Blinded By Certainty | Ryan Kramer

It's so great to see you here today. We are wrapping up our series that we've entitled, That's Crazy. And so if you got your Bibles, you can begin to head your way to Matthew chapter 9. And we've been exploring the miracles of Jesus in Matthew chapter 8 and 9 and throughout the summer and just what Jesus is doing, what it means for you and for me. And so it's been a great journey along the way. But before we hop into today's message, I just want to give a quick shout out to those that are watching online from wherever you're watching from and all the guys at Liberty Correctional that are tuning in. Would you give it up for the guys today? What an amazing testimony that Chris shared with us earlier. I was thinking this week back, man, 20, this is 2026, so 26, 27 years ago when Andrea and I got married and we were in our last year of college and we lived in this campus housing for married couples called Carroll Courts. And they were a bunch of one-bedroom apartments. And so we move in and in the apartment, it's full of all of these dark like wood veneer doors like everywhere, closets, doors, everything are these dark doors. And we move in and one of the things that I start getting really frustrated with right out the bat was the closet doors in the bedroom kept coming off the track. And I just would get so annoyed. And so I had this brilliant idea. I would take the doors off the track and I leaned them up behind the door to the bedroom so they'd be out of the way, nobody could see them. And one night I had to get up in the middle of night to use the restroom. And as I got up and began to walk towards the door, because our bathroom was out in the hallway, and as I began to walk towards the door, I noticed the silhouette of a door that was against the wall. And so my assumption was that the door was open. And so I start walking towards the restroom full speed and I run nose first into a closed bedroom door so hard that I like bounce back, you know.

And you know the favor of God is on Andrea because God woke her up right before all that happened so she could watch the whole thing transpire. And we're talking first year of marriage, so I was still in trying to impress mode and that did not, that did not go over that well. And you know I think about that experience and the crazy thing is, is I could, I could see just enough in order to convince myself that I was seeing everything that I needed to see. And if I would have known at that moment that those were the closet doors leaning up against the door, not the bedroom door that was open against the wall, I would have walked a little slower. I would have probably like, like put my hands out to try to, try to touch around like I would have, I would have turned on a light or something like that. You see, the problem that night wasn't that I couldn't see anything because there were some things that I could see. The problem was, is I couldn't see everything. And if you think about it, we oftentimes navigate our relationships in life the same way. We convince ourselves that we know why someone did what they did. We convince ourselves what they were thinking at the time or, or who it is that is the cause of the problem or maybe the discomfort that we're navigating in the season of our life. Or we convince ourself like what kind of person they are from what we've been seeing or what they need to change in their life. The reality is, if you think about it, is that none of us ever know the full story. We never know the full story of what's transpiring in the relationships that tend to be rubbing us the wrong way, even though we think we do. And so what often happens in our life, the pattern is, is we see something that someone does and we make an assumption as to why they did it. And we turn that assumption into a conclusion, and then we treat that conclusion as truth. And friend, that kind of pattern in our life will blow up the relationships that matter most. Because what happens when we begin to navigate that pattern over and over and over in our

life is we stop asking for clarity. Because we're already convinced that the conclusion that we've come up with is truth. And I just want to, I want to pastor you in this message and in this moment today because there's something that really concerns me about this kind of hyper-charged, hyper-critical, media-driven society and culture in which we live in. And here's what concerns me, especially as followers of Christ, that sometimes what we call discernment or God speaking to us is really pride with a Bible verse attached to it. You see, pride is a silent killer when it comes to our relationships. Because what pride does is it makes us completely confident about someone or something when we actually aren't seeing it clearly. And the more focus we put on what's wrong with other people around us, the less likely we are to see what's happening inside of us. And so, we see everyone else's attitude and we miss our own. We ask God to fix somebody else, all the while God is wanting to fix something in us. We pray, God, please, please show them what they need to do and how they need to change in their life. All the while, God's wanting to show some things and change some things in our own life. Because I think if we're honest with ourselves today, oftentimes the greatest obstacle to us seeing clearly is believing that we already do. Believing that we already see everything clearly. And so today, as we come into this last passage in Matthew, in the series, I think God is inviting us to consider a real difficult possibility in many of our lives. That what if there is someone or something that we are completely confident about today that we aren't actually seeing clearly? Today we're going to examine a moment in Matthew chapter 9. A moment where this begins to play out between two blind men and the Pharisees. And before we're done today, we're going to look at three things that we can do in order to help us to be able to see better so that we stop destroying some of the relationships that we care the most about.

