The recipe for healing John 9:1-7
In this passage Jesus heals a man who was born blind. And this in itself is something that should get our attention because this is one of those miracles that no one can fake. I’ve watched these supposed miracle workers who heal lower back pain and all kinds of things that can never be confirmed but I’ve never seen them heal someone who was blind. I’ve seen a news expose on Benny Hinn showing how his people pick and chose those who can get on the stage. They’re very careful not to let anyone get up there who can expose him for what he really is.
There was another guy who got caught using a voice receiver so he could hear the people tell his wife what their problems were. And then when they came up on the stage he told them what they told his wife. And they all thought it was miraculous until he was exposed. But listen, none of these guys would touch someone who was born blind. Some things are just too hard to fake.
I’m not suggesting we try this but imagine what happen if we were to show up at one of these healing meetings with a dead body. What would these faith healers do then? I think the jig would be up. But twice we see Jesus encountering the dead and both times He raised them back to life.
I believe God still heals but I don’t believe He gives anyone the gift of healing. There is a passage in James where we are told to anoint the sick with oil with the idea that God will heal them. So, the question is, are we still to do this? Does God still heal? I think He does, but He doesn’t do it as a fundraiser.
Stuart Taylor told me he had two different women who at two different times were in the hospital and they asked to be anointed with oil and prayed for so God could heal them. And both of these women were very sick and neither of them were expected to last very long. He and the deacons went and prayed as they were asked. The one was released from the hospital the very next day and the other died not long after they prayed. I said, “What did that tell you.” And he said, “That only God knows what He’s doing.”
I believe the miracles we see in this book serve to demonstrate the spiritual lessons they teach and yet there are only seven miracles in the entire book of John. There is the changing of the water into wine, the healing of the nobleman’s son, the curing of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus walking on the water, the restoring of sight to the blind man and the raising of Lazarus, and that’s it. And the purpose of every one of these miracles is to demonstrate who Jesus is and why He came.
Now, we read of a lot of other miracles in the other three gospels and we also notice that John says at the end of this book in chapter 21:25 “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” So, John’s acknowledging that other miracles were performed but these seven specific miracles were chosen so that everyone who would read about them might be led to put their faith in Jesus Christ.
Last week we began to look at the healing of this blind man and you’ll remember that I said that one of the unusual things about this particular miracle was that no one even mentions this guy’s name. And I guess we could say that it doesn’t really matter, because, the purpose of John’s telling us about this miracle is to show us who Jesus is, as much as it’s to demonstrate the reason for these miracles.
And what I mean by that is, the purpose of this miracle is not so much to show us what happened to the blind man as it is to show us what Jesus could and did do. And by this demonstration of His power we can see that He is God come in the flesh. After all, this was no slight of hand trick or someone pretending to be a blind man who was set in the crowd in order to deceive a bunch of gullible people. Everybody knew who the blind man was. I mean, he had probably sat on the same spot begging for most of their lives.
Now, getting back to verse 5 for a minute I want you to see that this is the third time in this book Jesus reminded His disciples that He is the light of the world. In John 1:4 John wrote, “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” And then in John 8:12 it says, “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” And then in verse 5 of this chapter He says the same thing, that He was the light of the world.
Now, listen carefully, He was the light of the world while He was in the world and now, we who belong to Him are the light of the world. I know that probably sounds a little ‘out there’ to say that but listen, we who are believers are here in the place of Jesus. After all, we are the body of Christ.
Flip back to Matthew 5:14 where Jesus is talking about believers and of course He’s referring to everyone who is indwelt by His Holy Spirit and there Jesus says, “Ye are the light of the world.” And so, we who are indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus Christ are to be and to demonstrate the light of Jesus Christ to this world through our lives. So listen, how are we doing so far?
And here in John 9 we could say that Jesus was the light of the world to the blind man who was not only in physical darkness as far as his sight was concerned but was also in spiritual darkness as far as the things of the Lord were concerned. Because this guy doesn’t just get healed of his blindness, he also gets saved from sin.
And I want to point out that this is also an unusual healing because most of the time Jesus just said the word and people were healed but here it says He made clay using dirt and (What did He use for water?) He used His own spit. (I think this was a great miracle, I mean, not only did He heal someone but I think He might have offended a few more.) Can you imagine if the blind man had said, “You’re not going to put any spit on my face.” This would be a really short story, wouldn’t it?
The only other time He did something like this was in Mark 7:33-35 where He healed the man who was deaf and couldn’t talk. It says, “And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers into His ears, and He spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up into heaven, he sighed, and sayeth unto him, Ephphatha, that is, be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plain.” And you notice that it doesn’t say whether something came out of this man’s ears before Jesus touched his tongue and it doesn’t say where Jesus spit. As a matter of fact, we don’t know why He did it this way or any of the details of what happened. It just says that this was what He did and doesn’t explain anything in detail.
