John's Gospel, chapter 9.
Tonight, the Gospel according to John is built
around eight miracles of Jesus and seven I
Am statements of Jesus.
We come in chapter 9 to the sixth
of those eight miracles.
And the miracles are recorded by the Holy
Spirit through the Apostle John in order that,
down through all of the ages, men and
women like you and I, in a search
for the truth concerning life and Jesus Christ,
might read this Gospel, what Jesus said and
what Jesus did, and in reading that accurate
account concerning him, that we would believe that
he is the promised Christ Messiah, believe that
he is the Son of God, and that
in believing in him, we would have everlasting
life in his name.
Now, chapter 9 begins with, now Jesus passed
by.
Now, as Jesus passed by, he saw a
man who was blind from birth.
Now, chapter 9 is a continuation of chapter
8.
And to deal with it independent of chapter
8 is to miss chapter 9 entirely.
In chapter 8, Jesus has been dealing with
the religious leaders.
He has declared himself to be the light
of the world.
He has declared himself to be, I am,
to be divine.
He has declared himself there in this chapter
to being
the one who was sent by God.
Those three great truths over and over again,
as we saw last week, until, you know,
you just finally think, come on, you guys,
you've got to get it.
Concerning the religious leaders, they didn't get it.
They didn't want to get it.
So they picked up stones and they're ready
to stone Jesus.
Jesus departed from their midst, passed by, as
we're told at the end of the chapter.
And as Jesus passed by them, he saw
a man who was blind from birth sitting
there in the area of the temple.
And as they're passing by this blind man,
Jesus' disciples asked him saying, Rabbi, who sinned,
this man or his parents, that he was
born blind?
Now, Jesus is going to heal this man.
And the healing, as I said, is very
much tied to chapter 8.
Jesus is going to allow these religious leaders
to reject his claims concerning himself.
But when he heals this man born blind,
in essence, what he is doing to the
religious leaders is, all right, you won't accept
these things about me, explain this.
And he heals the man who was blind
from birth and now, knowing that they're going
to bring that man to these same religious
leaders and ask them for their conclusion concerning
what Jesus had done for them.
And so their trouble is just beginning.
And in performing this miracle of healing a
man who is blind from birth, Jesus is
essentially confirming his claim to deity.
In chapter 8, only God can heal a
man who has been blind from birth.
As best as I understand, he's the only
one that can heal a blind person, period.
I look at you and I see no
hope for healing in the room on our
part, nor behind the pulpit.
So they're making their way now and they
evidently stop where this blind man is, probably
begging in the area of the temple.
And his disciples say, Rabbi, who sinned, this
man or his parents, that he was born
blind?
So we know that this man, there's a
man sitting there and he's been blind from
birth.
Now, the prevailing religious teaching of the day
by the rabbis concerning those who were born
blind or born handicapped, for a more contemporary
term at the time, was that anyone that
was born handicapped had to be because of
sin.
And so the disciples looked at this man
who has been born blind and they deduce
that since it is because of sin, they
narrow it down to two culprits.
Either this man was guilty of sin and
brought the blindness on himself, or his parents
were guilty of sin and he was bearing
the consequences of their sin.
Now, there was a religious teaching of the
rabbis in that day that it was possible
to sin in the womb prior to birth.
Those of you women who have had a
sharp kick in response to something delicious that
you ate might be inclined to believe this,
but the clear teaching of the Bible is
that life does begin at conception.
And since life begins at conception and on
the outside of the womb, we manifest ourselves
very early as being descendants of Adam in
that we sin.
So it wasn't inconceivable to the rabbis that
having that sinful nature in the womb, that
there could be the capacity for sin.
And perhaps as a teaching upon which to
base that teaching, they might have looked to
Isaac and Rebekah's sons, those twins Jacob and
Esau, when as they struggled, literally they fought
in her womb.
That's a troubled pregnancy.
And she goes to the Lord and she
says, Lord, what in the world, why am
I this way if all is well?
And she inquires of the Lord and the
Lord says, two nations are in your womb.
Two nations?
