"When the Light Breaks In!" (Middlebrooks) | John 9:1-23

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A reading from John chapter nine, verses one through twenty three.

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.

And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned?

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

Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

We must work 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.

Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva.

Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Silom, which means scent.

So he went and washed and came back seeing.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?

Some said it is he.

Others said no, but he is like him.

He kept saying, I am the man.

So they said to him, Then how are your eyes opened?

He answered, The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, Go to Siloam and wash.

So I went and washed and received my sight.

They said to him, Where is he?

He said, I do not know.

They brought to the Pharisees the man that they had formerly been blind.

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

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

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

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

And there was a division among them.

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

He said, He is a prophet.

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, Is this your son who you say was born blind?

How then does he now see?

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

But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes.

Ask him, he is of age, he will speak for himself.

His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.

Therefore his parents said, He is of age, ask him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks, Hilda.

Good morning.

My name is Chad Middlebrooks, and I do add my welcome to Steve's.

I'm one of the pastors here on staff.

And if you remember from last week, as we continue our series here in John's Gospel, Jesus left the temple hiding from the Jews who wanted to stone him.

And as you just heard read, Jesus doesn't go far before his eyes fall on a man who has never seen the light of day.

And the one who had just declared, I am the light of the world, is about to show what that really means.

And so let's go before the Lord this morning and ask him to open our eyes that we might see afresh, maybe for some of us for the first time, the beauty and the glory of Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Oh Heavenly Father, we do come this morning needing to be reminded of your love.

Deep, vast, unfailing.

Father, some of us come in here hurting this morning.

Others of us wondering if you even notice us.

Would you open our eyes as we hear your word preached?

And Lord, where we're blind to what is true about you, or even what's true about ourselves, Lord, would you shine your light graciously upon us?

Lord, let us leave here seeing more clearly our Savior and His work on our behalf.

We pray it in Christ's name.

Amen.

When the Norwegian town of Rukon tucked in a deep valley, the mountains blocked the sun from the town square from mid-September all the way to the end of March.

And for decades, residents rode the cable car that went to the mountaintop just to have a few moments in the sunlight.

But then in 2013, the town installed giant computer-controlled mirrors high on the mountainside that tracked the sun, reflected a beam of light down into the town square.

Now, imagine six months of living in the shadows, no sunlight directly upon you.

Notice what had to happen in Ruchon.

The valley couldn't produce the light that it needed.

It had to come from above.

It had to be broken in and come down upon them from outside of themselves.

That's the picture that we see here in John chapter 9.

John 9 · chapter mention

Jesus is walking away from the very place of which everyone should know who he is.

But as he leaves, he sees a man who has lived his entire life in darkness, for the light is about to break in.

And when it does, it will expose some things that people would much rather leave hidden in the shadows.

This story begins with a question that every one of us in this room has asked before.

Why?

Why is life so hard?

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why doesn't God just do something about it?

And when the pain gets personal, the questions get sharper.

Why this diagnosis?

Why my child?

Why me?

Why now?

See, every why question carries assumptions that we rarely examine.

We don't look at our assumptions, we look through our assumptions.

And this morning, as you see in your outline, we're going to see that when the light of the world breaks in, Jesus does three things.

He reveals our misguided assumptions, he displays his sovereign power, and he exposes our true allegiances.

So look back with me at verse 1 as Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.

Notice that word saw.

The man says nothing to Jesus.

He doesn't ask Jesus for anything.

He's a beggar.

He's used to being ignored his entire life.

And yet Jesus sees him.

And something in the way that Jesus looks upon this man, the disciples notice it and it unsettles them.

And so they ask the question Rabbi, who sinned?

This man or his parents that he was born blind?

In other words, why was he born this way?

Who sinned?

Do you see what they already assumed?

The question's not whether sin is behind this, they're convinced of that.

The question is, whose fault is it?

And in that moment, a man who spent his entire life in darkness becomes a test case, a theological puzzle to solve.

Discussed in the third person as he sits right there among them.

But we do this too.

We turn people into case studies, but this man is not a case.