Now, there are all kinds of speculations and explanations of why Jesus did what He did. One writer says spit was very commonly used among the ancient world and especially the spit of anyone who was considered popular or famous. I heard on the radio last week that a half eaten cheese sandwich that belonged to either Madona or Brittany Speer sold on E-Bay for seven hundred dollars. So, I guess we haven’t really come all that far.
Pliny was a famous Roman collector of what was called scientific information and he wrote a whole chapter on the use of spit. (Quite a scientist.) He said spit was a sovereign preservative against the poison of serpents and a protection against epilepsy. (So, if I spit on anyone while I’m talking, you can feel free to do whatever you want with it.) Pliny said you could use spit to heal yourself from a crick in the neck and that a fasting grandmother could put a little bit of spit on a baby applying it to its forehead and lips and then it will be safe from disease. And then he goes on to describe all kinds of other diseases that can healed with spit. (I bet you didn’t know how valuable it was.)
There’s been an awful lot written about how Jesus performed this particular miracle by making clay out of dirt and spit. Some have even gone out of their way to explain how Jesus was just accommodating the medical folklore that was common at the time. But, I think we should be very careful when we interpret God’s word based on our opinion of what part of scripture is true and what part is simply cultural, because Jesus never does anything to compromise the word of God to adapt to the culture either here or at any other point in His life or ministry.
So, Jesus made mud using a little bit of spit and dirt. Now, that seems like an unusual thing to do and we might wonder why He did this but then we find that the Jews had several extra-biblical books (Like commentaries) that were used to explain what the various laws meant. And even though they treated them like they were equivalent to scripture, they weren’t.
One of their rules about the Sabbath law (which they got from these books) was that no one was allowed to mix spit and dirt for fear they might offend God by appearing to make bricks. And since this act of healing the blind man took place on the Sabbath it must have really thrown the Pharisees and their kind into a tizzy. I mean, it was obvious that God’s power was used to heal someone but it was done in such a way that they believed that God would be offended.
But while the religious crowd were having their daily conniption fit, it’s rather interesting to see the blind man’s response to Jesus, because he had none. I mean, this guy wasn’t looking for a miracle. After all, he had never known what it felt like to see so he had no way of even knowing what he was missing. And next to the dead people Jesus raised in the other gospels I believe this situation was the most hopeless case Jesus had encountered. I mean, about the only thing this blind man had going for him was, he was in the right place at the right time, even if he didn’t know it.
And do you know the part of the story that baffles me? Jesus mixes this spit and dirt and then puts it on the man’s eyes and the guy doesn’t object. I mean, if a stranger came up and put spit and dirt on your face wouldn’t you say something? And then Jesus told him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam, right? The Pool of Siloam was in the southern end of the city and this guy would have to walk past several other pools to get there. And not only that; but the walk itself would really call for some exertion, especially from a blind man.
So, why was he going? Did you notice that Jesus didn’t even promise to heal him? I mean, as far as we know Jesus had never met this man before and so as far as we know the blind man didn’t even know who was doing all this to him or why he should go where he was sent. He was told where to go and what to do, he went and he was healed.
Now, maybe there’s more to this story than John tells us but this guy seems to be totally acting on faith with very little information. But whatever he knew or believed the end of verse 7 says, “He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.”
What do we learn from this? Well, there are three things that I want you to see. And the first one is, the message he received was simple. It only contained seven words. Jesus said, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam.” There was nothing difficult for him to understand and the gospel is the same. We are told to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to turn from our sin and trust in the Lord to forgive us based on what He’s accomplished on our behalf. There’s nothing to do, nothing to know and nothing to give. Repent and believe; it’s so simple that even a little child can do it and yet because of its simplicity, some of the so-called wisest people of this world miss it completely.
Second, it was personal. It was directed to him and to him alone. I mean, just think of all the people who might have heard what Jesus said to this man, they could have run to the pool with all of their problems but it wouldn’t have done any of them any good.
Third, we also notice that this involved an act of obedience in the sense that he had to go. I mean, nobody else could go for him.
I remember hearing about the Mormon practice of baptism for the dead. They have huge obituary filings in their main temples and you can go there and be baptized for someone who died a hundred years ago. The very concept is absurd. It’s like saying, “I can repent for someone who went to hell hating God.”
And what did the blind man do? As far as we know he went stumbling through the streets doing his best to find his way to this particular pool. I like how an old Puritan writer put it when he said, “He followed Christ blindly.”