It's worse than I thought.
Two peoples.
And the Lord began to speak promises to
her.
And so there was this struggle between the
two nations and peoples, even within the womb.
Well, they thought it could have been the
parents that had sinned.
The teaching that a child was born handicapped
because of some sin of the parents, that
would have been and would be to this
day an extraordinarily cruel teaching and stigma
to place upon any parent who was already
dealing with the added challenges of a handicapped
or special child.
But that was the teaching.
When the child was born in this condition,
it's one of these two things.
Blame had to be found.
And we like these formulas.
People do.
We don't like mystery in our relationship with
God.
Because mystery involves trust.
It involves faith.
So we like to look at something and
say, well, it's always this or it's always
that.
So, all right, then that is.
And even though it creates casualties in the
minds of people and of people, and it
doesn't match the scriptures, it's fine.
It makes my life easier, my world easier.
But there's no formula for figuring out some
of the things in life that idea that
someone was born in that condition because of
the sins of the parents.
Perhaps it was a misinterpretation of Exodus chapter
20, verse 5, where the Lord spoke of
visiting the sins of the fathers on the
children unto the third and the fourth generation
of those who hate me.
The Lord wasn't talking about this kind of
thing.
The Lord was talking about there was the
effect of parents' decisions and their sins upon
the children, those that hate God.
It's a tragic mishandling of the passage to
conclude that every misfortune that befalls a child
is a reflection of a parent's spirituality or
the lack of spirituality or because of some
sin in their life.
Yet it goes on today.
This idea that an absence of complete health
or whatever it might be is because of
some lack of spirituality or some sin in
somebody's life.
It's as old as the hills.
It's as old as Job, which is probably
the oldest book in the Bible.
Job's comforters.
They come to Job.
Now remember, Job is not only scraping his
pussy sores with a piece of pottery and
he's covered himself with ash not only as
a mourning but probably to absorb the pus.
As bad as his physical condition is, his
heart condition is far worse.
He has lost his entire family except for
his wife.
And they come and they say to him
for chapter after chapter after chapter, if you
will just confess your sin and get right
with God, then this will lift off you.
And the implication was not only that his
diseases were because of sin in his life,
but the death of his children because of
sin in his life.
There couldn't have been more wrong and yet
they wouldn't budge from the position.
There's even within our own hearts a tendency
to think that as soon, so often, so
many of our lives, as soon as something
bad happens, it must be that something's wrong
with me.
God's lowering the hammer on me.
I mean, it's kind of the first thought
that so many have.
There's sin in my life.
Not necessarily.
I got sick with the flu right after
Thursday night or during Thursday night.
I got sick with the flu.
I never considered it sin in my life.
I thought to myself, I got the flu.
I don't think I'm above getting the flu.
I'm all for being anointed with oil and
prayed.
I'm all for God healing me.
But if that's what's going to happen, and
I fully expect that if the Lord tarries
and I die by natural causes, that's the
means by which I go into heaven's glory.
That I will die of whatever I get
sick of last, but I won't die.
I will receive my perfect healing, and in
one nanosecond, I will see heaven's glory with
my own two eyes.
But there is this idea so often that,
oh, you know, what is it?
God's hammering me because something must be wrong.
There must be something wrong.
But suffering's not always the result of sin.
Some suffering or some handicap can be an
opportunity for God's grace and for his healing
to be displayed.
One of the things that troubles me concerning
the disciples in this passage, and I'm not
above it, is these budding theologians think nothing
of carrying on this discussion within the air
shot of a man who was born blind
from his mother's womb.
How many times do you think he heard
that discussion in his life?
We'll find out, surely this week, later in
the passage, that he is of adult age
and he's been begging at the temple for
long years.
And so how many have stopped and, you
know, waxed philosophical and theological about the source
of all of these kinds of things?
I am amazed what people will say to
other people or say in front of other
people.
And they have lost complete consciousness of the
fact that this is a real-life human
being just like you who hears as good
as you.
He's only blind.
And how much perhaps even more painful it
would be to endure those conversations through the
years than to be blind.
