How do you react to a
miracle from the Lord?
The blindness that that
once-blind man had experienced was nothing compared to the blindness
that the Pharisees, and his neighbours were experiencing, because
their blindness kept them from seeing the Lord at work! Their
blindness prevented them from believing the truth of what they saw
and heard; and those Pharisees were educated people, but as educated
as they were, they had no spiritual vision. They did not have the
ability to see what had taken place in that once-blind man's life.
They were groping around in spiritual darkness because of unbelief,
and so we can determine three things from the rest of Jn. chapter 9,
beginning with...
1. A problem of
unbelief, vss. 12-16
The neighbours of the
once-blind man, who were victims of unbelief themselves, brought
their once-blind acquaintance to the Pharisees. So the Pharisees
began an investigation in order to determine how it was he had, after
all these years, received his sight. Now you and I can understand
and relate to their unbelief. After all, this was the first time
they had ever experienced, or even heard tell-of such an event as
this!
You see, people are
people, in any culture and in any time, with all of our personality
and emotional and economic, and even religious differences. And in
our humaness, our response to events such as these is going to
reflect those various differences. And of course, the reason we
question truth in the first place is because of our birth
relationship to Adam. According to Romans 5 (Genesis 3) especially,
our "Adam nature" causes the spiritual blindness that all
of us, in our "old nature", experience. Even after Jesus
had performed His spiritual surgery on that once-blind man, and they
had accepted the fact that it was him, the Jews still found it hard
to believe his testimony.
How often has that
happened to us...after we are saved, our old friends, doubting our
ability to stick with it? Or questioning whether the miracle of the
new birth is even real! But in the case of that once-blind man, the
Pharisees were disturbed because of Who it was that had performed the
healing, the way He had healed and when He had healed. You see, they
were so caught-up in their religious traditions that they had no
trust in Jesus, or in His good work, either one. Nothing that Jesus
had said or done before had cured them of their unbelief, so this
miracle provided the perfect object lesson for Jesus to use with
them, and for us too! Consider two things...
(a) First, as we have
already seen, their unbelief had caused a disturbance (13-16a)
Now I think we all realize
that "the peace of God that passes all understanding" is
only available to the believer, so the world that we live in, and the
people that live in it are disturbed, in all kinds of ways, all the
way from problems with the environment, to the lack of respect of
children for their elders. And all the systems that mankind has
come-up-with, including our "religious systems" and our
systems of government, are all pretty flimsy models of life as God
intended it to be. We are a disturbed people because of our
unbelief, from Adam, all the way to now.
It would have been so much
simpler if those Pharisees had simply believed and received! It
would have been a whole lot better if they had recognized the Healer
for Who He truly was, and accepted his gift for themselves. But they
were all about causing a disturbance, and believe me, if you want to
cause a disturbance, even today, all you have to do is speak those
chilling words in vs. 16(a)..."He keepeth not the Sabbath!"
Those Pharisees could not see the miracle because of their devilish
blindness, but they sure could see a way to cause a disturbance!
(b) Secondly, we see that
their unbelief caused a division (16b)
Is it any wonder? Doesn't
disturbance often result in division? Of course it does!
In this case, division
resulted from the raising of doubt, and their pointless attemt to
rationalize what had just taken place..."How can a man that is a
sinner (performing deeds, even good deeds, on the Sabbath) (be used
by God to) do such miracles?" Those Jews, in their blindness,
were even divided over the question as to whether or not that
once-blind man had ever really been blind at all (as we'll se later)!
Their division was based on the accusations that Jesus could not
possibly be God because He "didn't keep the Sabbath".
Obviously a miracle had been performed, but..."How can a sinner
perform miracles?"
But what about division in
our churches today? We read in 1 Corinthians 1.10, Paul's
admonition..."by the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ...speak the
same thing, that there be no divisions among you...that you be
perfectly joined...". And other scriptures remind us that two
cannot walk together, unless they are agreed; that is, of one mind
and one body, and yet, in the church family, many believers are
hindered, or divided in their spiritual walk because they lack the
spiritual glue that binds them together in Christ. So you have those
who are carnal, and those who are spiritual, together in the same
church body, but divided in their commitment to one another and to
the Lord! And this is very common, and has been since the
giving of Holy Spirit, as recorded throughout the book of Acts, and Paul's letters as well. What
a disgrace to the Name of Christ!
