John 9 • “I was blind, now I see.”

We're studying through the Gospel of John here on Sunday morning. And going through Revelation on Wednesday night. These are the last two books, the book studies of our 3rd time through the Bible. So, this is we're just about done with our 3rd pass and yeah, we're in 9 and chapter 9 is all one continual story from beginning to end. So we're going to read through the whole chapter this morning and then we'll see what the Lord has for us. So follow along with me as I read, and then we'll pray. It says,

Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity this morning to gather as the body of Christ, to come together, to worship together, to pray together, to fellowship together, and to be in the word together. And we ask that you would speak to each heart. We ask that you would minister to each person. Lord, I know that some of the people who are here are going through some heavy times. And so I ask you, my Father God, to truly lift them up and as we sang this morning, to be the lifter of their heads and to speak words of grace, and hope, and life and peace. We thank you for your goodness. Speak now to your servants. Open our hearts in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Chapter 9 appears to come directly on the heels of chapter 8. You'll remember that when we studied through the last chapter, we heard about these disciples who had been following Jesus, but were really not fully committed to him on what he was saying. And you'll recall that as that chapter ended, they literally started picking up stones to kill Him. And that chapter ended by saying that Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. And now we're told that as they were passing through this area of the temple and leaving the area, they passed a man who was born blind. This is where people would go to beg, and it was a pretty smart thing to do. You want to, if you're going to hit people up for money, do it when they're going or coming from church. Right? So this is where people would situate themselves in order to beg for alms. And as they walked by this man and saw this man were told in verse 2 that, “His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind?” I've learned over the years that you can tell a lot about what somebody believes by the questions they ask. Or maybe I should say, you can learn a lot about what people assume to be true by the questions they ask. Because when you hear this question, they don't say, ‘Lord is this the result of some direct sin?’ They didn’t say that. The assumption was already in place, ‘Who sinned?’ This is exactly what's going on. They say, “This guy is blind. Well, obviously somebody sinned. So who was it? Was it him or was it his parents?”

And when you stop and think about it, asking if he had sinned, he'd been born blind, does that mean he would've sinned in the womb? Because he was born blind. Anyway, assumptions don't always have to make sense, but it's kind of a strange question anyway. But what the disciples of Jesus are expressing here was common back then. It’s very common today. It has not abated, it has not gone away. People assume that when someone is experiencing difficulty and however that difficulty may come (physical, emotional material, spiritual, whatever the assumption is), there is some direct sin that was involved, that has caused this thing. And you probably, if you're willing to admit it, when you've gone through rough times, you started kind of going through your brain, “What did I do? What did I do to deserve this?” And you start confessing things you didn't even know you did. You just start confessing your sin, ‘Lord, I'm just you know… I'm just going to… what?’ First of all, you go through all the sins you know about and then you start going through the things you might have done. And then you start going through the sins that somebody else did. I don't know, they might have gotten thrown on you somehow. And we just… and it's just a reality. And I find this to be especially true in areas of the world and cultures where superstition is very strong, essentially. This is kind of the idea of karma, and karma is, “You did it and now you're going to get it.” And we apply that same understanding to God. And so Jesus brings correction to this thinking in verse 3, if you look with me there in your Bible, “Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents…” So we're getting this thing squared away but then He gives another, He gives us some insight into this man's blindness by saying, “...but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” All right. This is a very important response and it's important that we understand it. So I want to begin here by telling you what Jesus is not saying. Jesus is not saying that this man never sinned. When He says, ‘neither him nor his parents,’ He's not saying his parents had never sinned. We know our Bible tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). So we're not talking about some sort of a sinless, sort of a situation for him or his parents or whatever.