You might get to a point where you
say, I accept the blindness.
Stop these people from coming and talking about
me and trying to solve theological questions within
earshot of me.
Have each of them do something good.
Give me three shekels and get out of
here.
Jesus answered them and said, neither this man
nor his parents sinned.
He's not saying that they've never sinned, but
the cause of this man's physical situation is
not because of their sin.
Jesus rejected the view that all suffering was
due to sin.
But that the works of God should be
revealed in him.
That was the reason for it, that the
works of God might be revealed in him.
God knew that this man was going to
be born blind, but he also knew that
he was going to heal that blindness.
He was going to use that healing of
that blindness to reveal himself to the world.
So instead, the problem existed so that God
could display his glory in the midst of
what looked like a tragedy to the human
eye.
God didn't cause it, but he's going to
heal him and he's going to work it
together for good.
I think every one of us is born
into this world with some catastrophic handicap.
Some of you I know with several.
I say it fondly.
For one, it's blindness.
For someone else, it's something else.
All of us are descendants of Adam, born
in with some marks, of course, of that
fall.
And while they look like a tragedy to
everybody else, all they are is an opportunity
to do something great in our life, in
changing that in our life.
And then as God does it, that he
would receive glory for it and be recognized
for who he alone is in this world.
And Jesus said, I must work the works
of him.
That is the father who sent me while
it is day.
The night is coming when no one can
work.
Now, in those days, they didn't have electricity.
So daylight represented a time to work.
Daylight was precious time in the ancient world
because there was work that could only be
done during the day.
It couldn't be done at night.
And when nightfall fell, then that work had
to cease.
We have the ability to turn on electricity
and we have the ability to put lights
on our tractors and all of these things
and work day and night.
That's not the way that they would have
heard.
So Jesus is now in the final six
months of this three and a half year
public ministry, and it constitutes daylight, but it
is a period of opportunity that is fast
coming to an end.
And so Jesus speaks of this remaining time
that he has to serve the father this
side of glory as something finite and something
precious.
I've always appreciated when Paul wrote by the
Spirit of God to the Ephesians and he
exhorts us as Christians to redeem the time.
Now, when I was a kid, we used
to redeem bottles.
The small bottles were worth, they went up
in the course of my childhood at their
highest value.
The small bottle was worth three cents and
the large bottle was worth five.
And when you came upon some bottle someplace,
this was a time when candy was a
penny.
Wow.
You could head to the drink and tell
and buy a whole pocketful of candy.
And so you learn to redeem something.
But the word redeem there in the book
of Ephesians, it means to buy it back,
to spend time and to treat it as
something so valuable as if you were paying
for it.
And so Jesus never commanding us to do
something that he doesn't also do.
He redeems the time.
And as long as I am in the
world, Jesus said, I am the light of
the world.
Tonight, I declare to you from the Word
of God in this simple place that Jesus
is the light of the world.
He is the way out of darkness.
I don't care what darkness you're in.
I don't care how deep you're into sin.
I don't care how deep you're into the
occult.
I don't care how deeply self-consumed you
are.
Jesus is the light and the way out
of that darkness.
You're sitting in a room filled with people
that he's led out of that darkness.
He's the light of the world.
As long as I am in the world,
I am the light of the world.
Well, listen to this.
Anybody can come along and say they're the
light of the world.
I mean, we've got speech makers and philosophers
and theologians and religious leaders all through human
history that have boasted great things concerning themselves.
There was a saying that I used to
hear when I was growing up, and the
saying went like this.
Put up or shut up.
Sometimes I say it to the television during
presidential elections.
Most often during election time in the United
States of America.
Anyone can say anything.
So Jesus has said some amazing things.
But he's not just some big blabber like
everybody else in the world.
He can back it up.
I'm the light of the world.
And when he had said these things, not
content with merely saying them, he spat on
the ground and he made clay with the
saliva and he anointed the eyes of a
blind man with the clay.
Now, aren't God's ways of healing interesting?
You know, sometimes he would just speak the
word and the person would be healed or,
you know, or he touched their eyes and
they'd be healed.
