Opened Eyes (John 9:1-23)

John chapter 9, starting in verse 1.

John 9 · chapter mention

As he was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth.

His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned?

This man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Neither this man nor his parents sinned, Jesus answered.

This came about so that God's works might be displayed in him.

We must do 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.

After he said these things, he spit on the ground, made some mud from the saliva, and spread the mud on his eyes.

Go, he told them, wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent.

So he left, washed, and came back seeing.

And his neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar said, Isn't this the one who used to sit begging?

And some said, He's the one.

And others are saying, No, but he looks like him.

And they kept saying, I'm the one.

So they asked him, But then how were your eyes opened?

And he answered, The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and told me, Go to Siloam and wash.

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

Where is he?

They asked, and I don't know, he said.

They brought the man who used to be blind to the Pharisees.

The day that Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes was a Sabbath.

Then the Pharisees asked him again how he received his sight.

When we put mud on my eyes, he told him, I washed and I can see.

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

Others were saying, How can a sinful man perform such signs?

There was a division among them.

Again they asked the blind man, What do you say about him since he opened your eyes?

Well, he's a prophet, he said.

The Jews did not believe this about him, that he was blind and received sight until they summoned the parents of the one who had received his sight.

And then they asked them, Is this your son, the one you say was born blind?

How then does he now see?

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

We don't know how he now sees, and we don't know who opened his eyes.

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

His parents said this thing because they were afraid of the Jews, since the Jews already agreed that if anyone confessed him as the Messiah, he would be banned from the synagogue.

This is why his parents said, He's of age.

Ask him.

Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you so much for this morning.

I thank you for your word that is true, that is faithful, that is good.

And I ask, Lord, you would fill me with your spirit to teach your word, that you would fill the hearers with your spirit to rightly divide and discern what is of you, that we would fall more in love with you as a result, that we would grow closer to you and be conformed to your image in your name.

Amen.

Go ahead and have a seat.

Okay.

So we get a little tiny context.

Normally, when we're going through this, because we study whole books of the Bible at Abide, verse by verse, so that we get the whole context of the thing flowing from one to the other.

And sometimes that context is like a third of the whole message because we have to catch up to those things.

A little bit easier this week because we have we have a mini context.

And the mini context is a showdown in John 8 with the Pharisees in Jerusalem, and then in verse 59 of chapter 8, they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus was hidden and went out of the temple.

So it was a Tuesday, basically, in Jesus' world.

It's like, oh wow.

That's what's crazy, is that when we look in verse 9, I mean, uh chapter 9, verse 1, he's saying, as he was passing by, if this is flowing continuously, which we don't know if it is or not, but if it is, he just had a like a death threat that he escaped, we don't know how, and then we waltzed right into this passage, which is crazy.

The ministry of Jesus is amazing in that respect.

That it is not just uh, you know, he he he goes and then he rests, and then he works, and then he rests.

It's amazing the different back and forth with that.

But that's why, as he is passing by in verse 1, he saw a man blind from birth.

So this is the central figure of this chapter as we're going through this.

This man blind from birth.

He wasn't blinded, he didn't lose his sight over time.

This guy has never seen before in his life.

And this is gonna be a fundamental metaphor as we're going through this passage, because seeing somebody who is blind, who has never seen before, who is powerless to restore his own sight, is a great metaphor for life prior to Jesus.

There is no hope, there is no sight, there is no healing in view prior to Jesus for our sins.

And that's going to be a metaphor that we're gonna keep coming back to over and over and over in here.

But he saw a man blind from birth.

And his disciples in verse 2 asked him, Rabbi, who sinned?

This man or his parents, that he was born blind?

In verse 3, neither this man nor his parents sinned, Jesus answered.

This came about so that God's works might be displayed in him.

So they're passing by, potentially from a very crazy event, passing by, and there's a man blind from birth.

And his disciples go, Hey, teacher, whose fault is this?

Why is this guy born blind?

Whose sin is responsible for this man's plight?

So, which I don't know about you, but if I was the blind man, I'd be like, my ears work just fine.

