Of all the physical handicaps that can curse men and women, blindness must be one of the saddest.
Yet there is something infinitely worse than physical blindness, and it is spiritual blindness. That is why God became man, bringing His divine light into the world, that those who believe in Him might receive spiritual sight, and behold the first rays of dawn.
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Ephesians 2:1 tells us that prior to coming to Christ in faith, we are dead in trespasses and sins. In His discourse with Nicodemus, Jesus told the Rabbi that until one is born again (or born from above), he cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven. We understand that to mean that until one is spiritually born through faith in Christ, he cannot enter Heaven, but also that until one receives that birth of the spirit he cannot comprehend spiritual truth.
There are many other passages of scripture to support this fundamental doctrine, that until we receive spiritual birth from God, we are all cut off from Him and from understanding Him, because of the effects of sin.
One writer said (and this is not a direct quote), that God, being Spirit, Who communicates with the spirit, had fellowship with man on a spiritual level. But when man sinned, God had to turn him over to the same biochemical forces that rule the rest of nature. Therefore, since God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth, and since spiritual truth must be spiritually discerned, we are more acutely blind to spiritual matters than this man in John 9 was to the world around him.
At least this beggar had four other senses with which to function in and realize the world around him. Those who are spiritually blind are without hope and apart from the grace and mercy of God, who sees us as Jesus saw this man, and has compassion for us.
Romans 5:6 says, “...while we were still helpless, Christ died for the ungodly” (That is, ‘those without God’)
We’ve all seen movies or television shows where someone was blind, and they’ve been given an opportunity through some new medical development to receive an operation and maybe get their sight back.
The day comes for the bandages to come off; the doctor, patient and family members all stand in a room and the doctor orders the lights to be dimmed because he knows that the patient’s eyes will have to adjust gradually to the light. Then, as suspense builds the doctor slowly unwraps the bandage, and finally the patient looks at the faces of his loved ones and shouts, “I can see! I can see!”
Well let’s look closely at the steps Christ takes, to lead this man out of darkness into light, one step at a time, finally leading to worship, which is always the final step in true conversion.
First, we have this somewhat baffling method Jesus uses...although it shouldn’t be that baffling to us, since He used mud in the first place to create the first man...but He mixes dirt and spit, makes it into mud and spreads it over the man’s eyes.
Y’know, over the years I’ve learned to be more accepting of the fact that Jesus just doesn’t do things the way we expect Him to do them.
Some years back my wife and I had occasion to talk with a man whose chief complaint against God was that He is deceptive. That was the man’s claim. God is deceptive.
When we asked what he meant by that charge, he explained that as he read the Bible, or observed life around him, it just seemed like God didn’t do things the way they’re supposed to be done. He said, “Just when I think that God will do something in a certain way, He does it in a totally different way. He just won’t let you know Him”.
The man was missing the point entirely. It’s not that God doesn’t want us to know Him, In fact, if this man would really read the Bible I don’t know how he could miss seeing evidence on almost every page, that God wants very much indeed for us to know Him.
It’s just that He won’t let us box Him in; which is what Lynn’s answer to him was at the time.
Just when we’re expecting God to do what we think an ordinary God doing miracles would do, in our own finite imaginations, He tosses in the ol’ shock factor and does something in a completely different way than we even dreamed.
I like it that way. I like letting God be God. I don’t want to know everything. I like surprises.
When we try to analyze our Lord’s methods or motives too deeply we miss the point. What do we have in this story? A man who is blind, not from disease or mishap but from birth (as attested to by his own parents right here in this chapter), sees for the first time in his life because the One who at the Creation said “Let there be light” and it was, has seen him and felt compassion for him, and touched him. That’s the point.
And that is precisely the fact that should drive us to our knees before Him in praise and adoration. We stand before God clean, only because He saw us, and had compassion for us, and entered into time to touch our lives.
So in verse 11 this man is telling his story to the crowds who are amazed at his healing, and he says “The man who is called Jesus...”
He hasn’t seen Jesus yet, remember. He went away to the pool to wash and came back seeing, but Jesus had already moved on; so he hasn’t laid eyes on his benefactor.
