21st Century Ocular Disease

This is a transcript of a podcast (Seek The Truth Bible Media Podcast Transcript 19/6/14), which can be listened to through www.seekthetruth.org.uk. Seek the Truth is a Bible Media site bringing to our audience “Truth u can Trust” exclusively from the Bible. Our aim is to not only to explain the Bible but more specifically to introduce people to the person of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. You may find this hard to get your head around but the Lord Jesus can be known personally in your life, but more of that will be explained as we go along.

One of the items we are currently working on is a series called ‘Dr Luke’s Diaries’. Dr Luke was a Physician who recorded stories about the life of Jesus. Ernest Renan (1823-92), the French Philosopher, historian and scholar of religion is recorded as saying about the gospel of Luke “Le plus beau livre qu’il ait”. My French is not too good but the English translation of this phrase is “the most beautiful book that exists”.

Historians tell us that Dr Luke is great historian, Today we are looking at Chapter 18 which describes an incident about the healing of a blind man.

Luke ch 18 v35-43 “ A blind Man Receives his sight”

“As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” He called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Lord, I want to see,” he replied.  Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they also praised God.”

This is a fantastic and yet in one way you could say an unbelievable passage. If I were to come to you today and say “I made a blind man see” you would be quite right to tell me that I was out of order, it doesn’t happen.... It’s IMPOSSIBLE.

But if I was to tell you about a man who, through various means and ways had clearly established that he was God visiting this world you might well say then ‘That’s PLAUSIBLE’

A Christian believes, very strongly, that the evidence for this is on the surface of scripture, the Bible. In terms of history there are many predictions (Prophecy’s) that were made hundreds of years before Jesus fulfilled them. Evidence of the authenticity of the Bible records has been proven by science, archaeology, geography and many more disciplines. All of this stacks up to convince Christians that Jesus is the Son of God and the Bible is the word of God.

Our passage from Luke’s gospel is a lovely incident and a true account where a man who was blind called on Jesus and Jesus gave him his sight back. We understand this firstly as a literal story; it actually happened and is part of the portfolio of evidence that Jesus is the Son of God.

These incidents are not just written to teach us that Jesus can heal the physical body but also to demonstrate that if He has miraculous power to deal with physical matters then we will be more likely to believe when He claims that He can deal with a person’s soul in matters relating to sin and God. Sin has put blindness in our hearts, a darkness in our souls and put us at a distance from God.

The lesson is that if Jesus can heal the outside he can heal the inside too. He deals with the physical as well as the spiritual.

We are all spiritually blind and needy but the Lord Jesus Christ is available to us, the Bible says His words are close to us if we would call out to Him. “Call upon the name of the Lord and you shall be saved”, Romans 10:13.

Christ died for our sins; He bore God’s punishment so that we might be forgiven. If we recognise that Jesus is the Son of God, confess to God that we are sinful and need His cleansing and forgiveness and cry out to Him then He will save us.

Then it could be said of you:

“ Your faith has made thee whole”

We trust that the Lord will richly bless you. Please check out seekthetruth.org.uk for more podcasts blogs and videos. Thank you for reading this.