Brother David, we got some young men I'm
going to be encouraging to point them towards the
Gideon's ministry.
Do you know I'll pay in the website?
Is it Gideon's Ministry International.org?
Gideon,
uh, Gideon, adopted.
Just Google it.
Google it.
Google, gig it.
All right, if you have your Bibles, turn with me to
John chapter 9 and verse number one.
Thank you so much, brother David, again.
for being with us this morning.
And we're turning to
a new chapter today, and this verse
by verse study of the gospel of John, and we've
just finished a very intense chapter
8, as you know, with much of chapter
8 being Jesus in confrontation
with the Jewish leadership in Israel.
And those are actually some of my favorite scenes
in the gospel of John.
But as we
come to this chapter, number nine, there's
a little bit of nuance that's added here,
and it tells us, in the ministry
of Jesus, where we are on the timeline,
is that we've passed a sort of
tipping point, if you will, and you're
going to see, in verse two,
the mention of the word disciples.
This is the first time that
Jesus' disciples have been mentioned
in this particular setting of Jesus'
ministry in Jerusalem, as he's come now to Jerusalem,
because he's been focusing
on the crowds, he's been focusing on the leadership, he's
been declaring who he is, he's been
having all of that supported by the incredible
miracles that he's done.
But as I've been telling you through chapter
8, right now on the timeline, we're about six
months away from the cross.
And the overall
rejection of the people of Israel has
become very clear at this point.
And now, we start to see Jesus shift
toward giving more of his attention to his disciples.
In these last months,
He wants to make sure that he's
answering their questions, and that he's equipping
them for what's fixing to happen after he
goes back to heaven in his ascension.
So, in one sense, he has tipped across the
edge, and now he's on the downslope,
away from the attention more to
the crowds and the nation of Israel and the
religious leaders, and as you know, the religious
leaders have long ago made up their mind about it.
And as he focuses in on
these disciples to prepare them.
This is not to say that the rest of
this portion of scripture that he doesn't impact the people,
and he doesn't impact the leaders as he did, but I want you to notice
this new emphasis, and we're going to
do that by starting to read these first 12 verses, and
really, the entire ninth chapter
is built around this one miracle.
Most of the chapters given to the discussion of this miracle.
But, since it's so lengthy, we're going
to have to break it down in parts, we're not going to be able to do it all here today.
But let's just start with our text for today, and read verses
one through 12.
The Bible says as
he passed by, he saw a
man blind from birth.
And his disciples asked him.
Rabbi, who sent?
This man, or his parents,
that he would be born blind.
Jesus answered, it was neither that
this man sinned nor his parents, but
it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
We must work
the works of him who sent me as long as it is day.
Night is coming, when
no one can work.
While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
When he had said this, he spat on the ground,
and made clay of the spittle, and applied the
clay to his eyes, and said to him, Go, wash
in the pool of Saloam, which is translated, sent.
So he went away and washed and came back, seeing.
Therefore, the neighbors, and those who previously
saw him as a beggar, were saying, Is not
this the one who used to sit and beg?
Others were saying, This is he.
Still, others were saying, no, but he is like him.
He kept saying, I am the one.
So they were saying to him, How then were
your eyes opened?
He answered, The man who is called Jesus.
made clay, and anointed
my eyes, and said to me, Go to Siloam and wash.
So I went away and washed, and I received sight.
They said to him, Where is he?
He said, I do not know.
And we're going to stop right there.
For now, in this story, and I want you to think about it.
Sickness, disease,
deformity, death,
have all dominated life in
this world since the follow of Adam.
And what does that mean?
That means all of human history, right?
It touches all of us.
Nobody likes to think about it.
But we are all,
right now, here today, in the process of dying.
We are all infected
and affected by
the corruption that came about
because of the fall in the garden.
And if you go through the Old Testament,
all of the corrupt influences
of physical life in this world were just
as normal and uninterrupted
back then, as they are today, but
also throughout the whole Old Testament, go and
scan every book, you will find that
miraculous healing in the Old
Testament was actually very rare.