It's my eyes that I'm having trouble with here.

And they're like, guys, like, really?

You're I'm not an object lesson.

So, and this is in this whole passage, whether it's the disciples, whether it's uh the Pharisees, whether it's his parents, this dude is an object lesson to them.

Whereas when Jesus encounters him, he encounters him as somebody with who is an image bearer, somebody who is made in the image of God, who is fundamentally of intrinsic value and interacting with.

So, his disciples ask him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.

Now, this shows a couple of things.

Number one, there is this misunderstanding that bad things happen to bad people.

Fundamentally, there is this idea of like, if this guy was blind, this has got to be a result of somebody's sin.

That God allowed this to happen, and this is therefore the judgment incurred that this guy was blind.

So is it his fault, or is it his parents' fault?

Which sounds like a really deep theological question.

Because is it, was this guy blind from birth preemptively for the sins he's going to commit?

Or is this guy blind as a result of the sins that were already committed by his parents?

It's a great cosmic thing going on with that.

And Jesus is like, neither.

But the important thing with that is that this is something that is not new.

It goes all the way back to Job, which many think is one of the oldest books in the Bible.

And you look at Job, and quick blitz through Job is that Job is a very prosperous guy, very wealthy, and then God allows everything to be taken from him except his life.

And then he is sitting in absolute destitution, and his friends show up, and they are the best friends in the world until they open their mouth.

And then they proceed to spend an entire book trying to convince this guy, this is your fault.

Your fault that you're in this state.

And he keeps going, no, no, it's not.

And so this idea of bad things happen as a result of people being bad people is not a new thing in the contemporary time of Jesus.

It goes all the way back.

This is kind of a, and we kind of tend to have that cultural implication too, if we're honest.

There's that idea of, well, if something's bad happened, it's like, well, that happened to bad people, karma, right?

Or if it's a good thing happens, it's like, well, good things happen to good people.

I've heard that said, like, I've actually heard that said many times to me, and I'm like, I don't even know how to react to that.

But uh, thanks.

Um, but this idea of that, and we don't want to give the disciples uh too much hate on that.

We don't want to you know criticize them too much on this idea, because this is what it looks like to be under the law.

Prior to Jesus, the best we can do is to diagnose somebody's state.

So they are cursed because they sinned.

That's the entire thing of the law.

We've talked about that before, that the law works as an MRI to diagnose what is there.

It's not the cure, it's not what actually eliminates the problem, it identifies what's there.

And so, this is actually a reasonable uh thought within the cons confines of the law.

The best that we can do is to say, well, this happened because of this person, because of this sin, because this happened.

And so the cool thing about this is Jesus.

Jesus enters and blows up that whole paradigm.

And we see that we've already gone over this verse a few weeks ago, but it's important to see in Isaiah 42, 6 through 7, this prophecy of the servant speaking of the Messiah.

I am the Lord, I've called you the Messiah for a righteous purpose, I'll hold you by your hand, I will watch over you, I will appoint you to be a covenant for the people and a light to the nations, in order to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, and those sitting in darkness from the prison house.

The part of the calling of the Messiah is to open blind eyes, is to bring light where there is darkness.

So it makes sense of what's going on with here.

But this is a foreign idea outside of Jesus.

They're not going, hey, maybe this guy who has never seen before in his life, maybe he'll start seeing.

That would be cool.

That's outside of the realm of possibility for their paradigm.

And so enter Jesus.

And Jesus says, Neither this man nor his parents sinned.

This came about so that God's works might be displayed in him.

We'll pause that for a second.

So Jesus is stating, this guy is not blind as a result of his sin or somebody else's sin.

Why did this come about so that God's works might be displayed in him?

That's a really tough verse to swallow.

Because from our perspective, it's a really tough thing to go, this guy has been blind his whole life, setting up for this occasion and this encounter with Jesus.

That's brutal.

And why is that brutal?

Because we have an earthly perspective where all, for the most part, we tend to default that all that matters is this life and this world.

Especially what happens in the beginning of it.

And if you think I'm wrong, we can all talk about how amazing we were in high school later.

