Sermon Tone Analysis

If you've been with us in our study through the Gospel of John, you no doubt know we're at the Feast of Tabernacles.

So many of these past weeks have been spent at that very feast.

We've had encounter after encounter with the Pharisees.

We've had objections.

We've had debates.

We've had Christ making these bold claims, one of which is "I am the light of the world."

We come today probably in the footsteps of that same day as Jesus is passing by one who has blindness from birth.

Not something that developed from a disease or later in life, but an individual who has never seen, who has never known sunlight, who has been, in that culture, a beggar.

He is raised up to be a beggar because without sight, there is no opportunity for him.

There is no ability for him.

Brother Mark is correct.

This is a true story, but it's such a metaphor for all of us as we consider our own inability to know the things of God, to be able to treasure the truths of God without the light of the world first coming into our hearts, illuminating us so that we who are blind can see.

That certainly weaves all through this story today.

Also weaving through this story is really the shocking words for us perhaps of the disciples at the very beginning of the story.

They're addressing the man's blindness.

They've been taught by rabbis that blindness from birth could have been the result of sin in the womb.

They draw back to the story of Esau and Jacob and feel that Esau committed sin in the womb.

So that story carries forward.

So when they see someone with a congenital birth defect, one explanation they offer is, "They must have done something even before they were born."

Of course Christ wants to stop that thinking.

He wants to put an end to that foolish argument.

He wants to point out that all of us are born in sin; all of us fall short of the glory of God.

But the weaknesses we find in people are actually where God can get His glory.

Our strength may very well be…and in fact I believe is…in the very weaknesses we have, the very things that threaten us, the very things we are not proud of.

The weaknesses that have dragged us down I want us to see today may be very well where our strengths lie.

So I call the message today that your strength is in your weaknesses because we all come here today with certain weaknesses, certain things we're not sure about, certain things we might have used as an excuse for why we can't do whatever it is.

I want us to see that maybe that's been put there so God might get the glory.

Look in John, chapter 9. Verse 1 says, /"Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth.

And His disciples asked Him, saying, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'"/

The disciples want to enter into some theological debate here.

You know, the sad thing about this is they look at this man who is blind, who is a beggar, and it's what they don't do, which is to minister to the guy.

They don't have any interest in the gentleman.

They just have interest about the gentleman.

They are leaving their Christianity at the same level so many of us leave Christianity, at the abstract idea.

You know, we talk about sin in the abstract.

We don't talk about ministering to a particular person in concrete.

Often the great challenge of being a believer is to move from the abstract Sunday school into the reality of Monday through Friday and to actually live out our Christian faith, to see someone who is suffering from addiction, someone who is suffering from a defect, someone who is suffering financially, someone who has been shunned in the community.

Rather than talk about them, to go to them and to minister to them because you see, that's exactly the example Jesus is offering here.

Now there are a lot of blind people.

Really this story is very similar to the one we saw earlier in our study of John when Jesus walks into a portico filled with people wanting to be healed by the so-called miraculous waters at the pool.

Jesus picks out one and heals them.

Certainly there are many blind people, but Jesus stops with this one.

Jesus does it for a particular reason.

When we think about the disciples' response, I think we're mindful that's a common response in Scripture.

You go back to the book of Job.

You want to see how people like to respond to somebody who is suffering, who is down and out, who has lost their family, who has lost their finances, who has lost their possessions, who has lost their health.

You can see what kind of good friends Job had.

They were the kind of friends who liked to talk about Job in Job's presence and to ridicule him in his presence, to basically accuse him and to say his circumstances he was in must have been the result of the fact he wasn't pleasing God.

You know, when you don't please God, God will get you.

When you don't do what God wants you to, God will zap you.

That's how so many people view our Heavenly Father, that He is Somebody we try to avoid at all costs.

We try not to tick Him off.

We try to just stay away and keep our nose clean.

That's how Job's friends analyzed Job's condition.

Job is a man in weakness.

In the story of Job, you see a man who has gone from great strength, apparently very wealthy, a good worshiper, great family man, to a man who is in sackcloths and ashes literally.

A man who is suffering the boils on his own body.

A man whose wife says, "Curse God and die.

Why don't you just commit suicide?

Why don't you just get it over with?"

If that were not bad enough, his friends saying, "I wonder what sin it was that got you into this kind of mess?" Job responds to that.

I want you to hear these words because this is the testimony of a man in weakness.

I want to speak to you who have felt the ridicule, the accusations of even good Christian friends because you right now are suffering.

You're alone.

You're broke.

You're addicted.

Whatever it might be, you're suffering from something that has brought you to a point of weakness.

Others, rather than helping, rather than ministering, rather than having that Christ-like response, they're saying, "I wonder what you did to deserve this."

Listen to Job's response in Job 13.

In verse 1 he is continuing his response to them.

He says, /"Behold, my eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood it.

What you know, I also know; I am not inferior to you."/

In other words, "Everything that has happened to me, I saw it too!

I'm living it!

You're talking like I didn't notice what's happened in my life, but I very well have noticed the terrible things that have happened in my life."

Verse 2, /"I am not inferior to you, but I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God.

But you forgers of lies, you are all worthless physicians.

Oh, that you would be silent, and it would be your wisdom!"/

In other words, "I wish you guys would shut up.

That would be the smart thing to do! You're terrible doctors; you're terrible physicians trying to diagnose the condition I'm in."

Verse 5, /"Oh, that you would be silent, and it would be your wisdom!

Now hear my reasoning, and heed the pleadings of my lips.

Will you speak wickedly for God, and talk deceitfully for Him?"/

You know, brother Ron pointed out the sin of the third commandment (which is not to take the Lord your God's name in vain), to take the Lord's name in vain, is to ascribe to God something God never said.

I've always heard that it meant you don't cuss, but that's not what it means.

It means to say God said something God didn't say, that God did something God didn't do.

That's exactly what Job is saying here.

He is saying, "You're saying I am suffering because of what God has done to me, that I'm deserving the just punishment God is dealing out.

But you're speaking wickedly for God.

You're pretending to say what God never said, and you're being unholy with your words."

People are like that.

"Who sinned?

Him or his parents?

I wonder what kind of sin got you in that condition you're in today."

Oh, he says in verse 8, /"Will you show partiality for Him?

Will you contend for God?

Will it be well when He searches you out?

Or can you mock Him as one mocks a man?

He will surely rebuke you if you secretly show partiality.

Will not His excellence make you afraid, and the dread of Him fall upon you?"/