Believing Is Seeing Series

Believing is Seeing (John Part 29)

Text: John 9:1-41

There’s an old saying that goes, “Seeing is believing.” But you know sometimes, old sayings are just that… old sayings. The reality is, sometimes, seeing doesn’t equal believing. Sometimes, a person can see something, and still not believe, or believe the wrong things. Some of you… if not all of you have experienced this when you’re trying to witness. A person can be shown the evidence, they can be shown the facts, they can be shown the truth, and still, despite all of those things, still refuse to believe what those facts, and evidence, and truths are pointing too.

And so it’s an interesting thing when you encounter someone who has a belief that’s not based on evidence or facts… or you meet someone who has a world-view, or opinion, that’s contrary to the evidence or that’s not based on the truth. It always makes me ask – “Why do you believe what you believe?” “How do you know what you think you know?” “Why do you hold this view, even though it’s contrary to the evidence?” Especially when something as important as eternity is at stake!

We’re in John 9 this morning, and we’re going to see this exact sort of thing happen. All the evidence, all the facts, all the signs are pointing to the reality that Jesus is God. That’s He’s the Messiah that God promised way back after Adam and Eve fell into sin. But in-spite of all that, the Pharisees are going to continue to believe a lie.

Let’s go ahead and look at our text (READ John 9:1-41).

So what John is saying, and has been saying since chapter one – is that people are blinded by their sin. They are blinded to the truth. They could see the miracles and the signs and wonders with their physical eyes, but they didn’t believe. Men love darkness rather light, so they won’t come to the light, because they love their darkness. Man in his natural state is dead in sin and trespasses. He is blind to spiritual truth. He is an enemy of God. He is totally against God, in every way. He does not seek God… in-fact Paul tells us in Romans that there are none who seek God, no not one.

That’s why salvation is all of grace. God gets all the glory. And Jesus has already taught that in John’s Gospel… back in chapter six. Let me just read what He said to refresh your memory.

John 6:37, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.”

John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”

John 6:65, “And He said, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father.’”

Or… if you want to go outside of John’s Gospel, you could look at Luke 10:22, “All things have been handed to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”

And this messes with people. They say, “Why? Why does it have to be that way? Why does Jesus have to reveal Himself? Why can’t a person just put two and two together and come up with this truth on their own?” Well, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that, “The natural person DOE NOT accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he IS NOT able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” In other words, when you’re spiritually dead, you can’t resurrect yourself to spiritual life. You need someone else to do that. When you’re spiritually blind, you can’t see spiritual things… When your mind is darkened by sin, you can’t understand OR ACCEPT spiritual truth.

And so we see Jesus doing signs and wonders and miracles. Things that the long promised Messiah is said to do when He comes. We see Him walk on water, miraculously feed thousands of people, heal the sick, raise the dead, and give sight to a man who was born blind. But the Pharisees still reject Him. They refuse to believe.

Men love darkness rather than light. And because they love darkness, they reject the Light.

Even the Light of the World.

And that’s actually the key to all of what we’re reading here. Jesus says it in verse 5… He said it earlier in John 8:12, “I Am the Light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” So what we see here in this chapter is that this man… this formerly blind man; both literally and figuratively sees the Light. And the Light is going to INCREASINGLY dawn on him… while paralleled to that, it’s going to INCREASINGLY be missed by the Pharisees.