Matthew 9:27-34
27 And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” 28 When he entered the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” 29 Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it done to you.” 30 And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them, “See that no one knows about it.” 31 But they went away and spread his fame through all that district.
32 As they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to him. 33 And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke. And the crowds marveled, saying, “Never was anything like this seen in Israel.” 34 But the Pharisees said, “He casts out demons by the prince of demons.” [1]
This is our 9th lesson from this section of Matthew chapters 8 and 9. Many of you were here when we went through the entire Sermon on the Mount. By now, all of us should be able to identify at least five reasons why we believe Jesus is the Messiah based on our study together. That is, after all, Matthew’s reason for writing his Gospel account. He has shown us Jesus’ lineage, his miraculous birth, his flight to Egypt, the beginning of his public ministry, his teachings, his interaction with various kinds of people, their responses to him and to his miracles.
First, we can believe Jesus is the Messiah because of his words. What he said, when he said it, and how he said it – with unmatched authority, authenticity, and insight into both the mind of God and the human heart. As John wrote in John 7:46, “No one ever spoke like this man.” Once God begins to work in a human heart, those seemingly-offensive commands, and those crazy claims about himself soften the hardened heart, renew the confused mind, and free our will to know and love and follow him.
Second, we can believe Jesus is the Messiah because of his verifiable predictions. You might recall Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (24:35). Now, if 500 years after Jesus said something like that, nobody ever spoke or heard of his words (the Golden Rule or the Lord’s Prayer) then we could say his claim was bogus. If 2000 years after he said, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (7:1) and only a few thousand people in the world knew who said that or have even heard that phrase, then we might tend to believe that Christianity is bogus. But when millions of people who don’t go to church, use Christ’s words in their own regular conversations, often without knowing it, that should get our attention.
Jesus made another prediction that should get our attention. It concerns the church. He spoke of its permanence, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (16:18). He also promised the Kingdom would spread and the gospel be believed by people from every nation (8:11; 28:19). Consider that claim, especially in the context of the 1st century.
If we lived in Christ’s day and we heard Caesar Augustus predict that Rome would last for 2000 years and our way of life will dominate people from every corner of the world, from our perspective, we likely would have agreed. But we know that’s not what happened. Rome collapsed. How could the great Roman Empire crumble to the ground? How could the Egyptian, Assyrian, and British empires all crumble while this tiny religion from this insignificant Middle Eastern people (this “Kingdom,” as Jesus calls it) keeps on growing?
The third reason Matthew has shown us to believe that Jesus is the Messiah is that he fulfills Old Testament prophecies and patterns. Jesus himself said in Luke 24:44 that what was written in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms was all fulfilled in him. Jesus claimed there is a unity to the Bible and that he is the unifying figure.
The more you read the Bible with Christ centered glasses, the more you will be amazed at how it all fits together. It’s not simply the predictive prophecies, such as Messiah will be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), in the town of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), or that he will be the suffering servant to atone for our sins (Isaiah 53). It is also the patterns he fulfills. He is the fulfillment of the Old Testament roles of prophet, priest, and king. Those offices were merely types and shadows of Messiah Jesus!
The 4th reason we can believe Jesus is the Messiah is because of his miracles. And now we are getting closer to our text this morning and closer to what we have looked at for the last few passages in the eight miracles we have seen so far in Matthew 8, 9. Other religions might believe in miracles or allow for miracles, but Christianity depends upon them. Most importantly we depend on the miracle of Christ’s resurrection. If he did not miraculously rise from the dead, then our faith is void, it’s useless.
But it’s not just the miracle of the resurrection, for which there is ample evidence. It is also all the less spectacular miracles scattered throughout the gospel accounts. If we look at the summary sections of Jesus miracles (and we have one coming in 9:35), we will see that Jesus healed thousands of people from every disease and affliction. Neither the Roman rulers nor the Jewish leaders of the day denied that he performed those miracles. Even Jewish historian Josephus admits that Jesus was a miracle-worker. No other explanation accounts for all the eyewitness testimony and all the interest of the crowds.
