Are You Blind Enough to See Jesus?

Open your Bibles up to John 9. We are going through this entire chapter today, so I would encourage you to leave your Bible open, since we will do some jumping around. That’s on page 951 in the pew Bible, in case you need help finding where we are.

This week, I learned about an extremely rare but fascinating medical condition called Anton Syndrome.

There have only been 28 cases diagnosed in history.

A person who develop Anton Syndrome have something happen—usually a stroke—that leaves them blind.

That isn’t totally unheard of. However, what happens with this unique disorder is that something else messes up in their brain which causes the individual not to acknowledge that they have lost their sight.

Patients who develop Anton Syndrome stumble around, bump into things, and need help eating and getting dressed, yet their brain refuses to acknowledge what the rest of the world knows: they are blind, and they cannot see anything. [1]

As we go through John 9 this morning, we need are going to meet some folks who are blind.

The man the story revolves around is physically blind, but as we will see, the religious leaders around him are like those with Anton Syndrome—they are blind but don’t even know it.

By the end of this account, we will see a blind man who was blind enough to see Jesus, and a bunch of Pharisees who are left staggering around in the dark.

The majority of this chapter is taken up with the story of the man, so we are going to jump through various verses to get a feel for what is going on.

Let’s walk through the story, starting in verse 1, and then we will come back and make some observations about our own blindness...

The first point I want us to acknowledge from this account is:

1) We are blind.

There are at least three groups dealing with some level of blindness in this passage.

The man born blind is physically unable to see, and Jesus takes care of that.

The disciples, though, seem to have some blindness of their own in the question they ask Jesus. They seem to be...

A) Blinded by misunderstanding God’s ways.

Look back at verses 2-3...

The disciples’ ideas of God came more from the culture than they did from what God shows us in his word.

In those days, they assumed that all illness and disability was a direct result of someone’s sin.

Someone must have done something wrong, and this was God punishing them.

That idea permeated their culture, despite what God clearly taught in his word.

Think back to the book of Job. In it, you are introduced to a righteous man named Job who was one of God’s best servants on earth.

He prayed for his kids, he gave to the poor, and he honored God with his life.

Yet, in a matter of moments, God allows Satan to kill all of his children, steal all of his flocks and herds, and even carry of his servants.

Shortly thereafter, he struck Job with painful sores all over his body.

As you read the book, you find that none of this was because Job had sinned. Instead, God was working behind the scenes to correct all of our understanding of suffering.

The disciples had heard Job’s story before, I’m sure, but what the culture taught was more entrenched in them than what the Bible said.

In our day, this is reflected in the teachings you sometimes hear on TV or the sayings that get tossed around.

Let me give you an example: Ever heard someone say, “God helps those who help themselves?”

Where is that in Bible? Nowhere—that is actually a quote from Benjamin Franklin, who wasn’t a Christian.

In fact, the Bible says the exact opposite. It teaches that God helps those who are blind, who are spiritually poor, and who are helpless, not those who think they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

There are other examples we could give.

We mentioned one last week: “We are all God’s children.” According to the Bible, that isn’t true. As we said, every human being is created in the image of God and has inherent worth and value, but that doesn’t mean we are all God’s children.

Some statements have some truth in them, but without the proper understanding of God’s ways, we don’t apply them in accurate ways.

I am thinking about statements like, “God wants me to be happy,” or, “God says we aren’t supposed to judge people.”

There is some truth in those statements, but the way we use them is not in line with who God is.

On top of all this, we still fight with the same understanding of God’s ways that the disciples did.

We feel like good people should have good things happen to them and that bad people should have bad things happen to them.

We talk about it in terms of karma these days—that’s what he gets for being a jerk.

Well, what happens when we get sick or when we go through some kind of painful struggle? “God, why are you doing this to me? I’ve been a good person, I’ve been nice to people, I go to church…why are you punishing me?”

There are times when the trouble we face are consequences for our sin, but sometimes, it is simply because we live in a world that God hasn’t fully redeemed yet.

Heartache, pain, and suffering are part of the human experience until Jesus returns, regardless of what culture says.

Our misunderstanding of God’s ways, then can blind us.

The disciples handled it correctly, though—they asked Jesus what was going on, and they allowed him to set them straight.

In the same way, you and I need to make sure we take everything we read, everything we read, and everything we hear, and filtering it through what God says in his word.

You need to be reading the Bible, studying the Bible, and growing in your understanding of who God is and what he has done.

However, there is a caution here: Just knowing what the Bible says cannot cure your blindness.

In fact, the group in this passage who struggled the most with blindness was the one that knew God’s word inside and out.

You see, the Pharisees were...

B) Blinded by misunderstanding God’s words.

Go back to verses 13-14...

If you have been with us, you know what the problem here is: Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath, which was against the rules the Pharisees had made.

The Old Testament taught that you cannot work on the Sabbath, but the Pharisees had put rules in place to define exactly what “work” was.

One of those rules was that you couldn’t heal anyone on the Sabbath of anything that wasn’t life-threatening. In this example, the man was born blind—one more day wouldn’t kill him, so they thought Jesus should have waited one more day.

