Have you seen the video for blinding lights by the weekend? It's pretty cool. I mean, it's got the Michael Jackson beat it era overtones to it, but also kind of tells a little story. It's just, I don't know, it's a decent music video if you're into that kind of thing. Disclaimer, disclaimer, whatever you're into. It's good, naughty music. I don't know, whatever. I thought it was cool. Here's the thing, though the metaphor for light and darkness is something that is timeless. It's always worked. Everybody knows what it means when somebody throws that out. You make pop music for children in the year 2020. People still get the light and darkness metaphor. It works. You make, like, I don't know, a Bible in, say, the first century AD and you use the light and darkness metaphor. It works. Let's say that you're writing prophecy hundreds of years earlier in the time of the Babylonians and the Persians, and you use the light and darkness metaphor. It also works. Though there can be the occasional upside to darkness, which is acknowledged in that blinding light song, still generally darkness is like, oh, you can't see as well, things aren't working as well, you can't identify truth as well, you can't separate things out or figure things out as well. And if you were living constantly in darkness, like say blindness-induced darkness, it would be way cooler if you could see stuff. So when we're in Matthew chapter 9, and Jesus heals these two blind guys who relentlessly pursue him, being like, hey, have mercy on us, son of David. And they bust into a house where he's at, and Jesus is like, okay, I was totally expecting you. And he's like, hey, do you believe that I'm able to do this healing thing? And they're like, Yes, we do, Lord. And he's like, okie dokie. And he touches their eyes and he says, according to your faith, it will be done. And then their sight is restored. Again, the metaphor kind of hits you over the head with a bat. It's not subtle. These guys were in darkness, stumbling around, and now they can see. But one of the interesting things is that even in their state of darkness, they were still able to identify Jesus as the Son of David, which is code to the original audience for Messiah. And they knew that wait a minute, okay, what's the deal with the Messiah? Yeah, the Messiah is supposed to be able to bring light to the darkness, to bring sight to the blind. And so they looked at the other things that Jesus had done, you know, looked or rather heard about the other things Jesus had done. They did the mental math. They thought about what they knew about the Bible or what they would call the scriptures, and they were like, all right, that is who you are, and they could see it, even though they were in darkness and blind. That is both a testimony to how much Matthew thinks of Jesus' compellingness as a messianic character. Like even blind people can see it. It's so evident it breaks through the darkness, and it's also a compliment from Matthew and from Jesus to the blind people themselves for seeing something that supposedly enlightened people just a couple of verses earlier were unable to see. Now, Jesus uses this light and darkness or blind and having sight metaphor quite a bit. He mostly uses it to call out his enemies who are getting after him, saying this is how the things ought to be. And those enemies are going to be complaining about stuff in the very next passage we look at. And in fact, I'll just give you a quick preview. While they were going out, a man who was demon-possessed could not talk was brought to Jesus. And when the demon was driven out, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed and said, Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel. But the Pharisees said, It is by the Prince of Demons that he drives out demons. So it's obvious to you and me as a reader that we're supposed to look at the Pharisees and be like, wow, the blind guys could see it, but the people whose eyes are working can't see it one passage later. And then Jesus doubles down on that metaphor of blindness, darkness, not sight when dealing with those Pharisees later on. In Matthew 15, verse 14, talking about the Pharisees, he says, Leave them, they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit. Again, indicating that Jesus thinks seeing things is better than not seeing things, though I'm sure he did not mean any personal insult against you if you happen to be blind. Chapter 23, verse 16 begins a string of Jesus using the same language. Woe to you, blind guides. You say if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. If that doesn't make any sense, you don't worry about it. We'll get to it later. You blind fools, which is greater, the gold of the temple or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You also say, if anyone swears by the altar, it means then he goes on to say some other stuff, you blind men. And he just keeps hitting this blindness theme. That is the dig he wants to throw out at the Pharisees. You guys should be able to see, you are best positioned to be able to see, but you can't see the simple basic truth that's right in front of you that even a blind guy can see. So moving forward, when it comes to the blinding lights, light, darkness, sight, not sight metaphor, we see Jesus use it a lot as a critique of the people who ought to get it but don't. But moving backwards in terms of how the original audience would have heard this language, we've got one of the most important prophecies in the entire Old Testament. This is Isaiah 61. And this was a really important passage of scripture before Jesus ever came along. And then, as we'll talk about in a minute, it's an even more significant messianic passage after Jesus comes along. It goes like this The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has appointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. And