John: Seeing Our Blindness

So that it that is my hope this morning is that we would see a little bit better.

And maybe you're thinking, well, I see fine.

I drove here.

You're confused, Russ.

I've been seeing fine.

I have no problem with that.

But what we're what we're praying for, and what we're hoping for, is that you would see God in a greater way, in a deeper way, that his grace for you that you would see that's even deeper than you thought it was.

And maybe that's for the first time, or maybe that's for the five millionth time since you became a Christian when you were seven years old.

But what we need this morning is we need sight.

We need to be able to see that, to see that there's a holy creator God and that is that loves you.

Not just your cousin Joe and your neighbor Susie, but actually you.

Like exactly who you are right now, he loves you.

Like even before you get better.

Not even me, like tomorrow when I get my act a little bit together, but right now, actually right now.

He loves you.

Not like not communally, okay, yeah, you communally, but actually you.

You and what he's saying is to us is all that performing, all that pretending, you can stop that now.

You can stop the performing, you can stop the pretending, you can you can stop that.

Have you seen what I did for you?

Have you seen the cross?

Have you seen that?

Not just okay, philosophically, okay, I get it historically, okay, that happened.

But but are you resting in that?

Are you uh are you are you getting it in your mind and in your heart?

Maybe you're here and you feel like you just can't quite get it all together.

Join the club, glad you're here.

That's what we're sort of about as a group coming together and saying we can't quite get it all together.

That's what the church should be.

That you're not living up to the standard you wish you were living up to.

You're not living up to God's standard definitely, and you can't quite get your mind around God, his sovereignty, the mystery of it, some of the stuff going on in the world.

You can't get your mind around that, and you're sort of frustrated maybe with God a little bit, but definitely frustrated with yourself that you're not better than you are.

I mean, you thought you'd be further along in your Christian walk, and you're still not, and you're kind of frustrated with that, and you're wrestling with that.

You can't get a handle on some of your motives and some of your thinking, and that's bothering you, and there's this feeling of desperation within you in your honest moments.

There's this feeling of desperation, and it's a feeling of blindness to some extent.

Maybe you're here and you don't associate it with that at all.

You you would just say, you know what, I I I kind of got a hand.

To be honest, I kind of have a handle on it.

I mean, and maybe that's like in a religious way.

You say, Man, I I mean, I'm I'm doing that devo every morning.

Um, no problem.

No problem.

Like, you know, people hit the snooze, those are lazy, apathetic.

I'm not even sure if they're Christians.

Uh me on the other hand, I'm I'm up, man, I'm in the Word, I'm praying, I have a handle on it.

You know, I'm loving my wife, I'm loving my neighbor, I'm loving my friend, you know, I have that.

I mean everything's fine.

I gotta have a handle, I know my future, I have a handle on it.

I've I've kind of have it together.

Or maybe it's more in a secular way, and you would say, you know what, I I'm not even really seeing the need for a relationship with God.

I kind of have a handle on myself.

I'm a well-adjusted human being.

I love my family, you know, I'm I'm sort of achieving, I'm doing a good job.

And my hope would be this morning, by the end of the message, that you would you would see that you don't see as well as you think you see.

You're just as blind as the rest of us.

So John chapter 9, Jesus, just after healing a blind man, he's talking to the Pharisees, religious people, and he makes a few comments, a couple comments about spiritual blindness.

John 9 · chapter mention

We're gonna read these, and I'm gonna tell a story from the Old Testament, kind of flesh this out, because Jesus is sort of talking in code here.

It's kind of a riddle.

You'll see what I'm saying when I read these verses.

Verse 39.

Jesus said, For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see, and those who see will become blind.

Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this.

They asked, What?

Are we we?

Yeah, we're religious.

We know everything.

Are we blind too?

And Jesus said, if you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin.

But now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

Sort of confusing statements to tell you the truth.

Kind of have to like sit in them and kind of pick it apart a little bit.

So three points about spiritual blindness this morning.

Uh number one, we are all blind.

All of us.

Number two, this blindness is about perception.

And number three, no one is as blind as the person who does not know they're blind.

So those three points.

Let's break that down.

So in 2 Kings, there's this great story in this country.

