John 9:24-34

Hey, everybody.

Thanks for being with us. Thanks for joining us.

Wednesday of this week, as we continue through the ninth chapter

of the Gospel of John.

Really one pretty well crafted story runs through this entire chapter.

Where we are, if you if you haven't been with us the last couple of days,

Jesus has healed a man that was born blind.

This has caused, some unhappiness from the

the religious leaders Pharisees on two fronts.

A that it was a Sabbath, and b it's occasioned an argument,

about whether or not Jesus is able to do this and who Jesus is.

Some really great themes that run through this chapter about seeing and not seeing.

And then I think today, we see and also another

theme, developing the idea of knowing and not knowing.

So we are jumping in at verse 24.

I'll read through about verse 30 for ten verses or so.

Then we'll come back and and see what we find in it.

So for the second time, they called

the man who had been born blind, and they said to him, give glory to God.

We know this man is a sinner.

He answered, I don't know whether he is a sinner.

One thing I do know, that one thing I do know,

that though I was blind, now I see.

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

How did he open your eyes?

He answered them, I told you already and you wouldn't listen.

Why do you want to hear it again?

Do you want to also become his disciples?

Then they reviled him and said, you are his disciple.

We are the disciples of Moses.

We know that God has spoken to Moses,

but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.

The man answered.

Well, this is an astonishing 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 he does listen to the one who worships him and obeys its will.

Never since the world began has it been

heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.

If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

Then they answered him, you

were born entirely in sins, and you are trying to teach us.

And they drove him out.

As we've seen, I think, Michael,

John gives us an escalation of the conflict.

It starts with an issue.

It then picks up with some conversation, with some argument.

And now, interestingly enough, some of the most heated

part of the discussion is with Jesus in the background,

which is a little bit unusual in the gospel.

Typically, Jesus is front and center in these kind of arguments, but

the Pharisees now take it upon themselves to try and get to the bottom of this.

So they say, give glory to God.

In other words, admit that God did this.

We don't think this man had anything to do with it.

And he's a sinner.

And a wonderful reply here.

I don't know if he's a sinner.

Here's the thing.

I know I was blind and now I see if that sounds familiar to you,

that that is the guiding, or he is the inspiration for the hymn amazing Grace.

John Newton, who wrote amazing Grace, was drawn to that idea through this verse.

And then they try to get to the bottom of, well, what did he do?

How could he have done this? And,

then the man asks, well, I guess what?

You want to be his disciples.

And that's kind of when things ratchet up to 11.

Michael.

There are so many threads within this text alone yet alone.

The the larger piece that we're seeing unfold here.

I just want to point out a couple of them and the first is no,

it's the theme of sinner within this story itself.

It starts off with that amazing nod here.

We know that this man

is a sinner, and the blind man

who, you know, is really already bending up in this conversation.

Did he sin?

Did his parents sin right?

You or my brother remember the disciples asking Jesus that now?

Now we see that being teased out and pointed at Jesus,

we know that Jesus is a sinner, but this man

who just previously everybody would have

assumed was sick because or was blind because he of his sin

or the sin of his parents, is now asked to give account to is Jesus a sinner?

Is he the one?

Is he acting in some evil or insipid way?

And Clint, I think what's fascinating about this is the Pharisees

are working against their own benefit in argument of this form.

They're going to a witness to try to mount a case against Jesus,

that they would have not held this a reputable witness from the jump.

And yet they're going to turn to him

to try to turn the tables on this man Jesus, who they at this point,

I have already been given ample motivation to want to kill.

I mean, John has mentioned already

numerous plots and the desire for Jesus Jesus's life to be taken.

So what we have happening right in front of us here is a strange

kind of reversal, where the locus of who is the sinner

is being sort of sought out by these religious leaders

while treating this man

in a very inhuman way,

looking at a man who's just healed and using his as argument

against Jesus is, in its way, its own kind of sinfulness.

And so John is doing this amazing sort of turn

where the people obsessed with sin are the very people who say

that sin lands on the very people for whom sinfulness

could be most accurately, you know, applied or ascribed.

And so I think, Clint,

it's just that's one small aspect that has gone now through the story.

But we're beginning to see John flesh it out.

And I think it's done to great literary effect.

I agree, and I think this is where two of those themes come together.

We've been saying for the last couple of days that one of the

one of the powerful threads of this text is the idea of what is obvious.

