What’s Your Story? Public
Notes
Transcript
Open your Bibles to John 9 this morning.
We are in our third and final week of our What’s Your Story sermon series.
As you are turning over there, let me ask you a question:
Do you ever get tired of the comparison game that social media gets us play?
For me, it is gym bros in reels doing insane workouts with insane amounts of weight.
I am by no means athletic, but I do touch a set of weights multiple times a week, and there is no way I can get anywhere close to the insane things these guys are doing.
If I am not careful, I can start thinking that my normal, non-steroid infused, consistent workouts aren’t worth anything by comparison.
For you, it may be something that other people make, or the way their relationship looks online, or whatever, but sometimes looking at people who seem way better than you can be demoralizing.
It’s possible you have felt this way about the last couple of sermons.
***show Three Important Points slide***
We are talking about sharing our story of God’s activity in our lives, and these messages have challenged us to remember what God has done in our lives, to remind ourselves of his activity, and retell that to others.
In our first week, we saw how Moses retold the story of how God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, how they rebelled against God, and how he had been faithful ever since.
Last week, Matt Simpson walked us through how Joseph remembered and retold his story, focusing on how he allowed God to reframe his story by trusting that God was redeeming the messy parts.
Here’s the thing, though: both of those stories involve tremendous men of faith.
These guys are some of the heroes we look up to as patterns of how to honor God when life gets tough.
They even make it into the list in Hebrews 11 where the author recounts people whose lives stand out in history as having faith in God.
You, like me, may be left looking at stories like that sometimes and think, “Man, but who am I to be telling these stories?”
You may feel like you haven’t been following Jesus long enough or that you don’t know enough, or that you still have questions of your own.
I hope the account we will see in John 9 will help answer some of those questions for you.
What happens in the life of the man we are looking at this morning is without a doubt miraculous.
Unlike Moses or Joseph, though, we don’t know this man’s name. We know nothing about him beyond what we see in this chapter.
He didn’t know a lot about what was going on, but he was quick and faithful to share what he did.
I want to challenge us this morning to do the same.
I love this account for a lot of reasons. Jesus is teaching us a lot theologically here and the way the events unfold is actually pretty funny.
Because there is a lot going on, let me remind you of some context that will help make sense of what is taking place.
Jesus has been teaching and healing and has created quite a buzz. That has upset the Jewish religious leaders, specifically a group called the Pharisees, because Jesus wasn’t doing what they thought he was supposed to do.
For instance, in this passage, he heals this man on the Sabbath, which the Pharisees considered work, and you weren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath.
We are going to see those themes woven through the chapter, so keep them in mind as we walk our way through it.
I would encourage you to keep your Bible open because we are going to jump around the chapter a bit and keep coming back to different parts.
As we work through it, we are going to pull out some story principles that will help us think about how we tell the story of what God has done in our lives.
Alright, let’s start walking through the text.
Read verses 1-5 with me.
This man had been born blind. As we saw during our study of the book of Job last year, that means people thought someone must have sinned, either his parents or that God caused him to be born blind because God knew he would be a bad guy.
Verse 3 is really important, and it gives us our first story principle:
God has a plan to use the broken parts of your story to show his goodness.
God has a plan to use the broken parts of your story to show his goodness.
Matt talked a lot about this last week, so I don’t want to park here for too long.
As we remember what God has done, remind ourselves of all that his activity means, and retell our stories, Matt challenged us to reframe those broken and messy parts of our stories by letting God redeem them, using them in some way to show his goodness.
If you missed last week’s message, you can catch it on our podcast feed or on our website. I would encourage you to listen to it.
Just like God redeemed the hard things in Joseph’s life, God is about to show his glory by miraculously working in this man’s life.
He knows what he is doing, even when we don’t yet see it.
We should be honest enough to acknowledge that when we tell people about how he has worked. It is okay to say, “I don’t know why this has happened, but I am trusting that God knows what he is doing.”
He sure did in this man’s life.
Let’s go back to the text.
Pick up in verses 6-7.
Don’t let the brevity of those verses cause you to lose the power of what is happening here.
This man didn’t have his sight restored; he saw for the first time in his life.
Jesus works and the man immediately gains his sight. He left, washed like Jesus told him to, and he came back able to see.
Here’s where the story starts getting comical and actually really relatable.
Pick up in verses 8-12.
A debate breaks out among the crowd…is this actually the same guy that was a blind beggar? Surely not.
He keeps telling them, “I’m the guy!”
They are confused, and he tells them exactly what happened.
Here’s our second story principle:
Don’t wait to tell your story of how God has worked.
Don’t wait to tell your story of how God has worked.
The blind beggar immediately started telling the people around him what had happened.
As we go through the passage, we see that this guy didn’t really know a lot about Jesus and what was going on.
We saw that in verse 12…”Where is the guy who healed you?” “I don’t know.” - I mean, it’s not like he knew what Jesus looked like, right?!
The neighbors bring the formerly blind man to the Pharisees, and this is where we see that they are mad that Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath.
In verses 13-15, he retells what God has done. This time, it isn’t just to interested neighbors; it is a hostile audience.
The Pharisees were divided about whether or not Jesus was from God or a sinner, and they ask the blind man’s opinion
Pick up in verse 17 - He doesn’t know much about Jesus, but he figures he has to at least be a prophet.
