John 9:35-41

Friends. Thanks for being with us again.

Finishing the ninth chapter of John today.

A great chapter, a great story.

We're just finding ourself at the conclusion.

And I think, we've made the case that John has really carefully crafted this story.

And I think that conclusion, is well done, kind of brings that home.

Let me read it for you.

Then we'll we'll work our way through it.

Jesus heard that they had driven the blind man out.

And when he found him, he said, do you believe in the Son of Man?

He answered, and who is he, sir?

Tell me so. I may believe in him.

Jesus said to him,

you have seen him,

and the one speaking with you is he.

He said, Lord, I believe.

And he worshiped him.

Jesus said, I came into this world for judgment,

so that those who do not see may see,

and those who do see may become blind.

Some of the Pharisees near him heard him say this and said to him,

surely we are not blind, are we?

Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would not have sinned.

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

So remember yesterday we saw the conflict between this man and the Pharisees.

They had been having this conversation.

The man said, well, maybe you want to follow him.

They insulted him and put him out.

And the idea is they sort of ran him off.

Really interesting.

Kind of a pastoral note here that Jesus finds him.

It's very interesting that we enter this last part of the text with the words

Jesus heard. They had driven him out.

And when he found him, implying that he went looking for him.

And I think you know, that falls in line with other images,

the lost sheep and the prodigal son, the father who was way.

So the idea that Jesus sought this man out

and then he he has this conversation.

Do you believe in the Son of Man?

Who is he?

Tell me that I may believe in him.

And Jesus says, you have seen him.

And again, we've made the case over the last couple of days

that so much of this chapter

is about what is seen and what is missed, what is believed

and and what is, forfeited, what is refused.

And so, Jesus, when Jesus says you have seen him,

the idea here is not just physically that this man's eyesight

has been restored, but he's learned something spiritual.

He's seen a spiritual truth.

And we know this because the response that John tells us

is that the man says, Lord, I believe and remember,

believe is one of the operative themes of this chapter.

And then he said, it says, and he worshiped him.

So belief and worship, John connects those two things in a powerful way.

The response of seeing Jesus is to belief,

to believe the response of belief is to worship.

Really well done, Michael.

A powerful conclusion here.

This is most of the end of the men story.

There's the essentially that for all practical purposes,

him worshiping is kind of the tail end of his role.

So I just another note to make sure that we all catch it is

we do see Jesus, as you point out, so helpfully, Clint finding this man,

seeking him out in verse 35, the beginning of this section.

But remember, it was Jesus who also came to this man in the very beginning

of this book, or, sorry, in the very beginning of this chapter.

As Jesus walks along in 91, he sees a man blind for birth.

And then, following the questions of the disciples, Jesus engages this man.

So I think actually, this is a way of bookending that experience,

even here at the end of the story, that Jesus is the first actor.

Jesus is also the last actor that ultimately

Jesus is the one who does the revealing.

And that's so important in John.

Clint, we we might pass by it, but in modern Christianity there is this

temptation to think that we would know Jesus because of reason, or we would.

We would be able to sort of work our way to who Jesus is.

But a story like this, and John really does push back on that.

I think this story makes it abundantly clear

that Jesus is the one who does the revealing of God's will and presence

in the world that you look to Jesus, and it's his prerogative.

You get to see a window into God's perfect plan.

What is fascinating is then the call.

Or as you've already pointed out, Clint, to what response is to that revelation.

And here Jesus asks a very simple

question and an ultimate lie.

The question is, well, sorry.

The man asked. Jesus, who is he?

And and Jesus is the one who then says, you've seen him?

The one speaking to you?

Is he that that seeing has multiple senses?

The question, then is, what does it mean that this man believes?

Because remember, he's

already been brought before the Pharisees, and there's always been already been

this question brought to him of, you know, who is the man?

Jesus.

Well, now, when the man has an opportunity that the formerly blind man

can now in this moment, address Jesus, he simply asks him the question.

And I think it plays back to a previous theme.

This man responded to those Pharisees and said, hey, listen,

I don't know who he is, but I was blind and now I can see that should be enough.

Well, hear the that same man.

When faced with the personal question, Who is Jesus?

He simply asks him.

And Jesus answers that if you see me, that then you know, and the man does believe,

and then that immediately leads to his action,

which is worship and belief and worship.

And John, they're going to be intertwined in some really interesting ways,

as they have already.

I just think this story is beginning to incorporate these many different layers

while simultaneously maintaining the kind of simplicity of this man's character,

which is essential to John's understanding of what it means to be a disciple.

You don't need to be a PhD or a priest or some kind of spiritual,

you know, a saint to follow Jesus.

You simply need to ask the right, simple question

and then give the right simple response.

It's it's somewhat subtle, and it can get lost

because of the conflict narrative in this story.

But I think if we follow the man's tragic

trajectory through this chapter, it's really interesting.

