Was Blind But Now I See (II)
This is a transcript. It may contain small inaccuracies.
It is a glorious chapter, chapter 9 of John. It is about the nature of spiritual sight. And this chapter is really one long event, one long conversation. It's one cohesive story about a man born blind, and more importantly, about the nature of spiritual sight. Some of the most famous words in all of Christian hymnody are those words that we're very familiar with: "I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see." In fact, they are part of that most well-known hymn in the world, which is, you know, "Amazing Grace." "Amazing Grace." Grace is always amazing.
You probably know that "Amazing Grace" was written by John Newton, a former slave trader, and then he was convicted and converted and eventually came to know the Lord Jesus Christ. And wonder of wonders, He became a pastor of a little church in the town of Olney, and He was a pastor there for many, many years. Interestingly, towards the end of his life, John Newton actually did lose his sight. Increasingly, his sight declined and by the end of his life, he was mostly blind. But isn't it a strange thing that for Newton, at the end of his life, he could see more clearly than ever? And in the years that he was a slave trader, a young man with bright eyes, he was very blind. He couldn't see, and after he came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, he experienced real sight, even though his physical sight declined.
Spiritual sight is one of the most important things in the world because it is the ability to understand reality, its insight into what really is. And we've been seeing that all over in the Gospel of John. We've seen darkness equals deception, hiding from the truth, fleeing from truth. We've seen light is truth, clarity, understanding, and living in light of that. And we've been seeing Jesus presents Himself as the ultimate light, the light of the world. He says, "I am the light of the world. I am the truth. Come to Me. Look to Me." And what follows in John chapter 9 is an actual healing of an actual physical blindness, but the reactions of the Jewish leaders to this man born blind and unmistakably healed by the Lord Jesus Christ on the Sabbath is a perfect illustration of spiritual blindness.
The man becomes, in the beautiful artistry of God, the blind man becomes a living illustration of what happens when you receive spiritual sigh. While the sighted Pharisees become an illustration of what happens when you insist that you can see and go deeper and deeper into darkness. You see, when the blind truly see, they truly rejoice. They rejoice that they can see now, and no one can refute the fact that they now see. But when the blind remain blind and claim sight while they are blind—sight that they don't have—they begin to attack and persecute those who do see. And as we watch the difference here, we're going to see the difference between the grace of sight and the curse of choosing darkness.
It's the Sabbath day around the temple. Jesus is not back here in the north. He's still in Jerusalem. He's close to the temple. The temple would have been where you would expect a blind man to be, perhaps sitting there begging, and that's likely where you would have encountered this man. And the disciples, you remember, come across this man, and apparently he was known to the community as the man who had been blind his whole life, in fact born blind. And the disciples, you remember, seem to have a view of sickness very close to Job's friends, very close to that view that's around even today, tragically, in the prosperity gospel, which is that all calamity, all difficulty, all deformity, all sickness must be the result of sin. And so for a man born blind, you have a bit of a perplexing situation. Either his parents sinned, or he himself sinned. But how could he have sinned if he was born this way?
Well, the rabbis taught this: there is no death without sin, and there's no suffering without iniquity. That's what they taught. And so for them it was binary. If he was blind, well it must be that he or his parents have sinned. They're sinners. Our Lord, commenting on this, on the question where did the man's blindness come from, and He said—and we saw this together extensively—it's not because he sinned, it's not because his parents sinned, but this was so that the works of God might be put on display, might be manifested, so that God's glory might be on display. And that's the key to this chapter.
This is a chapter dedicated to the displaying of the works of God, to displaying the glory of God. In fact, the backbone of the chapter is formed by two displays of the works of God. Two works of God. The first one, the removal of physical blindness, and the second one, the removal of spiritual blindness.
Last week we began to look at the first work of God. First work of God, and that's verses 1–34, the healing of the man's physical blindness. And we looked at the preparation in the first five verses. It's a theological preparation explaining the background of this man's blindness and our Lord's role in healing it. This man's congenital blindness was not the result of sin, as I mentioned, and it was part of God's grand design to put on display the glory of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the light of the world, as the God-sent God.
Then we looked at the action, verses 6 and 7. Jesus, in verse 7, the sent One from the Father, the God-sent God, the sent One, sends this man to a pool called Scent. The sent One sends the blind man to the pool called Scent. And of course we know it was neither the clay nor the saliva nor the water from the pool that was the active power that really brought about the healing, that gave physical sight to this blind man. It's just the power of Christ. Jesus supernaturally created the components of this man's ocular system that had been missing or malfunctioning from the womb. He creates them just like this in a split second, in an instant of time, sovereignly, supernaturally, because He is the Creator.
And then we looked at the reaction. We began to look at the reaction last Lord's Day, and that begins with verse 8. The reactions of the people that see and meet the blind man, you remember, they include amazement, doubt, and debate, but especially debate. In fact, the debate over this miracle continues from verse 8 all the way through verse 34. The reaction breaks down into two debates, actually. And the first involves the man's neighbors. The second involves the Pharisees, primarily.
Last Lord's Day, we considered the debate that involved the man's neighbors. And just to remind us of what happened there in terms of the debate that happens between the neighbors, in verses 8 and 9, we see the neighbors' reaction to the blind man healed is near disbelief. There's absolutely no case of a man born blind recovering sight, and so some of the people assume that he just can't be the same guy that we've known all of our lives, sitting, begging. He just must be someone like him, a look-alike. But, the text says, he kept saying, "I'm the one. It's me. Here I am. It's really, really, it's me." Eventually they are convinced of his identity, but obviously the next question on their mind is how? How? Tell us, how? How did this happen to you? Verse 10: "So they were saying to him, 'How then were your eyes opened?'" He answered, "The man who is called Jesus made clay, rubbed my eyes and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' So when I went away and washed, I received my sight." And they said to him, "Where is He?" He said, "I do not know."
Well, now in Israel, which was a strongly religious society and also a society in which the religious authorities were the authority, the ultimate authority, and so he was brought to the Pharisees. That's the next step, the logical step. Let's take him to the experts, the men that these people looked up to as the spiritual leaders. And so it's logical for them that they would seek their input on this matter. And that leads us now to the second debate. And that's our focus for this morning. The second debate under the reaction. A second debate, a debate in which the Pharisees take the primary role. And here what we find is, ironically, as these religious leaders interview the man—rather, really we should say interrogate the man—we find in them, we find in them blindness. Blindness. I like to call it incorrigible rejection. Incorrigible rejection.
What does incorrigible mean? It refers to someone who cannot be persuaded. They cannot be persuaded. Someone who cannot change their ways, stubbornly refuses to change their mind and their ways. This is as stubborn as stubborn gets. Verse 13: "They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind." Verse 14: "Now it was a Sabbath..." Oh, Sabbath. Okay, now we get to the real heart of the story. "Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes." Only here does John introduce us to the explosive element in this miracle. Nobody's panicking that a blind man is now seeing. Everyone can deal with that, as amazing as it is. But oh, we're back to the Sabbath issue. That's a big deal in their mind.
Just as back in John chapter 5 when Jesus healed the man who had been sick for 38 years, just as in Mark chapter 3 when Jesus healed the man with a withered hand, here Jesus intentionally, deliberately heals on the Sabbath. He is Lord of the Sabbath. Keep that in mind. And He's quite pleased to wield His authority over the Sabbath even if it offends the Pharisees.
Now when the Pharisees are brought in, they're just as amazed and just as doubtful and just as divided as the man's neighbors are. But especially now because of the issue of the Sabbath. I mean, they're really, really angry. Verse 15, "So the Pharisees also were asking him again how he received his sight. And he said to them, 'Well, He applied clay to my eyes and I washed and I see.'" So then 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 sinful man do such signs?" And there was a division among them.
So the Pharisees inspect the man and they asked for the story. What happened? We need to know what happened. Well, they get the same account. Nothing different. But see, the problem is that Jesus has chosen again to do this miracle on the Sabbath. He did not do it a day before, which He could have. He did not do it a day after, which He also could have. Rather, He chose to do it exactly on the Sabbath. And healing this man, according to the rabbis, was breaking the Sabbath on two accounts. First of all, according to rabbinic tradition, making mud was breaking the Sabbath because they said making mud is like kneading dough. So it was breaking the Sabbath. You're kneading dough, you're doing work on the Sabbath, you're breaking the Sabbath. It was also breaking the Sabbath on a second account. Alfred Ersheim, the Jewish believer, tells us that it was sinful to apply saliva, really, as a remedy. It was expressly forbidden on the ground that it was intended as a remedy, and you cannot heal on the Sabbath unless it is life-threatening.
So in applying the spittle, He would have violated the ban on using remedies on the Sabbath day to someone who was not in a life-and-death situation. So He broke the Sabbath as well. I mean, they added to the Word of God their own tradition. Some of the ridiculous Sabbath prohibitions, just to give you some, included, for example, walking in the grass on the Sabbath because its bruising effect would constitute a kind of threshing. Here's another one. Wearing nailed shoes, hammered nail on your shoes, is also prohibited because they would be viewed as carrying a burden on the Sabbath.
