Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Today on Light on the Hill, we’re introduced to a blind man. He had a problem, and he went to the right person to find the solution.

James Kaddis: The first thing that he had to do was he had to find a way to get to Jesus. He could not have been healed had he not gone to the right person to heal him. You can sit in your room for the rest of your life with a problem, and if you never tell anybody about the problem, it can never get fixed.

Guest (Male): I have found that peace only comes from you. I have found that joy only comes from you, 'cause all I need is you.

From Calvary Chapel Signal Hill comes another edition of Light on the Hill. Pastor James Kaddis will be in Mark chapter 8. Jesus is about to heal a blind man. It was literally an eye-opening experience, and it can be for us too. Pastor James will point out a few noteworthy lessons like why we should go to the Lord with our problems, do what he says, and trust in his timing. Here’s Pastor James with part one of Life or Death.

James Kaddis: Okay, Mark chapter 8, and we will continue in verse 22. Look what it says here in verse 22: "And he cometh to Bethsaida," which of course, we're talking about Jesus here, who's coming with his disciples. "And they bring a blind man unto him and besought him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when he had spit on his eyes and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw aught. And he looked up and he said, 'I see men as trees walking.' After that, he put his hands again upon his eyes and made him look up, and he was restored and saw every man clearly. And he sent him away to his house saying, 'Neither go into town nor tell to anyone in the town.'"

So this is an interesting story that we read here, and it also creates the imposition of a few questions. For example, what was that with Jesus spitting, and then basically asking if that worked? Then of course, the man's vision was not being completely intact. Then Jesus went back and did something else, and then he had vision.

I stopped for just a second to reflect upon what that actually means, what it looks like, what's actually happening as Jesus is doing this, and what it was intended to do. What were the circumstances that led to this? Why did it happen this way? Why did Jesus do all of this? I think it's incredible because it goes back to the idea that if we will learn to predicate our conclusions on the trust that God knows better than we do, then the interpretation of what we see is going to change substantially and radically.

If you understand what is true and take what is true into what you're seeing, then how you develop a conclusion of the outcome is going to be completely different. I just mentioned this before we started the Bible study. Many of the conclusions that are false that are being drawn right now concerning the President of the United States or Bibi, for that matter, are predicated upon facts that are not real and things that are not true. When you start on a foundation of no truth and then you begin to ask questions without the foundation of truth, you're already leading yourself down a road of investigation that causes you to come to some bad conclusions.

If you know anybody in this church who are real investigators—people who do this for a living—one of the first things that they'll tell you when you talk to them is there is a massive gathering process. Even an attorney will understand this. One of the first things that they'll tell you when they talk about the process of investigation is that when the information has been gathered, then there is a massive vetting process. They don't even begin to think about conclusions of their investigation until they can verify that the facts stipulated are real and correct.

There are all kinds of things that cause people to see things that aren't completely there. There are all kinds of biases that people can develop. There are all kinds of things that they can look at based on experiences they've had in the past that can cause them to act a specific way or do a specific thing. So you can't even begin to think about coming to a conclusion until you take all the facts in front of you and you make sure they are the real facts.

Then and only then can you begin to develop conclusions through a process of asking questions about the facts, where they sit, and where something may stand from the perspective of something that is reasonable. Outside of the scope of that which is reasonable, you have to look at it a very specific way. But the reality of it is you cannot investigate and you cannot ask questions unless you have accepted that which you know to be true.

When people teach passages like this, they don't often remind themselves of the truth that they know and the truth that they've been taught, and then they come to conclusions that are broken. By the way, I wouldn't encourage you to do this, but if you went online and you started reading people's ideas about what happened here when Jesus spit in the person's face, I've heard people say Jesus lost his temper and that's how the spit ended up in his eye. I've heard people say crazy things about cultural issues. The stories are just unbelievable.