It is this weird thought that this is the valuable thing, especially the early part.

And the maddening thing is that God has no such misconceptions.

And it's it's it is a crazy thing to look at because you look at Abraham and Sarah.

How old were they when they had the child of promise?

He was a hundred, I believe she was 86.

Whew.

And then you look ahead and you look at Joseph.

He spent his twenties in prison for something he didn't do.

He was enslaved for existing.

So the prime years of his life were spent in prison.

You look at Moses, 120 years old, and for the first 80 years, he was either in Egypt and then on the run or in the wilderness taking care of sheep.

And it wasn't until he was 80, two-thirds of the way through his life, that his calling was revealed in that.

David was anointed the king of Israel, right?

King of Israel.

And then what happened?

He got to flee for his life for years and years and years and years.

It is an amazing thing to see that in God's economy, what we value the most, God goes, I have something better later, potentially.

And it's just cool to see that.

And it's something that kind of helps with this passage here, this idea of this guy spending his childhood up to this point completely blind.

And Jesus saying, This came about so that he could encounter Jesus.

Because the reality of the situation is that encountering Jesus is better than had he been seeing this whole time.

And that is a hard, intense thing to process when we are going through hard times.

When I'm going through an easy time, I'm like, well, yeah, of course.

Yeah, that's great.

Until I actually have to live it out.

And then it's like, that's that's the intensity of that.

But in that, there is hope to know that what we see as desolation, Jesus views as opportunity to bring to him.

And that's what we see here.

Verse 4.

We must do 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.

We saw back in chapter 8 this idea of him being the light of the world.

And he's continuing that saying, We gotta work while it's day, because night's coming when no one will work.

At this point in time, they didn't have electricity, they didn't have a lot of means with that, so outside of a torch or a fire or a candle, once the sun goes down, work is done.

And then it's time to rest and recover until the sun goes up.

So this whole idea of I'm gonna work until like midnight and then I'm going to sleep and get up is foreign in this idea because there is there's no way to actually uh see what's going on.

So there's a really important thing though in verse 4.

He is setting up the collision of what we're about to see.

He says, we must do the works of him who sent me while it is day.

So while Jesus is there, while it is day, it's time to work.

There will be a time when that is not the case, but as long as I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world.

Why does this matter?

Because he's creating, seemingly intentionally, an absolute collision between the works he's about to do and the Pharisees who are saying, do not work.

We'll explore that more in a second, but he's setting up this foundation.

We must work versus do no work, because we'll see it's the Sabbath.

As we're continuing forward, we see the means of what he does in verse 6.

As he said these things, he spit on the ground, made some mud from the saliva, and spread the mud on his eyes.

Probably better that the guy was blind, so he didn't see what was about to happen.

Because it would be like, wait a minute, wait a minute, what are you doing?

What's going on?

So he spit on the ground, he made some mud from the saliva and spread the mud on his eyes, and then he said, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent.

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

What on earth just happened?

How would you like to be the uh the disciples?

Especially one of those disciples that don't get a whole lot of write-up in scripture, so you can be like Thaddeus and be like, what did he just do?

What this is how you heal people?

This is the formula?

And he's like, no, that's not the formula.

So, why on earth did Jesus do this?

Here is my take.

This is my interpretation of what I see here.

We find out later it is the Sabbath that he does this.

Jesus could have healed this man on any day of the week.

Could have been a Wednesday.

Wednesday is a good day for healing eyes, apparently.

But he decided to heal this man on the Sabbath, and he decided to do it by taking fluid and dust and kneading it to make clay.

Something that in the Pharisees' interpretation of the law is strictly forbidden on the Sabbath.

Not in the Torah, not in the Old Testament.

There's nothing that you see that says, hey, you can't make clay on the Sabbath.

It is strictly forbidden to be kneading and making, because that word mud, same word as clay, he is doing something that directly violates not the law, but their interpretation of it.

Some might consider that to be provocative.

But that's what we see here, which is quite interesting that he does that.

