Even a Blind Man Can See It

Jensen Near

John: Who is Jesus • Sermon • Submitted 7 years ago

John 9:1–41

Blindness

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So Clear, Even a Blind Man Can See It

INTRO:

Have you ever had one of those “moments of clarity”? Maybe people have been telling you to give up a bad habit, or check out a band they think you’ll like, pursue a different major or career option, or something along those lines.

You’ve shrugged off these suggestions, thinking you know better, or you just don’t have time for whatever it is, until finally one day, the moment comes and you realize… they’ve been right all along.

I had one of these moments the year after I graduated college. I was working for my college at the time, and so I got similar breaks to the college schedule, and was back home for a couple of weeks to visit.

YES! Finally I was on my way to having it all. The prettiest girl in school was my girlfriend. Everything was going to be great from here on out.

Now all through college I had continually argued with my mom about what classes and extra-curriculars I should have, how many hours I should work at my job, how much time I needed to do homework.

My mom always told me that she’d stop telling me what to do with my time and education when she saw me start taking responsibility for it myself. But until I took responsibility, she was going to make sure I did what I needed to do!

But there was a problem. We’d always gotten along as friends up to this point. We hadn’t had any real conflict. But once we started dating, the differences between us became painfully, painfully obvious. It soon became very clear that her expectations of what it meant to be boyfriend/girlfriend was very different from what my expectations were.

Well I went off to college, almost flunked out my first semester, and came to realize that she had been pretty much right about everything.

In my mind, we’d do everything we possible could to spend time together. Let’s get our classes to match up next semester! Let’s sit together during chapel time and church! Any downtime we have, let’s spend it together!

So here I am, back at home after graduating college, and I walk into the kitchen where my Mom and 16 year-old brother are arguing. And here is my little brother, sitting the way I sit, gesturing the way I gesture, and arguing with my mom about his education and work schedule with the exact same arguments and phrases I tried to use against her when I was in high school.

For Nicki, who was a straight A student, she wanted a much more balanced life. She pictured a boy-friend as someone who would be a natural study-buddy. We wouldn’t spend as much time

It was one of the most humbling moments of my life. There are few things more humbling than seeing your own foolish attitudes being replicated by someone who looks up to you.

I stopped abruptly and they both paused their conversation and looked at me. I looked at my mom and said, “Oh my gosh. I am so sorry.” I looked at my brother and said “I’ve been there, we’ll talk later.”

In that moment it was so clear to me. My mom had been forced to fight this fight with me virtually every day of high school, and here was my little brother disrespecting her on the exact same issues, in the way he had seen me do it.

Yowch.

I had probably realized I’d been wrong about some of that stuff beforehand, but it wasn’t until God let this comically similar re-enactment of my sin play out in front of me that I realized how wrong I was, and how much of an apology I owed to my mom.

This was my “moment of clarity.” But the reason it didn’t come earlier wasn’t because the information wasn’t there. There were probably multiple opportunities for me to recognize and repent of my sin beforehand. See it wasn’t lack of information that kept me from repenting. It was my own pride—I wasn’t willing to recognize the truth, until God gently showed me a “parable” that opened my eyes to the sin I had been so blind to.

See ther

This isn’t just a funny little story about how I was wrong, and figured that out. When Jesus took on human flesh and came to live, die and rise again as our savior, one of the things he taught was that we as humans are born with a serious medical condition: spiritual blindness.

Think about it this way: if we as humans were just in need of information to recognize who God is, and live our lives accordingly, then Jesus would have had a 100% success rate. He’d show up, everyone would give their lives to Him, and he’d move on to the next town. But that’s not what happened.

When Jesus came to present himself as the very savior and Messiah that the Jews were waiting for, he came up against severe opposition from the group that should have been most anxious to greet him—their religious and political leaders!

So why did they miss the memo? Did they not have enough information? Nope. Jesus was there. God in the flesh, right in front of them. They rejected him because they suffered from spiritual blindness.

The book of John, which we’re studying through right now, was written by John, one of Jesus’s 12 disciples, to address this problem: the Jews were waiting for a Messiah. Jesus, the Messiah, came, and they all didn’t accept him. In fact many plotted against him and ended up nailing him to a cross. And even after Jesus rose from the dead, the majority of the Jewish people didn’t receive him as Messiah.

So John wrote the gospel of John, originally to a predominantly Jewish audience, as he writes in , he wrote

SLIDE “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ (savior), the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

He wanted them to hear the story of Jesus, and he intentionally picked the stories and organized them to help people come to the right conlcusion: Jesus IS the savior, and belief in Him is the way to have relationship with God.

Tonight we’re going to be looking at , the story of Jesus healing a blind man, and we’re going to get to see four sets of people who are in various stages of spiritual blindness. They’re going to witness evidence of an incredible miracle, but they all respond to it differently.

