Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind | John 9:1-40

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

That was a serious length passage, and so thank you, Randy, for the work. I am gonna start us today with a question and a story. The question is this, have you ever been blamed for something that you didn’t do? Have you ever been blamed for something that you didn’t do? My, my story goes back a whole bunch of years, probably around 30 or maybe even 40 years.

I was sat in the back of my parents’ car. With my brother and my sister. My brother’s about 18 months younger than me, my sister, about four, four and a half years younger than me for some inex inexplicable reason. As the oldest child, I remember being sat in the middle seat, which just feels wrong. And as we began to disembark my brother got out one side.

And my sister, about six months old, got out the other side. Remember, this was the eighties, and so if you got to six months old, you were classed as an adult. You just had to survive by yourself. And so as she was climbing out, she fell. And landed face first on the stone driveway. My mom who’d gone to book groceries, I think in the house, came running out and grabbed her and picked her up and held her close to her.

And then she looked at me and said, what happened? Now there’s a backstory. To this story, I’d hit that age where kids tend to watch adults and stare, I dunno if you’ve seen them around, but they watch you and they try to figure out how to go about being an adult. What does it take to do this incredibly hard job?

And as I’d watched adults do their thing, I’ve noticed that every now and again, something would go wrong. Something would get messed up, and some adult you never were quite sure which one would say, Hey. Sorry, that was my fault. And when they did, all of the adults would come around them and say things like, Hey, happens to every one of us.

We’re all human. Don’t even worry about it. And it always sounded incredibly grown up. So while my mom was staring at me with my sister screaming into her shoulder, she said, what happened? And I said, my fault. Now I did not get the same reaction that those adults that I’d seen. Make this incredibly adult statement, God, my mom, she lit me up.

She cast me into the outer darkness, whether it’s weeping and gnashing of teeth. And I learned never to accept responsibility for anything ever again. Have you ever been blamed for something that you didn’t do on the surface? The story that we just heard is about blame. It’s about who is responsible for what happens.

But before we get too far into this, let me catch you up. If you haven’t been around with us the last few weeks we’ve been navigating our way through this biography of Jesus the Gospel of John. The passage that we’re in today is deeply connected to what just went before. You might say this, John seven to 10 makes up one continuous.

Narrative. It’s one day John seven happens. Sean taught us about Jesus and the festival, how he comes and stands up at the last day and says, anyone who is thirsty come to me in rivers of living water. We’ll pour out for them the later that day, the next passage, Jesus says, I am the light of the world.

And then today we land here. As this passage occurs. So with all of that in mind, let’s jump into it and see what we might learn. Verse one, he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents who sinned that he was born blind? It’s that same question, right?

Who is to blame? Whose fault is this? I think a question we probably ask a lot, something bad happens to someone that we think doesn’t deserve it. We say, whose fault is this? Maybe we have a bunch of answers, maybe we don’t. Sometimes as we see those situations occur, maybe we even ask if it’s God’s fault.

Maybe God is to blame. That’s not new to people like us. Th that conversation has been going on for a long time. This is Psalm 74, verse 11. Why do you withdraw your hand, even your right hand? Take it from the folds of your cloak. It’s someone writing thousands of years ago that sees a situation, says, God, your hand is supposed to protect us, and it’s not.

Take it out of your pocket. Do something with this situation. These conversations are not old conversations, and it feels like for a moment, the tension of this passage is going to be this big theological conversation about how you assign blame in a given situation and then really easily and really quickly.

Jesus just pushes that conversation to one side and it becomes about something else. Verse two. Neither this man nor his parents sinned, neither one of them, but this happens so that the works of God might be displayed in him. I love how the message paraphrase of the Bible translates this. This is gonna unlock it for some of you.

Check this out. Jesus said You are asking the wrong question. You are looking for someone to blame. There’s no such cause. An effect here. Now, I don’t want you to hear what Jesus doesn’t say. Jesus doesn’t say, you know what? It’s never anybody’s fault. There’s never anyone to blame. Doesn’t say that. Maybe you’ve been through a situation where there was clearly someone to blame.