He's a man created in the image of God with a story and a God who notices him.

But the instincts of the disciples here is as old as the book of Job.

If you'll remember Job's friends and how they jumped in on Job's situation after he lost his children, his wealth, and his health, and watching him lose his misfortune, they shared their logic regarding his situation.

Well, God is just, you're suffering, so you must have sinned.

Pretty easy.

But Job, even in estimating his own situation, erred in the opposite direction.

As he said, I'm righteous.

And he demanded that God explain himself for what had happened.

Both sides asking the why question, certain that the answer must lay in somebody's record.

But Jesus confronts this theology, this idea in Luke chapter 13.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

When people tell him about Galileans that Pilate had killed in the midst of them making their sacrifices.

And then he added that 18 people were crushed when the tower of Siloam fell upon them.

Do you think they were worse sinners than everyone else?

Jesus asks.

No.

But then he adds, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Jesus refuses to let suffering be a ranking system as if we could discern the cause of another person's pain and make a judgment about that.

One pastor observes that we tend to assume that the why question can be answered in one of two ways, but both of them are false.

The first way that we can answer the why question is the way of anger.

This is unfair.

God has no business doing this and allowing this in my life.

Someone needs to answer for this.

And so we get angry and we blame.

We blame our parents, we blame our boss, our teacher, or another group for the circumstances that we're facing.

But the second way that we tend to assume the why question can be answered is the way of guilt.

Well, I must have done something, and now I'm paying for it.

The disciples are in this camp.

And you and I often live in this camp as well, of guilt.

Even without admitting it.

Because even if unspoken, we often feel as though God has his clipboard out and he's looking over us, just watching to catch us in the act.

But there's even something that's much deeper, I think, even underneath the why question and our assumptions.

It's quiet arrogance.

We put God on the sand as if he owes us an explanation for what we're walking through in this life.

We assumed that we were promised a comfortable and easy life, and somehow that's been taken away from us.

But that assumption forgets what happens at the beginning of the Bible.

Genesis 3 offers us a different story and a different summary.

Because it was us who turned away from God, the one who created us in his image, and the world fell apart when we did.

The wonder isn't that there's suffering in this world and that you and I experience pain and suffering and loss in this world.

No, the wonder is that in spite of sin, that there's any light that breaks in at all.

Okay, you may be thinking, well, if guilt is not the answer, doesn't Scripture say that God disciplines those that he loves?

And yes, it does.

Hebrews 12, Proverbs 3, among other places.

There are seasons when God uses hardship to correct his children.

And when he does, though, it is rooted in his love for his children, not his wrath.

But there is a line that you and I dare not cross.

It's one thing to examine our own hearts when we're facing hardship and pain and ask if there's any unrepentant sin that we have not confessed.

But it is another to look at someone else's suffering and make our own judgments about it.

That's above our pay grade.

And when we try, we stand in the same shoes as the disciples here and Job's friends.

Okay, let's go back to the disciples' original question and look at Jesus' answer.

They asked about the cause.

Who sinned?

But Jesus answers with a purpose.

This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Jesus isn't denying that we live in a broken world, and he's also not denying that there's an enemy that wants to destroy us.

But he moves from the question, who's to blame, to what will God do with it?

And don't hear cruelty in that response by Jesus, as if he's using this man as a prop.

Now here's the honest part because when we want God to tell us when we're walking through our own suffering, the specifics behind why he's doing what he's doing, don't we?

And he doesn't often do that.

My thoughts are not your thoughts.

Your ways are not my ways, he says in Isaiah 55.

But for those who are in Christ, here's what we can know is true.

For those who love Christ, God takes all things in our lives, both the good and the bad from our vantage point.

And he uses them to display his glory and to do good in our lives.

He uses our weakness to display his power and his strength to the world.

And he turns what we've been through that we might comfort others.

So that we can comfort those in affliction with the comfort that we ourselves have received by his spirit.

You see, nothing is too dark for the light to break in.

God is so determined to be seen for who he is that he will take a lifetime of blindness and turn it into the very thing that gets a whole city talking about it.

And we're talking about it over 2,000 years later.

