John 9:35-41

our music ministry.

They do such a great job.

We're very blessed to have such talented

musicians.

You have your Bibles, or you can look upon the

screen, Gospel of John.

Chapter 9, and

verse number 35.

And before we round this chapter, out

today, since it's been a minute,

since we've been here, I want to give you the condensed review

of where we have been in

this encounter between Jesus and the

blind, the man born blind.

Remember that Jesus, now,

is just a few months away from the cross, maybe six.

He's in Jerusalem.

And after he claimed to

the Pharisees that he is,

I am the name of God,

What did they do?

Well, they picked up rocks to stone him to death.

But somehow we don't get the details, he

disappeared from their midst.

As he passes through the temple gates,

then after that, he comes across

a man,

who is not only blind, but this man has

been blind from birth.

He's never seen anything in his entire life,

which is just really staggering to just

think about that thought for a moment.

And the man, of course, is at the gate, and he's begging.

It's the only way that he could get money

for food, because he was an outcast in Jewish

society, and Jesus

heals this man,

of his blindness, by literally creating

new eyeballs for the man.

He is immediately able to see.

And his neighbors, the people who saw

him every day, the people who watched him grow up,

are trying to figure out

how, in

the world, could this have

possibly happened?

And they interrogated him.

And then he's

brought to the Pharisees, who

are the religious leaders, and, of course, OK,

they're supposed to render some type of explanation for this,

and as we've been studying, they, of course,

have already had their verdict in place,

even before they start the questioning,

because they believe that Jesus

is an insane demon possessed impostor.

They've already made that verdict long ago.

So he can't be from God.

And with that conclusion, they

reject the testimony of the man.

They reject the testimony of

the neighbors who had known this man all of his life.

They knew he was blind when he was a little kid.

And eventually, the

religious leaders end up throwing the man, who

can clearly now be out of the building.

And when they do that, even

more than when he was a blind beggar at the gate, out of the life of Israel completely.

He's already been an outcast, because

in their view, if you remember, we went through this, anybody

born blind was cursed by God,

either for their sin or for the sins of their parents, that

was the Jewish religious leader's view.

And then his own family is embarrassed by him.

They show up to the scene.

Do you remember?

And they throw him under the bus?

To protect themselves.

Think about it.

If they had any love whatsoever

for their blind son, he

wouldn't have been a beggar in the first place, right?

They would have cared for him.

That's why I said last time, these are

some really lame parents for this guy.

So this is a man who

has been completely rejected by

everyone, and now, all

of a sudden, he can see, everybody knows it.

And he is struggling to

get people to accept what happened to him.

But everybody can see that it did happen to him.

Those who, where his

neighbors can see it,

they can't explain it, the Pharisees see

it, but they refuse to see it

for what it is, and even his own parents

treat him with disdain.

And finally, when the interrogation is

over, look in verse 34.

Here are the Pharisees' last words to him.

You were born entirely

in sins, and are you teaching us?

So they put him out?

They reject Jesus, they

reject the man, and they

reject the clear, obvious to see miracle.

Now, Jesus is

not there, right at this point.

He healed the man.

He fades on out of the story.

The Pharisees throw the man out, but

Jesus comes back into the scene, starting in verse 35.

And this is going to be our text for today.

35 through 41.

Let's read and pick it up there in 35.

Jesus heard that they had put him out.

And finding him, he

said, Do you believe in the son of man?

He answered, Who is he, Lord?

that I may believe in him.

Jesus said to him, You

have both seen him, and he is the

one who is talking with you.

And he said, Lord, I

believe, and he worshipped him.

And Jesus said, For judgment, I came into this world.

So that those who do

not see, may see,

and that those who see may become

blind.

Those of the Pharisees who

were with him heard these things and said to him,

We are not blind to, are we?

Jesus said to them, If

you were blind, you would have no sin, but since you say

we see your sin,

remains.

Now, removing

in this story from physical blindness

to spiritual blindness.

The healing was physical.

The section that climaxes this

amazing story is about spiritual

blindness and spiritual sight.

And it's significant to realize how all

throughout the whole Bible blindness

is used metaphorically so many times to

represent the natural condition of fallenness

and corruption, and the natural inability

of man to comprehend God,

and to comprehend divine truth.

