It is so good to be with you
once again. We bring you glad tidings of
great joy, which shall be to all people. We have a report
to share today, and our report is right here. It's the Word
of God. The Word of God is our report,
and that's the only place we're given authority to speak from.
And today, I would like to go to the ninth chapter of the Book
of John and read just a few verses here and make some comments.
We so often find that the Lord shares with us the truth of the
gospel hidden in pictures. Now, I don't know about you,
but my grandmother had boxes of family pictures. And every
once in a while, when us kids got a little rowdy, she would
go bring these boxes of pictures out and share with us pictures
of my family over the years. Family pictures. Now, they were
wonderful to look at. and they represented real people,
but they were not real people. They were just representations
of it. Well, today we want to read a
passage of scripture that shares with us a truth that is found
in a picture. Now, the Lord Jesus is spoken
of in John chapter 9. In John chapter 9, we find the
subject of this story, this account, is Jesus and as Jesus passed
by, John chapter 9 verse 1, and Jesus passed by. Now there's one thing that I
have found that we can discover from the scriptures is that when
Jesus Christ went somewhere, he went there on purpose. He
never went anywhere on mistake. He never took the wrong road. He never turned right when he
should have went left. He was always at the right place
at the right time. In fact, the Bible tells us,
in whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will. So wherever we find the Lord
during his ministry, It is because he intended to be there. It's
not a mistake. It's not something that just
happened, but he intended to be there. Now, in our reading
today in John chapter 9, we find that as Jesus passed by, he is
fulfilling truly what we find in the book of Romans chapter
8 and verse 28, that all things, and we know that all things work
together for the good of them that love God, to those who are
the called according to his purpose. Now Jesus Christ is at the right
place at the right time on purpose because right there at this point
where he comes there's a man that has been born blind. He's
never seen in his entire life. He's been born blind. It tells
us that. It says, Jesus passed by and he saw a man that was
blind from his youth. Now, it's not a mistake that
the Lord passed by this man that has been blind from his youth,
from his birth. It's not a mistake. He is there
on purpose. Here is a man in a desperate
need and nobody can help him. All of the optometrists that
they may have had at that time couldn't help him, and probably,
if he lived during our time, nobody could help him with a
blindness from his very birth. When he came forth from his mother's
womb, he never saw the light of day. When he came forth from
his mother's womb, he never saw the earth or the sky or trees.
He never saw the face of his mother. He never saw the face
of his father. He was born blind. He was blind
from his birth. And yet we find that this is
exactly the person that the Lord Jesus Christ intended to visit
this day. And we are going to be able to
say hallelujah with that man that Jesus met that day. It tells
us here, and Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind
from his birth. Now, the scriptures tell us that
the Lord is around a lot of blind people and certain of them he
went to do something with. Now, the disciples are with him.
And the disciples noticed this man, just like the Lord does,
they saw where his attention was drawn to. They saw where
he was looking, they saw where he stopped, and they came and
they came up and says, his disciples asked him, saying, Master, now,
they're very courteous about their question. They say, master,
rabbi, teacher, very important to us. Teacher, who did sin? This man or his parents that
he was born blind. Now, so often when someone has
a great tragedy or they have a great sickness or something
happens to them, people on the sidelines say, I wonder what
they did. that brought on that great illness,
that great sickness, that great injury, that great whatever.
What is it? What did they do? What did their
parents do? And that's what the disciples
asked. You know, we read about a man in the book of Job, his
name was Job, and he had a lot of things happen to him, and
he had three people come to him, and they began to talk to him
and says, you know, if you hadn't have done something very terrible,
you probably wouldn't have this problem. Well, that wasn't the
reason that it happened at all, because the Lord Jesus shares
with us in this passage of scripture that a sin, a particular sin
of this man, and we have to remember he's been born blind, what does
it tell us about two twins, about two boys? He said before they
were born, before they could do good or evil, they couldn't,
it wasn't possible yet. for them. So he has not done
anything that would cause this blindness to be upon him. And
Jesus shares with us that his parents hadn't done anything
specifically that would cause this blindness to be upon him.
