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Mar 22, 2020

Man Born Blind - facing Evil

Preacher: Jess Achenbach

Keywords: evil, healing, blind

Summary:

Story of the man born blind - facing evil

Detail:

We have been preaching through the miracles of Jesus as told by John in his gospel for the last five weeks and you might remember that last week Pastor John spoke on the passage found in the 6th chapter when Jesus walked on water.  He entitled the passage “Don’t Panic”. I love to see how God moves providentially, He knew far in advance that our world would be in a state of panic when planned out what and when we would be preaching on.

This morning we are continuing the same theme of Christ’s miracles, but we are moving a few chapters further along to chapter nine.  The amazing event where He heals the man born blind.  So open if you would with me to the book of John and let’s read John nine. I will be reading out of the New American Standard Version.

Healing the Man Born Blind

9 As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. 2 And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?”

3 Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

4 We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.”

6 When He had said this, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes, 7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated, Sent). So he went away and washed, and came back seeing.

8 Therefore the neighbors, and those who previously saw him as a beggar, were saying, “Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?” 9 Others were saying, “This is he,” still others were saying, “No, but he is like him.” [a]He kept saying, “I am the one.”

10 So they were saying to him, “How then were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man who is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash’; so I went away and washed, and I received sight.” 12 They said to him, “Where is He?” He *said, “I do not know.”

Controversy over the Man / The Pharisees Investigate the Healing

13 They *brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. 15 Then the Pharisees also were asking him again how he received his sight. And he said to them, “He applied clay to my eyes, and I washed, and I see.”

16 Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying, “This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.” But others were saying, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such [b]signs?” And there was a division among them. 17 So they *said to the blind man again, “What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes?” And he said, “He is a prophet.”

18 The Jews then did not believe it of him, that he had been blind and had received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight, 19 and questioned them, saying, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?”

20 His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21 but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be [c]Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. 23 For this reason his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

24 So a second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, “Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner.” 25 He then answered, “Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26 So they said to him, “What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?”

27 He answered them, “I told you already and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again? You do not want to become His disciples too, do you?” 28 They reviled him and said, “You are His disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from.”

30 The man answered and said to them, “Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him. 32 [d]Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.”

34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?” So they put him out.

Jesus Affirms His Deity

35 Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “Who is He, [e]Lord, that I may believe in Him?”

37 Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” 38 And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. 39 And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”

40 Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but [f]since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

This chapter in a nutshell, Jesus comes across a blind man, heals him, the Pharisees sniff it out and make trouble for the guy and then after they ban him from the synagogue, Jesus finds him and tells the man who He really is – the Messiah.  But the Story starts actually just a little bit before this and for that we need to look in Chapter eight.  At the beginning of the Chapter the Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus with the woman found in adultery but then at the end of the Chapter they are trying to get Jesus to tell them who He is.  Let’s look at chapter 8 verse 56- 58.

56 Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

Why were they mad?  Was it because He said that He had seen Abraham?  No, in fact we can see in the Greek, the words “was born” is better translated “existence”, and the word “before” comes from the word meaning superior or first.  So it would sound more like Jesus was saying “I was before, and better than or superior to Abraham”.

Because of that we see that Jesus has had to slip away from the temple grounds because His claim that He was God.  The “I AM” caused the religious leaders to flip out and try and kill Him. 

From there he leaves the temple and as he comes out, he encounters the blind man.  Here He is in danger and he pauses to take the time to heal this man.  I can’t help but relate that to our current situation with the Covid-19 danger that is on the loose right now.  Here at Mosaic we are not being careless, in fact we are obeying the recommendations of our local and national leaders to not meet in groups larger than ten, and we are also encouraging all of you to follow safe practices, but we know where we are going when we die. We have this assurance, and for that reason, if there are those that need our help, we followers of Christ have dedicated our lives to Him and choose to do as he commands us.  Later on, in this same book John says, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends”. John 15:13

Our goal is not to die, but also not to live in fear.  About a month ago I was taking a close friend to the airport where he was leaving to enter a tough situation for several years. In my devotions that morning ( I am reading through the Bible in a year)  The Psalm of the day was Psalm 23 and I was reminded that “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil” and I repeated those words to him.  His reply caused me to really pause and think, he said “I don’t have to fear it, but there is no doubt, I will face it”.  

