Reflect the Purposes of Christmas
#3 – “(To proclaim) Recovery of Sight for the Blind.”
John 9
December 15, 2002
Introduction
John Newton’s famous hymn has a famous line that most of us are familiar with. “I was blind, but now I see.”
He was not talking about physical sight, but about spiritual sight. He saw His need for a Savior, when he hadn’t before, and He saw the opportunity for forgiveness for his sins. Forgiveness for owning and operating a slave ship. And he saw the chance for a new life on earth, with a new life waiting for him in heaven because of his trust in Christ.
Today we are going to look at an episode in the life of Jesus that illustrates that a bit, as well as talking about physical sight.
Caleb read our passage for today, and that’s the passage our message comes from. But before we get into that, I want us to review the idea behind this series on reflecting the purposes of Christmas.
We have been focusing on a passage from Luke chapter 4, in which Jesus uses a quote from the prophet Isaiah to announce that He is the Messiah, the Savior of the world. I have it printed at the top of your bulletin, and I would like us to read it together.
18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."
Today, rather than focus on a portion of that passage dealing with blindness, I want us to explore how Jesus uses one man’s blindness to communicate some very important truths that we need to hear and be reminded of.
But let me just give you a little background about something. The condition of blind men in Jesus’ day was not a pretty picture. The generally sat at roadsides begging for money just to survive. No employment, no prospects for marriage, no social honor. His future was bleak and he knew it.
So when Jesus walks by this man, His heart goes out to Him, and He determines that the Father would be pleased to heal him.
He wants to once again, as He did so often, reach out to the dregs of society, those who others had cast off, and give him a touch from God in the flesh.
We aren’t going to read the whole passage again, because of its length, but I want to pull out what I think are five lessons we can learn from Jesus’ healing of the blind man here in John chapter nine. If you need to find it again, it’s on page 758 of the Bibles in the seats.
I pray this will be a blessing to you, as well as a wake-up call for those who God might be speaking to about being blind spiritually, much like John Newton.
Five lessons from Jesus’ healing of the blind man:
1. Physical blindness is not necessarily a punishment from God.
If you have your finger at John 9, look back at the first three verses.
JN 9:1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
JN 9:3 "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.
The disciples and probably most of the Jewish population in New Testament times lived under the assumption that injury and illness were caused by sin.
So seeing the blind man, they just figured that someone had blown it – either him or his parents.
The parents may have sinned in a way that caused physical harm to the baby – maybe they smoked crack or something – we don’t know. The world is full of people born with physical infirmities because the mother did alcohol or drugs, or the father physically abused the mother while she was pregnant.
I’m not exactly sure how the baby could have sinned in the womb. He was born with a sinful nature, as we all are, but I’d have a hard time finding Scriptural support for saying the baby brought it on himself.
We live in a finite, decaying world that is corrupted both physically and spiritually by sin. It is just the nature of our condition that this world is not perfect, and that there are imperfections in it’s inhabitants.
I don’t understand it all, but I can tell you that God understands it all, and someday we will be able to understand. Until then we need to be patient, anticipating release from our broken down bodies into the new body God will give us in heaven.
But what I want to stress here is that God is not necessarily punishing you for your sins, if you have a physical infirmity. If you feel like you are under God’s curse, let me assure you that God loves you – so much that He sent His Son to be under the curse of death for you.
Job did not understand his sufferings. He did nothing to bring them on. And he had no idea that his sufferings were nothing more than the devil trying to make Job curse God. But even after his complaining, he kept his integrity before God, because even if he didn’t understand his sufferings, he understood who controlled the universe.
Back to the story. I want to mention that it would be easy to look at these verses here and think that God had made this man blind to let Jesus show off. But that’s just not the case.
“The man was not blinded just so God could show off. He sent Jesus to do works of healing in order to show His glory.” (NIV APP. COMMT)
God used the opportunity of the blind man’s presence to display His awesome healing power, which leads me to the second lesson we learn from Jesus’ healing of this man,…
2. Physical blindness can be cured by Jesus.
God was not limited to healing back in Jesus’ day. He can and He does heal today. He is not in the habit of doing it supernaturally all the time, but that doesn’t mean He can’t!
We can pray for healing today. We can, and should pray that God will intervene and act to bring about physical healing to those who need it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, I want to encourage you to do it more often and more fervently.
Believe that God is just as powerful today as He was when He parted the Red Sea, and when He healed the blind man here in our Bible passage.
