Blindness and the Light of the World

We'd like to invite you to open your New Testaments up to the Gospel of John chapter nine.

Our scripture reading for today is is the whole chapter of John nine.

Where Jesus heals a man born blind.

Beginning in verse one.

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.

And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

And Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.

Night is coming when no one can work.

As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

And having said these things, he spat on the ground and made some mud with saliva.

Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent.

So he went and washed, and he came back seeing.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before he was a beggar, before who had seen him before as a beggar, were saying, Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?

And some said, It is he, but others said, No, he's just like him.

But he kept saying, I'm the man.

And they said to him, Well, then how are your eyes opened?

And he answered, The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, Go to Siloam and wash.

So I went and washed, and I received my sight.

Well, where is he?

He said, I don't know.

So they brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.

Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.

So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight, and he said to them, He put mud on my eyes, and I washed and I see.

And some of the Pharisees said, This man is not from God, for he doesn't keep the Sabbath.

But others said, How can a man who's a sinner do such things?

And there was a division among them.

So they said again to the blind man, What do you say about him?

Since he opened your eyes?

And he said, He's a prophet.

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, Is this your son?

Who you say was born blind?

How then does he now see?

And his parents answered, We know that this is our son, and that yes he was born blind.

But how he now sees, we don't know.

Nor do we know who opened his eyes.

Ask him, he's of age, he'll speak for himself.

His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for they had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be the Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.

Therefore his parents said, He's of age, ask him.

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, Give glory to God.

We know this man as a sinner.

And he answered, Whether he's a sinner, I don't know, but one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.

They said to him, What did he do to you?

How did he open your eyes?

And he answered, I've already told you, and you wouldn't listen.

Do you want to hear it again?

Do you also want to become his disciples?

And they reviled him, saying, You are his disciple, but we're the disciples of Moses.

We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we don't know where he comes from.

The man answered, Why, this is an amazing thing.

You don't know where Jesus comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.

We know that God doesn't listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, the Lord listens to him.

Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind.

If this man weren't from God, he couldn't do anything.

And they answered him, You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?

And they cast him out.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out.

And having found him, he said, Do you believe in the Son of Man?

He answered, And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?

And Jesus said to him, You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.

He said, Lord, I believe, and he worshipped him.

And Jesus said, For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.

Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things and said to him, Are we also blind?

And Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you would have no guilt.

But now that you say we see, your guilt remains.

Well, here ends the reading of God's word.

Well, I want to begin by asking a question today of each of us.

How well do we know Jesus?

Perhaps a better question might be what should we know of Jesus in order to know him well?

And I think we could all agree probably on a few things, right?

We would all agree that we to know Jesus well, we would need to know his identity.

We would need to know who he is.

Who did he claim to be?

We know, of course, that the whole Bible, Old and New Testament, points to Jesus.

He's the central figure of all of Revelation.

But we'd also want to know what he taught.

The Gospels, of course, give us the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

They give us what he taught directly.

But the rest of the New Testament, the letters and other books there, give us the indirect teachings of Jesus through his authoritative apostles and their close associates.

But we would want to know more than his identity and what he taught.

We certainly would want to know some of the main things of his life, right?

We'd want to know that in the words of the book of Acts, that he went around doing good and that he performed mighty works in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And that ultimately he accomplished what he came to do.

He laid down his life for his sheep and he rose again.

So in broad strokes, I would say that this is where most of us camp.

In terms of knowing Jesus.

This is where we hang out.

This is maybe what I would call the meat and potatoes of Bible study, right?

When we engage in study, we ask these questions.

Who is he?

What's he saying?

And what are the main things that's going on here in the passage?

And there's a lot of overlap in these things.

But all of this misses a very important area.

To know anyone, we would want to know their heart.

We would want to know who they are in the inner person.

We would want to know what they value.

We would want to know what drives them.

We would want to know what they feel about us and about other people.

You can think about this in terms of you're married, those of you who are married.

You know, you can live for years.

You really can.

You can live, I'm a living testament to this.

You can live for years and not get very deep into the heart of your spouse.

Because you can focus on these other kinds of surface level things, and your conversation day by day will reveal where you really traffic.

But really, for you to have any kind of deep marriage at all, you have to get into these deep areas of the heart.

But do we really need to know this about Jesus?

And what difference would it make in our faith walk?

Granted, there might be a difference in marriage, but you know, in a sense, we're not living with Jesus, we're not married to him in the sense that we are with our spouse.

What difference would it make day by day to know the heart of Jesus in how we live out our faith?

And if it does make a difference, how do we go about discovering this?

How do we know what his heart really is?

And so today, that's really the focus of what I'd like us to do today.

I want to explore these questions of why do we need to know the heart of Jesus?

What difference does it make?

And how do we go about doing it?

And I'd like us to do it with a very practical example.

