Turn back to John chapter 9.
I'd like to thank all of you for your kindness. I love being
here. I've been coming here for 39
years. Believe it or not. Y'all always treated me wonderfully
and I love you like my own. The title of my message this
morning is a teaching moment Our Lord was the great teacher, and most of the time He was teaching
His disciples. They didn't know it, but by example
and by setting forth certain things, He was teaching disciples,
and disciples learned a lot of lessons in this passage of Scripture
this morning. John chapter 9 is very familiar
with it. It's the blind man who was healed by the Lord Jesus
Christ. His words have been recorded
in song, passed down through the ages, and most everybody
knows them. When he's confronted by the religion of the day, he
said, I know I once was blind, but now I see. I know that much.
I once was blind, but now I see. But the meaning of this entire
episode is found in the last three verses
of this chapter. Jesus said, for judgment I am
coming to this world that they which see not might see and that
they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees
which were with him heard these words and said unto him, are
we blind also? And Jesus said to them, if you
were blind, you should have no sin. But now you say, we see. Therefore your sin remaineth. This teaching lesson is about
blind men seeing and seeing men blind. The purpose of this miracle
is to give credentials, as all miracles were, to the message
of the Lord Jesus Christ until the fullness of the gospel came
in. The healing of the blind man was done for the purpose
of showing that these who claimed to know something, claimed to worship and love God,
were in truth and darkness concerning who God is because they didn't
know who Christ was, refused to acknowledge Him. And that's
why you're saved. That's why you're brought to
a knowledge of Jesus Christ. So for the rest of your days
here upon this earth, you can acknowledge God as he is and
for who he is. Reprobation is nothing more than
refusing to acknowledge God as who he is. Read Romans 21, twice
the word knowledge or acknowledge is used there. They refuse to
retain the knowledge of God actually says they refuse to acknowledge
God, to acknowledge God. This man's blindness as well
as his healing were ordained from the foundation of the world.
To declare who Christ was and to declare that the knowledge
of who he was cannot be learned or inherited or ciphered out,
but must be personally revealed. That's what this teaches in this
passage. Barnard, you say salvation is by revelation, and that's
the truth. It's by revelation. When you
are saved, you actually find out that you have been saved.
You were saved. You were saved. That's what the
gospel teaches. It doesn't teach you that you can be saved. It
teaches you, if you are given ears to hear it, that you were
saved. You were redeemed. You were bought
and paid for 2,000 years ago on Calvary's tree. Now the Pharisees used the hammer
of the law and tradition to name Christ a sinner in this passage
of Scripture. and say that he was not from
God. And the reason they use because he healed on the Sabbath
day. And the man who was healed from
blindness, though his defense of Christ was true and bold and
wonderful, also revealed that who Christ is cannot be known
by experience alone. Even a great and wonderful experience.
And he experienced something like none of us have ever experienced. After he was given sight, born
blind now, never saw a thing, raised in utter darkness, and
after he was given sight, when he was asked if he believed on
the Son of God, he said, who is he? Who is he? There's a whole lot here in this
passage, this gospel full and pressed down and running over.
The first thing is this. Believers are not done with the
disease of self-righteousness. It's our plague, and it will
be all our days. Just talking with Brother Thompson
for the service, we was talking about getting older. He's got me by about 20 years. Spurgeon said one time that progressive
sanctification, believing that you get holier as you live longer,
is a young man's view. Once you get old, you begin to
see more clearly how wretched and vile you are. You are always
wretched and vile, and you're no more wretched and vile at
the end than you were in the beginning. You're totally depraved
to begin with. But as the hoary hairs grow upon
your head, you begin to see the vileness of your character, the
weakness and frailness of humanity. and that your heart is blacker
than a thousand midnights down in a cypress swamp. Believers have not got rid of
self-righteousness, judgment, having answers to questions that
they don't even know what the questions are. We still base
so much of our thinking on our notions of sin, and usually in
reference to our notions of our sanctified self, The disciples assumed that this
man's blindness was the consequence of somebody having sinned. That's
what they assumed. They were not unlike the friends
of Job who proved to be forgers of lies and physicians of no
value. They said, Job, this wouldn't be happening to you if you was
a righteous man. This wouldn't be happening to
you unless you've done something that caused God to treat you
this way. The disciples did not ask our
Lord if this man sinned, and if this man's blindness was due
to his or his parents' sin. They asked who sinned. They knew
somebody sinned. Who sinned? They believed that
this man's blindness was because he or somebody sinned. To them,
this was a given. And sadly to say, there's part
of us that still think that way Let the right occurrence occur,
let the right circumstances occur, and we'll start asking why, and
wondering why, and saying, maybe I did something back yonder,
or maybe I didn't do something I should have. We're still sick
with this disease of self-righteousness. This is the blindness of self-righteousness. Because in this we say we see.