Maybe you have a victim of a crime, victim of abuse, all those different things. I don’t want you to hear that. Jesus says you can never assign blame. He says right here in this situation, there’s no one to blame, but what he says next. Is true even when there is someone to blame. Look instead for what God can do, look instead for what it’s possible that the God of the universe might make of even the worst situation.

Here’s why I think he says this. I think when we’re looking for blame, we sometimes miss the big picture. We sometimes miss that this God of the universe can do the most wonderful things in the most surprising circumstances. And then he finishes this thought reminding us while I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

When he said that a chapter ago, it was a little bit abstract, said, I’m the light of the world shining in the darkness, but here we get to know exactly what he means by that. He says, I am the light that shines in the darkest places that you will ever experience. I’m the light that shines in every darkness.

That’s how he introduces this passage, and this is how he moves us from this thing that looks like a theological conversation and then becomes something else altogether. Now, as you heard the chapter, you know what comes next is a long, extensive discussion. So I broke it up into three sections. This is gonna help you because firstly, it makes the passage move on and on.

So you’ll be able to see that here, the section one, what Jesus does. We’re gonna see an event, we’re gonna see something happen. But then the section two, what people think about what Jesus does. There’s gonna be a discussion on how Jesus acted and what he means, and then there’s this third section that’s gonna come last, what Jesus says about what people think about what Jesus does.

And as you work through those different sections, eventually what you’re going to see is you’re going to see how Jesus points back to everything that has happened. And I won’t reveal the answer yet, has actually been talking about the same thing from the beginning. So section one, scene one, if you like, plays if you don’t, section one, what Jesus does.

Verse six. After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the sliva and put it on the man’s eyes. Think about this for a second. From the blind man’s perspective, a group of people have been talking about you, not to you discussing whether you might be to blame for the situation you find yourself in.

In fact, we can walk through this. In more detail for a second. Close your eyes. You’ve heard people talking about you. There’s been a conversation, someone being seems to be suggesting you might be to blame for being blind. Someone suggests your parents might be to blame. And then this beautiful kind voice says, which not either of those things.

And then you hear nothing until you hear this sound.

And you know that sound, it’s a universal sound because you’ve made that sound yourself, and it’s followed by a specific action. And then the silence, you hear someone scrabbling around on the ground, and then you feel this substance rubbed over your eyes. And you know enough to put two and two together.

This is how this chapter starts. This is how this miracle starts. He spit on the ground, made some mud with his sliva and put it on the man’s eyes, and then says something that I bet even without a miracle, the man was delighted. Here. Now go and wash now and go. Go get rid of the sliva and mud that’s now on your eyes.

Go washing the pool of silo, which means. Sent. This is the same pool that the priest in chapter seven that we heard about just a few weeks ago would come and drag the water from, for this ceremonial, it was a water of purification. And the man goes, and then the action is simple, right? He goes, and he came home seeing.

Miracle is done. You can open your eyes if you still have them closed. By the way, I’ve seen a few around Now. Before we go any further with this story, I might ask you a question. If you are someone who’s hung around the Bible around faith for a long time, does this story sound familiar? Do you feel like you’ve heard it before to a first person in the Jewish world?

For a first century person in the Jewish world, it would definitely sound familiar. Let’s go back here. Genesis chapter two. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground. What’s this man being called all along? No name, just a man. Sometimes the man, this is an act of creation. In Genesis, God creates from the dust of the ground and in John Jesus creates.

From the dust of the ground, it’s not just a miracle, it’s a creation for a person. In the ancient world to heal a man born blind was considered to be impossible. It was ranked up there with raising the dead in terms of the miraculous. And now he’s Jesus creating in front of a whole bunch of people, bringing sight to one who could not see.

And so the conversations began. His neighbors and those who had formally seen him begging asked, isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg? Remember, Jesus has not been involved in the washing. He’s disappeared out of the scene, and now there’s a discussion Without Jesus present at all, they begin to ask questions about this man who was born blind.

Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg? I love how John interjects a chunk of humor into this. Some claim that he was. Others said, no, he only looks like him. Nobody thought to ask him. It seems it was a discussion again about him, not with him. He’s the one that, that finally says, I am the man. And again, that specific term, the term used of Adam in Genesis, the man who was created, knew by Jesus.

How then were your eyes opened? They asked. And he gives his story for the first time. He’ll give it a few times. The man they called Jesus, made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to silo and wash, so I went and washed and came home. Seeing that’s the story, and they have a follow up question.

Where is this man? I do not know. He has not seen Jesus face to face at all. At least not yet. Scene two, what people think about what Jesus does. It seems to some suspicion about Jesus and about the story of the man himself. The people that have heard his story the first time take him off to a religious group.

They brought him to the Pharisees, brought to the Pharisees, the man who had been born blind, and we get this key to what happens next to the discussion that takes place afterwards here in the next verse, another day. On which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was Sabbath. God created on the sixth day and he rested on the seventh day.

Who does this Jesus think he is creating on the Sabbath day? It starts to point to some of their understanding of what’s going on with the fact that’s Sabbath. Is such a big deal to them, it will continue to be a big deal. Therefore, the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. And he replies again, same story.

He put mud on my eyes. I washed, and now I see tells the same story to the Pharisees as he told to the other people listening. But the Pharisees response is very different. You see this distinguishment this sort of disagreement between two groups of the Pharisees. Some of the Pharisees said, this man is not from God for he does not keep the Sabbath.

Others said, how can a sinner perform such signs? There’s a division. But we can tell that one group is bigger than the other because the smaller group, they disappear from the scene. All we see now from this group of Pharisees is simply opposition to what Jesus has done. They as a group were divided.

They turn again to the blind Man, what have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened. Remember, this man has just seen for the first time. He just wants to get out there. He wants to go look at trees, the things he’s heard about all his life. He wants to see water. He wants to see the faces of his parents.

He wants to be out there in the world. And what he gets is a court case. One of the most frustrating things you can imagine happening to a man who has just been, his eyes have been opened, the man replied, he’s a prophet. Now, if this man knows his Jewish history, that’s probably the best guess. He could make.

And when you think about the history of the Jewish people, miracles have happened at different points, and most of the time it’s a prophet that does the miracle, but there’s never been a miracle like this before. This is beyond anything any prophet has done before. They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents.

This point it starts to move a little bit into the ridiculous. We don’t believe you, even though everyone knows you are blind. We’re gonna call your parents in to give witness to you. Now remember, this man may not be older than 13, 14, 15 years old. He may also be much older. We don’t really know much about him at all, and they ask the parents some very basic questions.

Is this your son? Is he the one you say he was born blind? How is it that he can now see and as we see from their response, the parents really want nothing whatsoever to do with the conversation. We know he is our son. Very basic. We know he was born blind, but how he can see or who opened his eyes, we don’t know.

Ask him. He is of age. He will speak for himself. The parents are not really interested in the story at all. There’s no excitement, particularly from them that their son can now see. They actually want to stay as far away from the situation as they possibly can, and John gives us the reason right afterwards.

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. That was why his parents said he’s of age. Ask him. There’s some suspicion amongst people in the academic world that John is actually writing some of this for his first readers in around 95 AD that they’re being persecuted for their faith and he’s trying to show how different people might respond to persecution.

That’s the reason for the parents’ involvement in the story. A second time they were summoned. The man who’s currently looking at all the things he’s never seen before, who had been born blind and give glory to God by telling the truth. They said, we know this man is a sinner. It’s like a code word.

It’s really an invitation. An invitation to confess. They don’t want the truth, they want them, him to acknowledge that all of this is made up. That’s how God will get the glory right when you confess that this Jesus is a charlatan, is a fake, is a fraud. You don’t get. God doesn’t get glory by somebody else, healing someone else.