Um, Aram, Aram is Syria, and Aram is is is they're battling Israel.

The Arameans, they keep coming into Israel, and they're bad people.

I mean, these are horrible people.

They're coming in and they're murdering, they're murdering the men, they're taking the women, they're taking the children, they're looting, they're destroying, they're stealing, they're thieves.

They are horrible people.

These are bad people, and so they keep coming to Israel and they're trying to, they're fighting, there's a war going on.

Israel's trying to push them back and help not come into our country anymore.

And so uh the Arameans, the king of Aram, he wants to position his army in a spot where the Israel army will come by and he'll he'll get them.

And so he keeps trying to position himself.

But the problem is, is God is actively working for the Israelites.

And so um God is speaking through this prophet named Elisha.

And Elisha keeps just just knowing where the Arameans are gonna be, and then Elisha goes to the king of Israel and says, Hey, by the way, they're gonna be camped out over here.

Don't go that way.

This keeps happening to the point where the king of Aram, he thinks, well, there's got to be a breakdown in my men.

So he gets the men together.

He says, Who is it?

Like somebody's oh, that's me.

You know, so he who is it?

And they say, well, it's it's actually none of us.

There's this guy, his name's Elisha, something weird's going on with him and uh like the their God, and he just keeps knowing where we're gonna be.

And the king says, Oh, well, we'll take care of this because we'll take care of him.

And so he gets his army together and they go to this town called Dothan.

That's where Elisha's at.

And so they surround the town at night.

And then the servant, Elisha's servant, who would have been a religious guy, probably a prophet in training, a seminary student, something like that.

He wakes up the next morning, he looks out, and they are surrounded by the enemy.

And he knows this enemy, and he knows they are the bad, horrible guy.

They've come to take them out, and he's freaking out.

We're gone, or this isn't gonna go well.

And he wakes up Elisha and he says, Lord, what should we do?

He's freaking out.

And in verse 16, Elisha says, Don't be afraid.

Yeah, don't be afraid.

We're surrounded by people who are going to gut us.

They're gonna cut us, they're gonna behead us, they're gonna, or maybe maybe they just enslave us, but it's not gonna go, but don't be afraid.

Elisha says, Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.

And you gotta think this servant's going, what are you talking about?

I look, I looked out, and what I saw was a whole bunch of the enemy.

I'm not seeing anything else.

So verse 17, Elisha prays to the Lord and says, Lord, would you open his eyes to see more than what he's seeing?

And that the servant's eyes are open.

He wasn't blind before, he still saw something.

So this isn't just about physical blindness, this is about a perception, a greater reality than what he's presently seeing.

And his eyes are open and he begins to see more.

And beyond that enemy, he sees horses and chariots that are for them, all around them.

And so the Arameans, they move in to take them out.

They're on the move.

And Elisha prays again.

He says, Strike these people with blindness, the enemy.

And so they're moving in and they get struck with blindness.

But but we know it's probably not like a physical blindness because sort of imagining here, if if you're going into a fight and you're struck with physical blindness, chaos is going to break out.

You're gonna be stabbing at anything, any voice, any person coming at you.

But see, that's not what's going on, that's not what happens.

What happens is that Elisha's able to come up to them and talk to them and reason with them, say, hey, this isn't the place you meant to be.

I'm not the guy that you're after.

Can I take can I take you somewhere?

Oh shit, sure.

Yeah, no problem.

I mean, there's some sort of confusion, a lack of perception.

So what we see here is we see a couple points.

Number one is we see we're all blind.

Right?

I mean, the Arameans were the horrible, bad, secular pagans.

Oh, those people are so bad.

It's the thems.

You know, they are so horrible, they're ruining the world.

And then you have the servant of the Lord, you have the religious guy, and he he couldn't see either.

Neither of them could see.

We're all blind.

Number two, this blindness is not physical, it's a it's a lack of perception, it's a it's a confusion.

This is what Jesus is talking about in John chapter 9.

John 9 · chapter mention

It's the inability to see something that is real and is right in front of you.

And what Jesus is talking about in John chapter 9 is the inability to see that you don't have what it takes.

