"The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind” (Psalm 146:8).
He was an unforgettable person: short, stocky, heavily built. He became blind in his early childhood and eminent eye surgeons said that he would never see again.
It was through Dr. Jayasingh [one of our Fellowship doctors, a Christian and well-known surgeon], that he first heard of the love and salvation of Jesus. He was gloriously transformed within. His life became radiant as hope lit up his life. Soon his eye began to see dimly. We called him David.
The last time I saw him, he was standing about 30 yards away from the car. I was in a hurry and was getting into the car wanting to get to my meeting on time. David was too late to catch a bus which would take him to the meeting. I called out, "David, do you want to go to the meeting?" You can’t imagine how he dashed to the car, like a sprinter. No blind man dare run that way. I asked if he could tell the colour of my shirt and of my trousers. He could, and we were thrilled to see his eyesight restored.
But the main thing is that in David’s short life on earth (he died in his early thirties), God gave him spiritual sight and he carried the Good News of Jesus to many whom I could not reach. The story of healing and the leap from despair to hope and happiness gripped the attention of many.
How true is the Word of God, which says, "The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind (Psalm 146:8). Who can open the eyes of the spiritually blind? Who can send light into a darkened understanding? The Bible says, "It’s the Lord who opens the eyes of the blind."
When the Lord Jesus called the religious leaders of His day, blind men, they asked in astonishment, "Are we blind also?" (John 9:40.)
Of course no man likes to be called a blind man. Educated men feel that education and this space age have really opened their eyes. But alas what blindness has befallen men today. Materialism has blinded them. Their values are so perverted that they appear to enjoy the total spiritual vacuum in which they live. Of course it is an illusion. To be upon a rudderless ship, however beautiful its appearance and interior decoration, without compass and chart would be the most nightmarish and fearful experience that a man can know. What is the good of a house loaded with things and a bank balance which weighs you down with a consciousness of bigness, blinds you so that you cannot see where you are going, and ties you up with cares so that you do not have a moment of peace?
Eternity is not something to be played with. A man who does not make certain where he is going to spend eternity is no more than a madman and a blind man.
Men are blinded too by pure, ugly, uncontrollable, raw, animal lust. No woman is safe these days in high society circles. Why talk of the slums? Slum ways have overtaken the societies. The immoral and unclean, the wreckers of homes and the breakers of families are lauded as the most fashionable in the land. Alas what blindness such a preoccupation with the flesh produces.
Social kissing is a most unwholesome development at parties and social gatherings, for the ballroom is already the moral graveyard of many a deflowered damsel and divorced dame.
It’s unpardonable and wilful blindness which neglects the family and stays out late, while the children cry themselves to sleep, night after night. No wonder so many rebels, drug addicts, and anarchists fill the land. The broken home produces an unceasing flow of candidates for the prison, the nervous disease hospitals, and the funeral homes.
A blind leader or preacher multiplies the number of widows, orphans, and the heartbroken in the community.
When you go to the Lord Jesus, He opens your blind eyes and you see your own sinfulness for the first time. A recent letter to me said: "There is no sinner like me, there never was and there never will be anyone so wicked as I.” Now that is the light of Jesus. Why should Jesus die for us if we were all such good and gracious persons? No, if you still think you are a very good man or woman, you are deceiving yourself.
I notice that men who in company are extremely gracious to their wives, snap at them at their dinner tables, and threaten them with awful imprecations. That is simply your wicked heart. And what an awful blindness it is not to know your own heart.
I have to deal with murderers. Today I was reviewing the case of a murderer who had beheaded his wife in public. The Lord Jesus opened his eyes in prison when the Word of God was preached by some of our men. I have met another murderer who simply could not see that murder was sin. He was that blind. Yet Jesus opened his blind eyes too.
The kid-loving sinner, with the practised smile and the pleasing manners, is the one whose eyes it seems most difficult to open. He believes doggedly and hypocritically in the old myth which says: "We’re basically very good people and we are all the time improving.” No. It is sheer blindness which makes you think that you are pretty good. That’s what I used to say by way of bluff. But when Jesus opened my eyes, I saw my wretchedness for the first time and my eyes were opened too to look at the cross of Jesus. The light and love which shone on me from the cross of Jesus removed the veil and the darkness from my heart.
Then God opens a man’s eyes "to see wondrous things in His word” (see Psalm 119:18). When you study the Bible before you go to work, God begins to speak to you and opens to you His loving plans for you.
Running to seek the help of astrologers or engaging in idolatrous practices fill your soul with darkness, which makes prayer impossible. The living God will dispel that blindness which makes it so hard for you to see Jesus. All over Europe too you can see this blindness which keeps men from Jesus. Money and acquiring things they understand only too well, but only a historical Jesus is known to them, not the Living Christ.
Dear listener, let Jesus open your eyes and your whole life will then become so beautiful and meaningful. I am praying that you too will say with the blind man of John 9: "Whereas I was blind, now I see.”