John 9:1-41 – The Gospel of John

Welcome to City Church Dublin Sermon Archives.

Join us this week as we continue to work through our book of John in the series The Gospel of John.

We're gonna look at this passage if you keep it open, and then I'm gonna pray uh for for us.

Don't worry, we won't be going verse by verse uh through it all.

Uh John, uh John 9, it's worth bearing in mind that John 9 still comes in this whole um section of John that starts at the start of chapter 7, where Jesus is at this feast.

We referenced it a couple of weeks ago when we were looking at uh the uh where Jesus saying uh uh that he is uh the the living water.

Um, you know, come to me, all who thirst.

Uh that invitation, because this Feast of Tabernacles, it looms as the context of all that's going on here.

And one of the things that happened in the Feast of Tabernacles, right towards the end of the feast, is they would have a big party.

They would erect these huge, four huge torches uh around the temple at each uh corner of the temple, these huge blazing flames.

That's why Jesus says, I'm the light of the world.

That's what he's drawing on when he says that.

And so they would light these huge torches, and uh and all of the priests and all of the people gathered, they would dance the night away in the last night of the feast round these torches, looking up at the light that was illuminating the night sky, because the light was a representation of the pillar of fire that led the people of Israel from Egypt to the promised land.

That God Himself came in that pillar of fire and guided his people for a generation.

And so the idea was that every year you were to go to this feast and you were to look and to see these four great torches and go, God led us in the wilderness and he leads us still.

I don't know uh you if you've seen me at the weekend, uh, I'm forever poking the fire.

Um, because I I find fire mesmerizing.

If you ever just kind of take it a moment just to kind of just stare into the flames and you see it making all these different shapes and kind of dancing and uh and just kind of mesmerized and entranced by it.

There's something uh about that of looking at the flames now.

But here's the thing what if you couldn't see it?

What if you couldn't see it and you were you were there and somebody was trying to describe to you the scene that was going on?

You were hearing commotion and music and people uh whooping and cheering, but you didn't quite know why.

And that person is saying to you, well, uh there's these there's these huge structures like like large walls, and on top of them there's fire.

Do you you feel the warmth sometimes?

But you don't actually have the categories for hanging any of those images on in your mind.

What sort of significance would that image have for you?

It would be diminished, right?

It would be be a little bit like this.

Is a silly analogy, but you imagine on kind of New Year's Eve, you know, you tune into uh to the to the fireworks display in uh uh in Sydney or in London.

The one in Dublin's a bit meh, uh but in Sydney or in London or in New York, and you see like the fireworks displays are just amazing and amazingly choreographed.

Like fireworks are such a wonderful spectacle.

But if somebody tried to describe it to you, it doesn't quite have the same force and it doesn't quite have the same significance of oh, and a new year has just come in.

You need to be able to see it.

Now, here's the thing: what's worse?

Never seeing it, or seeing it and forgetting the meaning of it.

Like what's worse, is it worse to be born blind, or is it worse to refuse to see?

And so to become dull and blinded.

That's kind of what this passage is drawing out.

Are there worse things than being born blind?

I suspect that um we all know or have been in our lives, those those people who who willfully refuse to acknowledge situations and circumstances and realities that are right in front of their or our faces.

We refuse to see.

Of course, we can our optic nerves are working, but we refuse to actually interact with reality the way that it is.

There's people who who hear uh but don't listen, who see but refuse to perceive rightly, and that's the warning of this passage.

That is, as a man is going to receive his sight and things are going to become clearer and clearer for him throughout the passage, darkness is really going to set in for the Pharisees.

And this theme of seeing and not seeing, of sight and blindness, of light and dark, has been building up in John's Gospel all the way to this point.

This is a crescendo moment in John's Gospel.

Because when was the last time uh we interacted with the Pharisee rather than the early parts of the gospel?

We had Nicodemus.

We had Nicodemus coming to Jesus and saying, We see that you are a man come from God.

He's claiming sight, and Jesus is about to show them just how blind they are.

Willfully blind.

This passage ends with two outcomes.

One is worship, the other is willful blindness.

