Good morning. If you have your Bibles, why don’t you open up to the gospel of John 9:1. If you have been here for a while, you know we have been going through the book of John. We have been looking at the miracles and ministry of Jesus Christ. We just finished off chapter 8 which involved a rather lengthy and somewhat heated discussion between Jesus and the Pharisees. You may recall in chapter 8 about verse 12, Jesus at one time makes this statement. He says “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” Today, as we begin reading in chapter 9, we see that light begin to work out in very practical and real ways as Jesus begins to give light to a blind man and most importantly begins to shed some light on his soul. Once again, we are going to be reading the gospel of John 9:1. If you want to use the red pew Bible, I think it is on page about 1061. (Scripture read here.)
As we begin to look at this passage, in the next few weeks we are going to look at the remaining verses, but we are going to look at the first 12 verses here again today. It starts out pretty straightforward. It says as Jesus went along he saw a man who was blind from birth. His disciples asked him “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus saw a man. Jesus saw a need. Jesus saw an opportunity to meet a need. What the disciples saw was an opportunity to have some sort of a discussion, some sort of a theological debate. What caused this man to have blindness? Was it the sin of the parents? Was it the sin of the man or possibly something else? We ask why would somebody ask something like that. The reality is back then people had different views of what caused people to be born into a certain condition or poverty or handicap. Some would believe that actually it was the sin of the parents that would be carried on kind of like a hereditary sort of thing. There were others who were more of the pagan belief or new age type belief. They believed in reincarnation. They believed if you were to sin in some sort of a prior life or commit a crime or commit some sort of atrocious sin, then the consequence of that would be carried on to future lives until there was made atonement for those particular sins. There were even those who believed somehow that a child could somehow sin within the womb. In fact, some of the Jewish scholars would make a case for that. They would point back to the issue with Jacob and Esau who were in the womb of Rebecca and they began to jostle around. They began to fight. Some would point at that to say sin can happen within the womb. What does Jesus do? He puts a lid on all of this. He stops and corrects them. He says listen, let me tell you something. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me.” Keep in mind, Jesus was not implying that the parents had never sinned. He was not implying that this man had never sinned. What he was saying was that was not the cause of his blindness. He is also not saying that somehow God was the cause of his blindness. That God somehow randomly picked out this man of all the humanity and said I am going to cause this person to become blind in order that I may reveal my glory and that I may display my works within the life of this person. That is not what it means.
In fact, a little bit of a Greek lesson. The underlying New Testament is written in Greek. In original Greek, there was no punctuation. It was like one long sentence all the way through. The scholars would have to sit back and decide where to put the punctuation. They base it on context. They base it on other manuscripts. They look at a lot of different things. They generally do a pretty good job. This particular passage could actually be looked at in a different way. Instead of it saying like it says here, it could be said “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but so that the works of God can be displayed in him, I must work the works of him that sent me while it is still day.” Do you see the little bit of nuance there? Basically what it is saying is mom or dad didn’t sin and the man didn’t sin and it really doesn’t matter. All I see is an opportunity for the works of God to be displayed in this person’s life. Don’t get caught up in what is the cause behind it. Just see this need as an opportunity to do the work of God in this person’s life.