But there's a 3rd thing that Jesus is not saying. He is not saying that sin had no part in this man's blindness. Okay? Because you see as human beings, we are born into a sinful broken world. And having been so brought into the brokenness and the fallenness of the world in which we live, those things are going to touch us. The brokenness of this world is going to touch us. It has touched us the longer we live, we know that the brokenness of this world has touched us in some way, shape, or form. It's also important to know that God did not originally create this world. He didn't create a broken world. God didn't create a sin soaked world. God created a perfect world that He, after creating it, declared, ‘It is good. This is good. This world that I've made is good.’ And He made the man and the woman, and that was good too. And He put them in the garden, and it was all good. But when we get to Genesis chapter 3, we find out what brought all of that to an end. And it was the sin that was committed there, which has now been rolling through life, and society and culture, and the human race ever since. And we've entered into brokenness. We've entered into a sinful world, and so sin is ultimately behind this man's condition of blindness. Because sin is behind all brokenness and all that is contrary to the will of God. God did not create blindness in human beings. Sin brought that to the forefront. Now, what Jesus is saying is that there was not a direct act of sin on this man's part or his parents that brought this condition of blindness. That's what he's saying, “Neither this man nor his parents did anything directly to cause this blindness.” Right? It just came from a broken world. Many times we see something happen in our life or someone else's life and of course, the first question everybody always asks is, “Why? Why did this happen?” We either ask it of one another, or we ask it of God, and God's usually not very forthcoming because I don't think we even fully understand the question. We assume we could understand the answer if He gave it to us. I don't think we could. But we asked the question, “Why?” Because we want to know the reason. We think perhaps if we knew the reason, that might give us some comfort, but I don't think it would. But the answer that Jesus gives them about this man's blindness, and I don't know if this satisfies you, but He says that the works of God might be displayed in him. That's his answer. So we look at that, and we pause for a while, and we think about that, and we begin to say, “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Just exactly what is Jesus saying here? Is Jesus saying that the condition of blindness in this man was sovereignly allowed so that God might receive the glory?” Yeah, He's saying that, but you need to be careful here, and the reason you need to be careful is that it is one thing to say that God allowed something to happen. It is another thing to say that He deliberately caused something to happen. Do you hear me? And the reason I want you to think seriously about the difference between those two things is because I've run into a lot of believers over the years that just cannot differentiate those two things. It is a fairly common thing for Christians when they hear that God allowed something according to his foreknowledge. And this is probably what makes it so difficult to embrace. We struggle understanding or even grasping God's foreknowledge of events. And the reason God has foreknowledge of events is because time is something He created. He is not bound by his creation. He transcends his creation. “Can you hear it raining?” “Cool. Huh? When I was a kid, that used to put me to sleep. Seriously, but anyway, I just all of a sudden heard it.” So since God dwells outside of time, He doesn't have to wait to see how things are going to turn out. He knows right now that the Minnesota Vikings are going to have another bad season. He knows that right now. I have to wait and go through the torment of watching all of the bad games, He already knows. Wow, right? Because God foreknows. He allows things in his foreknowledge but that doesn't mean that He causes that situation to happen. When I was in Bible college, I remember my Christian doctrine professor did his best to try to explain this in human terms. And by the way, human terms never are good enough because God is not like us in that sense. But he said, “You know how when you see a parent walking behind their little toddler that's just starting to walk, taking those first steps and they walk behind them and the child gets up and they start to walk and the mama gets behind the baby and puts her hands out and kind of follows along with the little toddler. She puts her hands out there because she knows that baby is going to fall down.

She knows it, so she's going to be there. She knew but she didn't make the baby fall down.” Right. Now, again, any illustration we use is going to break down eventually because we don't have illustrations that match the wonder and majesty of God. But it's the best we can come up with to try to help us understand a little sense of foreknowledge. But how do we reconcile this understanding of God and his foreknowledge, allowing someone to be born blind so that the glory might be given to the Lord? Well, I read a quote by a Bible scholar by the name of FF Bruce, maybe you've heard of him. He's kind of highbrow in his writing so it takes me a long time to wade through what he writes, but he made a quote that I'm going to put up on the screen for you, goes like this. “...God overruled the disaster of the child’s blindness so that, when he grew to manhood, he might, by the recovering of this sight, see the glory of God in the face of Christ, and others, seeing the work of God, might turn to the true Light of the World.” – F.F. Bruce He said, what his understanding is, “God overruled the disaster of the child's blindness (knowing of course that he would be born blind) so that, when he grew to manhood, he might, by the recovering of his sight, see the glory of God in the face of Christ, and others, seeing the work of God, might turn to the true light of the world.” God allowed this man to be born blind so that in him, he might see the glory of God in the face of Christ, and that others may see the glory of God in the work, the miraculous work of healing, and that might draw people to the Lord. But there's something else that Jesus says in verses 4 and 5, and I don't want to skip over it. He went on to say, He said, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day…” If you're having a new king James, your Bible says, “I must work the works of him.” He said, “...night is coming, when no one can work. (And) as long as I'm in the world, I am the light of the world.” Jesus is using the terms of day and night to describe essentially, the day refers to the time of his earthly ministry. Night speaks of the shortness or the coming of night. Speaks of the shortness of the time of Jesus and the work that he had left to do. And it's the same with all of us. This is our day. This is your day. You're still in your day. And the reason I know that is because you're here, you're sitting up and you're taking breath. So this is your day, night is coming. We don't know when, but night is coming. And when that happens, there's no more working. But since it is day, this is time to do our work. Right? Because now, even though Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” Did you know He passed that baton to you? It is recorded for us in Matthew. Let me put it up on the screen, chapter 5.