This is a novel thing he does here.
He spits on the ground.
He makes some clay out of it, puts
it on the guy's eyes.
And I mean, if you follow in his
footsteps and become the spitting evangelist.
But he does it, as we're going to
find out very shortly.
On the Sabbath day.
And one of the interpretations or traditions that
the religious leaders had added to the law
of Moses concerning the Sabbath day, and they
had added hundreds, was that it was against
the law of Moses to spit on the
Sabbath day.
Because when a person would spit on the
Sabbath day, and that spit would hit the
dirt of the ground and the dirt would
go up on both sides, it would furrow
the dirt and constituted plowing labor on the
Sabbath day.
I am not kidding you.
No hissing at me.
And I'm just making fun of whoever did
that.
I'm not making a big deal out of
it.
I'm just kidding.
I don't want somebody to feel like this,
you know, there.
The second thing that was strictly forbidden, according
to their interpretations.
Associated with the law of Moses was you
could not work clay.
On the Sabbath day, it constituted labor.
Jesus does both.
And all the way through the gospels, I'm
telling you, it's like he did it on
purpose, and I think he did it on
purpose.
The disciples could just wake up and go,
it's the Sabbath day.
Here comes trouble.
He's going to do it.
I know he's going to do it again.
And Jesus seemed to take not a perverse
pleasure, but he seemed just intent upon trampling
under their man-made traditions that were being
added to God's law, and that caused people
to be so concerned with the traditions that
they never got down to understanding the purpose
of the law.
It is very easy in religion to end
up in a religious system where there are
so many rules that a person spends so
much time keeping the rules that they never
have any time for a personal relationship with
God.
God has a beef with that.
And that's what the religion of the scribes
and the Pharisees had turned into.
And Jesus, as he said in the other
gospels, he declared to them that their interpretations
concerning the Sabbath as they were applied to
him and to man were wrong.
Their interpretations as they applied to man were
wrong because they did not mix in mercy.
And Jesus said, when you interpret God's law
in order to come to the proper interpretation,
you'll never have to violate God's mercy.
If it violates God's mercy, you've come to
a wrong interpretation.
And then concerning them trying to apply the
law of Moses, concerning the Sabbath to himself,
to Jesus, Jesus said, I'm not under the
law of Moses.
So he spits on the ground, he makes
clay, and he puts it on the man's
eyes.
How does this tie to chapter 8?
The earth.
Man was formed from the dust of the
earth, we're told in Genesis.
It is fascinating to know that the same
17 basic elements that make up the earth
also make up the human body.
It is one of the amazing testaments to
the truthfulness of the creation account in Genesis.
And what Jesus is doing by bringing life
out of the dust of the earth is
he's backing up his I am statement concerning
himself and he is taking them back to
Genesis.
And again, he knows that they're headed to
those religious leaders to tell them how it
is that Jesus did these things.
And Jesus knows that the man that's going
to be healed, he's not going to get
any of this because he wasn't around for
chapter 8.
But he knows the religious leaders are.
And when he brings and heals this man
of his blindness and brings light to his
eyes, he is testifying physically to the truth
of his statement concerning himself in chapter 8,
that he is the light of the world
and that he gives light to those who
follow him.
So he anoints the man's eyes with clay
and then he said, go wash in the
pool of Siloam, which is translated scent.
Now, this is weird again.
Go wash in the pool of Siloam.
The pool of Siloam is on the northeast
corner, Jerusalem.
This man is sitting in the realm of
the temple.
We've been to Israel.
We've been to the pool of Siloam, only
been to the pool of Siloam one time
because of the area that it's in is
very, most often dangerous to go into it.
But we were able to visit it at
one time.
It is a considerable distance from the temple
mount where the area of the temple area
where this man is sitting.
So he tells the man to go to
the pool of Siloam to wash his eyes.
But he tells him to do it at
the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, when
all around the area of the temple, there
was ample water there from other sources.
The sources being the Jewish mikvahs or ritual
baths all around the temple area.
They would have these kind of cisterns dug
out of the ground.