The Bible says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
He can heal supernaturally, and He will if we pray, and if He decides that it will be to our benefit and His glory to do so.
Did you hear that? God can heal, but we have no right to demand healing from God. He doesn’t owe anybody anything.
Ask and ask fervently, trusting that He has the ability, and that if He so wills, He will do it.
But keep in mind that His glory might be better displayed in you by not healing you this side of heaven.
That healing might take place only after you leave this earth. But that’s His call, not yours or mine.
One thing we would do well to grasp is that more often God chooses to heal us through such people as medical professionals.
Every now and again I think it would be great to live back in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s.
Life was so much simpler then – traffic wasn’t a hassle, people were generally much more trusting, you didn’t have lock the doors on your horse when you went into the barber shop. You get the idea.
But then I think about how primitive medical technology was back then. God has allowed mankind to advance medical technology beyond the wildest dreams of our grandparents.
Entire diseases have been wiped out, and new medicines and preventative measures are being discovered all the time.
When I go to the hospital, or see the doctor, I know that I am benefiting from God’s working through the hands and minds of people who have applied the brains they got from God in the first place.
And people are being healed of blindness today because of it.
Thank God for medical technology. It’s one of the ways He continues to heal blindness and other infirmities today.
The third lesson we learn from Jesus’ healing of the blind man is that…
3. Spiritual blindness is not automatically cured by education.
In fact, depending on the “education,” it can actually stand in the way of curing spiritual blindness.
The blind man was unlearned, yet recognized Jesus was from God.
The religious big shots were learned, but thought Jesus was from the devil.
Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath."
They were more concerned about someone doing good on the Sabbath than on the fact that God had touched a man, both physically and spiritually. And so Jesus basically says that part of His ministry would be judgement against the spiritually blind.
Remember what those guys said to Jesus?
"What? Are we blind too?"
41 Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
Jesus is saying that they, of all people should know better, because they had access to the Scriptures that most people didn’t. But their knowledge actually stood in the way.
You see, these guys knew the Old Testament and the traditions of the elders inside and out. They could tell you what they said about any topic you could think of.
But they did not allow that knowledge to impact them in a way that would cause them to see their need for the Savior.
The Bible says that knowledge puffs up, and it sure did that to these guys. They did not let their knowledge lead them to God – their knowledge led them to pridefully think they were the holders of the wisdom of God. But they were sadly mistaken.
And God used the healing of a poor blind man, who was not a seminary graduate to teach these guys, and us a lesson. That spiritual blindness is every bit as real as physical blindness, and it has even greater consequences.
Listen to 1 Corinthians 1:19-20
19As the Scriptures say, "I will destroy human wisdom and discard their most brilliant ideas."
20So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made them all look foolish and has shown their wisdom to be useless
A few verses later, Paul says…
26Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes, or powerful, or wealthy when God called you.27Instead, God deliberately chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise.
In our example here, Jesus used someone who had not studied to show that it’s not how much you know, but what you know, if it is the truth. This guy only knew Jesus, and that’s all he needed.
The learned will be accountable (James 3:1). If you claim to be a person who has a grasp on Scripture that allows you to teach others, than you better be careful.
You will be held to a higher standard. That’s why Jesus was so harsh to the Pharisees. They claimed that they were basically the only fountain of truth and wisdom from God. But Jesus tells them in another part of the Bible that they are just blind guides who lead other people astray. And they will be judged for it.
Should we stay ignorant of Scripture, then, so that we can see just enough to accept Christ as our Savior, but not be accountable?
Absolutely not. Get into the Word. Learn all you can. But don’t become a Pharisee who gets all full of himself because he knows the Bible well.
Remember what I’ve said about the main purpose of Scripture? It’s not to inform, but to transform.
Let the Word of God change your life, and watch your spiritual vision get more clear all the time. And pride will not be your hallmark – humility in the awesomeness of God and the honor He gives you to be His servant will be your hallmark.
The fourth lesson we learn from Jesus’ healing of the blind man is that…
4. Spiritual blindness prevents true worship.
What do I mean by that? Well, The Pharisees’ form of religion was so full of works that they could not worship God freely out of love – only fear and duty.
They could not just enjoy the wonderful benefits of being someone who was just in love with God. The God who created the universe and made Himself known so we could enjoy Him.
The formally blind man, on the other hand was simply accepting, trusting, and worshiping.