In the whole Old Testament, you
only have six occasions where the actual
physical miracle of healing took place,
only six, like the healing of Naaman, the leper, in 1 Kings.
Now that covers a whole lot of years.
And when you come to the New Testament,
there are a couple of physical miracles
on their own, like Elizabeths, barren her whole life,
she's enabled to have a baby, then, of course, marry, right?
Not with a healing, but the miracle of the virgin birth.
And you would think that in all of the
world, where there
would most likely be miraculous
healings, it would be where
God is most active, right?
I mean, the nation of Israel.
And all through the history of Israel, think about your Old Testament.
God was acting.
God was working.
He was working through prophets.
He was working through the fathers, but in all of that period of
history, as I said, where God was acting.
Miracles of healing rarely happen.
Extremely rare occasions did we see it.
until Jesus
showed up on this earth.
And when Jesus showed up.
miracles of physical
healing, literally exploded
in every direction throughout a
three year period of time.
By the way, Jesus did no miracle for
the first 30 years of his life.
Now, how do I know that?
Well, we know that, because when he turned 30,
And he went to the wedding in Cana, and he turned the water into wine.
What does the Bible say?
The Bible says, that was his first miracle.
At that wedding?
So those stupid books about Jesus bringing
birds back to life when he was a kid, and the
Gnostic Gospels, the Holy Grail, and Jesus was married,
and he went to Europe, and all of that garbage.
Every bit of that is lies.
Don't even read any of that.
So, all
that to say, we just don't see, many
miraculous healings, physical healings
in history, till you come to the life and ministry
of Jesus, all of a sudden, miraculous
healings are happening for these three year time period
on a daily, regular basis, and
intercourse, this is intended by God.
to demonstrate that the
Messiah, the Son of God, God in human flesh,
has arrived in the world.
I mean, you would think that when God came to earth,
in the person of Jesus Christ, in
the form of a man, there'd be some miraculous things happening, right?
Doesn't that make sense?
And as we've studied, all of these healings were
supernatural in nature.
These miracles
of Jesus were creative miracles.
There were people with
deformed limbs, they were given new limbs.
There were people with diseased organs.
They're given new organs, they're people with absolutely,
totally blind, useless eyes, and they're given new eyes.
Each of those.
It was a creative work.
Taking something that was corrupted,
deformed, and diseased, and literally replacing
it with something brand new.
There was no natural explanation
for the miracles of Jesus.
There was no medical explanation.
They were definitely not psychosomatic,
or any of those Benny the Hen kind
of categories of healing that we see on television.
These were divine, supernatural
and they were instantaneous.
They were transforming, they were creative miracles.
They were done by a word or a touch, and when they happened,
they happened instantly, and they happened completely.
There's never been anything
like it in the history of the world before
or since.
And as I said, it all exploded.
in a three year window of time.
The prophet Isaiah said, Messiah
would come, and when it came, he would heal.
The New Testament, really,
think about this, just gives us a small window,
just a little glimpse of the
totality of the miracles of Jesus because remember
what John says later, if everything that Jesus did was recorded?
The whole books of the world couldn't
contain all that happened.
So we have the privilege here in chapter
9, of looking closely,
at one of the literally thousands of miracles
that Jesus did when he was here.
And we're going to examine this miracle, alongside
some unbelievers.
And we're going to find out how unbelief investigates
a miracle.
I mean, this miracle alone, just
this one, should have, substantially
change the view of Jesus that
people had who were at that time rejecting him, including the leaders.
If they hadn't already understood that he
was divine, this miracle should
have been enough by itself to
affirm his deity, but
instead of coming to faith.
Instead of acknowledging
that there was absolutely no human explanation
whatsoever for what they were seeing right
in front of their face and what they were experiencing, the rejection
just continued, and the animosity
of the Jewish leaders just continued to rise.
And so, as I said, the inevitable starts to happen.