If you're taking notes today, I've entitled today's message, Blinded by Certainty. And we're going to be in Matthew chapter 9, verse 27 through 34. Father, we thank you for your presence here today, and we thank you for the freedom to be able to open up your Word. Lord, I pray that our hearts would be softened. I pray that our eyes would be opened, our ears would be opened. And Lord, we want to hear what you have to say to us today, and Lord, I pray that we would have the courage to respond to it. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So, in Matthew 9, Jesus is in Capernaum. This is his kind of home base, so to speak, as he begins to spread the gospel. And if you've been journeying with us through the series in this specific Matthew 9, he has just finished healing the woman with the issue of blood, right? A 12-year sickness that nobody else could heal. She had spent all of her money to try to find freedom from that and couldn't. And so, Jesus heals her and then goes straight from healing her to Jairus' house, who has now a 12-year-old dead daughter. And Jesus walks in, and all these professional mourners are in there doing their, like, acting crazy. and doing their thing, and Jesus kicks them out, and he walks into the girl's room and raises her from the dead. This is what has just transpired, and as Jesus begins to leave the girl's house is where we're dropping into this story, and it says in verse 27 that as Jesus left her home, two blind men followed along behind Jesus. Now, I just wanna stop right there, and I wanna make sure that we see the significance of this.

Two blind men are following behind Jesus. Imagine yourself today when the service is over that you blindfold yourself, and you've gotta make it from here all the way picking up your kids or wherever you gotta go all the way back to your car. Chances are it would be a pretty funny experience for us, not for you, but for us, and chances are most of us would not make it back to our car and so to think about this idea that two blind men are now following Jesus is quite crazy. Now, how they're able to follow Jesus, I don't know. Maybe it was Jesus was talking on the way back to the house. He's headed back to most likely Peter's house, and so maybe Jesus is talking, or maybe it's the crowd that is making a bunch of noise as Jesus is making his way through, and so the blind men are able to hear and to follow that direction, or maybe they've reached out and grabbed ahold of somebody's robe and somebody is escorting them back to Peter's house, but however they make that journey and are able to follow, what they end up saying and what they're shouting along the way is pretty significant. They begin shouting, Son of David, have mercy on us.

Now, Son of David isn't some random title. It's a messianic title. Like they were declaring in this moment that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Like we're talking the prophecy from Nathan and 2 Samuel that these two blind men are the very first people recorded in Scripture to actually refer to Jesus with this prophetic title, and I think about that, and that's huge because you've got two people who couldn't see Jesus physically, and they were the first ones to actually see Jesus clearly for who he really was, and I think that's why what they asked for is so significant. Notice they didn't ask for healing. They asked for mercy. You see, these two blind men, they couldn't see anything, but they recognized that the Jesus in front of them wasn't just a miracle worker, that he was the Savior. And in verse 28, it says that they went, so they're following him, right? And then they go right into the house where Jesus was staying. Again, this is probably Peter's house, which is where he had healed Peter's mother-in-law. It's where the paralyzed man was lowered down through the roof and was healed and saved,

and he goes right into where Jesus was staying, and Jesus asked them, do you believe that I can make you see? Yes, Lord, they told him, we do. And I think about this moment, too, that it couldn't have been easy for them to be following Jesus, but they continued to persevere and to be persistent until they found himself in his presence, and it's in his presence that then Jesus touched their eyes and said, because of your faith, it'll happen. Now, I think about this, and I think about these blind men, and I can't help but to think that there's two types of faith. There is a convenient faith and a committed faith, that the convenient faith is one that waits for the right moment or waits for the right conditions in order to pursue Jesus. It's one that disappears when things begin to get difficult, but a committed faith, which is what these two blind men had, just continues to persevere. Like Jesus, they are calling out to Jesus and Jesus doesn't respond, but they keep pursuing. Jesus doesn't stop. He keeps walking, but they kept following Jesus. I mean, think about all the onlookers that are watching these two blind men trying to follow Jesus and they keep calling out, Son of David, have mercy on me, and Jesus continues to keep walking towards Peter's house rather than stopping and turning around and healing them in this moment. Like these blind men had to be kind of staggering along the way towards Jesus.