In other words, what is seen and what is missed.

And so these men,

they they don't see what's in front of them.

They've already gotten a conclusion and it keeps them blinded.

And so now we have this wonderful reversal where the ones who can't see

are criticizing the one whose blindness has been healed.

And then there's the idea of knowledge of of knowing.

We know this man is a sinner.

And the other man says, well, I don't know that.

I know that he healed my blindness.

And I know that God does good things.

And nobody's ever talked about people being healed of their blindness.

And don't you think that that means something?

Here's an astonishing thing.

You don't know where he comes from.

But he opened my eyes.

So, in other words, what is obvious to the man who used to be blind

is now hidden from the ones who think they can see

and what what they think they know

is the opposite, exactly the opposite of what is reality

that is observable and obvious

to even those who can barely see.

And so, John is just doing a really nice job here

of weaving this all together.

We know that God does not listen to sinners.

He listens to the one who worships him and obeys his will.

If the man were not from God, he could do nothing.

So, interestingly enough, this is the statement of the blind man.

He looks at his situation he now sees, and where it leads him is,

if this man wasn't from God, he couldn't do these things.

What's the implication?

He's clearly from God.

And and it's at this point

where affirming Jesus sets

the Pharisees off the most that they insult him.

They accuse him of being born in sin and they drive him out.

In other words, they they rid him or rid the

the temple, the synagogue, not the temple, the synagogue of him.

And if you remember where we started, this text,

you see that John again

has done a really beautiful job of bringing this full circle.

You were born entirely and in your sin,

so remember that this whole episode starts when Jesus

and the disciples see a blind man and the disciples asked, who sinned?

Whose sin was the problem, that this man would be blind?

And Jesus says, no, this man is about to show the glory of God.

And now, having done that, the very ones who should know better

see instead and accuse this man, instead of being born in sin,

of being steeped in sin entirely in sin.

Just a a really nice, simple.

Literary mechanism here to show us

how far the Pharisees are from the mark.

And that this man who just beginning this passage, this chapter was blind.

What he now sees about Jesus.

There's a really explicit

reference to evangelism

and discipleship in this text that I don't think we should miss.

It comes right here in verse 27, when the Pharisees,

are asked by

this man, I've told you and you wouldn't listen.

Why do you want to hear it again?

Do you also want to become his disciples?

John uses questions like this.

So impactful.

And this is a question that both rings

with a note of sarcasm, a note of rhetoric or argument.

Right? Like what more do you actually want?

And simultaneously, I think, is in many ways a whole hearted question.

Do what?

What is the thing that you want to get from this line of questioning?

Because there's a nod here.

There's a tip here that if you are engaged in questioning Christ

with an outcome already in mind, you will get that outcome right.

If you come to Jesus and you were dead set, that I'm going to interrogate you

to prove that you are a sinner, not in the line of Moses,

but in the line of self-aggrandizement, that in a

a heretical teacher, if you come to Jesus and your expectation is that he

is this thing, then this story

serves as a unbelievable illustration that there's no amount of evidence,

not even the man that you walked by every day, your neighbor who was blind.

You will not even recognize who that man is when God is done with him,

because you are so dead set on the outcome that you preconceived.

And so that question.

Right, like, do you want to be his disciple?

Is that the goal or is there something else?

And of course, they're not interested in being his disciple.

They're interested

in catching him and being able to sort of turn the plot against him.

And, in John, it's not Jesus's time, so that won't go their way.

But they'll keep at it until they get their ends.

There's also, I think that since Michael, we saw this,

you know, remember that the Pharisees go to the man's parents and they say,

you know, tell us about your son.

And they say, go ask him, right.

Go to the source.

And now the man says, do you want to be his disciples?

Why are you talking to me about whether he's a sinner or not?

Here's here's what I know.

I was blind and now I see.

Do you want to follow him?

Well, go to him.

And so, again, part of the part

of the plotting of the Pharisees

is to not deal with Jesus directly, but to try and find some reason

to be unhappy with him, and something that will bring the situation

in to what they've already decided that Jesus is off base and

the story itself

keeps just pushing us toward, well,

go to the source, go to the source,

go to Jesus, go ask him. Go listen to him.

Go watch what he does. And,

it is really interesting how John,

particularly I think I would say this, push back

Michael, if I how John particularly

uses the Pharisees

to push a theme to the reader.

