July 20, 2024

Mark 8:22-23A

²² Then He came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to Him, and begged Him to touch him. ²³ So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. 

Something quite puzzling occurs when Jesus is connected with a blind man in the town of Bethsaida. Based on His previous interaction with blind people, I would have simply expected Him to lay His hands on the blind man and heal him. There are variations in how He did this, but essentially, the laying on of hands was how He communicated the flow of the power of God.

In this particular instance, if you continue reading, He does lay His hands on the man, although He first spits in his eyes. But He does something unusual, even before He is able to effectively minister to the man and heal his blindness.

What is it? He takes the blind man by the hand and LEADS HIM OUT OF THE TOWN!

Now why would He do something unusual like this before He healed the man? Because the town of Bethsaida was known for it’s unbelief and resistance to the grace of God! Jesus would actually single this town out for their unbelief and say, in a later teaching, that it would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than it would be for them, because great miracles had been done there, but they remained in unbelief.

The culture of Bethsaida was mired in hard-heartedness! As a group, they were stubbornly opposed to the move of God. They were stuck in unbelief and they had a culture that promoted unbelief.

And so BEFORE Jesus could help this man, He needed to get him OUT OF the culture of unbelief. Hence, He brought him out of the town. And when the man was healed, if you keep reading, Jesus tells him NOT to go back into the town.

Why would He tell him that? Because He had taken him out of the culture of unbelief to get him healed. But if he went back into the culture of unbelief, he was not going to be able to maintain his healing. The unbelief would end up stealing his victory!

Now I cannot tell you how many times I have prayed for people to be healed, and they have been miraculously healed. But then they go back into their unbelieving church culture and end up losing their healing.

Jesus knew this was a thing. A culture of unbelief will steal your victory if you remain in it. It will suck the life out of you. Even Jesus could not minister in such a culture. And THAT’S why He led the man out of town and told him not to go back.

The culture of unbelief is highly prolific in the modern church. There are entire denominations who preach against the miraculous and teach that this type of ministry ended with the apostles.

But in our ministry, we see people who are victims of this false teaching getting healed all the time. But then when they go back into their culture of unbelief, they begin to lose what they were freely given.

It is important to guard your heart! And unfortunately, there are many church cultures today which echo the culture of Bethsaida.

The only way to minister to people in the power of God is to get them out of their culture of unbelief. But few of them are willing to renounce where they came from in order to keep what God has given them.

Jesus knew it. Even He could not minister in power when the culture was full of unbelief. And that’s why He first separated the man from his culture. It was the culture of unbelief that was causing his blindness. And it was that same culture that would return him to blindness if he ever went back into it.

Not everyone can be healed. But it isn’t because God doesn’t want them well and isn’t willing to heal them. It is because they refuse to leave Bethsaida. The place of unbelief.