Also, you couldn't light a wick on the Sabbath, and if a man extinguished a lamp on the Sabbath to spare the lamp, to save the oil, conserve the wick, he was guilty of violating the Sabbath as well. You couldn't even light one. You couldn't even blow one out. You're doing work on the Sabbath. So Jesus is breaking the Sabbath according to the rabbis, and Jesus did this deliberately. He's forcing the issue of His authority status as Lord of the Sabbath.
This breaks up the Pharisees into two groups now. They are on the horns of a dilemma. You see it in the text. They've got to choose. They've got to make a decision. They've got to choose between two logical syllogisms.
One logical syllogism goes this way: Only someone from God could heal the blind. Jesus has healed the blind. Jesus is from God. That's number one. Syllogism number two goes like this: People who break the Sabbath are not from God. Jesus has broken the Sabbath. Well, Jesus is not from God. They've got to choose between these two logical options. Well, one group chooses the second option. Jesus cannot be from God because He has broken our Sabbath rule.
It seems to me that men like this are the kind of people who would post a notice that would read something like this: Attention all miracle workers! All supernatural acts that transcend the laws of human life are to be performed between sunset Saturday night and the following Friday sunset. Performing acts of God between Friday night and Saturday is strictly forbidden. Does this seem a bit ridiculous to you? Well, that's the logic. Forget that the person who could do this is the very same person who gave the law to Moses at Sinai. But that's the logic. Apparently even God must submit to the traditions of the rabbis.
Well, this other group is more moderate. They're asking this obvious question: Yes, He did it on the Sabbath, but who except God can do such a thing? Do you know that you find this kind of reaction when you become a Christian? Think about it. No one can deny the change in you, but the people who see you, well, they have to explain it. And just like this situation here in our text, you also have a logical syllogism that goes like this: Only God can radically change a life. My life has been radically changed. Therefore, God exists. He is real. Jesus is real. But if they accept that, they must accept that God exists. They must embrace the whole package. They must accept that God came into your life. They must believe that Jesus Christ is real.
But if they reject Jesus, they have to reject your explanation of the radical change in your life. They have to explain it away. You know, something like, well, he found a religious crutch. He was going through a hard time. He had a kind of a midlife crisis. Or maybe his wife leaned on him and he just wanted to make peace at home. Oh, he's been brainwashed. Oh, he's trying to please people, etc., etc.
Well, at this point, the Pharisees have the answer in plain sight. Jesus of Nazareth has healed a man born blind. But that is not a conclusion they want or will accept. You know what they're doing. They're fleeing from the truth. They're fleeing from the truth.
Now, as we know, this is not the only miracle that Jesus had done here in Jerusalem. You remember the one a year earlier in "John chapter 5," but certainly there are many others as well. And if you would add those miracles to the legion of healings that Jesus had performed in Galilee and in other parts of Judea, there was in fact an army of evidence lined up that Jesus must be from God.
Just the sheer number of miracles that Jesus had done. I mean, this isn't a guy in a back room somewhere, where two people supposedly somewhere heard, you know, all those testimonies about miracles. You know, my aunt's cousin's friend's friend was there when this person was healed in outer Mongolia or whatever. We all have heard that kind of stuff. In this case, there's a whole different situation going on. Jesus' healings were countless in number. They were undeniable in nature. Jesus' healings were not internal, invisible, and thus unconfirmable. Jesus did not heal only things like backaches and headaches, invisible internal conditions. Jesus' healings were external, instantaneously visible, and therefore undeniably miraculous.
You see, too many lepers had been immediately, instantly, visibly cleansed. I mean, you watched it right there. I mean, the guy, you know, I mean, the skin or the fingers missing, whatever it was, and suddenly the leper is whole, made whole. There it is, and I mean just, boom, in an instant. Too many withered hands had instantly become whole right in front of the eyes of the watchers. Too many paralytics who really were paralytics had leapt up and walked and jumped and ran and carried their bed and went home. I mean, it was an avalanche of miracles.
And these Pharisees looking at that, all of that, and saying, this is at another level altogether. This is something else. This avalanche of miracles must be occurring. I mean, some of them were thinking, because God had opened the door of Heaven and His Kingdom is breaking into the world, surely this couldn't be the work of Satan. So some of the Pharisees focused on the Sabbath. Others focused on the quantity and the quality of Jesus' miracles.
And the result, as often is the case—you see the case in John's Gospel—is what? End of verse 16: division. Division. And there was a division among them. ‘Schisma’ is the Greek word for division. ‘Schisma.’ I mean, even the word itself, you know, you could hear the sound when you tear a paper, right? Schism. Like that. Tear. Split. As into factions. There was a schism. ‘Schisma.’ Division among them.
What this means is that the Pharisees are exactly where the crowds were in John 7:43, where it said, "A division occurred in the crowd because of Him." Because of Him. Well, the Pharisees look around and say, well, maybe the ex-blind man can bring some clarity to the whole situation. Maybe he can bring some clarity, much-needed clarity here. So the Pharisees turned to him and asked him a question in verse 17: "What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes?" And he said, "He's a prophet." Their first question: so what's your opinion of Jesus because He did this for you? Maybe they were hoping the man would say something like, you're not going to believe this. I was sitting there begging and He came by and threw magic powder on me and ran away. Maybe Jesus is an occultist, a magician, a wizard.
Instead, he gives an answer that they don't like. Now, this healed man still doesn't know precisely who his Healer is. I mean, it was Jesus. He knew that much. But he doesn't have the Messianic idea in his head yet. We'll get there, but not yet. His conclusion is, well, it's obvious, guys. This man has to be from God. He must be a prophet. He's like Moses, like Elijah, endued by powers from God.
What was theoretical for his neighbors, what was theoretical for the Pharisees—for this man born blind, it's not theoretical. For him, it's life-transforming. He had never seen sunshine. He only felt the warmth of it on his face. He'd never seen a flower. He'd only felt the petals between his sightless fingers. He'd never seen the temple of God there in Jerusalem. He'd only climbed its hill and felt the coolness of the limestone blocks as he touched it. He heard the voices of his neighbors, his friends, and family. But he'd never seen their faces. And now, for the first time ever, by the grace of God, by the gracious working of God, he, for the first time in his life, is seeing all of those things and more.
So whatever confusion, doubts they had, this guy had no doubts, no confusion, no confusion whatsoever. None. None. Utter lifetime darkness has in a moment become light. Just like that. Jesus must be from God, He said. He must be a prophet.
Well, that's not what they want to hear. That's not what they want to hear. Now, faced with the incontestable evidence that this man was seeing—and there he is, he's in front of us, he's seeing—well, the Pharisees fall back on the position that this seeing man must be a conman. He must be a charlatan. He must be a fake. Obviously, he's seeing now because he's seen his whole life, and this is all just a fake. He's trying to stir up some interest in Jesus and in ministry and so on. It's all been arranged ahead of time, this sort of thing.
So that's the next point. The whole miracle claim here is just a giant deception. So it's time for the Scotland Yard of Jerusalem to do some sleuthing, to do some background check. And so they think, we're going to expose the fraud? We're going to expose the charade? Let's call the man's parents. Put them on the spot.
So in verse 18, we see this: "The Jews did not believe it of him that he was born blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight and questioned them, saying, 'Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?'" So his parents answered and said, "We know that this is our son and that he was born blind."
Mom and dad are the two witnesses. Two witnesses. What's significant? That's the standard Old Testament regulation. Two witnesses. Two witnesses, and they confirmed two facts. Two facts. This man—yes, he is our son. Fact number one. And yes, in fact, he was born blind. He was always blind, blind his whole life. There goes that argument for the Pharisees. It's now undeniable. A genuine miracle has taken place. And they can't deny it. This guy was not a faker, not a charlatan who had always seen and just trying to fake his way to fame or something like that.
Mom and dad, however, as you see in this account, notice that they refused to answer the third question. Look at the third question: "How does he now see?" They refused to answer that. They have no desire to get into the crossfire of the firefight between Jesus of Nazareth and the Pharisees. I mean, they know what's going on. All Jerusalem knows what's going on. And they know that Jesus and the Pharisees are now contending with one another, and they don't want to get in the middle of it. And we see why. Verse 21: "But how he now sees," they continue, "we do not know. Or who opened his eyes? We do not know. Ask him. He is of age. He will speak for himself." His parents said this—now we know, John inserts this for us to know what's going on—they were afraid of the Jews. For the Jews—and when you read "the Jews," the word Jews is a reference to the, it's equivalent to the religious leaders, the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin—had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. "For this reason his parents said, 'He is of age; ask him.'"
As to the change in their son's life, I mean, they could definitely sense the problem. And they were afraid. They recognized that the Pharisees are not at all happy that their son had been miraculously healed. This is a bad thing. Can you imagine? Everything is upside down. This is a bad thing. It's no cause for rejoicing. And so, sensing the tension in the air, they throw the ball back over the net and they say, whatever He did, whatever was done to him to get this miraculous cure, we had no part of it. We wash our hands. We had no part of it. We did not endorse it. We did not pay for it. And we hereby indemnify ourselves of any good thing that has happened to our son. Please refer all further questions to that adult legal entity, otherwise known as our son.
