Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. Thanks for making time to hang out with me. I know you have a lot to do. I know there's a billion podcasts and other things out there to listen to as well. And yet here we are. And that's pretty awesome. And I always appreciate it. And I want to make sure that you know that I appreciate it. And also, welcome to any of you who have not hung out with me before and you're here doing this for the first time. That's awesome. We're in Matthew chapter nine, chipping away at the first book of the New Testament a little bit more every day. And right now we're looking at a pair of back-to-back stories where Jesus heals some people who were blind and somebody who is demon-possessed. Don't worry, we'll break all of that stuff down more as we go along, who could not talk. And so it seems like then there must be some kind of thing going on here, a motif about the five senses, because these things are arranged back to back. So what's the point? What's the text getting at? Every text kind of has this question that it demands just based on the clues that are sitting there right in front of us. And I think this one is suggesting to us that we should think about the five senses thing. So that's what we're going to do this time around. The two that are on display here, blindness and not being able to speak. Let's talk about the blindness side of that, because that one comes up more than the mute-ness side throughout the Bible. And it might seem like culturally the idea of being blind has one connotation, but check out this mental ninja ing. Blind is a bat, justice is blind, love is blind, that umpire is blind. In each of those situations, it means something pretty different. I mean, in two of those, it's a compliment, right? And then in two others of those, it seems like it's a criticism or at least an acknowledgement of a lack of ability that somebody has. Or you could go even a step further and get into the cultural metaphorical examples that we have in our own time frame about blindness. Like Daredevil from Marvel, the comic book character, the whole idea of that character is that he's a blind guy, but upon becoming blind, he gains the ability to supremely sense what's going on around him and interact with the physical world, his environment more effectively than everybody else. And so it's kind of this twist on the story where you got somebody who's blind, but he sees better than everybody else. And this hero, also in the comic book, is a Christian, but he goes by daredevil. So you see what they're doing there. So for you and me, culturally, the idea of blindness is one that goes beyond just a simple one-dimensional thing, like being blind is bad, that um is blind. Being blind is good if you're trying to be just, justice is blind. Being blind is something that happens when you overlook the flaws in somebody you deeply love, which is a good thing. It goes beyond those simple one-dimensional things and even into this multidimensional metaphorical illustration that I think comes right from the Bible, the idea of the blind seeing and the seeing actually being blind. It's kind of a kingdom value motif that is sneaked into how we think about things. Well, if we have such complexity on the idea of blindness today, why would we imagine that people back in the day, at the time the Bible was being written and these events are happening, would have any less sophisticated understandings of blindness or any less multifaceted understandings of blindness? So, what I want to work on today, in the interest of not looking at a passage like this about blindness or muteness and just jumping to conclusions about what it must mean based on whichever one of those cultural images or metaphors for blindness might happen to spring to mind first. I want to look a bit more closely at what Jesus means when he talks about blindness and what the Bible means when it talks about blindness. So, Jesus talking about blindness, it's already come up in the book of Matthew. I'm gonna give you a chance right now to look real smart and impress everybody who you're listening to this with and be like, oh, where have we talked about blindness so far? Okay, five, four, three, two, one, your chance to look awesome is passed. I had to look it up too. It's cool. So Matthew 6, 22, remember it's the part where Jesus is saying, Don't store it for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal, but store it for yourselves treasures in heaven, where all of that stuff doesn't happen for your treasure is there, your heart will be also. Like, oh yeah, that's a very beautiful, important part of the Sermon on the Mount. But in the very next verse, remember this? He goes on to say, the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? And then you get the Mr. Miyagi thing about you can't serve two masters, squish light, grape, all of that. So if you recall, when we were looking at that, we had to process this difficult metaphor because an eye and a lamp, how does that work? We don't use that metaphor anymore. And it looks like contextually, what Jesus was doing here is saying that the eye isn't just something that goes out, but it's also a portal that lets things in. And the filters or gels or colorations that we put over our eyes affect what comes in, and what comes in affects what goes on at the level of our essence. But is that the only metaphor he uses? Well, flip over here and Matthew 11 is a couple pages in Matthew 11, 15. All right. This passage is the follow-up to what we just got done looking at in Matthew chapter 9, when John the Baptist's followers come up and they're like, hey, what's the you in the fasting? How come you don't fast like we fast? What's the deal with that? That conversation gets extended in Matthew chapter 11 when John gets imprisoned and John's disciples come and ask Jesus, like, Are you the Messiah? In so many words, that's what they're saying. Are you the one that we're supposed to be expecting? And Jesus pushes back pretty directly. He