And just as we're talking about the Sabbath, something that's cool with this, understanding the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was instituted before sin happened.

Before there was ever sin in the world, God instituted some things.

He instituted work.

He put Adam in the garden to tend it and keep it, to work.

And then he rested on the seventh day and instituted rest.

This rhythm of work and rest.

So what happened when sin entered the world?

Work became hard.

Work became unfruitful.

It didn't create the work.

So why am I telling you this?

Because work is something that we saw in an editic state.

I believe it's something that we will see in a heavenly state.

And so the issue here, when we look at the Sabbath things, the point of what God set up on the Sabbath is to institute rhythms of work and rest.

Work, rest, work, rest.

They took that and turned it into a uh, extrapolate it further into a fear aspect of if you do the wrong thing, then you are working and you are violating the law.

Which, I don't know about you, is way more stressful and unrestful to me than what I could have been doing otherwise.

That's one of those crazy things of like, I don't really work well in that situation, of that constant, hey, you're about to mess up mindset.

But that's what the law was turned into.

And so Jesus here is actively provoking their interpretation of the law, what was not actually seen in the law.

Okay.

Interesting too.

He didn't put that on his eyes and say, okay, done.

Healed.

Because he could have.

He could have just told the man, you're healed.

And that would have been done.

But he told them to go and wash.

Well, why is that?

Well, a couple things.

Number one, I like that Jesus heals people a different way and every time a different way every time, so that we don't think it's a formula.

So we don't think it's like, oh, this is apparently how you deal with the eye problem.

And oh, hey, people can't walk.

Well, apparently, first you need to get friends and then he need to drop you through the roof, and then that's how you heal people.

Like the core is Jesus, not the system.

And so he didn't learn the spell.

He is God.

So when he says go wash in the pool of Thalon, what does that guy have to do?

He has to go, he has to obey.

He has to respond to the command of the Savior.

Which is cool, because number one, he had a little harder, I would argue, because he actually, it's not like he's gonna like get up and go, okay, and they're be like, it's that way.

Uh because he's blind.

Uh he has to actually get help to do so.

To actually publicly say, look, I need to go wash because I was told that I would be healed if I do so.

Very public thing.

It also sets up a collision in a moment where Jesus isn't physically present, which is interesting.

Because the last collisions we've seen with the Pharisees, Jesus is the center of it.

Here, he's like not even there.

And so, but it is awesome how this guy who has no hope, who has no means of seeing, collides with Jesus.

And what Jesus does is calls him to obey.

And the man has to believe and to respond.

This is why I was saying this is a great metaphor for salvation and encountering Jesus.

He didn't tell the guy, these are the things you need to do in order to do this ten times a day.

And eventually you will be healed.

He just says, go wash.

So what happened?

He left, he washed, and he came back seeing.

Which is.

We're like, well, yeah, of course.

That's what happens.

Because Jesus.

We can't do this in 2024.

Somebody who has never seen before.

Yes, I get there are experimental things where maybe you could, blah, blah.

We don't even know if this guy physically had the mechanisms for being able to see.

We don't know if this was a situation where God just had to tweak a little thing or if he had to rebuild an entire organ structure.

We just don't know.

But what I do know, which is amazing, is that we are clearly an advanced culture right now, way more than these primitives that we read about now.

And uh all of our advances, this is something that we can't do today, no matter how awesome we are.

And for Jesus, it's no difficulty in any way, shape, or form.

Okay, continuing forward, his neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar said, Isn't this the one who used to sit begging?

And some said, Yeah, he's the one.

And others said, No, he looks like him.

And he kept saying, I'm the one.

So this healing did not get to escape public attention.

It wasn't a healing to where it's like, okay, and then he kind of sneaked off into his own little world.

His neighbors are like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Isn't that the guy who used to sit begging because he couldn't see?

Other people are like, oh my gosh, it's him.

And then others are like, there's no way that could be him.

It has to be someone who looks like him.

So this is the best example of a litmus test of the glass half full versus half empty people in the room.

To where it's like, isn't this the guy?

Oh yeah, it must be the guy.

I wonder how he was healed.