He knows the things he heard going on around him while he was still blind. Perhaps he even heard the conversation between Jesus and His disciples back in verses 2-5 when they asked why the man had been born blind; and he knows that this MAN Jesus touched him.
It is possible to be touched by God and not know Him. It goes on everyday, and everywhere. The difference is not in how God treats people, but how people respond to God.
The fortunate ones are the ones who seek Him out, to find out more about Him...to get to know Him...and the power of His resurrection.
The same sun that melts butter, hardens clay. The sun is the same toward both. What determines the response, is the content of the material.
Well, a start has been made. Jesus has touched him, he knows it, he proclaims it - first to the people there in verse 11 which we read earlier - then to the Pharisees in verse 15 when he says, “He applied clay to my eyes and I washed, and I see”.
Now at this point, enter with me into a little bit of educated speculation.
One, we know he’s been blind from birth. He said so; his parents said so.
Two, we know he’s a beggar, because the people said so. “Is this not the one who used to sit and beg?”
Three, the implication of scripture is that Jesus confronted him outside the temple. In my own experience - in the third world countries I’ve been in - when you saw beggars in a certain spot, you could bet they’d be in that spot the next day. They picked a certain spot and stayed there. They were always there. If they were crippled their family would carry them there and come back to get them at the end of the day. They would be just outside a Buddhist temple, or near the market place, but always in the same spot every day.
Since this man was sitting outside the temple, I’m going to assume, based on my own experience, that he was probably in pretty much the same spot every day, for years. That’s why the crowds recognized him.
This probably means that he had sat for countless hours, for years if not his entire life, listening to disputes and conversations by various Rabbis and scribes and other scholars about the Law and the prophets, Jewish history, etc.
Now there are two reasons I’m prepared to make this assumption about him. One is the answer he gives to the doubting Pharisees in verses 30 - 33.
“The man answered and said to them, ‘Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes. We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is God-fearing, and does His will, He hears him. Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing’.”
I love that guy’s grit.
Is this someone who has been listening to a lot of teaching from the scriptures? You bet.
Who but someone who is confident of his knowledge of antiquity, would stand before the knowledgeable Pharisees, and assert that from the beginning of time, it has not been heard of someone healing someone else of blindness?
“If this man were not from God, He could do nothing” Love it.
The second reason for my assumption is found in verse 17 of this chapter.
“He is a prophet” the man declares.
This is not a statement made in ignorance or thrown out glibly. To the ancient Jews, the term ‘prophet’ had a lot more punch than it does in our ears.
First of all, not counting John the Baptist, there had not been a prophet in Israel for 400 years. So when he declared Jesus a prophet, in their ears that was the equivalent of saying “Moses is back”. Because the next prophet they expected was to be the one Moses had spoken of... the Prophet, like himself.
Secondly, it was common knowledge that it was dangerous to call yourself a prophet in those times, unless you really were one. If your words didn’t pass the test by becoming true, you got stoned to death.
So this man had to have come quickly to a strong conviction that this man, Jesus, had to have come from God, or he may have been sealing the doom of the very one who had just given him his sight.
My point for us to consider today is this. God wants a thinking people. He wants people who have studied and considered spiritual truth to the point that when called upon they will be able to give an accurate account from a firm conviction for the hope that is in them. How often do we fall far short of that?
Here is a beggar who spent his life sitting against a wall outside the temple begging for alms, and he preaches one of the most profound sermons in all of history. “I only know that I was blind, and now I see!”
So we’ve seen him go from knowing only that this ‘man’ Jesus opened his eyes, to declaring Him a ‘prophet’.
His spiritual eyes are now receiving light. God doesn’t always open our understanding wide and instantly. Sometimes the truth comes slowly, as we consider a topic, as we discuss it, like morning’s dawn creeping over the horizon.
Now we’ve come to a point that draws a sharp line of distinction between those who are satisfied with having a comfortable form of religiosity and determined to cling to it, even at the expense of truth, and someone loving truth, and being willing to stand for the truth, whatever the cost.