says, Go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, and those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Ah, see how the five senses thing comes up there again? You got the blindness, the leprosy thing, you're talking about touch. You've got the deaf hearing again, and you know, just throw dead people are being raised. That's like all the five senses in one fell swoop right there. So Jesus' answer to John the Baptist, who I think maybe should have had this one straight already, is look at the data, bro. Like all the things that are supposed to be happening are happening, but also how many of those have to do with the human capacity to engage with their environment in an accurate way? Fascinating. But then Jesus turns around and he's actually pretty complimentary. He's like, Hey, I tell you the truth, among those born of women, there hasn't risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. And he goes on to say a whole bunch of cool things about that, and then to say, and even as great as John the Baptist is, anybody who's in the kingdom, this new thing that is being initiated, is actually in a better place than him. And I can see how the whole thing would be sort of confusing when you get to the end. And Jesus seems to know that because he says, He who has ears, let him hear. If you get it, you get it. But he seems also content to say, if you don't get it yet, well then I guess you don't get it yet. So we got Matthew 6.22, where Jesus talks about the eyes as a portal into you. So the eyes as a gateway, a filter, and if your eyes are bad, then that could fill you with darkness. Then here it looks more like the eyes and ears are something that is evidence of a fulfillment of some messianic prophecy. So the idea here would be that seeing and hearing and talking and being alive are better materially than not seeing and not hearing and not talking and not being alive. And then further, he goes on to suggest that having the ability to hear is maybe something that is from beyond. Maybe that's a work that God is doing in some people and that some people are just gonna miss it. Jumping over to Matthew 13, a place where we're gonna spend a whole bunch of time very soon. Here again, Jesus says in verse 9, he who has ears, let him hear. Well, it's confusing because a bunch of people are gathering around and they're crushing in on him, and not everybody's understanding the parables and the way he's communicating. So then everybody clears out, and then the disciples come up to Jesus in verse 10, and they're like, Hey, why do you speak to the people in parables? Jesus fully discloses, not everybody's gonna get it. Some people are gonna kind of get it, some people are gonna get it for a minute and then stop getting it. Some people are gonna get it and it's really gonna take root. But the heart of his answer happens in verse 13, and it's a reference to the Old Testament. He says, This is why I speak to them in parables. Quote, though seeing they don't see, though hearing they don't hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah. Quote, you'll be ever hearing but never understanding, you'll be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused, they hardly hear with their ears, and they've closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them. So by drawing on this passage, which is from Isaiah 6, it seems that now Jesus is framing this even a little bit differently. Matthew 6, 22, the eyes, if they're good, they inform the inside of you well. If they're bad, they inform the inside of you badly. Matthew 11, fixing the eyes and ears of people is an indication that the Messiah is doing something. Also, Matthew 11, maybe God just makes it so some people can hear. I don't know. I realize that has a lot of implications and raises a lot of questions. We'll work on that. And then here in Matthew 13, it looks like he's saying blindness and deafness are a metaphor for a refusal to get it and to tell the truth to yourself about what your otherwise good eyes and otherwise good ears are seeing and hearing, respectively. And that kind of fits with what we were talking about last time around in Matthew chapter 9, where two groups of people looked at the exact same stuff happening. And one of them were like, that was amazing. I've never seen anything like that before. This is very compelling. And the others were like, demons, that's that's from Satan, that's screwed up, that's gross. I should have known this was going to take two days. That's okay, though. Tomorrow we are going to go and work more on filling out our understanding of what blindness, deafness, muteness would have meant to the original audience Jesus was talking to, what that would have meant to Matthew's original reading audience, what Jesus was drawing on in terms of cultural and religious motifs on this thing. And then I want to talk a little bit about some extra biblical assumptions that might have existed at that time in terms of blindness. Again, all of this is in the interest of us overcoming whatever snap association might happen for us when we hear the word blind or deaf, whether it be a negative one, ah, the ump is blind, the ref is blind, they missed that call, or a positive one, justice is blind, or a thematic one, daredevil is blind. I want us to get past that and try to understand this text the way the original audience would have understood it, and that's taken a little bit of work. So thanks for your patience with me. Tomorrow we're gonna look at Isaiah 6 and we're gonna look at some extra biblical stuff to round this out as well, and I think we're going to have fun. Then the day after that, we're gonna get back to the demons thing a little bit because I just can't help myself, and it's really interesting whenever that comes up. All right, we're wrapping it up there. Thank you for hanging out with me, especially if this was your first time ever being here. Thank you for doing this. Looking forward to doing this together more soon. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour. We'll catch you in a bit.