But here's the danger in that. If there's an aspect about the story that you simply don't know, then say you don't know it and investigate the things that you do know. Investigate the probability of that which exists within the moment and understand how they work to the story. What do we know about Jesus? First of all, is it safe to say that Jesus' motives are true? We know that his motives are true. We know that Christ is pure. He's never sinned. We know that.

Jesus has a heart of compassion for the people that he's addressing. We know that. Is Jesus the Son of God? Yes, we know that. Is Jesus a healer? Yes, he's our Creator. Of course, he's a healer. Does he know what he's doing when it comes to human interaction? That's a big yes. Is Jesus aware of the heart and the condition of the heart of the man that he's ministering to? Yes, we know that.

Here's a big one that a lot of people don't ask: Would Jesus then, in healing this person, be acting in their best interest? Absolutely. If Jesus is acting in his best interest, is there even a minute possibility that Jesus, in the action of healing this person, would do anything that wasn't in his best interest? No. What Jesus is doing here could very well be something that creates a condition indicative of what is going to be best for the blind man. Is it also possible that Jesus might be doing this so that the writer who writes this Gospel might provide details for us that would also cause us to want to understand what was going on? The answer to that is yes.

Keeping all of that stuff in mind, let me give you an idea of what I think is happening. Let me give you an idea of what seems to make the most sense based on the facts that we do know. I'm willing to say right off the bat that some of the pontificating that might be going on is not definitive in the sense that I can't read people's minds and I don't know what people were thinking at the time that they were saying it. But based on what I do know of Christ, I know that he loves us. I know that he acts in our best interest.

I know that he's the Creator of the universe, which means he doesn't make mistakes. And I also know that if he allowed this man to have his vision opened only to not see completely clearly—to have to have a round two—then he did it for a reason. Let me tell you what I think is happening here. First and foremost—and I probably shouldn't have chased this rabbit trail, but I have—some of the stories that come out of this are just unbelievable. Some of them will just make you outright cry because what we're doing right now in medical science is amazing.

They're taking people who were born blind at birth and at six through ten years old, they're giving them vision. They're actually learning how to cure certain forms of color blindness. They're doing all kinds of things right now with medical technology. One of the things that they're learning because they've done enough of these is they're learning about restoring people's vision. They've learned it very quickly. Tell me if this is not coincidental as I share it. One of the things that they're learning is that they can actually put into motion emotional and psychological damage if they take a person who has never seen and make them see instantly.

I didn't realize this, but do you know that when they now begin to do operations where they restore people's eyes, an overwhelming majority of the time they mandate psychological evaluation? They sit down and they prep them through what they're going to experience because the level of shock physiologically that they experience can be so overstimulating that in some contexts it can actually initiate seizures. It is the same kind of situation as if you walk into a room and there's a big flashing light all of a sudden.

Let's go back to what I know about Jesus. Does Jesus know everything about us? Yes. Is he a healer? Yes. Is he the one who created us? Yes. Does he know every detail about us? Yes. Is he acting in our best interest? Yes. What if God is initiating in this man a process that is not nearly as fast as we would expect it to be because he's caring for how the man gains his vision instead of the fact that he just gained his vision?

I would bet the farm on the fact that that's what is happening. Jesus is putting into motion a process that may not make sense to a lot of people, but will make perfect sense to him because he's God and he knows what a person can actually handle and what a person cannot. Let's look at the mechanics of what happened. The Bible tells us he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. Why would he lead the man out of the town? A lot of people would think that he led the man out of town so that many people around the town would not see him.

But that's a baloney argument because he could have taken the man 15 miles away. But the moment the man comes back seeing, Jesus is going to get the credit for it. Could it be possible that Jesus took him outside the town so as to understand the fact that the moment his eyes opened for the first time, he wouldn't be so overstimulated that he probably would have broken down and flopped? It's a possibility.