You think God had a purpose in this man's life?

But maybe you have quietly wondered whether your suffering is God paying you back for something you did.

Hear this this morning, brothers and sisters.

For the believer, there is this promise that we can stake our lives upon, and that is we will never be punished for our sin.

Because every ounce of our sin and the punishment fell on Christ at the cross.

It's been paid for.

And so when suffering comes into our lives, it is never punishment.

And it is never his wrath.

Now it may be a loving Father's correction of us when we drift away from Him.

Or it may be His way of building perseverance and character and hope in a way that it could not happen otherwise.

But either way, nothing is random in our lives.

And nothing is without purpose.

And nothing is wasted.

Because God is at work.

I would encourage you, maybe even this afternoon, for further study, to go to Hebrews 12, Romans chapter 5, 2 Corinthians 1.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Okay, so Jesus moves us now from analysis to action.

Look at what he says in verse 4.

We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.

For night is coming when no one can work.

Notice that word we.

He's now taking the disciples from the sidelines and he's putting them into the game.

And the works of him who sent me are the works to put his glory and his mercy on display.

Because Jesus says that window for those works to be displayed and seen is short.

And so their question, who's to blame?

That's a spectator's question.

Jesus offers a participant's question.

What work is there to do while the light is here?

And he gives us the answer and our motivation to work in verse 5.

As long as Jesus is in the world, he is the light of the world.

And for most of human history, the four-minute mile was treated like a wall.

No one could achieve that.

Experts had settled the matter.

The human body just could not do it.

But on May 6, 1954, in Oxford, Roger Bannister ran the mile in three minutes and 59 seconds.

Within six weeks, another person ran it and broke it.

And within a few years, many people broke the four-minute mile.

The barrier was never in the human body, it was in the assumption.

And once someone broke it, everyone could see what had been wrong all along.

And that's what Jesus is doing in these first five verses.

For as long as anyone could remember, the assumption was that suffering was a scoreboard.

And that there's a sin that matches every single sorrow, one for one.

But Jesus says it was not that this man sinned, nor his parents.

And so the wall comes down.

Suffering is not a scoreboard, and we were never meant to see it as such.

And so, as believers, we are free to stop keeping score with our own pain or with the pain of others around us.

And we can do the Lord's work in moving towards people in their pain, in their suffering, with compassion instead of standing back and making our own judgments.

With his disciples, he's very direct.

You're asking the wrong question, you're making the wrong assumption.

But with the blind beggar, he moves with tenderness and compassion to him.

He doesn't lecture the beggar about the problem of evil.

No, he gets down in the dust.

He moves towards this man.

He stoops low.

Which brings us to the second point of what the light does when it breaks in.

It displays his sovereign power.

Verse 6 tells us that Jesus spit on the ground, he made mud, and he put it on the man's eyes.

And then he says, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which John tells us means sent.

Now think about the man for a moment.

He cannot see.

He has mud caked on his eyes, and now he has to feel his way through the streets of Jerusalem to find this pool that he is to go wash in.

All the while, Jesus didn't explain one thing to this man, and he didn't promise him one thing.

John simply says, so he went and washed and came back seeing.

That's the epitome of blind obedience.

This man had to obey in the dark.

His sight came after his obedience, not before.

Some of you here this morning are in this very place that this blind beggar was in.

God's given you the next step that he wants you to take, but he isn't given one reason of why he wants you to do it.

There's mud on your eyes, as it were.

You have no idea what God's up to, and everyone else around you is giving their theories.

God is asking you to trust and to obey him in faith.

Go and wash.

Not because you understand everything, but because the one who is sending you is the very one who made you in his image and who brought light into darkness.

This is the sixth of seven signs that John records here in his gospel, and the previous five have all pointed to who Jesus is.

But this sixth sign points back to the prophets.

Because Isaiah promised that when God came to save his people, he would open the eyes of the blind.

Isaiah 35.

And here we see it happening in broad daylight for everyone to see.

But notice the response after this miracle.

The neighbors who've walked past this Man for years, begin to argue about who he is.