If things go as somewhat as they have in Italy with the spread of the virus, it is very possible that things might get much worse before they get better.  Hopefully not!  But I rest in this and in the words found in the first chapter of James 1:2-3 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance”.  Regardless of our circumstances we have the privilege to choose joy because of the hope that we have.

Now that we have established the scene of what is going on around this situation lets dive in a little deeper to the text.

PART I

The disciples ask Jesus was it this man’s sin that that caused him to be born blind or was it the cause of his parents?  The religious leaders during this time had different groups that had different beliefs about all parts of scripture and they would debate them, one of the ideas was that you could sin in the womb, they would argue about the minutia of sin and the law.  So the disciples just assumed that it was a theological reason that he was blind. Maybe they were hoping Jesus would solve the debate for them.

One thought is that his blindness could have been caused by an STD called Gonorrhea.  Here is what the CDC says about it: If a pregnant woman has gonorrhea, she may give the infection to her baby as the baby passes through the birth canal during delivery. This can cause blindness, joint infection, or a life-threatening blood infection in the baby. And this is in the day and age when we have medication to treat such things that has been mostly eliminated here in the US but is still fairly common in third world countries.  At the time it could very well have been the intent of the question, what it some what that this guy sinned in the womb, or was it that his parents fooled around with other partners and got an STD that made him blind.  Either way sin must have been involved right?

Jesus’ answer is strait forward.  Neither! He doesn’t fall into the argument of who is to blame, but instead brings it to another idea of purpose.  The purpose of the blindness was so that: Verse 3 “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him”.

Life is filled with suffering; we have the opportunity to bring glory to God in spite of our suffering.  Last month as I was reading through Job in my morning devotions, I read again Job 13:15a “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him”.

Jesus tells us that it happed that the works of God might be displayed in HIM.  Again, John showing us that Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus makes the statement that “I am the light of the world” speaking both (in this case) figuratively and spiritually.  He is bringing light to the eyes of the blind man, and eventually we see at the end of the chapter, spiritual light to his life.

Here then Jesus makes mud out of some spit, puts it on the guy’s eyes and tells him to go off to the pool called Siloam and wash. 

Just a couple of points, why would Jesus use his spit?  Well there are a lot of different theories, because Jesus did this several different times in other passages where he used spit.  One possible reason is that at the time the Jews thought that the spittle of the firstborn had some sort of healing properties, so perhaps he was making a statement with that.  It sure seems odd, surely not social distancing. 

As for the pool, this was quite a place, it was called sent because it was created during the time of Hezekiah while he was defending Jerusalem.  They moved the water through a tunnel to keep it out of the hands of invaders, the water was “Sent” into the city.  So, the man goes, washes and receives his sight.

PART II

In the chapter we see these headings that were put in, it starts at verse one through twelve and the heading is “Healing the Man Born Blind”.  Then in verse thirteen the header of that section is “Controversy over the Man” but I like the heading that is found in the NIV here and theirs calls it “The Pharisees Investigate the Healing”.  It really seems to be that idea where they are out to get Jesus and they have lost all sense of right and wrong; they are just trying to prove their position.

John wrote his gospel to show that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, and we can see that through the book the Pharisees get angry with Jesus and that anger grows up until the end when they crucify Him.  We see here part of that process where they are searching out Jesus and trying to trap him like in chapter 8 when they brought the woman caught in adultery to Him.

Twenty five years ago while I was working in Alaska, there was a coworker that was so annoying, he was a “know it all” and he was always telling us what to do, even though he didn’t have the authority to do it.  Everyone was irritated, but I really let it get under my skin.  It got to the point where I was just looking for an offense.  He would do something that anyone else would do, and it wouldn’t bother me if they did it, but because of my attitude about this guy if he did it I would go ballistic, it got worse and worse until things really blew up.  It was needless, but I think that is what was happening to the Pharisees here.  They were so irate that anything Jesus did set them off to the point where it seems they were following Him around trying to find any little thing that He did.  And what they accuse Jesus here of doing is breaking the Sabbath law so that they can use it to get rid of Him.  The funny thing is, it wasn’t a sin to heal on the Sabbath, but the rule was you could only heal “whenever there is doubt whether life is in danger, this overrides the Sabbath” (m. Yoma 8:6; cf. b. Yoma 84b-85b; Lohse 1971:14-15).