Then you say what is the work of God? If you were here several weeks ago, you know that in John 6 the disciples had the same question. They said what are the works of God? Jesus’ reply was the work of God is to believe in the one that God had sent. In other words to believe in Jesus Christ. In fact, if you want to know where we are going with this whole series, all the way at the end, just open up to John 20 or so about verse 31 and the whole reason the book of John was written was so they might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and upon believing, they may have eternal life. That is where we are going. The whole book is about belief. In order to have the belief in Jesus Christ, you have to be convinced that he was here to do God’s work. He was here for a reason. He was here for a specific purpose. He was sent for a reason. You say what was Jesus sent for. Really that is outlined pretty clearly in the book of Luke. You may recall that Jesus was teaching to the Pharisees and he came up and unrolled the Isaiah scroll and applied that scripture to himself where he says “The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” In other words, he is the messenger. He is the preacher. He is the incarnate good news in many ways. “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners.” We are not just talking about political prisoners. We are talking about people who had been in prison to their own ways, their own devices, their own bondage, their own addictions. Those type of things that cause a person to be in prison. Not only that, as we see today, he is called to give sight to the blind. Not just physical sight but spiritual sight. To help the blind people begin to see. We will see that in a few weeks as this chapter unfolds even more. Also he is called for not only that but he is called to release the oppressed. People that are somehow under some sort of an oppressive system. It could be governments. It could be the welfare system. It could be all sorts of things that keep people down and prevent people from doing what they are called to be. It could be all sorts of oppressive systems. It could be oppressive work environment. Ultimately, what he is called to do is to basically declare that this is the year of the Lord. This is the year of the Lord’s favor. Favor is another word for grace. What he is saying is his job is to come down and say you know the grace that you need, the unmerited forgiveness is what you need; I am here today and I am here to declare that that grace is being poured out on you today. That is Jesus’ mission. That is his focus. That is his work that he uses to allow God’s work to be displayed into the lives of the people. He attaches a little bit of an urgency to it. He says this isn’t necessarily for tomorrow. This is for today because today is getting kind of short. He says “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
You may ask what is he talking about when he is talking about day or night. It seems clear that the day is while Jesus is here but what is the night about. Some would say that it has to do with the crucifixion when Jesus would die and be buried in the tomb. Some suggest it just has to do with the end times. It doesn’t matter. What Jesus says is while it is still day, I need to do the work because I am the light of the world. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world, which is implying to his disciples that when he leaves the world, they are the light of the world. They are the ones that have to be the flashlight to the world. They are the ones that have to continue on and spread that light out there. Jesus gives them a little lecture and gives them a little set up. Then he says I am going to go to work right now. So he spits on the ground. Makes a nice little mud patty and rubs it in this guy’s eyes. Can you imagine? Think about what that is like. That is a little bit gross. I can’t imagine what would happen if we went downtown and saw a blind person and spit on the ground and pulled up some dirt and began to rub it on that guy’s face. The guy would probably knock you out. That is not a nice thing to do to rub dirt in somebody’s face. You begin to say why mud? Why saliva? The reality is we don’t know why. Some suggest he used mud because mud represents earth. Mud represents our humanity. John was all about making it clear that Jesus not only was fully God but he was fully human. Some suggest the dirt represented human. The dirt represented Jesus’ full humanity. The spit could represent the streams of living word. It could represent the word. We really don’t know. It is all speculation. Some would suggest it doesn’t really matter what it means. Maybe it just means Jesus saw dirt and said I am going to spit on the ground and make a mud puddle and I am going to do something different than what I did the last time. Maybe what he is trying to say is don’t get caught up in a method. Don’t get caught up in a method of ministry. Be flexible. Use what is available to you at the time and what is prompted by the spirit of God. It could be anything. It could be mud. It could be a salt shaker. I remember a couple years ago I was doing my internship at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH. A great, huge facility. I was making the transition from the business world where I had spent 20 years into ministry. That is a hard transition. Here I am struggling with my identity. Is this something I am really called to do or did I somehow make it up in my mind? I am going back wishy-washy and I am talking to the other interns. Frankly, they got tired of listening to me. One day I am having lunch with this other intern and I am complaining about whether I am really called to be a pastor. I mentioned that I didn’t feel very pastoral. The intern said: “Listen Chuck. Here is a salt shaker. Here is a spoon. Here is a knife.” Then she pointed at me and said: “There is Chuck the pastor. Accept it. Just as this spoon is here. Just as this knife is here. Just as this salt shaker is here, there is Chuck the pastor.” As insignificant as that seemed that stuck with me. That was all I needed to affirm my identity as a pastor. Somebody just had to tell me, Chuck, you are a pastor now quit complaining about, quit talking about it, and move on and start pastoring because that is what pastors do. That was the opening. That was the thing that I needed to hear at that time.