And let me just run through a quick sampling.

Of how blindness is used

in scripture to illustrate this point.

And we won't turn to all of them.

I'll just give you some paraphrases.

Isaiah 43, we read of the people who

are blind, even though they have eyes.

Jeremiah 5, the people who are foolish and

senseless, who have eyes, but do not see.

Jesus called the Pharisees,

one time, blind guides.

Think about Paul on the Damascus road.

He had been blind when he was a Pharisee, spiritually

blind, and then he was blinded physically,

and then he was given sight, both

spiritually and physically, to illustrate

the point of what was happening on the domestic road to the man who

wound up writing two thirds of the New Testament.

In Ephesians 4, Paul tells

us, unbelievers are darkened in their

understanding.

Remember, in John 3, Jesus

said, they love the darkness, rather than the light.

They cherish their evil deeds, that's why.

So, the Bible speaks of blindness

as a metaphor of spiritual ignorance,

spiritual, darkness, spiritual

corruption, spiritual, inability to know God.

spiritual inability to know truth,

and on top of this, this

natural blindness that every natural born person

has, look with me at 2 Corinthians

4, and verse number 4, which

says, in whose case, the god,

little g, god of this world, Satan,

has blinded the minds.

of the unbelieving so that they might not

see the light of the gospel of

the glory of Christ, who is the image

of God?

So notice that's a double blindness.

Natural blindness, compounded

by our adversary's power and

deception, of blindness, and when

this blindness in a person is

persistent, and when it continues

relentlessly.

Oh, then there's a third kind of blindness.

A divine judgment kind of blindness.

This brings about a

terminal blindness.

Isaiah 44, 18.

Look at it.

They do not know.

Nor do they understand.

Why?

For he, God,

has smeared over their

eyes so that they cannot see,

and their hearts, so that they cannot

comprehend.

And that's exactly what God said to Isaiah

in that amazing vision in Isaiah chapter 6.

They will hear and yet not understand.

They will see and yet not perceive.

They will not believe.

Because, after so

many attempts, they have been hardened.

as a judgment of God.

Later on in John 12, verses

39 and 40, John actually quotes

from Isaiah again, where he says this, look at this.

For this reason, they could not believe,

for Isaiah said again, He has

blinded their eyes, and he hardened

their heart so that they would not see

with their eyes, and perceive with

their heart, and be converted, and I heal them.

Folks, let me tell you, I can't think.

of a more frightening and

dangerous reality.

for a person to be in, then

terminal spiritual blindness.

Now, natural blind,

I mean, if you think about terminal blindness,

as the judgment of God, it is the judgment of God at

that point, that's

the removal of all hope for you.

But natural blindness compounded

by satanic blindness that we talked about earlier, that's

where we all were before salvation.

Terminal blindness, judicial blindness,

equals no hope.

Colossians 113.

Look what it says.

The beautiful word, for he

rescued us.

He rescued us.

From the domain of

darkness, from the domain of

natural, spiritual blindness, compounded

by satanic, blindness, and

so blindness, and darkness, or constant metaphors

for our natural condition in the Bible.

And then contrast that with the fact that

in the Old Testament.

Over and over, God starts to

talk about in different passages throughout the Old Testament and Messiah.

He talks about the Messiah coming to bring what light?

All over Isaiah.

Messiah is described as the one who will bring light into

this world of darkness, and the light will

shine upon the nations when Messiah comes.

And as this gospel of John opens up,

Do you remember what John said?

In him, in Christ

was life.

And the life was what the light of men.

In the darkness.

Jesus says what?

I am the what?

Light of the world.

He who follows me will not walk

in darkness, but have the light of life.

In Matthew 4.

says the people were sitting in darkness.

And they've seen a great what?

Light.

First Peter 2:9, very end of the verse.

It describes Jesus as him

who has called you out of

darkness into his

marvelous light.

Oh, aren't you glad, if you're here this morning,

that you're in the light, that you're walking in the light, because

of who Christ is and what Christ has done.

So, I give you all of that.

to get you locked into the sense that

God, in his divine purposes,

has designed to use blindness

and darkness all throughout scripture

as a metaphor for the natural spiritual

condition of man, and then contrast that

with what he uses as light as

the only answer to the problem of the darkness.