Verse 8 Isn't this the guy who used to beg and sit and we walk past him?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's him.

No, no, no, no, that's not him.

That's that's somebody he just looks like him, but that's not him.

In the middle of this argument about his own identity, the man has to cut in and say, I'm that man.

Now imagine finally getting your sight after decades of being blind, and the first thing you have to do is prove your existence.

The world around him cannot make sense of what has just happened.

And so they ask him, How?

How did this happen?

The man called Jesus made mud, put it on my eyes, told me to go wash.

And then they ask, Well, where is he?

I don't know.

I've been seen for five minutes.

You're the one that can see.

You don't should know where he went.

All I know is what just happened to me.

I can see.

This man did nothing to open his eyes.

And neither can we.

Physical, spiritual blindness come only from the merciful, gracious, sovereign, and powerful hand of God.

Where are you still trying to dig yourself out of your circumstances?

By trying harder, being better, trying to figure it all out on your own.

You can't see your way out of darkness any more than this man could.

Help has to come from the outside.

And some of us take the opposite route, just like the neighbors did.

A man who could not see, but now can see, and all they can do is argue that whether it happened or not.

It's much easier to debate a miracle than to allow yourself to be changed by it.

And now this man who's just been brought up out of darkness is about to be put on the stand.

And that's the third thing that the light does when it breaks in.

It exposes our true allegiances.

So first, it starts with the Pharisees exposing their allegiance to their system of rules.

Beginning of verse 13, the neighbors bring this man to the Pharisees, and John slips this detail into the story.

It was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud.

Now, in the Pharisees' rule book, healing could only happen if it was a life or death situation.

And this situation did not warrant it.

So that's a check against Jesus.

Furthermore, Jesus made mud in the clay.

He was needing, which is work.

Strike two.

And so a man born blind who now stands in front of the Pharisees and can see.

But their rule book says that the one who healed him is a sinner because he broke the rules.

And they're split on the decision.

This man's not from God because he doesn't keep the Sabbath.

But then others say, well, how can a sinner do such signs?

The evidence is never in doubt.

And yet they would rather keep their system intact than to acknowledge and see with the evidence before them and what it's pointing to.

This is the epitome of hard-heartedness.

They don't lack the evidence.

They lack the willingness to surrender to what it's pointing to, and that is that Jesus is the very Son of God.

Because if they surrender to that, they stand to lose their entire system that they built their life around.

Their standing in the community and their power and control.

And that's too much for them to lay down.

But next, we see here, even in this whole idea that John's telling two stories at once.

Because there's a man here who is physically blind and he can now see.

And there are men here who have perfect eyesight, but are blind as they can be.

The Pharisees are spiritually blind to their sin.

They weren't irreligious.

They were actually good men seeking after God.

And that's what makes this passage a little uncomfortable for many of us who have grown up in the church.

We need our spiritual eyes to be opened to see the full depth of our sin.

Even the mixed motives behind the good that we do as good Christians, the service that we give others, the generosity that we give.

Here's the paradox.

That when our sinfulness becomes real to us, more than just a doctrinal statement that we assent to, but we see the depth of our sin, then the reality of reliance on God's grace and his mercy begins to change us from the inside out.

Because if all you see is that you're basically a good person, you're fine compared to everyone else, then grace is just a nice accessory to add to your life.

But if you see your hopelessness and your helplessness apart from Christ, then grace is oxygen that you must have to live.

Next, we see this exposure of the parrots and their exposure, their loyalty to safety.

Look at when the Pharisees called them in, they confirmed the facts.

Yes, this is our son.

Yes, he was born blind.

But how he's able to see and who did it, we have no idea.

He's a big boy, go ask him.

John tells us why they were afraid, though.

Because the leaders had already said anyone who confesses Jesus as the Christ is going to be kicked out of the synagogue.

And that is a big deal in that day.

Because the synagogue was the hub of community.

It's not only where you worshiped, it could affect your work, your standing, your relationships.

And so they stand to lose a lot if they admit to this.

But they're valuing their security and their comfort over surrendering to the very one who has just opened the eyes of their son.

