Anchor My Faith

Can the Blind Lead the Blind?

Scripture: Matthew 15:12-14; Mark 7:17; Luke 6:39

In our previous lesson, we saw Jesus call the people back together and taught them about the heart. Mark summarized that teaching with one sentence: “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”

The teaching session ends: ^{Mk 7:17} “And when he had entered the house and left the people, ^{Mt 15:12} then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?”

We don’t know whose house he entered, maybe his, and we don’t know how he managed to send the people away, but we find him alone with his disciples. They come to Jesus and express a view like ours today. They were more concerned about Jesus offending the Pharisees than they were about Jesus teaching truth. The disciples knew the Pharisees hated Jesus and they may have been concerned that Jesus was making the tension worse by what he was teaching. They didn’t understand that Jesus would continue to offend the Pharisees until the day they hung him on the cross. The gospel had to be taught and Jesus had to die to bring the gospel into reality. Without his death and resurrection, the gospel was without substance.

Jesus responds to their comment: ^{Mt 15:13} “He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. ¹⁴ Let them alone; they are blind guides. ^{Lk 6:39} He also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?”’

Jesus answers them with an agricultural example followed by a parable. Being an agrarian society, the disciples understood the agricultural parallel to what Jesus was saying. That parallel finds a farmer planting his field, but when the plants grow they are joined by other plants, called weeds, that the farmer did not plant. The plants that the Father did not plant, the weeds, were the Pharisees. They will one day be rooted up and destroyed in hell, but for now they are to be left alone as blind guides.

Why would God want to leave them alone if they are misleading others? The answer can be found in the parable Jesus gives. There are plants and weeds; those who can see and those who are blind; those chosen by the Father and those who are not. Those who can see who can understand spiritual things, will avoid those blind leaders. Those who are blind, the weeds, will gravitate toward blind leaders and together they will be destroyed. This is one of God’s ways of separating the wheat from the tares as in Matthew 13:24 – 30.

I believe that God is using these people of unbelief in some way to benefit the kingdom. It is noticed that under persecution the church grows and is closer in their walk with God than the church that is without persecution. Persecution adds value in that it requires believers to pay a cost because of their faith in Jesus. Others see that willingness to stand with Jesus and seek to know what he has to offer that encourages them to take such a stand at such a cost. Without that pressure, the church tends to drift and become lukewarm in its walk as we have in the west.

Peter apparently understood this much but wanted more explanation about that which defiled us as we will see in the next lesson.

Conclusion

Again, we see the sovereignty of God as the Father determines the plants that will not be rooted up. The devil plants weeds, but every plant that the heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up as it bears no fruit to his glory.