THE BLIND MAN’S EYES OPENED – Charles Spurgeon
THE BLIND MAN’S EYES OPENED
— OR, PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
“Jesus answered, Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night comes, when no man can work.” John 9:3, 4.
Observe, dear friends, how little disconcerted our Lord Jesus Christ was by the most violent opposition of His enemies. The Jews took up stones to stone Him, and He hid Himself from them. But almost the moment after, when He had passed, perhaps, through a single court, and was sufficiently out of range to be unobserved by them, He stood still and fixed His eyes upon a blind beggar who had been sitting near the temple gate. I am afraid that most of us would have had no heart to help even the neediest while we were escaping from a shower of stones, and if we had attempted the work, moved by supreme compassion, we would have gone about it blunderingly, in a great hurry, and certainly would not have talked calmly and wisely, as the Savior did when He answered His disciples’ question and went on to talk with them.
One of the things worthy of notice in our Lord’s character is His wonderful quiet spirit, especially His marvelous calmness in the presence of those who misjudged, insulted, and slandered Him. He is reviled often, but never ruffled. He is often in death’s grip, but always full of life. No doubt He felt keenly all the contradictions of sinners against Himself, for in a passage in the Psalms which refers to the Messiah we read, “Reproach has broken My heart,” yet the Lord Jesus did not permit His feelings to overcome Him. He was quiet and self-possessed, acting with a profound disregard of the slanders and assaults of His bitter enemies.
One reason, I take it, for His being so self-contained was that He was never elated by the praise of men. Take my word for it, for I know it, that if you ever allow yourself to be pleased by those who speak well of you, to that extent you will be capable of being grieved by those who speak ill of you. But if you have learned (and it is a hard lesson for most of us) that you are not the servant of men, but of God, and that therefore you will not live upon the breath of men’s nostrils if they praise you, and you will not die if they denounce you—then you will be strong, and show that you have come to the stature of a man in Christ Jesus.
If the great Master’s head had been turned by the hosannas of the multitude, then His heart would have sunk within Him when they cried, “Crucify Him; crucify Him.” But He was neither lifted up nor cast down by men. He committed Himself unto no man because He knew what was in man. The innermost reason for this quiet of heart was His unbroken communion with the Father. Jesus dwelt apart, for He lived with God, the Son of man who came down from heaven still dwelt in heaven, serenely patient because He was raised above earthly things in the holy contemplations of His perfect mind.
Because His heart was with His Father, the Father made Him strong to bear anything that might come from men. Oh, that we all could wear this armor of light, the celestial panoply of communion with the High Eternal One. Then we would not be afraid of evil tidings, or of evil occurrences, for our hearts would be fixed on the sure rock of Jehovah’s unchanging love.
There was perhaps another reason for our Savior’s wonderful composure when He was attacked with stones, namely, that His heart was so set upon His work that He could not be turned away from it whatever the unbelieving Jews might do. The ruling passion bore Him on through danger and suffering, and made Him calmly defy all opposition. He had come into the world to bless men, and He must bless men. The Jews might oppose Him for this reason and for that, but they could not turn the current of His soul from the riverbed of mercy along which it rushed like a torrent. He must do good to the suffering and the poor; He cannot help it, His face was set like flint towards His lifework. It had become His meat and His drink to do the will of Him that sent Him, and so, when they took up stones, although He withdrew Himself a little, yet as He only wished to preserve His life to do good, He returned to His lifework without a moment’s delay. Stones cannot drive Him from His gracious pursuits.
As we have seen a parent bird, chased away for a moment from its nest, return to it the instant the intruder has withdrawn, so do we see our Lord come back to His holy work almost before He is out of the sight of His would-be murderers. Yonder sits a blind man, and Jesus is at once at his side to heal him. They will overtake You, O Christ! They will seek to slay You! There are more stones in their cruel hands. Your haters hurl their missiles fiercely, and they will be upon You in a moment! What cares He for that? No cowardly spirit can make Him overlook an occasion for glorifying the Father. That blind man must be attended to, and at all hazards He stops to deal with Him in love.
If you and I become completely taken up with zeal for God, and with the desire to win souls, then nothing will daunt us. We shall bear anything, and not seem to have anything to bear. We shall hear slander as though we heard it not, and endure hardship as though there were none to endure. As an arrow from a bow, shot by a strong archer, defies the opposing wind, and speeds forward to the white of the target, so shall we fly forward towards the great objective of our compassionate ambition. Happy is that man whom God has launched like a thunderbolt from His hand, who must go on and fulfill his destiny, happy that it is his vocation to bring sinners to the Savior’s feet.