There's no way that they were walking in a straight line. They had to be like all over the place heading towards Peter's house. And as Jesus goes inside, what do they do? They go inside. It makes me think about that passage in Luke chapter 11 that you might be familiar with. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks finds. The one who knocks, the door will be opened. You know, I don't know if you know this about the Greek language, but in that passage, these two verses, it is in the original language. It is a present imperative, which means it's not a one-time thing. You're not just asking once. You're not just knocking once. But it means repetition. It's this idea of continually asking, continually seeking, continually knocking. And what Jesus is saying here, for everyone who keeps doing that, for everyone who keeps asking, they're going to receive. For everyone who keeps seeking, they're going to eventually find. For everyone who keeps on knocking, the door will be opened to you. I mean, these two blind men, their relentless pursuit, it didn't earn them the miracle. What it did was revealed their faith. And I don't know what you're walking through today, and I don't know what the pressure of the season is today, but I think there is a question that all of us should ask of ourself, and that is, which type of faith do we have? In this season, what kind of, do we have convenient faith, where we're waiting for everything to align just the right way before we pursue Jesus? Do we have that convenient faith where we pull away and we disappear when we're inconvenienced? Or do we have a committed faith that Jesus may not be answering my prayer today, but

I'm determined, that I'm going to keep on seeking, that I'm going to keep on knocking, that I'm going to keep on asking? It says in verse 30, then their eyes are opened and they could see. It's that committed faith, and Jesus sternly warns them, don't tell anyone about this. Next verse, but instead, they went out and they spread his fame all over the region. I think we've got to give these guys the benefit of the doubt. Like if you haven't, I don't know if you've ever seen one of the videos of people who are blind and they put on the glasses that allow them to be able to see and to watch their reaction to going from blackness of everything that they see to all of a sudden seeing colors for the first time, seeing people's faces, you know, of the voices that they know so well. Like we're talking about a significant life event, and so I think we have to give them a little benefit of the doubt with their reaction, but why is Jesus trying to tell them, don't go out, don't spread it? I think there's a couple reasons. One is, is Jesus doesn't want to just be known as the miracle worker. Not only does He not want to just be known as the miracle worker, but their expectation of Jesus in those days was that He was coming back, this promised Messiah was coming back to be king in order to make their life easier, where Jesus was coming back to make their life better. And friend, you and I, it's so easy for us to fall into those two expectations even in our own life. I think about myself and I think about how difficult it is when things aren't going the way I want them to go. Jesus isn't jumping into my story the way that I hope he would jump into. The temptation is to always disengage. And we have this expectation on Jesus that if we give him a little part of our life, that our life is just going to be easier. But he didn't come to make our life easier. He came to make it better.

And so we see here in this story, like in verse 32, right after he heals these two blind men and they begin to walk out, then he's got a demon-possessed man that's brought to him. A possessed man, in verse 32, who couldn't speak. And I want you to think about this from Jesus' perspective for a second. So he gets off the boat in Capernaum. He's on his way to heal a dead girl. Gets interrupted by the woman with the issue of blood. Heals her. Then goes back to Jairus' house, kicks off the mourners, out the mourners. Then heals the girl. Then as he's leaving the house, then he's got a couple blind men that are following after him, you know, wanting Jesus to respond to them and heal them. And then right after that, a demon-possessed man is brought to him. Like, I don't know about you, but I would assume my guy is ready for a Sunday afternoon nap. Like, he has been given. He has been given. And so verse 33 says, so Jesus casts out the demon. And then the man began to speak and the crowds were amazed. Notice their response. Nothing like this has ever happened in Israel. And then I want you to see this next verse. Verse 34, but the Pharisee said that he cast out the demons because he is empowered by the prince of demons. I mean, the crowd and the Pharisee see the same miracle, but walked away with completely different conclusions. The crowd sees the miracle and says, we've never seen anything like this before. And the Pharisee see the miracle and they say, this must be the work of the devil. Same Jesus, same miracle, same evidence, but two completely different conclusions.