During this period the religious leaders had a lot of power.  The synagogue was a main center of business and social encounters.  Over centuries of time they had refined the Sabbath laws to be so restrictive that life on the Sabbath had to have been horrible.  Things haven’t changed either.  Candice and I live a few blocks away from one of the very few Orthodox synagogues in the area.  They cannot turn on a light switch, or off for that matter, they all walk to worship on Saturday.  In New York where there is such a high concentration of Orthodox Jews, they will often hire a Shabbat Goy (gentile) to come and turn on their lights or do chores around the house. 

In doing research about this, I found out that now there are settings on smart ovens and refrigerators that cause the lights and any beeps to be disabled during Sabbath. You see opening a door on the oven would cause the light to go on and that would constitute work.

Five years ago today on March 22nd 2015 the NY daily news posted an article about a house fire in Brooklyn that had been caused the day before by a warming plate in an orthodox Jewish home.  They left the plate on to keep the food warm for Shabbat on Friday because they have such limited ability to prepare food on Sabbath.  The hot plate malfunctioned causing a fire that killed seven of their children.

These were real laws that had real effect. In New Testament times if you were thrown out of the temple you very likely had significant social ramifications, as well as economic.  People believed that you were cursed and wouldn’t bring you business, and they didn’t want to associate with you and end up with the same fate.  It was a real threat to most people, but obviously not so bad for the guy that had been healed.  Since he was blind, and they already believed him to be a sinner or cursed because of sin - he probably wasn’t allowed much anyway.  But after he is healed, all the people that are around, they began to question him.  Finding out that it really was the same guy, they go and get the Pharisees and fill them in on the juicy news and then THEY come out and really start grilling him.

After he tells the religious leaders how he was healed, they try and get him to say that Jesus was a sinner because of the whole “healing on the Sabbath”, but the man replied, “He is a prophet”.  The Pharisees are bound and determined to get someone to call Jesus a sinner, so they drag out his parents.  Fearing that they will be thrown out of the synagogue they just point back to their son.  2 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”.

I am sure they must have been so conflicted, if my son was born blind and was a shameful beggar, then was healed I would want to be rejoicing not dragged into some political argument. 

So the religious leaders drag him back and continue to grill him. 

24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”

25 He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”

If you want to irritate your opponent, mock him a little.  That will rile them up.

28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”

30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes.

This guy was a comedian, maybe it was because he had nothing to lose.  But he is not going to be pushed around by these guys.  He is calling it like he sees it.  LITERALLY!

Their response is to mock him and then throw him out.

 

PART III - Spiritual Blindness

Jesus seeks out the man after the story gets back to him and he asks a question.  “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”.   He doesn’t ask what is the son of man, but rather, who is it?  So that I can believe.  Belief here is not just an intellectual or logical understanding.  It is a full trust in the Man (Jesus) as the Messiah.   For him it seems like it would be a short leap of faith, he had already acknowledged Him as at least a prophet to the religious leaders, then his next step is to worship Him.

Jesus used the healing of physical blindness to reveal the need to be healed of the much more serious situation, to be healed from spiritual blindness.

Of course, there were some Pharisees with him and then:

39Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

The know it all leaders were convinced in their hearts that they could follow the law and that was their ticket in.  They claimed to have sight, but they hardened their hearts to Jesus.  They refused to have humility and recognize their need for Him.  While the blind man was humbled, and his eyes were opened spiritually and physically.

Where is your heart?  The spiritual leaders accused the blind man of being a sinner, but the real sin was anger, arrogance, pride and in their own understanding. 

Our three points from today are this:

Jesus took his time for everyone, in this current climate of disaster our job in being Christ like is to follow His example, the classic “WWJD”

Don’t be fearful of the world our hope is in Jesus, stand for him and you will end up with the ultimate healing – Spiritual health

Lastly, don’t be arrogant, perhaps your perspective on Jesus is based on your own understanding of who you think he is, and like the pharisees you might be completely wrong.