It's funny how often, when people come to Christ, other people interview the family. Did you notice that? People go to the parents and siblings and ask, what happened to him? What happened to your son? When did this religious thing start with him? How did he catch the virus? The unbelieving family usually only has one kind of an explanation: yeah, it was that church in Markham. They brainwashed him. That's the only way the family can explain it.
It's not hard to see what's going on here in our text. Considering the number of miracles that Jesus had done, considering the messianic anticipation that was raging in Palestine at this era, it's inevitable that many would look at that—as they were expecting the Messiah to come and free us from the Romans—we believe He is coming. And so here's this man doing countless miracles. It's inevitable that some of them would conclude that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the long-expected Messiah.
The Pharisees saw that. They looked at what was going on, and they said, you know what? We can't afford to lose our grip. We need a plan. We need to plan to address this. And so they had already concocted a plan to squash any grassroots acclamation of Jesus as the Messiah. And that plan was this: anyone who accepted Jesus to be the Christ would be what? De-synagogued. He would be de-synagogued. He would be kicked out of the synagogue. He would be excommunicated.
In fact, the word of the Pharisees—their intentions to do this—had already circulated among the people. To what? To generate fear. The synagogue was the focal point of Jewish life. What we need to know—we need to know this—is important. Of theological life. Of social life. And so to be de-synagogued was pretty much the end of life for a Jew. What that meant is not simply that you would be put out of the church, as it were, but out of the community as well. For to be put out of the synagogue was to suffer social as well as spiritual expulsion. A person couldn't even make any money. It was economic ruin. It was social ruin. It was spiritual ruin to be cast out of the synagogue. For the life of the synagogue was the life of the entire community. So to be put out of the synagogue was an economic disaster. It was a social disaster as well as being a religious disaster in the minds of many.
Therefore, this man's parents refused to be thrown under the bus for the sake of Jesus, who apparently they did not believe in. They want no part of the excommunication that might follow if they were entangled in the Jesus debate that's going on between Jesus and the Pharisees. For this reason, "verse 23," his parents said, "He is of age; ask him." We have nothing to do with this. We wash our hands.
Well, this interrogation is not going very well for the Pharisees, is it? The man healed thinks that Jesus is a prophet from God. His parents verify that he is who he says he is. His parents also verify that he was indeed born blind. And unfortunately for the Pharisees, it's obvious that now he can see. So the last remaining option is that this man is—he has to be—withholding some vital information. He's refusing to disclose something that will reveal to us that Jesus is in fact a sinner. So we got to really push harder. Verse 24: "Therefore a second time they called the man who had been born blind and said to him, 'Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.'" I mean, they've reached the point of telling the man what he must decide about Jesus. Can you believe it?
See the phrase, "Give glory to God"? It's the same phrase, the exact same phrase that Joshua used with Achan back in Joshua chapter 7 and verse 19. Remember that account. Achan had been shown to be the one who had stolen the banned goods from Jericho, buried them in his tent. He'd been lying about it all the time, obviously. And so Joshua says to him, "Give glory to Yahweh, the God of Israel. Give praise to Him and declare to me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me." In other words, God is glorified when you tell the truth.
So that's what they were saying. Tell us the truth. In other words, they're not buying his testimony. They're not buying the testimony of the parents. And they're not buying the testimony of the neighbors. We want the truth. Stop lying. Stop covering your deceits. Glorify God by telling the truth. Stop the charade. Tell us exactly, really, what happened. And in verse 24: "Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner." This is how firm, this is how immovable, this is how incorrigible their unbelief is. Tell us the truth. And look at the audacity, how they put it: "We know that this man is a sinner." We know that this man is a sinner. Based on what? Based on their own assessment. Based on His violation of the Sabbath, their man-made rule. We know.
The truth is they don't know. They claim really to know that Jesus is a sinner like everyone else. They claim that they have real knowledge about this, and when they had no knowledge whatsoever. Whatsoever. They are simply religious phonies and liars.
It doesn't matter what these parents say or what the blind man says or what Jesus says or does. These religious frauds have their minds made up, and they claim they knew that Jesus was a sinner. Oftentimes unbelievers say "we know" when they have no clue. When they don't know. Science often says it knows when it doesn't know. "We know the world was created billions of years ago." They have no clue. They make stuff up, guessing.
So the healed man picks up on the use of the word "know," and he answers in verse 25: "He then answered, 'Whether He is a sinner, I don't know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.'" You're going to talk about how we know, what we don't know. I don't know who He is. I don't know about the accusation that you're leveling against Him to be a sinner. But I do know that I was blind, now I see.
This man's clear-eyed honesty is a bright light, really, in the midst of this deep, dark darkness. I can't make judgment on Jesus. You do that. You are the religious leaders. You're the experts. But I can just tell you what happened to me. And here's what happened to me: I once was blind, but now I see. And you know, beloved, when people assail your faith, when they tell you God cannot exist, the Bible cannot be God's Word, that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, there's always, always, always one irrefutable answer. As to your objections, I cannot answer all of them. But one thing I know: I once was blind, but now I see.
You see, the simple experience and testimony of an open eye, of spiritual sight—becoming a Christian, being born from above, being saved, justified, new life—that cannot be gainsayed. It cannot be undone. It cannot be taken away.
Once you see, you cannot unsee. No matter how many people tell you, you must unsee. You must unsee. Which is what unbelievers try to tell us all the time—unsee. I mean, imagine saying this to this formerly blind man: "You're really not seeing us right now. You think you see us, but we're not really seen by you." There's one really sure thing in this man's life right now, and that's that he had never seen before in his life, and now he sees. And until the Pharisees answer the reality of that external, visible, undeniable miracle, he says, "Guys, I remain unanswered. Until you answer that, you haven't answered anything." Well, there's nothing like the facts of reality to enrage people who hate the truth, right? So now they're just about breathing in his face with clenched fists. They're furious. No longer able to deny that blindness had been turned to sight, the Pharisees revert to the question: How did it happen? How did He do it? What did you do?
So they said to him, "What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?" Like trying to be prosecutors or trying to push the witness to change the story. The blind man's answer really is cheeky, to say the least. His exasperation leads to sarcasm. Verse 27: "He answered them, 'I told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to listen again? Do you want to become His disciples too?'" Do you?
And now they're in rage. They're fuming. Now they're in fury. That's the last thing they wanted to hear. And by the way, this is—I mean, I don't know—this is the fourth time in this passage they ask the question: How did you get healed? What they simply cannot accept is that what happened to the man is that Jesus healed him. And so they demand of the man that he retells the story differently. Differently. They want a new version of what happened. They want alternative facts. Tell us how Jesus healed you, but not the way you told it before.
What is this? Incorrigible rejection. Incorrigible rejection. This is when people get angry with you about your conversion story. About how you came to know the Lord Jesus Christ. How you were radically transformed. And eventually they're so fed up and say, What really happened to you? Tell us. Was it money? Was it a financial crisis? Was it drugs? Did you get in trouble with the law? Was it some massive family crisis? Maybe midlife crisis? Tell us the real story.
Well, this man's sarcastic answer shows us that all his years of blindness had not dulled his wittiness and sharpness. He knows these Pharisees are liars in search of an alternative to the truth. Nothing he says will satisfy them, short of lying. He'll have to lie to satisfy them. He'll have to tell a false story to suit their narrative. So, he says to them, Why must I retell the story of what Jesus did to me? Why? As it were, do you love stories about Jesus too? Are you enlisting in the school of Jesus? And verse 28: "They reviled him and said, '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 is from.'"
So, when you run out of truth, you turn to insults. You turn to insults. So, they begin to insult this man. The insulting process. They say to him, It's obvious who's Jesus' disciple. It's you. It's you. You're in some kind of collusion with Jesus, but we are Moses' disciples. Moses, whom we've verified. And we know where he's from. He's from God. Jesus is a no-name brand. He didn't come through any of our schools. He doesn't have the stamp of our approval.
The Pharisees still weren't seeing that Moses should have been pointing them to Jesus, rather than insulating them from Jesus. You remember back in chapter 5, Jesus pointed that out to them? He said in chapter 5, verse 39, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that bear witness about Me." And the same chapter, verse 46, "For if you believed Moses, you would have believed Me. For he wrote about who? About Me."
The Pharisees were still not understanding that Moses, in the Old Testament, was all designed to point to Him, the Christ, the Messiah. He was not designed to insulate them from Christ. They don't get it. So they say to Him, in verse 29, "We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from." Well, now the ex-blind man is willing to take the gloves off and give the Pharisees a right hook to the jaw, as it were. Look at verse 30. The man answered and said to them, "Well, here's a marvelous thing, that you do not know where He's from. And He opened my eyes." The obvious conclusion is simple. He opened my eyes. He created new eyes. He must be from Heaven. God alone is the Creator. Satan can destroy, falsify. Only God can create. He has opened my eyes and you don't know where He's from? Are you for real? Figure it out, guys. He's straight from God. If you can't add two and two and get four, then get out of the math class. Verse 31: "We know that God does not listen to sinners." That's an Old Testament principle. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." That's what the Old Testament says. This man knew his Old Testament. God doesn't hear sinners. "But if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He listens to him." And since the beginning of time, it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. Conclusion? Verse 33: "If this man were not from God, He could do nothing."
