Signs 6: Healing of the Blind Man
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: John 9:1-12
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Thank you, praise band, for leading us in worship through music this morning, and welcome back children’s ministry from camp this week! And to all of you here in the room and out there online, welcome to Family Worship at Eastern Hills. I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor, and it’s a blessing to be able to worship together on this first Sunday of summer (the summer solstice was this past week, so it’s officially summertime).
Announcements
Announcements
I wanted to give the church family a heads up that we will begin receiving our annual offering for World Hunger/Disaster Relief next week. Our goal as a church this year is $5,700. Begin praying now about how God would have you give to support Southern Baptist efforts to combat world hunger and provide assistance and care to those living in the wake of natural disasters. We take this offering up during the month of July each year.
I very nearly scrapped my entire message on Friday and started over. This was, of course, because of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the guiding legal precedent regarding abortion for the past 49 years, a fact which should absolutely be celebrated by all who believe that life begins at conception. Since Roe became the controlling law of the land in 1973, an estimated 63,000,000 unborn babies have died through abortion. Were we to have a single second of silence for each of those lives lost, we would have to be silent for two years straight. But the pendulum has shifted, and we can and should rejoice in the work of God in changing hearts and minds.
However, I want to make a couple of things clear, so that we know how to discuss this. I only read the Syllabus of the decision on Friday (basically the first eight pages, so the summary), but this is my understanding:
First, the Supreme Court decided that Roe and Casey were both just badly decided, because they essentially misinterpreted the Constitution in order to make law from the judicial bench, instead of from the legislature the way our government is meant to operate. They did not make a declaration about the morality of abortion itself (other than to say it is a “profound moral question”), just that one cannot manipulate the Constitution to manufacture the protected “right” to abortion on a national level. They decided that abortion access is a moral question for lawmakers, not the courts, and so that decision-making should be left to the individual States’ elected legislatures.
Second, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe and Casey doesn’t make abortion “illegal” in most of the nation. Several states have “trigger laws” that either went into effect Friday or will go into effect in the next several weeks, and several other States already have law on the books that would make the practice illegal if those laws are enforced.
Third, here in New Mexico, there were laws on the books greatly restricting abortion, but those laws were repealed by the legislature in February of 2021. Abortion will remain legal in this State for the foreseeable future.
Now for application: For the Church, we have the opportunity to do even more. Here in New Mexico, we will need to continue to contend for the unborn. But now that abortion-on-demand has been removed from its protected position as a fundamental right in the U.S., there are going to be more opportunities than at any time in my recollection to care for people (women, children, AND men) in crisis. Many in this congregation already do these things. We need to support our local pregnancy centers as much as we are able with our volunteer time, donations, and other resources, so that they can have all that they need to minister effectively and efficiently. We must live out our commitment to these children that we have sought to protect: that we would support moms and dads who are surprised and scared; that we would show love and care for women who find themselves pregnant and alone; that we would live out the text of Psalm 82:3-4 by providing justice for the needy and the fatherless, upholding the rights of the oppressed and the destitute, rescuing the poor and needy, and that our religion would be “pure and undefiled before God the Father” because we “look after orphans and widows in their distress.” (James 1:27). If the Lord leads us to foster, we should foster. If the Lord leads us to adopt, we should adopt. We should neighbor our communities well, reaching out to those physically close to us through “neighboring moments,” getting to know and then meeting our neighbors’ needs as we can in surprisingly practical ways so that people know we care, know we love, and know we believe, so that we would be a refuge for them in a time of desperate need.
So we celebrate the change in the law regarding abortion, but we also need to gird ourselves up for the task ahead of continuing to be the hands and feet of Jesus to those experiencing a crisis pregnancy. But really, we’ve always been called to be the hands and feet of Jesus in every situation. So in a way, nothing has changed for our calling and mission, just perhaps the volume of a specific kind of opportunity. So cheer, but care. Celebrate, but serve. Rejoice, but reach out. To God be the glory.