When Jesus confronted him about being the Son of Man, this guy didn’t go ask the Pharisees; he didn’t go and look at his denominational handbook; he didn’t go check out a book at the church library to see if what Jesus said was real.
He knew it instinctively in his spirit that Jesus was who He said He was, and He worshipped Him. Notice that He also didn’t stop to get a book about how to worship. He just did it.
And Jesus accepted it. He saw the love of a man who realized He was in the presence of the Messiah, powerful to heal and to save. He saw a God of love, whom he could love.
The Westminster Confession of Faith says that the chief end of man is to love God and enjoy all His benefits.
Folks, that leads to true worship.
The Pharisees did not enjoy His benefits. They tried to avoid His wrath, and in doing so they didn’t see the love and grace that permeated all the Scriptures they knew about so well.
They knew about the Word of God, but they did not know the God of the Word.
Their spiritual blindness prevented true worship.
The fifth and last lesson I want to point out this morning from Jesus’ healing of the blind man is that…
5. Spiritual blindness can be cured by Jesus.
Just like physical blindness can be cured by Jesus, so can spiritual blindness. You see, that’s just what he did for the blind man.
He opened his eyes physically, then he opened his eyes spiritually so he could recognize the Savior.
Jesus, seeing once again that the Pharisees where more concerned about tradition than about the Messiah, sought this guy out to give him the good news of salvation through Him.
The Pharisees decided this man was a liar and loser and a sinner. Don’t you just love the irony of what they said to the guy after they got done questioning him?
"You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!"
Remember how I said that people believed that sin was the cause of such things as blindness? Well, here’s the Pharisees reinforcing that by saying that this man was a sinner at birth.
What they conveniently forgot was that they, too, were steeped in sin at birth. David says that we adopted Adam’s sinful nature in the womb. That’s everybody, not just the blind, folks.
They used a common tactic when arguing. They could not answer what the man said, so they stooped to insulting him and punishing him.
They weren’t interested in finding out truth, they were only interesting in protecting their hold on the people’s minds and loyalties.
Folks, Jesus wants you to be healed, both physically and spiritually. But in the case of the blind man here in our Bible passage today, He was more concerned about the man’s spiritual health than his physical health.
Why is that? Because it’s obvious from this passage that even people who have physical sight can be spiritually blind.
And if you are not able to see spiritually, if you are not able to recognize Jesus as the Savior, if you are not able to recognize your need to submit to Him and His plan, then having perfect physical vision will do you absolutely no good in terms of eternity.
So what do you do with this? Let me suggest something very simple that anyone can do this afternoon after lunch.
First, if you are not a devoted follower of Christ, in other words, someone who has trusted in Christ to save you and is living in loving submission and obedience to Christ, then you need to get that straightened out.
You can call on Christ right now to save you from the penalty you and I deserve for our sins, by acknowledging your sinfulness and need for a Savior. Believing that Jesus paid the penalty for you on the cross and that He rose from the dead, call on Him to forgive you, make you a new person, and give you a home in heaven, where you will spend eternity with Him.
Recently one of the testimonies at a Missions conference was so powerful it seemed to take the breath away from the people attending. It was the story of a blind woman by the name of Pani. She was listening to the Jesus film in her village as those with their sight were watching. Pani was greatly moved when, she heard on the film, Jesus restored the sight of the blind man. When Pani heard these words she cried out, “I want to receive my sight too.” At the conclusion of the film a miracle took place. Pani could see! Jesus restored her sight! As the mission conference attendees heard this wonderful story they began to show emotion for such a miracle. They were stopped of their emotional exuberance by the missionary as he gave them a reminder. The restoration of Pani’s sight was not the greatest miracle that evening.
A greater miracle took place than the restoration of her sight. Pani received forgiveness of her sins that night by trusting Jesus as her Savior! She heard Jesus speak the sweetest words of all, “Your sins are forgiven.”
For those of you who would call yourself a devoted follower of Christ, a serious Christian, then I would suggest that this afternoon you re-read this passage, and ask God to point out to you how you might be blind to areas of your life that are not under control of the Messiah.
And if He brings some things to your attention, don’t shy away from them. Humbly confess them, and ask God to forgive you, and to help you be intentional about overcoming them.
And ask Him to help you worship and serve Him simply and gladly all the days of your life remaining.
Do that, will you? Then you can sing along with John Newton, that once I was blind, but now I see.
Let’s pray, shall we?
