I AM the Light of the World

Text: John 9:1-7, 13-17, 34-39 Sermon Title: Live Life by the Light Series: I AM Date: September 13, 2020 Introduction There are certain things in life everyone has to have an opinion on. Some of them are kind of trivial, like whether you're a morning person or night person, whether you're a dog person or a cat person, whether you're an Aggies fan or a Longhorns fan...or Red Raiders (don't wanna make Mark mad). Like I said, these are kind of trivial, but just about everyone has an opinion on those things if you ask them. But there are other things like this that are a little more serious. An obvious one is politics...where do you stand on the spectrum...are you conservative, liberal, independent, sick of talking about it? Like...where did the world come from? Was it creation, evolution, intelligent design? Or what's our purpose on earth? Do we have a purpose on earth? These are the big questions. These are the ones you don't talk about at parties, because they have a way of bringing out very strong feelings. And just about everyone has a stance on them. Now there are some people who will dodge all these questions. They won't vote in elections, they never think or talk about the deeper "meaning of life" type stuff. But even then, they're taking a stance. Their stance is called Epicureanism. Their stance is that life is too short to worry about all that stuff, and if you do, you're doing something wrong. The point is...everyone takes a stance on these things. Even people who don't take a stance are taking a stance. But I would suggest there's one question that everyone in the world has to answer at some point in their life. And I think it really encompasses all of life's really big questions, like where did we come from, what's our purpose, etc. All of those questions really depend on your answer to one single question, and that's the question we're setting out to answer in this sermon series: Who is Jesus? We know this is an important question, because Jesus himself asks this question of his disciples multiple times. We know it's important because Jesus answers it many times with different I AM statements, which is what we're going to focus on in this series. And we also know it's important because people have been talking about it for centuries. So today, we're going to look at John 9 and try to figure out what this chapter tells us about who Jesus is. But before we do that, I need to pause, because I think I might still need to convince you that this sermon and this series are worth your time. Because you might be thinking you know who Jesus is. If you've been a Christian for a while, or if you've read the Bible before, you might be thinking you don't need this series. But today we're going to see in John 9 that we seriously overestimate our ability to see. And that's why we need this Scripture today. We need to see the extent of our blindness, the effects of our blindness, and the cure for our blindness. Let's look at John 9: 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. 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." 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,[a] "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind." It's funny how God works, isn't it? I mean, Jesus healed a lot of people in his ministry. He healed people with leprosy, he healed people who couldn't walk, he even raised people from the dead! And yet of all the people Jesus could have been healing as he had this conversation with his disciples, it was a blind man. This actually happens a lot in John's Gospel. See, the different Gospel writers have different styles, and part of John's style is to teach a spiritual lesson through a physical act that's connected to it. He's pretty good at it, isn't he? He's pretty good at showing you that the blind man isn't the only one in the story who can't see. You see it when the disciples ask that first question: "Who sinned?" That was common at the time, to think that a child born with some kind of complication was a direct result of a specific sin. There were even Jewish rabbinical writings about this. They argued over whether it was possible for a baby to commit a sin grievous enough to deserve the punishment of being born blind, and they determined it was possible. And that shows us the first option we sometimes take when it comes to the extent of spiritual blindness. The first thing we think is that the spiritual blindness of sin only affects a select few people who are the really bad ones. And so the thought is, you've got your Hitlers and your Mussolini's and your Stalins, yea, they're bad people, and they get what's coming to them. But the problem is, you don't have to be around too long in this world before you start seeing that bad things don't only happen to bad people. And then you start to see that the good people aren't really all that good. And so you start to think that maybe there are more people in spiritual blindness than you thought. So you think, maybe most people are spiritually blind. Most people are spiritually blind, but I can see. That's where the Pharisees were at. They were realists. They knew no one really lived up to God's law...no one except them. And this is the more dangerous of the two positions. Because thinking you can see when you're really blind is very dangerous. You can imagine how that would play out in real life if someone you know was blind, and they tried to get behind the wheel of a car. You'd never let that happen, right? That would be incredibly dangerous! And that's why it's so dangerous to think we can see spiritually when we're really blind. Because when we do, we start to put other people in danger. So what does this mean about the extent of spiritual blindness? As you look at this chapter, and we skipped over a few verses to shorten it up a little bit, the fact that this man was blind from birth keeps coming up. In a part we skipped over, the Pharisees interrogate the man's parents to see if he really was blind from birth. Then when they throw him out, they tell him, "You were steeped in sin at birth!" And the point that John is trying to get across is that spiritual blindness, like this man's physical blindness is from birth. That idea is all over the place in Scripture. Psalm 51:5 says, "Surely I was sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." So from the moment we were born, the Bible tells us that we have had this sin living in us. And so you can say that the extent of spiritual blindness is universal. Every single one of us has sin living in us that makes us think we can see when we're really spiritually blind. And that shows itself in different ways/that leads to the effects of our blindness. There are two effects of blindness in this lesson, and I'll just briefly touch on the first one, because I want to focus more on the second one. The first effect of our spiritual blindness is the way we see people. Look at the way the disciples viewed this man. Or the way the Pharisees viewed him. They saw the misfortune in his life, and they thought it had to be tied to a mistake he had made. And we do this all the time too. When someone gets their car broken into, we say "Well, you shouldn't have left your valuables in your car." When someone has heart disease or a health problem, we blame it on the way they ate, or didn't exercise, or didn't take care of their body. When misfortune happens in someone's life, we blame it on their mistakes. Because when we do that, we think