One will lead us to interacting with Jesus in a new way with worship and clear eyes.

Clear eyes, full heart, can't lose.

The other will see Jesus and be hardened by his voice.

And so we're going to trace that through.

Now, the situation begins with this man who's who's born blind, and uh, we have this pretty insensitive question from the disciples.

Uh, it's really not something that you should uh ask of anyone.

Uh, as they passed by, they saw a man who was blind from birth, and uh his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned?

This man or his parents that he was born blind?

Like you know, some sort of sin must have occurred uh in the past that has resulted in this blindness.

So who did it?

Their question is one of cause.

What caused the man to be born blind?

And Jesus' answer is really intriguing.

But before we get to Jesus' answer, here's a couple of things that you need to know about suffering.

If there was no sin in the world, if we didn't live in a fallen world, would this man have been born blind?

No.

Right?

And so, in that general sense, suffering is generally as a result of life in the fallen world.

This is a result of sin.

Is there a specific correlation between past action and present suffering?

Very usually not.

Most usually the answer to that question is no.

And that is what the disciples are trying to draw the line.

Was there a specific sin either in this, you know, in this man's past life or in his parents' life, that means that God has punished him by making him blind?

The answer to that question is no.

And we know that already from the book of Job.

That's the point of the book of Job.

Job has everything taken away from him, his livelihood, his family, uh, everything, his health.

And his friends come along, and they are searching around and rooting around and digging around in Job's life to try and find out well, what's caused it?

What sin are you hiding, Job, in your past?

That means that God, who knows everything, who sees your heart, has punished you.

Because it must be really bad, because you've lost everything, Job.

But the whole point of the book of Job is that Job was a righteous man.

That there wasn't any, there wasn't any past cause.

The disciples don't don't get that.

They think that there is a link between past action and present sin.

Now, I said very usually no, there's some limited specific circumstances where you might say yes.

So, for example, very quickly, if you uh if you sleep around uh and are promiscuous, and then you find yourself uh making an appointment at the gum clinic uh for whatever STD you've contracted, you might say there that the suffering that you're enduring is a result of a particular sin, right?

The particular causal link.

But generally speaking, no.

You wouldn't say that if you slept around in your teenage years and then had a stroke in your 30s, that there was a link between the two.

Jesus' disciples ask why this man was born blind, hoping to find a cause.

But Jesus answers the question not in terms of cause, but in terms of purpose.

Why was this man born blind?

Cause, Jesus.

No, I'm gonna answer this in terms of purpose, disciples, and I'm gonna turn your whole view of suffering on its head.

And so Jesus answers verse 3 it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Why was this man born blind?

So that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Folks, understanding this and the implications of this will change your life.

This is the fast track to Christian maturity.

If you can think about the things that have happened in your life, not in terms of cause, but in terms of purpose, it will change you forever.

The greatest and most necessary question in the face of our suffering is not what caused it, but what is its purpose.

And God has assured us that He has imbued and saturated all of our suffering with purpose.

And that is the Jesus that is the answer that Jesus gives, so that the works of God might be displayed.

And so imagine for a moment that everything that has happened to you, for good and for ill, every blessing and every tragedy was intended and designed by a God who loves you with a purpose, not as a punishment for past sins, but with a purpose of deeper faith and future glory.

That he might use you through that suffering to be a blessing to others, that he might drive you like a nail further into the love of God, that he might transform you by your experience.

And at some level, you know this as you look back at your at the tragedies that have befallen you, as the sufferings and griefs that have befallen you, and that you are processing or have come through, and you look back and you say, I don't want to go back there.

Uh I didn't enjoy it while I was there.

But I know that I'm a different person because of it.

And I know that, like Job, I met with God in the world in that.

I saw him.

I glimpsed his purposes for me.

He met me in those moments, in a way that if life had just been sunshine and rainbows, I might not have.

The explanation in your suffering lies not in past causes, but in future purposes.

You might say, well, that's all well and good, but this guy gets healed.

He has his suffering relieved.

But the reality of the scriptures and the reality of life is that the works of God are displayed in our life, both through healing and through non-healing.