You say He's a sinner? How in the world would God give Him this power if He were as bad as you say He is? This man has just irrefutable logic, sanctified logic. He presents a series of statements that logically connect. God does not do mighty works through sinners, those opposed to Him. God does mighty works through His people, people who worship Him and obey Him. A work like healing a man born blind is a staggering miracle. You can't fake it. It's impossible for someone who is a rebel.
The conclusion is, since the man has been healed by Jesus, Jesus could not have done this if He was ungodly. He has to have been enabled by God. He has to have been from God. So it doesn't matter if He didn't come through your rabbinic schools, He still healed me. That's implication number one. Implication number two, the Pharisees can't seem to tell who is from God. That's implication number two. And implication number three, maybe they're not themselves from God. Wow.
Well, unable to respond to this line of argument, the Pharisees fall back on the old ploy of attacking the man rather than the arguments. Look at verse 34 “They answered and said to him, “You were born in entirely in sin and are you teaching us?,” so they put him out. Their answer is simply to resort to slander and insult. And isn't this ironic? Isn't this ironic? I mean, look at the statement in verse 34. Look at it. Here they've been trying to say all along, this man wasn't born blind, but here they say, "You were born entirely in sin." They're admitting that he was born blind.
And just like the twelve, back in verse 1 and 2, the Pharisees had embraced the theology of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar in the book of Job. They too assume that this man's congenital blindness must have been because of either his sin or his parents' sin. They couldn't see anything else. But here they just confess that they do think he was born blind, in which case they're admitting that a miracle had taken place.
And now, of course, they ignore what He says. And they can ignore what He says in their mind because, or even what happened to Him, they can ignore it in their mind because of who He is. In their mind, He's a sinner, and He is nothing. It doesn't matter what He says. And this man has the audacity to use theological logic on us? Who is he? I mean, you can picture, really, the Pharisee in the temple looking down his long nose. So they put him out. They put him out, meaning out of the synagogue. They formally excommunicated him. They stubbornly reject his arguments. They put him out of the synagogue. "We're not going to listen to you anymore. Out you go." And remember, this is a big deal to be put out of the synagogue. The synagogue is where you registered for your genealogy. It's where your children were named. It's where you went for instruction, general community. It was part of getting ahead when it comes to employment, employment-wise.
To be cast out is to be regarded as a heathen, a Gentile, a publican. You've been excommunicated. You're out of the community. Some of what that meant is that people would have to keep a distance of at least 2 meters from you. You would not be admitted into an assembly of 10 men. You couldn't come to public prayer. You weren't allowed to study with others. No conversation was to be held with you. You were not even to be shown the road if you were lost. You were allowed to buy the necessaries of life, but it was forbidden to eat or drink with such a person.
So just a few hours into this man's sighted life, and he's lost all standing in Jewish society. But you know there's a good Shepherd looking for the sheep that had been kicked out of the fold of the synagogue, looking for the flock of God's people. Well, that begins in verse 35, but that must wait until next time, Lord willing.
But I want to leave us with some application this morning very briefly. We sometimes hear people say, "If I could just see a miracle, I'd believe in Jesus." "Show me evidence, then I'll believe." But these Pharisees saw all sorts of miracles and yet hardened their hearts against Jesus. The blind man's parents had just seen their prayers answered. I'm assuming they prayed in their Judaism for God to heal their boy, and that the blind son had been miraculously healed, and yet they were afraid to openly confess Jesus as Lord.
The Pharisees and the blind man's parents revealed four factors which are either sinful in themselves or stem from sin that keep unbelievers from true spiritual knowledge, that keep unbelievers from coming all the way to Christ. At the same time, beloved, these factors also can hinder growing in spiritual knowledge among those of us who do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Factor number one: the fear of men. The fear of men—we see it here. The Pharisees called the man's parents and asked, "Is this your son who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?" They reply, "We know that this is our son. He was born blind, but how he now sees, we do not know. Who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him. He is of age. He will speak for himself."
Really, their answer, come to think of it, was not really truthful. It's inconceivable that their son had not told them what he had told the neighbors, namely that Jesus had healed him and how He had healed him. But John explains to us here in verse 22—they replied the way they replied because of fear, fear of men, fear of the Jews who had threatened to put them out of the synagogue. Anyone would confess Jesus as the Christ. And in a culture of fear, people keep their distance from anything that would get them in trouble with others, especially authorities. And it's a problem that has plagued many down to our days.
People fear what others will think more than they fear what God thinks. Perhaps a family member has trusted Jesus and is obviously transformed into a trophy of God's grace, but it embarrasses, it threatens the other members of the family who are outside of Christ. They'd rather not talk about it, or if it comes up in Jesus' name and it comes up as the cause of their loved one's change, they downplay it by saying, "Yes, that seems to work for him," and then they quickly change the subject. They've received a powerful testimony of the power of Christ, but as long as they fear what others think, they will not experience Christ's power in their own lives.
The fear of men cripples, hinders true knowledge of God. And even for us as children of God, we need to make sure we keep that at bay. We strike at the first rising of the fear of man and remind ourselves of Paul's words in Galatians 1: "If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ."
Second factor: wrong presuppositions based on religious rules hinder true spiritual knowledge. Here we move from the parents to the religious leaders, whom John calls the Jews. John almost offhandedly mentions the crux of the problem in verse 14: "Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes." As already mentioned, this violated rabbinic Sabbath regulation. The rules were not in the law of Moses but had been added by the religious leaders.
They added to the commandments of God the commandments of men, and their wrong presupposition was: our rules are equal to God's law. The minor premise was: Jesus violated our rules. Their conclusion was: thus Jesus violated God's law, therefore He's a sinner. But their presupposition was faulty.
Beloved, this keeps unbelievers from really coming to the knowledge—the true knowledge—of God. They make up their own rules as well. And for us, beloved, let us make sure that we don't become narrower than the Scripture as we live the Christian life. That we stand on the Word of God and rightly divide it and ask the Lord to give us light so that we can properly, rightly divide the Word of truth.
Factor number three: always seeking more evidence while discrediting the evidence you already have. Always seeking for more evidence while discrediting the evidence you already have. Never enough. Never enough. The Pharisees had the evidence of the neighbors, the parents, the man himself had been born blind. Jesus healed him on the Sabbath. But they still wanted more—more evidence. More, more, more evidence. And they would refute every time they received a line of evidence. And if they don't like it, they reject it. If it doesn't suit their narrative, they don't accept it. Again and again. "Give glory to God. Tell us the truth. We don't believe you. Come on. Your story must be wrong."
And factor number four, finally. And this is the deadliest one: pride. Pride. Pride hinders true spiritual knowledge. The Pharisees put down this man's testimony in verse 34: "You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?" They held to the view that the disciples reflected—that either this man or his parents must have sinned for him to be born blind. But they prided themselves on their own spiritual knowledge because they thought that they knew the Scriptures. So how could this former blind beggar, who was probably illiterate, teach them anything?
Again, John is using irony. He couldn't teach them anything, and neither could Jesus because of their what? Spiritual arrogance. Pride. Beloved, the spiritual pride is one of the main reasons people do not come to Christ. They think that their good works will commend them to God. They don't see their need for a Savior. They think they are in control. But the starting point for true spiritual knowledge is to admit that you are a sinner and in desperate need for Jesus to save you. It's to come saying, "Lord, I have nothing. I am nothing. I can do nothing to commend myself to You. And I need everything that Christ has done on Calvary's cross for me."
The only way an unbeliever can be released and delivered from this kind of enslaving captivity and bondage to what is evil and arrogant, intolerant, and irrational—the only way an unbeliever can be delivered from this—wait, ready for the answer? The power of God. The power of God.
So what do we do as believers? We're entrusted with the Gospel. What do we do? What do we do? Well, we faithfully present the Gospel and we plead with God to be gracious. We plead with the sinners to believe, and we plead for God to be gracious. Make sure you present the Gospel faithfully. The power is from God—not from you, not from me. Because the natural man, Paul says, understands not the things of God. To him they're what? Foolishness. Because they are spiritually appraised, and he is spiritually dead. "1 Corinthians 2:14."
So when we share the glorious Gospel with others, we don't lose heart. Thank God it's not on me. It's not up to me. I am off the hook as far as transforming lives. I don't do anything. I can do nothing. I'm simply entrusted with the message—the glorious message. I'm a jar of clay, a vessel of clay, a frail, broken vessel that carries the treasure of indescribable value.
