And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. (John 9:39–41)

Old Isaac in Genesis 27 was fortunate to be blind. Let me explain.

But first I want to tell you why I read Dracula every year. Well, actually, I don’t read it, I listen to it.

Come October, it starts to feel like Dracula season, and I take a break from podcasts and listen once again to the classic vampire novel. It’s because Dracula is, on the one hand captivating, enthralling, exciting, and on the other hand, a deeply Christian novel. One of the ways the novel provides an escape into fantasy land is that, for the most part, the novel presents clear moral choices; there are bright lines between right and wrong.

That kind of clearly demarcated morality does happen in our world, the real world, but there is also a lot of gray here. There’s not much gray in Dracula, and that is, in some ways, a relief. The character for whom the novel is named is clearly evil, pursuing an evil plan, and stopping him is a good thing. There are some heroes in the book, mostly the men who, about halfway through the novel, have committed themselves to destroying the Count. There are five men, led by Abraham Van Helsing, and one woman, Mina Harker, and they are all brave and virtuous, ready to offer their lives in pursuit of their just goal. There is no ambiguity about whom to root for.

(The novel does not completely lack nuance. In ch. 23, Mina Harker told the assembled men that killing Dracula would be good even for Dracula, and so they should not pursue him out of hate but rather out of love. “That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality. You must be pitiful to him, too, though it may not hold your hands from his destruction.”)

My favorite character is Quincey Morris, and not just because he’s the only American in the novel. He is, in fact, the bravest of all. When he becomes convinced that he knows the right thing to do, he does not hesitate. This characteristic of Mr. Morris is represented well near the end of chapter 24, when the group is discussing what they will do when they find Count Dracula resting in his coffin. Van Helsing says that they will wait for an opportunity when no one is looking, because they need to drive a stake through Dracula’s heart, and that’s not the kind of thing you want people to witness. You don’t want to be accused of murder. But to this counsel of caution from Van Helsing, Quincey Morris responds, in his Texas accent:

I shall not wait for any opportunity. When I see the box I shall open it and destroy the monster, though there were a thousand men looking on, and if I am to be wiped out for it the next moment!

I love that attitude: I am ready to do what is right, come what may! That attitude contrasts so sharply with my own, because I find myself pursuing peace and comfort and avoiding risk. I need to be inspired to lay down my life in the work of God, just as Christ demands.

What Can I Offer?

What is the point of life? There are different ways of saying it, and I myself—in my teaching and preaching—say it in different ways, just as the New Testament does. Sometimes I say that the point of our lives is to be conformed to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29), and I think that’s a good way of putting it. Or, we could say that, since Jesus calls us to die (Mark 8:35; cf. Gal 2:20), then our entire life is about figuring out how to die for Jesus. Both of those ways of articulating the point of our lives are true and biblical and could be restated like this: we dedicate ourselves to God.

In the past few years we’ve started singing a song at church that I now learn through google was popularized by Brandon Lake, a song called “Gratitude.”

It’s got a section that resonates with me.

I know it’s not muchbut I’ve nothing else fit for a king,except for a heart singing hallelujah.

I definitely feel that. I don’t have anything to give to God, nothing worthy of what he has done for me. All I’ve got is this heart singing hallelujah.

But here’s the thing: the saints have always longed to give more to God than just a worship song; they’ve given their entire lives. The saints have longed for a chance to sacrifice themselves on behalf of Christ, and many of them were granted that opportunity.

For example, in her classic of spirituality called The Story of a Soul, St. Thérèse of Lisieux recalls a trip to Rome that included a visit to the Coliseum, where she kissed the ground.

My heart beat violently as I pressed my lips to the dust once reddened with the blood of the early Christians, and I asked the grace to be a martyr too for Jesus. At the bottom of my heart I felt that I was heard.

—St. Thérèse of Lisieux, describing her visit to the Coliseum in Rome (ch. 6, p. 75)

Thérèse ended up dying at age 24 of tuberculosis; but throughout her memoir she described her own life, lived entirely in dedication to God as a nun, as a type of martyrdom. Indeed, at one point she mentioned that “theologians call a martyrdom” the religious life (ch. 9, p. 123). She knew what it was that Paul meant in Philippians 1:29, when he said that the Christians in Philippi had been granted by God’s grace not only to believe Christ but also to suffer for him.