So you could set in contrast uh the man born blind in John 9 with, say, Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, who is given this thorn who he describes as a messenger of Satan, this this condition, this illness that he talks obliquely about, that he begs God to take him take away.

He says, Three times I prayed to the Lord to take this thorn away, and the answer came back from God.

No.

My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made perfect in your weakness.

God is glorified, God displays his works in you both through healing and through non-healing.

And so all suffering, no matter how profound or prolonged, finds its purpose in relation to the God who made you, who loves you, who's redeemed your life, and who is storing up for you a weight of glory.

And so we set our lives kind of in the context of eternity, and we say with Paul, I do not count the sufferings of this present age worthy to be compared with the glory that awaits us.

That the works of God might be displayed in him.

Wrestling with that and settling that in your mind and in your heart is a cornerstone of Christian maturity.

So, what are the works of God in this passage?

Well, there are there are two really.

There is the deepening of faith and and the result of worship, and then there is the the blindness that that leads to to judgment.

Those are the works that that come out from the various responses in this passage, and both of them are played out in the conversation.

So this is why I'm not going to go verse to verse, I'm going to be going kind of conversation by conversation because there are there are five of them.

But before we do that, what's the deal with the mud?

Um I was saying just across the road, it's like, I don't know about you, but I don't know how much kind of saliva I have in my mouth at any one moment.

Um I don't know like like how much how much saliva was it need to be produced to kind of get like was this some sort of internal saliva gland miracle in this in the Son of God?

Like, wow, they're like how much mud?

Like we're like, what are we like what are we talking about here?

So so and why mud?

Like, why didn't Jesus just go be opened?

Be healed?

Because he does have other places.

Why the mud?

And look, there are lots of possible answers there.

Loads of suggestions raging from uh Jesus was acting like a pagan witch doctor.

Um you did that sort of thing.

Like that's what they would have done in the nation surrounding it.

They would have kind of, if you were building an idol, uh, in order to kind of make the the false god see, you would have anointed its eyes with muds, like, oh maybe Jesus is kind of picking up on that.

Like, but yeah, but but why?

Just because they did that, okay, that's fine.

It could be uh another suggestion is that um God made man from the dust of the earth, and so uh here's God coming and almost kind of reforming his his eyes with that that dust.

I quite like that one, but I don't think that that's what what's going on.

Uh, is it that Jesus, well, this guy's blind, right?

And so Jesus wants him to kind of feel that that he's doing something uh to help him.

I like I like that too.

But I think there's something else going on, and I think the clue is uh in what is really kind of getting the Pharisees goat.

Now, the thing with the Pharisees, the thing that really annoys them is again that he did it on the Sabbath.

So we know that um from verse 14.

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

It's that again.

Jesus again is he just can't quit doing good on the Sabbath.

Like he needs to go and chill out and you know, not doing it, like stop healing people, Jesus, on the Sabbath.

Like, but that's what really is annoying them because during the Sabbath there are a number of very specific actions that you couldn't perform.

You couldn't carry your bed.

John 5, right?

Take up your bed and walk.

And so this guy's carrying his bed.

Can't do that.

So he couldn't carry his bed.

You can't pick grain, that's what his disciples do in Mark chapter 2.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

Uh, and another one that you couldn't do is you couldn't need dough.

You couldn't need dough.

When this text says that Jesus made mud with his saliva, John uses the exact same term for needing dough.

It's saying Jesus needed mud.

He's deliberately breaking the Sabbath again.

He's provoking controversy with the Pharisees in order to reveal their hearts.

Do you think of Jesus in those things like Jesus all the way through these last few chapters has been poking the bear?

Like Jesus could like step back, lower the temperature, go make some more wine out of water, uh, you know, get a bit of a party going, get a bit of a following, you'd love more feelings of the 5,000, please, Jesus.

You know, we like that stuff.

But Jesus doesn't do that.

He keeps on poking the bear, he keeps on provoking controversy, keeps on getting under the Pharisees' skin.

Why?

In order to reveal their hearts.

In order to reveal what's already in there.