Mom didn't fall down on purpose. She didn't ride a horse and get
thrown off on purpose. All the things that people might
say, why this young man is born blind. But Jesus shares with
us, neither hath this man sin, nor his parents. Now he's not
saying they never committed a sin, but it wasn't some specific sin
that caused him to have no sight all of his life. And that's an
important thing. You know, the Lord never asked
us to judge what happens to someone else. The Lord never asked us
to judge because someone has a disease or someone has a frailty
or someone has this, that they've done something great and drastically
wrong. because we find out that Jesus
Christ shared a very important thing with his disciples over
this matter. He has met a man that has been
born blind. He's been blind from his youth,
and he's there on purpose, just like we find him always being,
and he's gonna take care of the problem here, but he wants his
disciples to understand that this was not caused by just some
sin that somebody had. In fact, he goes on It tells
us here, neither hath this man sin nor his parents, but that
the works of God should be made manifest in him. What's the reason
he says this young man here has been born blind? What's the issue? God would be glorified in this.
You know, the Lord Jesus is going to heal this man of his blindness.
And he's there by divine appointment in the condition that he is because
God is going to be made manifest. No, we're born into this world
spiritually born blind. We may have our regular eyesight,
but we cannot see spiritual things by nature. We're not born that
way. We must have the new birth. We must have God deal with us
just like he's going to do here in a physical sense. It must
be in a spiritual sense. We cannot see God. We cannot
see the kingdom of God unless he gives us the new birth. And
that is really eyes to see. And once we have eyes to see,
I remember reading in the Old Testament about a sheep herder.
Now the sheepherder's name was Moses, and he'd run from Pharaoh. He was in trouble down there.
He had killed an Egyptian man. And he has run away, and he went
to the backside of the desert, and he's going to spend 40 years
there. And one day, Out of all the days that he's been out there,
there's a phenomena that took place that he could not explain
and decided, I'm going to go take a look at this. What was
it? There was a bush that was on fire that was not consumed. Now, it wouldn't mean there would
be no issue if it was on fire and finally it burned down. but
he saw something that he had never seen before. And that was
he saw a bush that was not consumed. Now he says, I think I'll go
over there and take a look at that. Now how God is so careful
to attract his people by himself. And it is through situations
like this that he brings his people to recognize him. He opened
Moses' eyes that day and he got to see the Shekinah glory of
God. God said to him, take off your shoes for you're on holy
ground. Who was speaking from that burning bush? It was God
Almighty. the same God that we find here
in John chapter 9 that saw a man that has been blind from his
youth and his disciples ask him, what caused this? How come he's
this way? And Jesus told him, he said,
this is this way that the works of God should be made manifest. We're going to see something
happen here that's not common. We're going to see something
happen that's not normal. We're going to see something
happen that is a miracle. This happened that somebody could
have God's work on them. Now this is the way God does
His business. God works in this way. He always has all the things
set up just right so that we can hear, we can see, we can
be acquainted with the Almighty God at His All right, it goes on here, it
says, I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is
yet day, the night cometh, when no man can work. Now he's dealing
with a man born blind, and he says, we're headed for the night
when no man can work. This man's been that way all
his life. He's been blind all his life, he's never seen a thing.
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
He fills us in and so much about himself. He is the light of the
world. He's the reason for the world. He's the creator of heaven and
earth. He's the reason that is all in his great combination
of ways of thing and goings on that the moon doesn't run into
the earth or Jupiter doesn't get out of orbit or the sun doesn't
come any closer than it does or doesn't go any further away.