Look at the attitude of the parents, starting in verse 18.. and the question of the Pharisees in verse 19. Then the parents’ answer:
“His parents answered them and said, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he shall speak for himself’.”
Now the parents responded in this way because they were afraid of the Jews, because the Jews had already said that if anyone should confess Him to be the Christ they would be put out of the synagogue.
“For this reason his parents said, ‘he is of age; ask him‘.”
If your fear of being kicked out of church causes you to deny Christ, what’s the point of being in church?
The church can be wrong. Christ can not.
The church is often wrong. Christ is never wrong.
Contrast this with what their son says, and their answer to him in verse 34
“They answered and said to him, ‘You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?’ and they put him out.”
Don’t let it escape your notice that they were making the same assumption the disciples had made in the beginning of the chapter; that his blindness was due to sin. When we in pride presume to attribute another’s misfortune to some fault of theirs for the sake of placing ourselves morally above them, we do them a disservice and miss God’s glory.
He stood for the truth. When he said Jesus was a prophet, he was declaring Him to be “The Prophet” ...the Christ. They had agreed that if anyone confessed this Jesus to be the Christ, they’d be put out of the synagogue; so when he said “He is a prophet” and they kicked him out, that tells me that in their minds declaring Jesus to be a prophet was tantamount to saying He’s the Christ.
Church-goer, name to yourself the reasons you are here. When you are done, if the top of your list doesn’t include something like, “I was lost but now I’m found, I was blind but now I see”, then you need to reevaluate your Christian experience. You could be in a very dangerous position indeed.
Because if that’s not the kind of thing that comes immediately to your mouth from your heart; if it’s something less; “Because I’m a deacon” “Because I’m a teacher” “Because I sing in the choir” “Because I bought this new dress and somebody’s gotta see it”, ...whatever it is... if it takes the place of confession of Christ as the One who bought you back from sin and death and gave you righteous standing before God, then you’re in a more dangerous place than if you had never heard the gospel at all.
Don’t be one of those to whom He finally says, “Depart from Me, I never knew you”.
Now we come to the part of this story I like the best.
The man’s physical eyes have been opened, we rejoice with him over that, but the best is yet to come.
Witness first of all the compassion of Jesus, Who, hearing that the man has been expelled from the temple, seeks him out.
It was a cultural shame to be expelled from the temple. You literally were not allowed to make sacrifices, to worship, to obey the Mosaic Law in the keeping of those things...
...you were an outcast to society if you were excommunicated.
So this man really was giving up something very important to him, in order to stand for what he saw as truth.
But in verse 35, it says, “Jesus heard that they had put him out; and finding him, He said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’”
Look at those three little words; “and finding him”.
Here’s another analogy concerning our own relationship to Christ. By His Spirit He opens our eyes to our need and His provision, but in the end it is always He who seeks us out and reveals Himself to us.
That’s the magic moment, folks. Then, and only then, do we see the first rays of dawn.
When sinner finally meets Savior, when the called responds in repentance and worship, that’s when eternity begins for us.
The man said, “Lord, I believe” and he worshiped Him.
That’s when his real eyes were opened.
When the worlds have passed away and in the eons of eternity we’ve sat at his feet and learned from Him and praised Him and worshiped Him and reigned with Him, we will only then be saying ‘the morning is upon us’.
But in this life we’re only seeing those first rays of dawn, peeking over the Eastern horizon. But oh, what a glorious light they give!
Sinner, you are in need of a sight-giver. You are dead in your sin, and blind to spiritual truth. But the Savior seeks you out.
He told His followers that the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.
He told them, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world”.
The apostle John, at the beginning of his gospel, declared Him to be the Light that shined in the darkness.
Let Him dispel your darkness today. Let the one who spoke light into being, open your blinded eyes to the first rays of eternity’s dawn. Let Him cast all the shadows from your life, and flood your soul with His glorious light!
He’ll do it if you surrender to His touch. It’s why He came.
“The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin,
The light of the world is Jesus;
Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in,
The light of the world is Jesus.
Come to the light, ‘tis shining for thee!
Sweetly the light has dawned upon me;
Once I was blind, but now I can see -
The light of the world is Jesus.”
-Bliss