All I know and all I can say with great sincerity and depth—and with the backing of what is factual—is that Jesus did what he did for the blind man's benefit. He takes him out of town, he spits on his eyes, he puts his hands upon him, and he asks him if he saw aught. What do you think would happen if Jesus was around a bunch of people in the middle of the town, spits on the man's eyes, and then begins to question him? Do you think the man's going to have enough clarity to understand what's going on?

Do you think there's going to be so much interference that happens with the spectacle that they're seeing that maybe it's going to get in the way of what this man needs to experience in order to get healthy? Look what happens next because this is really interesting. He looked up and said, "I see men as trees walking." Now it's interesting because if you're going to make the assumption that this is a man who had never seen before, it's hard.

All we know is that he's a blind man. We don't know the length of time he's been blind, but certainly he's been blind for a long time. He's able to understand that his vision is still affected because he's not seeing things clearly. Could that mean that Jesus heard him describing what he was looking at and perceiving based on his description that what he was seeing was a description of a tree when in reality it was a man? I don't know. But what I do know is that Jesus then takes him to the next step.

The man says, "I see men as trees walking." After that, Jesus put his hands again upon his eyes and made him look up, and he was restored and saw every man clearly. The first time was a mild experience. He sees blurs. He sees men walking around, but he thinks they're trees walking around. The second time, he sees everything clearly. Everything is working.

There were three things that this man had to be willing to do in order to experience clarity for the first time in a long time. The first thing that he had to do was he had to find a way to get to Jesus. He could not have been healed had he not gone to the right person to heal him. You can sit in your room for the rest of your life with a problem, and if you never tell anybody about the problem, it can never get fixed.

I deal with this all the time in counseling. I say you need to tell me everything and you need to not dress it up. You need to not play games and you need to not lie. You need to tell me everything no matter how shocked you think I'm going to be, because I can promise you you're not going to tell me anything that I don't already know in one way or another or have not seen in one way or another. Just tell me the truth. Why? Because I can't fix what I don't know is broken.

There's no way this man could have been healed had he not gone to the Lord. I think there's a powerful lesson for us to be learned as readers of the Gospel. If you're a non-believer, the lesson is obvious: if you want to be healed from the bondage of sin and you want to find eternal life, there's only one place to go. You've got to start with Jesus. You've got to go to him.

If you're a believer, the powerful lesson that comes from this is that when confronted with any problem, no matter how big or small, you better know who to go to to get the problem fixed. I was talking to the mayor of the city and the police chief just a few hours ago because we did a ceremony for Law Enforcement Memorial Day. I think the mayor said, "Well, it's always about who you know." And I thought in my mind, "Yeah, that's true."

It's all about who you know. If you don't know Jesus, you've got one problem. But if you know Jesus and don't know to go to him when the problems arise, you lose. You can't open up the door for the problem to be solved if you seek to go elsewhere to get it solved. You've got to go to the Lord. There's no other way around it. I can have a long day where I haven't slept and I'm completely exhausted, and I can seek to empty every last dime in my pocket to have people do things for me, and it still won't solve the problem of exhaustion.

I have to go to the core issue. I have to go to the place where I need to go. It's the same thing. I'm not going to solve an interpersonal relationship that is affected primarily by my bad behavior by going somewhere where I can't find the solution. Am I going to try to solve it with the person I have a bad relationship with? No. The only person I can go to that's going to fix my problem is going to be Christ. If I can't go to him, I can't even get to first base. You've got to go to the Lord to find the solution to the problem.

And by the way, this is a replicable pattern. The second thing you have to do is you have to be willing to go where he tells you to go. You have to be willing to do what he says. The man goes to Jesus for help and Jesus says, "Okay, let's go outside the city." The only time you went outside the city was if you were going to get stoned to death or if you were traveling somewhere.

If you're going to go to the Lord, you have to be willing to do what he asks you to do. That's the reason why I don't do much counseling anymore, because I point people to go to the Lord and they're just not willing to do what God wants them to do. It's a waste of time. It doesn't work. So not only do you have to go to Jesus, you have to go where he tells you to go. That's a critical one.

