And He came to Bethsaida and they brought a blind man unto Him, and besought Him to touch him. And He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town. And when He had spit on his eyes, and put His hands upon him, He asked him if he saw anything. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. After that He put His hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up. And he was restored, and saw every man clearly.” Mark 8:22-25.
The next was a very strange act, too. He brought him under ordained but despicable means—He spit on his eyes. The Savior frequently used the saliva of His mouth as a means of cure. It has been said because it was recommended by ancient physicians. But I cannot think that their opinion could have had much weight with our wonder-working Lord. It seems to me that the use of spittle connected the opening of the eye with the Savior’s mouth, that is to say, it connected in type the illuminating of the understanding with the Truth of God which Christ utters. Of course spiritual eyesight comes by means of spiritual Truth, and the eye of the understanding is opened by the doctrine which Christ speaks. Yet it seems to me that the association which we naturally put with spittle is that of disgust, and that this was intentionally employed by the Savior for that very end. It was nothing but spittle, though it was spittle from the Savior’s mouth. And so, mark you, Friend, it is very possible that God will bless you by that very truth which you once despised, and He might even bless you through that very man against whom you spoke the most bitterly! It has often pleased God to award to His ministering servants a gracious kind of vengeance—many and many times those who were the hottest and most furious against God’s own servants have received the best blessings from the hands of those men whom they most despised.
You call it, “spittle”—nothing but that shall open your eyes. You say, “The Gospel is a very common-place thing.” It is by such common places that you shall have life. You have sneeringly declared that such a man speaks the Truth of God in a coarse and vulgar style—you shall one day bless that vulgarity—and be glad enough to receive, even after a coarse fashion, the Truth as his Master bids him speak it. I think that many of us had to notice this in our conversion, that the Lord chastised our pride by saying to us, “Those poor people of whom you thought so harshly shall be made a blessing to you, and My servant, against whom you were most filled with prejudice, shall be the man to bring you into perfect peace.” It strikes me that more than that, a great deal but all that, is in the thought of the Savior’s spitting on his eyes. No powders of the merchant, no myrrh and frankincense, no costly drugs—just a common spittle on the lips. And so if you would see, my Hearer, the deep things of God, it shall not be by the philosophers, nor by the profound thinkers of the day, but he that said unto you, “Trust Christ and live,” teaches you better philosophy than the philosophers! And he who tells you that in Him, in the Lord Jesus, dwells all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge, tells you in that simple statement more than you could learn though Socrates and Plato should rise from the dead, and you could sit, a scholar, at their feet. Jesus Christ will open your eyes, and it shall be by this ignoble means—the spittle of His mouth.
C.H. Spurgeon- Seeing and Not Seeing—Or, Men As Trees Walking
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