This afternoon, I was driving home from Nacogdoches Texas to see my favorite wife, when I heard Steve mention that he was unsure about why the Lord Jesus used clay to heal the blind man.
The following is something to consider!!!
Is the LORD awesome or what?There are two vitally important things that we must understand here. The first is that Jesus healed this man on a Sabbath. In so doing he broke one of the most sacred of all Israel’s fence laws, for the tradition of the elders forbade one to heal on a Sabbath. The only exception to this rule was if the person in need of healing was likely to die if not healed before the start of the following day; the healing of a man born blind obviously did not fit into that category. Yet it could be understandable to make the point that in breaking this particular rule Jesus wasn’t so much laying down the gauntlet to the Oral Law as simply having compassion on the blind man. This hardly appears to constitute all out war on the tradition of the elders. But appearances can be deceiving, and they certainly are in this particular instance; it is all to do with the mud, with the way in which Jesus conducted the healing.
The second thing we must understand here is extremely significant. The Mishna states, "To heal a blind man on the Sabbath it is prohibited to inject wine into his eyes. It is also prohibited to make mud from spittle and smear it on his eyes."30 Not only did the Oral Law forbid healing on the Sabbath, it also spelt out how not to heal on the Sabbath, specifically banning the healing of a blind man by the application of spittle and mud to the eye. It is a bit like saying that smoking cigarettes is forbidden but that smoking a particular brand is especially not allowed. It is the kind of nonsense spiritual legalism always leads to; it gathers momentum and gets out of control like a snowball rolling down a hill.
With this Messianic miracle we see that not only did Jesus heal the blind man at a forbidden time but he also did so in a forbidden way. However, the final straw was yet to come. Jesus sent the man to wash in the Pool of Siloam where the healing actually took place whilst he bathed. This is important because this all happened on a Sabbath of the Feast of Tabernacles during which the laver in the Temple was filled using jugs carrying water taken from this particular pool. It was the centre of attention and interest at that specific time and Jesus sent a man there to be healed in full view of all present – including the religious leaders who enforced the laws he was so publicly breaking. Not only does he heal at a forbidden time and in a forbidden way but also as publicly and as
antagonistically (as far as the religious leaders were concerned) as he could by arranging that the actual messianic sign occurred at the public place of greatest interest in Jerusalem at that particular moment. This is indeed open warfare on Israel’s tradition of the elders.