Isaac

And now we come to Isaac, the overlooked patriarch. But how could he avoid being overlooked? His own father is Abraham, the father of the faithful. We sing songs about father Abraham. The blessing awaiting the faithful who have departed, according to Jesus in Luke 16:22, is to rest in the bosom of Abraham. It’s hard for a son to live up to such a father. And then Isaac’s own son is Jacob, who is, literally, Israel (cf. Gen 32:28), the father of the twelve tribes. It’s easy for such a son to overshadow his father.

What about Isaac? What did he do? The most famous thing he ever did was get born (Gen 21), finally, after Abraham waited decades for a son. Or maybe the most famous thing about Isaac was his near-death experience on Mount Moriah (Gen 22). But, in any case, the well-known stories involving Isaac aren’t really about Isaac at all. Abraham died in Genesis 25, and then it’s Isaac’s time to shine, but immediately the attention of Genesis turns toward the next generation, so that Jacob and Esau, and especially Jacob, dominates the next chapters, until we get to Joseph in the following generation.

Abraham—wow!

Jacob—wow!

Isaac—who?

There’s really just one chapter where Isaac is the star of the show, and that’s Genesis 26, the one where Isaac follows the example of his father Abraham (cf. Gen 20) by lying to Abimelech about his wife, Rebekah, claiming that she is, instead, his sister. Isaac doesn’t even have Abraham’s excuse that he’s married to his half-sister (cf. Gen 20:12). Rebekah is Isaac’s cousin. It’s also interesting that there is no indication in Genesis 26 that anyone had thought about taking Rebekah as a wife, as Pharaoh (Gen 12:15) and Abimelech (Gen 20:2) had done with Sarah. The rest of chapter 26 describes conflict between Isaac and the Philistines in regard to some wells.

Isaac is a hundred years old at the end of chapter 26, which we can calculate based on the information given in the text: Isaac was sixty years old at the birth of his twin sons (25:26), and at the end of chapter 26 those twins are 40 years old (26:34).

Now Isaac thinks he’s about to die. It’s not an unreasonable thought for a man who measures his life in triple digits, but it turns out to be premature. Isaac lives to be 180 years old (35:28). He’s still alive when Jacob returns from Paddan-Aram with two wives and twelve sons (Gen 33), and he seems to live for some years after that. But in Genesis 27, Isaac has already lived a century, and he’s basically blind, and so he thinks the end is near.

Isaac calls his oldest boy, Esau, to offer a blessing on what he thinks is his deathbed. This blessing, according to the biblical text, is obviously very important and even fateful for the one receiving the blessing, but I’m not exactly sure why. I find the power of this blessing a little confusing. It seems to be tapping into something about the culture of the patriarchs, or the culture of ancient Israel, that is not really explained in the Bible. This is not the only time we see such a blessing in Scripture—Jacob himself does it (Gen 48–49)—but it is the first time. I don’t know how common this kind of thing was in the ancient Near East.

In our own day, deathbed wishes sometimes happen. For me, about a year ago my aunt, Anna Lou, called from a hospital bed to tell me goodbye, because she knew she was about to die. She did not offer a blessing, not a formal one, but she told me she loved me and was proud of me.

This blessing from Isaac to his son is something beyond that, something more potent. His wife, Rebekah, obviously thinks the blessing is important—she knows that this is a blessing “before YHWH” (27:7). It sounds like the blessing determines who is the leader in the family; maybe we could compare it to getting the majority share of the inheritance. That’s probably not quite right, because there is something else called the birthright, that Esau has already sold (25:29–34). Maybe we could think of the birthright as the money, and the blessing as control—like a family that owns a company could give one kid the majority of the savings and the other kid the majority ownership of the company.

At any rate, let’s take a look at the blessing.

Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:

Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee:

be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee:

cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee. (Genesis 27:28–29)

Isaac grants leadership of the family, rule of all the brothers. This is the blessing he thinks he’s giving Esau, but instead he’s giving the blessing to Jacob. He thinks that he’s granting the rule over the family to Esau. After all, Esau is his oldest son, by a minute or two, and he’s the son who has a better relationship with his father. It certainly makes sense that he would want Esau to rule over the family, for Esau’s brothers to serve Esau.