I'd like us to do it right in the passage that we're in in John chapter 9, and kind of look at this passage.

John 9 · chapter mention

And so today, in a sense, there's a this is kind of a kind of an exercise today, but I hope that this will be very helpful to you in your walk, and you'll see why that this is so vital to our life with God in knowing his heart.

Well, as we look at John chapter 9, it's a long chapter.

John 9 · chapter mention

There's a lot in here.

And I chose this passage for a number of reasons, but I'd like us just to begin.

We're gonna study John 9, right?

We're gonna be people of the Word.

We want to know who the Lord is.

And so we're gonna look at John 9.

I think we'd want to ask these three basic questions that I began with.

The meat and potatoes of Bible study, right?

Um, who is Jesus?

Who is Jesus in this passage?

And that's one of the things that John 9 is really strong about doing.

It's one of the purposes of John 9.

It's one of the things the Lord wants to communicate to us.

And if we were to go through this passage and go back through it, here's just a summary.

I'm gonna only give some summary here.

We can see very clearly here that God wants us to know, He wants anyone who's encountering this gospel to know that Jesus is the Son of Man.

He's the God man who takes on human flesh and becomes one of us.

Secondly, he's the one sent by his father.

He is the long-awaited Messiah.

And finally, he is the light of the world.

He's the light of the world.

And one of the things in John 9 that is really important is to see the symbolism in this passage.

This is full of symbolism here.

Because at the surface level, what's happening is you have a man who's living in darkness for all his life, right?

He's blind.

No light enters in his eyes.

And yet a man comes along, Jesus, the Nazarene.

And he brings light into his eyes.

He brings light to his life.

But the passage really isn't so much about the physical blindness.

It's really operating at a much higher level.

It's really talking about spiritual blindness and spiritual light.

Because in this passage, we're going to see, we have seen, there are many people around who are the real blind people in this day and in this event.

Because they're blind to God.

And Jesus' light is shining.

But they won't let it in.

But Jesus says that he is the light of the world.

What does he do in this passage?

Well, he opens the eyes of a blind man.

This is, there's no other miracle recorded like this.

The man had it right.

Never has it been heard that someone opened the eyes of a man born blind.

And more than this, Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah because that's what the Messiah would do.

He would be opening the eyes of the blind.

Well, finally, what did he teach?

What's really going on here?

Well, Jesus taught a number of things in this passage that we could focus our attention on if we were good students of Scripture and if we were engaging what God wants us to get out of here.

There's a lot in this passage to get, right?

One of the things straight away is that being born with physical challenges was not a sign of personal or parental sin and guilt.

I think there are people who wrestle with that one.

Moreover, Jesus taught that there is no other light in the world.

Earlier in John's gospel, John had said that Jesus is the true light which enlightens everyone.

In other words, anyone who is enlightened is enlightened by Jesus.

He isn't a light, he's not a luminary, one of many, but he is the one and only light of the world sent by the Father.

And finally, I think we would say at the very end of this chapter, there's some very poignant words that Jesus meant to teach, that we're meant, God means for us to hear.

Jesus came to expose men, to expose our hearts before the very judgment of God.

The open and the humble who can acknowledge their blindness and seek healing will find it in Jesus.

But the proud and the willfully blind who think they see and who think they have no need of sight will remain under guilt.

So this passage really has a very strong pronouncement and teaching about spiritual blindness.

So all of this is where we tend to focus, and these are important things to focus.

So please don't hear me say, let's just bypass those things.

These are all very important aspects of growing as Christians and understanding who the Lord is.

But let's move on to the fourth category that I gave us is what is the heart of Jesus in this event?

Well, to see this, you have to take a little different approach.

You have to have a little different focus.

And one of the things you have to do is just kind of force yourself not to be overly scrupulous with all the all the doctrines in the passage and the in the details of the passage.

What we really have to do is kind of have a practice of putting ourselves in this event, of being a witness, as it were, in this event.

Try to imagine what it was like to be a fly on the wall with Jesus traveling along when he sees this blind man.

And try to just look at Jesus.

Try to just see what is he doing?

And who is this guy?

What's really going on inside of him?

You see, this is really something you might think, wow, this is a strange exercise.

But this is really a Bible encouraged exercise.

Again, earlier in chapter John, in the first chapter of John, in the summary of the whole book, John says this.

He says, No one has ever seen God.

Except, essentially, except Jesus, who is at the Father's side or in his bosom.

And he has exegeted God.

He has made him known.

He also said the word became flesh, and he tabernacled among us.

And so Jesus came, he's the sent one from the Father, and a part of what he does is he reveals the heart of the Father.

He puts flesh on the invisible God.

He puts flesh and bones on the heart of God so that we might know him better.

We might see him as one of us and see how he responds and what he values and who he is and how he feels about things.

And we can get to know him as a person.

We can get to know him deeply.