And guys, Jesus will do that with you.

Jesus does do that with you, or he should.

He should get under your skin and tell you things that make you feel uncomfortable because the emotional response of the discomfort is revealing something that's in there.

It's not that Jesus is putting discomfort or awkwardness or bristling or anger into your heart.

It's that he's drawing it out and going, why is it that you feel like that?

What could be going on inside you that that's the response that you have?

Why does this why do these emotions come out of you?

Because they're already in there.

So Jesus is provoking this controversy with the Pharisees.

And I think that's what's going on with the mud.

Let's trace these conversations.

Excuse me.

Both towards clear-sighted faith and willful blindness.

There are five interactions.

The first one is uh this interaction that the man has with his neighbors, verses eight to twelve.

The neighbors are kind of saying, Is this the is this the guy?

Oh, hold on, back up a second.

Um I was talking to another pastor uh this week and I was asking him about has he ever preached this?

I was asking him about the mud and things like that.

And he told me something really cool that when he preached it, he was doing some reading, he was saying, The miracle is really profound because somebody who's born blind doesn't have any categories for understanding what they're seeing around them.

If somebody has developed blindness and then say it is medically restored, they understand that this is a chair.

But Jesus didn't just heal the guy's optic nerve and give him sight again.

He also gave him all of the categories to be able to, like, oh, that's a that's a pool, this is a Pharisee.

Sorry for pointing at you, Duncan.

Um it's really cool that they leave up.

This is a chair.

I can sit in this.

This is that's a chair from that angle, and that's a chair from that angle.

So I just thought that that was quite cool.

I thought I'd chat with you.

But the uh the neighbors are like, Oh, is this the is this the guy?

Notice his response.

How does he refer to Jesus?

Verse 11, he says, He answered, the man called Jesus, made mad and anointed my eyes and told me, Go wash, uh, go to Siloam and wash.

The man called Jesus.

He knows his name, but calls him simply the man.

Then comes the first interaction with the Pharisees, verses 13 to 17.

And the Pharisees show uh that they are not seeing Jesus clearly at all.

So uh they brought verse 13, they brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.

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

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

Some of the Pharisees says, This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.

But others said, How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?

And a division rose among them.

So they said to him again, What do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?

And he said, He is a prophet.

The Pharisees are saying he's not from God, that he is a sinner.

This is blasphemy.

Attributing the the works of God to be sin, that he is not from God.

But look at how the man born blind has developed already.

We've moved from the man to he says to the Pharisees, he is a prophet.

This guy's this guy's off and running now.

That faith mode is starting to take over, he's on a journey, he's gone, he's starting to clarify, he's gone from the man, he's saying, Oh no, hold on, actually, this guy can't just be a man because because of what what he did, and he can't just be a sinner, like God must be with him in in some sort of way.

Well, maybe he's a he must be a prophet.

That's the second interaction.

Third, we then have his parents.

We're not going to spend too much on it.

We've kind of alluded to it a couple of weeks ago, two weeks ago.

Uh, we talked about how his parents were uh were fearful, they were concerned about the opinions of others, they didn't want to be ostracized, they want to be uh social outcasts, kicked out of the synagogue, and so they they kind of defer it back to the to the son and say, Well, he's of age, go and ask him.

But look, they don't deny his son, they don't deny their son, they know what's happened to him, and so I want to give them give them a little bit of credit today.

I've criticized them two weeks ago.

We're gonna give them credit today because I was thinking again about Nicodemus.

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, he didn't want to be publicly identified with Jesus, he came under cover of darkness so that nobody else would know.

In John 7, there arises this controversy, they're gonna arrest him, the Pharisees, their temperature is hot, and Nicodemus speaks up in the council and he doesn't give a full-throated defense of Jesus.

He doesn't come to Jesus and say, uh, or doesn't come to the I've heard this man, I didn't tell you guys, but I went to visit him.

The things that he said, they're really remarkable, I really think that he is the Messiah.

He doesn't do any of that, he raises a procedural question just to kind of lower the temperature a little bit.

He says, We normally kind of put put guys on a fair trial, maybe we should think about doing that.