Or there ain't no way that was the guy because he was blind.

This guy's not blind, there's no way.

And so, and he keeps being in the middle, going like, it's me, guys.

Hello?

Yes, I can see you arguing now, which is cool.

Like, I want to know this.

This is just Ben being weird.

I really want to know what he thought people looked like versus what they looked like.

If there was a little bit of like, really?

That's human?

Okay, that's okay.

You know, like you know, a dog walks up and he's like, oh my gosh, what is that thing?

Like, well, that's a dog.

That's a I thought they had five limbs because there was a thing that wagged in the back.

They don't have five legs?

Oh, cool.

Anyway, it's just something that, like, the paradigm of somebody who has never seen before who suddenly has that whole thing blown up, is number one really cool, but number two is a really great example of what happens when we encounter Jesus.

And it is not something that he gets to escape privately.

So they say, well, how are your in verse 10?

How are your eyes open?

He said, Well, the man called Jesus.

He made mud, he spread it on my eyes, and he said, Go to Siloem and wash.

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

And where is he?

I don't know.

Okay.

Do you see how the formula, the system of how to give effective testimony for Jesus?

Dude was just honest.

And um it wasn't pretentious in any way, shape, or form.

He's sitting there, he's like, He just answered the questions, which is cool.

He didn't have to make it look bigger than it already was because a miracle already happened.

So when he encountered Jesus, he didn't say, you know what?

I need to tell you that I was the most blind person that is ever blinded in their life.

Let me give you 25 minutes to illustrate how blind I was.

And then Jesus.

The end.

He just said, What happened?

Well, I was blind, I'm that guy.

Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, said, go wash.

I went, I washed, here I am.

That's the best testimony ever.

I was blind, but now I see.

Good song, there.

And it's interesting too that he knows it was Jesus, so it wasn't completely anonymous in there.

He said, A man, the man called Jesus, did that.

So here is the next scene in this drama.

They brought the man who used to be blind, to the artist formerly known as blind, to the Pharisees.

And the day that Jesus made the mud was, and opened his eyes was a Sabbath.

So they're pointing out this was specifically done on the Sabbath.

And so, if somebody is going to be bugged by that, it's going to be the Pharisees.

And this starts the next argument.

The Pharisees ask him how he received his side.

And once again, the most honest testimony in the world, he put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I can see.

Simple as that, not dressed up, just and then what happens is the Pharisees are forced to grapple with how that could be so.

Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not from God because he doesn't keep the Sabbath.

Exactly.

Other Pharisees were saying, How can a sinful man perform such signs?

Dude, he's seeing.

How can that be as a result of sin?

I could be wrong, but I think the enemy tends to work the opposite direction.

So, and then there was a division among them.

So here is the big conflict.

Which takes priority?

What's the lens we see this miracle through?

What takes priority?

Their interpretation of the law or the fact of the miraculous that they saw?

Because if the most important thing is their understanding of the law, their interpretation, then Jesus has to be a sinner because he made clay in order to miraculously heal this guy.

If the important thing is the evidence that the man is made whole, then you have to wonder, first of all, Jesus is more than just a teacher, but then also they have to question their understanding of the law.

Because if Jesus is truly divine, and he did this on the Sabbath, and he did this by doing something that the Pharisees say you can't do on the Sabbath, either you have to say, This guy is bad news, and I don't know what trickery this is, but clearly this is wrong, because I need to protect my interpretation of the law.

Or you have to go, God just did a great work here.

Maybe I'm not understanding what's important.

It's a crisis point.

There is insanity in the fact that they are arguing to this point in the division, so they turn to the blind guy to get his take.

The teacher of the law.

Back and forth, back and forth.

Is he a sinner?

Is he a man from God?

If he did this on the Sabbath, he must be guilty.

How can he be guilty if the guy is seeing now and he wasn't before?

And they turn to the blind guy.

What do you think?

And he's probably just like, um.

He's a prophet.

Seems like a safe thing, which is more, I mean, you know, the idea of a prophet.

I love the progression of this man's understanding of Jesus.