And now, as I said, as we come to this text,

the subject matter is

changing, from physical sight and

light, to spiritual sight and

light, coming out of blindness and darkness.

And we're going to break this down very simply, OK?

Two sections here.

Spiritual site, in

verses 35 to 38, with the beggar, spiritual

blindness, in verses 39 to 41, that's with the Pharisees.

So let's look first at spiritual site

and the beggar, and I want to define spiritual

site with four points.

Point number one, spiritual site requires,

divine initiative.

Now we're getting into what Brother A was talking about this morning in Sunday school.

This man does not have any

capability to make himself see physically.

If Jesus hadn't stopped at that gate,

He would have went the rest of his life blind

as a bat till his death.

And in the same way.

He doesn't have any capacity

or ability in and of himself to make

himself see spiritually.

Humanly speaking, on the natural

level, there was no surgeon around who could fix

this man's blindness, even with all

the technology we have today, a person born blind, we don't

have the capability, in most cases, none that I know

of, to give new eyes to someone.

So in both cases, physical and spiritual,

if he was ever going to sea,

either physically or spiritually,

guess what had to happen?

Heaven had to come down and find him.

And initiate.

And that's exactly what happened.

We come to verse 35.

There's still a buzz going around the temple area about what happened.

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine the words spreading like wildfire?

You can't believe what happened to the blind guy at the gate.

Come over here, let me tell you.

Let's go see if we can find him, right?

Verse 35.

Jesus heard that

they had put it out.

And finding him.

Oh, that is such a great phrase.

Don't skip over the

deep meaning of that phrase, and

finding him.

Just like we saw back in John 5, with the

man at the pool of Bethesda who picked up his bed and walked.

Remember that story?

He got interrogated by the Pharisee, same kind of deal,

and it says in that text, Jesus found.

him.

That is how any person.

receives spiritual site.

It has to start with a divine initiative.

It has to start with a sovereign purpose

in the mind of God.

Jesus said, Look at this.

The Son of Man is come to seek

and save that

which was lost, not just the saving.

You see that?

But also the seeking.

Because Romans 3 says clearly what?

No man seeks after God.

No man in his natural condition will

ever seek after the God of the Bible.

Oh, he'll hunt for Allah, he'll hunt for Buddha,

he'll hunt for any number of gods, but not the god of the Bible on his own.

So Jesus is the seeker.

He said to his apostles, You have not chosen me.

I have chosen you.

Jesus is the one who is seeking us.

It's never the other way around.

So Jesus finds this man, and this

is where spiritual sight begins.

He finds the man, and he

initiates the conversation, and it's very short.

Now, remember, in these New

Testament accounts, we get these very condensed conversations.

What we get is exactly the essence of precisely

what God wanted to reveal to us, but we don't,

I'm quite certain, get the whole conversation.

We get what God wants us to know.

But look next in verse 35.

He says to the man.

Do you believe?

In the Son of Man?

And that is a very important question.

And what we learned last time is that this

man, somehow, was well schooled in

the Old Testament, even though he's never been involved in the synagogue

because of his condition, we don't know how, but

this guy is pretty wise.

He knew there was no record ever in

history of anybody being healed of blindness, he knew that.

He also knows what characterizes a prophet.

Think about it.

He's already said of Jesus, he's of God.

He's already said of Jesus, he's

the one who does the will of God.

He's already said of Jesus, he's a prophet.

And knowing his Old Testament, he

is very familiar with this messianic title that

comes from Daniel 7, that Jesus has just used

in his question the title that Jesus uses

of himself more than any other title in the gospel's

son of man.

All the Jews understood the

messianic title, son of man.

It's used 13 times in John's gospel.

Because it's familiar in

the conversation of the Jews, because they all knew

Daniel 7, very well.

So Jesus says to the formerly

physically born blind man,

Do you believe in the Son of Man?

Do you believe in the Messiah?

Do you believe that the Messiah

is coming to establish his kingdom?

So the first step in bringing

spiritual sight is this darkened,

spiritually blind man, is

found by crime?

For Christ's own saving purposes.