He said, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to (all the house) all in the house. In the same way (He said), let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and (do what?) give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” You are the light of the world. This is your day. It's daytime, so keep working while it is still daytime. And then Jesus did something kind of strange, we read in verses 6 and 7 that He spit on the ground and made mud. He anointed the man's eyes with the mud and told him, “To go wash in the pool of Siloam,” which is interesting. We're told Siloam means scent, so He sent him to wash in the pool of scent, and he went and washed and came back seeing. And we all stop here at this time and we go, ‘What's up with the mud? Why mud? Why did Jesus make mud? I mean, couldn't He have healed the guy without mud?’ “Well, sure He could have because we know that nothing is impossible with God.” “So then why the mud?” “Yeah, mud was a touch point. It was a touch point of faith. That's all. It was a touch point.”

“What do I mean? What do I mean by that?” “It's a place for faith to take hold. That's it.” “And it's not unlike the woman who had that issue of bleeding. For years and years, spent all her money on doctors. She got no better. She only got worse. What did she say?” She said, “If I can just touch the hem of his garment, I know that I will be healed.” “Was there something supernaturally charged with the hem of Jesus' garment?” “Of course not. It was the touch point. It was her touch point of faith.” I've heard crazy stories about people, watching some guy preaching on TV and the pastor says, “Just come and touch the TV, put your hand on the tv, or something like that.” And we're all kind of sitting there, rolling our eyes going, “Oh, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.” And you know what? Some people get healed! Because it's a touch point. Because God's not going to sit up there in heaven and kind of go, “Really a TV? You're going to touch the TV, all you're going to get is a shock.” Listen, He is going to honor faith, however that faith might be expressed, even if it's expressed in some of the ways that to you and me sound pretty ridiculous, like smearing mud on somebody's eyes. I mean, ‘What's up with that?’ Do you guys remember there's even a passage in the book of Acts. Let me show you this on the screen Acts chapter 19.

The word handkerchief here in the Greek is it speaks of something that they used to wear around their neck to kind of catch sweat. It was like a sweatband and the apron, of course was for a working class person, you would wear an apron just to protect your clothing from not getting soiled while you worked. Well, it says that those things that had touched Paul when they touched others, they were healed and were kind of going, “Where do I find one of those sweat bands or aprons?” “Well, there was nothing special about a sweat band or an Apron. It was the touch point of faith.” People had faith that if they touched something that Paul had touched. We know that in some cases people were healed when Peter's shadow passed upon them and were kinda like, “Whoa! Did God supercharge Peter's shadow?” “No, it was the touchpoint of faith. The touchpoint of faith that is so important for us to understand.” Now, as we look at the rest of the verses in this chapter, we find out that there are different reactions that people have to this miracle (we have the man's neighbors, we have the Jewish religious leaders, and then finally we have the man's own parents). The reaction of his neighbors was mixed. Some of them said, “Is this the guy that used to beg?” And some of the people said, “Yeah.” And other people said, “No, it's just his doppelganger”. And the guy was going, “It's me!” So they started questioning him and eventually brought him to the Pharisees, who of course questioned him. And John adds for us the note in verse 14 that it was the Sabbath day when this healing took place, which, of course is given to you and me to understand that we know that the Jews are going to use this against Jesus. Even though Jesus was not violating the Sabbath by giving this man his eyesight back. You remember that Jesus had told them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” “What does that mean?” “The Sabbath was given to man to be a blessing to him, not a burden.”