Jesus starts to pull away.
And that's why we see the introduction
of conversations, not so much with the
Pharisees, as with the disciples from here on
out in the Gospel of John.
It's a sad and
tragic fulfillment of what we learned in the first
chapter of this Gospel of John.
He came unto his own.
and his own, his own people,
received him not.
Now, as I said, chapter 9
is devoted to one miracle and its investigation,
whole chapter, and we're going to take a number of sermons,
to break all of this down, and today, as I said, we're
going to cover verses one to 12,
And in these verses, I've got for you a very
simple outline.
OK?
This will be points of contact for you to follow along as we work our way through these verses.
Point number one is going to be darkness.
Part number two is going to be light.
Point number 3 is going to be site,
and point number 4 is going to go back to
darkness, OK?
So let's start with darkness, number one.
Look at verse one.
As he passed by, he
saw a man blind from birth.
Now, you have to understand, blindness was very
common back in New Testament times.
Same in the Old Testament.
It's mentioned many times in both the Old and New Testament.
It was a dominating reality in the ancient world.
And Jesus comes upon this man.
Remember, this is out right after he's coming out of the temple,
when the last text that we looked at, he's coming out of the temple, and
he comes upon this man who is congenitally blind.
He's been blind his whole life.
He's never seen anything.
Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine never having seen
anything but darkness your whole life?
You hear sound?
You hear people talking?
You have no earthly idea whatsoever what they look like.
None whatsoever.
I can't even imagine that.
And just to remember where we are and what
the picture is, Jesus has just finished declaring
in chapter 8, before Abraham was, I am.
The name of God.
I am, he told the religious leaders.
He just told him, I am God.
And they were so infuriated by what he said.
Remember, they picked up the stones to throw at him, but
some kind of way which we don't understand, he hid himself and got out of that temple.
So, right after that scene, he's
walking out of the temple, and along the way
as he's walking out of the temple, he passed by.
Look at verse one again.
He saw a man blind from birth.
Now, this man would have been sitting at
one of the temple gates begging, as
Jesus passed by him.
We know that, because that's where all the beggars went.
They all ended up at the temple gates.
And we must note that even though Jesus
is in a high risk,
dangerous situation coming out of what he just left from, because,
I mean, he's escaping, being stoned to death at that moment, he
still stops, to demonstrate grace,
to demonstrate power and mercy,
and compassion, and as we're going to see, even salvation,
upon a blind beggar.
Now, the lame and the blind came
to the temple to beg on purpose, because that's where the crowds were.
They also knew that
that's where the most devout people would be.
The good folks, right?
The people with compassion, and also people were going
there to make sacrifices.
So at that moment, as they're going to the temple, they'd
be conscious of their sin, and people feeling guilty about sin,
are more likely to be generous, right?
I mean, we get that.
I mean, that's human nature.
Not to mention the fact that, sadly,
you have people trying to earn
their salvation with God, through the false Jewish
system of religion, and they were taught by the rabbis,
Hey, part of your deal is, you got to give these alms.
And so then you also just have the sheer
volume of human beings all day long.
So, I mean, look, the beggars knew where to be.
Now, this particular beggar.
He can't see Jesus at all.
He has no idea what a human being looks like, as I said.
He's never seen anything in his life, ever.
But it says, Jesus saw him.
It's sovereign
grace that dominates this miracle
we're fixing to look at.
The blind man here is
such a very clear picture
of a spiritually blind, natural
man who has no capacity in and
of himself to see salvation on his own, no capacity
to see the Savior as he is.
I mean the analogy here, folks,
is irresistible.
The New Testament uses this analogy in many places.
How many times do you hear?
Paul talk about spiritual blindness, right?
In fact, the gospels record more
cases of blind people being healed than
any other specific malady.
There are five separate accounts of
blind people in the gospels.
So what could possibly be a
better illustration than man's
naturally lost condition in
being blind?
The blind man is
helpless, from the very start, where he sits.