O blessed Spirit, lift us up to dwell in God, and so to sympathize with His fatherly compassion that we may heed neither stones, nor sneers, nor slanders, but become absorbed in our self-denying service for Jesus’ sake!
Let that stand for an introduction. The Savior in His worst and lowest estate, when near to death, thinks of nothing but the good of men. When cruel eyes are spying Him out that they may slay Him, He has an eye for the poor blind. There is no stone in His heart towards the sorrowful even when stones are flying past His ears.
I. THE WORKER
I give that as a well-earned title to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the worker, the chief worker, and the example to all workers. He came into the world, He says, to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His work. On this occasion, when He is pursued by His enemies, He is still a worker—a wonder-worker with the blind man.
There are many in this world which ignore sorrow, pass by grief, are deaf to lamentation, and blind to distress. The easiest thing that I know of to do with this wicked, wretched City of London is not to know much about it. They say that half the world knows not how the other half lives. Surely if it did know, it would not live as carelessly as it does, or be quite as cruel as it is. There are sights in this metropolis that might melt a heart of steel, and make a Nabal generous. But it is an easy way of escaping from the exercise of benevolence to shut your eyes and see nothing of the abject misery which is groveling at your feet.
“Where ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise,” so said some easygoing ignoramus of old. If beggars are persistent, then passersby must be deaf. If sinners are profane, it is a simple matter to stop your ears, and hurry on. If this blind man must necessarily sit and beg at the gate of the temple, then those who frequent the temple must just slip by as if they were as blind as he. Crowds pass by and take no notice of him. Is not that the way with the multitude today? If you are in trouble—if you are suffering heartbreak, do they not ignore you, and go their way to their farm and to their merchandise, though you lie down and starve? Dives finds it convenient to remain ignorant of the sores of Lazarus.
It is not so with Jesus. He has a quick eye to see the blind beggar if He sees nothing else. If He is not enraptured with the massive stones and the beautiful architecture of the temple, yet He fixes His eyes upon a sightless beggar at the temple gate. He is all eye, all ear, all heart, all hand, where misery is present.
My Master is made of tenderness. He melts with love. O true souls who love Him, copy Him in this, and always let your hearts be touched with a fellow feeling for the suffering and the sinning.
There are others who, though they see misery, do not diminish it by warm sympathy, but increase it by their cold logical conclusions. “Poverty,” they say—“Yes. Well, that of course is brought on by drunkenness and by laziness and by all sorts of vice.” I do not say that it is not so in many cases, but I do say that the observation will not help a poor man to become either better or happier. Such a hard remark will rather exasperate the hardened than assist the struggling.
“Sickness,” say some—“Oh, no doubt, a great deal of sickness is caused by wicked habits, neglect of sanitary laws,” and so on. This also may be sadly true, but it grates on a sufferer’s ear. A very kind and pleasing doctrine to teach in the wards of our hospitals! I would recommend you not to teach it till you are ill yourself, and then perhaps the doctrine may not seem quite so instructive.
Even Christ’s disciples, when they saw this blind man, thought that there must be something particularly wicked about his father and mother, or something especially vicious about the man himself, which God foresaw, and on account of which He punished him with blindness. The disciples were of the same spirit as Job’s three comforters, who, when they saw the patriarch on a dunghill, bereft of all his children, robbed of all his property, and scraping himself because he was covered with sores, said, “Of course he must be a hypocrite. He must have done something very dreadful, or he would not be so grievously afflicted.”
The world will still stick to its unfounded belief that if the Tower of Siloam falls upon any men, they must be sinners above all sinners upon the face of the earth. A cruel doctrine, a vile doctrine, fit for savages, but not to be mentioned by Christians, who know that whom the Lord loves He chastens, and even His best beloved have been taken away all of a sudden.
Yet I do see a good deal of this cruel notion about, and if men are in trouble, I hear it muttered, “Well, of course they brought it on themselves.” Is this your way of cheering them? Cheap moral observations steeped in vinegar make a poor dish for an invalid. Such censures are a sorry way of helping a lame dog over a stile—no, it is putting up another stile for him so that he cannot get over it at all.
Now I mark this of my Lord—that it is written of Him that He “gives to all men liberally, and upbraids not.” When He fed those thousands in the wilderness it would have been most just if He had said to them, “Why did you all come out into the wilderness, and not bring provisions with you? What have you to do out here without something to eat? You are unthrifty, and deserve to starve.” No, no, He never said a word of the sort, but He fed them, fed them all, and sent them home filled.
You and I are not sent into the world to thunder out commandments from the top of Sinai, we are come unto Mount Zion. We are not to go on circuit as if we were judge and hangman rolled into one, to meet all the sorrow and misery in the world with bitter words of censure and condemnation. If we do so, how different we are from that blessed Master of ours who says not a word by way of rebuke to those who seek Him, but simply feeds the hungry, and heals all those who have need of healing!