Anyway, going from mud, but it just wasn’t that the man was supposed to stand there with mud in his eyes. He was told to do something. He was told very simply to go. You may recall the story of the woman that was caught up in adultery. She was told to go and leave her life of sin. This man was just told just to go. Go and wash in this pool of Siloam. Go and wash. That is what he did. He went on to say “‘Go,’ he told him, ‘wash in the Pool of Siloam’ (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.” In other words, he did what he was told to do. You think of course he is going to go wash his eyes out. Maybe it is more than that. Maybe the guy needed a bath. Maybe he had been begging for so long and really he was dirty and filthy and smelly and Jesus said go wash. In other words, make your outside appearance begin to match the thing that I am starting to do on the inside. Make sure that outside is beginning to match that spiritual transformation that is beginning to happen. We know that something happened because he went home seeing. His neighbors didn’t even recognize him. It goes on to say in about verse 8 “His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, ‘Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?’ Some claimed that he was. Others said ‘No, he only looks like him.’ But he himself insisted, ‘I am the man.’” I am the one that used to sit there begging. That is me. It is me. Finally they seem to start to get it, but they didn’t want to know necessarily who. They didn’t know the man behind the man. They didn’t want to know the God behind the man. They wanted to know how did it happen. How did this guy pry your eyes open? They are asking kind of sarcastically “‘How then were your eyes open?’ they demanded.” He replied in straightforward, simple detail what he remembered. Well the man called Jesus put some mud on my eyes, told me to go to Siloam and wash the stuff out of my eyes, and then I did what I was supposed to do and I saw. That is about it. That is all I know. They say well where is this man. He says I don’t know. Do you get it? I don’t have all the details. A side note is you have to think that this guy at that time wasn’t really saved. In other words, he probably didn’t have a spiritual transformation. He had a healing. His eyes had been opened. He began to see the light of Christ, but there was so much more to come. There was a revelation. There was a gradual unfolding of the light of Christ that would eventually penetrate down into the depths of his soul. There is a passage that speaks of this out of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 4:18 says “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter until the full light of day.” Isn’t that a neat passage? It is really the path of discipleship. The path of the righteous, the one who makes that initial acceptance, accepts the work of Christ in their lives, gets that glimmer of light like the morning dawn. Like when the sun comes up in the morning. And as they move along the path of discipleship that sun comes up until it is at the fullness of day. Until they leave this earth it is a noonday sun what they are seeing. That is a neat passage. That is a great verse to remind us once again that it is not always immediate. We don’t get that full light immediately. Really, this is all I wanted to cover as far as the scripture goes.
What I want to do is think about in the next few minutes what would be some of the applications that we would get from such a passage, especially just the first 12 verses. The first one is quite simple when we think about the disciples. The disciples were still kind of in the training mode. Disciple means learner. They were still learning. In fact, they called Jesus Rabbi. They are still in the thinking mode. They are still in the processing mode. They see this guy and they see him as an opportunity not to help him. They see him as an opportunity for some sort of a debate. What caused this man to sin? I think at times we are all kind of guilty of that. I know I am guilty of it. I remember in seminary we would sit around at noontime and discuss all these deep theological truths. How should we serve? Where should we serve? What should we do? Who should we serve? The reality was we didn’t do much serving. We talked about serving. We read books about serving. We thought we would serve others. We thought we would minister to others. We even wanted to write our own books about ministering to others. But very few of us rolled up our sleeves and served. And really if you are a true disciple, at some point you have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. In fact, you have to get a little mud on your hands. That is what you have to do. Chris is going to talk about it after the service. We are putting a big push on small groups. It is not just to get you involved in a