Christ is the seeker, and

Christ is the one who takes the initiative in

this man's life, and that brings us to the second point, spiritual

sight requires faith.

Look at verse 36.

And he answered, Who

is he, Lord?

Then I may believe in him.

Now, that is

an incredible statement.

Here we have a man.

He's ready to believe.

He just wants to know who to believe in.

And I could just really stop right now and do a whole

series to develop the theology here, because what you're seeing

in this is the very essence of the doctrine

of regeneration at work right here in front of our face.

This man is ready to believe.

He just wants to know who to believe in.

Now, this is not easily understood.

Make sure you understand.

It's not just because of what we say,

as Brother Ed said earlier, that people believe.

Oh, it's used, by God, what

we say when we give the gospel.

But primarily, it is because of what

God has done first to open

them to believing that they respond to the truth.

Let me put it to you simply, regeneration precedes faith.

Yes, sir.

You must be born again in

order to activate the gifts of repentance and faith.

The other side of the theological divide

has it backwards.

They say you must believe, and then you're born again.

That's backwards.

Okay?

That's not what the Bible teaches.

This man now

has a prepared heart.

What we got right here?

This is the good soil of Jesus' parables

sitting right here at the gate brand new eyeballs.

So who is he, Lord?

And it's important to understand the Greek here

with the word Lord.

This man doesn't know who Jesus is, so here, he's

not calling Jesus, Lord, in that upper

case high level sense.

He's calling Jesus, Lord, in the lower case sense.

Like, the word Kyrie in the Greek can be

used as, like, sir.

You see?

Like you see, with the old English, the lords,

and the ladies, the kind of idea.

That's how he's using the word lore here, in the common sense.

Who is he, sir?

that I may believe in him.

Oh, something's happening in this man's heart right now.

The divine initiative is

not only physical, not only Jesus finding

him, but God, by the power of

the Holy Spirit, is opening his heart to

believe, just like Lydia, in the

book of Acts, whose heart it says, The Lord opened.

Thank you, Brother Ed, this morning for telling us that.

This is not some kind of rational

act, where you convince this man, he

needs to be, leave the gospel facts that you just told

him, and by his own human reasoning, now he's going to believe.

The Holy Spirit, here has enabled this

man to believe, even before the facts even become clear.

So divine initiative

and a response of faith.

Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in

him, and then thirdly, spiritual sight.

confesses Jesus.

as Lord, and the

highest sense.

Look at verse 37.

Jesus said to him, You have

both seen him, and

he is the one talking to you.

You are looking at him.

Now, we

don't know how much this man heard Jesus teach at all, if at all.

Certainly he hadn't seen any of his miracles, right?

Not a one.

But there are lots of people who saw

the amazing miracles of Jesus.

In fact, the whole population of Israel,

and in the large majority report, as

we know, in general, their spiritual

darkness could not be overcome,

even though they saw Jesus raise people from the dead.

But God is

overcoming this man's spiritual darkness by

regenerating him and granting him the

gift of faith.

He just wants to know who he's supposed to put that faith in.

And Jesus says, you've seen him.

He's the one talking to you.

He's the one looking at them new eyes that

he just created in your skull.

He's looking at you right now.

Like Jesus when he was with the woman at the well,

and she says, Well, we know that Christ is going to come, and Jesus responds

by saying, I, who speak to you, am he.

What happened?

She believed, and so did the whole village, and he spent

a couple days they were teaching them.

Oh, what a teaching event that must have been.

This is a divine miracle.

Look next in verse 38.

He said, Lord, I believe.

Notice he didn't say.

Could you give me more evidence there?

guy.

He didn't say, Well, why would I believe that?

about you.

We don't know what all he

had heard or what he had known, but it was sufficient for

this man that Jesus had made him able

to see that he had already declared that

Jesus was from God, and that he was a prophet, and

now he knows for, sure,

he's a prophet from God.

And if a prophet from God says, I am

the Son of man, I am the

long awaited Messiah.

Guess what?

That's enough for this guy.

Because not only that, he

has a prepared regenerated heart already.

And when he says, Here, Lord in

the Greek, we move to the upper case since.

This isn't just, sir.

He's gone from sir to Lord of Lords.

Now.