He is at the total mercy.
of somebody who comes
to him and chooses
to help him.
He's like us.
In our naturally lost condition.
God has to take the initiative.
God has to move first upon us through Christ.
That's how grace on merited
favor operates.
Naturally, we are blind.
We can't see Christ.
We can't see spiritual truth.
We have no capacity for it in and of ourselves.
But God always sees us.
And he comes to us with grace.
He comes to us with compassion, and
he bestows upon us spiritual sight.
So that's point number one, darkness there in verse one.
Let's look at point number two, light, starting with verse two.
And his disciples asked him, Rabbi,
who sinned?
This man, or his parents, that he
would be born, Bly.
And that tells you right away where
their theology was in this subject matter.
If something's wrong with you, it's a sin issue,
not an indirect one, but a direct one.
Now, we can
all agree that everybody's illness, whenever you
have an illness, whether it's a cold or cancer,
it is related in the biggest picture
to the fall of Adam, right?
We all understand that.
That's part of the curse.
We get sick, we get disease, we die, but
you cannot make a
direct link between, I'm sick
right now, because two months ago I committed a sin.
But in their theology, that's how it worked.
If you were deformed or diseased,
or you had some kind of illness, it was because of some kind
of direct sin that you had committed, not
because you're just a fallen person living in a fallen
world, and as a result of the curse, people get sick.
They get diseased and have deformity on
a regular basis, but then notice in verse two.
Again, they asked, Who sinned?
This man or his parents?
That was what they had developed.
People were ill, or diseased,
or deformed, were that way, because either here's
the deal, either they sinned, or their parents stand.
The rabbis were convinced
that the sins of the parents were
visited upon the children, and where they got
that was from a serious misinterpretation
of Exodus Chapter 20.
And we're going to come to that in just a few minutes.
But they believed that
parent's sin could show up
in their children's guilt
and punishment.
I mean, they also made
a direct connection between suffering and sin in
the life of a person.
You remember the story of Job, right?
You remember his good buddies?
They came to see him.
Job hadn't done anything wrong.
And he's enduring overwhelming
suffering, more than any of us probably ever will, for
sure, and his friends come up, chapter after chapter, and
they're trying to indict him in that book,
and make him guilty so they can find his
sin as the direct cause for his suffering.
But we know the story.
It wasn't.
But that was ingrained in
the theology of the rabbis.
Even with this particular man, how
could his sin, his particular sin,
make him born into
this world blind?
When they say, Was it this man whose sinned,
how could he have sinned when he was a fetus?
Now, of course, I'm not talking about original
sin.
We were all born or even in the womb,
where we have original sin, because we're descendants of Adam.
I'm talking about practical sin.
We are talking about actual sin committed.
I kid you not, the rabbis even
developed this idea of actual prenatal
iniquity in the womb.
And it gets crazy if you look into it.
One of the rabbis took from Genesis
4, sin lies at the door, and he
made the door, to refer to the door of the womb.
So he interpreted that as some kind
of great insight into actual prenatal
iniquity by the baby.
Another one argued that the baby was actually sitting in the womb, he'd be kicking harder.
The mama.
I mean, it's just insane.
On the other hand, they
also believed that the children suffered
from the parents' sin.
You know where they got this from?
Look at it with me.
Exodus, chapter 20, verse 5.
Look on your screen.
or in your Bible.
I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God.
Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the
children on the 3rd and 4th generation.
Now, you may have even heard
this in our day.
You ever heard about generational
curses, our crazy,
charismatic friends, believe, some of
them, that there are cursed children and cursed whole generations.
And it's pretty incredible, actually,
to think that even in our day, they have this notion
that you could somehow be
paying right now for the sins of your parents or
your ancestors, based off this verse.
Well, I'm here to clear this up for you today without question.
What does Exodus 20 verse 5 mean?
What does it mean?
It's pretty simple.
It's actually a collective statement.
The sins of the fathers is what it says.
