The Grace of Our Lord Gives You Eyes to See Him. (Mat 20:29-34)

Class Outline:

Sunday September 7, 2025

 

Main idea: The Lord alone can heal the spiritual blindness that prevents every person from seeing the way of His kingdom. 

 

MAT 20:29-34

 

Intro:

 

The Lord alone can heal the thing within you that is causing the Person of Christ to be not as clear as He could be. 

 

It will be healed if you ask Him in faith. “You ask but do not have because you ask with wrong motives” (JAM 4:3).

 

If you continue to seek the Lord through His Word, I promise you that God will reveal the thoughts and motives of your heart.

 

Seeing is understanding and understanding of Him only comes from His Word repeatedly heard since understanding takes time. 

 

This is an historical depiction of our own struggle to maturity in which we see, or rather, understand (always in the heart) the whole mind of Christ. Maturity is when we walk in the light as He is in the light, delivered from darkness - a major theme of the whole of Scripture. 

 

1. Every person is born blind to the ways of the kingdom of heaven. 

 

Blindness of the fallen world - darkness.

 

Reason: all are born in Adam (ROM 5:19; 1CO 15:22).

 

The real problem with the human race is not physical, economic, political, or even moral.

 

Result: spiritual blindness, darkness (JOH 3:19 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.”)

 

Darkness is ignorance = can’t see salvation, life, goodness. 

 

Result of the fall: individual and group.

 

Individual: Misery, disappointment, disenchantment (big one: hopes dashed) = blind beggar on the side of the road. 

 

The problem does not vanish when we become believers.

 

EPH 3:4

By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ

 

EPH 3:9

to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery

 

EPH 3:18

may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

 

EPH 4:13

until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

 

EPH 4:17-18

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them

 

From this point in his letter, until EPH 5:21, Paul goes through a cycle, multiple times, of darkness and light; the old and the new.

 

Lay aside the old self, put on the new (EPH 4:22-24); lay aside falsehood, speak truth (EPH 4:25); be angry, do not sin (EPH 4:26); stealing, giving (EPH 4:28); unwholesome words, edification (EPH 4:29); bitterness and wrath, kindness and gentleness and forgiveness (EPH 4:31-32) - keep reading and find them to 5:21.

 

Why do we need God’s Word to consistently test our minds and hearts, reveal our deep inner motivations, remind us the Lord Jesus Christ risen from the grave? (2TI 2:8; why does Paul have to say this to a man like Timothy, already learned, in ministry?)

 

Result of the fall: Group (Mob Mentality).

 

You do not live in isolation.

 

Mob mentality. A crowd’s collective behavior resists reasoned dialogue. This phenomenon has terms like mob mentality (loss of individuality), crowd psychology (change of behavior), mass persuasion (being influenced to do what you normally wouldn’t), or collective effervescence (heightened emotional energy and lowered reasoning power). You cannot reason with a crowd. People in a crowd tend to lose their individuality. I think of TSA workers in the airport trying to direct the mob.

 

Application: running with the wrong crowd. (PRO 13:20; 1CO 15:33). 

 

Influences from others assist in blinding us to truths that are vital to understand. 

 

This crowd does not yet see what kind of King Jesus is.

 

2. The world has a mob mentality. 

 

Crowd mentality of the disciples (rebuking the Syrophoenician woman (MAT 15:23), Peter’s forbidding the Lord (MAT 16:22); rebuking the children (MAT 19:13); rebuking Mary’s expensive perfume (MAT 26:8). 

 

Whose greatest? Can we sit on Your right and left? How many times must I forgive my brother? (calculating world - not Christ).

 

The mob mentality of the world puts every aspect of our lives in its cross hairs.

 

We must not allow it to continue. Initially, it cannot be avoided, but we have to humbly yield and accept His will, which is life and blessing. 

 

What area(s)? Ask with faith and courage and you will receive.

 

The two men are tenacious because faith seeks the Lord above the world.

 

3. Jesus seeks the desire that is in each soul: “What do you want Me to do for you?” 

 

The Lord does not practice healing on demand; He inquires. (repeat: “What do you want Me to do for you?”)

 

What you think or believe the Lord can do for you is only limited by who you believe Him to be. 

 

The two men get a private audience: Jesus always stops for faith. He always listens to faith. He always acts on our faith in Him. 

 

JOH 9:39-41; the man born blind sees more than the most learned in Israel. 

 

The proper result of getting your new eyes: look upon the one who healed you and follow Him, always looking.

 

The two follow Him. 

 

Now they can follow Him by their own choice. 

 

What more will they see? (what we’re going to see over the next few months) They will see the passion week with their first week of sight and then, after they despair like the rest, they will see (or at least believe other eye-witnesses) the risen Christ. 

 

Application:

 

Keep seeking to clarify your vision of Christ:

 

Don't become part of crowd or get your identity from it.

 

Discern people's faith not their position in life.

 

Christ is the only way to life. Following Him is a journey of seeing more.