Opening
Opening
Now that we have addressed that this morning, we’re going to continue down the path of our series, and we will make a connection to the happenings of the day within it. We are past the halfway point of our series on the seven signs that Jesus performed in the Gospel of John. Our series will actually look at nine “signs,” and if that’s confusing, you’ll have have to make sure that you’re here for the last two weeks of the series. Last week, we looked at the fifth sign: Jesus walking on the water of the Sea of Galilee in John 6. This morning, we jump all the way into John 9 to consider the sixth miraculous sign. Our focal passage is the first 12 verses of the chapter. As you are able, let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read it together:
1 As he was passing by, 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,” Jesus answered. “This came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him. 4 We must do the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 After he said these things he spit on the ground, made some mud from the saliva, and spread the mud on his eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So he left, washed, and came back seeing. 8 His neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar said, “Isn’t this the one who used to sit begging?” 9 Some said, “He’s the one.” Others were saying, “No, but he looks like him.” He kept saying, “I’m the one.” 10 So they asked him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So when I went and washed I received my sight.” 12 “Where is he?” they asked. “I don’t know,” he said.
PRAYER (thank the Lord for the SCOTUS decision, pray for our faithfulness in loving and serving others well, and pray for Christ Church—different from Christ Church ABQ from last week)
To this point in our “Signs” series, we’ve seen Jesus do some pretty incredible things: Things that defy natural explanations; things that demanded a supernatural intervention into reality, even the suspension of the laws that govern how the universe works. In short, we’ve studied about how Jesus did the truly miraculous.
Jesus did these signs to showcase His identity as the promised Messiah and as Almighty God. By the time we reach John 9, we’re easily halfway through the time of His earthly ministry. People have seen the works that He has done, and basically there are two responses: belief and resistance:
30 As he was saying these things, many believed in him.
48 The Jews responded to him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you’re a Samaritan and have a demon?”
These two responses are recorded in the same conversation in the temple during the Feast of Shelters right before our focal passage today. So Jesus is a hot topic. People either followed or resisted. Not terribly dissimilar to our culture today.
Now, there’s something interesting that takes place at the beginning of our focal passage this morning that we might not catch, because it’s just so natural. See if you can catch it:
1 As he was passing by, 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?”
Jesus and His disciples are walking, and they pass by a man who was born blind. He had never seen light or beauty or the faces of those who loved him and those whom he loved. But instead of the disciples seeing the blind man, they seek to understand the blind man’s problem. “Why is this man blind? Whose fault is it? His (as if he were preemptively punished with blindness for sins that he would later commit, since he was born blind)? Or his parents (as if they did something wrong and now had received a son born blind as their punishment… which then means the man is punished as well)?”
They have only two ways of looking at the situation. It’s one or the other. All or nothing. The reason that I said this is just so natural is because for many of us, we come to situations and we approach them incredibly mechanistically. I KNOW that I do this, so I’m preaching to myself first and foremost here. What I mean by “mechanistically,” is that we look at something and see the issue, and then we just want to know why the issue is there or how it could have been prevented.
We do this in my house all the time. Abbie: “Cough, cough… I don’t feel well.” Me: I wonder where she could have gotten sick? I might even throw some blame around: If you hadn’t taken a sip of so-and-so’s Coke, you probably wouldn’t be sick right now. Does it matter where she got sick? No. Does it change the fact that she’s sick? No. Does it shorten the duration of her sickness or somehow provide a cure if I suss out where she got sick? No. But somehow, I feel like if I can just solve the question, I feel like I have some kind of control. Some kind of power. But that doesn’t really matter in the moment.
What really matters right then? My daughter who’s sick. (she’s not, by the way) Sometimes, what matters most isn’t the problem. It’s the person. The disciples saw the problem, not the person. Now, I get that sometimes solving the problem really helps the person… but not in this case.