What that means there is the leaders,
the heads of a generation, the
sins that they commit in time, those
sins define that generation are
so influential that they can't be
reversed or rooted out for three or four generations.
In other words, they define the culture in
any given society.
Think about the '60s we've talked about, how
that generation's sinned, what it has spawned since then.
There's a principle here that this verse is establishing.
It's not saying that individual sins
for three or four generations of kids, grandkids,
and great grandkids are going to be cursed.
That is not what this verse is saying.
It is saying, as a whole, You
better take care of your generation, because
if your generation is characterized by
overwhelming sin, it's going to take three or four generations,
at least, to turn that around.
Think about that, and what this generation is we're living in right now.
Think about it.
What we got going
on in this culture right now?
Does this turn around fast?
No.
Unless there's massive revival, and God works
to really convert millions of people at one
time, what this generation right now,
it don't turn around quick.
That's what this verse is talking about.
Now I want you to make sure you get this.
All right?
So I'm going to give you an example of what the Bible is saying in
a positive direction about this.
I want to show you a passage that deals directly with
this issue, so you make sure you know why,
Brother Philip said this morning, that degenerational cursors aren't really what we think they are.
Look at Ezekiel 18.
Versus 1 to 2.
Ezekiel says, Then the
word of the Lord came to me, saying, What do you mean
by using this proverb concerning the land
of Israel, saying, The fathers eat the
sour grapes, but the children's teeth are set on edge.
That's the proverb.
The proverb is that the children suffer
the consequence of the behavior of the parents, but
look what God says.
Next in verse three.
As I live, declares the Lord, you
are surely not going to use this proverb
in Israel anymore.
Very clear.
Stop using it, and then look
down in verse 20, where he explains.
The person whose sins will die.
The Son will not bear the
punishment for the Father's iniquity, nor will
the Father bear the punishment for the Son's iniquity, the
righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and
the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.
Forget the generational cursive stuff.
Okay?
Individual responsibility, period,
paragraph, end of sentence, that's false doctrine.
If you misinterpret Exodus 20.
Y'all with me?
You understand.
Got a question?
Ask me after church.
But in this corrupted Jewish
theology, they had still developed
this system where generations could be cursed.
Now go back to verse John chapter 9.
So that's why they're asking this question.
Did the man sin?
Did he sin in the womb?
Because he was born blind.
Or did his parents sin?
And did that cause him to be born by?
Jesus responds next.
Verse 3.
Jesus answered, because
Jesus knows Ezekiel 2.
It was neither that this man sinned,
nor his parents.
Now, let me tell you something.
Just that one statement, Jesus has completely obliterated
the whole false theological system of generational
curses right there, because he's clearly saying that
a person can have a severe, congenital,
lifelong illness, and that has absolutely nothing to do
with his own sin or the sins of his parents.
Could Jesus be any clearer, I think, not?
You can't make that conclusion, Jesus is saying.
And that wipes out their whole system.
Here is the reason.
that this man is blind.
Look next.
But it was so that the works
of God might be displayed in him.
He's blind?
Well, the glory of God.
He's blind, so
that we could come to this very moment, at
this very gate, and this very healing,
and have the power of God put on display, and
later, this story is going to be written down, and
it's going to be remembered throughout all the rest of human
history, and we're reading it again right here in 2026
on Hooper Road, Providence Baptist, and God is
going to be glorified by this story.
That's the reason.
Not
all disease, not all defect, not all
suffering comes from
personal sin, but listen to me very carefully.
Make no mistake about it.
It can.
You can be a genuine
believer, genuinely regenerated.
And if you just keep on in a continuing pattern of
unending sin as a pattern of your life,
the Lord might make you weak, he might make
you sick, he might even take your life.
How do I know that?
Well, you ought to know it, because we review it every time we have the Lord's Supper.
Huh?
They were acting up, getting crazy, and corn?
And what did Paul say?
That's the reason why some of you are weak.
Some of you are sick.
