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Healing the Blind – Sign of the Messiah
It is recorded in the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, that when Jesus was in the synagogue in His home town of Nazareth, He read from the book of Isaiah these words: The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. – Luke 4:18,19.
He was reading from Isaiah 61, verses one and two. However, apparently no one noticed that He inserted a line from another of Isaiah’s messianic prophecies in Isaiah 42:7, which reads, “To open the blind eyes.” Jesus was telling His audience that the Messiah would recover sight to the blind.
The prophet David said in Psalm 146:8 that “The LORD opens the eyes of the blind.” However, there are no instances of God healing anyone who is blind in the Old Testament. David was prophesying of a time when God would heal the blind through the Messiah.
This reference from the Psalms and the coordinating verses in Isaiah, are like arrows pointing through time to verify that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah, the only person in history to open the eyes of a man that was born blind (John 9:32).
Sadly, this vital clue to Jesus’ identity is overlooked by the multitudes today who reject Him as the Messiah, just as it was in Jesus’ day when He was cast out of His home town, after He correctly attributed the prophet Isaiah’s words to Himself.
In Matthew 13, verses 15 and 16, Jesus contrasts two types of people regarding their ability to discern the truth. I will leave it up to you to discern which category you are in. -
For this people's heart is grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.
Copyright 2023 by H.D. Shively