From Blindness

In John 9, Jesus heals a man born blind. But the real miracle is not only physical sight, but spiritual vision. This message explores how Christ, the Light of the world, opens our eyes and calls us from darkness into living faith.

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With me to the Gospel According to John, chapter nine. The Gospel According to John, Chapter nine. Now, as you know, you may know, in the lectionary readings that we follow here, and churches all over the world, by the way, follow these same readings. So this is the reading all around the world in Christian churches that not every Christian church, but you know, a lot of them, that this is it, John 9 today. Okay.

And so, but notice in year A, which is what we're in, it's a three year cycle, abc. It corresponds to Matthew, Mark and Luke. Right. So most of the readings in year A, okay, are going to come from the Gospel According to Matthew. However, during Lent, all of a sudden we shift gears and we're stuck in John's readings.

Okay, so like Gospel of John's readings. Right. And we have been for quite a while. Nicodemus, remember the woman at the well last? Right.

So we've got these beautiful theologically deep readings from the Gospel of John. And this one is no different, to be honest with you. Okay. And notice also the readings get a lot lengthier. Has anybody noticed that?

Like even the Old Testament reading today was a lengthy, you know, it's rather lengthy. Right, Which I love personally. Paul, you remember, tells, Timothy says, read the Scriptures publicly until I come again. So we know this is a declaration according to St Paul in the early church, to read the scriptures publicly. Notice, not just preach from them.

We're going to do that, I'm going to do that. But also just reading them publicly, like this is when you gather here. This is a public sort of expression of our faith. This is worship. It's not in some way hidden rather or private, but rather public in this regard.

Okay, so now you should have been able to find John 9 in that little intro there. Once you found John 9, go ahead and stand with me for the reading of God's Word. And we'll be reading the entire chapter here and I'll be reading from the nrsv. Notice these words. This is the word of God.

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind? Jesus answered, neither this man nor his parents sinned, he was born blind. So that God's works might be revealed in him, we must work the works of him who sent me. While it is day, night is coming when no one can work.

As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the Saliva spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means scent. Then he went and washed and came back, able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, is this not the man who used to sit and beg? Some were saying, it is he.

Others were saying, no, but it is someone like him. He kept saying, I am the man. But they kept asking him, then how were your eyes opened? He answered, the man called Jesus made mud. Spread it on my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. Then I went and washed and received my sight.

They said to him, where is he? He said, I do not know. They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how.

How he had received his sight. He said to them, he put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see. Some of the Pharisees said, this man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath. But others said, how can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?

And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened. He said, he is a prophet. The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight.

Until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, is this your son who you say was born blind? How then does he now see? His parents answered, we know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But we do not know how it is that now he sees. Nor do we know who opened his eyes.

Ask him. He is of age. He will speak for himself. His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews. For the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.

Therefore his parents said, he is of age. Ask him. So for the second time, they called the man who had been blind. And they said to him, give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.

He answered, I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know that though I was blind, now I see. They said to him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? He answered them, I have told you already and you would not listen.

Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples? Then they reviled him, saying, you are his disciple. But we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we.

We do not know where he comes from. The man answered, well, here's astounding thing. You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.

If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. They answered him, you were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us? And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out. And when he found him, he said, do you believe in the Son of Man? He answered, and who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him. Jesus said to him, you have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.

He said, lord, I believe. And he worshiped him. Jesus said, I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind. Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, surely we are not blind, are we? Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would not have sin.

But now that you say, we see, your sin remains.

Lord Jesus, thank you for your holy word. And we pray that by the power of the Holy Spirit himself, you would open our eyes and open our ears to see and hear today so that we might encounter you. Lord Jesus, we pray in your name. Amen. And you can be seated.

Well, let's just get it out of the way real quick. This is a kind of weird thing going on, isn't it? This is an odd story. No, I mean, I know there's some odd stories in the Bible, but this is certainly one of them. Jesus spitting on the ground and playing with putty to make it into a mud clay, to then put it on the man's eyes.

I mean, that's got to be an odd. Why didn't he just wave the wand? You're healed. Voila. Right?

Instead, he spits on the ground. And I mean, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen anybody spit on the ground, but, you know, I have four boys. Like, sometimes when they're outside, they spit on the ground. It's like, buddy, stop spitting where we're walking, Right? You know, that's nasty, okay?

But Jesus spits on the ground. You can imagine. And this is an odd thing. And probably everybody there is shocked, except for the blind man, because he can't even see it. Good thing he couldn't.

