WHEN THE BLIND LEADS THE BLIND
Then His disciples came and said to Him, "Do You know that the
Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?"
But He answered and said,
"Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be
uprooted. Let them alone. They are blind
leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a
ditch."
Matt 15:12-14
Jesus often used physical
conditions to describe the spiritual conditions of the people to whom he
ministered. He spoke about those who had eyes and could not see or who had ears
but did not hear, about those who were alive but dead and things of such a
nature.
Here he was describing some
people as blind who led the blind; obviously he was not referring to their
physical condition but to their spiritual condition.
What is blindness?
Blindness is a loss of vision, of
sight, the effects of blindness can be very devastating, the obvious one is a
loss of sight, leading to the inability to find direction, easily discern or
differentiate between objects or colors.
Physical blindness is a
disability but spiritual blindness is often worse because of its deceptive
nature.
.Can you imagine a scenario where
a blind person is being led by another blind person! That is a classic case of
double jeopardy.
In the passage above Jesus was
referencing the Pharisees as the bind leaders who were leading the ordinary
people who themselves were unsighted.
We need to look closely at these
scriptures to understand its far reaching import for the Church and the nation
today. The Pharisees were no ordinary people, they were the religious elite in
the days of the Jesus, they were at the very top pf the religious pyramid and
were power brokers in the society. They had influence with the people and also
with the governmental systems of the day.
A good number of the priests
belonged to this class, they were fervent and knowledgeable in the scriptures,
it is said that one of the qualifications for actually being a member of this
elite group was to be able to quote offhand the first 5 books of the law!
Saul of Tarsus was a very famous
Pharisee, that is until he later became Paul the Apostle. The Pharisees prided
themselves in their religious accomplishments and generally considered
themselves as the moral guide and light of the nation.
But Jesus had some very harsh
words for them, often reserving some of his harshest criticisms for these
people. With all they knew and thought they had Jesus looked at them and said
of them, they were blind, hypocrites, corrupt, godless, unfeeling and wicked’
What made them blind? I believe
they were blind to God’s counsel for the nation, blind to who Jesus was, blind
to the hour and season of their visitation and blind to the spiritual condition
of the nation.
They had the law, which testified
of Jesus, they knew the prophecies but they could not find direction and light
from them. It was a terrible situation, the people depended on them for
direction but they themselves did not know where they were going.
I was talking to someone on my
way back from a trip to Abuja and as we talked about the state of the nation
and the Church and how the Church had unwittingly contributed to our present
situation, as we talked this phrase from the scripture above jumped into my
mind
The blind leading the blind will
cause both to fall into the same ditch.
in the 19th Chapter of
Luke, Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they did not know the day of their
visitation, He foresaw the end of their blindness and the events that would
befall the nation. Most of the things Jesus foresaw came to pass with the
sacking of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the terrible things that happened at that
time. These things were not the will of God, they were avoidable but because of
the blindness of the leadership they whole nation was plunged into a crises.
Leadership is everything, whether
in secular or spiritual contexts. Prayer is great, the Pharisees were given to
much prayer, activity and discipleship is wonderful, but Pharisees also
excelled in that what they lacked was sight, am inability to discern times and
seasons, a lack of revelation of what God was saying and doing and an inability
to find direction from the prophetic word for the nation.
These are the same conditions
afflicting the Nigerian Church and nation. Pride, arrogance, greed, selfish
ambition and desire for vain glory has blinded the leaders and has caused their
sight to fail.
The Lord has not left the Church
without direction through the ministry of the prophet and the Holy Spirit, the
Lord has spoken so many great things about this nation through the prophets
over the last 50 years, those words by themselves are sufficient to provide
direction for a Church seeking God and his will.
Daniel knew by the writings of
the prophets that the time of the captivity of the nation was at hand and he
began to seek the Lord, even Jesus found direction by what was written
concerning him in the Law, Prophets and the Psalms.
There is a reason why the Lord
set prophets in the Church, and a reason why He is restoring the office of the
Prophet in our times. This of course will explain why the devil is doing so
much to discredit the true ministry of the prophet by the proliferation of
false and fake prophets.
Just like Paul told Toothy to war
by the prophecies that had gone on ahead of him, so the Church wars over the
soul of the nation by the same means
This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies
previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare,
1 Tim 1:18
When factors like ethnicity, denominational
pride, religious considerations, personal ambition, political correctness and
personal profit become the factors that influence and affect the decision
making processes at the highest levels in the Church and national leadership
then we have a ‘blind’ leadership.
Jesus came declaring ‘the son can
do nothing except what He sees the father doing’ the father hid nothing from
the son nad showed him all that He was doing, that is visionary leadership.
Jesus said of those who followed
him, ‘all that the father has shown me, I have made known to you, that is why I
call you my friends’
The leaders of the first Church
had no agendas, no personal kingdoms to build, no great ministries to
establish, wealth and its accumulation for whatever purposes was not their focus,
they had only one program and agenda to know Jesus and make him known. Because
Jesus and His kingdom was their agenda, Jesus could trust them with the
resources of sight which they needed to fulfill that vision.
The Church greatly lacks men
without such no agenda agendas. Our leaders today have too much to protect,
reputations, kingdoms, influence, wealth etc it would seem that the more of
such things we have the greater our blindness, may the Lord give us sight.
The blindness of the leaders of Israel
threw the nation into an avoidable crisis, human actions have consequences, God
will give us a choice and the freedom to exercise our will but we also have to
live with the consequences.
Today the Nigerian nation laments
over the fractured state of the polity, never in the history of the nation have
we been so divided and impoverished and as it is in the nation so it is with
the Church.
We lament the absence of
visionary leaders in the body of Christ, men for whom the kingdom of God and
his will was their overarching purpose and rightly so! Men whose voices echo
like thunder and bring in the heart and counsel of the Lord fo r Church and
nation, men who were not afraid to rebuke kings and speak up for the poor! Lord
where is Babalola, Elton , where is Idahosa as we knew him in his prime?
Lord have mercy on us, raise up men who see
and who hear!
The worse part about spiritual
blindness is that those who are afflicted with this condition often do not
recognize their state, because they determine their condition by externals they
often do not recognize how blind they really are.
Jesus said to the Pharisees
Because you say that you can see,
your sin remains, if you had acknowledged your blindness, you would have had no
sin. (John 6)
Because they claimed to be able
to see they would not go to the One who could give them sight Jesus, this is
often why God has to raise a new leadership who depend on him for sight and
direction.
The ‘Fathers’ say they see but
they are blind!
In the ministry of Jesus very few
Pharisees humbled themselves to go to Jesus , pride was their destruction. Even
Paul the apostle had to be struck blind first in order that he may receive
sight!
It was he who taught us to pray
that God may give unto us a spirit of wisdom revelation and that the eyes of
our understanding may be enlighted… Ephesians 1:17
In the Church and in the nation,
a new leadership must rise, the Church must no longer be led by blind men who
are leading the blind
To be continued