The Jews, with all their traditions and rules about how to keep the Sabbath, had made it a burden. Jesus said that was never God's intention. “Do you know what God told him to do on the Sabbath?” “Just don't work. That was it. Just don't work.” And they came up with all these rules about how…oh… but there's so much more to it than that. I find it interesting when people argue about what day you go to church. And of course, the Seventh Adventists are very strong about going to church on the Sabbath because they believe in Sabbath keeping. “Do you know what's interesting about that?” “God never told even the Jews to go to church on the Sabbath.” There's nothing in the Bible about what day you go to church. That was just, they just came up with it because that was the day that they rested. They had time to go to synagogue because they weren't working on that day. God never told them to do that. So when people go, “What day of work? Do you go to church? Do you go on the Sabbath or are you one of those sinners that goes on Sunday?” Just hand him your Bible and say, “Show me in the Bible where God said, “This is the day you go to church.” It's not there. It's not there.” So anyway, they made something of it more than what it was meant to be. So the Pharisees are asking questions of this guy, verse 15, you know how he received his sight and he tells them, he says, “He put mud on my eyes and I washed. And now I see.” I want you to notice their response in verse 16 and 17. It says there was division among them at the end of verse, actually that's all verse 16. Because the Pharisees said there's no possible way that this man could be a godly man to do this on the Sabbath, because of course, that breaks our rules, again, not Gods. And others thought, ‘Well, how in the world can a man do such incredible things and not be a godly man?’

And so they ended up in verse 18. You'll notice they, they wouldn't even believe that he was born blind. They're like, ‘You're lying.’ So they had his parents come in, question them, and the parents' reaction is pretty interesting. They were afraid of what the Jews were saying to people. If you confess Christ in any way or Jesus as the Messiah, they will put you out of the synagogue. So they don't even want to go on the record about this whole thing. So they just said, ‘Hey, he's grown up. Ask him.’ So in verse 24, the second time, they call the man back and they ask him again, ‘You know what happened here? And you better say it right this time because we know this man is a sinner.’ And I love the man; he says (verse 25 to 26), “I don't know whether he is a sinner or not. All I know is that I was born blind and now I can see. That's all I know.” And I've always really loved that exchange because it's so beautifully simple, “All I know is I used to be one way and now I'm different because of Jesus. And that's my testimony, right?” So it says they reviled him after he kind of made that great statement (verse 27 and 28), “Do you want to be his disciple?” (to revile means to attack and to condemn). And they said to him, “28 You are his disciple but we are disciples of Moses.” Verse 29, he says, “We know that God's spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not (even know) where he comes from.” And I love the response of the man, here’s this man born blind who is now suddenly speaking with such incredible wisdom. And he says (verse 30), “Well, that is something, isn't it? You got a guy going around healing people who've been born blind and you don't know even where he came from. And you guys are the leaders. That is really something that tells me something about you guys.” He's just really sticking it to him, I mean, what a great response here. And then he says verse 31, “We know that God doesn't listen to sinners, but, and if this man were a sinner, if He were not from God, He couldn't do these sorts of things.” And of course they just say (verse 34), “You were born in utter sin. How dare you teach us. We are the righteous of God, wonderful, wonderful men.” And it says they put him out, they cast him out, and that means they disfellowshipped him. So you're out of the synagogue. And the final section of this chapter is quite beautiful, where Jesus hears that this man has been put out of the synagogue. And He comes to him and He says,