If you’ve got a bible or smartphone, let’s turn to John Chapter 9, Verse 1. I’ll have it up on the screen if you want to follow along there instead.

SLIDE

English Standard Version Chapter 9

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work 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 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud 7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.

So Jesus and his disciples are traveling, perhaps having just escaped an angry mob in the temple who wanted to stone Jesus. They pass a man who has been blind from birth. They ask Jesus a theological question, and He uses this opportunity not only to teach them a powerful truth, but to heal this man of his physical blindness!

let’s keep reading in verse 8

English Standard Version Chapter 9

8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” 10 So they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

So Jesus heals this guy who has been blind from birth. Now we learn in verse 8 that this guys neighbors all knew who he was, because, as was common in that day-and-age, his disability kept him from holding a job, so he was someone the neighbors would see every day. Bottom line: they knew his face. They knew who he was, and they knew he was blind.

But here he is, standing before them, telling them that this Jesus guy had healed him and given him sight!

How do they respond? Well, some don’t believe it at first. they say “well, He looks like the blind guy we all know, but it can’t be the same guy. Blind people stay blind!”

The neighbor’s problem isn’t an information problem. They’re absolutely right: People who are born blind don’t usually wake up one day able to see. Mud isn’t widely known as a cure for blindness.

But they don’t all connect the dots: Blind people don’t just start seeing all of a sudden—that’s why we call it a miracle! The God who created the heavens and earth, and all of them, is among them, displaying His power and compassion by MIRACULOUSLY healing this blind guy.

Let’s keep reading, verse 13

English Standard Version Chapter 9

13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” 16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” And there was a division among them. 17 So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a prophet.”

So the neighbors had a hard time believing this miracle. They bring the guy to the Pharisees—the religious leaders. Most of these guys would have had the old Testament (the first half of the scriptures) memorized. They should have known to expect blind people to start getting healed when the savior showed up, because the prophet Isaiah predicted this for them in Isaiah 29:18:

English Standard Version Chapter 29

In that day the deaf shall hear

the words of a book,

and out of their gloom and darkness

the eyes of the blind shall see.

So they should have immediately taken a blind guy getting sight as a clue that the Messiah was here!

How did they respond? “Tell us how you received your sight.”

blind guy: “well, on the Sabbath, I met this guy Jesus, he made mud, had me go wash, and when I washed I could see!”

Some of the Pharisees: AHA! He miraculously restored your eyesight with mud on the SABBATH???? Clearly he’s not from God!

Others of the Pharisees: Man. Healing the blind isn’t something a sinner—somebody who is against God—could do.

they can’t agree among themselves, so they turn back to the blind guy: “He healed you, what do you think about him?”

The blind guy has put 2 and 2 together: There’s gotta be something special about this guy, because He miraculously healed me. He must be sent by God. He must be a prophet.

At this point there is a division in the crowd. So as He moves on in the story, John reintroduces the people He calls “the Jews.” This is John’s catchall term for people who hear Jesus but reject him.

let’s keep reading in verse 18

English Standard Version Chapter 9

18 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 19 and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” 20 His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. 21 But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” 22 (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) 23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

So some of the people that we’ve already seen gathered—the neighbors, Pharisees, and whoever else was around—decide this must be another case of mistaken identity. People don’t miraculously receive their sight. They must have the wrong guy!

Insisting upon this, they drum up the blind guys parents.

Is this your son?

Yes.

Was he born blind?

Yes.

How can he see now?

The parents can see where this is going:

“whoah whoah whoah, back up. Look, we know it’s our son, and that he was blind, but we don’t know anything about how or why he was healed. Ask him.”

John makes sure that we see through their lie: in verse 22 we learn that they DO know that Jesus had healed him, but that confessing so would result in them getting kicked out of the Synagogue—the Jewish center of worship.

So to save themselves, they push it back on their son.

Let’s keep reading: v. 24

English Standard Version Chapter 9

24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” 25 He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26 They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27 He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” 28 And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”

By this time the formerly blind man is getting tired of getting the runaround. The Pharisees are blustering about how holy they are, and pretending to be doing a serious investigation.

They go back and forth, and then the “blind man” finally calls out their hypocrisy in verse 30, check this out:

30 The man answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

English Standard Version Chapter 9

This blind guy has been denied basically everything that people would consider “normal.” He’s facing down a hostile room full of some of Israel’s best educated people. His parents have already cowered in the face of this intimidating group. But he’s had enough, and he tells them off:

“Oh ok, “you don’t know where he comes from,” yet he clearly did this unbelievable miracle that only the power of God could accomplish. This miracle is so big, it’s never been done before—clearly he’s gotta be from God, but “you don’t know where he’s from.”

The Pharisees aren’t going to take crap from this “nothing” of a guy. they respond, verse 34.