So, not a full-throated defense, but a kind of let's just cool the jets, guys.

And then by the end of the gospel, Jesus will go to Pontius Pilate, or Nicodemus will go to Pontius Pilate and say, Can I have his body?

Because I'm gonna bury him.

He publicly identifies with Jesus in the end, he gets there in the end.

For the man born blind, things are moving quick.

Man, prophet, by the end, he's gonna be bowing down in worship.

For Nicodemus, and maybe for his parents as well.

It's just a little bit slower.

Sometimes the grace of God floods like a torrent into somebody's life, and they're like firing.

Like the synapse is just going like, oh, I I get it.

For other people, it's a slow process, it's a drip, drip, drip.

I see a little bit more.

Okay, well, maybe I'm not I don't quite have the courage to like make a full-through defense of Jesus, but maybe I could say something.

And I'm really encouraged that both of those are in this gospel because we can expect that everybody goes just one of the ways, the kind of the torrenty, come on, get to it.

Whereas actually, Nicodemus gets there in the end, and he has so much courage that he publicly identifies with the corpse of Jesus.

Maybe his parents are on the same road, their son is moving very quickly, his vision is clearing fast.

Perhaps for his parents, like Nicodemus, they'll get there, but it's slow.

The man is brought back before the Pharisees.

This is the longest conversation, starts in verse 24.

We're not going to read all the verses.

Uh, but they call him back and they say to him, Give glory to God, which is basically the Pharisee way of saying, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

What's going on here?

Uh, that's what they're asking him.

And look at the beauty of the man's testimony, the simplicity of the man's testimony.

Verse 25.

Whether he's a sinner, I don't know.

One thing I do know that though I was blind, now I see.

That's the summary of the testimony of every person in this room who trusts in Jesus.

I was blind, and now I see.

I was blind, and now I see.

And that's why, isn't that why John Newton picked up those that idea in his hymn Amazing Grace?

I once was lost, but now I'm fine, was blind, but now I see.

If you're trusting in Jesus, you now see you were blind.

I was blind, but now I see.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

And with his newfound sight comes courage and a little bit of scorn.

I'm really glad that you guys laugh when Alice read verse 27 because you're supposed to.

Uh, when he says, and he answered them, I've told you already, and you would not listen.

Do you want to hear it again?

Do you want to become his disciples?

That as faith clarifies, and as faith takes root, it does begin to give birth to courage and to saying, Do you know what?

I'm not just gonna kind of stand in the shadows, I'm not just gonna shrink back, I am gonna publicly identify with this guy.

I am going to, in a sense, not just always be on the backfoot and on the defensive.

I'm almost, I'm gonna go on the offensive.

Do you want to be his disciples too?

Clearing faith gives birth to a bit of courage.

And their response is hostility and reviling.

They looked at him, verse 28, and they said they reviled him, saying, You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.

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

And again, Jesus had already told them you have no idea where I'm coming from or where I'm going, but I know.

And the blindness is setting in further because Jesus had also told them in John 5.46, if you believed Moses, you would believe me.

And so they are willfully blind.

They're saying, Oh no, we're all about Moses.

Jesus already told them, if you were really about Moses, you would have followed me.

And the man puts his finger on it and diagnoses the whole situation.

Read with me from verse 30.

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

You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.

We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God 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 were not from God, he could do nothing.

This is the man looking at the disciples going, or looking at the Pharisees going, I know what's really going on here.

This isn't just that you're intellectually confused.

This isn't just that you haven't seen enough evidence.

This isn't just that you haven't had enough questions answered.

You don't want to believe this.

You don't want to accept the implications of what this means.

You're not just accidentally blind, you're willfully blind.

You are blinding yourself in order to not have to face up to the realities.

And so finally, Jesus finds him in this fifth interaction.

And what's happened to him?

Well, he's been cast out.

Verse 34, they answered him, You were born in other sin.

Why would you teach us?

And they cast him out.

They go back to the to the almost to the disciples' old question.

Their assumption is that there was some sin in the past.

Oh, you were born in other sin.

