The Blind Criticising The Former Blind Series

3 Blind Mice” Three blind mice, three blind mice. See how they run! See how they run! They all ran after a farmer's wife, Who cut off their tails with a carving knife. Did you ever see such a thing in your life, As three blind mice? WHAT KIND OF THING IS THIS TO TEACH KIDS?

Many nursery rhymes started out as social commentary or political cartoons in verse. In this case, the "farmer's wife" was Queen Mary I of England, so called because her estates included a lot of farmland. She was displeased with 3 ratty noblemen, but she didn't dismember them as the rhyme suggests. She simply had them burned at the stake!

WHO COULD BE SO CRUEL TO THOSE CONSIDERED BLIND? WHY WOULD THEY ATTACK THIS POOR MAN WHO HAD SUFFERED SO MUCH IN LIFE AND NOW WAS SET FREE?

Sometimes the greater the evidence that proves you wrong the harder you fight against it.

• These ever watching Pharisees were always on the lookout for anything they could accuse Jesus of doing that was wrong. The fact that this miracle had been done on the SABBATH DAY was finally something they could accuse Him with.

One of their religious laws forbid even SPITTING on the Sabbath because in doing so you would mix saliva and dirt which makes mud which is what they used to construct their homes. That was considered brick making and work. If you spit on the Sabbath it had better be on a ROCK. Rabbis said it was forbidden to heal on the Sabbath day. They specifically said, "If you find somebody with a broken leg you can keep it from getting worse, but you cannot make it any better."

• How horrible and unwise to make rules and restrictions that don’t allow God to be God on the most holy day of the week.

25 He then answered, "Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see."

A couple years ago, I took a tour of a cave near Raystown. The guide taught us an interesting fact about this. A person who lives in total darkness for just a few months will become irrevocably blind. Darkness not only hinders sight, it causes blindness.

SOME PEOPLE STRUGGLE WITH THE THINGS GOD IS DOING:

• Sometimes we can make ASSUMPTIONS upon the ways of God and as a result fight against the very acts of God that don’t fall into those assumptions. How free is God to work in your life in ways He has never done before? How has God worked in the past in ways He has not worked in our day? Could He work tomorrow in ways different than in the past or present? The obvious answer is yes so why do we find so many people resisting His changing ways?

1. QUESTIONING THE MAN BORN BLIND: 13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes.

• Here is a man who wasn’t asking for trouble or looking for trouble but simply because his life troubled others he becomes the center of this controversy. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOUR LIFE WAS WORTH TAKING CONTROVERSAL NOT OF?

“Live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God didn’t exist!” – Cardinal Suhard Chuck Swindoll asks, “Is your life a cold monument to religious duty, or is it a living mystery?”

• This man must have been excited celebrating this great miracle and looking to tell all he could about it and then he runs into the SOCIETY FOR THE TRUE BLIND. While others saw a blind man healed they focused on the fact that Jesus MADE CLAY. Save man in pool with no swimming sign.

15 Then the Pharisees also were asking him again how he received his sight. And he said to them, "He applied clay to my eyes, and I washed, and I see."

16 Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying, "This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath." But others were saying, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And there was a division among them.

• According to the reasoning of the super religious, ‘It is impossible for God to work outside the box we have constructed’. Jesus could not be from God, not because He broke the laws of nature to do a miracle, but because He broke the religious laws these Pharisees had added to the Biblical text.

• Breaking their law made Him a sinner and thus God could not use Him. Do you know anybody with their own set of laws that they think nobody could be used by God if they break?