You share Christ. You present Christ. You share Christ. And we don't do it with any hope, really, that we have the power in our reason, in our cleverness, in our method, or the power in our facts, or the power in the way we present it to shatter the blindness and the darkness and the bondage of unbelief. We go with the truth and cry out to God to draw the sinner out of the bondage of unbelief. You sow the seed and you go to sleep. And you lean on God.
Let's pray.
You probably know that "Amazing Grace" was written by John Newton, a former slave trader, and then he was convicted and converted and eventually came to know the Lord Jesus Christ. And wonder of wonders, He became a pastor of a little church in the town of Olney, and He was a pastor there for many, many years. Interestingly, towards the end of his life, John Newton actually did lose his sight. Increasingly, his sight declined and by the end of his life, he was mostly blind. But isn't it a strange thing that for Newton, at the end of his life, he could see more clearly than ever? And in the years that he was a slave trader, a young man with bright eyes, he was very blind. He couldn't see, and after he came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, he experienced real sight, even though his physical sight declined.
Spiritual sight is one of the most important things in the world because it is the ability to understand reality, its insight into what really is. And we've been seeing that all over in the Gospel of John. We've seen darkness equals deception, hiding from the truth, fleeing from truth. We've seen light is truth, clarity, understanding, and living in light of that. And we've been seeing Jesus presents Himself as the ultimate light, the light of the world. He says, "I am the light of the world. I am the truth. Come to Me. Look to Me." And what follows in John chapter 9 is an actual healing of an actual physical blindness, but the reactions of the Jewish leaders to this man born blind and unmistakably healed by the Lord Jesus Christ on the Sabbath is a perfect illustration of spiritual blindness.
The man becomes, in the beautiful artistry of God, the blind man becomes a living illustration of what happens when you receive spiritual sigh. While the sighted Pharisees become an illustration of what happens when you insist that you can see and go deeper and deeper into darkness. You see, when the blind truly see, they truly rejoice. They rejoice that they can see now, and no one can refute the fact that they now see. But when the blind remain blind and claim sight while they are blind—sight that they don't have—they begin to attack and persecute those who do see. And as we watch the difference here, we're going to see the difference between the grace of sight and the curse of choosing darkness.
It's the Sabbath day around the temple. Jesus is not back here in the north. He's still in Jerusalem. He's close to the temple. The temple would have been where you would expect a blind man to be, perhaps sitting there begging, and that's likely where you would have encountered this man. And the disciples, you remember, come across this man, and apparently he was known to the community as the man who had been blind his whole life, in fact born blind. And the disciples, you remember, seem to have a view of sickness very close to Job's friends, very close to that view that's around even today, tragically, in the prosperity gospel, which is that all calamity, all difficulty, all deformity, all sickness must be the result of sin. And so for a man born blind, you have a bit of a perplexing situation. Either his parents sinned, or he himself sinned. But how could he have sinned if he was born this way?
Well, the rabbis taught this: there is no death without sin, and there's no suffering without iniquity. That's what they taught. And so for them it was binary. If he was blind, well it must be that he or his parents have sinned. They're sinners. Our Lord, commenting on this, on the question where did the man's blindness come from, and He said—and we saw this together extensively—it's not because he sinned, it's not because his parents sinned, but this was so that the works of God might be put on display, might be manifested, so that God's glory might be on display. And that's the key to this chapter.
This is a chapter dedicated to the displaying of the works of God, to displaying the glory of God. In fact, the backbone of the chapter is formed by two displays of the works of God. Two works of God. The first one, the removal of physical blindness, and the second one, the removal of spiritual blindness.
Last week we began to look at the first work of God. First work of God, and that's verses 1–34, the healing of the man's physical blindness. And we looked at the preparation in the first five verses. It's a theological preparation explaining the background of this man's blindness and our Lord's role in healing it. This man's congenital blindness was not the result of sin, as I mentioned, and it was part of God's grand design to put on display the glory of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the light of the world, as the God-sent God.
Then we looked at the action, verses 6 and 7. Jesus, in verse 7, the sent One from the Father, the God-sent God, the sent One, sends this man to a pool called Scent. The sent One sends the blind man to the pool called Scent. And of course we know it was neither the clay nor the saliva nor the water from the pool that was the active power that really brought about the healing, that gave physical sight to this blind man. It's just the power of Christ. Jesus supernaturally created the components of this man's ocular system that had been missing or malfunctioning from the womb. He creates them just like this in a split second, in an instant of time, sovereignly, supernaturally, because He is the Creator.
And then we looked at the reaction. We began to look at the reaction last Lord's Day, and that begins with verse 8. The reactions of the people that see and meet the blind man, you remember, they include amazement, doubt, and debate, but especially debate. In fact, the debate over this miracle continues from verse 8 all the way through verse 34. The reaction breaks down into two debates, actually. And the first involves the man's neighbors. The second involves the Pharisees, primarily.
Last Lord's Day, we considered the debate that involved the man's neighbors. And just to remind us of what happened there in terms of the debate that happens between the neighbors, in verses 8 and 9, we see the neighbors' reaction to the blind man healed is near disbelief. There's absolutely no case of a man born blind recovering sight, and so some of the people assume that he just can't be the same guy that we've known all of our lives, sitting, begging. He just must be someone like him, a look-alike. But, the text says, he kept saying, "I'm the one. It's me. Here I am. It's really, really, it's me." Eventually they are convinced of his identity, but obviously the next question on their mind is how? How? Tell us, how? How did this happen to you? Verse 10: "So they were saying to him, 'How then were your eyes opened?'" He answered, "The man who is called Jesus made clay, rubbed my eyes and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' So when I went away and washed, I received my sight." And they said to him, "Where is He?" He said, "I do not know."
Well, now in Israel, which was a strongly religious society and also a society in which the religious authorities were the authority, the ultimate authority, and so he was brought to the Pharisees. That's the next step, the logical step. Let's take him to the experts, the men that these people looked up to as the spiritual leaders. And so it's logical for them that they would seek their input on this matter. And that leads us now to the second debate. And that's our focus for this morning. The second debate under the reaction. A second debate, a debate in which the Pharisees take the primary role. And here what we find is, ironically, as these religious leaders interview the man—rather, really we should say interrogate the man—we find in them, we find in them blindness. Blindness. I like to call it incorrigible rejection. Incorrigible rejection.
What does incorrigible mean? It refers to someone who cannot be persuaded. They cannot be persuaded. Someone who cannot change their ways, stubbornly refuses to change their mind and their ways. This is as stubborn as stubborn gets. Verse 13: "They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind." Verse 14: "Now it was a Sabbath..." Oh, Sabbath. Okay, now we get to the real heart of the story. "Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes." Only here does John introduce us to the explosive element in this miracle. Nobody's panicking that a blind man is now seeing. Everyone can deal with that, as amazing as it is. But oh, we're back to the Sabbath issue. That's a big deal in their mind.
Just as back in John chapter 5 when Jesus healed the man who had been sick for 38 years, just as in Mark chapter 3 when Jesus healed the man with a withered hand, here Jesus intentionally, deliberately heals on the Sabbath. He is Lord of the Sabbath. Keep that in mind. And He's quite pleased to wield His authority over the Sabbath even if it offends the Pharisees.
Now when the Pharisees are brought in, they're just as amazed and just as doubtful and just as divided as the man's neighbors are. But especially now because of the issue of the Sabbath. I mean, they're really, really angry. Verse 15, "So the Pharisees also were asking him again how he received his sight. And he said to them, 'Well, He applied clay to my eyes and I washed and I see.'" So then 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 sinful man do such signs?" And there was a division among them.
So the Pharisees inspect the man and they asked for the story. What happened? We need to know what happened. Well, they get the same account. Nothing different. But see, the problem is that Jesus has chosen again to do this miracle on the Sabbath. He did not do it a day before, which He could have. He did not do it a day after, which He also could have. Rather, He chose to do it exactly on the Sabbath. And healing this man, according to the rabbis, was breaking the Sabbath on two accounts. First of all, according to rabbinic tradition, making mud was breaking the Sabbath because they said making mud is like kneading dough. So it was breaking the Sabbath. You're kneading dough, you're doing work on the Sabbath, you're breaking the Sabbath. It was also breaking the Sabbath on a second account. Alfred Ersheim, the Jewish believer, tells us that it was sinful to apply saliva, really, as a remedy. It was expressly forbidden on the ground that it was intended as a remedy, and you cannot heal on the Sabbath unless it is life-threatening.
So in applying the spittle, He would have violated the ban on using remedies on the Sabbath day to someone who was not in a life-and-death situation. So He broke the Sabbath as well. I mean, they added to the Word of God their own tradition. Some of the ridiculous Sabbath prohibitions, just to give you some, included, for example, walking in the grass on the Sabbath because its bruising effect would constitute a kind of threshing. Here's another one. Wearing nailed shoes, hammered nail on your shoes, is also prohibited because they would be viewed as carrying a burden on the Sabbath.