Because first he's the man.

The man called Jesus.

Now here's a prophet.

What's a prophet?

Prophet is still a mortal, it's still a human being, but somebody who has uh information direction and calling from God.

So next we're on step two.

Later, spoiler alert, he will confess Jesus as God, which is cool.

I don't get to teach that passage.

Um, but uh it's cool to see that progression with that, but ultimately it's they are so bound up in their argument that they have to, they're like, what do you think?

He's like, I just got here and I can see, and uh, he's a prophet.

And then, verse 18, it continues forward.

The Jews didn't believe this about him, that he was blind and received his sight until they summoned the parents of the one who had received his sight.

So they're basically like this just isn't the blind guy.

That's the punchline.

This is what we have to, we have to, the narrative we have to tell ourselves is that this clearly wasn't the guy, so we're gonna call the parents to testify of this.

Now, the parents are being pulled into this inquiry.

If your child had a lifelong malady and was healed, wouldn't that be a good day?

I mean, wouldn't that seem to be like the best day ever?

Not only because you love your child and suddenly he is made whole, but also because, I mean, these parents have been doing the heavy lifting his whole life.

More so than I would know or understand.

Because we just, if I can say it this way, there are no government assistance systems in Jerusalem in this time period.

They are taking care of their kid this whole time who it cannot see, and then he's begging because that's really the only thing you can do if you have uh such a malady in order to contribute.

Now he's healed, but they instantly get thrown into an inquisition.

So they ask them in verse 19, is this your son, the one you say was born blind?

How does he see?

So, first question, is this your kid?

Secondly, if so, how can he see all of a sudden?

They've moved on from his testimony, and they're on to the parents.

And the little parents are going to respond.

We know this is our son, and we know he was born blind, but we don't know how he now sees, and we don't know who opened his eyes.

Ask him.

He's of age, he will speak for himself.

Somebody did the the hard work of prepping this person for the courtroom before they actually had to give testimony.

What I do know is that's my son.

I know he was blind, everything else, I cleaned the fifth.

And then basically, like, well, what's the question?

Well, I mean, well, well, what happened?

Well, he's our kid and he was blind.

Well, how'd he see?

Ask him.

Uh what on earth is happening here?

First of all, I think it's hilarious too that they say, we don't know how he sees, and we don't know who opened his eyes.

So clearly they know that somebody opened his eyes.

They have some part of the story here that his eyes were open.

It's it's kind of like that idea when your kid goes, nothing happened.

Or, I don't know how that broke.

And we're like, I didn't ask, but now I can't think of anything else.

What is it's the same thing to where it's they're like, we don't know who opened his eyes.

I we did we didn't ask who opened his eyes, we asked how he could see, but they clearly know that someone did.

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

And then verse 22, his parents said these things because they were afraid of the Jews.

Since the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed him as the Messiah, he would be banned from the synagogue.

This is why his parents said he's of age, asked him.

Okay, so why do they punt here?

They are afraid of the religious leaders.

A little brutal, but like best day ever, but then I am not going to engage in this because I'm afraid of being ostracized for my entire society.

This is not like they are banned from the synagogue, so they get up and they walk to the second church of Israel down the street and go, okay, now we're in part of the synagogue.

There is no second synagogue here.

It is their entire culture and society, they would be cut off for anybody who confessed Jesus as the Messiah.

Is this crazy?

Like that's a to me, like I hear that and I'm like, you sound threatened if you have to basically set up that law that anybody who says that Jesus is the Messiah will be kicked out of the synagogue, will be ostracized from our community.

Uh that's a that's a big deal.

So I don't personally give the parents too hard of a time here on why they punted it back to the kid.

First of all, he's he's he's of age, he's old enough, it's not like he's a six-year-old here and they're putting him on trial.

But there is a very, very high cost here.

This is what is interesting is that in this situation, there is a very high cost for everything that's happening to this guy who is healed, to the parents who experienced it.

And where's Jesus?

I mean, he's he's around, but it's interesting that he set this up to allow this to happen, to where this guy who just experienced life for the first time through seeing in that idea is having to give testimony before the religious leaders that is going to cost him dearly, spoiler alert.