Why? I think it's because the Pharisees had already decided in their heart who Jesus was. And once they formed that conclusion about Jesus, that became their truth. And they began to interpret everything that Jesus did through their truth. And it sounds crazy, but if you think about it, how often do we follow that same pattern in our own life? Someone doesn't respond to our text message quick enough. And we began to assume that they're ignoring us or they don't like us or they're mad at us. Someone walks by us without speaking to us, and we assume that they think there's a problem with us, or maybe we think that they're arrogant or they're stuck up, or, you know, a boss or a leader that you serve under, like they make a decision that we don't understand, and then we begin to assume that they don't value your opinion, or we assume that their decision is wrong. Or someone's tone, this gets me in trouble all the time. Somebody's tone or body language, right? And we interpret that. We assume that they're upset with us or whatever it is. And here's the issue when we do that, is when we begin to form assumptions and conclusions, and we stop asking questions about it. We stop getting clarity from them about what's at the heart of the issue. We stop, this is a huge one, we stop considering what's actually happening in their life at the time. And we just fill in what we don't know with what we assume. We see something they did. We assume why they did it. We form a conclusion. And then we treat that conclusion as truth. And at that point when we do that, we aren't seeing them anymore. We're seeing the conclusion that we've formed about them, but we're not seeing them anymore.

And friend, that leads in our relationships to trust beginning to erode. It creates distance in our relationship that begins to grow. Relationships begin to break down. And eventually what happens is we damage a relationship that we care a lot about over a motive that we've imagined. So how do we keep from doing that? How do we keep from responding to people in our life and the relationships that we care the most about, not like the Pharisees did, but like the blind men? I want to give you three things today that'll help us to see more clearly. The first one is this, is we've got to admit that we have blind spots. Turn to your neighbor, tell them you got blind spots. You got blind spots. Like you got blind spots. Listen, we all have blind spots. We've all got them. And blind spots, listen, that could be dangerous because we will never ask Jesus to open our eyes if we're convinced we already see clearly. So the first step for us to be able to admit that we have blind spots is to do what many of us, and I'm one of them, don't like to do and admit that we could be wrong. You know, in that first year that Andrew and I were married, another thing happened that I'm not quite proud of, and that is we got in an argument and she looked at me and she said, you think you're right all the time, don't you? And I paused for a second and I was stupid. And I said, no, I don't think I'm right all the time. I think I'm right 99.9% of the time, but I'm not right all the time. Twenty-six years later, I've lost like 0.8%, so I'm like 90, 99.2% now, but no. Just kidding. But to admit that we're wrong, to be humble enough to acknowledge that we may not have all the details about the situation, that we may not understand all the motives behind it and that we certainly don't see the entire situation.

And so before we form a conclusion, here's three questions that you could ask yourself. If somebody rubs you the wrong way and you're trying to figure out how am I going to respond, what am I going to think about them, what conclusions am I going to generate, here's three questions. First one is this, what do I know to be true? Not what do I assume is true, but what do I specifically from first-hand experience know to be true? Not what my neighbor said, not what their friend said, but what do I know to be true? The second one is could there be another explanation that I haven't considered? Because we tend to jump to conclusions and assumptions, but could there be another explanation that I haven't considered? And then the third one, have I heard their side of the story? Man, how many times do we form conclusions without ever asking the person to provide clarity? See, pride says that I already know, humility says there may be something I'm not seeing. And it makes me think of that verse in John 13, right, how does the world know that we are His disciples by the assumptions and conclusions that we make of people when we never ask them for clarity? No, by our love for one another. And what does love do? Love doesn't make assumptions, false conclusions. Love does is it seeks clarity. See admitting that you have a blind spot isn't a weakness in our life. It's wisdom. It's understanding. We don't have all the answers. We don't know all the details. And so we go on a loving journey to discover what they are. The second one is this identify what may be distorting your vision. We don't see people as they are. We see them through the filter of our experiences. Just in case you missed that, I'm going to say it again.

We don't see people as they are. You're not seeing people as they are. You and I are seeing people through the filter of our experiences. We see people through our past hurt, whether it was with them or whether it was hurt from somebody else. Unresolved offense, unmet expectations. Here's something that I learned this summer, like, and it was like a light bulb moment for me, is that expectations are only expectations when both parties agree to them. If I have an expectation on somebody and they haven't agreed to that expectation, it's not an expectation, it's a hope. And how many times do we get upset at other people because we have an expectation that they're not even aware of, right? Our own insecurity, things in our own life that we don't even realize we have. Our own insecurity, things in our own life that cause us to filter reactions and filter people with or something that someone else has told us about that individual that we use as a filter in the way that we see them. And then this one's really, I mean, it's reality is childhood trauma. The stuff that we experienced as kids that oftentimes we've kind of suppressed and tried to move on, that that stuff is a filter to how we react and how we see people. And here's what that means. It means that what you may see somebody doing may be real, but the way in which you're interpreting it is most likely distorted. And here's what I mean. Maybe the reality is that they didn't send you a text message. That's fact, that you didn't get a response back from your text message, but they don't care about me, that's an interpretation. Maybe that person, the boss, leader, whatever, maybe they did make a decision without asking you. That's fact.