But it’s not just that Jesus was a miracle worker, we should believe Jesus is Messiah because of how he performed his miracles. He never showed off like the huckster miracle workers of today; he got rid of the crowd whenever he could. More importantly, he touched the untouchables – a leper, a dead body, the eyes of the blind. Why touch them? Why not just bark out a command from a safe distance? How he healed is significant. But when he healed is also significant. He healed on the Sabbath, for example. He did it to make a theological point, but also to show he had the power to heal however and whenever he wanted.
It is how he healed. It’s when he healed, and it’s what he healed – leprosy, demon possession, paralysis, blindness, even death! His resume is quite impressive. He wasn’t healing sprained ankles, pimples, or runny noses. What he did, when he did it, and how he did it was never seen in the history of Israel (9:33), but never seen in the history of the world. Not even those who clearly hated him dared to argue that his miracles were fake. Jesus’ miracles should help us believe he is Messiah.
The fifth reason we can believe Jesus is the Messiah is tied to this reality of Jesus as a miracle worker. It involves whom Jesus healed. His healing goes deeper than mere physical healing. It involves spiritual healing. It is whom Jesus welcomed into the Kingdom of heaven. We see the Lord of the Harvest harvesting lepers and Roman centurions and women and demon possessed men and tax collectors and the blind and the deaf and the dumb.
We see God’s compassion for both the materially and religiously poor, the social and religious outcasts of his society – the last, the lost, the least, the little, and the dead! We are so familiar with these gospel stories, and we have been so Christianized in the Western world with basic Christian ethics, that we don’t think twice about helping the hungry, caring for the sick, loving the loveless, forgiving those who trespass against us, or welcoming ethnic and economic diversity into the body of Christ.
We take Christ’s compassion and Christianity for granted. But what he did, not only in his death on the cross (the ultimate show of compassion for outcasts!), but also what he did here in these two chapters of Matthew 8, 9, is unparalleled. No one in the history of the world showed compassion how he did and to whom he did. And that compassion is what makes us want to exclaim with great joy and with deep conviction, “Truly this is the son of God.” Truly, Jesus is the Messiah!
TWO BLIND MEN
With that understanding of what Matthew has been writing, we come to our 9th miracle story of the two blind men in 9:27-31. What does the story of these two blind men add to this section in Matthew that we have not already seen in the previous miracles? Do they merely add to Jesus’ already impressive miracle-worker resume?
Certainly, like the previous miracles, they show Messiah’s authority over the effects of the curse in this world, everything from blindness to death. But before these two men receive sight, they add to our understanding of faith. This miracle focuses on faith: “Do you believe” (9:28) and “According to your faith be it done to you.” The two blind men focus our attention on three questions: (1) in whom are we to have faith? (2) For what are we to ask? (3) How are we to come to Christ?
These two men answer the question by plainly answering that they are trusting into Christ alone:
27 And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” 28 When he entered the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” 29 Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it done to you.” 30 And their eyes were opened.
Notice some details in this passage. First, the topic of faith is at the center of their conversation. In faith they cry out to Jesus because they want to be healed. Jesus then asks them if they believe that he is able to do this. Jesus doesn’t ask them if they believe that his Father in Heaven has the power to heal. Rather, he says, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” Their response is an unqualified “yes.”
Jesus is the object of their faith. Specifically, it is Jesus as the “Son of David” (9:27). These two men are the first to use this important messianic term for Jesus. They are the first two people to see both Christ’s royalty and his role as the one who fulfills the Davidic covenant. The first words in Matthew’s gospel are, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David…” (1:1). Finally someone has caught up with Matthew’s line of reasoning. He is the Son of David, the greater, eternal King promised to David so long before.
The messianic age was understood to be a time when “the eyes of the blind [would be] opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped,” when “the lame [would] leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy” (Isa. 35:5–6). “If Jesus was really the Messiah, the blind reasoned, then he would have mercy on them; and they would have their sight,” writes D. A. Carson. They may not have been certain that their faith was rightly placed before they cried out, but it was their only chance. Their condition was as hopeless as that of the people in the preceding story. Yet once Jesus turned to them, called them inside, questioned them, and healed them, they knew he was indeed the Savior and the King of Israel.[2]
In spite of what many people today think, faith is not nebulous. Faith demands an object. It must be placed into something or someone. For instance, someone may tell you they have faith in the philosophical idea that all faiths are the same. It may not be historically or logically accurate. But at least that person admits to having faith in something. But you cannot have “faith in faith.” Faith demands an object. Just like love. You cannot be “in love with love.” As Christians, we have faith in Christ. Like these blind men, we look to him alone as the object of our saving faith, for he alone is “the son of David.”