If the disciples got the answer to their question, does it make the man less blind? No. Does it make his existence better in the slightest? No. And the real truth is that their two ways of looking at the problem was a problem of its own, because the answer was neither.
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus answered. “This came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him.
The question that we need to answer in response to this verse is: “which works?” Well, spoiler alert: it’s going to end up being a couple of things. A main one, and a result.
We saw in the miracle of the feeding of the 5000:
29 Jesus replied, “This is the work of God—that you believe in the one he has sent.”
The work of God in the life of the blind man is for him to follow Jesus, because that is how he is going to truly see.
1) To follow Jesus is to truly see.
1) To follow Jesus is to truly see.
This man was born blind. He had never had sight. And Jesus comes along, notices the man, and does a miraculous sign in the man’s life so that God’s works would be displayed in his life. Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud from the spittle, and puts it on the blind man’s eyes.
6 After he said these things he spit on the ground, made some mud from the saliva, and spread the mud on his eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So he left, washed, and came back seeing.
This man had eyes that had never worked, and then with one visit, a little spit, a little mud, and a little touch from Jesus, and he opened them to the full-color reality of life! This man could SEE. He hasn’t yet seen Jesus, but he already sees something about Him: that He is a prophet:
17 Again they asked the blind man, “What do you say about him, since he opened your eyes?” “He’s a prophet,” he said.
He sees that Jesus is something special. He doesn’t have a full understanding of just how special right away, but it comes (we’ll look at that in a minute). What matters for the moment is that the blind man went from seeing the world wrongly to seeing it clearly. His eyes could see nothing, and now they could see everything.
So the question for us on this point is: “How do we see?” What’s the lens through which we look at the world?
“Either Scripture will be the lens through which you view the world, or the world (science, politics, etc.) will be the lens through which you view Scripture. Ultimately, one or the other will be your authority.”
— Dustin Benge, Professor of Biblical Spirituality & Historical Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
How we see matters. One of the grave dangers we witness in the currents of modern Christianity is the desire to follow Jesus, but the lack of desire to see the world the way Jesus does.
Some “progressive” Christians look at what is happening in the world and decide that human solutions are better than biblical ones, so they basically make deals with the devil in order to obtain whatever the current culture warriors cry out for in the way of social justice, overlooking the very real, very evil sins that are being committed in the name of “progress.” But they forget that it is because of the deception of the human heart that we have these problems happening in the world in the first place. So they run from human solution to human solution, all the while minimizing or ignoring the reality of the sinfulness of the human heart—and so refusing to call people to turn from their sins in repentance and surrender to Jesus for their true rescue. They don’t see the world the way Jesus sees it: as radically broken and in need of not just repair, but revival through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And this knife cuts both ways. Some so-called “conservative” Christians look at what is happening in the world and can readily and probably accurately point to all the problems that have brought us to this place. They can jump on their social media soapboxes and lay down some zingers at people they have never met, or maybe even worse, at people they claim to know and love. And they can insult and belittle and besmirch the characters of these people because they don’t agree with us… so they should be able to denigrate them or treat them with contempt. So they run from battle to battle, all the while minimizing or ignoring the reality of the sinfulness of the human heart—and refusing to repent of their own hubris and actually love people the way Jesus would have them do. They don’t see the world the way Jesus sees it: as a whole bunch of people lovingly created by Him to be in a relationship with Him and who are bound for hell without Him. They would rather win an argument than win a soul.
Neither of these positions is right, and I admit that I’ve painted with a really broad brush this morning, but my intent is not to offend, but to illuminate the extremes. One position claims to love, but refuses to speak the truth. The other speaks what is true, but refuses to love.
Warren W. Wiersbe said:
“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”
We must have both if we are to see the way Jesus sees.
15 But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ.
It doesn’t matter how you slice it: sinning in the name of righteousness doesn’t make any sense. I know that I’m guilty of this, if even sometimes in the confines of my own heart. I so often don’t see the way Jesus sees. And in this, I’m like the Pharisees.