It is easy to criticize, it is easy to upbraid, but ours should be the higher and nobler task of blessing and saving. I notice yet again that there are certain others who, if they are not indifferent to sorrow, and do not pitch upon some cruel theory of condemnation, nevertheless speculate a good deal where speculation can be of no practical service.
When we get together there are many questions which we like to raise and dispute upon which are of no practical value whatever. There is the question of the origin of evil. That is a fine subject for those who like to chop logic by the week, without making enough chips to light a fire for cold hands to warm at.
Such was the subject proposed to the Savior—foreseen guilt or hereditary taint—“Who did sin, this man, or his parents?” How far is it right that the sin of parents should, as it often does, fall upon the children? I could propose to you a great many topics equally profound and curious, but what would be the use?
Yet there are many in the world that are fond of these topics, spinning cobwebs, blowing bubbles, making theories, breaking them, and making more. I wonder whether the world was ever blessed to the extent of a bad farthing by all the theories of all the learned men that have ever lived. May they not all be put down under the head of vain janglings? I would rather create an ounce of help than a ton of theory.
It is beautiful to me to see how the Master breaks up the fine speculation which the disciples are setting forth. He says somewhat shortly, “Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents,” and then He spits on the ground, and makes clay, and opens the blind man’s eyes. This was work, the other was mere worry.
“Father,” said a boy, “the cows are in the corn. How did they get in?” “Boy,” said the father, “never mind how they got in, let us hurry up and get them out.” There is common sense about that practical proceeding. Here are these people sunken in vice, and steeped in poverty. Postpone the inquiries—how they got into this condition? What is the origin of moral evil? How is it transmitted from parent to child? Answer those questions after the Day of Judgment, when you will have more light, but just now the great thing is to see how you and I can get evil out of the world, and how we can lift up the fallen and restore those who have gone astray. Never let us imitate the man in the fable who saw a boy drowning, and then and there lectured him upon the imprudence of bathing out of his depth. No, no, let us land the boy on the bank, dry him and dress him, and then tell him not to go there again, lest a worse thing happen to him.
I say that the Master was no speculator, He was no spinner of theories, He was no mere doctrinalist, but He went to work and healed those that had need of healing. Now, in this, He is the great example for us all in this year of grace.
Come, what have we ever done to bless our fellow men? Many of us are followers of Christ, and oh, how happy we ought to be that we are so! What have we ever done worthy of our high calling? “Sir, I heard a lecture the other night,” says one, “upon the evils of intemperance.” Is that all you did? Has any action come of that brilliant oration and of your careful attention to it? Did you straightway try to remove this intemperance by your example?
“Well, I shall think of that, sir, one of these days.” Meanwhile, what is to become of these intemperate ones? Will not their blood lie at your door?
“I heard the other day,” says one, “a very forcible and interesting lecture upon political economy, and I feel that it is a very weighty science, and can explain much of the poverty you mention.” Perhaps so, but political economy in itself is about as hard as brass, it has no guts, or heart, or conscience, and neither can it make allowance for such things. The political economist is a man of iron, who would be rusted by a tear, and therefore never tolerates the mood of compassion.
His science is a rock which will wreck a navy, and remain unmoved by the cries of drowning men and women. It is as the wind of the desert which withers all it blows upon. It seems to dry up men’s souls when they get to be masters of it, or rather are mastered by it. It is a science of stubborn facts, which would not be facts if we were not so brutish.
It is easy to criticize, it is easy to upbraid, but ours should be the higher and nobler task of blessing and saving. I notice yet again that there are certain others who, if they are not indifferent to sorrow, and do not pitch upon some cruel theory of condemnation, nevertheless speculate a good deal where speculation can be of no practical service.
When we get together there are many questions which we like to raise and dispute upon which are of no practical value whatever. There is the question of the origin of evil. That is a fine subject for those who like to chop logic by the week, without making enough chips to light a fire for cold hands to warm at.
Such was the subject proposed to the Savior—foreseen guilt or hereditary taint—“Who did sin, this man, or his parents?” How far is it right that the sin of parents should, as it often does, fall upon the children? I could propose to you a great many topics equally profound and curious, but what would be the use? Yet there are many in the world that are fond of these topics, spinning cobwebs, blowing bubbles, making theories, breaking them, and making more. I wonder whether the world was ever blessed to the extent of a bad farthing by all the theories of all the learned men that have ever lived. May they not all be put down under the head of vain janglings? I would rather create an ounce of help than a ton of theory.