There's conflict with the Pharisees in, in all the Gospels that's built in,

but I think John uses their characters

especially well to push the reader to, to join in

on some of the debates and discussions and to make a decision

about what we see when we encounter these stories of Jesus.

I think there's a different tone, because I think of the

accusations that Jesus makes against the Pharisees,

you know, whitewashed tombs, or he calls down,

different sort of warnings against Jerusalem.

I think what you have in John is a the Pharisees

stand as a representative sample of those who are so close

and spiritually as far away as you can possibly be.

I think they're a warning sign out on this on the road of faith

that look at these people who deny actual healing,

that a man who could uncontroversial be

be claimed as a miracle story.

No, no one here asked after, you know, they confirm

that this isn't some kind of dupe or switch, right?

That this man was the one that they all knew to be blind.

He's now healed.

With that now settled, they move on to by what powers

this Jesus doing this because he's clearly not doing it from God's power.

They move on to the next thing that needs sort of sought after.

And I think

what's really telling about that is they deny the physical reality itself.

And I think that's

what makes his statement here in verse three so powerful, clinched.

And yet he opened my eyes.

It is that simple for a book that's all about metaphor and complex

theology and and all of these nuances which we say over and over again,

this book is also unbelievably simple.

It's human. It's flesh and blood.

This man, you can you can just imagine this moment where this man says, guys,

I'm not here to debate theology with people.

I'm here to tell you what happened to me.

That's all I've got to say.

I was blind now I see and by the way, the moment he does

that simple reflection of what has happened to him, he's witnessing.

He's discipling.

He's inviting these Pharisees

to question the assumption that they're coming to him with.

I think that that's exactly what John wants us to see

is that evangelism, sharing the faith,

witnessing to what God has done in our life is not some complicated,

messy, scientific process that you need to have a PhD to do.

Now, it's very simply you seeing in your own life

the things that God has done or is doing, and then you simply giving voice to that

to other people as an invitation for them to see the same in their own life.

That's it.

John's not looking here in all of its nuances.

John's not looking to make this more complicated.

That is, I was blind.

Now I see the character of the person

who can make the world right when it's broken is enough for me.

And and that's all that there is to it.

Would you like to be his disciple, too?

Or is this all in jest?

Are you just after chasing windmills?

And that's the question that the Pharisees will quite frankly not answer correctly.

And the same question that we're tempted to answer the same way.

Yeah,

there is I mean, I think one of the takeaways here is that

there is an obviousness to this story.

There's oddness in it.

Jesus makes mud for whatever that may be meant.

And, and perhaps we're not sure any longer what it did or didn't mean.

So we guess at that.

But when it comes term to when it comes

to the act itself,

Jesus encounters a man

who sin is blamed for his condition, and Jesus frees him of that condition

while simultaneously declaring that it was not a sin,

but that he, his life and and the moment

he's in is an opportunity for the glory of God to be seen.

And who can't see it?

The self-righteous.

Everyone else can see it.

Even the blind man can see it.

I know that he's from God, right?

But those who refuse.

And tomorrow, as this story comes to the conclusion, we're going to hear this

pronouncement against blindness, and John will bring it all to kind of ahead

as we see what it really means to see

and and what it means to remain blind.

Well, I just think this is a the I this may be my favorite chapter

in the book of John.

I think it probably is.

It's an important word to make sure

that you join us tomorrow, because it does come to a head.

And that's not just a saying that you make.

That's the reality of what John is trying to do is point us to the head.

He's been taking us somewhere.

Exactly right.

And and the culmination of this story

in a human sense, could simply be.

And we might be tempted to think it's the human aspect.

Like, look at this man who's got his sight back.

Look at this man who's being mistreated by these Pharisees.

I mean, these are real things.

But John wants to show us and make sure to join us tomorrow

to see how this comes together, because John wants us to see that

this all rises and falls upon who Jesus is.

And and your response to who Jesus is

is 100% related to this massive turn

that all of history has taken when God entered reality,

when the light comes into darkness,

the darkness is in its nature transform.

It's change is chased away.

And we're going to discover how that is lived out,

not in theological, grandiose terms in real human lives.

What happens when light and when darkness encounters the light?

When the light comes into it, everything changes.

And John is going to show us that.

Don't miss it tomorrow. Yeah. Hope you can be with us.