The Blind Man

Scripture: John 9:1-41

John 9:1–41 NIV

1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing. 8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him.” But he himself insisted, “I am the man.” 10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked. 11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.” 12 “Where is this man?” they asked him. “I don’t know,” he said. 13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.” 16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided. 17 Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” The man replied, “He is a prophet.” 18 They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. 19 “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?” 20 “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. 21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” 24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.” 25 He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” 26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” 28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” 30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out. 35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.” 37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” 38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” 40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?” 41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

3/15/2026

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes: Standard

Opening Prayer:

Prayer of Confession

Holy God, we confess that we have been hiding in the darkness over living light of Christ. We close our eyes to Your truth and fail to walk as children of light. Forgive us, Lord, and open our eyes to Your eternal love and grace. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Call to Worship

Leader: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

People: He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters.

Leader: Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.”

People: We come to walk in His light and live in His love.

Leader: Come, let us worship the one who opens our eyes and leads us to life.

All: We lift our hearts to the Shepherd and Light of the World!

The Blind Man

Movement 1: The Question — Sin and Suffering

When you see someone suffering, really suffering, have you ever caught yourself wondering what they did to deserve that? Or have you ever wondered if they were suffering because of something someone close to them did?

We associate sin with suffering. The wisdom literature tells us that if we act foolish, bad things will happen. The Old Testament law promises consequences for disobedience. We can go back to Adam and Eve in the garden when there was only one rule, and it had a consequence. If you eat from that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die. So we have a natural response, maybe even a trained response, that when we see suffering, we expect to see sin.

Over these last few weeks in our Lenten series "Sinners," we've watched Jesus reveal sin in some surprising places: in the devil's temptations, in Nicodemus's pride, in the broken priorities of the woman at the well. Each time, Jesus opened their eyes to the truth and offered them the chance to believe in him and trust him instead of the things they had built their lives around. Today's story is different, because in the story of the blind man from John chapter 9, the sin being dealt with is not in its main character. In many ways, it's in everybody else.

★ That's important, because the message of this whole passage seems to be that sin is not always where we think it is.

There was something about this blind man that caught the attention of Jesus. Most people probably walked right past him without a second thought. He was part of the scenery. Jesus stopped. When Jesus stopped, the disciples had to stop too. His condition bothered them. They could tell that life was hard for him, would always be hard for him, and had been hard for him from the day he was born.

I wonder if they struggled to know how to feel about him. I wonder if they asked their question because part of them wanted to feel pity, and another part wondered whether, if there was this much suffering, somebody must have done something wrong to make God angry.

Their question raises deep and maybe terrible thoughts about sin. Does God punish us ahead of time for what we're going to do? Did this man sin before he was even born? Or did he inherit the sins of his parents?

Listen to Jesus' answer. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him."

Movement 2: The Healing — Remade Without Asking

This man lived his entire life in darkness, and not just because he couldn't see. The only thing anyone ever focused on was the question of sin.

Who did what so bad to deserve this?

There is clearly sin here. Where is it? Why did this happen?

Should we feel bad, or is someone getting what they deserved?

How can I avoid this happening to me or someone I care about?

Those may have been the words this man heard his whole life from friends, family, and strangers alike. That was the only world he knew. Darkness inside and out, and no one offering any light.

Jesus walks into that crowd of sin, that cloud surrounding this man, and continues on as if we know what he's talking about.

"As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he gets down on the ground, spits, makes some mud with his saliva. He takes that mud and puts it on the man's eyes and tells him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam," which means "Sent."

This man didn't ask for healing. No one else asked on his behalf. Given the severity of his situation, it is probably not even anything that anyone prayed for. There's no mention of faith. Just one simple act of obedience. He goes, and he washes. When he came back home, this man who was blind from birth could suddenly see.

The cloud of sin around him was gone. So gone that people didn't even recognize him. His whole identity since the day he was born was about being blind and pitiful. Now that he can see, it's like he's been born again. Not a repeat cycle of his first life, but a brand-new life. It was more than healing. He was completely remade.

This was one of those healing miracles that didn't come with fireworks and fanfare. Nobody knew that it had happened except for the blind man. Jesus and the disciples had moved on. This man was just excited that he could see and was living day one of the rest of his brand-new life.