They would fill them with water and you're
going to meet with God.
And so the Jews would come in.
They would completely immerse themselves in the water,
come up out of the water, and then
they would go and make their offerings.
And what this represented physically was their desire
to be clean before God.
So these mikvahs are all over the place.
Jesus could have said, go over to that
mikvah and take and wash your eyes and
then go show yourself, you know.
But he doesn't.
He says, I want you to go to
the pool of Siloam.
Why does he tell him to go to
the pool of Siloam?
Because Siloam means scent.
And he is bringing the religious leaders face
to face with the truth that this man's
healing came from the place called scent.
As he drives home the other great truth
that he tried to drive home to them
in chapter 8, and that is as he
spoke to them over and over again, I
am sent by the Father, is brilliant, brilliant.
He's going to heal this man.
He's going to save this man.
But he continues to try and reach these
religious leaders.
And so what did the man do?
He went and he washed and he came
back seeing.
Now, you know, you put yourself there where
Jesus takes and then puts that clay upon
the man's eyes and all and then forces
him in essence as an act of obedience
to go this somewhat great distance to wash
his eyes.
Now you have a man who is not
only blind, but now there's mud in your
eye.
I mean, he's got to walk along.
I mean, it's just as if things couldn't
get any worse for him.
It's like God.
I mean, I thought I was bad off
before you started working in my life.
Now I've got mud in my eye and
the whole thing.
And so he goes there and for the
average person looking at that man and what
Jesus had done, they ought to think to
themselves, that's the cruelest thing I've ever seen
anyone ever do to a blind man.
And it would be if God wasn't doing
it.
Or someone could look at that and say,
that's the cruelest thing the cause of human
being to put their faith in that I've
ever seen.
And it would be if God wasn't in
it.
And I think as it relates to salvation.
Salvation is so simple.
It's as simple as go wash in the
pool of Siloam.
And so he went and washed and came
back saying, believe in him, receive his Holy
Spirit into your life and you'll have everlasting
life.
To make salvation that simple, the forgiveness of
sins that simple, would be cruel to sinful
man to get their hopes up in that
way if it weren't true.
And if it weren't God speaking it.
So he goes and he comes back saying,
and imagine I wear glasses.
Then they get stronger all the time.
But I remember the first time I got
glasses and I put them on and I
couldn't believe how much of life I was
missing.
I saw leaves again.
I saw details again.
This man has never seen in his whole
life.
He puts that water on his eyes.
The clay goes off and he sees for
the first time in his life.
He's a changed man.
And therefore the neighbors and those who previously
had seen that he was blind, they said,
is not this he who sat and begged?
I mean, he has so changed because of
the Lord's work in his life.
They don't even recognize him.
And some said, well, it's he.
Others said, well, it's like him.
And he said, it's me.
And therefore they said to him, and this
is, of course, the curiosity that happens.
People question the source of life changing change.
And so they said, how were your eyes
opened?
And he answered and he said, a man
called Jesus made clay.
He anointed my eyes and he said to
me, go to the pool of Siloam and
wash.
And so I went and I washed and
I received sight.
It's a great encapsulation of things.
And you notice in verse 11, he describes
Jesus as a man called Jesus.
The revelation concerning Jesus is going to unfold
as the chapter goes on.
And then they said to him, where is
he?
Where is this guy that's able to do
this?
And he said, I don't know.
See, by the time he got his sight,
Jesus was long gone.
He didn't have sight when he had contact
with Jesus.
So he said, I don't have the slightest
idea where he is.
They brought him, who was formerly blind, to
the Pharisees, the friends and the neighbors, anticipating,
I'm sure, that the Pharisees are going to
break out those little party poppers and have
a great time.
Look at this.
I can't believe it.
Can you?
And they're excited.
They come in all of their excitement over
what Jesus has done in this man's life.
And they expect that the Pharisees are going
to share in all of that excitement.
And so they bring him to the Pharisees.
Oh, here's the bad news.
Verse 14, that was the Sabbath when Jesus
made the clay and he opened his eyes.