John 9 · chapter mention

You don't have what it takes to make yourself right with God.

You don't have what it takes to get rid of the inadequacy within you.

You you don't have what it takes.

You need something, you need a word from outside of yourself.

You need grace given to you.

So Elisha tells these guys that they're in the wrong place, and he leads them away from Doth, and he leads them into Samaria, where the Israelite army is, and he leads them right into their enemy.

And he opens their eyes and they look around, they are they're surrounded.

And then the king of Israel comes to Elisha, and the king of Israel says, Can I kill them all?

Right?

I mean, these are the people that have stolen from us.

They've killed, they've killed our men, they've they've they've stolen our women, they've kidnapped our women and our children, they've enslaved them.

This is our shot to take them out so they never come back into our country again?

Can I can I kill them?

And Elisha says, No.

Actually, let's throw them a huge party.

Let's feed them.

Can you imagine this?

What are you talking?

What are you talking about?

I mean, this is uh this is our shot.

This is our who does this?

Who loves like this?

That would love their enemy.

It's it's the chance, the person who spit on you.

It's your chance to take them out.

No, no, no.

I gotta be- let's let's give them a feast.

God is just teaching something here because what happens is these soldiers feast and they leave and they never come back again.

And God was teaching them that if you truly want to change a person's heart, it's about grace given.

It's not about force.

So for the third point, let's let's go back to John chapter 9.

John 9 · chapter mention

Number one, we are all blind.

Religious, secular, we're all blind.

Number two, this blindness is about perception, not physical blindness, it's an awareness of a reality that's right in front of us, but we can't see it.

This is what Jesus is saying: for judgment, I've come into this world so that the blind will see, and those who see will become blind.

So those who see, or and this, those who see, who are seeing so well, they have their act together, so sophisticated in their discernment, that they are actually blinded to crucial pieces of reality right in front of them.

Sixth grade, I got glasses, hated them.

So in seventh grade, I got some contacts.

I wore contacts all the time, all the all the way through middle school and high school.

I wore them early.

As soon as I woke up, I put those things in, and you know, I wore them late into the night.

Sometimes I forgot and I slept in them.

If you if you wear contacts, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

And so you also know the other end of the story that over time it's slowly my eyes are getting worse and unhealthier and healthier because the oxygen is getting cut off.

So by the time I'm getting out of seminary, I'm about to get married, uh, my eyes are so unhealthy.

I mean, they're burning, but I hate the glasses.

I had glasses give me headaches, but then the context of my eyes are burning.

And a friend of mine gets LASIK surgery, and he comes out of that thing and he goes from blind to sight, and he's this is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to him.

You've got to do this, you've got to, you've got to go.

And so Christian and I are engaged at the point, at this point.

We have no money, there's no margin, nothing going on, and I'm thinking through all the costs of you know, a wedding and some stuff there, and then honeymoon, and we want to buy a house, and and I'm going, you know, do we have a few thousand dollars just to hand over for me to have eye surgery?

And she says, Well, uh do it, let's do it now.

Let's just go ahead and do it now.

So I go into the consultation to see if I'm a candidate.

It's this doctor's office, there's this big glass room in the middle with this chair and it's big machine, and that's where they're doing the surgeries.

And it's not a great idea to show the surgery.

I'm thinking, I think they think it's good marketing appeal.

I don't like the idea of seeing the guy getting the surgery done over and over again, but there's a glass room in the middle, and so you see a little bit of that, and got the consultation, and so we're looking at the prices.

And so you have you had three lasers, different prices.

You had like the gold price, you had the silver, and you had like the bronze.

I said, Well, what's the difference between these lasers?

And he says, Well, you know, this is the really good laser, this is the okay laser, this laser's not as good.

Let's get this straight.

You're gonna shoot a laser into my eye.

You just you keep that Walmart laser to yourself.

I I I if you're shooting a laser into my eye, I want the good laser.

That's what I want.

So let's work on how I get the good laser.

Since you're shooting a laser into my eye, I don't want the cheap laser, mind you.

Good laser, let's work on that price coming down here to this price, and so we do some negotiating.