So we have first a blind man in need

and he encounters

Jesus or experiences Jesus first as healer.

And then he says, the man Jesus.

And then he says, well, I don't know if he's a sinner.

I know he healed me.

We know that he must be from God.

Right?

And so you have this movement that culminates here in these words.

He calls him Lord.

So the man Jesus, the one who healed me, the a prophet,

the one from God, all of that leads him

ultimately to this profession, Lord,

I believe and and then it leads him also to worship.

And for John, I think this is a pattern,

a paradigm of what it is to encounter Jesus.

And it would be, I think a case could be made that

it would have been nice if the story ended here,

but because John is always telling the bigger story

that forces the question of who Jesus is, he instead adds some conflict at the end.

Jesus says this thing,

I came so that people who don't see can see.

I came to open the eyes of the blind, and those who think they can see.

I came to show them that they are blind.

And the Pharisees overhear this,

and they assume he's speaking to them, or they sort of figure that out.

And he says, they say to him, we are not blind, are we?

And then the words that do conclude this story come from Jesus.

If you were blind, you wouldn't have sin.

But because you say, we see, your sin remains.

And again, what a wonderful way to

to sort of summarize

some of, not all of but some of the themes of this chapter,

your convinced you know the truth and yet you are blind.

And the man who started the the story blind

is proclaiming Jesus Lord and worshiping him.

The ones who claim that they can see and that they know the truth

are ultimately at the end, still blind to the truth.

And I just think it's, it's not

it's a less positive way to end the story, Michael,

but it makes sense, I think, for what

John is trying to do, and it allows him to really hammer the point home.

This story is carefully told from start to finish.

I just want to point out that we see that again in the way that it ends.

Because remember how this story began by the disciples asking, Rabbi,

who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind, right?

The question was the sinfulness of this man, which, by the way,

the Pharisees have already used to their benefit in the way

that they've used this man to sort of prop up an argument against Jesus.

Now look at this.

Jesus just essentially lands a blow to say no.

The third character, it wasn't the man or his parents who have sinned.

They're not the issue.

It's the the ones who think they can see

and are unwilling to confess the brokenness of their hearts.

They are the ones who have been sinful from the start.

This is not an accidental kind of turn at the end of the story.

This is a very carefully told way

of helping us to see that no matter

how threatened the Pharisees are, when they come after Jesus,

when they seek their own power, they seek some privilege over him.

The Pharisees are fundamentally scared of who

Jesus might be in their physical circumstance, right?

He might become popular. He might become famous.

He might draw people away.

Maybe there's some spiritual, you know, theological kind of emphasis there,

but there's very clearly a willingness to do whatever it takes to put Jesus down.

What's fascinating is that at the end of the day,

Jesus is a threat to them in truth,

because he represents the world turned upside down.

That sinfulness is not a thing that humans do and pass on to the next generation

that causes blindness and then needs to be argued about in the synagogue.

No blindness is when you are unwilling

to be transformed in the presence of God incarnate.

And make no mistake about this is so important in this book.

We should not pass by it without seeing it

that the man's belief immediately leads to worship.

And this is the antidote to misunderstanding what belief means.

Belief in Jesus is not in the book of John

simply, oh, I assent to the fact that he's a good teacher,

or I think he's a, a good human and a moral exemplar.

Now, Jesus is those things. Absolutely.

But from John's lens, from his perspective, his belief in

Jesus will always lead to divine worship of Jesus.

Because Jesus is at the core, Lord in the messianic sense.

He's the one who renews, transforms, redeems, justifies.

Jesus is both judge and the one judge.

And all of this occupies at the same time this human living and revealing God.

And so this movement that we see in this man

is an unbelievably important movement, because it shows us

how he goes from a man blind, a physical illness,

to a man who gets jostled around by the Pharisees, trying to use him

to accuse Jesus of sinfulness, to, in the end, being a person

who is suddenly able to see Jesus for who he is

spiritually as he sees him physically.

And that man then is moved to worship the one who stands in front of him.

That's the amazing circle that this story takes, is it?

It both serves as a kind of repudiation of those who can see physically

but are spiritually blind, while simultaneously

showing us a journey of a man once physically blind,

then able to see Jesus spiritually, and where that leads him

to the foot of worshiping the one who had come to redeem.

I mean, that's the kind of turn in this story that makes it so incredible.

And I understand why this is likely your favorite passage in John,

because it it takes us on a journey with this man.

There's a really nice bookend here.

In a passage that starts with Jesus saying

that the man's sin.

Has not caused physical blindness

and ending with the condemnation

that in refusing to leave their spiritual blindness,

the Pharisees persist in their sin.

So what is John telling us here?

That sin

causes spiritual blindness, not physical blindness?

This man isn't blind physically because he sinned or his parents sinned.