Also, you couldn't light a wick on the Sabbath, and if a man extinguished a lamp on the Sabbath to spare the lamp, to save the oil, conserve the wick, he was guilty of violating the Sabbath as well. You couldn't even light one. You couldn't even blow one out. You're doing work on the Sabbath. So Jesus is breaking the Sabbath according to the rabbis, and Jesus did this deliberately. He's forcing the issue of His authority status as Lord of the Sabbath.
This breaks up the Pharisees into two groups now. They are on the horns of a dilemma. You see it in the text. They've got to choose. They've got to make a decision. They've got to choose between two logical syllogisms.
One logical syllogism goes this way: Only someone from God could heal the blind. Jesus has healed the blind. Jesus is from God. That's number one. Syllogism number two goes like this: People who break the Sabbath are not from God. Jesus has broken the Sabbath. Well, Jesus is not from God. They've got to choose between these two logical options. Well, one group chooses the second option. Jesus cannot be from God because He has broken our Sabbath rule.
It seems to me that men like this are the kind of people who would post a notice that would read something like this: Attention all miracle workers! All supernatural acts that transcend the laws of human life are to be performed between sunset Saturday night and the following Friday sunset. Performing acts of God between Friday night and Saturday is strictly forbidden. Does this seem a bit ridiculous to you? Well, that's the logic. Forget that the person who could do this is the very same person who gave the law to Moses at Sinai. But that's the logic. Apparently even God must submit to the traditions of the rabbis.
Well, this other group is more moderate. They're asking this obvious question: Yes, He did it on the Sabbath, but who except God can do such a thing? Do you know that you find this kind of reaction when you become a Christian? Think about it. No one can deny the change in you, but the people who see you, well, they have to explain it. And just like this situation here in our text, you also have a logical syllogism that goes like this: Only God can radically change a life. My life has been radically changed. Therefore, God exists. He is real. Jesus is real. But if they accept that, they must accept that God exists. They must embrace the whole package. They must accept that God came into your life. They must believe that Jesus Christ is real.
But if they reject Jesus, they have to reject your explanation of the radical change in your life. They have to explain it away. You know, something like, well, he found a religious crutch. He was going through a hard time. He had a kind of a midlife crisis. Or maybe his wife leaned on him and he just wanted to make peace at home. Oh, he's been brainwashed. Oh, he's trying to please people, etc., etc.
Well, at this point, the Pharisees have the answer in plain sight. Jesus of Nazareth has healed a man born blind. But that is not a conclusion they want or will accept. You know what they're doing. They're fleeing from the truth. They're fleeing from the truth.
Now, as we know, this is not the only miracle that Jesus had done here in Jerusalem. You remember the one a year earlier in "John chapter 5," but certainly there are many others as well. And if you would add those miracles to the legion of healings that Jesus had performed in Galilee and in other parts of Judea, there was in fact an army of evidence lined up that Jesus must be from God.
Just the sheer number of miracles that Jesus had done. I mean, this isn't a guy in a back room somewhere, where two people supposedly somewhere heard, you know, all those testimonies about miracles. You know, my aunt's cousin's friend's friend was there when this person was healed in outer Mongolia or whatever. We all have heard that kind of stuff. In this case, there's a whole different situation going on. Jesus' healings were countless in number. They were undeniable in nature. Jesus' healings were not internal, invisible, and thus unconfirmable. Jesus did not heal only things like backaches and headaches, invisible internal conditions. Jesus' healings were external, instantaneously visible, and therefore undeniably miraculous.
You see, too many lepers had been immediately, instantly, visibly cleansed. I mean, you watched it right there. I mean, the guy, you know, I mean, the skin or the fingers missing, whatever it was, and suddenly the leper is whole, made whole. There it is, and I mean just, boom, in an instant. Too many withered hands had instantly become whole right in front of the eyes of the watchers. Too many paralytics who really were paralytics had leapt up and walked and jumped and ran and carried their bed and went home. I mean, it was an avalanche of miracles.
And these Pharisees looking at that, all of that, and saying, this is at another level altogether. This is something else. This avalanche of miracles must be occurring. I mean, some of them were thinking, because God had opened the door of Heaven and His Kingdom is breaking into the world, surely this couldn't be the work of Satan. So some of the Pharisees focused on the Sabbath. Others focused on the quantity and the quality of Jesus' miracles.
And the result, as often is the case—you see the case in John's Gospel—is what? End of verse 16: division. Division. And there was a division among them. ‘Schisma’ is the Greek word for division. ‘Schisma.’ I mean, even the word itself, you know, you could hear the sound when you tear a paper, right? Schism. Like that. Tear. Split. As into factions. There was a schism. ‘Schisma.’ Division among them.
What this means is that the Pharisees are exactly where the crowds were in John 7:43, where it said, "A division occurred in the crowd because of Him." Because of Him. Well, the Pharisees look around and say, well, maybe the ex-blind man can bring some clarity to the whole situation. Maybe he can bring some clarity, much-needed clarity here. So the Pharisees turned to him and asked him a question in verse 17: "What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes?" And he said, "He's a prophet." Their first question: so what's your opinion of Jesus because He did this for you? Maybe they were hoping the man would say something like, you're not going to believe this. I was sitting there begging and He came by and threw magic powder on me and ran away. Maybe Jesus is an occultist, a magician, a wizard.
Instead, he gives an answer that they don't like. Now, this healed man still doesn't know precisely who his Healer is. I mean, it was Jesus. He knew that much. But he doesn't have the Messianic idea in his head yet. We'll get there, but not yet. His conclusion is, well, it's obvious, guys. This man has to be from God. He must be a prophet. He's like Moses, like Elijah, endued by powers from God.
What was theoretical for his neighbors, what was theoretical for the Pharisees—for this man born blind, it's not theoretical. For him, it's life-transforming. He had never seen sunshine. He only felt the warmth of it on his face. He'd never seen a flower. He'd only felt the petals between his sightless fingers. He'd never seen the temple of God there in Jerusalem. He'd only climbed its hill and felt the coolness of the limestone blocks as he touched it. He heard the voices of his neighbors, his friends, and family. But he'd never seen their faces. And now, for the first time ever, by the grace of God, by the gracious working of God, he, for the first time in his life, is seeing all of those things and more.
So whatever confusion, doubts they had, this guy had no doubts, no confusion, no confusion whatsoever. None. None. Utter lifetime darkness has in a moment become light. Just like that. Jesus must be from God, He said. He must be a prophet.
Well, that's not what they want to hear. That's not what they want to hear. Now, faced with the incontestable evidence that this man was seeing—and there he is, he's in front of us, he's seeing—well, the Pharisees fall back on the position that this seeing man must be a conman. He must be a charlatan. He must be a fake. Obviously, he's seeing now because he's seen his whole life, and this is all just a fake. He's trying to stir up some interest in Jesus and in ministry and so on. It's all been arranged ahead of time, this sort of thing.
So that's the next point. The whole miracle claim here is just a giant deception. So it's time for the Scotland Yard of Jerusalem to do some sleuthing, to do some background check. And so they think, we're going to expose the fraud? We're going to expose the charade? Let's call the man's parents. Put them on the spot.
So in verse 18, we see this: "The Jews did not believe it of him that he was born blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight and questioned them, saying, 'Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?'" So his parents answered and said, "We know that this is our son and that he was born blind."
Mom and dad are the two witnesses. Two witnesses. What's significant? That's the standard Old Testament regulation. Two witnesses. Two witnesses, and they confirmed two facts. Two facts. This man—yes, he is our son. Fact number one. And yes, in fact, he was born blind. He was always blind, blind his whole life. There goes that argument for the Pharisees. It's now undeniable. A genuine miracle has taken place. And they can't deny it. This guy was not a faker, not a charlatan who had always seen and just trying to fake his way to fame or something like that.
Mom and dad, however, as you see in this account, notice that they refused to answer the third question. Look at the third question: "How does he now see?" They refused to answer that. They have no desire to get into the crossfire of the firefight between Jesus of Nazareth and the Pharisees. I mean, they know what's going on. All Jerusalem knows what's going on. And they know that Jesus and the Pharisees are now contending with one another, and they don't want to get in the middle of it. And we see why. Verse 21: "But how he now sees," they continue, "we do not know. Or who opened his eyes? We do not know. Ask him. He is of age. He will speak for himself." His parents said this—now we know, John inserts this for us to know what's going on—they were afraid of the Jews. For the Jews—and when you read "the Jews," the word Jews is a reference to the, it's equivalent to the religious leaders, the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin—had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. "For this reason his parents said, 'He is of age; ask him.'"
As to the change in their son's life, I mean, they could definitely sense the problem. And they were afraid. They recognized that the Pharisees are not at all happy that their son had been miraculously healed. This is a bad thing. Can you imagine? Everything is upside down. This is a bad thing. It's no cause for rejoicing. And so, sensing the tension in the air, they throw the ball back over the net and they say, whatever He did, whatever was done to him to get this miraculous cure, we had no part of it. We wash our hands. We had no part of it. We did not endorse it. We did not pay for it. And we hereby indemnify ourselves of any good thing that has happened to our son. Please refer all further questions to that adult legal entity, otherwise known as our son.