So, Jesus mixed spit and dirt and anointed the blind man’s eyes. Does the very idea of someone putting spit on your face offend you? Does it seem like a foolish thing to do? What if I offered to do it for anyone who wore glasses today? In a sense, we probably should react to it because the very idea doesn’t make much sense to us. But, then again, just think about some of the things that we do.
How do we pay our bills at the church? We don’t charge admission, we just take up offerings. And everyone knows how little you get whenever you pass the hat in any crowd. But just think about it, through our offerings we pay our mortgage, the Pastor’s salary, we support missions and there are times when we even take up offerings for someone who has a special need.
We take communion. The world might see us taking communion and think, what are these people doing eating a tiny piece of flat bread and drinking a tiny little bit of grape juice. And we’re doing this why? As an act of obedience we are remembering the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. But it makes no sense to the unsaved mind.
We practice baptism. And to us this is our identification with the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The unsaved might come and see a baptismal service and think, what a waste of time. They got all wet for nothing.
And then there’s the gospel itself. Not only do we preach it here but we send people anywhere in the world to spread the word. I mean, the unsaved might think, how can the death of someone who died two thousand years ago have any affect on anyone today? But listen, our faith in Jesus Christ makes all the difference not only in what we believe but also in how we express our faith. So, washing the dirt out of his eyes at a pool across town may not have made to much sense to this guy but he did it in faith and as an act of obedience and because he did, he was healed.
And then we see the reaction of others to his testimony. Verse 8 says, “The neighbors therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, is not this he that sat and begged? Some said, this is he: others said, he is like him: but he said, I am he. Therefore said they unto him, how were thine eyes opened? He answered and said, a man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, go to the pool of Siloam, and wash, and I went and washed, and I received sight. Then said they unto him, where is He? He said, I know not.”
I get a laugh when I read the part that says in verse 9 that some people didn’t recognize him and the reason I find this part funny is because this has more to do with the fact that he was a blind man than that he looked any different. You see, I don’t think they ever even looked at him before. The fact is, they were as blind as he was.
We don’t know how old this guy was but we do know that he was old enough that many people knew him from hanging around the temple. And we also know that the older people get the harder it is to reach them with the gospel but his age certainly didn’t make a difference.
Over the years there have been some interesting studies done on the age at which people receive the Lord. I don’t think there is a right or wrong age but there are some interesting facts that show when most people get saved.
One study said salvation can happen at around the age of seven or eight but we all know people who have been saved much earlier than that. And then the study said that the number of conversions increased gradually to the age of ten and eleven and then there is a rapid increase to the age of sixteen. And then it declines steeply up to the age of twenty and after the age of thirty, it happens, but it’s very rare.
I read one study that said, “Those who are converted over the age of sixty-five are one in seven hundred thousand.” Listen, it’s not that the power of God is ineffective with this crowd; it’s just that the more people refuse Him, the easier it is to do it the next time. I may have told you before about visiting the lady at the Sackville hospital who was ninety-two years old. When I explained the plan of salvation she very kindly said, “Yes, I know I have to accept the Lord but I don’t want to do it right now.” And she died a week later. Listen, I think she had been saying, not right now, thinking she would do it later, for most of her life. And it became such a habit that it enslaved her mind. She felt comfortable knowing she was going to do it, she just never got around to doing it. That’s why the Bible says, “Now, is the day of salvation.”
I remember when I went to Main Street Baptist one of the first baptismal services I had, there were eleven people baptized and listen, they were all over the age of sixty-five. Most of them were people that Med Wry had been witnessing to and a few were people that I had led to the Lord during visitation. But it was very unusual and I can’t help but believe that God was doing something very unique at the time.
Listen, wouldn’t you love to see God do that again? Can you imagine the joy we’d experience if people were walking these aisles to get saved and then we had to have baptismal services once a month?
I believe God wants to save people today but He also wants you and I to get our hearts on the same page He’s on. You see, the problem isn’t with God. We believe that God still saves people but we wonder, why isn’t He doing it here? I think that’s a question we often wonder but we also tend to avoid hearing the answer.
Think about this, if God were to bless our church and people got saved and we had a wrong attitude and began to act really proud about it and talked like it all happened because of our efforts or because we were the cause God wouldn’t be glorified. And if anything God would have to hold His nose to endure our worship. And I don’t think He’s about to do that. So, before we start praying for God to save souls He has to prepare our hearts to receive His blessing.
If we really want to see God reaching people today we need to pray that He’ll work in us and then that He’ll work through us. And there’s no sense in praying that He’ll work in us if we won’t let Him work through us. And if we don’t care, then it really doesn’t matter, because He’ll just let us go on the way we’ve been going.