This is Lord, and its fullest and most loftiest

elevated sense.

He's not asking a question of who he is anymore.

Now, he believes, he says, Lord,

now, in a completely different sense, because next.

What?

How do I know that?

How you know that, brother Philip?

Well, look immediately next.

What does he do?

it says.

And he worshiped him.

That's how you know how he's treating him with the word Lord.

Now, he worshiped him.

So, how do you know when

spiritual sight comes to someone?

Well, first, it's initiated by God.

The heart is prepared by God.

It opens up to accept the truth.

And then that heart confesses Jesus

as Lord, king.

It's a miracle.

Just as equally as much as

the miracle of physical sight.

Remember when Jesus said to Peter, Peter,

let me tell you something, dude.

Flesh and blood hasn't revealed this to you?

Don't get to thinking that my Father in heaven

has revealed this to you.

And that wasn't just true of Peter.

That is true of anybody who has

ever been brought to saving faith in Christ, every single

believer who has ever believed the same way.

That's what happened to me.

Amen.

So, this poor, blind

beggar, who has never

seen anything in his whole life.

Now he gets the double whammy.

He sees physically, but more importantly,

now he sees very clearly the Son

of man, the Messiah, the king,

the Lord, standing right in front of his face.

He's gazing on the glory of God,

incarnate in the world, in the person of Jesus Christ,

in the face of Jesus.

He's been given the most important kind of sight.

Anybody can ever receive.

Do you know if you're saved here?

This morning.

The most significant, important

thing above all things that could ever happen to

a human being has happened to you.

It has happened to you.

God took the initiative in your life.

and gave you spiritual sight.

There's nothing more important than can happen to a human being than that.

And so again, spiritual

sight requires divine initiative, responds

with faith, confesses Jesus' Lord, which

results in worship.

That's how verse 38 ends.

And really, the whole of what it is to believe is

in that one simple statement, he worshipped him.

How do you know when a person becomes a believer because

they become a worshipper?

They love to come to church and worship with their church family.

Not because you prayed a prayer, brother Anne,

or got emotionally moved in a meeting and felt

all sentimental about Jesus.

True spiritual sight produces

a true worshiper.

There is a change in your whole way of thinking,

you have this now wild desire to

strive to be obedient to the Word of God.

Amen.

And the only person, listen to me now carefully here.

The only person on all of the earth.

Who knows, if that is

genuinely true about you, is you.

Yeah.

You, only you.

Only you know.

If this is truly the priority of your life,

only you know if you're living your life to

bring glory to God above all over things, and worship Him,

and not just on Sunday morning.

But only independently for the

rest of your week, Monday to Saturday, as well.

Only you know, if what fulfills the

longing of your heart, more than anything, is to

honor the Lord, to hear his word, to worship him,

only you and God,

know if this is true about you.

You fool me.

You can fool everybody.

except yourself.

And him.

The formerly blind man is a

picture, folks, of what it is to be a Christian.

He takes his place at the feet of

Christ himself and becomes a worshiper.

Now, lastly, we're going to close out with this.

Let's do a contrast, because that's where the text takes us.

With spiritual blindness in the case of the Pharisees, verse 39.

And Jesus said, For judgment, I came into the world,

this world, so that those who do

not see, may see,

like the blind man in all who repent and believe, and

those who see, like the Pharisees who

think they see, may come blind.

It's the same as when Jesus said,

I've not come to call the righteous, meaning,

I'm not come to call to people who think they're righteous,

I have come into this world so that those who do not see,

may see, and those who see, think they see,

may become blind.

It's a play on words.

In this whole concept of blindness,

and it's white, a contrast.

Even though Jesus comes to

seek and to save the loss, his salvation in

itself, folks, it becomes the great

dividing line.

across all of humanity across

all of the people in the world.

There is judgment bound up in it,

and Jesus is the dividing line.

This is not final judgment.

This is a kind of immediate judgment

that happens at the point when the gospel is introduced.

There is a dividing line that takes place

between a believer and an unbeliever, as

we learned in John 3, if you reject

Christ, you judge yourself,

in fact, Jesus said, you're already judged.

If a person sees in Jesus,

who died on the cross for salvation, no

big deal, nothing desirable, just

another religious zealot who got himself killed on a Roman cross,

nothing that that person wants anything to do with, guess what?