And then the Pharisees also asked him again
how he had received his sight.
And so they said, tell us now, what
is it that happened?
And he said to them, he put clay
on my eyes and I washed and I
see.
And therefore, some of the Pharisees said, this
man is not from God because he doesn't
keep the Sabbath.
And others said, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a
second.
How can a man who is a sinner
do such signs?
And so there was a division among the
Pharisees.
Nicodemus was probably among that group that said,
hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second.
You can't say that he's not of God.
Remember when Nicodemus came to him in John
chapter three, he said, we know that you're
come from God because no one could do
the works that you're doing unless they were
come from God.
And so there's this division among the Pharisees
here as it relates to all of this
and the conclusion concerning Jesus.
And they said to the blind man again,
now, what do you say about him?
Because he opened your eyes.
And so they're willing to accept that a
miracle has happened.
But they want to know what kind of
a conclusion that this man has come to
as it relates to Jesus and all of
that.
And the man said, he's a prophet.
In other words, he's from God.
This man is listening to the argument back
and forth.
He's of God.
He's not of God.
He's of God.
He's not of God.
No, he couldn't.
Well, it's over here and all that thing.
And he comes in and when he says
he's a prophet, he's taking the side of
those who think that he's from God.
But the Jews did not believe him, that
he had been blind and received his sight
until they called the parents of him who
had received his sight.
And so they called the parents and they
asked the parents saying, is this your son
who was born blind?
And how does he see now?
So there's two questions.
Number one, is this your son who you
say?
And now they want to believe that he
was born blind, that you say, was he,
is this your son who you say was
born blind?
And then what's their opinion about how he
sees?
And his parents answered and said, we know
that this is our son and that he
was born blind.
Pharisees have to think rats.
You know, this is a true miracle that's
happened here.
But by what means he now sees, we
don't know or who opened his eyes.
We do not know.
He's of age.
Ask him and he'll speak for himself.
This is very sad, isn't it?
This should have been one of the happiest
days in their lives as parents.
And these religious leaders are going to spoil
it for them.
I mean, here's their son who is able
to see.
This is their boy.
And it would have been so nice if
the religious leaders had just, you know, recognized
it for what it was that they're going
to spoil the whole thing.
And we see in a moment why it
is that they take and they roll the
thing over to their son.
They said, well, he's of age.
He's an adult, apparently.
And so his testimony holds before your inquiry.
Ask him about it.
We can't offer you an eyewitness account as
it relates to his healing.
We weren't there.
And his parents said these things because they
feared the Jews, for the Jews had agreed
already that if anyone confessed that Jesus was
the Christ, that is the Messiah, he would
be put out of the synagogue.
And therefore, his parents said to him, he
is of age.
Ask him.
Now, it is a pretty big thing that
they have been put out of the synagogue.
Here, you know, in the United States of
America, somebody doesn't like you over here.
You just go over there.
Somebody says, you know, listen, we don't like
the way that you look.
Get out of the church, you know, and
you say, that's fine.
There's 140 others in town.
I'll just go over to one of them.
To be put out of the synagogue in
Jerusalem was essentially to be excommunicated.
But it wasn't just to be excommunicated from
religious instruction or from a spiritual place to
meet.
Typically, your whole livelihood, your family structure was
tied to that.
To be excommunicated would mean that your family
would shun you.
You would lose those relationships with your family.
So you lose your family.
You lose your livelihood.
When we were in India, one of the
last couple of times, there was a place.
And India is a great place to see
the whole way that the ancient world would
have been like, because Israel is so modern
now, it's tougher to see that village kind
of setting.
But you go to the villages and all
in India, and they've got one place to
pump the water and all, and they've got
one baker and they've got one butcher.
And if the whole place is Hindu and
you become a Christian and they excommunicate you,
then nobody sells you bread.
Nobody sells you meat.
You don't have a job tomorrow, and you
don't get any water, and you can't see
your family.
That's the kind of stand that people take
to follow the Lord in some parts of
the world.