The other thing you have to do is you have to put your trust in the solution that he brings to the table. You know what the average person might do in this situation? The average person might get really upset and say, "What a horrible God he is! He just spit in my face. He doesn't like disabled people." You could make whatever argument you want. You could go crazy with that whole situation.

But the man trusted that God knew what he was doing. The other thing that you have to do—and this one perhaps may be one of the most significant and most important things—is you have to trust in his timing. Listen, he went to Jesus. He listened to what Jesus said. He trusted in Jesus' solution. And when the effect came that was not desired, he was willing to rest in the timing of God. Lots of people have the mindset that if it's not working for them, they're out of here.

Well, I've got news for you. If you're walking with the Lord and you're serving him and you love him, what God is doing in your life is either working on you or it's working for you. There's no other way to look at it. It's a really simple process. You've got to think all that through.

Guest (Male): This is Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis, and we're currently going through the Gospel of Mark. Listen to this study and more at lightonthehillradio.com. Pastor James' teachings are also available through the Light on the Hill app and at oneplace.com. You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts as well. When you have a moment sometime today, send us an email. We'd love it. It's encouraging to hear what the Lord is doing in our listeners' lives, and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what he's doing. There's a place to contact us at our website, lightonthehillradio.com.

We've been blessed by the feedback we've received thus far regarding Pastor James' new book, *The Last Book*. If you haven't ordered a copy yet, we'd encourage you to do so. This guide to Revelation covers the first half of the book, giving you what you need to know about the Rapture and the end times in a clear and concise manner. Request your copy today at lightonthehillradio.com or through Amazon.

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Pastor James, this was literally an eye-opening study in Mark. Jesus healed this man, but the question I have heard in response to that is: Why doesn't God heal everyone? Maybe someone listening right now is desperately wanting that in his or her own life or the life of a loved one, but it hasn't happened. Would you respond to that as we close?

James Kaddis: Well, first and foremost, I would simply say that if you're a believer, God has your best interests at heart. So trust him and understand the fact that he's in control and wants to give to you the best of what he has, that you would experience him to the fullest. If you choose to not put your faith and trust in the Lord, I would say the question is somewhat superfluous. It's a moot point.

The reason why it's a moot point is because if you choose to not acknowledge that the Creator of the universe has sovereign control over everything because you say that he doesn't exist, well then you don't have the depth of awareness to recognize that you can't possibly understand the fact that God will do with people what he chooses to do because he's sovereign.

In his sovereignty, he knows how it should be handled and the best way it should be conveyed. It's that simple. So it goes back to one of the questions that God asked Job: "Where were you when I spun the world into existence?" I think we have to look at it the same way.

Guest (Male): Thanks for that encouragement, Pastor James. Now with this final point of application, here's Pastor James.

James Kaddis: So Jesus asks him some questions—one question to be very specific. He was able to communicate with him. That's something that we have to learn how to do. We have to learn how to communicate with the God that's guiding us. If God is guiding you somewhere, he's also speaking to you, and if he's speaking to you, you have an obligation to respond to that.

You've got to go to him. You've got to listen to where he's asking you to go. You've got to go where he goes. That's a very important thing to do. You've got to trust him. You have to be able to rest in his timing and you've got to communicate. You have to communicate with him. Jesus asked him a question. This is what he saw. His communication skills may not have even been great. He probably wasn't using any superpower medical terminology. He was saying, "I see men walking like trees." Okay, fair enough. God can do that. If he can read your mind, he can understand what you're trying to say.

But the next thing that you have to do is you have to be willing to dedicate the rest of your life to walking in obedience to the word that he gives you. He told the man, "Go. Go do this." We'll save the rest of this message for next time.

Guest (Male): Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.

I have found that peace only comes from you. I have found that joy only comes from you, 'cause all I need is you.