But here’s the thing—God didn’t want Esau to be the leader; he wanted the younger son to be the leader. This is a pattern in Genesis. Isaac himself had benefited from it. His older half-brother Ishmael was not the promised child, and Ishmael, the first-born of Abraham, did not inherit Abraham’s possessions or power. The oldest son of Jacob is Reuben, but Reuben is not the most important or most powerful of Jacob’s sons; in the book of Genesis, that is clearly Joseph, one of the youngest of Jacob’s boys. Later on, the tribe of Judah, Jacob’s fourth son, would inherit the rule.

God didn’t want Esau to be the leader; he wanted the younger son to be the leader.

So, maybe Isaac should have expected that God would have plans for Isaac’s family that did not involve a straightforward primogeniture. But, he really should have known it because God told him, or he told his wife.

And YHWH said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger. (Genesis 25:23)

The biblical text presents this oracle as coming to Rebekah alone, but what are the chances that she told her husband? I bet she told him. Why wouldn’t she? It’s an oracle about their family, an oracle from God. It seems like the kind of thing a wife would tell her husband. Isaac should have known—both from his own life (he’s the younger son) and from this oracle—that God might well want Jacob to have the rule of the family.

But old Isaac, seemingly on his deathbed, was about to bless Esau, not Jacob, with the rule over the family. He was about to subvert God’s will—and he would have, too, had he been able to see well enough to tell his boys apart.

Good thing he was blind.

John 9

Do you recall the story of the blind man in John 9? This man, we are told, had been blind from birth. I don’t think we are ever told the age of the man when Jesus healed him. I often get that confused with other stories: the man healed by Jesus by the pool of water in John 5 had been sick 38 years, and the man lame from birth healed by Peter and John in Acts 3 is over 40 years old (Acts 4:22). But I’m pretty sure we are never told the age of the man blind from birth in John 9.

I am interested in the question that the disciples ask upon encountering this man, and the response from Jesus.

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. (John 9:2–3)

Do you hear this? This man was born without sight “that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” Now I’m interested in his age again. How old is this guy? I don’t know, except that he’s an adult. He’s not 80, because his parents are still alive, but he’s not 10 either. Let’s say, he’s somewhere between 20–40. He has been blind for decades. He has never seen the sunset, or the faces of his parents, or even his own face. And it’s not because he did anything wrong, and it’s not because his parents did anything wrong. It was so that he might display the works of God.

Jesus’ answer to his disciples reminds me of what he says two chapters later about his friend Lazarus. “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby” (John 11:4). Of course, we remember what happened. Lazarus did die, and spent four days in the tomb, while Jesus dithered. When Jesus finally arrived at the home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha seemed upset with him. But Jesus was right: the sickness that killed Lazarus did not ultimately result in death, because Jesus controls life and death. As he tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Yes, Lazarus died, but death was not the end, and the glory of God was displayed through that sickness.

I am confident that Lazarus and Mary and Martha wanted to display the glory of God in their lives. I am confident that had Jesus asked them, “would you like for the Son of God to be glorified through you,” they would have said, “Absolutely! Sign us up!” But what would they have said if Jesus had told them what it would cost to display the glory of God? I imagine it would have been something like, “Let this cup pass from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.”

What I do know is that Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith, … for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2). I know that Jesus understood what it would take for the glory of God to be manifest in him. He counted the cost. And he barreled ahead.

What of the blind man? How many times had his parents prayed for him, that he would gain his sight? How many times had he prayed, or cried out, “why me?” or “how long?”

What if his parents had been told when he was born, or at age 10, that his blindness was for a special purpose to bring glory to God? What would they have thought?

Or what if God had made an offer to the blind man — you can have your sight now and you can live a normal life, comfortable, just like everyone else. Or you can wait years to get your sight, decades even, and you will get your sight when you meet God in the flesh—and the glory of God and of the Son of God will be manifest in you. You will meet your heart’s desire, indeed, the desire of the nations (Hag 2:7).

Which do you choose?

Let’s Pretend

Let’s imagine a soul in heaven before God has assigned it to a body. Now, listen, I’m probably teaching heresy here: I don’t know that a soul does pre-exist its entrance into a body—in fact, I would guess the opposite, given the story in Genesis 2, of how God created the man out of dirt and then breathed him into him the breath of life. But you know that verse in Jeremiah 1 where God says, “I knew you before I formed you in the womb”? That’s what I’m imagining, that God knows people before their birth. Paul was a chosen vessel picked out by God for a special purpose (Acts 9:15). I wonder if this blind man was, as well.