The second question these two men help us answer is: For what? We are to have faith in Christ Jesus, but for what? The answer is mercy. Verse 27 tells us the two blind men followed after Jesus crying out, “Have mercy on us.” They wanted Jesus to have compassion for their condition. Blindness in their time led not only to the obvious hardships, but also to shunning and poverty. The blind in Christ’s day were almost always beggars. Additionally, blindness also had a religious stigma attached to it. In the Old Testament, every example of someone becoming blind is in the context of their being judged or punished for sin (Deuteronomy 28:28).
Think of the Sodomites knocking on Lot’s door. They were struck with blindness (Genesis 19:11). You might recall Elisha’s prayer for the attacking Syrian army to be struck with blindness, which they were (2 Kings 6:18). Recall Samson and how his eyes, because of his sin, were gouged out (Judges 16:21). He died blind.
In the New Testament, Christ’s healing of the blind man in John 9 shows that blindness is not always related to sin. Yet other texts like Acts 9:8 (13:11), where the apostle Paul is stricken temporarily blind, show that it sometimes is. Sin always has consequences. Sometimes those consequences manifest themselves physically. So, there might be more to this plea for mercy than a cure for blindness. They might be confessing their sin and repenting. But Matthew wants us to think more spiritually, whatever the etiology of their blindness.
Like the paralyzed man brought to Jesus at the beginning of Chapter 9, their biggest need and our biggest need is God’s merciful forgiveness of sins. Jesus did not die to make nice people even nicer. He didn’t die just to show us how to sacrifice for others. Jesus died to demonstrate God’s hatred towards sin and mercy toward sinners, sin blinded sinners like you and me and them.
So, we are to have faith in Christ Jesus. And for what? Mercy. And finally: how are we to come in faith to Jesus for mercy? What should our posture be? We should come with a starving humility. Jesus passes by. The blind men follow him and cry out loudly, “Have mercy on us, son of David” (9:27). But what does Jesus do? For the first time in this Gospel, when asked for something he just keeps on walking. Why does he do that? Is he testing their faith? Or maybe he is concerned that they are proclaiming his messianic title publicly, which might be wrongly interpreted by the crowd as Jesus being a political savior (cf. 9:30,31).
Whatever his reason, he goes into the house, and they follow right after him. These men are starving for healing. Like the father of the dead girl, like the hemorrhaging woman, and the four men who tore a roof off to save their friend, these two blind men are absolutely determined to get into the presence of Jesus. That is starving humility! That is gospel faith!
Just like all the other beneficiaries of Jesus’ miracles, they show faith in him before he performs any miracle. Here, Jesus makes sure of it. He asks them point blank, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.”
Jesus responds to their starving humility with his own humility. He touches their unclean, diseased, sin-infected, curse-laden eyes. “According to your faith be it done to you.” 30 And their eyes were opened. Can you imagine it? Immediately they saw the light of the sun, the flight of the sparrow, the color of Jesus’ eyes.
FAITH’S EXUBERENCE
Now the irony begins to build, particularly as we move to the next miracle. Once these blind men see, the first thing they do is disobey Jesus (9:31). We could go all judgy on them, as I am want to do when I observe other people’s disobedience. Here is how their story ends:
And Jesus sternly warned them, “See that no one knows about it.” 31 But they went away and spread his fame through all that district.
Scholars often talk about the “messianic secret,” why Jesus sometimes told people to be quiet about a miracle (and sometimes did not, cf. John 4). There is much written speculation about why Jesus instructed certain people to remain silent about him. But the simplest explanation is that Jesus was not looking for the fanfare that comes with the power to heal and, more importantly, he did not want the crowds and his disciples to misunderstand the nature of his Kingdom or kingship.