And so a week later, I'm in the glassroom on the chair, big machine, and he says, and I can remember it as I'm sitting there, big machine says, You know, we're gonna put this thing into your eye and pry it open, and we're gonna pull your eye out a little bit, and when we do that, you are gonna go blind for about 20 seconds.

And so I'm sitting there and you know, tight.

You know, we're in the dentist's office, and the dentist starts poking around, your whole body just tightens up.

So I'm real tightened up.

He says, relax, yeah, that's gonna happen.

So he he pryes my eye open and he pulls my eye out, and it just goes black.

It was weird because you know, not like black, like someone turned the lights off, and not black like I closed my eye, but but my eye is open and I can't see, I can't see the machine over me that's right in front of me.

I can't see the doctor, I can't, you know, completely black.

There's a a lack of sight into the reality right in front of me.

This is what Jesus is talking about here.

He's saying there's a lack of sight for the reality that's right in front of you, and you can't see it because you're you're blind.

Jesus is saying when when you're spiritually blind, you think you see, but in that self-reliance and that pride, you are actually blind to the reality right in front of you.

It has gone dark.

And some of these Pharisees are so shocked by this because of the Pharisees.

They're the religious people, they know everything about God, they know everything about how to live, they they have it under control, they have life under control, and so they can't believe that they would be missing some sort of reality.

I mean, heaven forbid, I mean, they are the religious elite, they have it all figured out, they are the rulers.

How could they possibly not?

And they're very upset about this, and they just say, are we blind?

Heaven forbid, the religious elite?

Could we possibly be blind?

So Jesus says, let me explain the first comment with another comment that you probably still won't understand.

But here it is in verse 41.

If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin.

So he's saying, if you understand that you don't see everything, you actually see.

But now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

So when you think you see, you're blind.

Because you can't see your need and the reality that you need God's rescue for you and Jesus.

So if you think you see, you're still blind.

But when you understand you are blind, you're beginning to see because you understand you aren't perfect.

You don't have it under control.

You have seen that you are blind.

This is the very thing that helps you be relieved by the grace of God because you've seen it.

This is point number three.

Jesus is saying, no one is as blind as the person who does not know they are blind.

Anyone can hear, I say it every week.

At the beginning of the service, I almost always say, we are more flawed than we thought, but we were more loved by God than we dared to imagine.

Anybody can hear that.

And we know all of that in Jesus, objectively, historically.

God died for us.

So we've ever wondered, we can look at the cross, we know it's been done, our sin has been put on him, his righteousness is given to us, we are beloved in his sight.

We know this, right?

And anybody can hear it.

Some people can even know it, but but the person who sees it can, in a moment of failure, in a moment of letdown.

Like when your children are radically imperfect, they're defaming your name, when you didn't get the job, when the girl broke up with you, when the thing didn't work out, when the test didn't come back well for your health, or when you were testing to get into med school and you didn't get it, and your whole future of what you thought was gonna happen is not gonna happen.

When the weight didn't come off and the money didn't come in, when you had them betrayed by your friend, and you thought this was a friend that would stick by you forever, and you've been betrayed by your friend, or when you betrayed your friend, and when you lied, and when you screwed up, and at night you look in that mirror and you're exhausted, or you lay your head on your pillow and you just feel like trash.

And my question is can you forgive yourself?

See, when you see that you're not perfect and you see what Jesus has done for you on the cross and it's sufficient for you, when you see this, it means you can forgive yourself.

It means you can rest and his work for you.

Do you really see that God does not condemn you and that he loves you?

Do you do you really see that?

Fifteen years ago, I was a sophomore at the University of Georgia, and I got to the University of Georgia, and if I can just be honest, before you, I was the amount of girls at the school was amazing to a 20-year-old boy.

It was overwhelming, and I didn't have the greatest confidence, but I was just amazed.

I can remember this.

And so I'm at the Wesley Foundation, and there's plenty of girls there, and so I'm at Wesley Foundation.

I'm a devoted Christian at this point, so I'm not chasing women, but I'm interested in women, and so I'm at Wesley, lots of women.

I'm div I'm a devoted Christian, so I'm doing the Christian thing, but my eyes are wide open to all of these girls, and so there's a fall retreat coming up, and it's a relationship retreat.