English Standard Version Chapter 9

34 They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out.

Thoroughly shown up by a guy with no education or social standing, all the Pharisees can do is insult him: “You were born blind. Clearly God didn’t like you to begin with!”

So of all the people we meet in this story, the neighbors, the Pharisees, the parents, a guy who’s been blind all his life is the only one who proves to be free of spiritual blindness.

The blind guy is the only one who can see! And instead of responding to the truth he was confronting them with, they kicked him out of the Synagogue—and in a society that is completely built around their religion, that’s a social death-sentence.

So let’s look at a few of these groups we run into in this story:

First, the Neighbors:

Neutral toward Jesus

Know the guy’s face

Aren’t sure how to handle this apparent miracle

Ultimately pass him off to the Pharisees

“We’ll let somebody else worry about that.”

Next let’s look at the Pharisees

Already opposed to Jesus

Aren’t sure the guy was blind until the Parents testify

Insist that Healing on Sabbath proves Jesus’s evil nature

“He’s not the God we know”

and finally, the Parents

Recognize the healed man as their son

Know he was blind

Know Jesus healed him

Too afraid of the cost to stand for the truth.

All of these people missed the truth. They missed the point of Jesus’s miracle. Ultimately they missed the savior. But John doesn’t want us to miss the point. He wants us to see the truth presented here in God’s word and respond to it.

but what is the specific truth we are supposed to respond to here? The one everyone in the story (save the blind man himself) missed?

Jesus already told us:

Look back at verse 3. Jesus disciples point out the blind man and ask “who’s sin caused this man to be born blind?”

See in their understanding, any disease or disability like this was a sure sign of God’s judgment—so either the guy’s parents sinned, or somehow he was sinful before being born, and either way, God struck him with blindness.

But look how Jesus responds: this is the truth John wants us to see, and respond to:

verse 3:

English Standard Version Chapter 9

“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work 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.”

This man’s blindness wasn’t the judgment of God! Quite the opposite: this man’s congenital blindness wasn’t supposed to reveal God’s judgement—it was to reveal God’s mercy!

This man was born blind so that God could use him to show everyone around him who Jesus—who the savior—was!

Jesus says “it’s daytime right now, time for doing the works of the one who sent me! (God), I’m the light of the world.”

And as he is claiming to be the light of the world, he stoops on the dirt, makes mud by spitting on the ground, and brings light to the eyes of a man who has always lived in literal darkness.

APPLICATION

So what do we do with this truth?

Jesus is the light of the world. We are in desperate daily need of him to be able to see what is really going on in the world around us.

The first thing revealed by His coming as the light is that we are spiritually blind.

In our blindness we have rebelled against God, and for that we deserve to be punished. But Jesus didn’t come to bring that judgment, he came to PAY for that judgment.

So the first step to recognizing how blind we are is to accept our need for Him. We need Jesus to be our savior. We need to give our lives to him. If you’ve never given your life to Jesus, I’d invite you to do so tonight!

We don’t want to stop where the neighbors stopped: whaddya know, Blind Ben’s got his sight. Guess we’d better defer this to the local religious leaders. We need to recognize Jesus for who He is!

but for those of you who’ve accepted Jesus, we still have a daily need to remember this truth.

Jesus is the light of the world.

We can’t see without him.

Giving our life to Jesus isn’t just a one-time thing. That makes it just a religious thing. That’s where the Pharisees were. They believed in God, and they were following all the rules. But they had allowed their pride to build up to the point where they were more blind than the regular, un-religious folks. We need the light of Jesus to show us how to love, and to show us how to humble ourselves in our relationship with God and with the people around us.

Giving our life to Jesus is an every day thing.

We don’t want to be the parents: Of all the people in the story, they had the most information, and still refused to act on it.

They knew their son had been cured, and they knew it was Jesus who did it. But they were too afraid of the social cost to walk in the truth.

Look, we are all broken people! That’s why we need Jesus. Somedays I struggle like the Pharisees did. Other days I struggle like the parents did. someday I’m like the neighbors, and I just shrug off what God is calling me to do.

We want to have sight like the blind man.

Look what happens after the man is kicked out of the synagogue:

English Standard Version Chapter 9

35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

Jesus comes to him, and reveals the fullness of who He is. Up til this point the blind man just knew Jesus was a man of God. He didn’t realize Jesus was THE man of God.

Jesus reveals himself, and the blind man does what anybody presented with the Holy One of God should do. He worships. He sees the light and he responds.

Jesus has revealed himself to us. How are you going to respond?

Let’s pray.

CONCLUSION:

If you don’t know Him: Open your eyes to see him for who he is. (GOSPEL) Be like the blindman! acknowledge your blindness, and accept the savior who presents Himself to You.

If you do know Him: Fully Knowing God (seeing): Paul’s prayer for believers: . This changes our heart towards God, and how we think about obeying him, doing things his way.

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