curse the darkness, receive still greater light, and are taught by the Lord.

THEY SEEK THE LIGHT

The disciples stood at a crossroads as they decided whether or not to hold on to the system in which they were reared and identify themselves with the Pharisees and Sadducees, whom they had been trained to respect and honor. The Pharisees were the recognized interpreters of the Jewish law and traditions, and the Sadducees were the religious aristocracy, which customarily included the high priest and the chief priests.

But the Twelve did not hesitate in following Jesus, and when He crossed back to the eastern, Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee, they came to the other side with Him. They genuinely sought God’s light, and they knew Jesus was Himself that light. Through Jeremiah, the Lord had promised, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. And I will be found by you” (Jer. 29:13-14). The disciples had seeking hearts, and God honored His promise to lead them to Himself.

As He stood teaching in the Temple one day, Jesus declared to the disciples along with the unbelieving scribes and Pharisees, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). The disciples believed that truth, and they knew that, as God’s light, He not only was to be seen but followed. They knew the Messiah would come “as a light to the nations” (Isa. 42:6) and, as David had proclaimed, would indeed be their “light and [their] salvation” (Ps. 27:1). Jesus was the light that illumined their darkness, and, though often stumbling and misunderstanding, they genuinely sought to follow Him.

But not everyone who became interested in Jesus was faithful to follow Him. When they began to realize the true nature of His message and the cost of discipleship, many superficial disciples “withdrew, and were not walking with Him anymore” (John 6:66).

But the true believers knew they would never be able to have spiritual sight apart from the gracious work of God on their behalf through Jesus Christ. Some of them perhaps prayed with the psalmist, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Thy law . . . Teach me, O Lord, the way of Thy statutes, . . . Incline my heart to Thy testimonies, . . . Thy hands made me and fashioned me; give me understanding, that I may learn Thy commandments” (Ps. 119:18, 33, 36, 73).

THEY CURSE THE DARKNESS

Because they sought God’s light, the true disciples also, in effect, cursed Satan’s darkness. They had hungry hearts for God’s light and truth and were eager learners. They turned their backs on the willfully blind and corrupt Pharisees and Sadducees, who led their followers into deeper and deeper darkness and made them even more wicked than themselves (see Matt. 23:15). When Jesus asked “the twelve, ‘You do not want to go away also, do you?’ Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God’” (John 6:67-69).

They were as naturally blind as the Pharisees and Sadducees, but unlike those unbelieving religious leaders, the Twelve recognized their blindness and came to Jesus for help.

THEY RECEIVE STILL GREATER LIGHT

As soon as the disciples arrived at the other side with Jesus, they realized they had forgotten to take bread with them. They had left hurriedly after the confrontation with the Pharisees and Sadducees (vv. 1-4), and on the sparsely populated northeastern side of the Sea of Galilee they were possibly many miles from a place where they could buy food. Mark reports that they “did not have more than one loaf in the boat with them” (Mark 8:14), far from enough to feed thirteen men even one meal.

Despite Jesus’ divine teaching, His perfect example, and His great miracles, the disciples still thought and functioned primarily on the physical level. When they became hungry after rowing to the other side of the lake, their thoughts did not turn to Jesus’ provision but to their own lack. As He frequently did, the Lord took their extremity as a divine opportunity to teach His truth.

That is an apt example of how Christians should disciple other Christians, walking alongside them and helping them interpret life’s struggles, perplexities, problems, and opportunities in light of spiritual truth and resources. Christian maturity is learning to live day by day by the light of God’s Word and in His provision.

Knowing the disciples’ concern over their lack of food, Jesus said to them, “Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” The imperative watch out is from hora, which has the basic meaning of seeing clearly or taking notice of. “Open your eyes,” Jesus was saying, “and pay close attention to the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Don’t be concerned about bread but about what is truly important. In the present situation, what is important is the spiritual danger of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

Christ was only months from the cross, and He had much more to teach the disciples and they had much more to learn. One day without food was of no consequence. But like believers in all ages, the disciples were caught up in the physical and temporal. Their spiritual vision was limited, and their spiritual attention span was short.