Yet there in India, when someone comes to
know the Lord, and I'll tell you, it
really separates the sheep from the goat, you
know, in terms of really being born again,
because these people come to know the Lord.
And when they come to know the Lord,
they take out all of these Hindu gods,
they pile them out in the middle of
the road, broken, and then the entire village
watches and waits for the Hindu gods to
destroy them in their house.
And then when they're powerless against the God
that they have chosen to serve, it becomes
a witness to everyone.
But there has to be that stand first.
But you risk everything.
The parents aren't willing to risk everything at
this point.
But the man is, and the man's willing
to because he's got to change life.
And so this is the whole vibe of
what's happening there.
And so therefore, his parents said, he is
of age, call him.
And so they again called the man who
was blind and said to him, give God
the glory we know that this man is
a sinner.
Give God the glory for the miracle.
This guy just happened to, you know, fall
down and say something near you.
And I don't know, but it didn't really
have anything to do with him.
Now, he is with the grand poobahs of
Jewish religion in that day.
The highest place he has ever reached in
that society is as a beggar at the
temple.
The entire scene, what these Pharisees are trying
to do to him is to badger him
and intimidate him into denying Jesus and going
their way, exerting enormous pressure upon him to
change his story in front of his family
and in front of his friends.
And you notice his response in verse 25.
And he answered and said, whether he's a
sinner or not, I don't know.
And he knew they didn't know either because
they had just been arguing recently, as in
five seconds ago.
He said, one thing I know, and I'm
going to hold on to what I do
know, as Pastor Chuck said Thursday night, that
though I was blind, now I see.
He is in this passage identifying himself with
Jesus and thus risking being put out of
all those things that I've talked about.
And yet he makes a stand anyway.
And he is in essence saying, this man,
this one has changed my life.
And I will not be so ungrateful as
to deny him in this setting.
When I came to know the Lord, the
most instrumental thing initially was the prophetic element
of the word of God.
The kind of things that we looked at
this morning and other areas of the scripture.
And that became like a rock foundation for
me as it related to my faith in
the Lord and in the word of God.
But God brings people into the kingdom of
God a lot of different ways.
They don't all come in this way.
For others, they experience something between them and
God.
And the change is so dramatic in their
life.
They become a new creation.
And they don't know prophecy.
They don't know theology.
They don't know this.
They don't know anything.
All they know is this is what I
was, and I am no longer that.
And it is because of this man's word
and obedience to that word.
And you're never going to budge me from
it because of what he's done in my
life.
The testimony is a powerful thing, a very,
very powerful thing.
And so he comes in and he's a
man with a testimony of the power of
God.
In Acts chapter 3, when Peter and John
went up together to the temple in the
hour of prayer, the ninth hour, there was
that man there who was laying from his
mother's womb.
Silver and gold have I none.
And the healing power.
And he's dancing and jumping and all of
these things.
And so they hauled everybody before the religious
leaders and all of this.
And the interrogation begins to go on.
They begin to argue down what it is
that's happened in the name of Jesus and
all of this.
But it's beautiful what is declared there concerning
the religious leaders and seeing the man who
had been healed standing with them.
They could say nothing against it, the power
of a changed life.
That's what's happening here with this guy, the
power of a changed life.
And no one's going to budge him from
it.
And then they said to him again, what
did he do to you?
How did he open your eyes?
Now, they're trying to get him to tell
his story again, doesn't he?
And you did not listen.
This is right out of chapter eight.
He said, why do you want to hear
it again?
Do you also want to become his disciples?
So now here they are.
The word also, he's clearly identifying himself with
Jesus at this point, if anybody had missed
it up to now.
But here as he says this to them,
he is in speaking this to them.
Well, I've lost my thought.
Why do you want to hear it again?
Do you also want to become his disciples?
And then they reviled him and said, you
are his disciple, but we are Moses's disciples.
We know that God spoke to Moses, but
as for this fellow, we don't know where
he's from.
And then the man answered and he is
smart.
He's listening to what they're saying.
He is in a debate with them.
He's never got to do this before.
They wouldn't talk to blind people.