group. It is about creating an environment where you can be discipled. We believe that discipleships happen within the context of community. Yes you can learn a lot on your own but you learn a lot more when you are in a small group. Whether it is a home group or Bible study. That is what it is for. The reality is, technically speaking, if you just think about doing the commands of God, if you just talk about doing the things of God in a small group and you never take it outside, really what you have done is violated what John talked about in 1 John where he says “If you say ‘I am a follower’ yet you fail to do the commands, you are a liar and the truth is not within you.” That is a hard thing. But the reality is so many of us like to just talk about it. So many of us like to just talk about the idea of doing good things. The idea of carrying out Jesus’ commands. He says if you are my disciple, you are really going to do the things. Why do you have to do it? Because the day is getting short. The day is getting short. If the day was short back then, I guarantee it is pretty short right now. The day is very short. We can get into a discussion. What does he man by the day? Maybe it was just Jesus’ days. What if it is about the night? Maybe it is the crucifixion. Jesus said don’t worry about that day. Just worry about the 24 hours that I gave you. Just worry about that 24 hours. The gift of God that has been given to you and decide what you are going to do with it and make sure you are managing it well. I say that to you but I say it to me at the same time. If I said I spend my entire day or week just doing the work of God, I would be a liar. You say Chuck you are a pastor. Isn’t that what you do? Isn’t that what you spend your time just doing the work of God? I say no I don’t. I wish I could but I don’t. In so many ways I spend my day doing the work of man. I spend the day doing the work of the church. In many ways my day isn’t that much different from yours. I sit at my desk and work on spreadsheets. I sit there and answer emails. I sit there and post status updates on Facebook. We do all these things. We attend long, boring meetings. I hate to say it, but I could make a case that is the work of God, but really in many ways it is not. Some of you are thinking, Chuck, you are the pastor. You should just be doing the work of God and we are going to let you go do it. You just go do it and don’t worry about that other stuff. That is fine until I get the call from a disgruntled member because I forgot to change the voice message or we didn’t send out the monthly newsletter. We would hear about it if we didn’t do the work of man and if we didn’t do the work of the church. But that is okay because just as pastors should not be immune from doing the work of God, you cooks, accountants, and office workers, you shouldn’t be immune from doing the works of God where you are at. Just because we shouldn’t be immune from doing the works of man, you should not be immune from doing the works of God in your particular environment. We both have to create the margins in our day so we can make sure that we are doing the works of God because the day is getting short.
The good news is that Jesus, in the very first line, tells us how to do it. It says “As he went along”. Some passages say “As he walked along”. The bottom line is Jesus was going through his day. Jesus was going through his week. Jesus was going through his month on the way to the cross. He didn’t just say I am focused. I have to just do this thing. I am headed toward the cross and nobody better get in my way because I have my blinders on. “As he went along, he saw the man who was blind from birth.” But he saw all sorts of other people. He saw within the crowds. He saw the issue that had the issue of blood. He saw the woman that was caught up in adultery. He saw the woman at the well. He saw the lepers. He saw all these people even though he was busy he put his spiritual antenna on and he saw the people. He saw the people beyond the need and he was willing to deal with it. The reality is had Jesus not seen this man, the man would have never seen Jesus. Do you hear that? If Jesus had not taken the time to see the man, the man would never see Jesus. He would have never gotten his eyes open. In the same way, if we don’t stop and see the people, if we don’t take off our blinders and see the people, then there is no way that they are ever going to see Jesus. We have that responsibility. We have the responsibility to make room on our calendars. To make room in our day planners. To make those margins where we take the opportunity to see the people and when we see the people, we see them not just as an object of discussion. We see them as a potential display case for God’s glory. That is what we see. We see that potential. We see what God wants to do in that person.