They knew what to hit on.

I mean, the other stuff about the retreat is at Fort Something Park and Middle Georgia, and there were cabins and a lake or something.

I mean, there wasn't a lot of lure to the retreat, except it's a relationship retreat, and so all the guys knew all the girls were going, so all the guys went, and we're trying to play it cool, like we're not really into learning about the relationship, so we're going, but yeah, you know, we're playing it cool.

And so me and my buddy John were, I can remember it's this it was this old gym and metal chairs and rows.

I don't think, I don't think they're in curtains up.

It was just an old gym and worship band, bad sound system, and maybe a hundred or so people there, and we're sitting on the fourth row from the back, and you know, you're kind of eyeing out some girls, and you're worshiping, and we're devoted Christians, but our eyes are open, mind you, and we're gonna hear about relationships and we're gonna try to start some relationships, and so we're toward the back, involved, but not too involved, and worship begins, and then the the camp.

Pastor starts to talk, and it was him and his wife talking, and the the story they shared.

I still remember the story they shared, it was about their first year of marriage, and it was about how she was basically trying to get out of it, and she was doing everything to try to get out of it.

And he was pursuing her and chasing her, and he would not give up on her.

And there were principles for relationships being shared, but for me in the back, there was something else going on.

And I was trying to be cool, but there was a visitation going on from God to me, and what was playing out in my mind and my heart was my life.

And thinking through my family wounds that have defined so much, and then thinking through how I became kind of religious because of that, and a doer because of that, as I've proved to everybody I was okay.

You know, I'll rise above this on my own, and so I was just doing anything I could do to prove to people that I was a great person, and just doing that and doing that and doing that and doing that, and just seeing all this play out in front of me, and what I was getting in this moment was sight to that I'm not Jesus.

I'm actually like that wife running from her husband, and that husband was pursuing her over and over and over and over.

I didn't learn anything about dating, mind you, but I'm in the back, and I'm I was being undone, completely ruined and undone and about to fall apart with my friends, and so I sort of excused myself to go find a seat further in the back, kind of off on my own, because I'm worried I'm I'm about to absolutely break apart and just weep.

And I did in the back corner where nobody would see me, and I can get everything cleaned up before we get dismissed.

Because deep down these questions of like, who's for me?

Like, who can who can I trust?

Like, can I be can I be loved right now?

Like when I'm when I'm so blind, when I'm so wounded, when I don't have my act together, I'm not better.

Can I be loved in this moment?

And starting to see, and I was starting to see, this is one of those moments, I was already a Christian, but I was seeing, I was seeing that he is so faithful and he loves me exactly where I'm at.

And that he has never given up on me, and he never will.

And that concept of God loves me when I'm imperfect.

Right?

Like, like, okay, I've heard it, I've heard it, I've heard it.

Oh, now I see it.

I get it.

The perception, the confusion has been pulled apart.

I see, I can I can rest in this now.

And so much of this wasn't just seeing the greatness and the faithfulness of God.

Part of it was seeing that I'm not so faithful.

Quite exhausted, trying to live up to the image of the perfect Christian, quite exhausted with that and seeing I'm not as good as I thought I was, quite imperfect, and yet also seeing at the same time his unbelievable faithfulness.

See, this is God's healing of our blindness by helping us see we are blind.

Chew on that for a while.

So God will help heal our blindness by helping us see we are blind.

So the sight of our blindness is our sight.

See, I can tell you over and over and over again, and I will tell you over and over and over again, if it's not me, somebody else standing up here will tell you over and over and over again that God loves you.

Jesus died for you.

Don't worry about your past.

Those wounds, that shame, that guilt that's been taken care of on the cross.

I can tell you this over and over and over again.

But do you see it?

Do you comprehend it?

Do you rest in it?

So at the end of the day, when you look in the mirror, your head's on the pillow, that there's no there's not exhaustion, and there's not a feeling of I'm absolute trash because you're not resting what you've done today.

You have you have rested in that you are God's beloved because of Jesus on the cross.

So this week I had the duty of taking uh my five-year-old to ballet class.

I had done this before.

This was new to me.

Christy usually takes care of it.

