Blessed Are Your Eyes

Ignorance is bliss. What do I mean? Well, my eyes see so much corruption in our world, and I wish I could return to a time when I didn’t see it. A time of innocence when I walked around with rose-colored glasses thinking we all had a bright and rosy future.

 

But those days are long past, and my eyes do see.

 

Still, not all see what I see. So, why can’t many see our overreaching government preparing us to accept Antichrist and his mark? Do I see these things because I’m a fanatic—too focused on Bible prophecy and not enough on the love of Jesus? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.

 

As Jesus walked this earth, He spoke in parables.[1] When His disciples asked Him why, He answered, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore, I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.”[2]

 

What…? Jesus explained saying, “And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive…”[3]

 

Most of Israel could not see their long-awaited Messiah when He stood in their midst since He, Jesus, did not fit the narrative the Pharisees put forth. Israel rejected Jesus for the same reason I might not want to see what is going on today. Our world looks much better bathed in a pink hue.

 

But blind eyes, deaf ears, and hardness of heart were conditions that plagued Israel all their days. And Moses said it first, “Yet the LORD has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day.”[4] Paul explaining this phenomenon wrote, “…that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.”[5]

 

God blinded Israel so we could come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior while they rejected Him. But this does not explain why some are given eyes to see, and some are not. Or why what some have will be taken away.

 

Just before His crucifixion, Jesus said to the Father, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world…For I have given to them the words which You have given Me…and they have believed that You sent Me.”[6]

 

So, God the Father chose the disciples and gave them to Jesus. Jesus gave these men the Father’s words, and by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit, they believed. At that moment, they were different—God had given them the ability to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. The disciples saw who Jesus was—they heard and understood His Word—even the parables.[7]

 

As a result, they acted differently.

 

The disciples did not cause their own change. Instead, the Truth within them provided eyes to see. In turn, they bore fruit for Jesus is the VINE…the Father, the VINEDRESSER who prunes that the branches may bear more fruit. But, Jesus said, “…every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away...”[8]

 

Matthew 13 began with Jesus’s parable of the Sower—four types of ordinary, everyday people who hear the True Word of God. Their difference—the condition of their heart, which only God knows—a hard path, rocky, thorny, or good soil.

 

The Word had fallen on the good soil of each true disciple’s heart. And Jesus said, “…blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear.”[9]

 

So, my friend, if you see things differently—our present world careening toward the end times scenario laid out in our Bible, take heart, for—blessed are your eyes. That Day will not overtake you as a thief.[10]

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[1] Psalm 78:2

[2] Matthew 13:10-13

[3] Matthew 13:14-15; Isaiah 6:9-10

[4] Deuteronomy 29:2-4

[5] Romans 11:25

[6] John 17:6-8

[7] Matthew 13:51

[8] John 15:2

[9] Matthew 13:16

[10] 1 Thessalonians 5:4