Movement 3: The Conflict — The Scapegoat Is Gone

The community around him was disturbed, because in many ways this man was their scapegoat. Whenever they felt bad, either because of suffering or guilt over something they had done, they could always look out into the streets and see him sitting there and think to themselves, "Well, at least I'm not that bad. Whatever I've done, whatever we've done hasn't made God that angry." As long as his burden was heavier than theirs, they could carry their own. But now that comfort was gone, and the man they had always looked down on was looking back at them.

Someone who looked a lot like him stood in his place, but this person was full of joy and was claiming that he had received not just a blessing, but an impossible blessing. The person who made their sin feel manageable was now more blessed than any of them. That was enough to shake up the whole community.

So they did the most sensible thing they could. They brought the man to the Pharisees, the people who knew God better than anyone, and made him repeat his story. Now, remember he had been blind when everything happened so he could only describe what he heard and felt: hands on his face, mud on his eyes, a voice telling him where to go. "I was blind. This man put mud on my eyes, and told me to go wash, I did, and now I see." That’s not many details, but more than enough to make everyone rethink their notions of sin, consequences, punishment, mercy, forgiveness, healing, and whatever this was where something was made right that had never been right. Recreation.

The Pharisees saw something else in his story. Whether it was jealousy over this miracle worker no one had even seen, or indignation that their settled understanding of sin and punishment didn't fit anymore, they wanted to make a quick U-turn and get back to normal. It was a Sabbath day. Surely this kind of healing was against the rules, and the profound results of this healing shook them up as well.

It shook them so much that they wouldn't believe this man was who he said he was, so they brought in his parents. His parents claimed him as their son but refused to answer for him for fear of the consequences in their own lives. So this man was put on trial alone to incriminate the person who gave him a gift he never asked for, a person he didn't even know.

They told him the man who healed him had to be a sinner. This man, who had lived his entire life under that cloud of sin until that day, said,

"Whether he's a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see."

He was bold and honest and simple. It was probably his first time getting to be inside the synagogue. They invited him in that day to share about his blessing and then they kicked him out. They kicked him out for telling people about how Jesus had come and changed his life. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine being leaders in that church, watching this happen? Allowing it to happen? Being the ones kicking this person out for the rest of their lives? Can you imagine his parents being part of this happening to their own son?

Everyone was so focused on what had changed that no one stopped to ask what God was doing in this incredible miracle.

Here is this man who had never read the Bible, never read anything, saying,

"This is remarkable. You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."

★ Throughout his whole life, nothing made sense. His suffering didn't make sense. Sin didn't make sense. This day was the first thing that ever made sense to him. It was the day God came to him and did what only God could do.

His community couldn't take it. "You were steeped in sin at birth. How dare you lecture us?" What they meant was: You were supposed to be the one that made us feel better about ourselves. Today you received more than we could ever hope to receive in our lifetimes. What are we supposed to do with that?

Movement 4: The Revelation — Jesus Finds Him

That made a lot of commotion in town, and word got back to Jesus. Jesus came to him and said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" That was a kind of code word the Jewish people used for the Messiah. He said, "Who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him." Jesus said, "You have now seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking to you." He said, "Lord, I believe."

Jesus stopped for this man when nobody else would. He healed him when nobody asked. Now, after the man had been rejected by his community, cast out of the synagogue, abandoned by his own parents, Jesus came back and found him. He didn't leave him alone in his brand-new life. He came back to offer this man a relationship with himself, the Messiah.

In John chapter 3, Jesus told Nicodemus that he came into this world to save it, not to condemn it. That salvation happens as we are born from above into the kingdom, not just through the flesh, not just through the water, but by the Holy Spirit. That same Spirit carried Jesus victoriously through trial and temptation. When he met the woman at the well, he gave her the gift of that Spirit. Born from above. Restored. Renewed. Set free with that living water so she would never thirst again.

Today in John chapter 9, Jesus shared that same gift with a man born without hope, living in utter darkness his entire life. Jesus was the light that opened his eyes and gave him that same light, that Holy Spirit, to share with others without training, expertise, or any special talent. Just by telling the truth. For this man, it wasn’t about sin. It was God showing who God is. It was another moment on the road where Jesus stopped and revealed himself as the Messiah, come to save his people.