Because the disciples’ thoughts were on physical food they missed the spiritual warning, so that when Jesus mentioned leaven they began to discuss among themselves, saying, “It is because we took no bread.” Perhaps they thought Jesus was concerned that they might buy some bread to eat that was baked by a Pharisee or sold by a Sadducee and that it would therefore somehow be defiled. But such things were of no consequence to Jesus, as the Twelve should have known from what He repeatedly said and did. Only a short while before, He had made plain that it is “not what enters into the mouth [that] defiles the man” (Matt. 15:11). Jesus was not the least concerned about whether the earthly bread they ate came from a Pharisee or a Sadducee, a Jew or a Gentile. Such matters have absolutely no bearing on spirituality and godliness and were not in His mind when He spoke that warning.

The disciples were confused about what Jesus meant because their earthly orientation was a great barrier to spiritual vision. Their response revealed again how much they needed divine help in understanding, prompting the Lord to say to them what He had said numerous times before: “You men of little faith” (cf. Matt. 6:30; 8:26; 14:31). They did not fail to understand because of limited information or limited intellectual ability but because of limited faith.

“Why do you discuss among yourselves that you have no bread?” “You should know that I am not speaking about the fact that we have no bread,” He said in effect. “Do you not yet understand or remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets you took up? Or the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many large baskets you took up? How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?” “If I were concerned about our having bread, I would simply create some Myself,” He implied, “just as I did when I fed the five thousand in Jewish territory, where twelve baskets were left over (see John 6:1-14), and the four thousand in Gentile territory, where seven baskets remained (see Matt. 15:32-39). Have you forgotten those occasions so soon?”

When believers live on the level of spiritual trust and obedience, God makes provision for their physical needs. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus cautioned, “Do not be anxious then, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘With what shall we clothe ourselves?’ For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt. 6:31-33). “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food,” Paul assured the Corinthians, “will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness” (2 Cor. 9:10).

The Twelve needed to heed the counsel Paul would one day give the church at Philippi: “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things” (Phil. 4:8; cf. Col. 3:2). The Christian needs constant exposure to the Word of God and constant illumination by the Spirit of God. Only God’s Word and Spirit can raise him above the cares, concerns, perplexities, and confusion that are the inevitable heritage of life that is viewed and lived purely in the human dimension.

Jesus was grieved that the Twelve, after so much clear teaching and so many miraculous manifestations, were still living by human rather than by divine sight. But He was patient with them, as He always is with His own, and He knew they could not comprehend without divine illumination.

He then repeated the warning (cf. v. 8): “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Leaven made bread rise before baking and was used in much the same way yeast is used today. But the only method ancient peoples had for reproducing yeast was to save a small piece of unbaked dough, which was later used to start fermentation in the next batch of bread.

Because a small piece of leaven was able to cause a relatively large amount of dough to rise, the term was often used figuratively to represent any sort of influence—usually, but not inherently, a harmful influence, as seen in its use in Matthew 13:33. When the Israelites were led out of bondage in Egypt, the Lord did not allow them to take any leavened bread with them, symbolically representing His intention that the people take no influence of pagan Egypt with them into the Promised Land. Israel was to start life afresh, with no contaminating influence from the wicked, ungodly land of her oppression.

It was the spiritually contaminating influence of the Pharisees and Sadducees that Jesus here uses leaven to represent. “Beware of their influence,” the Lord was saying. “Their way of thinking and living has no part in My kingdom or its righteousness.”

On another occasion Jesus explained that the leaven of the Pharisees was hypocrisy (Luke 12:1). Their particular form of ungodliness was characterized by religious phoniness, external purity without internal righteousness. The legalism, formalism, and ritualism they cherished so dearly were a cover for spiritual uncleanness and deadness. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus told them. “For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matt. 23:27). And their hypocrisy adversely permeated the whole religious scene in Israel.

The leaven of the . . . Sadducees, on the other hand, was religious liberalism. To them, religion was primarily a means to earthly, temporal ends. They did not believe in angels, miracles, the resurrection, an afterlife, or anything else supernatural (see Acts 23:8). They were thoroughly materialistic and rationalistic, and they, too, had an adverse permeating influence with many.

Both types of leaven are enemies of the gospel. They corrupt God’s truth and God’s people. “Don’t let either the legalism of the Pharisees or the liberalism of the Sadducees influence you,” Jesus was saying. False doctrine is always a danger, no matter what its form, and it should be shunned and rejected by the believer wherever and however it is encountered.