The Pharisees are spiritually blind

because their sin keeps them

from seeing what is painfully evident to those around them,

including a blind man, that Jesus is Jesus.

And so I think a really nice contrast here between the opening lines of the story

and the ending lines of the story, where we see

that we've moved from the question of, of physical blindness,

and we've centered on the question of physical blindness and sin.

While not responsible for the first,

is a condition of the second,

and that it not surprisingly, the relationship

between Jesus and the Pharisees is going to continue to spiral downhill.

This is a significant moment in it, but it's not over yet.

But I think here, John is pretty clear

with his the charge that he's laying out,

or at least that he hears in Jesus conversation with them.

This is maybe example par excellence of why

the Bible should not rightly be understood as some kind of pure

history book seeking to tell the story exactly how it happened.

Not saying that it's not interested in those details, but Clint,

this could be read as a sermon and it have impact

without being interpreted in in the way that we think of interpretation.

The narrative itself reveals the transformation

of this man's life because of his encounter with Jesus.

There is a devotional nod built into this text itself,

and I think that it reveals, for any believer willing to see it,

that there's a kind of faithfulness

to the gospel that looks in our own life

to see those concrete, physical, maybe even to you.

It's not the the enormity of being blind and then being healed, but but the

the things that we might think of, non spiritual things that can lead us

to deep spiritual awareness and gratitude for what Christ has done in our life.

I think that a text like this illustrates

what even a modern Christian is called to do in our life.

That is, pay attention to look at what Christ is doing

so that as you see it unfolding, you can return.

Thanks. You can come to his feet and worship him.

You can, return to the one who has enlightened you in the Johannine sense.

And, and you can therefore bear that light so that others might see it as well.

There's an amazing kind of marching order that lives underneath this text.

That.

So as this man became a witness, in fact,

he was schooled and even teaching in some senses, of the Pharisees.

So the same for you.

No matter how competent you feel or how many church words

you feel like you have command of, that's not the point.

The point isn't that you get a theology degree.

The point is you're attentive

to where Christ is at in your life, that that moves you to his worship,

and then that will ultimate, regardless of what you intend, send

you out to be a witness to what has happened to you.

I think if you read this chapter

just with an eye for what happened, the man was blind.

He got healed. The Pharisees were upset by that.

They argued with him. They argued with Jesus.

If you stuck to this kind of bare bones facts of this chapter,

I think you would miss those

undercurrents,

those themes that John has worked really hard, light and dark,

seeing and not seeing, believing, not believing.

This is this is too well crafted

to approach it as simply a story of what happened next.

That's all in there. That that's fine.

You certainly should understand what happened in the story.

But John is doing much, much more than that.

John is using that story and I think sermon is the right word.

Mike.

I think John is preaching at us,

to us, with us through this story.

And I think if you only left chapter nine

with the outline version and and missed

the deeper theology and spirituality that's happening here, I, I think you

I think you would

I think it would be very unfortunate, which is I think one of the benefits

of kind of working through verse by verse and section by section,

you slow down a little bit and you get a chance to see more of that.

We're going to come towards a conclusion here,

but I just want to make sure there's one last theme

I can think of that we might want to tie up.

And you mentioned this in the beginning, the idea that Jesus goes looking for this

man after he's been driven out.

I just want to sort of quickly remind you

that to a Christian in the earliest part of the faith

who lived with the present reality, that they may be driven out of their

synagogues, that they would no longer be welcome to the place where their family

has lived out all of the rights of what it means to be Jewish.

To those believers, the fact that Jesus came to find this man

on the outside of being put out would be nothing but good news.

And maybe that's not your fear.

You know that's not your experience.

If you live in 21st century America and you have a church family

that you feel safe and comfortable in, but friends,

no matter your circumstance, the truth

and the hope of that remains the same, that there's no place that we find ourself

pull it out from in the name of Jesus, where Jesus doesn't come to find us.

And that's the kind of present lived hope.

I think that this story can can work to show us

is that though we have many things to be afraid of in our lives,

in the face of Jesus, all of them melt away that he can be trusted.

He is faithful.

And if we but turn our eyes to him, then the light of the world will do his work.

And that's exactly what we that's our best hope for the world.

Yeah, I think it's

a beautiful detail of the story that Jesus encounters a man in need heals him.

That man is then hurt by the religion of his day

or the religious people of his day, and Jesus seeks him out

to heal him again in a different way to bring him.

He's brought him sight, and now he brings him life.

And I think, you know, again, I think that's one of the it's just a

it's just a simple detail that Jesus found him, but it says a lot.

Thanks for being with us.

Hope you've liked this part of the study through chapter nine.

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We are going to be coming back in a couple weeks.

We're taking a Christmas,

New Year's break here while we're going through this study.

So we'll be back January 6th.

Would love to see you then. Hope you on.

You and yours have great holidays and thanks for being with us.