Stop for just a minute and let this scene sink in.

Here’s a guy who has been blind for at least, what, 20 years?

Suddenly, miraculously, God has healed him and now he can see perfectly for the first time in his life.

What should our response to that be? Shouldn’t we be filled with joy and excitement about what God is doing?

Yet, how did they respond? Look back at verse 16...

They were so convinced that they were the only ones who saw what was true that they were blind to what God was actually doing.

This is a challenge to us “church people.”

Those of us who have been around church for a large portion of our lives and know a lot of Bible verses in our heads.

What does your knowledge of God produce in you?

Is it an awe for God’s works, especially when he does things that surprise you?

Or is it a refusal to see that God might be doing something different, working in a different way, doing the unexpected? Perhaps it is a style of music or teaching or a way of doing ministry that isn’t what you and I are used to?

Perhaps it is that we think we have it all figured out, and we are condemning people for not living up to the standards we have set?

Listen—not everything is okay, and we need to be clear that certain things are sinful and even that some are unwise, even though they may not actually be sin.

However, we need to make sure that we don’t become like these Pharisees and allow our knowledge of God’s word to puff us up with pride and remove any sense of compassion or wonder.

Listen to the way Jesus rebukes them at the end of this chapter. Start in verse 39-41...

These people thought their lists of do’s and don’ts were enough to get them to heaven, but instead they were like the people with Anton Syndrome, walking around blind without realizing it.

Would you be willing to ask God to help you see if that is you?

Would you ask him to see if you are still spiritually blind because you have allowed the culture or even your own understanding of God’s word to keep you from trusting and seeing him?

You see, that’s the beauty of this passage.

If God shows us our blindness, and we respond in humility...

2) We can regain our sight.

Go back to verse 6-7...

The blind man saw.

We don’t know exactly why Jesus made mud. This is the only time we hear of him doing that.

It could be that he was using the mud as an outward symbol of the blindness we all deal with.

Regardless, the man could see.

What do we learn from this?

We too can see through a couple of different things we see in this passage.

First, we can regain our sight...

A) By God’s grace.

Go back to the beginning of the story in verse 1.

From what John recorded, what did the blind man do to get Jesus to notice him?

It doesn’t seem like anything! He is probably in the same place he was most days, begging like he normally does, and Jesus came by.

Unlike some of the other stories where Jesus healed people, the text doesn’t tell us that he ever asked to be healed or called out to Jesus, or even that someone brought him to Jesus.

Jesus passed by him, and he healed him.

Isn’t this what the Bible teaches us about the way God makes us alive?

These may be familiar verses, but hear them again:

Ephesians 2:8–9 CSB

For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast.

The Pharisees had it wrong—God doesn’t save us because of our good works.

Instead, God saves us by his grace, which means he extends salvation as a gift that you and I do not deserve and cannot earn.

It’s not by works, so no one can boast that they earned their way to being right with God.

Why did Jesus heal this man? Because he did.

Were there others he didn’t heal? Absolutely.

Why did he choose him? Because he is God and he extends grace as he sees fit.

I don’t know everything about why God healed this man, or why God saves some people and others don’t get saved, but here’s what I do know: God saw this man and healed him.

If you and I see, if we are understanding these truths and growing to know Jesus better, it is because of God’s goodness and grace.

Just like the man wasn’t blind because of his sin, he also wasn’t made whole because of his good deeds.

Instead, God extended healing and ultimately salvation to him as a gift based off his grace.

If that’s the case, then—that spiritual sight is a gift from God by his grace, then we also see from this passage that seeing will be accompanied...

B) By humility.

There are details John leaves out here, but most of us wouldn’t sign up for the “spit-made mud mask” treatment.

How does this man respond? He let’s Jesus do it, and then he obeys by going and washing like Jesus told him.

From that moment on, he begins following Jesus. That’s implied in verse 27 when he says, “You don’t want to become his disciples too, do you?”

We see that humility displayed in verses 35-38....

God’s grace toward him has created a humility that is hungry to learn and quick to worship.

He believes what Jesus says and trusts him and follows him.

That stands in stark contrast to the Pharisees who stick to their guns and stay blind.

For them, their blindness caused them to refuse God’s grace, even when the perfect embodiment of it was standing right in front of them.

They refused to acknowledge their need to follow Jesus, thinking they saw everything clearly, and they didn’t get forgiveness.

So, take a look at your own life—what do you see?

Have you ever acknowledged your own blindness, that you can’t see and you need Jesus to open your eyes so you can follow him?

In his grace, God can forgive and save those who respond humbly to him.

Have you always trusted what the culture says about God and not really tried to understand who he is?

Or, have you allowed your understanding of God’s word to blind you to how God may be working around you?

Don’t assume you are the blind man—perhaps you are a disciple, but you still have areas where you think more like the culture than like the Bible.

Perhaps you are like the Pharisees.

Would you ask God to help you be blind enough to see?

Endnotes:

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2827161/. Accessed 12 January 2022.