Some of you sleep.
You died.
The Lord took you out.
But at the same time, at the
same time, you can't necessarily make that connection,
are you going to be like one of Job's friends?
trying to find out something that wasn't there?
So, this isn't about the
blind man's parents.
Were they sinful?
Well, yeah, they were.
Is this man a sinner?
The blind man?
Of course he is.
But this has nothing to do with that.
There are some really healthy sinners in the world.
I mean, have you noticed?
And some of them who are really bad people
are very healthy for a very long time.
George Soros, and at the
same time, there are some really sick
true believers who are suffering
right this minute, immensely in
this life, and they are very faithful to the Lord,
no matter what happens.
So, folks, I'm telling you, that's just people down here in
responsibility, and you can't make those connections.
Stay in your lane,
while God owns every
lane and knows and ordains every reason for every
circumstance that exists.
Just let him be God, and you be you.
So Jesus just cuts the bottom out
of all this era in their theology.
And he says, hey, this is about the works of God.
The purpose of this man's blindness is
to reveal the miraculous power of God, through
the Son of God, to substantiate his claims,
to be the Messiah, to be God
himself, which he had just finished doing in the temple.
He's fixing to do a creative miracle so
that it becomes very clear to everybody that he
is the one who creates, as John
starts out in chapter one, telling us.
He created everything there is to be created.
The blind man is
a prepared vessel to put God on display
through Christ, and so without any more
theological discussion, Jesus moves on.
Verse 4.
We must work the works of him who
sent me as long as it is day.
Night is coming when no one can work.
So it's good to have theological discussion.
I love having theological discussion, but sooner or later,
you need to go to work with your theology.
He's not going to stand there with him
and debate theology anymore.
Jesus said, it's time to go to work.
Now, when he says, night is coming when no one can work.
He's not talking about physical night.
He's not talking about nighttime when the stars come out.
I want you to notice in verse 4, also, how it starts with the
word we.
You see that?
We must work the works of him who
sent me, and I want to unpack this we for just a minute.
Back in chapter 5,
if you think back, you remember what Jesus said.
I work, and the Father works, remember?
The Father and I work together.
I do what the Father does.
And they wanted to stone him just for that, because why?
He was making himself equal with God at that moment.
remember that?
Here, he pulls
in the disciples with the word, we.
We are called together to the works of him who
sent me as long as it is day.
And what does that mean?
It is day.
It's not literal daytime.
Daylight, what he
means here, is lifetime.
There is a far greater spiritual
implication here, Church.
Death, right now, as I've told
you, is looming on the horizon for Jesus.
He's got about six months left on Earth at this very moment.
And the disciples, even some of them, don't
have very long, just a few years before they're martyred.
The big picture reality here is we
only have a brief time here on the Earth.
This is not a time to get bogged
down and caught up in theological debates.
It's time for us for we to go
to work.
Look what he in verse 4.
He says, night is coming.
You know what that means?
The end of your life is coming.
That's what he means.
Night is coming when no one can work.
There ain't one of us in here that knows
how much time we have left.
This might be our last day right here today.
Don't say it can't be.
There's not 100% degree of accuracy that you will be
here tomorrow at this time.
There's not ever a 100% degree of accuracy that that's true.
What do we have left, months?
Years?
I have no idea.
Neither do you.
I find that fascinating to think about.
But we're all included in the we right here.
We must work the works of
the one who sent me as long as it is day.
What is Jesus saying?
As long as we have life and breath.
Because night is coming.
What is he saying?
Death is coming for all of us.
And when we get there, and we
look back, what will we
have done in this one life that God gave us,
to advance the kingdom of God?
In Ephesians 5, remember back, not
long ago, Paul emphasized, look at it.
Making the most of your time,
because the days are evil.
So it's begging the question, What are you doing with your time?
What are you doing with your life?
This is a call
to every Christian as long as it is day,
as long as you're living here, to get into the business
of doing things with your time, your attention, that
have eternal value, that advance
the kingdom of God, stop being so focused
on things that have no eternal value
at all is what the implication is here.