The Galatian church was threatened by the legalistic perversions of the Judaizers, who insisted that observance of circumcision and the Mosaic law be added to the finished work of Christ. To them Paul declared, “This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:2-3). The Colossian church, on the other hand, was threatened by religious rationalism and liberalism. To those believers Paul wrote, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Col. 2:8).

False doctrine is never to be trifled with or minimized. Jude warns that when a believer seeks to help deliver someone from a false system he should go about it as if he were snatching a brand from the fire (Jude 23). To get too close to a cult or pagan religion is to risk being burned.

THEY ARE TAUGHT BY THE LORD

Because the Twelve received His light, God gave them still greater light. Jesus explained that He was not talking about physical bread but was warning them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. By the Lord’s sovereign and gracious illumination, then they understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Jesus’ continual desire during His earthly ministry was to teach those who trusted in Him, the apostles in particular. Even after He rose from the grave He continued to teach during the forty days before His ascension (Acts 1:3). He had already provided for the continuation of His teaching after the ascension: “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:26). A short while later He told His disciples, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you” (John 16:12-15).

Not only is the believer given God’s own Word to study and believe but is given His indwelling Spirit to illumine and interpret the Word. A vital part of the Holy Spirit’s present ministry is to elucidate God’s Word and apply it to the hearts and lives of those who belong to Christ. John assured his Christian readers, “You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. . . . And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him” (1 John 2:20, 27).

Paul declared to the Corinthian believers, “My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:4-5). Writing as God’s apostle, Paul’s word was God’s Word, not human wisdom but divine. “For our gospel did not come to you in word only,” he explained to the Thessalonians, “but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thess. 1:5).

When on a previous occasion the disciples had asked Jesus, “‘Why do You speak to them [the multitudes] in parables?’ . . . He answered and said to them, To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted’” (Matt. 13:10-11). The majority of the people who heard Jesus teach and preach had no desire for the things of God, and therefore what He said made no sense to them. “While seeing they do not see,” Jesus explained; “and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. . . . For the heart of this people has become dull, and with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I should heal them” (vv. 13, 15). But to the Twelve Jesus then said, “Blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear” (v. 16). The difference was not in the innate ability of the disciples but in their willingness to be taught by God. They, too, were spiritually blind, but through their faith the Lord enabled them to see.

“Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him,” Paul wrote, quoting Isaiah. “For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. . . . Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God” (1 Cor. 2:9-10, 12; cf. Isa. 64:4; 65:17).

As the believer studies God’s Word and allows God’s Spirit to interpret and apply it, he is divinely enabled to understand even the deep things of God. Though utterly blind in his natural mind and spirit, by God’s gracious provision he is given knowledge and understanding of the most important truths in the universe. As with the two disciples to whom Jesus appeared on the Emmaus road, a Christian’s heart should burn with wonder and glory as the Lord makes His truth come alive (see Luke 24:32).

The story is told of a blind French girl who was given a copy of the gospel of Mark in braille. As she read and reread the book, she came to have faith in Christ, and the book became more precious with each reading. She read it so much that she developed callouses on her fingers that eventually prevented her from feeling the raised dots. She was so determined to read God’s Word that she peeled the skin off the tips of her fingers to make them more sensitive, but in doing so she permanently damaged the nerves. Devastated, she picked up the book to kiss it farewell, only to discover that her lips were even more sensitive than her fingers.

God will always find a way to feed the heart that hungers for His truth.

The famous American revolutionary hero Ethan Allen was an avowed atheist and wrote a book denying the deity of Christ. When his devout Christian wife died, the daughter was torn between the ways of her parents. Some years after her mother died, the daughter was also struck with a terminal illness. As she lay dying, she said to her father, “You will bury me by the side of Mother, for that was her dying request. But Father, you and Mother have never agreed on religion. Mother often spoke to me of the blessed Savior who died for us all, and she used to pray for both you and me that the Savior might be our Friend and that we might all see Him when He sits enthroned in His glory.” Looking desperately into her father’s eyes, she pleaded, “I don’t feel I can go into death alone. Tell me whom I shall follow, you or Mother? Shall I reject Christ as you’ve taught me, or shall I accept Him, as Mother wanted me to do?” Deeply moved and heartbroken, her father replied, “My child, cling to your Mother’s Savior. She was right. And I, too, shall try to follow you to that blessed place.”

Only through Christ are the blind made to see.