if you're like, oh, that's weird, I don't know that much about Isaiah, but I'm sure I've heard that one before. It's probably because over in Luke, chapter, I want to say four, Jesus is in Nazareth, his hometown. You remember this story, right? We talked about it before. And he's still pretty early in the game, and people aren't sure what to make of him. And he goes up because the leader of the synagogue there is like, okay, you get to read the next thing. And Jesus goes up and he reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 61. They wouldn't have called it that at the time, but that's what it is to us. And he reads. And it says in verse 17, unrolling it, he, Jesus, found the place where it is written, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. I guess I stopped reading Isaiah 61 a little too early because it goes into that stuff too. So right off the bat, hopefully you're like, oh, wow, that's really interesting because Jesus is claiming that passage for himself. I mean, famously after he reads it in Luke chapter four, he says, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. And he's talking about himself. That's a gigantic throwing down of the gauntlet at the beginning of his life in Luke chapter four. So on the one hand, like, wow, that's that's really cool the way Jesus took that. And it's not like a later author tried to attribute that prophecy to him and be like, oh, look how this kind of fits. Jesus said that he is the fulfillment of that exact prophecy. I mean, smoking gun claim about who he believes himself to be, and that is the son of David, the Messiah, the one who's gonna bring sight to the blind and straighten out all the broken stuff and bind up the brokenhearted and bring about all of this good news and proclaim freedom for the captives. But there might be one thing that you also noticed in there that deserves a quick side note, and that is that in Isaiah, the language is a little bit different. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners. And again, over in Luke 4, not five, it says, He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind. What gives? Did Jesus have a bad copy of the Bible? And the answer is no. Just about every scroll that he probably would have been reading from in a Nazarene synagogue at that point in history would have been derived from what we call the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. It's possible that he's reading from a Hebrew or Aramaic rendering here, but it's one of those places where the Septuagint differs just a little bit in the language from what we believe to be the Hebrew text that was floating around, and the Hebrew text from which most modern Bibles translate Isaiah 61. So when you go read Isaiah 61, in most of your Bibles, Old Testament, it'll say, proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, which really effectively communicates the same thing. It's just the metaphor is spelled out a little differently. And then when you're looking at what there's a good chance is drawn from the Septuagint in Luke chapter 4, the language is a little bit different, but the meaning is the same. And I've broken down tons of the questions and controversy and really beautiful things and harmonizing things about those different ancient versions of the Hebrew scriptures or what we call the Old Testament over on the YouTube channel. You can go and check that out if you want. It's just something that I felt needed to be acknowledged because you're not stupid, and you can tell that Isaiah 61 had slightly different language on the question of blindness than Luke chapter 4. Either way, the original audience would have come across that and been like, oh yeah, I heard that one. You can't be the son of David, you can't be the Messiah and not bind up the brokenhearted. You can't be the Messiah and not bring sight to the blind. Now imagine the really astute original audience member who's looking at what Matthew has written down, which again appears to be chronological in nature at this point in the text. And you're like, okay, well, what has he done in what we call chapter nine? He's bound up the brokenhearted, take heart, son, your sins are forgiven. Remember that from the beginning of chapter nine? Bound up the brokenhearted over here later in chapter nine, too. Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you. And he's given sight to the blind. Do you believe I'm able to do this? Yes, Lord, they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, According to your faith, will it be done to you? And their sight was restored. And you might be like, hey, wait a minute though, where's the freedom for the captives? That was supposed to be happening too. And the answer is, Well, you already cast out those demons on the other shore, but just in case news didn't get back, in the very next passage, once again, he frees someone from his captivity in a spiritual sense. In other words, once again, Jesus is taking all the boxes, and the blind guys can tell that even without functioning eyes. Yet somehow, by the mercy of the king making himself evident to the blind guys, who probably never would have been able to see it without the king's involvement and investment and presence near them, because of that, their eyes now work and they can see things rightly for what they are. And I think those are the basic levels of how the metaphor plays out here, looking backwards and forward from the perspective of the original audience on the whole blind versus sight thing. Well, it's been a couple of weeks since we were talking about demons, and I know you're all chomping at the bit to get back to more of that kind of business. So we're gonna talk about that kind of stuff tomorrow. I'm Matt, this is the 10 minute Bible Hour podcast. Thanks for hanging out with me. Let's do this again soon.