Several years ago, sightless restaurants became a growing trend across Europe. So what is a sightless restaurant?
John Bohannon experienced it firsthand. Bohannon plunged into what he called the “inky blackness of Unsicht-Bar, a restaurant named for the German word for invisible.” To get to his table, it was necessary to place his hand on the shoulder of Magid the waiter, then allow his dining partner to put her hand on his shoulder. In single file, they carefully maneuvered to their chairs, with the waiter as their guide. Magid needed no light. Like most waiters in these restaurants, he is blind.
Bohannon felt panicked by the utter darkness and the inability to see his own hand while waving it in front of his face. He heard a glass crash to the floor from a nearby table. His reaction, he said, was “more desperate than the situation would merit under normal (well-lit) circumstances.”
Since no lights of any kind are allowed in the dining room, a staff member must lead patrons to a candlelit bathroom when the need arises. Bohannon's unease over the situation began to build to the point where he wanted someone to lead him to the bathroom, just so he could see something again. He pushed aside the nervousness when Magid arrived with the food and Bohannon soon discovered the difficulties of using a fork you can't see.
At the end of this unique dining experience, the waiter arrived to lead Bohannon and his guest back out of the restaurant and into the light (“The Best Food I've Tasted but Never Seen,” The Christian Science Monitor, 10-13-04; www.PreachingToday.com).
In a dark world, sometimes your best guide is blind. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to John 9, John 9, where a blind man shows us the way even in our own dark world.
John 9:1-2 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (ESV)
Now, that was the theological debate of the day. The scholars taught that sickness comes from sin. So, if you’re sick, you must have sinned in some way. But what do you do with a man BORN blind. He certainly could not have sinned before he was born. So, perhaps, his parents had sinned.
Jesus’ disciples missed seeing the blind man as an object of mercy. Rather, they focused on him as a subject for theological discussion. So Jesus sets them straight.
John 9:3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (ESV).
Not all sickness is the result of sin. Sometimes, God allows sickness just so He can demonstrate His power, just so He can glorify Himself in your life.
In his book Hinge Moments, college president D. Michael Lindsay talks about the birth of his oldest daughter, Elizabeth. They quickly knew something was wrong with her developmentally. When she was four months old, their pediatrician said, “Well, I don’t know what to say, but something is definitely wrong with your little girl.” Lindsay says, “I found it difficult to breathe. Grief overtook us and made it hard to get out even basic words. We prayed hard that our worst fears wouldn’t live themselves out, but we dreaded they would.”
After three years of tests and specialists, doctors diagnosed Elizabeth with an extremely rare genetic disorder. She is only one of 500 people or so known cases in the world. There is no cure. It involves profound cognitive disability, legal blindness, and many challenges with internal organs.
Lindsay says that parenting Elisabeth has been what he calls a “heavy joy”—filled with profound challenges but also lots of happy moments. It has also taught him and his wife key lessons about being transformed by Christ. Lindsay writes:
“Elizabeth is not drawn to fame or self-advancement. She reflects a more authentic way of Christian living, one that is less interested in appearances or achievement. She takes pleasure in simple things—the taste of vanilla ice cream, the thrill of reaching heights in the backyard swing, the delight of listening to songs with a good beat and familiar melody. And Elizabeth is genuinely happy when she pleases her father, clapping for herself when she hears my affirmations.
“Having Elizabeth in our family has helped us see the importance of vulnerability and simple obedience to Christ. More importantly, she has demonstrated that “walking in a manner worthy of the Lord” (Col. 1:10) doesn’t rely on superior [knowledge or performance]. Instead, it is a way of being that opens us up to fully pleasing the Lord in our respective callings (D. Michael Lindsay, Hinge Moments, IVP, 2021, pp. 120-121; www.PreachingToday.com).
Elizabeth brings glory to God just through her simple faith in Him.
Disability is not a reason for despair. It’s an opportunity for God to display His power either by the miracle of healing, or by the greater miracle of the grace He provides before He heals. In the case of the man born blind here in John 9, Jesus chooses to heal the man.
Look at the next verse where Jesus finishes His answer to His disciples’ question.
John 9:4-7 “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing (ESV).
As the “Light of the World” Jesus opens blind eyes, not only physically, but spiritually, as well. The blind man “came back seeing” physically, but Jesus will help him see spiritual realities that even the scholars of His day refuse to see.
John 9:8-12 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” So they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
The man doesn’t know much. He doesn’t even know where Jesus is or where He came from. All he knows is that “a man called Jesus” healed him.
To be sure, Jesus is a good man, a compassionate man. Unlike other men, who debated the blind man’s sinfulness, Jesus cared. Jesus took the time to make some clay, anoint his eyes, and send him to the pool of Siloam. Jesus touched a man, whose condition repulsed others and kept them away.
In a dark world, let this blind man show you the way. First…
SEE JESUS AS A GOOD MAN.
Recognize that Jesus is a compassionate person. Acknowledge that Jesus truly cares.