Jesus is indeed the Son of David, but unlike David he has not come as a military warrior but as a sacrificial lamb. He is the Son of David, but he is also the Suffering Servant. Certainly, the men were wrong to disobey Jesus’ very intense command. But we can be sympathetic. Seriously, they were just helplessly happy, gleefully grateful. I doubt there is a one of us who would not have done the same thing.
This story, and the story of the deaf mute that follows, only appear in Matthew’s Gospel. When these men were blind, they still saw who Jesus was. They knew in whom they were to have trust, what they were to ask for, and how they were to approach Jesus. But once they have their physical sight, their first tendency is to stop living by faith, which is always shown by obedience to Christ commands (1 John 2:3). But note this well: they retained their physical sight. Jesus did not strike them blind again for their disobedience. He was gracious and he understood their weakness in their moment of great exuberance!
TOO BLIND TO SEE
Look at verses 32-34:
32 As they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to him. 33 And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke. And the crowds marveled, saying, “Never was anything like this seen in Israel.” 34 But the Pharisees said, “He casts out demons by the prince of demons.”
After going through so many of these miracle stories in chapters 8, 9, you might have begun to notice how these stories work. All of the miracles highlight both Christ divine authority and his power. They are things only God could do, and that is what we are to think about them. Most of them demonstrate the nature of trust into Christ. This is how we are to respond to Jesus. But two of these miracles are noticeably different than the rest – the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and the exorcism of this deaf-mute man.
Faith is not mentioned in either account. Additionally, the other miracle stories contain dialogue between Jesus and whomever he heals. But when Jesus heals peter’s mother-in-law, there is no recorded dialogue. The same is true here with this poor man. Obviously, dialogue would be pointless with a deaf and mute person in Jesus’ day. But there is more to it than that.
I suspect that when there is no conversation between Jesus and the person healed, Matthew is making an important theological point. That’s why this particular miracle is included. Yes, Matthew is always making theological points. That is, after all, the point of writing a gospel account. But you could well ask what is the point of this miracle? What does it show? This miracle shows the blindness of the Pharisees.
In these few verses, the focus is not on the faith of the mute or on the miracle itself. Matthew spills no ink there. Rather, the focus is on the reactions to the miracle. The crowd marvels, “Never was anything like this seen in Israel” (19:33). The crowd marvels. But the Pharisees do not. They refused to believe. Having seen with their own eyes Jesus healed the leopard, the lame, the blind, this demon possessed deaf and mute man, and also having seen a demon cast out, they accused Jesus of demonic activity, of working for the devil (cf. 12:24).
They have made themselves willfully blind to their own scripture. They refused to consider such verses as Isaiah 35: 4-6, “Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come …and save you.” 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.’” [3] They are blind to God’s Word. So they are blind to God’s Son.
This is part of the upside-down nature of Matthew’s Gospel. The centurion shows that gentiles can see Jesus for who he is. Matthew himself shows that sinners, even tax collectors, can also see him. And then, irony of ironies, even blind men see Jesus as Lord and Christ. But these Jewish religious elites are completely blind. The blind see, the mute speak, the lame leap but the Pharisees speak out of their willful spiritual blindness.
Although they can see and have seen, they cannot see and will not see Jesus for who he is. They are too blind to see Jesus. And this is why Jesus will say of them in Matthew 23, “Woe to you, blind guides . . .” (vv. 16, 24), woe to “[y]ou blind fools” (v. 17), woe to “you blind men” (v. 19), woe to “[y]ou blind Pharisee[s]” (v. 26). And this is why he will say, after he heals the blind man in John 9:39, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”[4]
What do you see today? Do you see anything? Like the Pharisees, are you blind to who Jesus is and what he offers? Or do you see him as the son of David, as Lord and Christ? Do you see him as full of mercy, willing to be merciful even to you, to all who come to him with starving humility?
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, 6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; 7who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; 8the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down….[5]
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 9:27–34.
[2] James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001), 158.
[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 35:4–6.
[4] O’Donnell, Douglas Sean. Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth (Preaching the Word) (pp. 270-272). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 146:5–8.