The Pharisees still can’t wrap their minds around what is going on, so they call the man’s parents to confirm that this really is their son and that he really was blind.
They confirm that he is their son but refuse to say much more because they are scared of what the religious leaders will do.
The Pharisees bring the formerly blind man back to keep questioning him.
Pick up in verse 24-34.
Again, he doesn’t know everything, but he shares based off what he knows.
I love the simplicity of verse 25: “One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I can see!”
We don’t know how long all this took, but it appears that in a matter of hours, this man has shared his story about what God had done with his neighbors, with his parents, and with a hostile group of religious leaders.
He still had a lot to learn, which we will see more of in a minute, but from the very beginning, he shared what he knew.
As we think about sharing our stories as a church this year, can I challenge you not to wait for us?
We are going to have some opportunities to help you think about what God has done and give you some tips on how to share those stories.
We are also going to share some stories with you in services and things so you can see what it looks like to talk more about how God has worked in your life.
All of that is designed to help you get more comfortable with talking about the God who loves you and has shown you that.
Don’t use that as an excuse - “I need to learn more, I need to practice some, I need some training…”
This man had none of that; he simply told people about what Jesus had done.
There was one main thing he knew: He was blind, and now he could see.
Let’s slow down on that point for a minute: You do realize that through these events, God is also giving us a picture of all of our stories, right?
That’s a big part of what God is doing here.
In fact, let’s draw out a third story principle here:
You have a story worth telling.
You have a story worth telling.
We are drawn to dramatic stories like miraculous healings, Joseph’s rags-to-riches, God’s deliverance of his people…all those things show clearly how powerful God is.
You may not have a story that seems as dramatic as this one, but I promise you that if you have been saved and are walking with Jesus, you have a story to tell.
In fact, your story is the same as this man’s.
You were once blind spiritually but God made you alive to be able to see:
But if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God…
For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
The Bible makes it clear that you and I were born spiritually blind. The sin in our hearts blinds us to who God is and all he has done.
Some of us are hesitant to acknowledge it, but there are also spiritual forces who are working to keep you in the dark and not let you see the glory and beauty of who God really is.
There is a spiritual system that wants to keep you distracted from knowing and following God.
If you have been saved, that means that God lifted that veil and restored your eyes to see him, to follow him, and to love him.
He shines his light into your heart to help you see how good he is, and he invites you to know and follow him into the life he created you to live.
Do you know how good God is?
He is so morally pure that he cannot let sin go unpunished.
You and I have sinned, we have turned from his design and his desires to do what we want, and the punishment we deserve for that is death.
He is so good, though, that he sent Jesus to die in our place and give us his life in exchange for our sin.
Let that truth sink in: Regardless of how outwardly dramatic your salvation seemed, it means that you were blind and, not just though some mud and some water, but through the death and resurrection of the Son of God, you have been given sight and life and transformed into a new creation.
That’s a story worth telling!
We said earlier that this guy started sharing his story before he knew much.
It actually looks like from the text that there were some key pieces of information he was missing, so Jesus tracks him down to lead him one crucial step further.
Read verse 35-39
With the mud and the pool, Jesus healed this man’s physical blindness.
He still wasn’t sure about all God was doing, but he was sharing it.
Now, Jesus helps him see spiritually: The man understands that Jesus is more than a prophet; he is the one God promised to send to save his people.
He responds by fully committing to Christ and worshiping him.
We don’t know if he had already been saved before this moment, but when he calls out to Jesus as his Lord and worships him, we know that his spiritual blindness is gone.
If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.
He knows now that the man who gave him physical sight is the Lord, the one in charge.
He surrendered and fully trusted him, showing that he gained spiritual sight as well.
Now, he could walk that out, share that story, and live his life following his Lord.
How do we tie all this together?
Read verses 39-41.
Jesus is using somewhat cryptic language here, so let’s look at it:
He is taking what he has done in this man’s life and making a spiritual point: Those who are willing to recognize their blindness will see, and those who are unwilling to recognize their need stay blind.
The Pharisees could be forgiven and saved, just like this blind man. However, they couldn’t see Jesus as who he was: The God who loved them enough to save them, but who would challenge what they thought following him looked like.
We have been talking about sharing our stories this morning, and that’s because most of the people here this morning likely have a story of Jesus giving them sight.
In a group this size, though, there likely are some folks who don’t have that story yet.
Our hope is that you are hearing today that there is a God who you are responsible to, and he is a loving God who cares deeply for you and has an incredible plan for your life.
I have been praying this week that, whether this is the first time or the 1000th time you have heard this, that God would remove that veil and give you sight today.
I hope that today is the day you see him clearly, respond to him, and follow him as your Lord.
I want to invite our worship team to come up on stage as we get ready to respond and sing.
If you are seeing for the first time, let me encourage you to spend some time during this next song telling Jesus that.
Talk to Jesus about the fact that you see him and realize that you need him to forgive you for your sin and that you are committing to follow him.
Let this moment be the moment you say, “I believe, Lord” and worship him.
After the service, I will be over here in the Hall and would love to talk to you. If you can’t get to me, find one of the folks with a blue lanyard on and they will help you find someone to talk to.
We are also going to take up our offering this morning, which is where we give back to God a portion of the financial resources he has entrusted to us, recognizing that everything we have belongs to him.
Let’s stand, and let me pray with you as we prepare to sing, respond, and give…