But his healing revealed the sin of everyone else around him. Jesus took the scapegoat of the community and protected him from ever having to bear anyone else's sin ever again. All that sin people threw at him over the years fell right back into their laps, and they didn't know what to do with it.

Jesus, the light of the world, came so that the blind could see. He came to save the world. He also came for judgment, so that those who do see would become blind. When the Pharisees heard this, they questioned if Jesus was calling them blind. He told them blindness was the only excuse that they had, because if they could truly see God, then they would see the sin in their own lives. They would see how it was unaccounted for. Unresolved. How they tried to distract others, themselves, and maybe even God from their own sin by pointing out the sin in everybody else's life. If they could truly see, then they were still guilty.

Movement 5: The Application — Bad News, Good News, and Amazing Grace

In many ways, it's easier for us in community to handle bad news than good news. When tragedy strikes, everyone gathers together. We show sympathy. We wish it had never happened. However, we really struggle with blessing, especially when that blessing is big. If one of our own suddenly fell into great fortune, the rest of us quickly start to criticize. What did they ever do to deserve that blessing? Wouldn't that blessing be better off if it was given to someone else?

That same spirit in our hearts that helps us pity those worse off than us can be the same spirit of envy and jealousy that pushes people away when they experience a real blessing from God. As difficult as it is to live each day filled with the joy of Jesus, it's even harder to share that joy consistently in community, because to do that, we have to stop comparing ourselves to each other.

We have to own up to our own sins and our own blessings and recognize that it doesn't matter if anyone else around us sinned or didn't sin. It doesn't matter who was blessed and who was left out. We were all steeped in sin since birth. We all remain blind to most of it throughout our lives. Even when God opens our eyes each day to the sin that's in our lives, it only shows us how powerless we are to do anything with it, and how much we need Jesus.

Sometimes that need for Jesus is all we really need though. We don't need to have walked in someone else's shoes to share Jesus with them. He just needs us to tell the truth, like the blind man did. That blind man's words were plain and simple, spoken under stress when he was put on trial for receiving a blessing he didn't ask for. "I was blind, but now I see." Those words stuck in the minds of the disciples who put his story in their gospels, told and preached across the generations. They were put down into a song we all know well. This man who doesn't even get a name in this scripture, who no one wants to claim in this scripture, might be the patron saint of those who don't feel like they're good enough to come to church. In my years of doing funerals for families not connected with the church, most of them can't name a Bible verse or know the words to “Jesus Loves Me”. But most of them know this song by heart:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now am found.

Was blind, but now I see.

You and I are not going to figure out this problem of sin in our lives or in the lives of anybody else. Sin will never make sense. In those moments where we think it does, we're probably sitting in the seats of the Pharisees, pretending to be in control over the situations around us when we aren't even in control of our own lives. Sin is not supposed to make sense.

Instead, we are made to see is the light of Jesus and the difference he makes in our life and in the lives of others. If there's something that keeps us from seeing that, or from seeing and celebrating that light in the lives of those around us, we need to confess that and ask Jesus to open our eyes so that we don't have to compare ourselves to anyone. ★ Even when that cloud of sin that has been handed down to us is so thick that we can't see Jesus, he still sees us. He will stop for us because he wants to set us free from that. We who are lost in darkness can be found in him and finally see.

Reflection Questions

Where do you see Jesus in your life? Where do you struggle to see him?

What are you convinced you can see clearly that might actually be your blindest spot?

Who fills your heart with pity? Who fills your heart with envy or jealousy?

Say their name to yourself and before God. Write them down on your prayer list. Pray that God would help you to let go of whatever it is you need to let go of so that you could have a right relationship with them as a brother and sister in Christ. Free to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. Made one by his Spirit, and not living in relationships controlled by that cloud of sin and shame.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we still live in a dark and broken world, and we try every day to make sense of it. Our minds and hearts are never truly satisfied. We often feel as though we don't see enough or know enough or have enough or are good enough. We struggle with the tragedies that we face in our own lives and that we see around us. We struggle with the blessings that you give us and to those around us. It's hard for us not to compare ourselves to each other.

Today, we invite you to come and take all of that away, and to be our Lord and Savior, plain and simple. Let everything else follow that, be built upon that foundation. We cannot deal with the problem of sin in our lives or anybody else's, but we believe that you can. Come, Lord Jesus. Come and save us and set us free to follow you faithfully. In Jesus' name, amen.