Jesus Comes From God

John 9: Jesus Comes from God.

The tragic thing at the beginning of this story is how the disciples see the same man begging as Jesus does, but their reaction to him is so very different. They look at him and ask “Master, who sinned- this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind like this?”

Do you see the difference? What a contrast between the heart of Jesus, moved with compassion to make a difference, and the heart of his friends, who just wanted to know “Who sinned?”

Years ago a pastor called David Ferguson made his first visit to an AIDS clinic. He was briefed that among the patients there would be healthcare workers who had contracted the disease through their duties, others who had received contaminated blood through transfusion, together with drug users who had shared needles, and those who had got the disease because of a homosexual or promiscuous lifestyle. Ferguson said,

“We went to the clinic & began to enter the rooms. Painfully I found inside me that day a re-enactment of the John 9 passage. I found that as I walked into many of those rooms, the first question in my mind was “I wonder how he caught it? I wonder how she got it.” I was just like those disciples wanting to know “Who sinned?” And it broke my heart. Painfully, I was convicted that Christ would have walked into every one of those rooms already knowing everything about the people in them, and His heart would have only been moved with compassion, ministering grace to those in need.’

Jesus looked at this man, and saw someone God could work a miracle in! Jesus said it wasn’t because of sin, but so that God could do something glorious that this had happened. It was to make GOD’S PLAN SHOWN.

Maybe there’s something troubling you today. Jesus can make God’s plan clear. Bring God’s purposes to life in you. He doesn’t want to come to condemn or judge us, he wants to bring healing to our point of need- if we honestly admit it. He wants God’s plan to be shown in your life! You say ‘I can’t see how God can help me.’ You only get to see when you are led by the one who said “I am the light of the world!”

Jesus decided by sovereign divine initiative to heal the man - and He did. Jesus healed by GOD’S POWER ALONE. Imagine if you were there when this happened, watching it. Having to describe it like John does for us. “Well Jesus walked up to this blind man and SPAT on the ground. Then he reached down to the dust and SPAT a bit more. Then he made some little mud pies with the spit. Ad he rolled them round a bit with his fingers, then he picked up the spitty muddy pies and covered the blind man’s eyes with them! And this blind man is shouting, “Who’s that? What’s going on? Get this stuff off my eyes! This is gross!”

Then Jesus said,’ You go and get it off yourself, go to the pool called Sent.’

‘You mean the one outside the temple, right at the other end of the city, right at the bottom of the hill?”

“Right.”

And he goes, probably feeling like someone’s played a dirty joke on him- and he washes, and is healed.

Not healed by spit, not healed by mud, but healed by God’s power alone. For the first time ever, he sees the world. Imagine that! He was born blind!

He had never seen anything before! Whether Jesus made new eyes for him, or did something that made the old one work, I don’t know. But this tells me Jesus can heal how he chooses to heal. It’s not some formula he used here. Jesus didn’t always make mud pies and spit. Sometimes he did it with a touch, other times with a gentle word, other times he’d heal with a shout, or at a distance. But it’s not the mud, the spit or the pool of Siloam that brings the healing. The healer brings the healing. It’s Jesus! God’s power alone.

In the life of this blind man.

God’s plan is being shown.

Others wrote him off, passed him by every day. But Jesus had compassion on him, cared for him.

God’s power alone made the difference to this man.

He went to his neighbours - no-one having to help him- no stick to guide him. They were amazed! “This can’t be- or can it?” So they reported it to the Pharisees for them see what they thought.

And Jesus fades into the background now in the story for a little while as we see what happened when the blind man was questioned by the Pharisees.