It's funny how often, when people come to Christ, other people interview the family. Did you notice that? People go to the parents and siblings and ask, what happened to him? What happened to your son? When did this religious thing start with him? How did he catch the virus? The unbelieving family usually only has one kind of an explanation: yeah, it was that church in Markham. They brainwashed him. That's the only way the family can explain it.
It's not hard to see what's going on here in our text. Considering the number of miracles that Jesus had done, considering the messianic anticipation that was raging in Palestine at this era, it's inevitable that many would look at that—as they were expecting the Messiah to come and free us from the Romans—we believe He is coming. And so here's this man doing countless miracles. It's inevitable that some of them would conclude that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the long-expected Messiah.
The Pharisees saw that. They looked at what was going on, and they said, you know what? We can't afford to lose our grip. We need a plan. We need to plan to address this. And so they had already concocted a plan to squash any grassroots acclamation of Jesus as the Messiah. And that plan was this: anyone who accepted Jesus to be the Christ would be what? De-synagogued. He would be de-synagogued. He would be kicked out of the synagogue. He would be excommunicated.
In fact, the word of the Pharisees—their intentions to do this—had already circulated among the people. To what? To generate fear. The synagogue was the focal point of Jewish life. What we need to know—we need to know this—is important. Of theological life. Of social life. And so to be de-synagogued was pretty much the end of life for a Jew. What that meant is not simply that you would be put out of the church, as it were, but out of the community as well. For to be put out of the synagogue was to suffer social as well as spiritual expulsion. A person couldn't even make any money. It was economic ruin. It was social ruin. It was spiritual ruin to be cast out of the synagogue. For the life of the synagogue was the life of the entire community. So to be put out of the synagogue was an economic disaster. It was a social disaster as well as being a religious disaster in the minds of many.
Therefore, this man's parents refused to be thrown under the bus for the sake of Jesus, who apparently they did not believe in. They want no part of the excommunication that might follow if they were entangled in the Jesus debate that's going on between Jesus and the Pharisees. For this reason, "verse 23," his parents said, "He is of age; ask him." We have nothing to do with this. We wash our hands.
Well, this interrogation is not going very well for the Pharisees, is it? The man healed thinks that Jesus is a prophet from God. His parents verify that he is who he says he is. His parents also verify that he was indeed born blind. And unfortunately for the Pharisees, it's obvious that now he can see. So the last remaining option is that this man is—he has to be—withholding some vital information. He's refusing to disclose something that will reveal to us that Jesus is in fact a sinner. So we got to really push harder. Verse 24: "Therefore a second time they called the man who had been born blind and said to him, 'Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.'" I mean, they've reached the point of telling the man what he must decide about Jesus. Can you believe it?
See the phrase, "Give glory to God"? It's the same phrase, the exact same phrase that Joshua used with Achan back in Joshua chapter 7 and verse 19. Remember that account. Achan had been shown to be the one who had stolen the banned goods from Jericho, buried them in his tent. He'd been lying about it all the time, obviously. And so Joshua says to him, "Give glory to Yahweh, the God of Israel. Give praise to Him and declare to me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me." In other words, God is glorified when you tell the truth.
So that's what they were saying. Tell us the truth. In other words, they're not buying his testimony. They're not buying the testimony of the parents. And they're not buying the testimony of the neighbors. We want the truth. Stop lying. Stop covering your deceits. Glorify God by telling the truth. Stop the charade. Tell us exactly, really, what happened. And in verse 24: "Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner." This is how firm, this is how immovable, this is how incorrigible their unbelief is. Tell us the truth. And look at the audacity, how they put it: "We know that this man is a sinner." We know that this man is a sinner. Based on what? Based on their own assessment. Based on His violation of the Sabbath, their man-made rule. We know.
The truth is they don't know. They claim really to know that Jesus is a sinner like everyone else. They claim that they have real knowledge about this, and when they had no knowledge whatsoever. Whatsoever. They are simply religious phonies and liars.
It doesn't matter what these parents say or what the blind man says or what Jesus says or does. These religious frauds have their minds made up, and they claim they knew that Jesus was a sinner. Oftentimes unbelievers say "we know" when they have no clue. When they don't know. Science often says it knows when it doesn't know. "We know the world was created billions of years ago." They have no clue. They make stuff up, guessing.
So the healed man picks up on the use of the word "know," and he answers in verse 25: "He then answered, 'Whether He is a sinner, I don't know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.'" You're going to talk about how we know, what we don't know. I don't know who He is. I don't know about the accusation that you're leveling against Him to be a sinner. But I do know that I was blind, now I see.
This man's clear-eyed honesty is a bright light, really, in the midst of this deep, dark darkness. I can't make judgment on Jesus. You do that. You are the religious leaders. You're the experts. But I can just tell you what happened to me. And here's what happened to me: I once was blind, but now I see. And you know, beloved, when people assail your faith, when they tell you God cannot exist, the Bible cannot be God's Word, that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, there's always, always, always one irrefutable answer. As to your objections, I cannot answer all of them. But one thing I know: I once was blind, but now I see.
You see, the simple experience and testimony of an open eye, of spiritual sight—becoming a Christian, being born from above, being saved, justified, new life—that cannot be gainsayed. It cannot be undone. It cannot be taken away.
Once you see, you cannot unsee. No matter how many people tell you, you must unsee. You must unsee. Which is what unbelievers try to tell us all the time—unsee. I mean, imagine saying this to this formerly blind man: "You're really not seeing us right now. You think you see us, but we're not really seen by you." There's one really sure thing in this man's life right now, and that's that he had never seen before in his life, and now he sees. And until the Pharisees answer the reality of that external, visible, undeniable miracle, he says, "Guys, I remain unanswered. Until you answer that, you haven't answered anything." Well, there's nothing like the facts of reality to enrage people who hate the truth, right? So now they're just about breathing in his face with clenched fists. They're furious. No longer able to deny that blindness had been turned to sight, the Pharisees revert to the question: How did it happen? How did He do it? What did you do?
So they said to him, "What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?" Like trying to be prosecutors or trying to push the witness to change the story. The blind man's answer really is cheeky, to say the least. His exasperation leads to sarcasm. Verse 27: "He answered them, 'I told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to listen again? Do you want to become His disciples too?'" Do you?
And now they're in rage. They're fuming. Now they're in fury. That's the last thing they wanted to hear. And by the way, this is—I mean, I don't know—this is the fourth time in this passage they ask the question: How did you get healed? What they simply cannot accept is that what happened to the man is that Jesus healed him. And so they demand of the man that he retells the story differently. Differently. They want a new version of what happened. They want alternative facts. Tell us how Jesus healed you, but not the way you told it before.
What is this? Incorrigible rejection. Incorrigible rejection. This is when people get angry with you about your conversion story. About how you came to know the Lord Jesus Christ. How you were radically transformed. And eventually they're so fed up and say, What really happened to you? Tell us. Was it money? Was it a financial crisis? Was it drugs? Did you get in trouble with the law? Was it some massive family crisis? Maybe midlife crisis? Tell us the real story.
Well, this man's sarcastic answer shows us that all his years of blindness had not dulled his wittiness and sharpness. He knows these Pharisees are liars in search of an alternative to the truth. Nothing he says will satisfy them, short of lying. He'll have to lie to satisfy them. He'll have to tell a false story to suit their narrative. So, he says to them, Why must I retell the story of what Jesus did to me? Why? As it were, do you love stories about Jesus too? Are you enlisting in the school of Jesus? And verse 28: "They reviled him and said, '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 is from.'"
So, when you run out of truth, you turn to insults. You turn to insults. So, they begin to insult this man. The insulting process. They say to him, It's obvious who's Jesus' disciple. It's you. It's you. You're in some kind of collusion with Jesus, but we are Moses' disciples. Moses, whom we've verified. And we know where he's from. He's from God. Jesus is a no-name brand. He didn't come through any of our schools. He doesn't have the stamp of our approval.
The Pharisees still weren't seeing that Moses should have been pointing them to Jesus, rather than insulating them from Jesus. You remember back in chapter 5, Jesus pointed that out to them? He said in chapter 5, verse 39, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that bear witness about Me." And the same chapter, verse 46, "For if you believed Moses, you would have believed Me. For he wrote about who? About Me."
The Pharisees were still not understanding that Moses, in the Old Testament, was all designed to point to Him, the Christ, the Messiah. He was not designed to insulate them from Christ. They don't get it. So they say to Him, in verse 29, "We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from." Well, now the ex-blind man is willing to take the gloves off and give the Pharisees a right hook to the jaw, as it were. Look at verse 30. The man answered and said to them, "Well, here's a marvelous thing, that you do not know where He's from. And He opened my eyes." The obvious conclusion is simple. He opened my eyes. He created new eyes. He must be from Heaven. God alone is the Creator. Satan can destroy, falsify. Only God can create. He has opened my eyes and you don't know where He's from? Are you for real? Figure it out, guys. He's straight from God. If you can't add two and two and get four, then get out of the math class. Verse 31: "We know that God does not listen to sinners." That's an Old Testament principle. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." That's what the Old Testament says. This man knew his Old Testament. God doesn't hear sinners. "But if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He listens to him." And since the beginning of time, it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. Conclusion? Verse 33: "If this man were not from God, He could do nothing."
