Sermon Tone Analysis

ENGAGE

It's the NEW YEAR - January 1st - 2023

Anyone here does New Year Resolutions?

I have a few things and some are cliche:

I want to work out and lose weight

I want to eat better and healthier

I want to be more in the Word and study

I want to read 1 book every week - 4 books a month - not the ones I'm assigned but the ones that I have already that I've been wanting to read.

I want to date my wife more - at least once a month.

Most of our New Year resolutions are about self-improvement - whether it concerns your body, mind or relationships with others.

Which is perfectly healthy and fine.

But as Christians and sons and daughters of the most High God - Are we intentional about these so called changes we want to make in our lives.

Are we making New Year resolutions that drives the two most important commandments that Jesus gave us -

Love God with all of your heart, mind, strength and soul.

Love others as you love yourself.

I was guilty and convicted of not being intentional.

I need to continue to gear and position my life towards Jesus - in loving Him with all of me and loving others as much as I do myself.

I need to continue to look to the Light - that is Jesus - to point me toward His desires and not mine

In his Turning Point daily devotional for July 18, David Jeremiah writes: “Millions around the world have benefited from the teaching ministry of Kay Arthur; but her work wouldn’t have happened apart from bitter disappointment early in her ministry.

While serving as a missionary to Mexico, she contracted a heart infection that forced her to return home.

“‘I felt like a failure,'” she recalls.

‘Depression set in until I cried, “Father, whatever You want.”‘

Back in Chattanooga, she began teaching the Bible to teenagers in her home, and out of those experiences came her life’s work.

‘It would be several years before I’d see how He’d use those formative years of study in Mexico to prepare me to write inductive Bible studies that would eventually reach 52 countries,’ she wrote.

“We seldom understand our trials at the time.

We may feel like failures and wonder why God allows suffering, but as time passes we learn to look back and see how He worked things for good and how every trial drove us closer to Him.

With every test, our relationship with God grows more intimate and our perseverance more sturdy.”

TENSION

Have you ever gone through something that was so hard that you never thought you could survive from it?

What struggles have you been through and you thought God was punishing you?

I must have done something wrong, that's why I'm probably going through this?

Or we think of others who are going through hard times, we start thinking that they probably had done something sinful to be going through that.

We can think of a few people in the Bible who have faced hardships and trials, while God had allowed it, and many questioned it - God had an ultimate plan and purpose for the suffering in their lives.

Job - who lost his home, his kids and farm.

TRUTH

The Bible Knowledge Commentary 2. The Healing of a Man Born Blind (Chap.

9)

2. THE HEALING OF A MAN BORN BLIND (CHAP.

9).

Isaiah predicted that in messianic times various signs would occur.

The Messiah would “open eyes that are blind” (Isa.

42:7; cf.

Isa.

29:18; 35:5).

Jesus often healed the blind (cf.

Matt.

9:27–31; 12:22–23; 15:30; 20:29–34; 21:14).

This miracle in John 9 is notable because Jesus had just proclaimed Himself as “the Light of the world” (8:12).

As a public demonstration of His claim, He gave sight to a man born blind.

9:1.

As He went along in the city of Jerusalem, Jesus saw a man with congenital blindness.

Jesus’ choice of this individual is significant (cf.

5:5–6).

He is Sovereign in His works.

That the man was blind from birth pointed out his seeming hopelessness.

This illustrates man’s spiritual blindness from birth (9:39–41; 2 Cor.

4:4; Eph.

2:1–3).

9:2–3.

The disciples faced a theological problem.

Believing that sin directly caused all suffering, how could a person be born with a handicap?

Therefore either this man … sinned in his mother’s womb (Ezek.

18:4) or his parents sinned (Ex.

20:5).

Jesus therefore answered, Neither this man nor his parents sinned.

These words do not contradict the universal sinfulness of man (cf.

Rom.

3:9–20, 23).

Instead Jesus meant that this man’s blindness was not caused by some specific sin.

Instead the problem existed so that … God could display His glory in the midst of seeming tragedy (cf.

Ex. 4:11; 2 Cor.

12:9).

9:4–5.

Day means the time allotted for Jesus to do God’s will (to do the work of Him who sent Me).

We includes the disciples and by extension all believers.

Night is the limit set to do God’s works.

In Jesus’ case it was His coming death.

As the Light of the world Jesus gives people salvation (cf.

8:12).

After His death, His disciples would be His lights (cf.

Matt.

5:14; Eph.

5:8–14), bringing Christ to others.

9:6–7.

Jesus placed clay (mud with … saliva) on the man’s eyes.

Interestingly man was made from this same substance—the dust of the earth (Gen.

2:7).

Jesus probably used the clay as an aid to develop the man’s faith, not as a medicine.

Jesus’ making of clay broke the Rabbinic regulations against kneading clay on the Sabbath (cf.

John 9:14).

Jesus then told the man, Wash in the pool of Siloam (this word means Sent).

This is located at the southeast corner of Jerusalem (see the map), where Hezekiah’s tunnel channeled water inside the city walls from the Gihon Spring.

The man was “sent” there and Jesus was the One “sent” by the Father.

The man … washed and went home seeing!

9:8–9.

People argued over whether he was the same man who used to sit and beg.

If so, it was incredible that he could see.

Perhaps, they said, it was a case of mistaken identity.

But he himself insisted, I am the man.

9:10–12.

But if he were the same man, how was this possible?

He gave a simple and factual account of how the miracle occurred.

He referred to the Lord as the Man they call Jesus.

Since he was blind at the time of the miracle, he had no idea where Jesus went.

9:13–14.

Since this miracle was so unusual, the people brought the man to the Pharisees, who were highly respected in religious matters.

To the Pharisees, healing (unless life was in danger) and making or kneading clay violated the Sabbath Law.

9:15–16.

When the Pharisees … asked him about his situation, he briefly told what happened (cf.

v. 11).

The Pharisees believed that since Jesus “violated” the Sabbath He was a false prophet turning the people away from God (Deut.

13:3–5).

So they concluded, This Man is not from God.

Later they said Jesus was “a sinner” (John 9:24).

Others concluded that the signs were so impressive that a sinner could not do them.

(Of course a false prophet could do deceptive signs [cf. 2 Thes.

2:9].)

The Pharisees then were divided (cf.

John 7:43; 10:19).

9:17.

The healed blind man’s opinion was that Jesus is a prophet.

Old Testament prophets sometimes performed miracles which marked them out as God’s men.