Creating this man we know is a sinner. Maybe you’ve noticed with this group, the Pharisees, there’s a particular approach that they have to the situation. How might you describe their response? I think you describe it this way. They’re certain, they’re absolutely certain that they understand God. They’re under, they’re certain that they know exactly how God works, who God likes, how God will act in the future too.

In some ways there a warning to maybe some of us that have been following the way of Jesus for a long time. As you follow Jesus for more and more time, I think you get more and more certain that you haven’t figured out. And yet the God of scripture has been surprisingly difficult to figure out. In the Old Testament books, we have God talk about a foreign king as though he’s his specific tool or specific servant in a specific situation.

We have a prophet go to a foreign country where God talks about his deep love for that country, and we have Jesus calm, not as a mighty king, but as a suffering servant. Scott is surprisingly difficult to figure out. But the Pharisees are certain that they understand him completely. The man replies whether he is a sinner or not.

I don’t know. One thing I do know, I was blind. Now I see one of the truly great lines in scripture, and there are many of course. But not spiritual yet. Not as we sing it in the song. Amazing Grace that will sing at the end of the service. It’s not spiritual still, it’s physical right now. I used to have no sight and now I have some sight, and that’s the thing.

I understand that experience of God is the one thing that tells me. Everything right now that I know Pharisees are certain. The man, he’s curious. Desperately longing to know more about Jesus, desperately longing to understand what has happened to him. The Pharisees are certain, the man is curious.

This pattern will continue as they ask another question. Then they asked him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? Again, something he’s already answered very specifically, two or three times. Now, he answered, I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you too want to become his disciples?

If you’ve been following these groups around Jesus, these religious groups, what you’ve seen over and over again is that there’s always something that pushes them over the edge. They can have a fairly civilized conversation and then they’ll say, so Jesus will say something that really ends up driving them nuts.

This is it here. Then they held insults at him and said, you are this fellow’s disciple, and we are disciples of Moses. We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from certain about Jesus, certain about his father, certain about everything that God will do in the world.

I think what happens when we’re certain is this I think certainty. Kills continued growth. You don’t grow anymore when you serve now. Now don’t hear what I’m not saying. It doesn’t mean you don’t hold onto old truths, old traditions from the past. It doesn’t mean nothing that’s happened before matters.

But when you think you figured out who God is, who he likes, who he doesn’t like, who he cares for, doesn’t care for which side he is on. I think we missed something. ’cause this God always seems to surprise us and I think that’s the point. It’s not a failure. I think it’s the point. Think about things that Paul, one of Jesus followers wrote.

Now we see only a reflection in a mirror. Then we’ll see face to face. Now I know in part then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known, this God is a mystery. One day we’ll understand. But even then, perhaps it will take eternity to get a picture fully of who this God is. It would be a shame if we were absolutely certain what he was like.

Right now it’s a bigger mystery than now. This is the way c. S Lewis talks about this same issue in his letter. The screw in his book, the Screw Tape Letters describes a man who has just reached this point of death and now experiences his God for himself. And he writes it this way. He had no faint conception till that very hour, how they, the Trinity would look and even doubted their existence.

But when he saw them, he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that he could now say to them one by one, not who are you, but so it was you all the time. I am not saying we don’t know God.

I’m saying that there is this deep relationship. That doesn’t mean we fully understand. Who he is and what he means. Certainty has this way of killing continued growth. The man answers the Pharisees form a question. This is the longest passage, longest speech that he gives as his confidence grows. Now that is remarkable.

You don’t know where he comes from yet He opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. Not only is he right about that, there was no story in Judaism of a man who was born blind, having his eyes opened.

But he also says the same thing about Jesus. The Nicodemus said in chapter three, this famous teacher of Israel, the wisest man of his time. This man is starting to grow in knowledge and understand what it takes to follow Jesus himself, whereas the Pharisees are still missing it. You are steeped in sin at birth.