And so let's do this.

I'd like us to just get into this passage and we'll just do it in summary fashion.

Let's begin in verse 1.

Jesus is traveling.

He's in Jerusalem.

There's feasts going on at some time during one of those times.

And the passage said that he saw a man blind from birth.

Now, I I think this is really actually important.

You could read this in different ways.

But you don't, you gotta realize Jesus isn't just like walking along and there's nobody else in Jerusalem.

And like he has nothing to do.

He's exceptionally busy, right?

He's making use of every single day that he has.

He has three years to accomplish a great task.

He's doing things at all different levels all the time.

And he's coming along and he notices something.

It doesn't say this man called out to Jesus, and sometimes we do read that, right?

Jesus sees him.

He sees him.

This guy's a blind beggar.

He's a man born blind.

In our day, if you're born blind, hey, we have all kinds of ways that you can really live.

At least I hope this isn't sound arrogant on my part because I'm not blind, but from what appears to be a fairly normal life, right?

Or a normal life, you can accomplish phenomenal things.

We have all kinds of ways in the modern world of helping.

But in this day and age, if you were born blind, I think you would do what this man did.

You would sit and beg.

Because the avenues opened up to you would be very few.

But one of the things that's really striking here is.

Is that as this man is healed, people don't recognize him.

They're not really sure it's him.

I wonder why that is.

Why is there so much disagreement about that that's really him?

I can't help but think that one of the reasons is because no one ever really saw this guy.

Oh, I don't mean they didn't see him, but they didn't see him.

Even his neighbors.

We'll come to that shortly.

Many of them didn't recognize him.

We're like that.

We don't see someone that is in this kind of place sometimes, right?

We'll walk right by them.

We see them in the periphery, but we don't see them.

Well, the next thing that Jesus does with this guy, it might not sound like much, but again, you have to put yourself in that place.

You have to imagine what it had been like for this guy to have heard these words from Jesus.

The disciples, uh, in all their sensitivity, say right in the hearing of this guy, who sinned?

Him or his parents, that he was born this way?

Do you think this is the first time the guy ever heard that?

No, the Jews believe that.

And I don't know all their doctrine about how they believe that an individual could sin in the womb somehow and produce blindness.

But if you were taught that all your life, what do you think you would think about this condition?

Every day you've got this blindness.

Why do you have it?

All your friends are getting married, they're having normal lives, you can hear children playing, and you are stuck on the corner, blind, because of something that's what?

It's not my fault.

I didn't ask for this life.

But yet everyone's telling you, you're it's because you're a sinner.

You sinned.

Or your parents sinned.

But Jesus tells this man, and he's doing multiple things here, I get that.

But he says something that would have been life-giving to this man.

He says that it wasn't your sin or your parents' sin that produced this blindness.

No, it was for that the works of God would be revealed in you.

As long as I'm in the world, I am the light of the world.

I can imagine this guy, his heart much have just jumped.

Because did you hear what Jesus just said?

He's talking about a work of God, a work that's going to be light, a work that's going to be good and deep and releasing.

That that's about to happen here.

And that that's why Jesus came, and that that's even a part of why he was born blind.

There's, as you go on in this passage, Jesus, of course, he puts mud on this man's eyes, he sends him to a pool.

There's a lot of symbolism here.

He wants him to go and wash in the pool of scent.

Go take a bath in the pool called scent, and you'll come back seeing.

There's a great overarching symbolism here for spiritual blindness.

But the real contrast comes when you contrast how Jesus deals with this man with how others in the passage are dealing with him.

We already see the disciples who have, you know, apparently not much sensitivity to this guy.

We don't see them seeing this guy very well.

The neighbors around him, we read of this in verses 8 and following.

Many of them don't even know that this is really the guy.

They're not sure he was really healed.

They want to know what happened.

We don't read of anyone in this passage rejoicing with this blind man.

And maybe there were some there, and that wasn't John's point, but we don't read of anyone rejoicing with this guy of what has happened to him.

The Pharisees, of course, there's a big division on them, but it's a lopsided division.

The vast majority of them agree that if anyone believes in Jesus, we're throwing them out of the synagogue, and that this man really wasn't born blind.

And they're driven by fear, and they they end up just having open contempt for this man.

Later, I want us to touch on that point.

These guys are religious people, and they're going about their religion on the basis of duty, and they end up having contempt for this man, and they're driven by fear.

And they end up being people who shut out light.

And even the man's parents, you know, you can have some sympathy with the parents.

In this day, the pressure of being shamed and excluded was huge.

It was massive.

But there's a part of me that cringes at these parents.

They don't advocate for their son here.

They really don't.

They don't say, absolutely, he was healed.

Are you kidding me?

Yes, he's our son.

Yes, he was born blind, and he was healed.

You better believe it.

They're ducking.

They're ducking and hiding.