Uh Christy had a doctor's appointment, and so I have uh baby, one-year-old, I have three-year-old, Izzy, and then five-year-old to ballet.

There's a little waiting room.

Christy had given me the breakdown, I have the bag, I have toys, I got all of it.

Um Josie's in her ballet costume, and then Izzy dresses in her ballet costume to practice in the waiting room while Josie's in class.

And so Izzy is dancing all around the waiting room in front of all the other parents who are waiting, and they're obviously used to this every week, as Christy's there every week, and all these other moms are every week.

And so we're there, and Greta May is crawling all over the place, and so finally I'm on the floor, and pretty sure the carpet's the original carpet to when Marietta was built in the 1800s.

And so I'm on the floor, and we're wrestling, we're playing, and people are chit-chatting.

And somebody says, Are you giving anything up for Lent?

So Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter.

And so there's some religious tradition to giving something up for Lent.

Somebody says, Well, I'm giving up chocolate for Lent.

Wow.

And somebody else says, Well, I'm giving up, I'm giving up coffee for Lent.

And I'm trying not to be in judgment, sitting on the floor.

I'm I do judge, I am, let's be honest.

I am completely judging them.

As I do all of you.

Um and you do me.

Right now.

You're judging me right now for my judgment on them.

And so I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, you know, I'm I I bet this is gonna revolutionize their spiritual life, this giving up of chocolate.

I mean, this is going to, I am giving up coffee, and the heavens are gonna break wide open, and it's gonna be amazing.

I well, maybe, I don't know.

I'm not gonna rule it out, but I have an even better idea.

Perhaps.

For Lent.

I'm giving up.

Yeah, that's it.

I'm giving up.

Like that, that would, there's no rest of the sentence.

There's a period at the end of that sentence.

I'm sorry, I probably said it wrong.

For Lent, for life, let's just give up.

That's what the New Testament says.

Die to self.

Give up.

Give up that tendency to try to do enough to feel righteous, of, oh, if I just do this, then I will be right with God, or I'll be holy or right.

No, die to self, none of me, less of me, more of Christ.

I will rest in him more.

And out of that, out of that, there is this explosion of fruit for the gospel and for worship and for freedom.

And so maybe maybe here you feel like you just can't see.

You keep thinking, if I can only see a little bit better, if I can only get a little bit better, understand a little bit more, then I'll be then I'll be, okay, if I can figure out my motives, just a little bit more.

I think you're seeing.

You're seeing that you're not enough.

Like that, that is the sight.

And then you just need to rest in what Jesus has done for you.

But maybe you're here and you are blind to your blindness, but you think you have it under control.

And I just pray you begin to see today that you don't see as well as you think you see, because then you'll be able to see that you need grace.

You need Jesus.

And if I can just have a pastoral moment here to end on, it's a little bit outside of the text.

Is some of us are blind to our worth.

That you are created in the image of God.

You are God's beloved, and we know this is Jesus hung on a cross for for you.

For you.

We're stuck in some wound, we're stuck in some abuse, we're stuck in some lie, and you aren't seeing that you are God's beloved.

You're not resting in that, you're not living out of it.

Just listen.

He really loves you.

He really does.

Like before you get the promotion, he really loves you.

And when you lose your job, he loves you.

When you feel inadequate, he loves you.

This is enough for us to rest in.

This is enough for our identities and ourselves.

Let's pray together.

God, give us sight of our own blindness that we might turn to you and see you in greater ways.

We are all blind.

I am blind.

I am blind to so many of my motives, and I see it later on.

I look back, and as I see how screwed up I've been, I still am, I also see how faithful you are.

It's a heavenly father who's in love with me.

And your love poured out for me on the cross, and I'm relieved of my sin and my imperfection and my brokenness.

God, we we we need an increase of sight.

Beyond behaviors, beyond performing and pretending into the depth of our hearts.

That we would in a way be broken and repent, and in a way just turn to you and rest and know a freedom beyond anything we've ever known.

God protect us from being religious Pharisees who just think we got we have it figured out.

We know.

Oh, we know.

The problem's with them, not us.

God protect us from that.

Humble us this morning to turn to you, to know you in greater ways.

Amen.

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