Get hand in hand with the king, and go serve
the king with your life, be about his business instead
of your business, because night is coming.
Death is coming.
And after you're dead, you can't do any of his works,
that you have lifetime here to do on Earth.
And once death is here, we'll no longer have the
privilege that it is to be on mission for our king.
And so Jesus here knows.
Depths just months away from me.
He says, Next, verse 5.
While I am in the world, I
am the light of the world.
But that's only for a little while longer for him here.
He will always be the light in one sense,
but it'll never shine as brightly as it did
for those three years on the Earth until, of course, he
comes again, and that's just for one event.
He is saying to them, I
must use my power and my light while I
am still here, and he's going to use his power to
give a blind man physical light,
but more importantly, as we're going to see, he gives this man.
spiritual light.
So he skipped down to verse 38, just, let's just
skip ahead and see for a second.
What's the man say?
Lord, I believe.
And he worshiped him.
So he not only heals the blind man.
He saves the blind man from his sin.
He gives him physical light, so he can see the
world around him that he's never seen before, and then he gives him
spiritual sight, so he can see God
and Christ as he truly is.
So number one, to darkness, number two, the light.
Next we come thirdly, verses 6 to 7, to cite.
Look in verses 6 to 7.
When he had said this, he
spat on the ground, and made clay
of the spittle, and applied the clay to
his eyes, and said to him, Go, wash in
the pool of Siloam, which is translated, sent.
So he went away and washed, and came back, see.
Now, if you read the commentaries
on the Bible, the question comes up,
why did he use this method?
I mean, he did it a few times, and Mark,
he did this, and he put it on somebody's ears, and
he did the same thing with the clay and the spill on another blind
person, and the commentaries come up
with some very interesting suggestions.
One says to make use of the healing quality of saliva.
I mean really?
Another one says, to make him even more blind.
What?
You can't be more blind than totally blind.
Popping mud on eyes that
don't function, don't make you more blind.
Another writer says, To
symbolize that man is made from dirt.
Come on, man.
Another one said to give the eyes
time to heal.
Those eyes didn't need to heal.
They needed to be replaced.
So forget all those.
Why did he use this method?
I have no idea.
And
since it doesn't specifically say, guess what?
I'm good with not needing to know.
why this method was used.
But there is something that I do understand.
Jesus could
have just touched his eyes.
Jesus could have just thought it.
Jesus could have just said it, and instantaneously he would have seen.
So why does he do this?
And then send him off to the pool to wash?
Well, John MacArthur, I think, has a good insight here.
He says, I think he's calling for obedience here.
I think he's calling for
this man to submit.
Remember, the man doesn't
know who's talking to him.
He's never seen anybody.
But he obeys.
And he goes and does what Jesus says.
Look at verse 7, he went away and washed
and came back seeing.
Why does he do this?
I mean, look, in any ordinary circumstance, if somebody
came up to this guy and put some spit and some mud on
his eyes, he would probably just strike out on him,
call, help, man!
What's going on here, right?
That might be normal.
But he doesn't do that.
He's immediately obedient.
And I think that
that gives evidence of the start of
what we know happens later that I read to you in verse 38,
where he believes, could this be the start of
the effectual call, and regeneration, new
life bursting upon his dead spirit?
Could it be that spark of faith, ignited in his heart,
and the spirit of God began to change him on
the inside, and in all come on, that's again?
again?
Look at verse 38, where he says, Lord, I believe, and he worshiped him.
Are these the 1st workings of the
power of the Holy Spirit, to draw this man, to
submit to Christ in action?
I think the evidence is pretty good that it is.
This is how salvation works, isn't it?
Sovereign grace confronts
a blind, helpless, hopeless,
begging, sinner, who can on his own see God.
He can't see Christ, but sovereign grace comes
to him, and only a response of simple faith is what is.
asked.
And then that response happens.