How dare you lecture us and they threw it out. The Pharisees end up back at the beginning of the passage, the disciples question, who is to blame? They still think it’s his fault. They’re back at the beginning. It’s as if they’ve learned nothing from what’s happened, which brings us finally to scene three and what Jesus says about what people think about what Jesus does.

For the first time, the man actually stands face to face with Jesus himself. Jesus heard that they had thrown him out and when he found him said, do you believe in the Son of man? Who is he, sir? The man asked, tell me so I may believe in him. Jesus said, you have seen him. In fact, he’s the one speaking to you now.

The man said, I believe and he worshiped him. The physical side he has been given is now matched by the spiritual site he now has. He has seen Jesus for himself. This is where the passage all comes together, seems. It was never about blame. It’s always been about what it takes to see Jesus for yourself.

This message that runs all the way along has been this. Jesus can open our eyes. Jesus can open our eyes even when we’ve been blind, the entirety of our life in a spiritual sense. It’s possible for anyone at any moment to come to know Jesus for themselves. Suddenly that might be true for all of us in different ways.

Perhaps you’ve never fully understand this message of Jesus, perhaps. It’s always seemed a mystery to you. You’ve never really been able to jump into it ’cause it’s always seemed distant and yet at the same time, perhaps you or I have become people that are very certain. About who God is and how he works.

We’ve lost some of that mystery. Some of that invites that continued growth that we were talking about a little bit earlier. Maybe for each one of us, there’s this truth that God still has to open our eyes to see him more clearly. Maybe we need again, to see the world through Jesus colored eyes. I want us to watch this video for just a second.

I think it explains it better than I can.

Ready add you some new sunglasses. Okay, but why did you make them perk there?

Weird.

Okay. Put them on. Now look at your case and tell me what color that is. Wait. Are these my color? Yeah. Oh my God. This is red. Oh my gosh. This is, and that’s white. Look. Look at the sign up there. What’s that? And oh my gosh, that’s yellow.

And this is black. And this is white. What color is that car? Oh my gosh. A tiny colors blue. Oh my. Oh, finally I can see the colors. Oh, and that has a blue outline, yellow kind. Come here. These are awesome. Come here, come on and look. What color is the bush? It’s green and yellow is blue.

Oh. I better look at these guys over here. Mama. Can I wear these? This school? Yeah. I’m gonna wear them forever. I’m gonna wear these forever. Look at these guys.

Thank you so much.

That’s what we’re longing for. We’re longing to see this world through Jesus colored glasses. We’re longing to see him for ourselves. We get to journey alongside all sorts of people, and that’s what we get to do. We get to journey with them until this moment where they get to see Jesus for themselves.

That’s what we do in groups. When we join in groups. That’s what we do in classes. In classes. That’s what we do when we serve people, maybe kids, maybe students, people of all sorts of age. That’s what a community of faith does. It doesn’t rest in one person’s certainty of how they see Jesus themselves.

It’s a community thing. As we try to understand who he’s together, and slowly each of us, our eyes opened more and more. As we see the God of the universe who is able to open our eyes. If verse 39, Jesus said, for judgment, I have come into the world so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.

This is the message translation. Again, super helpful so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind. Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, what are you blind? Are we blind to? Jesus said, if you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin.

But now that you claim to see your guilt remains, Jesus can open our eyes if we can admit, we can’t see. If we can admit we can’t see. That’s what we get to do. When we come here, we get to say, God, will you open my eyes to see you in your world in new ways? Would you be not just for me information, but revelation, the thing that I’ve gathered here, would you knock it down a couple of feet so it lands right here?

Would you let me see Jesus for my, this is John Newton Christian Slave Trader, a man who could see but was really blind. This is John Newton, a man who became physically blind, but could see incredibly well, who wrote the words of the song? Amazing Grace. I once was blind, but now I see God. Would you open our eyes to help us to see Jesus?

Would he not just be an idea to us, but a deep passion and a journey towards him knowing him more each day. Help us to not stay where we are, but continue to grow in you. Amen.