So there obviously was a
problem of unbelief, but there also was...
2. A profusion of
unbelief! vss. 17-23
So here we have the Jews,
who refused to believe, going to the parents of the once-blind man
for confirmation of his once-blind condition! Now remember, the fuss
is all about a miracle of healing, which is no big surprise to me,
because we still argue about healing experiences today...was it, or
wasn't it; was he really that sick to begin-with? Is she just in
remission? Well you would think that after witnessing a miracle, the
parents would have been more than anxious to share their son's
blessing with anyone who would listen! But rather, we're told
that..."for fear of the Jews" they wouldn't come clean.
You know, many unbelievers
today are, to put it bluntly, plagued by their resistance to the
Truth, with a capital "T", just like those unbelieving Jews
in this Gospel record. They could not accept a simple statement of
faith. Even the once-blind man's own testimony couldn't convince
them, in their awful state. So instead of accepting truth and
professing faith, they took a step even further away from Jesus, the
most reliable Source of truth, and went to those who hadn't even been
there to witness the event!
You know, every so-called
"religious group" has some degree of truth mixed up with
their error. Like the Mormons, the JW's or even the RC church (and your church?); all
those "organizations" allow their own authority to become
more important than the authority of, and the truth of, the
scriptures. That is, after all, how the Protestant reformation came
about...because of the rebellion, or the reformation, in favour of
the the God-given authorship, or the authority of scripture. And so,
the response in vs. 21..."by what means...we know not."
It's a fact, that the
devilish element that was against Jesus in that day still exisits.
There are people today, just like those Pharisees, who try to silence
those who would take the Gospel message out of the church, into the
public domain...that is, the editorial page of the newspaper, and the
houses of legislature, and the school classroom. That is, after all,
the reason for denying prayer or bible reading in our schools, the
denial of erecting manger scenes in the town square at Christmas, and
the removal of all that is decent and good by the manipulation of our
own constitution, all because of the spiritual blindness that still
exisits in society today. I've found out from many years with Jesus,
that we needn't be afraid of any system of unbelief. Nor should we
allow fear to silence our testimony or dampen the fire of our faith.
The power of God really is greater than the power of darkness!
Finally, in the case of
this once-blind man, we see...
3. A profession of
belief, vss. 24-41
We can see from the Gospel
record, three things that changed once that that man professed faith
in Jesus. It's interesting to see, how we can relate to this one
man's experience...
(a) First, he professed
confidence (24-25)
Now he didn't have all the
theology to back up his testimony, any more than we do when we
experience Jesus. All he knew was..."once I was blind and now I
can see!" (vs. 25) He knew that Jesus had radically changed his
outlook on life.
Nor did that once-blind
man have the scriptures that we have available to us today, but he
knew that he wasn't blind anymore! And he had a zeal that propelled
him on a spiritual walk toward eternity to come. You know, at our
conversion, God gave us a "fat-fire" of faith to start us
on our spiritual walk. And then, after awhile, we need to turn our
attention to the meat that is our Christian experience, and to the
depths of the Word of God!
(b) Next this once-blind
man professed the courage of his convictions (26-33)
I doubt that there was a
person present at that meetng that didn't recognize that man's
courage. He had boldly stated that his healing could only have been
an act of God. And I think that we could say that this was a
courageous stand to take, before those fanatical Pharisees. And not
to worry, we have plenty of opportunities to be courageous witnesses
today too, as we are moved by Holy Spirit.
(c) Then finally, this
man professed Christ (34-39)
This man trusted Jesus...right from the very first, when Jesus had put the mud on his eyes and
told him to wash. But then, when Jesus asked him, in vs. 35..."Do
you believe on the Son of God?" he professed belief. But of
course, others did not. They continued in their state of spiritual
blindness, just as people still do today.
It really is true that,
there is none so blind as he who will not see!
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