And you find your way to the
cleansing waters, like I did in 1997.
This is another great analogy we have.
John uses it time and time again of the cleansing waters.
And he comes back, and he can see, not
only with his physical eyes, but brand
new spiritual eyes to be able to see the
glory of God.
And that leads us up to the last little part of our opening.
Now we come to this fourth part, this point going
back to the darkness.
Why do I say it that way?
Well, because everybody around this man and what
just happened is in the dark.
about what's going on.
Check out the neighbors.
You ready for the names?
Look at them in verse 8.
Therefore the neighbors.
And those who previously saw him as a beggar
were saying, is not this the one who used to
sit and beg?
So, pretty clear, this was a
daily deal for him for his survival, same beggar, always in the same place.
They all knew him.
But they can't explain.
It can't even process, wait a minute, how
is this guy all of a sudden able to see, verse 9?
Others were saying, This is he.
Still, others were saying, no, but
he is like him.
I mean, he just looks like him, but that can't be him.
And then looks next.
He kept saying.
I am the one.
Y'all don't need to debate.
I'm the used to be blind guy.
That's me.
And we can't even begin to imagine the rest of that conversation.
As he tried to explain,
I've never seen anything in my whole life, and now I
can see, and everything in front of me is technicolor.
I didn't even know what that was.
Verse 10!
So they were saying to him, How were your
eyes open, verse 11, he answered, The
man who is called Jesus, made clay, and
anointed my eyes, and said to me, Go to Salom
and wash, so I went away and washed, and receive my sight.
So, obviously, somebody did tell him Jesus' name.
Because he says, the man who was called Jesus,
and then he doesn't explain, how it happened, he just
explains that it did, and what he went and did.
And there is no human explanation for how it happened.
You understand that?
This is a creative miracle.
Jesus created brand new two eye right here.
So the man can only describe the experience.
Look at verse 12.
They said to him, Where is he?
He said, I do not know.
Can you imagine asking
this guy, Where is he?
He could have said, Where's where?
I'm never seen where or anything else.
I don't know where anything is.
Are you seriously asking me for directions?
This is my first day ever to see.
So this darkness ensues and
falls over everybody.
How are they going to dispel this darkness?
What are they gonna do about this?
Well, verse 13,
What the Jewish mind knew to do?
They brought to the Pharisees,
the man who was formerly blind.
Oh, let's go to the experts.
And this is where unbelief
starts to investigate a miracle
with a predictable result from this crew.
This is just a fantastic account.
Jesus, healing a blinding
which so clearly illustrates the salvation process,
We sat blinded by sin.
We couldn't see God.
We couldn't see Christ.
We had no capacity on our own to desire
Christ, or even recognize him.
We had no possible way of initiating
any kind of delivery from sin or rescue, and
then God, in his mercy and grace through Christ, found us.
That's how salvation reaches out
to us first, in our blindness, and gives us sight.
And all he asks is
a simple act of faith, belief, which he empowers,
which he gives as a gift, and he watches us,
and we forever see.
And that's what's going to happen to this man.
First, physical sight, then soul
blindness is removed.
And we're going to get deeper into that next time.
But you got to come back if you want to hear the rest of the story.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you, Lord.
Every single account in
the gospels is extraordinary.
What grace?
You have given us.
to take us back when we read your word 2,000
years ago to this very human
transaction between Jesus and this blind man.
We get to be right there to experience it all
again, afresh and anew.
Every single time we read your word, illuminated
by the Holy Spirit to all believers, Lord.
I just thank you for this word.
I thank you for the picture.
that it represents.
I pray, Father, that we would gain, even
a deeper understanding of how it works from what we've heard today,
and as always, if there are any here, who have not
bowed any to Christ in salvation.
I pray for you to draw them, that they would seek the Lord,
and not let him go until you've given the peace that you have saved.
We pray that all this has been done such a way today.
It's your worship service to bring you maximum glory.
Jesus' name, we pray.
Amen.