But they don't value your input. That's an interpretation. And what we have to do is we have to learn to separate what happened to us from the story that we've attached to it. Here's what my counselor tells me. He's like, Ryan, stop trying to be the expert of them and start being the expert of you. And how many times is that where we live our life? We want to be the expert of everybody else. And we want to know like they're acting this way because they believe this or they do this or they don't care this. And we rarely ever slow down. Why did just not getting a response to a text message for two hours, why did that bother me so much? So we don't go there. We assign assumption and form a conclusion. But if we're going to have healthy relationships, healthy relationships with each other, healthy relationships with our clients, healthy relationships with our employees, healthy relationships with our clients, healthy relationships with our employees, but if we're going to have healthy relationships that pride's not going to step in and tear apart, then at some point we have to begin to step back and begin to ask ourselves those questions and allow the Holy Spirit to begin to bring some of that to the surface so that we can personally find healing and not damage the relationships that we genuinely care so much about. Because here's what's going to happen. If we don't identify what's distorting our vision

that we're going to end up punishing people in the present. pain that we have carried in from our past. The third one is this, is let Jesus challenge what you think you see. Friend, spiritual maturity is being willing to pray, Jesus before you change them, show me what I need to change. This is so contrary to our culture because everything on social media is all about us assigning blame and accusations and conclusions on other people and to be a spiritual mature disciple of Christ means we slow our roll down a little bit and we begin to ask those questions of ourselves. And then Ephesians chapter 4 gives us such a beautiful snapshot of our heart and our attitude and our motives as we're navigating these difficulties in relationships. And here's what Paul says, Ephesians chapter 4 verse 1, he says, therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, notice this language, I beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling. For you have been called by God. Look at your neighbor, tell them you're called, you're called, you're called. And Paul's like, I beg you. To me that means that there are a lot of people that aren't living a life worthy of the call for Paul to have to beg for this. And here's what he says in verse 2, always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other. Making allowance for each other's faults because of your love, not because they deserve it, but because of your love. I love what he says here of each other's faults because we all have them. We all fall short, we all make mistakes, we all make assumptions and form conclusions and have filters, and Paul's like that's the whole reason why you have to make an allowance for each other's faults and that it should come out of your love. He says in verse 3, make every effort, every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. Paul instructs us that a life that is worthy of our calling is one that's humble enough to admit that we could be wrong in our conclusions. To be gentle in the way in which we handle people and disagreements and hurts. To be patient with people when we don't understand why they're doing what they're doing, but in

all that to be willing to make an allowance for one another and be intentional about protecting peace. You know, protecting peace takes effort. Jesus didn't call us to be peacekeepers, he called us to be peacemakers, which means you and I have to step into uncomfortable situations and we bring the peace of God into the situation with us, not avoid them. And notice what he says here, make every effort. That's an important phrase because unity doesn't happen by accident either, it requires effort. I mean to ask a question instead of making an accusation, that requires effort. To have a conversation instead of... Creating a narrative in our mind it requires effort. To believe the best in somebody when you don't know the rest of the story requires effort. And sometimes sometimes it requires enough humility to let Jesus say to us that what you're seeing is real but your conclusion about it is wrong. See the Pharisees refused to reconsider what they believed about Jesus. So friend let's not make the same mistake with the people that God has placed in our lives. Friend before you end the friendship, before you leave whatever church you call home, before you send the text, before you repeat the story that you've heard to other people, stop and pray and say Jesus open my eyes. Show me what I'm missing. Challenge what I think I see. And help me to be able to filter every conversation and every response and every action through the Ephesians 4 passage. Because friends sometimes the relationship doesn't need to be abandoned. Sometimes it doesn't need to be abandoned. Sometimes our eyes just need to be opened. Thank you so much for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it and if you did make sure you subscribe. Also if something spoke to you in a special way share it with a friend because you never know how it could transform someone's life. If you're interested in checking out our service times make sure you go to our website at transformTLH.com and we hope to see you at TC on a Sunday. Thanks so much and have a great day.