He says, “I know it’s not much but I’ve nothing else fit for a king, except for a heart singing hallelujah.”

And God says, “Nope, I want more.”

So imagine with me a soul having a conversation with God. And the soul says to God that he loves God so much, when he takes on a body, when he comes to earth, he just wants to dedicate his life to God’s glory. He says, “I know it’s not much but I’ve nothing else fit for a king, except for a heart singing hallelujah.”

And God says to the soul, “Nope, I want more.”

Stunned, the soul stares back at God. “You want more than that? Uh, but, I’ve nothing else fit for a king.”

And God says: “I want more than a heart singing hallelujah.”

And the soul says: “yeah, yeah, absolutely, but I don’t know what to do. Can you tell me what to do? I want to give you everything. I want to give you my entire being. But I don’t know how. Help me, please.”

And God says, “Well, I don’t need a prophet; I’ve got all the prophets I need. And I don’t need an apostle; those positions have been filled. But I tell you what I have in mind. I am planning on going to earth at some point, in the fullness of time, and when I do, I’m going to heal a blind person. Actually, I’m going to heal multiple blind people, but I’m thinking about one time when I’m going to be healing someone who has never had physical sight because he was born blind. And that story is going to be written down, and people are going to be hearing about it and reading it for generations, centuries, and people will learn a great deal about God, and about life, and about salvation, from this story.”

And the soul says, “Oh, I love that idea. And you want me to be involved? Thank you. I could write the story down.”

God: “No, I’ve already got someone picked out for that. But I do need someone to be the blind guy.”

The Blind Patriarch

The heroes of our faith pray things like this Prayer of Abandonment. Give it a read.

My Father, I abandon myself to you. Make of me what you will. Whatever you make of me,I thank you. I am ready for everythingI accept everything. Provided that your will be done in me, In all your creatures, I desire nothing else, Lord. I put my soul in your hands, I give it to you, Lord, With all the love in my heart, Because I love you, And because it is for me a need of loveTo give myself,To put myself in your hands unreservedly, With infinite trust. For you are my Father!—Charles de Foucauld, Prayer of Abandonment

But what if there is resistance? What if someone is not going to follow through with God’s plans?

Isaac was blind, and that blindness was used by God. Isaac needed to be blind. Had he recognized his son Jacob, he would not have blessed him. He would have stood in the way of God.

I’m going to give Isaac the benefit of the doubt, and assume that had someone asked him whether he wanted to give glory to God with his entire life, he would have said yes. It’s just that Isaac suffered from the same condition that afflicts many of us: we think we know better than God.

Isaac’s story as recorded in Genesis appears to focus on this one event, this blessing Jacob, his younger son. We might even say that it is Isaac’s major purpose in life to give this blessing to Jacob. And he almost blew it. He would have blown it had he been seeing.

Good thing he was blind.

And the reason he was blind—not born blind, but became blind—was that the works of God should be made manifest in him. And in this way, I trust, the greatest desire of Isaac came to fulfillment. Surely this patriarch prayed the same as Charles de Foucauld: “My Father, I abandon myself to you. Make of me what you will.” And God did.

Or we might imagine Isaac praying that prayer that I have sometimes heard in church, the prayer that goes, “If we try to do something against your will, defeat us, O Lord!” If Isaac prayed that prayer, then perhaps he recognized his own good fortune in experiencing one of his prayers answered by God. It had been announced before the birth of his twins that the younger was the chosen vessel, appointed by God for leadership, but Isaac stood opposed to God’s plans. God defeated him.

I won’t tell you what ended up happening with Quincey Morris—you’ll have to read the book. But I will say he proved himself noble. Thérèse of Lisieux asked for the grace to be a martyr for Jesus. She wanted to glorify God with her entire life, since it was God who had given her life and Jesus who had redeemed it.

Do we wish similarly, to give our lives wholly to God? And when given the opportunity—like the blind man, or like the blind patriarch—will we embrace it, or at least trust God to defeat us?

Back in November 2025, I preached a version of these thoughts at the Sherrod Ave. Church of Christ (Florence, Alabama). Here’s the video.

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