He's the one that keeps it all in absolute control. And yet
I'm the light of the world. And if this man is ever going
to see, I have to do something. The doctors have done all they
could do. So I already, whatever reason, he doesn't have, he doesn't
have sight for whatever reason. But for the true reason is Jesus
Christ came one day specifically ordained in the covenant of grace
to come up to one individual out of all the individuals and
do something for him that only God can do. And that is to give
him sight. So it says, when he had thus
spoken, He spit on the ground. He spat on the ground and made
clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with
the clay. You know, most of us would probably
overreact. Someone spit on the ground, start
making some mud and come up and wipe them on our eyes, we'd probably
overreact, even if we were blind. We'd say, no, that's not for
me. You know, when God does something for his people, his people are
satisfied. His people are resigned. His people are given over. Why? Because he never does anything
to his people to harm them. He's always has their best interest
in mind. He's always has their eternal
interest in mind. And so he spent over and spit
into the dirt. From the dirt, this man was made. And from the dirt, he's going
to use him and his spittle and put it on. Now, why did he do
that? Because he's God. I can't answer why he used spit
and dirt to do this miracle. All I can say is he's absolute
God, the very God, and he has the right to do with his own
that he sees fit. Lord, give me grace when you
spit on the ground and wanna wipe me with that dirt. Well,
it tells us here that he anointed the blind man's, the eyes of
the blind man with clay. Now, how in the world is that
gonna help a man see? Putting dirt. Muddy dirt in a
man's eyes. We think that would be just exactly
opposite of what we think should happen. You know what? Everything
that God does is exactly opposite of what we think should be done.
He is so opposite of natural man. Natural man's got his idea
that he can approach God by his own righteousness. And that's
exactly opposite of what God intended. We approach God on
his righteousness. He said, we actually think we
can by our works approach God and we can only approach God
by his works, exactly opposite. He does things exactly opposite
of what we think. He has to do a lot of work on
us before we agree with what he has to do, but he does that
in the new birth. He says here, he put clay on
him and he said unto him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which
is by interpretation sin. And he went his way therefore
and washed and came seeing. First time in his whole life
he'd ever seen anything. And it's as a result of the sovereign
God anointing his eyes with some spittle and dirt combined, told
him to go wash. I think someone had to help him
over there, don't you? A blind man is going to have
trouble walking. So somehow he got over there to the pool of
Siloam. Now he's not saying you have
to go get into water in order to see. He's saying you follow
my instructions. What's the instructions that
God gives to people today about himself? Believe on me. Trust me and don't move a muscle.
Trust the Lord. Don't move a muscle. Don't get
involved. Trust me. Trust me. He's the God that is
able to do so much different than we ever can plan, but he
always works it out for his honor, glory, and for our good. So he
sent him over there. He dipped down in that pool. Not only did it wash the mud
off of his eyes, but by doing what God had commanded, he came
seeing. He came, he washed and came seen. What a miracle. The Lord performed
there. A man is in desperate situations. I think all the messages we brought
here at this veteran's home has been about people that are in
desperate situations. They are in trouble. They have
some real problems that nobody can take care of for them. And
lo and behold, the Lord is there and he takes care of it. And
he has a woman that with an issue of blood, she's taken care of.
A man that's born blind, taken care of. All these things are
taken care of. And the Lord willing, next time
we meet, I want to go to the greatest of challenges. A man's
dead and he's taken care of. What wonderful pictures we have
in the scripture about the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ from
a spiritual application. Yes, we're blind by nature, but
he gives us sight. We're deaf by nature spiritually.
I had good hearing when I was born. I had sight when I was
born. I had the ability of tasting, handling, and so forth, ability
of working. But those things do not come
close to even matching what God requires. It's not our works. It's not our righteousness, but
it's his work and his righteousness. And nobody will ever see without
the work of the Holy Spirit in us called the new birth. And
then we can see the kingdom of heaven. And who is that? The
Lord Jesus Christ himself. So he saw a certain man. He passed by and saw a man. I'm
so glad. that even today, the Lord passes
by and sees certain people in certain places, and he does what
is required and necessary for them to be able to see and to
live and to breathe and to think spiritual things. He saw that
blind from his birth, his disciples ask him what is often asked,
why, why, why? And Jesus said, because, because,
because, because it is fit for the Father to demonstrate his
great power. And then he did something that
is so unnatural. No doctor, no physician, no eye
doctor would say, oh, take some spit and mud and put it in your
eyes. But that's what the Lord does. He does things so contrary
to our thoughts. And then the man went Got in
the pool, came out, came seeing. He saw things he'd never seen
before. What a gracious act of God that he would do that for
this man so many years ago, but he'd still do that for us today
when it comes to our spiritual needs. We can come seeing. I saw the Lord high and lifted
up. All right. Go and wash in the pool, he came
washed, he came seen. Jesus is on to something else
though. All right, we'll stop there and we'll ask our friend
to.