You say He's a sinner? How in the world would God give Him this power if He were as bad as you say He is? This man has just irrefutable logic, sanctified logic. He presents a series of statements that logically connect. God does not do mighty works through sinners, those opposed to Him. God does mighty works through His people, people who worship Him and obey Him. A work like healing a man born blind is a staggering miracle. You can't fake it. It's impossible for someone who is a rebel.
The conclusion is, since the man has been healed by Jesus, Jesus could not have done this if He was ungodly. He has to have been enabled by God. He has to have been from God. So it doesn't matter if He didn't come through your rabbinic schools, He still healed me. That's implication number one. Implication number two, the Pharisees can't seem to tell who is from God. That's implication number two. And implication number three, maybe they're not themselves from God. Wow.
Well, unable to respond to this line of argument, the Pharisees fall back on the old ploy of attacking the man rather than the arguments. Look at verse 34 “They answered and said to him, “You were born in entirely in sin and are you teaching us?,” so they put him out. Their answer is simply to resort to slander and insult. And isn't this ironic? Isn't this ironic? I mean, look at the statement in verse 34. Look at it. Here they've been trying to say all along, this man wasn't born blind, but here they say, "You were born entirely in sin." They're admitting that he was born blind.
And just like the twelve, back in verse 1 and 2, the Pharisees had embraced the theology of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar in the book of Job. They too assume that this man's congenital blindness must have been because of either his sin or his parents' sin. They couldn't see anything else. But here they just confess that they do think he was born blind, in which case they're admitting that a miracle had taken place.
And now, of course, they ignore what He says. And they can ignore what He says in their mind because, or even what happened to Him, they can ignore it in their mind because of who He is. In their mind, He's a sinner, and He is nothing. It doesn't matter what He says. And this man has the audacity to use theological logic on us? Who is he? I mean, you can picture, really, the Pharisee in the temple looking down his long nose. So they put him out. They put him out, meaning out of the synagogue. They formally excommunicated him. They stubbornly reject his arguments. They put him out of the synagogue. "We're not going to listen to you anymore. Out you go." And remember, this is a big deal to be put out of the synagogue. The synagogue is where you registered for your genealogy. It's where your children were named. It's where you went for instruction, general community. It was part of getting ahead when it comes to employment, employment-wise.
To be cast out is to be regarded as a heathen, a Gentile, a publican. You've been excommunicated. You're out of the community. Some of what that meant is that people would have to keep a distance of at least 2 meters from you. You would not be admitted into an assembly of 10 men. You couldn't come to public prayer. You weren't allowed to study with others. No conversation was to be held with you. You were not even to be shown the road if you were lost. You were allowed to buy the necessaries of life, but it was forbidden to eat or drink with such a person.
So just a few hours into this man's sighted life, and he's lost all standing in Jewish society. But you know there's a good Shepherd looking for the sheep that had been kicked out of the fold of the synagogue, looking for the flock of God's people. Well, that begins in verse 35, but that must wait until next time, Lord willing.
But I want to leave us with some application this morning very briefly. We sometimes hear people say, "If I could just see a miracle, I'd believe in Jesus." "Show me evidence, then I'll believe." But these Pharisees saw all sorts of miracles and yet hardened their hearts against Jesus. The blind man's parents had just seen their prayers answered. I'm assuming they prayed in their Judaism for God to heal their boy, and that the blind son had been miraculously healed, and yet they were afraid to openly confess Jesus as Lord.
The Pharisees and the blind man's parents revealed four factors which are either sinful in themselves or stem from sin that keep unbelievers from true spiritual knowledge, that keep unbelievers from coming all the way to Christ. At the same time, beloved, these factors also can hinder growing in spiritual knowledge among those of us who do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Factor number one: the fear of men. The fear of men—we see it here. The Pharisees called the man's parents and asked, "Is this your son who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?" They reply, "We know that this is our son. He was born blind, but how he now sees, we do not know. Who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him. He is of age. He will speak for himself."
Really, their answer, come to think of it, was not really truthful. It's inconceivable that their son had not told them what he had told the neighbors, namely that Jesus had healed him and how He had healed him. But John explains to us here in verse 22—they replied the way they replied because of fear, fear of men, fear of the Jews who had threatened to put them out of the synagogue. Anyone would confess Jesus as the Christ. And in a culture of fear, people keep their distance from anything that would get them in trouble with others, especially authorities. And it's a problem that has plagued many down to our days.
People fear what others will think more than they fear what God thinks. Perhaps a family member has trusted Jesus and is obviously transformed into a trophy of God's grace, but it embarrasses, it threatens the other members of the family who are outside of Christ. They'd rather not talk about it, or if it comes up in Jesus' name and it comes up as the cause of their loved one's change, they downplay it by saying, "Yes, that seems to work for him," and then they quickly change the subject. They've received a powerful testimony of the power of Christ, but as long as they fear what others think, they will not experience Christ's power in their own lives.
The fear of men cripples, hinders true knowledge of God. And even for us as children of God, we need to make sure we keep that at bay. We strike at the first rising of the fear of man and remind ourselves of Paul's words in Galatians 1: "If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ."
Second factor: wrong presuppositions based on religious rules hinder true spiritual knowledge. Here we move from the parents to the religious leaders, whom John calls the Jews. John almost offhandedly mentions the crux of the problem in verse 14: "Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes." As already mentioned, this violated rabbinic Sabbath regulation. The rules were not in the law of Moses but had been added by the religious leaders.
They added to the commandments of God the commandments of men, and their wrong presupposition was: our rules are equal to God's law. The minor premise was: Jesus violated our rules. Their conclusion was: thus Jesus violated God's law, therefore He's a sinner. But their presupposition was faulty.
Beloved, this keeps unbelievers from really coming to the knowledge—the true knowledge—of God. They make up their own rules as well. And for us, beloved, let us make sure that we don't become narrower than the Scripture as we live the Christian life. That we stand on the Word of God and rightly divide it and ask the Lord to give us light so that we can properly, rightly divide the Word of truth.
Factor number three: always seeking more evidence while discrediting the evidence you already have. Always seeking for more evidence while discrediting the evidence you already have. Never enough. Never enough. The Pharisees had the evidence of the neighbors, the parents, the man himself had been born blind. Jesus healed him on the Sabbath. But they still wanted more—more evidence. More, more, more evidence. And they would refute every time they received a line of evidence. And if they don't like it, they reject it. If it doesn't suit their narrative, they don't accept it. Again and again. "Give glory to God. Tell us the truth. We don't believe you. Come on. Your story must be wrong."
And factor number four, finally. And this is the deadliest one: pride. Pride. Pride hinders true spiritual knowledge. The Pharisees put down this man's testimony in verse 34: "You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?" They held to the view that the disciples reflected—that either this man or his parents must have sinned for him to be born blind. But they prided themselves on their own spiritual knowledge because they thought that they knew the Scriptures. So how could this former blind beggar, who was probably illiterate, teach them anything?
Again, John is using irony. He couldn't teach them anything, and neither could Jesus because of their what? Spiritual arrogance. Pride. Beloved, the spiritual pride is one of the main reasons people do not come to Christ. They think that their good works will commend them to God. They don't see their need for a Savior. They think they are in control. But the starting point for true spiritual knowledge is to admit that you are a sinner and in desperate need for Jesus to save you. It's to come saying, "Lord, I have nothing. I am nothing. I can do nothing to commend myself to You. And I need everything that Christ has done on Calvary's cross for me."
The only way an unbeliever can be released and delivered from this kind of enslaving captivity and bondage to what is evil and arrogant, intolerant, and irrational—the only way an unbeliever can be delivered from this—wait, ready for the answer? The power of God. The power of God.
So what do we do as believers? We're entrusted with the Gospel. What do we do? What do we do? Well, we faithfully present the Gospel and we plead with God to be gracious. We plead with the sinners to believe, and we plead for God to be gracious. Make sure you present the Gospel faithfully. The power is from God—not from you, not from me. Because the natural man, Paul says, understands not the things of God. To him they're what? Foolishness. Because they are spiritually appraised, and he is spiritually dead. "1 Corinthians 2:14."
So when we share the glorious Gospel with others, we don't lose heart. Thank God it's not on me. It's not up to me. I am off the hook as far as transforming lives. I don't do anything. I can do nothing. I'm simply entrusted with the message—the glorious message. I'm a jar of clay, a vessel of clay, a frail, broken vessel that carries the treasure of indescribable value.
You share Christ. You present Christ. You share Christ. And we don't do it with any hope, really, that we have the power in our reason, in our cleverness, in our method, or the power in our facts, or the power in the way we present it to shatter the blindness and the darkness and the bondage of unbelief. We go with the truth and cry out to God to draw the sinner out of the bondage of unbelief. You sow the seed and you go to sleep. And you lean on God.
Let's pray.
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