Dr. Lisa Iezzoni is a professor of medicine at Harvard. She has done research for 25 years with people who have disabilities, to find out, “What is it like for you to go to a doctor?” She kept hearing stories about doctors’ offices “you can’t get into. Doctors who don’t treat you with respect. Care that is way below standard.”
So, she decided then ask doctors, “What is it like for you to treat someone with disabilities?” She promised the doctors, “You’ll be anonymous,” and the focus groups were on video, so the doctors couldn’t see that Dr. Iezzoni, who has multiple sclerosis, was sitting in a wheelchair.
The result? Some doctors said their office scales could not accommodate wheelchairs, so they told patients to go to a supermarket, a grain elevator, a cattle processing plant, or a zoo to be weighed. Some would tell a new patient, “Sorry, the practice is closed.” One specialist said disabled patients take too much time, and they’re a “disruption to clinic flow” (Gina Kolata, "These Doctors Admit They Don’t Want Patients with Disabilities,” The New York Times, 10-19-22; www.PreachingToday.com).
Jesus, our Great Physician, approaches disabled people with a far different attitude. He actually cares for disabled people. He makes time for them, and He touches them.
My dear friends, He cares for YOU! Please, in your darkness, let a blind man show you the way. First, see Jesus as a good man. Then second…
SEE JESUS AS A GREAT MAN.
Recognize that Jesus is no ordinary man, but rather a prophet. Acknowledge that God sent Jesus into the world.
John 9:13-16 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” And there was a division among them (ESV).
The Pharisees are confused and conflicted. They had a rule against kneading clay on the Sabbath. Well, since Jesus made clay on the Sabbath, many of them considered Jesus to be a law-breaker. Others just wondered about Jesus. They didn’t know what to think, so they ask the blind man what he thought.
John 9:17 So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a prophet” (ESV).
Notice, the man’s insight is increasing. In verse 11, he identified his Healer as “the man called Jesus.” Here, he says, “[Jesus] is a prophet”—not just a man, but a great man. However, the Pharisees refuse to see it.
John 9:18-23 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him” (ESV).
So much for objectivity. The Pharisees have already prejudiced the witnesses. They threatened to kick anyone put of the synagogue, who just happen to mention that Jesus may be the Messiah.
Now, the synagogue was not only a place of worship once a week. It was also the center of Jewish social life every day in Jesus’ day. So to be excluded from the synagogue, excluded you from any kind of a social life. You lost all your friends, who would then start treating you as a tax collector and a sinner. I.e., they would start treating you as a swindler and a thief the rest of your life.
That’s why the blind man’s parents refuse to answer the Pharisees. They know that anything they say can and will be used against them.
John 9:24-25 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (ESV).
The man declines to engage in a theological argument, because the theology goes way over his head. He just knows that Jesus healed him.
John 926-27 They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” (ESV).
You have to appreciate the man’s sarcasm, making fun of the Pharisees, which they don’t appreciate at all.
John 9:28-33 And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (ESV).
Wow! That’s tremendous insight for a man born blind. He sees more clearly than the religious leaders of his day. Only, they refuse to appreciate his insight.
John 9:34 They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out (ESV).
They cast him out of the synagogue and therefore out of any kind of social life. They refused to see Jesus as a man from God, but that’s exactly who He is. Jesus is more than just a good man. He is a great man—a prophet that God sent into the world.
In More Jesus, Less Religion, Steve Arterburn writes about the work of a Wycliffe Bible translator in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. When he first translated the opening chapters of Genesis into the native language, their attitude toward women in the tribe changed overnight. They had not realized or understood that God had specifically formed the woman out of the side of the man. Without even hearing this concept developed, they immediately grasped the honor God gave to both men and women and began adjusting their behavior.
Even so, they hung on to their own gods and superstitions. One of their practices was to spit on the wounds of the sick. Their medicine men were known as the spitters, and they did not want someone like Jesus to take away their status in the village.
However, their attitude changed as the translators rendered more of the Bible into the tribe's dialect. When they read the passage where Jesus cured a blind man in a most unusual way, the medicine men pricked up their ears. The Master spit on the ground, made a paste of mud, put it on the man's eyelids, told him to wash it off—and the man was healed. When these tribesmen heard this story in their own language, they saw that Jesus was not against them, but for them. They found one of their own, a Savior who was also a spitter! And they came to the Lord because of this connection (Steve Arterburn and Jack Felton, More Jesus, Less Religion, Sisters, Oregon: Waterbrook Press, 2000, p.116; www.PreachingToday.com).
They saw Jesus for who He is—not a rival, but a spitter just like them. They saw Jesus as a great man, and they came to respect Him. You do the same. See Jesus as a great man and increase your respect for Him.
Just a few years ago, writer/historian John Dickson wrote a social media post that annoyed his atheist friends. He quoted a portion of George Viereck’s 1929 interview of Albert Einstein. What annoyed them was Einstein’s admiration for a historical figure found in the New Testament Gospels.