You see, there is an underlying message in the sign itself: the blind man regains his physical sight, and can thereafter see. The Pharisees can physically see, but it turns out that they are actually blind.
39 Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, in order that those who do not see will see and those who do see will become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and asked him, “We aren’t blind too, are we?” 41 “If you were blind,” Jesus told them, “you wouldn’t have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
It was the Pharisees who were the real blind men in this account. They were the ones who were so blind, they were even blind to their blindness: they had to ask if they were blind, because they were certain that they could see.
The blind man comes away seeing. The Pharisees come away being informed that they are blind.
In Revelation 3, we read the Lord’s missive to the church at Laodicea. In it, we find that they were like the Pharisees: they were certain that they were doing well, but in fact, we see that they were blind:
17 For you say, ‘I’m rich; I have become wealthy and need nothing,’ and you don’t realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
17 For you say, ‘I’m rich; I have become wealthy and need nothing,’ and you don’t realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. 18 I advise you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you may be rich, white clothes so that you may be dressed and your shameful nakedness not be exposed, and ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may see. 19 As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be zealous and repent. 20 See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
Jesus could see their real predicament, just like He saw the blind man’s physical predicament and the Pharisees’ spiritual predicament. And He offers the church at Laodicea a solution:
18 I advise you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you may be rich, white clothes so that you may be dressed and your shameful nakedness not be exposed, and ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may see. 19 As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be zealous and repent. 20 See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
If we are going to truly see, we must surrender to God through faith in Jesus—that He would be both Lord and Savior, so that we would long to see things the way that He sees them, to live His commands as He would have us to live them, and that we would walk with Him the way that He calls us to walk with Him: in the light.
2) To follow Jesus is to walk in the light.
2) To follow Jesus is to walk in the light.
The Scriptures use the concept of “walking” as a picture of how a person lives, not how a person puts one foot in front of the other to get from one place to another. Jesus said that He is the light of the world, and that those who follow Him will never walk in darkness:
12 Jesus spoke to them again: “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”
The reason that we who follow Jesus will not walk in the darkness is that Jesus is God, and there is no darkness in Him. So as we walk with Christ, He continues to shine that light into our lives so that we are cleansed from our sin and look more and more like Jesus as we grow together as brothers and sisters in Christ:
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him. 6 If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. 7 If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
In our focal passage this morning, Jesus said that to follow Him is to walk, and to work, in the light.
4 We must do the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
So according to Jesus, while the light was shining on the earth (His presence), He and His disciples needed to do the work of God (calling people to faith in Jesus). There would be a time of darkness when that work would not continue (His crucifixion). But Jesus beat the darkness of the grave and rose again, never to die again, and now by His Spirit’s presence in the lives of believers, He remains in the world through us. Therefore, it is always day, always time to do the works of God. We are the light of the world, reflecting the love of Christ to the lost:
14 “You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
We walk and work in the light so that others would see the light of Christ in us and then give glory to God for how He’s worked in us. However, how this is worked out in a practical sense is that those who follow Jesus are sent:
12 Jesus spoke to them again: “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”
3) To follow Jesus is to be sent.
3) To follow Jesus is to be sent.
Light that isn’t visible isn’t really light. If we are to be the light of the world, then we are to be active in shining that light. We in our focal passage this morning the practical outworkings of the work of Jesus in the life of the blind man. There is a little bit of a triple-entendre here in verse 7:
7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So he left, washed, and came back seeing.
So the man is literally “sent” by Jesus to the pool called “Sent.” He obediently goes and washes, and finds that when the mud has been removed from his eyes, the blindness has been removed with it.
What’s funny is that the formerly blind man doesn’t even realize that God is giving him opportunity after opportunity to testify to what Jesus has done. He becomes that city on a hill or lamp on a stand. He goes from being “sent” to the pool to unknowingly being “sent” as a messenger of the Kingdom of God.