But do you think this guy is like, man, I really wish I was blind still?

Nothing would have if I hadn't encountered Jesus, none of this would have happened.

I really doubt that he has that mindset at this point in time, considering his prior state and his current state.

He's never known sight.

He encounters Jesus, he sees for the first time, and his first situation is having everything he knows and understands for his culture being put on the line in order to testify of what Jesus has done in his life.

I don't think he's mad about it.

And that's the cool thing in this situation.

We're partway through this whole uh scene because otherwise it would be a really long teaching, but as we stop here, we get to see that progression of somebody who had no hope, who had no means of healing, who was bound up in darkness, encountering Jesus, responding to his call, having his eyes opened, his life restored, and it's not easy for him afterwards.

They didn't say, okay, well, now that you have encountered Jesus and your eyes are open, here is how you are now uh accumulating all of the benefits of this life.

It instantly gets hard, but it's better.

It's better because at the beginning of this chapter, he was a blind beggar.

And at the end of this, no matter what else happens, he can see and he has encountered Jesus.

That is the Christian life in a nutshell.

The life of following Jesus.

We were slaves of sin.

We encountered Jesus.

He did all of the work to bring about salvation.

We needed to respond, to obey, and then life afterwards is so much greater than anything we had before.

So cool.

Such a cool thing in that.

And his testimony in here is so authentic that he's like, look, blind guy, met Jesus.

I can see.

So cool.

And that is the same thing that we have as believers.

It's like, I don't care if you grew up your whole life in a Christian family or if you met Jesus yesterday and were doing horrible things before that.

It is the same thing in both circumstances.

I was a slave to sin, I met Jesus, and now I'm free.

Such an amazing thing and such a beautiful thing that we get to experience in that.

So, wrapping this up, just uh the obvious reminder in this is that this is why Jesus is here.

This wasn't a sideshow for Jesus' important work.

This is part of the roughly three years that he spent on earth.

He didn't go, I'm here, I'm alive, straight to the cross.

He actually demonstrated the life that he gives, the healing that he does, the unrolling of the effects of sin and death.

And so it's such an amazing thing to see.

This is the God that we serve.

So that means what we have for those of us who have confessed Christ is far greater, is far better, is far more worth it and valuable than anything that we may have had to surrender, to give up, to walk away from in order to follow him.

That's not a sad thing.

That's a joyous thing.

We get to, with exuberance, look at following Jesus and go, this is so much better.

There's, I mean, literally, I don't look back at my life before Jesus and go, oh, those were good days.

Man, I uh I missed that.

It just doesn't happen.

And yeah, there can be sorrow associated with that, especially with broken relationships, with the counting the cost, but ultimately we get to walk joyfully in the new life we have in Jesus, just like this blind man got to walk joyfully in the healing that he experienced.

Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you so much for how good you are.

I thank you for the things that are impossible outside of you, that are absolutely no difficulty whatsoever with you.

How cool that is.

There is nothing that is hard for you.

And I thank you that life with you is far greater surpassing anything that this world has to offer.

I thank you that following you is better.

Is better than what we could have otherwise had, is more valuable than the years we perceive to have lost or the struggle that we perceive to be walking through, that following you is better.

And Lord, I thank you that for those of us who know you, there is a day where we can cash in an inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, reserved and waiting for us in heaven.

Bought and paid for solely by the blood of Jesus.

I thank you so much for that blessing.

For those who have not confessed you, Lord, I ask by your spirit you would work on their heart, that they would desire, that they would know, that you would open eyes to the goodness that we have in you, that we would joyfully set aside the things that are enslaving us, and instead gladly receive, confessing and believing, Jesus as Lord.

Believing that He paid the price for our sins and offers us His righteousness as a result that can be granted through confession and belief.

I ask, Lord, you would quicken hearts to do that.

Help us to continue to walk in a way that is worthy of your gospel with just uh joyful simplicity of the goodness that we have in you.

Be glorified in your name.

Amen.