Veireck asked Einstein, “To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?”
Einstein replied, “As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”
So Veireck asked Einstein, “You accept the historical existence of Jesus?”
To which Einstein replied, “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Thesus. Thesus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.”
Dickson says, “I literally had folks suggesting Veireck’s interview itself was a fraud.” He said, “I had to dig [the interview] out of the archives and post screenshots of the relevant pages… before some would believe that Einstein said such a thing… (John Dickson, Is Jesus History? The Goodbook Company, 2019, pp. 10-11; www.PreachingToday.com).
Einstein believed that Jesus was a real, great man in history, not just a legendary hero. You do the same. In your darkness, let a blind man show you the way. 1st, see Jesus as a good man. 2nd, see Jesus as a great man. Then 3rd, and most importantly…
SEE JESUS AS THE GOD-MAN.
Recognize that Jesus is God in the flesh. Acknowledge that Jesus is fully God and fully man. That’s what the blind man comes to see.
John 9:35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (ESV)
The Old Testament called the Messiah “the Son of Man.” In Daniel 7, the prophet Daniel writes, “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14).
So, when Jesus asked the blind man, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He was asking him, “Do you believe in the One who will reign forever?”
John 9:36-38 He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him (ESV).
The blind man saw that Jesus is God, so he worshipped his Lord and his God.
John 9:39 Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (ESV).
The blind man sees that Jesus is God. The seeing Pharisees were blind to their own Messiah even though they knew the Scriptures more than any other person alive. They could tell you how many letters were in each book of the Old Testament and the exact center word in each book. They had mastered details about the Scriptures that we could never discover in a million years.
Yet when their own Messiah showed up, they missed Him. When the very subject of the Old Testament arrived on the scene, they overlooked Him. They missed the flfillment of all they had studied all those years. They claimed to see better than anyone, but they were more blind than the blind man here in John 9.
The blind man recognized Jesus for who He is—God in the flesh—and he worshipped Jesus. Now, Peter refused to accept the worship of men (Acts 10:25-26). Paul also refused to accept the worship of men (Acts 14:11-15). And even the angels refused to accept the worship of men (Revelation 22:8-9).
But Jesus accepts the worship of men, because He is God, who alone is worthy of worship. Jesus accepted the blind man’s worship, who saw better than the Pharisees who claimed to see.
He reminds me of another blind person, who wrote over 9,000 songs. Her name was Fanny Crosby, who was blinded in both eyes at six weeks of age through a medical error. Even so, her songs reflect more insight than many who have sight. The blind songwriter amazingly spoke about sight in many of her songs. For example:
She wrote “Visions of rapture now burst on my sight” in her song Blessed Assurance.
That song also includes the phrase, “Watching and waiting, looking above.”
Her song In the Cross contains this declaration: “Near the cross I'll watch and wait, hoping, trusting ever.”
Then in her song To God Be the Glory, she predicts, “But purer and higher and greater will be, our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see” (Christian History Magazine Staff, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know, Holman Reference, 2000, Pages 163-165; www.PreachingToday.com).
Like the blind man in John 9, Fanny Crosby saw with greater clarity than most sighted people. He and she certainly saw better than the Pharisees who claimed to see.
John 9:40-41 Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains (ESV).
Since they claimed to see, they had no excuse. Please, refuse to be like the Pharisees. Refuse to be so proud of your sight that you are blind to Jesus.
Instead, in your darkness, let a blind man show you the way. 1st, see Jesus as a good man and appreciate Him. 2nd, see Jesus as a great man and respect Him. Then 3rd, see Jesus as the God-Man and worship Him. It’s the only way you’ll see in a dark and desperate world.
When Pierre-Paul Thomas was growing up in Montreal, Canada in the 1940s, he couldn't play hockey with his brothers, and it broke his heart. Thomas was born blind, so for most of his life he could only imagine the world that people often described to him. For years he walked with a white cane to avoid obstacles in front of him. Then, at the age of sixty-six, Thomas fell down the stairs in an apartment building and fractured the bones of his face. He was rushed to the hospital with severe swelling around his eyes. A team of doctors went to work to repair the bones. Months later he went to be examined by a plastic surgeon for a consultation about repairing his scalp.
The surgeon casually asked Thomas, “Oh, while we're at it, do you want us to fix your eyes too?” Thomas did not understand. Nor did he know how to respond. Not long after that, Thomas had surgery and could truly see for the first time.
Suddenly his world consisted of bright colors he had never grasped before. He spoke of being awestruck by flowers blossoming and trees blooming.
It’s a beautiful story of a 66-year-old man seeing for the first time, but there is a sad reality. He could have had the same surgery at a younger age and been able to see earlier. Thomas had assumed he would never see and had resigned himself to a life of blindness when, in reality, he could have experienced the gift of sight decades earlier (Aaron Derfel, “Blind No More,” Montreal Gazette, 7-27-13; www.PreachingToday. com).
Please, do not resign yourself to a sightless existence. Instead, look to Jesus today and see!