8 His neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar said, “Isn’t this the one who used to sit begging?” 9 Some said, “He’s the one.” Others were saying, “No, but he looks like him.” He kept saying, “I’m the one.” 10 So they asked him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So when I went and washed I received my sight.”
11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So when I went and washed I received my sight.”
His neighbors are confused. “Isn’t that the blind guy? Yeah… wait, no....” And he just keeps saying, “Yes, I’m the blind guy.” And finally, they reach the important question: “How has you blindness gone away?” And now He gets to tell the story for the first time.
It turns out the day the man was healed was a Sabbath day, and healers didn’t heal on the Sabbath because that was working, so the Pharisees call the blind man in to ask him about the guy who broke the religious rules (see how the disciples are in some ways a lot like the Pharisees—they don’t care that the guy can see… they just care about the problem of Sabbath violation):
15 Then the Pharisees asked him again how he received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” he told them. “I washed and I can see.”
And now it starts getting real for the formerly blind man. We saw him earlier declare that Jesus is a prophet. Now they call Him a sinner, and the man just testifies about what Jesus has done:
24 So a second time they summoned the man who had been blind and told him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” 25 He answered, “Whether or not he’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I can see!”
25 He answered, “Whether or not he’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I can see!”
But he STILL wasn’t done. They ask him again, and now he says something really important:
27 “I already told you,” he said, “and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t want to become his disciples too, do you?”
26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27 “I already told you,” he said, “and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t want to become his disciples too, do you?”
He says that he wants to become a disciple of Jesus. He makes it clear: “You don’t want to become his disciples TOO, do you?”
This guy is testifying to the grace of God in the work of Jesus over and over to these people who think Jesus is terrible. But he had one more: after he asks that question, they get really mad, and they insult both Jesus and the man by saying they have no idea where Jesus came from, and that the man must be in cahoots with Him in His sinfulness. And this is where the formerly blind man just lays it all on the line:
30 “This is an amazing thing!” the man told them. “You don’t know where he is from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is God-fearing and does his will, he listens to him. 32 Throughout history no one has ever heard of someone opening the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
Brothers and sisters, we’re sent in the same way as the formerly blind man. We have opportunity after opportunity placed in front of us to testify to what Jesus has done in our lives. We can speak words of truth and life into a culture filled with lies and death. We are called to tell of the incredible grace of God, proven in the death of His perfect Son, to call people to stop sprinting in the darkness toward hell and surrender to Jesus, so that they may walk in the light toward God. The only question is this: will we do so?
Closing
Closing
Now, to end the blind man’s story, we find that he comes to complete faith when Jesus finally reveals Himself.
35 Jesus heard that they had thrown the man out, and when he found him, he asked, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 “Who is he, Sir, that I may believe in him?” he asked. 37 Jesus answered, “You have seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” 38 “I believe, Lord!” he said, and he worshiped him.
Knowing the answer to the question the disciples asked didn’t matter. What mattered was what God was doing in the life of this person. Are we willing to look past problems and see lost people who need Jesus? Jesus can handle the problem of their lostness. He handled mine, he handled yours. There is no one so far lost that God can’t save them. He is the one who changes lives. He’s the one who does the work; we’re called to be His ambassadors of reconciliation.
However, like the Pharisees in today’s passage, those who are lost also have a decision to make: we’ve seen so many miraculous things that Jesus has done. Are we willing to follow Him?
Invitation to trust Christ
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Offering
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Pastor’s Bible Study tonight at 5:30 in MH.
Long time church member Bob Suber passed away Friday before last, and we will be holding his memorial service here in the sanctuary tomorrow evening at 530.
Bible reading: Luke 19, finishing Luke on Friday. Then starting Ezekiel!
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
44 Jesus cried out, “The one who believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me. 45 And the one who sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me would not remain in darkness.
Go and see. Go and walk in the light. You are sent.