And the man answered and said to them,
why this is a marvelous thing that you
don't know where he's from.
And yet he's opened my eyes.
You notice in verse 29, they said, as
for this fellow, we don't know where he's
from.
So he takes their confession that they don't
even know enough about him to know where
he's come.
And yet they've come to a conclusion about
him.
How can you know who he is and
come to a conclusion about him if you
don't even know where he's from?
This is what the guy is saying here.
And yet he's opened my eyes.
This is a sharp guy.
Now we know that God does not hear
sinners.
But if anyone is a worshiper of God
and does his will, he hears him.
And since the world began, it has been
unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of
him who was born blind.
If this man were not from God, he
could do nothing.
And they answered and said to him, you're
completely born in sins.
And are you teaching us?
And they cast them out.
They were losing the argument.
The great religious leaders were losing a theological
discussion concerning Jesus to a man who had
begged at the temple all of his life.
The testimony is a powerful thing.
And facts concerning Jesus Christ are stubborn things.
And when they can't deal with the facts,
they just get angry and they go back
to their teaching.
You're completely born in sin.
You have sin or your mother and father
had sin.
That's why you were in this condition.
And you're teaching us.
They're not teachable at all from a person
like this.
And they cast them out, excommunicated him.
And Jesus heard that they had cast him
out when he had found him, found him
the seeking Savior.
He said to him, do you believe in
the Son of God?
And he answered and said, who is he,
Lord, that I may believe in him?
So he confesses his ignorance concerning the Son
of God, the Messiah.
He said, I don't know who he is,
Lord.
Who is he that I may believe in
him?
Jesus said to him, you have both seen
him and that is he who is talking
with you.
And so Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah
now to this man.
And then he said to Jesus, Lord, I
believe.
And he worshiped him.
No Jew would worship another human being.
He is acknowledging Jesus not only as the
promised Messiah, but as in verse 35, the
Son of God.
He's recognizing him to be divine and giving
him the worship that he deserves.
Lord, I believe.
And he worshiped him in verse 38.
The rest of the earlier part of the
chapter had to do with God healing him,
cleansing him of his physical blindness.
Now his spiritual blindness is taken care of
also.
And Jesus said, for judgment, I have come
into this world, into this world that those
who do not see may see and those
who see may be made blind.
And then some of the Pharisees who were
with him heard those words and they said
to Jesus, are we blind also?
And Jesus said to them, if you were
blind, you would have no sin.
But now you say we see and therefore
your sin remains.
Jesus said, if you were blind, you would
have no sin.
They knew enough about Jesus to come to
the right conclusion concerning him.
If they didn't know anything, then they would
have been less responsible.
But he said, now you say we see,
therefore your sin remains.
Knowing what they did about Jesus, and indeed
they considered themselves experts concerning Jesus, made them
all the more responsible for their unbelief.
And Jesus didn't let them squirm out from
under their responsibility.
He said, you're responsible for your sin and
thus your sin remains.
Beautiful, beautiful story.
I don't know how many in this room,
I won't ask for a show of hands,
but how many all over the world, in
order to be the Lord's workmanship, have faced
this kind of a response by the religious
system that you grew up in, in order
to now walk faithful with the Lord?
With this thing you've been a part of
all of your life, and now all of
a sudden the Lord comes in, you're born
again by the Holy Spirit, and you're a
changed person.
It's obvious.
And now you begin to speak about the
fact that Jesus has changed you, the necessity
of being born again.
What happens?
You know, you end up in a theological
discussion or argument or whatever, and the whole
thing ends up in a place where facts
are stubborn things and out you go.
But who meets you out there?
Jesus meets us out there, and leads us
on in a personal relationship with him.
Beautiful lessons from the chapter.
The demonstration of God's love is the cross
of Calvary.
God demonstrated his love toward us in the
while we were yet sinners.
Christ died for the ungodly.
It is not my circumstances.
Then the beautiful testimony of the man in
verse 25.
One thing I know, once I was blind
and now I see.
Why?
Because he's the creator, because he is the
sent one, and because he is the light
of the world.