He probably would have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But instead, he receives this mud. And then, not only that, not only does he receive it where his eyes are supposed to be working, but they never have. You know, this is the only time where we have someone born blind, healed. Everybody else had lost sight at some point, apparently.

But then he goes and washes and is healed and he comes back able to see. And, you know, most gospel, right, like the synoptics, you know, Matthew, Mark and Luke, most of them, that would be it, right? Like, I mean, you get to, what, verse five or so and they wrap up the story, you know. Yep, there's another healing. Let's move on to the next one.

You know how it is in Matthew, it's boom, boom, boom. There may be four healings in one chapter, but. Oh, no, no, no, no. You must not heard John, because the way John does it, he elongates the story, does he not? He gets very dramatic, in fact, with the details of the story.

For instance, like last week, it was about noon, right? He tells us this one detail where, interestingly, by the way, at noon would have been the only time you'd have been able to see all the way down the well, if you think about it, right? No darkness at all. Straight light. And of course, we're talking about Jesus being the light here today.

These little details of John, we skip right over them most of the time. Oh, yeah. I don't know why he's saying that, but really, we need to park there. Now, I would love to park in this long chapter, this dramatic story, but I know you have tension spans just as I do, and you've got places to go just as I do, I guess. But I'm going to just make three movements this morning through the text.

And the first one is this. When you get to John, and this is just sort of an interpretive piece here, is John is doing something different than the other gospel writers. And we know that. I mean, if you've read the other gospels, you know, immediately when you get to the Gospel of John, he's missing primary stories that are in the other one that's not in his, but he's indicating them in a different way, you know, just the same way that he starts his gospel. In the beginning was the word, right?

I mean, boom, going straight back to Genesis, but beginning to, not with just Jesus birth, right? Or the announcement of his Birth or his conception, okay? But rather all the way to the beginning before he ever took on flesh. That's a theological move. That's an interesting symbolic move here on his part.

And every one of these particular stories that John chooses to tell us because he's very selective, alright? The other guys are trying to get it all in, but John is a little more, if we could say it this way, philosophically theological because all of a sudden now he latches onto one thing and elongates the story to try to get across a major point for us. It's not like he just says Jesus, the light of the world, you know, Merry Christmas. Right? That's not the way he does it.

Instead he's going to show that Jesus is the world, not just by declaration, but by today demonstration. Okay? And so notice we've got this interesting detail also of like siloam. Even the place he goes and washes is called scent. Have you ever noticed how many parenthetical statements are in the Gospel of John?

Like most books of the Bible, you can go through the whole thing and there's not one parenthetical statement. Not so with John. John's always like, oh, and by the way, Salome meant sent. And it's almost like he's winking at you, like, get it? You know, like we're sent.

Once we're baptized, we're sent. You know, anybody? No, I mean that's what he's doing here. At every turn he's sort of winking at us with these major theological themes that reach all the way back, interwoven in fact throughout all of the Old Testament and what will be the New Testament. It's fascinating.

It's point blank genius to be honest with you. You're literally holding when you're reading the Gospel of John here, one of the greatest books ever written. The there's nothing that could even match this sort of inspiration of God as written by John the beloved who knew Jesus personally. What a testimony, number one. Like that.

That's what we ground our faith in, dear brothers and sisters. Not some sort of idea that's just out there that others have believed that we have to believe in some unscientific, you know, non intellectual way? No, no, we ground it in eyewitness testimony. And isn't that how we get our news today, as fragmented as that is? I mean, we want somebody down there in the hurricane or we don't believe it.

I'm down here in the hurricane. It's like, why is that guy down there? It's because we Trust eyewitness accounts. Right? We trust him.

Okay, Same thing here. This is an I. John was there. And John is a little bit more like my wife than me. Her stories, like, if you ask me how my day is, I can do it in 30 seconds. It really can.

But for her, if asked, it's not going to be 30 seconds. It's because things are more important to her than details that I just blow past. I mean, you asked me what I did two weeks ago. I don't even know, like, truly, okay. Because I don't like so much stuff just goes past me.

But she locks into people and to, you know, she cares about these. And I'm like, man, that John's like that. You see, I'm more like Mark. Move immediately, immediately, immediately. You know?

But John makes us slow down. No, no, hang on. Park with me. And so he has kind of a literary way of immersing us in the story. So in other words, we are meant to sort of be immersed in this world.

Like we're stuck there for quite a while, thinking and being there. And in fact, it's fascinating that John never names this guy Mr. Detail himself, right? Naming Nicodemus and Mary and others by name, but omitting the name of this guy, simply referring to him over and over again. You heard it.