What have you got to say?

And so they cast him out.

Jesus finds him wonderfully.

Verse 35, Jesus heard that they cast him out, and having found him, he said, Do you believe in the Son of Man?

Here's the thing.

He was a beggar, he was already a social outcast, he had been healed.

Did he think, I wonder, at the start of this chapter, when he had received disciples, I wonder, did he think, I get to be in, I get to be in community, I get to go to the temple now and see those torches that they were talking about.

I get to see those flames blazing, I get to dance with the religious leaders, I get to be with them now.

And they cast him out.

This man became a Christian and his life got harder.

That happened to any of you?

Anything, ah, I become a Christian.

Why didn't my life get easier?

Yeah, not really how it works.

The first 70 or so years are the hardest.

It gets easier after that.

His life got harder, but he would never see it that way because while he cannot go go into the temple and behold the torches, he's standing before the light of the world.

He's seeing for the first time the face of the one that all of the symbols, all of the fireworks of Judaism pointed to, and he's looking at him dead in the eye.

And Jesus is saying to him, Do you believe in the Son of Man?

This had this term from the Old Testament of this of this one who would come and receive this eternal kingdom that would never end.

And he reveals himself to this man.

And so now, with the eyes of his heart undimmed, the man doesn't see just another human being, nor does he see a prophet.

How does he address him?

Verse 38, Lord, I believe.

And he worshipped him.

He sees Jesus for who he truly is, and the only appropriate response is that he bows and worship.

Everything that had happened to this man led to that moment.

All the years of his life not being able to perceive any reason why God had done this to him.

You've experienced that?

You're like, I cannot fathom why God would have allowed this to happen to me or that to happen to me.

And then in a moment, he's like, I get it now.

I get it now.

And that actually is a promise.

That is a promise for all.

It might not be, we might not have that moment of clarity, even in this life.

But in the world to come, there will be a point when we look at Jesus' face and we go, I get it now.

I get, I get why you led me through that.

I get why you left those questions unanswered all of that time.

I get that actually you were with me in all of that.

I see that now.

I didn't see it then, but I see it now.

Lord, I believe.

You bow down and worship.

It's glorious.

The contrast, just as we finish, is that the Pharisees' blindness is all but complete.

The Puritans had a saying that the same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay.

And it has happened here.

They have become willfully hardened, willfully blind.

And so Jesus says that in verse 39, that he came for judgment, which is interesting.

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

Now, in Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus back in John chapter 3, in verse 17, he says that uh that the Son did not come to condemn the world.

John 3 · chapter mention

So what's going on there?

A little uh contradiction.

Let me read it to you, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that he might that the world might be saved through him.

And now Jesus says, I came for judgment.

Now, what's going on here is that in Jesus saving the world, the consequence of that is that some will condemn themselves by their willful unwillingness and refusal to see and to understand their need for repentance and faith.

Jesus says then if you really were blind, you would have some excuse, but you do see me, you do see what I'm doing, you have heard my words, but still you say that I'm a sinner, that I have a demon.

It would be better if you were born blind.

But because you claim to see your guilt remains their pride, their spiritual superiority, their intellectual superiority, their unteachableness all contributed to their blindness.

And it does still.

Clear sight comes from humility, repentance, a willingness to learn and to be sent by Jesus wherever he will lead.

Jesus told the disciples in verse 4, and with this we conclude, that there is a day when darkness is coming, when no one can do any work.

That day for Jesus was his crucifixion, the light of the world, engulfed by humanity's willful darkness.

But we live in a new day.

We live in a day when the light of the world is shining bright by the Spirit of God at work in the world.

The light is going out, as Colin alluded to yesterday.

We light those flickering torches and we take them out into the world and we flood the world with light again.

Jesus is giving sight to people every day across our planet, and the darkness will not overcome that.

There will come a day again when God will wrap up all of history and darkness will descend upon those who have been willfully blind permanently.

The invitation for us now is to walk in the light while it is the day, to see Jesus with clear eyes and with hearts undimmed, seeing him through every season and circumstance, and displaying that light to a dark and to a hopeless world.

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