Believing is Seeing!
John 9
John 9:35-41
35 Jesus…said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"
36 "Who is he, sir?" the man asked. "Tell me so that I may believe in him."
37 Jesus said, "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you."
38 Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him.
39 Jesus 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.
(NIV)
Find five things that have green in them:
With a GREEN mindset, you’ll find that GREEN jumps out at you.
We SEE what we are LOOKING for!
A certain pastor observed a little girl standing outside the preschool Sunday school classroom between Sunday school and worship, waiting for her parents to come and pick her up for "big church." The pastor noticed that she clutched a big storybook under her arm with the title "Jonah and the Whale."
Feeling mischievous, he knelt beside the girl and asked, "What’s that you have in your hand?"
"This is my storybook about Jonah and the whale," she answered.
"Tell me something," he continued, "do you believe that story about Jonah and the whale?"
The girl said, "Why, of course I believe it!"
The pastor inquired further, "You really believe a man can be swallowed up by a big whale, stay inside him all that time, and come out okay?"
She declared, "Yes! This story is in the Bible, and we talked about it in Sunday school today."
Then the pastor asked, "Can you prove to me this story is true?"
She thought for a moment and then said, "Well, when I get to heaven, I’ll ask Jonah."
Finally the pastor asked, "What if Jonah’s not in heaven?"
The girl put her hands on her hips and sternly declared, "Then YOU can ask him!"
Believing is SEEING!
The African Impala can jump to a height of over 10 feet and cover a distance of greater than 30 feet. Yet these magnificent creatures can be kept in an enclosure in any zoo with a 3-foot wall. Why? These animals will not jump if they cannot see where their feet will land.
Believing is SEEING!
1 Corinthians 2:9
9 However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"--
(NIV)
Believing is SEEING!
John 20:26-29
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!"
27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
28 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
29 Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
(NIV)
As with Thomas, so it is with us. We have trouble believing it until we see it. The true of the matter is that we really can never see it until we believe it.
John 7-10 records for us events that happened in the life of Jesus during the Feast of the Tabernacles, one of three festivals every Jewish man was to attend every year. Jesus was not going, and then went secretly, so as not to draw attention to himself. When He did make Himself known, the Pharisees did everything in their power to try and discredit Jesus. They argued, told lies, entrapped a woman they caught in the act of adultery (for some reason, they only brought the woman! Doesn’t it take a man and a woman to commit adultery?), argued some more with Jesus and even tried to stone Him. As Jesus is leaving the temple grounds, going down into the city of Jerusalem, he and His disciples encounter a man who had been blind all his life.
John 9:1-7
1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.
2 His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
3 "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.
4 As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.
5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
6 Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.
7 "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
(NIV)
Sometimes we miss God because we only look for Him within our own limited framework of understanding. Rather than looking for a God that is bigger than our reality, we try to squeeze Him into our narrow vision. That’s what the disciples did here.
Jesus told His friends that this guy was born blind “so the power of God could be seen in him.”
Has it ever occurred to you that your most frustrating situations, your most agonizing pains, your darkest moments, might exist simply for the purpose of God’s power being seen in you? Just a thought.
Our assumptions about God and about reality can keep us from knowing and seeing God. That’s one reason so many people never come to see Him or know Him—He doesn’t fit their preconceived ideas, so they reject Him. But He’s still just as real, just as God.
Look at how Jesus heals the blind man. He could’ve just touched the guy or said some magic words, you know—done something cool and exciting and real holy-looking. But what does He do? He makes mud out of spit! Not exactly the kind of divine Visine I’d expect God to use. But that’s exactly what Jesus does—puts spit-mud on the man’s eyes and tells him to wash it off. No one has ever done this before—it’s not like anyone could say, “Jesus, wait—You’re doing that wrong!”
The man does exactly what Jesus tells him. He goes to the pool of Siloam and washes off the mud. And suddenly, for the very first time since God first set the globe spinning, a man born blind can see. A lot of awesome miracles were done in the Old Testament, but not this one. No one has ever seen a blind man gain sight! Not even the great miracle-working God has ever done such a thing.