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (verse 36) He answered him, “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him. And Jesus said to him, “You've seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you. (And) he said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.” And it says nothing about Jesus discouraging that worship. The Jews all knew and understood that they were to worship God and Him alone. They were to have no other gods before him, worship God that was drilled into the heart and mind of a Jewish person from their very first days. And yet this man knowing what he knows raised as a Jew, he worships Jesus. And Jesus doesn't rebuke him. He receives it. Why? Because he's doing what he was told to do and that is worship the one true God. And then Jesus makes some statements saying, “39 For judgment, I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” And this is a challenging statement to understand. And the Pharisees, they got it though. They understood it and because they were standing nearby. And so they even asked him, they said, “Are you saying that we're blind? Is that what you're saying, Jesus, that we are blind.” And then He says, “41 If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.” And that response that Jesus gives to the Pharisees can be a little challenging for a modern audience to kind of make sense of. But if I were or if I may, Jesus is using the pictures of blindness and seeing as illustrations of how we recognize or fail to recognize our true sinful condition. All right? That's what He's talking about. So if Jesus were to say this like today, or to paraphrase it to a modern audience, He would say something like, ‘If you admit that you are blind, meaning that you are sinful, and you're in need of a savior, then your sins could be forgiven and you could be saved. But since you say ‘I see or you claim to see, which is to say that you're in need of nothing. I see just fine. Thank you very much. Then There is no forgiveness for you. Because you're unwilling to admit reality.’ The reality of what God has communicated to you and me through the scripture is that we are sinners. And it's a fairly simple thing, for we who are our Christians, and we hear somebody say that God has revealed in his word that we're sinners. We all kind of go, ‘Yeah, okay next because we've dealt with it.’ I mean, I'm assuming that you guys have all dealt with the fact that ‘I'm a sinner.’ I don't have any problem with that. I don't have any problem with somebody coming up to me and telling me, “Paul, what you just did was a sin.”

“Yeah, you're probably right. I've dealt with that already.” But do you know how many people just for this simple acknowledgement is so challenging. And I've heard people say with my own ears, “Why do you Christians, why are you always talking about sin? You're, it seems like you're always trying to make people feel terrible about themselves,” which of course is not true. What we're talking about is the revelation of sin that God has given us in His word, and that He communicates to us through His Holy Spirit, whereby we recognize that we're sinners and we embrace it, and we come to him to be saved. See, that's why we don't mind talking about sin as Christians because we know what to do with sin. We take it to the cross and we get we're forgiven for our sin, right? So it doesn't make me feel bad. It actually makes me feel good because I know that I know that I know that I'm forgiven of my sin, right? And so the people who don't like us talking about sin, they either don't know what to do with it once they hear about it or they just don't want to hear about it, period, ‘because it makes me feel bad about myself and I don't want to feel bad about myself.’ Do you guys remember what Jesus said to the church of Laodicea when he wrote that letter dictating it through John? Let me show it to you on the screen.

It's very important. He said, “You say, I am rich, I've prospered and I need nothing, not realizing (the true reality of your situation) that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” It is possible for a human being to go through this life and to believe that they are just fine when in fact, the true condition of their life is quite the opposite. Now, why has God revealed to you and me that we are sinners, so that we will come to Him and be forgiven and be saved from our sin and be able to live with Him for eternity? That's why He didn't tell you were a sinner, so that you'd feel bad about yourself and that it would ruin your self-esteem. It's not why He did it.

God doesn't really care all that much about self-esteem. He cares about you being Christ-like. That's what he cares about the most. And so if He has to assault your self-esteem in order to bring you to the place of salvation, He'll do it. He loves you that much. In just about every instance where Jesus healed somebody of some physical sort of a situation, there's a picture in that healing of our condition apart from Christ. And here in the blind man, we see that the scripture is communicating to you and me that we are blind, apart from Jesus we cannot see. But He makes this revelation available to us to understand who and what we really are. And when we embrace it, we truly begin to see. We see with new eyes, spiritual eyes, and we understand things that we could have never understood before. And this is all why John wrote later on what he wrote in his first epistle, and we'll end with this. Let me show you this from 1 John 1:8.

He said, “If we say we have no sin (if we go around saying, ‘we don't sin, I don't sin,’ he says), we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (But) if we confess our sins (if we acknowledge that we're sinners and confess that sin), he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Amen. So, we Christians, we've been given sight. We've been given sight and we see. I see who I am, but I also see who He is and yeah, I've sinned, but man, let me tell you about my Savior. Where sin abounds grace much more abounds, right? Remember, we sing that song, "His mercy is more, our sins they are many. His mercy is more." Amen. Let's stand together. We'll close in prayer. If you need prayer this morning, come on up. We'll pray for you. Be happy to do that. Father, thank you for Your Word. Thank you for your Holy Spirit. Thank you for the life that is ours in Jesus. Thank you for sight to see ourselves as we really are, and then to bring what we are to the cross, and to find forgiveness of sins, and not just forgiveness of sins, but an incredible love that would invite us to be forever children of God. We thank you and praise you in Jesus' precious name we pray, and all God's people said together, amen. God bless you. Have a good rest of your Sunday.