You heard it repeated. The man born blind, over and over again. The man born blind said. The man born blind, like John. John, he said, pastor, what's going on there?

Well, I think what's going on there is we're the man born blond. He doesn't give them a name, a specific name, because it's us. It's all of us. And isn't this the way we come into the world, spiritually speaking? It absolutely is.

We come in darkness and we can't see and we're born blind. And this takes us right Back to John 3, doesn't it? You must be born again to see with spiritual eyes. You must be born again. Born of the spirit, not of the flesh.

Everybody in here that can hear me, that can see me, you've been born once, now you must be born again. That's what salvation is.

John specializes also in misunderstandings, doesn't he? You remember, he kind of lets the story unfold in such a way that he shows how misunderstood, in fact, Jesus really was during his earthly life, during his earthly teachings. And we sort of look back sometimes. Sometimes, unfortunately, a little snobbery is going on when we look back. Oh, I can't believe they didn't know what born again MEANT well, after 2,000 years, we certainly should know.

And we still struggle with it, much less if we were there the first time to hear it. Right? So let's have a little sympathy for those first hearers rather than just condemning them and acting like we're somehow smarter than they. Okay. No.

In fact, John constantly shows. You remember with the woman at the well, it's like, I have food, you know, not of. It's like, did he go get Subway? We went to Burger King. Did he?

And he's like, guys, guys. It's to do. The Father's will never left. Remember, they went into town to go get Burger King. At least that's the way I envision it.

And you remember Jesus says, you must be born again. Nicolas said, how can I go back into my buddy. This law? Like, you're a teacher of the law, and you can't put this together. All right, like, come on.

Come on with me. Jesus misunderstood, and he is misunderstood here, isn't he? He's a sinner. No, he's not. They're divided.

What's going on here? Was this really the guy? And I love that. I love that little detail. He said, how could they not recognize they saw him every day?

And now they're like, well, because the guy's begging, can't see anything. And now he's up moving around, talking to them, freely being able to see. That's quite a dramatic change. And they can't envision him begging as opposed to him up moving around. I mean, we kind of experience this sort of thing, you know, like, if somebody sees me in my coat dressed up like this up front, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, there you go.

Or me as a teacher, very similar. But if you see me out playing pickleball, I've had students or other people say, Mr. Dack, is that you? It's like, well, yeah, it's me. I'm just dressed very differently. Right.

You know how. I don't know if you ever had that kind of experience before, but you envision people only in this way. We kind of lock people in. You are this. But here's what grace does.

Grace breaks out of all of that. Those stereotypes, those limitations, because grace perfects nature. Same guy, but not the same guy. He's a new creation, you see? And that's one of the things John is trying to get across to us.

This guy ain't the same anymore, and people notice he's not the same. And shouldn't our testimony be that. That once we were this, now we Are that because we've been born anew, Born again? Now, some of you, I'm not trying to question whether or not you've been born again. I'm saying today, you need to start living like it.

You see the difference? When baptized, we are now in Christ. Start living like it. We're now a child of the King. We'll start living like it.

Some of us are not living it out. We're not letting our light shine. Instead, we're hiding it like his parents did because of fear of society, fear of getting kicked out of this or that circle.

And notice when Jesus finally finds this guy, it's once he's been kicked out, purged from the ways of the world, even though here those ways of the world have found their way into the church, so to speak, into the synagogues. Notice. And so. So John here again, dramatically showing us, this is, by the way, the sixth sign. Seven.

Next week will be seven. Okay? Lazarus, you may remember, okay, that's the seventh sign. This is the six, and it's the opening of the eyes. Now just think about.

John chooses only seven of the miracles to show to us, right? And this is one of them. So we want to lock in, try to, you know, squeeze out, if you will, the real core here. And. And I'll just give it away.

I'll give it away ahead of time. I'll give you the Cliff Notes since we can't be here all day, right? And it's this. Jesus is the light of the world. And it's by light that the organ of the eye can see everybody.

With me, you got eyeballs. If you have eyeballs, by the way, and they're working, then that means they're receptive to light. And it's by light that we see. Now, it's interesting that if you actually look at the source of light itself for us, namely the sun, right? Not just artificial light, but the sun's light.

If you actually look directly at it, you won't see anything at all.

That's about right. If Jesus is the light of the world, then we're looking at God himself. And we can't know God through natural means only, okay? We can know some things, but not his essence. And the only way we can know that is because God himself tells us who he is.

That's why this is so important. Scripture is so important for us.

And so we have, interestingly enough, last week we had the woman at the well, all right? A Jew. You remember this? She says, I don't know why a Jew is here. Right.

