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.