Just how Jesus tells us how to make time within our day, he shows us how to do it in a very simple way. Once again, this guy was a beggar. He was there all the time. He was begging. We see beggars all the time. We see them in downtown Pittsburgh. We see people with their hand out. We see them under the Roberto Clemente Bridge as we are going to the ball park. The guy with the saxophone. He is a beggar. He plays the same songs over and over again. What do we do? We throw money in. That is our solution. Did you ever notice that Jesus didn’t hand out much money? I don’t think I can think of a time that he handed out some change. Jesus had the ability to just hand over a million denarius or to write the check that would have taken care of him for his entire life. But yet he didn’t do that. Instead he chose to deal with the root problem. In this case it was the man’s blindness because it was the blindness that was preventing him from working and having social status or whatever it takes. Not only that, he began to deal with the spiritual problem, which is the underlying issue in all our different problems. It is funny because we see what Jesus was doing; we see it carried out in the book of Acts. Around Acts 3. You may remember this story. Peter and John went up to the temple to pray. They saw a man there, a beggar, who had been lame since birth. They see this man and said “Look at me.” They wanted to get his attention. So what did the man do? He looked at them and gave them his attention and it says “expecting to get something from them.” He is used to it. That is what he does for a living. He sits there and people have given over and over so he expects to get the handout. Why wouldn’t he. Peter is saying “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” So the man walked. He got up. His ankles became strong. His legs became strong. His feet became strong. He went away laughing and leaping and praising God. He went home and the neighbors were all blown away because they had seen the awesome wonders of God. They had seen the work of God being displayed in this man’s life in a mighty way. In other words, what they gave him was more than he expected. They blew him out of the water. He expected to get a denarius. They gave him a brand new body. They gave him a brand new life. They gave him Jesus Christ. That is what we are supposed to do. We are not supposed to give people what they expect. As Christians, we are supposed to give them more than they expect because we have the capacity within us to give them more than they expect, but we settle on just giving them some loose change just like anybody else does in the world.
You say Chuck I don’t have that ability. I am not able to heal like Jesus. I am not able to give sight to a blind man. I am not able to help a crippled beggar. I am not able to do that. The reality is that some of you have that gift. You just don’t know it. Frankly, you never tried it. I believe that the gift of healing is a very real thing right now. Some of you might have it and you don’t even know it and you’ve never tried it. Even if you don’t have the gift of healing, if you are a Christian, you have a gift. Once again, as you are a born-again Christian, Christians believe that they receive the Spirit of God within them, which means they also receive the gifts of the spirit. The charisma. That is what charisma. Charismatic comes from the idea gifts. You have each received some sort of gift. Some of you have the gift of healing, which is still operative today. Some of you have some of the more simple gifts. Some of you have the gift of prayer. You are considered prayer intercessors. But yet you restrict that prayer to the church or restrict it to a certain place on Sunday morning. Jesus is saying it is daytime. You better go out and take it and do the works of God. Take that prayer and take it into your workplace. When somebody says I am really struggling and hurting, instead of saying I will go home and pray for you and put you on the prayer list, say can I pray for you right now? Can I pray for you? Most people will not reject it. Very few people when they have a deep-felt need are going to reject prayer. I don’t care if they are an atheist. They are not going to reject it. Use that gift. Some of you have the gift of hospitality where you just open up your homes to people. You open up your homes to other Christians. I am saying take that gift of hospitality and give it to somebody who is never welcomed into a home. Extend it beyond your Christian circles. Extend it to the people that need some hospitality into their life in whatever way you can give it to that person. You may begin to see the works of God displayed in that person’s life. Some of you have the gift of prophecy. Prophecy is not necessarily looking off into the future. Prophecy is the ability to look at the present. To look and see truth in a circumstance of what is going on when the person’s world is falling apart. Someone with the gift of prophecy can look and say this is what I am hearing. They can just nail it down. Some people really need the truth spoken into their life. If you have the gift of prophecy, you have the gift of truth; you are to speak truth into that life. When you speak truth, maybe it is the first thing they needed to hear and you begin to see some healing taking place. You begin to see the works of God being displayed in that persons’ life. Some of you have the gift of mercy. I don’t have the gift of mercy. Some people can be so merciful and listen to somebody for hours and hours and say it will be alright and give them a hug. If you have that, use it. Some people just need a hug. Some people just need to be able to listen to somebody. Some people have the gift of wisdom. People that are able to counsel people in a very wise way to make some very wise decisions. To help somebody figure things out. Use that gift of wisdom. When you start using those gifts of God that you have been given, you begin to see the works of God displayed in the person’s life and pretty soon they are walking and jumping around and praising God, and they are becoming a showcase for God’s glory. That is what is going on there.