that if we can avoid their mistakes, we can avoid their misfortune. And what that does is it makes us see ourselves as better than that person. It makes us incapable of having compassion for them, because the whole time, we're thinking about how their misfortune is a product of their own mistakes. That's the first effect of our blindness. The second is that it affects the way we see Jesus. There's all kinds of debate going on in this lesson over who Jesus is. It even says in verse 16, "so they were divided." First, though, there are the disciples. The disciples see this man, and they assume that God is punishing him for something he did. That's the first mistake we make in how we view God or how we view Jesus. We think he's a God who brings suffering into people's lives to punish them for a sin they committed. Then you've got the Pharisees. They're arguing over whether Jesus is a sinful man, or whether he's from God. And they even ask the man whose eyes Jesus had just opened, and he says, "He's a prophet." So this is it. This is really the question that we're talking about today. Who is Jesus? Some say he's a sinful man, some say he's from God or a prophet. There's division. And that shouldn't be surprising. Jesus tells us that people are going to be divided over him. So let's look for a second at these two options. Maybe you're thinking that you would never think either of these things about Jesus, but I think you do. What would it look like if you thought Jesus was a sinful human being just like us? What if he was just a great moral teacher and nothing more? Well then, when something Jesus says comes up against something the world says, you could choose which one you wanted to believe. And when something Jesus said collides with your conscience, or what you are telling yourself, you'd have a right to listen to yourself. Because Jesus is just another guy, and he lived 2,000 years ago. He doesn't get your struggles. He doesn't understand what it's like to live in 2020. So if something he says doesn't line up with what you want to do, or what someone else tells you you should be doing, by all means, throw out the 2,000 year old advice and go with something new....does that sound familiar? To me, that sounds an awful lot like a conversation I have with myself every day, whether these words actually come into my head or not: "What I want is more important that what Jesus says about what I want." We treat Jesus like just another guy. But maybe you're better at recognizing that, and you're better at taking Jesus' words seriously. Maybe you realize that his words are the words of God. Maybe you realize that he performed miracles, and therefore he must have divine power. And so you read his words. You study his Word, and you take it seriously. You even let his Word shape your morals and your conscience, because you know that his Words come straight from God. Do you realize you can think all of those thoughts, which are great thoughts, and still only be treating Jesus as a prophet, or as a man from God? The Old Testament prophets did miracles. They spoke words directly from God. That was their job. So what does it look like if we're treating Jesus only as a prophet? It would mean that we read his words, and we use them to navigate life. It would mean we come to church on a Sunday morning and hear those words, and maybe even study them during the week. It would mean we choose those words over the words of other people and over our own voice. And to a lot of people out there, that's what Christianity is. It's only about reading the Word. It's only about seeing how that Word shapes your life. Again, there's nothing wrong with that! That's one of the most vital parts of Christianity! But if it stops there, Jesus is your prophet, he's not your Savior. Your blindness is affecting the way you see Jesus. And that brings me to the cure for our blindness. And that cure is recognizing that Jesus is more. Jesus is more than a sinful human being. He's the only human being to go through life without sin. The apostle Paul says, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that through him we might become the righteousness of God." Not only did Jesus have no sin, not only is he more than a sinful human being, he makes you more too! In the most unfair trade of all time, Jesus gave you his perfection, his sinlessness, his righteousness, in exchange for your sin. He became sin for us. He suffered the punishment of God for us, because he is more than a sinful human being. He's your Savior. And thanks to him, you're more than a sinful human being. You're still sinful, but now you're a sinful human being who has forgiveness for all those sins. And you're a sinful human being who knows that when you stand before God on Judgment Day, all he's going to see is the perfection Jesus gave you. Jesus is more. Jesus is more than a prophet. Because a prophet will tell you wise things. A prophet might even have healed this man of his blindness by God's power, but a prophet couldn't have said what Jesus said. A prophet is there to point you to someone else. Jesus points to himself and says, "I AM the Light of the World. I AM the Son of Man, the promised Savior." Jesus is more than a prophet, because he doesn't point you to the one who is going to save you, he saves you himself. He comes to you when you're blind. When you're sitting there in darkness because you can't find your way to him, he comes to you. When your blindness has made you do things and say things to other people that make you feel worthless, he comes to you and washes you clean until your sins dissolve like the mud in the Pool of Siloam. And then you praise him. Because Jesus is more. You wouldn't worship another person, you wouldn't pray to a prophet, but Jesus is more. So praise him. Live your life for him instead of for yourself. And pray to him. Jesus has given you the green light to come to him with anything that's on your heart or mind. Don't just treat him like a prophet, don't stop at reading his Word, talk to him! Let him guide your life every single day. (I'll close with this...) I mentioned earlier that it would be ridiculous for a blind man to go through life as if he weren't blind. Wouldn't it be equally ridiculous for someone who can see to go through life as if they were blind? Think about it this way. If you had gone through most of your life legally blind, and you had just been given a pair of glasses that helped you see clearly for the first time in your life, do you think you'd leave those glasses on your nightstand? Do you think you'd divide your life between things you wear the glasses for and things you don't? Of course not. So why would we treat Jesus that way? He's told us who he is. He is the Light of the World. So now Live Life by the Light. Why would you only want to hear from him once a week? Why would you stop at reading his Word and not pray to him and worship him? Why would you compartmentalize your life between things you let Jesus into and things you keep him out of? Jesus is the Light that helps you see everything in life better, but he's also more. He's the Light that brought you out of darkness, healed you of your blindness, and continues to shine the Light of his forgiveness and love on you every day. He's the Light that helps us see our whole life differently. We see how blind we are without him, we see our whole life better through him, and we know we have forgiveness and eternal life because of him. Let's live by his Light. Amen.