Turn with me to a passage the Pastor spoke on in the evening service a while back, it’s found in Revelation 3:14-18. It’s the one that deals with the church of Laodicia. I was reluctant to refer to this passage because I find it so offensive but maybe every once in a while we need to look at something that rubs us the wrong way because it may help us to examine our own hearts to see where we’re at.
Ever since I was saved people have always been saying, “This passage of scripture is speaking prophetically about the last days, meaning, this relates to the time of tribulation. And what they mean is that, this is describing a church that’s ineffective and uncaring while the anti-Christ is ruling the world. And that may be true but look with me and see if there are a few things we can learn from it that might apply to today.
“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, these things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear, and anoint thy eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore and repent.”
Now, I agree that this is a terrible passage to read to believers and to imply that somehow this might apply to us but think about it. This is describing a church that is neither on fire for evangelism nor is it a bunch of liberals that don’t believe the gospel. You see, I think these Laodicians were religious people that never missed a church service and I also think they led lived pretty good lives. And most of us would say, “Well, what’s wrong with that?”
Listen, they never missed church but they missed the reason they went to church. They went there to be prepared to preach the gospel to the whole world but they never got around to doing it.
And Jesus said, “I wish you were either hot or cold.” Now, why would He wish that? You see, I think He was telling them, I wish you lived like you were saved or unsaved so the people of the world could tell where you are at. I think the unbelieving world was looking at the Loadician church and they were confused. They couldn’t figure out if the church was full of unsaved people who are pretending to be saved or if they’re saved people who were too pre-occupied with their religion to really care about the rest of the world. And for the most part the church looked like a social club for religious people to the rest of society.
And what did they think of themselves? It says, “They were rich, increased with goods, and have need of nothing.” They thought they were doing pretty good. They were happy, healthy and prosperous. And I think that describes our situation today.
Now, most of us would say, I’m not rich, but the issue is, what exactly do we mean by rich. Who are we comparing ourselves to. I mean, we all have clothes to wear and food to eat. And most of us have homes to live in, cars to drive and all of our medical needs are met. And what do we really need, nothing. And to most of the world that classifies us as being rich.
And then Jesus described their condition and He wasn’t comparing them to the church down the street but He was telling them what they were, compared to what they should have been. He said, “They were wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.”
It appears as though the wealth of the Laodician city had become so much a part of the church that these people viewed the material possessions they enjoyed as God’s blessing on them for their spirituality but Jesus said they were the poorest of the poor.
And so, in spite of all they had Jesus told them to buy from Him gold. In other words they needed to get the true riches and not the riches of this world. And then He said they also needed to buy white raiment. He said they were proud of how they were dressed but if fact they were spiritually naked. And then He told them to anoint their eyes with salve. They needed to see things they way they were and not just how comfortable they were. This city was known for it’s production of ointment for the ear and eyes. But those who helped the rest of the world to see and hear were blind and deaf to their spiritual condition.
We could also see the gold as representing salvation, the clothing as works of righteousness and the eye salve as preparation for having a vision to do something for God.
Boy, He was really hard on these people wasn’t He. Why? I think the answer is found for us in verse 19 when He says, “As many as I love.” He loved them. That’s why it says He rebuked and chastened them. If they were just a bunch of unsaved people He wouldn’t expect them to be any more than they were. But these were people who made a good confession but they weren’t doing what they were saved to do and that’s to preach the gospel.
Listen, I believe God loves little churches as much as He loves big churches but according to this portion of scripture He doesn’t get too excited about churches that are inactive. And when I say inactive I’m not speaking of the whole church but to individuals who know they need to speak up for God, whether it’s to your family, your friends or even to your neighbors.
Sometimes I think we need to ask ourselves, what affect are we, the people of Salem Baptist Church really having on the town of Sackville? For instance, I would be willing to bet that 95% of the university students couldn’t even tell you where our church is. After all, many of them have never had a reason to come across the highway.
I believe we should pray to see souls saved just like we pray for our daily bread. Do you ever forget to pray before your meals? I’m sure most of us don’t. If anything it’s a habit we learned when we were younger and it’s a good one at that. But if we were as conscious of the condition of those around us as we were of our appetites I don’t think revival would be too far away.
Am I a Soldier of the cross?
Am I a soldier of the cross, a follower of the Lamb?
And shall I fear to own His cause, or blush to speak His name?
Must I be carried to the skies, on flowery beds of ease?
While others fought to win the prize, and sailed through bloody seas?
Are there no foes for me to face? Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend to grace, to help me on to God?
Sure I must fight, if I would reign; increase my courage, Lord: I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain, supported by Thy word.