You know, sir. Okay, a prophet. She kind of. You notice this progression, right? And then could this be the Messiah?

And then finally, savior of the world. So she moves from a Jew. Why is a Jew here, Samaria, all the way to savior of the world. That's the. Interestingly, there's a progression here.

And that's the second point. The progression is twofold, however. One is an ascent from darkness to light. That's the man born blonde. The other is a descent from those who.

We could put it this way, think they see into utter darkness. They're completely blind. So long as they say, now we see, they're refusing to see the light. No. You know, even in commercials, understanding or ideas that are clear, lucid are pictured as what light?

Right? I mean, you've seen. Surely you've watched cartoons at some point where a cartoon, you know, a character has an idea, and what happens? Ding. The light comes on.

Anybody ever seen that before? You know what I'm talking about? Some people have, like, never watched good cartoons. And so I have to wonder, like, do they even show that kind of artistic thing? But notice that light represents understanding, Light represents knowledge.

And it really. We. Even when we're talking to each other, we say it like, do you see what I'm saying?

Well, you didn't show me anything except for in my mind's eye, right? And if I have light, I'm like, oh, yeah, I see what you mean. You see, light is necessary and is equivalent to understanding. One group is descending into total darkness, whereas this man born blind is ascending to the light himself, Jesus Christ. So there's a crisscross, okay, in this story, and you can tell where it centers, because right at the center is where they're divided.

You remember, is he this? Is he that? Who did this? How did you know? First of all, they don't even believe that he.

He was healed. Then they finally bring the parents in, like, well, I guess he was healed, actually. Now what do we do? And then they say, well, I know what it is. The healer is a sinner.

You remember the progression here? So they're going down, down, down. They won't even believe what their eyes have seen, which is that this man that was born blind now sees. They don't believe it any.

If you pay attention to culture at all, let me just say that's exactly where we're living today.

Descent into darkness. We don't want to go that way. Instead, we want to be like this guy who begins by calling the man called Jesus. He ain't got A clue who this is. Notice the man called Jesus Christ physically heals him, you know, spits the mud.

Right. And what's going on with the mud? Well, a lot's going on with the mud, but you don't want me to have to go into all of it. Okay. Suffice it to say, it takes us right back to Genesis again.

Let me just point you in that direction. And how does God make man out of the dirt? Out of the. In the Septuagint LXXX, the 70, it says in Greek, which is just a Greek. So they take the Hebrew and turn into Greek.

It's the same word used here. Clay. It's clay. He takes the clay and breathes into it his spirit, and we become a living being.

Now, what is he doing? Spits on the ground and makes two eyeballs. That's the way I like to envision it. He makes two eyeballs that work now, because he's the Creator, and He can even take his broken creation by his grace. In other words, his power, and give us new eyes to see.

Because here's the reality. We really have two sets of eyes. One physical. These two physical organs that receive light. And then we can see.

Without light, we can't see point blank. Point blank. If there was no light, you would not be able to see anything in this room. But with light, we can see. Okay.

Same thing with our spiritual eyes. Without the light of Christ, we can see nothing. Spiritually. We got a lot of blind people that have physical sight, but not spiritual, because you must be born again. You must be born of the Spirit.

He has to open our eyes. We can't do it ourselves. It's not our own enlightenment. In fact, there's an interesting progression that specifically takes place here. Man, I wish I had a lot more time than I do, but it does like this physical healing.

There's an intellectual wrestling. You remember, the guy starts arguing with the. They're the experts. And he's, oh, okay, so you don't know. You know, oh, so do you want to be his disciple?

And that really miffs them, doesn't it? Now they're really hacked off. They revile him. You are born a sinner entirely in sin. You were born entirely in sin.

Who are you to teach us? What's absent there is they were born entirely in sin. The doctrine of original sin says all are born entirely in their sins. In the sin of Adam, yes. But in our own sinning, again, we are the man born blind.

And we too have to make a who is this Jesus? This man called you? Who is this man called you? He must be a prophet. That's the second conclusion.

The third. If this were not from God, he could do nothing. You see, he's intellectually. He's doing theology, right? He's trying to do theology, even though he's being opposed.

He's being interrogated by his neighbors, by others, twice by the Pharisees. And you know what? Our faith is going to be interrogated. And the Lord will allow that because it should strengthen our faith. Brothers and sisters, every time we're asked, what happened now, who did this?

He finally says, look, I don't know who did it. Really. Notice Jesus is only at the first and the end of this whole story, which is beautiful. He shows up at the beginning to do the healing, and then he's just absent for most of the drama. And then he finds him.