That right there is judgment on that person.

That's a self condemnation for that person.

And guess who that is?

That's the Pharisees.

In their minds, they didn't need anything.

And their minds, they could see clearly.

What are you talking about?

We see clearly, that we know God.

We know the truth.

And we know this Jesus guy is a demoniac, insane person.

That's what we know.

And because they thought they could

see so clearly, they are totally blind.

And that's the point of verse 39.

So that's the first thing about spiritual blindness.

It brings judgment.

both in the here and now, and

in the future, which you can never get out of.

But secondly, spiritual

blindness is so very stubborn.

Look at verse 40.

Those of the Pharisees who were with him heard

these things and said to him, We are not blind too, are we?

And again, speaking metaphorically,

they just refuse to admit their blindness.

They are speaking here, really, read between the

lines, arrogance and scorn is dripping

out of that statement, right?

You're not saying that we,

the most learned erudite righteous

and holy representatives of God, are blind,

are you really saying that to us?

Well, that's exactly what he was saying.

But to them, this idea he's

presenting of spiritual bonus was a joke, and

it definitely didn't apply to them.

And then, thirdly, the spiritually

blind reject sight when it is offered.

Look at verse 41.

Jesus said to them, If you were blind,

you would have no sin, and

Jesus uses another play on words, here, I'm going to explain this, when

he says, If you were blind, you would have no sin,

what he means there is, You are not

blind to the truth, you are not.

If you really were blind to the truth.

In other words, if you had no knowledge of the truth.

If you didn't have the scripture, if you didn't have all

of the Old Testament, if you didn't have all of the law that

you know, and all of the prophets that you know, and

me standing in front of you, and all the demonstration

that I've given you of who I am, your sin would not be so severe.

But you're not blind to the truth.

You are blind in the sense that you don't see your own sin.

That's what he's saying here.

But you are not blind in the sense that you

have been very exposed to the truth.

That's what he's saying.

You have the law, you have the prophets, you

have the covenants, you have the whole Old Testament, and you have

me in your midst.

You've hurt my words.

You've seen the miracles.

And guess what, men?

You have no excuse whatsoever.

Yes, you are blind to your own sin.

But no, you are not blind to the truth.

It's all around you.

I am the way, the truth, standing right in front of you.

Lastly, Spiritual

blindness results in doom.

Look next in verse 41, but since you say,

we see?

Whoo, that's a heavy phrase right here.

Your sin remains.

Just skip over that.

You are accepting the condition you

are in of spiritual blindness as

spiritual sight, and the result is,

you are doomed.

You are hopeless.

If you think right now,

Right now, I'm standing in front of you.

If you think right now, that you can see?

There's no hope for you.

It's amazing play on words.

Look at the phrase.

Your sin remains.

You can look at me, reject me.

I'm God incarnate.

Not I've proved it over and over.

You don't get it.

You won't believe it.

Your sin remains.

Let me tell you something.

That's finality right there for those guys.

That's it.

So the light shines in the darkness and

the darkness cannot extinguish it.

The darkness cannot put it out,

but I can tell you what the darkness can does and does do.

Reject it.

Jesus came to his own, and his own received him not.

He was in the world.

Oh, John tells us, the world was made

by Jesus.

And the world knew him not.

This is still true today.

The truth, the

gospel message, is available, is

accessible worldwide.

I just preached it last Easter Sunday,

as clearly as I know how.

But only those, with eyes

to see, will believe.

Let's pray.

Father heaven, we thank you for this very,

very clear teaching.

This is Biblical

Christianity one on one.

And, Lord, we want to pray right now.

For those in our families, in

our circles of influence, who

reject the gospel.

Only you can give them sight,

just like you did with us.

And just like you did with this blind man.

And it is a great source

of encouragement to us to

know that you use our prayers as

a means to bring sinners

out of spiritual sight.

We don't need to understand how all of that works.

We just know that it's true.

So help us, Lord, to

make a commitment to those who we are praying for, even now that

are close to us, who reject Christ and reject the gospel,

to say to you, as Jacob did.

I will not let you go, Lord, until

you bless me, until you save them.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.