But it’s true! The man can see!
What a wonderful miracle! Can you imagine what this man thought as he walked along? The first sight he saw when He washed the mud from his eyes was his own reflection in the pool. He has never seen himself before! He must have looked up and saw for the first time what he had only felt in the past: rocks, plants, trees, friends, sunshine, his own body.
Because the blind man believed and obeyed, he came home seeing. Yet he had no idea what he would see in others as he came home.
These refused to BELIEVE
so they did not SEE:
1) NEIGHBORS (John 9:8-12)
2) PHARISEES(John 9:13-17, 24-24)
The Pharisees were the religious cops of that culture. They were supposed to be the experts on God, and they took great delight in trying to force their own ideas about God onto everyone else. The light of the world stood before them, and because they refused to believe, they were blinded to Him.
3) PARENTS (John 9:18-23)
The parents did attest to the fact that this was their son, and yes he was born blind, but they refused to go into any details concerning the miracle because of a fear of being excommunicated from the synagogue. Being excommunicated from synagogue carried some heavy implications. It essentially meant that the community was forced to shun you. It meant that you lost all privileges to synagogue worship, and as well lost all privileges of the sacrificial system. This was major because the life of the Jew was defined by their religious system. Essentially, being excommunicated meant that you have found yourself in the place of having no true identity, and no means of finding forgiveness of sin. There was no way that you could approach God, or have any relationship with Him, because God cannot have fellowship with sin.
The man born blind knew simply one thing:
John 9:25
25 He replied, “…One thing I do know.
I was blind but now I see!"
(NIV)
“I don’t know the answers to all your questions. I don’t know about Jesus’ background, His education, His credentials, His work experience, His references. I don’t know how it’s possible for the chemicals in spit and dirt to mix and react in such a way that they give sight to a grown man who has never seen anything. I don’t know how such a thing can be explained. But I know that my whole life I saw nothing but darkness. I spent the brightest and sunniest days imprisoned in a blackness I could not escape. I never knew what my parents looked like. I couldn’t imagine what a color like blue or red looked like. But today I saw my parents’ faces for the first time. Today I ran for the first time. Today for the first time, I saw the smile on a child’s face, the beauty of a single lily, the graceful flight of a bird, the sun casting shadows on the side of a mountain. Today for the first time ever I saw my own hands. For the first time I saw my own reflection. Say whatever you want about Jesus or about me. Say whatever you want, believe whatever you want. I have no idea about all that stuff. There is only one truth, one reality, one absolutely undeniable fact that I will stand here and tell you with all confidence that I know for sure: I was blind, and now I see.”
“You don’t have to understand everything to believe in something.” We can know some things without knowing everything. After all, we don’t apply this standard to anything else in life.
When I eat in a restaurant, I don’t know where my food came from. I don’t know who prepared it, what was done to it, or sometimes even what’s in it. I just believe that it will be good.
When you get out on the road in a vehicle, you don’t know who else is on the highway, how long they’ve been driving, how much they’ve had to drink, or if they’re capable of eating fast food, talking on the phone, and driving at the same time--as they’re doing. But it’s a pretty safe guess that most of you got here today in some kind of vehicle.
So why is it that when it comes to eternity--the single most important subject we ever deal with--we have to understand the Holy Trinity? We have to know why God didn’t answer this prayer the way we wanted Him to. We have to know why He hasn’t given us a better job than the one we have. We have to know how He can let disasters happen around the world. We have to understand how saliva mixed with dirt and rinsed off with water can make a blind man see…or do we?
No! Believing is Seeing!
Those who refused to believe it, didn’t see it!
If you’re stumbling in the darkness, I urge you to shift your focus from what is unexplainable to what is undeniable--then you will see Jesus. Our faith rests on truth, not on complete understanding. And the truth is that Believing is seeing. If you refuse to believe, you will be blind. But if you believe, you will see.