After all, the drama settles. The guy seems to be on his own, growing in faith. He healed me. I. I don't really know who he is. Okay, he must be a prophet.

He comes to this intellectual reasoning, Must be a prophet. But notice, intellectual insight is not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough to know about this one. Instead, what is saving when his eyes are spiritually open is when he encounters Jesus Christ, when he finds him.

And he has a subjective, personal encounter with the living God, not just an intellectual one. Some of us stop at the intellectual and we make demands upon God. Unless I can understand, I will never believe. Unless you show me proof of God, I will never believe. Well, good luck.

God is not the kind of God who is whisked around by our desires and, and by our wants. He does what he wants to do. He is who he is, and he never changes. So if you start demanding the Father act a certain way, you're already disordered in how you're approaching God. As if he's your little pet project that you can make demands on God.

Good luck.

No, that is idolatry. Instead we say Lord, I don't completely understand who does. We're dealing with God. It's hard enough for me to understand mitochondria, how it works, DNA, I don't quirks crazy stuff. In our world, if we can't understand the created stuff, how could we ever understand Him?

Why would we demand until I completely understand? That's not the way this works.

Instead, what we need, like this man, is an encounter with Jesus.

I mean the kind of subjective encounter. Not objective out here, external, subjective. So, Pastor, should our faith be built on subjectivism? Not in argumentation of doctrine. No, that's, that's objective.

This right here, objective.

But encounter testimony, subjective. It's in the subject. In other words, it's in me, not in you. This can be accessed by you and me because it's external to us, it's above us. My subjectivity as a person and my encounter with Christ is something you can't experience.

I can't pass it down to my sons and beautiful daughter and save them somehow. In fact, I told him last night we had a kind of a family pow wow meeting. I said, you can't live off our faith. You've got to encounter Christ. And it's the same for you, dear brothers.

You can't live off Harvest point faith, Emily's faith, my faith, Jack's faith, etc. Etc. No subjective encounter with God is necessary for salvation. It must be applied to you. John Wesley once said, you know, it's not enough that Christ died for the whole world.

I need to know he died for me. Do you know that this man did? Finally, you know, this long, elongated, dramatic story comes to its climax when Jesus finds him. I love the way it begins and I love the way it ends. It's an inclusio.

You know where Jesus is at the beginning and, and at the end, at the beginning, Jesus passed by and can I just submit to you today he's here. His grace is available now, not later. He's not on our time, his time. And when he passes by, we better stand up and listen.

He said, I'll do it later. Later's not promised. The subjective experience of grace in this room right now is not promised later.

When he passes by, we need to do what he says, just as this man did. And then this last part. He passed by. I love it. Jesus found him.

Oh, I love not. He found Jesus. Remember, he just had gotten kicked out. And it's like Jesus was just kind of waiting around for him to get kicked out of him. It's inevitable, right?

He says, okay, now he's ready. He wasn't ready before. What if the Lord has been moving you from some physical interest to then the intellectual interest of Christ to now? He says, I want you to follow me. I want you to bend the knee.

I want you to be baptized so that you can see.

Don't be like the Pharisees who went from thinking they could see to total darkness, instead go the other way. Understand that we have a hard time seeing depression, anxiety, lusts of all kind, greediness, all kinds of things. The media crowd our mind and Darken our reason.

Only the light of Christ can help us to see. No amount of me convincing you will ever work. The full disclosure of God, his light in our potential to receive that light and see, that's the only thing that'll do.

And so what voices in your life are trying to dissuade you from the truth?

What sort of neighbors and others? We all have others in our life that speak about us and try to try to lock us into. This is who you are and it'll always be this way.

What kind of demonic bondage is roaming around in your head in your interior life where you can't see? And you know it doesn't take much cloudiness to not be able to see 10 foot in front of you. You know how fog works? See these wrecks? Like, how can 120 people wreck fog?

We need the light to cut through.

We need the light of Christ. Don't be like Pilate when the light was right before him. What is truth? Let's just think about it a little more. No, no, no, no.

He's here now to be encountered. Not to just be thought about, but to be encountered for your will to come into submission to his will.

CS Lewis says this. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Are you blind this morning? Come to the light. Has he opened your eyes? Come to the light. Keep pushing in deeper and deeper so it exposes the darkness within so he can heal us and send us out.

Because after we're washed, Salome means sent. Just as Jesus sent, so too we are sent to be the light. Jesus says not you will be, but you are the light of the world. Are you? Are you?

Let's be that. But only as we come in contact with the light, the true light. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, may it be so. Amen.