In closing, you can’t really give what you don’t have. You can’t really give out what you have yet to receive. Hear me out on this. There are some people that are very good at receiving. They receive the temporal stuff. They receive food, shelter, clothing, maybe they get their rent paid, maybe they receive cash. There are some people that are always on to receiving those temporal things but they never want to receive the real healing that will move them beyond that. Don’t get me wrong, and if you are all honest with yourself, there are times when we are all on the receiving end or need to be on the receiving end of the material things. We get ourselves in a situation or circumstance and we need help. We need a check or we need some food. Whatever it is. As a matter of fact, I am reminded of about 15 years ago when I was self-employed and money was up and down. I had just started school back in Oregon. I am stressed out about finances. One night, the ice machine in the freezer broke. We had never bought ice-cube trays. I don’t know if I made the comment or my first wife, Dana, who passed away in 2001 whether she made the comment to a friend that we are so broke we can’t even make ice or something like that. I am sitting there one night in the kitchen working on a paper. The doorbell rings and here is Shannon with a big bag of ice and a big wad of cash and says here, take this. Instead of saying yes, I said no I can’t take that. What happened is that big ugly thing called pride crept up. In my mind, even though I was suffering a temporary shortage of cash, I was still better than them. I had a bigger house. She didn’t have a college degree. I had a college degree. I had the ability to make things better. I said no I can’t take that. At that moment, you saw her countenance go down and saw a tear go down her eye. She went away with the ice and the money. I went back to working on the paper and my first wife Dana, who was very wise at the time, she sits down and said: “That was real nice. Big shot seminary student. Somebody comes to bless you and you say no. What you did was rob Shannon of this blessing. You robbed her of something that she was so thrilled to do. You prevented her from being a blessing to you.” If you know me, guilt came all over me and I got in the car and drove a few miles over to the house. She was there. I said I will take the ice. I will take the money. I will take your house if you want to give it to me. Whatever it is. I will receive what you want to give me. I had to make things right. I say that because sometimes each of us have to learn how to receive with grace. You have to learn, even if you know you are in a better position, even if you know you don’t need the money, take it. Give it to somebody else if you have to but take it because somebody wants to bless you and you don’t want to deny them of that blessing.
I think about this and I think about the whole idea is we need to be on the receiving side, but honestly there are some people that camp out at the receiving line a little bit too long. They live there. Their whole life is on the receiving end. Material, money, food, clothing, shelter. They live in that realm and what happens is they become unproductive in that realm. It doesn’t do anything to get them out of the situation. Sometimes they have to move beyond just receiving the things that deal with the purely physical and they have to begin to move along and begin to receive the things that begin to heal the soul, mind, body, and ultimately the things that heal the spirit. They have to allow that light of Christ to come in. Some people don’t want to do it. It feels like that mud is being pushed in their eye. They are not ready to get that mud in their eye because the mud sometimes shows how dirty they really are. It shows them how dirty. They are thinking all sorts of things. They want to get that mud off there. Really what it comes down to is sometimes they don’t want to do what Jesus said to do. Jesus said Go. What happens is a lot of people say I don’t want to go. Jesus is saying you need to go see that counselor. You need to go join that AA group or the Gambler’s anonymous group. You need to go and see things. You need to go and begin to allow God to begin to perform his works in you. You need to go and make reconciliation with somebody. You need to go. The reality is, unless you go, you can never receive the healing that is necessary. You never receive that grace of God, the favor of God that he wants to pour down on you now and really forevermore. In other words, if you don’t do this, you can never be in the place where you can hand out that grace and that healing to somebody else. The bottom line is that is what it is all about. You receive the grace, you receive the healing not to hold on to. Not to just hoard. You receive that healing so that you can heal somebody else. You received the broken chains. You became free from that addiction, free from that bondage, free from whatever mess you were in not to just hold on to it but to take that and offer that freedom to somebody else. You received sight to the physical blind, you received the healing. You may have received spiritual healing. Not to hold on but to give sight to somebody else. You received the comfort of God so that you can comfort others. Paul sums it up best when he says in 2 Corinthians “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” You have received God’s comfort in order that you can comfort others. Let us pray.