Well, then if you get to the end of the chapter, in verses 35 and following, this man ends up being cast out of the synagogue, the blind man.

But look at verse 35.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out.

And having found him, having found him, he looked for him.

Jesus, who was so busy, so busy, who had already healed this guy, he went and looked for him.

And he brings him the gospel.

He asked him, does he believe in the Son of Man?

And lets him know that it is he, I'm He, who healed you, and you've now seen me with your very eyes.

You know, I wonder, a couple of weeks ago, maybe it was last week, uh, I was visiting with one of the teachers in the Sunday school class, and uh just before uh Sunday school and uh or in the morning, and he said, you know, one of the things we're gonna talk about today, this was in Lowell's class, is one of the things we're gonna talk about, we're gonna be in the life of Abraham, and we're gonna be talking about how do we hear the words of God?

How do we hear the words of God in the Bible?

With what kind of mood, that's wow, I understood him to say, do these words come across to us?

And so I want to ask the same question here.

How do we read the words of Jesus when we read these words?

What kind of mood do we read them with?

Do we read these words without any emotion at all?

Do we read these words like they're just indifferent?

Like Jesus is like a robot who just goes along perfectly accomplishing the Father's will?

Do we read any tenderness in his voice?

Do we read any love and warmth in his disposition?

I was thinking about this this week, and I was thinking, you know, I wonder if some of you, we just think, if some of you brought your friend to one of the pastors here, one of the elders, or maybe someone who's a leader or teacher here, and you wanted them to help you and witness to them.

I wonder what kind of disposition would you expect to find in these leaders?

Would you be very happy if they were just indifferent or cold or machine-like, or all they were interested in was communicating truth?

I think you'd be appalled.

I think you'd find another church.

I would.

Sometimes we read the words of God as though he were angry, and there is anger sometimes in Jesus, one of the emotions he does have.

But we just read them that way toward us.

You know, in the very beginning of John's gospel, we read these words.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.

The glory as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

And from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.

For the law was given to Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

And I wonder if we're really good students of Scripture.

Do we know that as we look at other passages of Scripture, everywhere in the Gospels, we read of Jesus very often acting out of compassion and acting out of pity.

The gospel writers tell us that again and again, not in a few cases.

They tell us that a man comes to Jesus who's rich and he's got lots of money, and Jesus looks at him and knows he's lost and blind, and it says he loved him and goes on to tell him something, to help him become unblind, and the guy goes away sad.

So, does the gospel have to tell us that every single time for us to realize that this was the way Jesus ministered?

That he was the good shepherd.

The Old Testament foretold that when God would come to the earth, that the way of the wilderness was to be made ready, and the great, glorious king was going to become.

And how did Isaiah put it?

The very first description of this God is that he would be like a shepherd of his people.

He would carry the sheep close to his heart, and he would carry the little ones in his arms, and the ones with young ones he would tenderly tend to.

And Jesus is the good shepherd who comes.

If we had the time, we would go and look.

You know, this heart of Jesus isn't limited to just those who received him favorably.

Read John chapter 5 later.

John 5 · chapter mention

There is almost a parallel event to what we're reading today.

And this man goes away and brings trouble to Jesus and appears to be one who doesn't believe in him at all, even though he was healed from a malady of 38 years.

And yet Jesus pursues him and is very tender to him.

I think even the Pharisees in this passage, for all of the stern rebuke that's right there, there is along with that a sense of invitation.

Do you hear it?

For judgment I've came into this world that those who don't see may see, and those who see may become blind.

If you were blind, if you were truly blind and were seeking healing, if you knew you were blind, you wouldn't have any guilt because I would heal you.

But now that you say we see, your guilt remains.

There's a hint, hint here.

Hint, hint.

There's a way of seeing by coming to me.

Why is it so important for us to regularly gaze on the heart of Jesus and to spend time with him in the gospel accounts?

I just have time for three words here before we close.

It engenders real worship as we come to see and know Jesus as the one who loves us.

He loves us tenderly.

He doesn't stop loving us when we become his disciples.

He pursues us with the same fervor that he did in the very beginning.

He takes care of his own and his he cares for his sheep.

But we have to know that to have real worship.

Where we serve Jesus from just duty, we lose worship.

But secondly, we have to know that to have courage to face our real inner self.

To be transformed by love, as one author put it.

We have to receive it in an undefended state.

We have to have the courage to go deep inside and face who we really are.

But we'll never do that.

We'll never do that if we think we have to earn his favor.

We'll never go to who we really are and just relax and put it out there and open ourselves up to him.

And finally, we'll never have the courage to really obey and step out.

Jesus once told a Pharisee, he who has been forgiven little loves little.

All this talk about living a radical Christian life, it only comes as we taste the love that Christ has for us.

The Pharisees failed all three of these points.

And they died blind.

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Amen.