Untitled Sermon

Approximately 500,000 children are born blind each year.

The overwhelming majority of those are from impoverished nations and places where sanitary conditions are not great. Yet for many many more cataracts, macular degeneration and other eye disease can rob us of sight.

The more we know, the less we may think!

With greater knowledge we cannot forget to actually engage in critical thinking. We allow “others” to do the thinking or can become so entrenched in our way of thinking we never consider, “could I be wrong on this?”

Jesus does the works of God!

John is going to give us another sign this morning, number 6 if you are counting. The signs are meant to have us explore who Jesus is.

Jesus must do the work because he has been sent.

The empahsis in verses 3-4 should be on teh work of Jesus as being from God not the state of the man or us. though we can theologically affirm the translation as in the NIV we may hav eto admit a better translation as given by Gary Burge could be, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus. ‘But so that the work of God might be displayed in his life, we must do teh work of him who sent me while it is still day.’”

Jesus sends others as He is sent.

John tells us this fact and we must not miss it. Our job is to be like Jesus, to obey His word and to live differently. At foundation we must see were are sent out as his representatives and His power; not our own.

We must stick with what we know. The power of our story.

the man does not let others distract or lead him down a path of what he does not know.

Fear gets in the way of growth.

I want to be gentle here but it is also true. The parents were so afraid of bad things happening they failed to progress in their faith of Jesus and God.

Knowledge can create pride. Pride causes blindness.

The Pharisees cannot comprehend that Jesus could be more than a sinner because they had already decided this was not possible.

Grow in your understanding and worship of Jesus.

The man born blind is found by Jesus. Let that sink in. The man was open to new information to inform his decision. Then he does what we all must do—worship Jesus.

See Jesus for who He is!

As we go out as sent ones in our world we must make sure we share the Jesus of Scripture and not just our version of Him. We must stay open to learning without building a new foundation.