But we have our own version of this.

Out of fear, we can hold back what we know is true for our own security and our own standing, and also to keep the peace.

Maybe it's at the dinner table with family members, whether it's in work, whether it's in our marriage or in our friendships.

Where are we aligning our hearts with the things of this world?

Not willing to surrender to the Lord Jesus.

And then third, look at the man himself.

His loyalty is exposed to what he has seen and what he's experienced.

Listen to how he answers across these verses.

To the neighbors, the identity of Jesus is the man called Jesus.

And then when the prophet, the Pharisees press him, Jesus is a prophet.

This man, his testimony is taking shape.

He's on a journey.

It's not complete yet.

But he has one thing.

It is what he's seen.

I went and I washed, and now I see.

Now the pressure of that courtroom didn't create what came out of that man in anger.

It simply revealed it.

And that's what light does in this scene here in John 9.

The healing puts everyone under cross-examination, exposing everyone to where their true loyalty lies.

The Pharisees, their moral system and code, to his parents, their security and safety in the synagogue.

This man, what he has seen.

Now we're stopping this morning in verse 23, and we're going to leave this man in the middle of his journey, because that's what John does.

But next week we're going to watch as this road continues and the pressure gets turned up on this man.

Now we have to be honest because we know that being exposed does not always feel like good news, does it?

But ask yourself honestly this morning.

When the pressure gets turned up, when trials, when hardship, when suffering, when loss hit your heart, what do you protect first?

Is it your reputation?

Is it your comfort?

Is it your family, your relationships?

Or is it what you've seen Jesus do?

The light doesn't expose us to leave us in our guilt and shame.

It exposes us to save us and to free us.

And this is why this is good news this morning.

Because the same Jesus who opened this man's eyes would be lifted up on a cross, and he will die for the very sins that the disciples were trying to assign to those around them.

Only through the cross can Jesus buy back sinners out of slavery.

That's what redemption means.

But our suffering is often not going to make sense to us.

It's going to confuse us.

But on Good Friday, the suffering that doesn't make sense to us is met by a suffering that makes complete sense.

That the innocent, perfect Lamb of God suffered and was slain in the place of guilty sinners like you and I.

We don't have to wonder whether God understands our pain.

The light of the world went down to the valley of the shadow of death so that you and I would not have to be there alone.

Do you see Jesus noticing you this morning?

In your hurt, in your loss, in your confusion, in your fear, in your self-righteousness.

Do you see?

See, when you understand your suffering in light of the cross, you stop needing to explain your own suffering or even others around you.

You're free to move towards them and not have all the answers.

You can visit that person and say, I don't know why this is happening, but I'm here.

You can sit in the hospital room and save the Pat Bible verses until they actually ask you for them.

You can take the meal to that person that is grieving and hurting and pray with them instead of praying at them.

And you can weep with those who are struggling.

Just as Jesus did, his buddy Lazarus at his tomb.

But it also frees us in our own pain.

Meaning that we don't have to fake it with a God as good smile when we're walking through tough times.

We can bring our honest questions before the one who's already carried the worst of it and knows every detail about it.

So remember Rukon, the people in the valley, they didn't produce the light that shone down in the town square.

It came from a source that they couldn't reach, reflected down.

That's where we are.

The light has come, but he hasn't come to explain every shadow that we find ourselves in.

But this blind man's story, as we see this morning, is not finished.

And neither is ours.

But if the light of the world has looked upon you and seen you, then you have every reason to go and reflect that light to those around you who need to have their darkness exposed.

So that Christ may be glorified and they may be free to experience the goodness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, you are the light of the world.

And you do see us.

So, Father, would you open our eyes afresh to what is true?

And would you forgive us for the ways that we have judged instead of loving others that you've put in our lives?

Lord, would you use even the pain that we experience in our lives to comfort others?

Lord, teach us to trust you in the dark places until the day that we see you face to face, and what a day it will be.

Lord, give us confidence, give us trust to obey, even when we haven't all figured out.

We pray this for your glory and for our good in Christ's name.

Amen.