And that makes us blind. That makes us blind. Our self-righteousness
is a chief contributor to how we feel about ourselves in reference
to others. We are all too familiar with
that that spills out of our decrepit heads in situations like these. When set upon by some hard circumstance,
our sad, depraved brain wonders what we did wrong to bring about
such calamity. Conversely, And perhaps more
tragic, when we experience some modicum of success, some part
of us thinks that we must have done something right to have
this occur to us. That's the Indian religion of
karma. That's not truth. The fact is, the world has very little to
do with us. It doesn't revolve around us,
and what happens usually has nothing to do with us. The fact
is, as our brother said the other night, everything that happens
is about Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Everything that happens. This happened, and it was about
Jesus Christ. Our Lord said that in His words,
There's a consummate freedom in the knowledge that everything
is about Christ and is designed solely to reveal who He is. He
said this in verse 3, neither hath this man sinned nor his
parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest. I must work the works of Him
that sent me. While it is day, the night cometh
when no man can work. As long as I am in the world,
I am the light of the world. This was about Him. This man
was born blind, stayed blind, and the reason he was blind was
for the glory of God and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. I wouldn't say that to just anybody.
I doubt if I'd ever say it to a blind man. But our Lord said
it, and it's so. Self-righteousness is simply
another form, a more despicable form of blindness, a voluntary
form, because it causes us not to be able to see past or outside
our meager experience and existence in this world. We think we know
stuff, but all we know is what's been revealed to us. And that's
between the pages of the two covers of this book that you
hold in your lap. That's what we know. That's what
we can know. The rest of the stuff, we can't know what God's
doing. In fact, I'm convinced, having
lived a little bit, I'm convinced that I don't want to know what
God's doing. Providence can be a hard thing. And most of you
tell you providence ain't that much fun. Would you agree with
that? It ain't that much fun. And we
really don't want to go and try and figure out why and the wherefore
of it. My daddy died five years ago. on my son's birthday. We were outside, talking outside
my mother's house, because after my daddy died, my brother, my
younger brother, called my mother and said, I'll take you to church,
because daddy always took her to church. And so he took my
mom to church to hear the gospel, and the Lord saved her. We were
standing outside, and I said, Myron, that's my younger brother.
I said, Myron, if God had asked you, is it okay if I take your
daddy to get you under the gospel, what would you have said? He
said, I said, no. Providence, tough, hard, you
don't want to know. It ain't your business. Keep
your nose out of it. You don't have the answers. You
don't have the answers. That's the first lesson taught.
Secondly, one can experience great things at the hand of God,
even miracles, and yet remain an unbeliever. The rich man fared
sumptuously while he was here on earth, but now he's suffering
the torments of hell. Christ healed ten lepers, but
only one of them came back to thank Him. The others went on
their merry way, believing that they were entitled to the mercy
of God, probably patting themselves on the back And lauding the wisdom
of their wills for availing themselves to this faith healer. Thirdly,
experience is what it is. People will lie. They lie about
experience. But people have experiences.
I've talked with people that I believe are telling the truth.
Religious experiences they've had. They told me about them
and it sounds reasonable to me. Don't question people's experience. This man had an experience. What
an experience he had. He had a tremendous experience.
But it is what it is. It may be questioned, but ultimately
cannot be challenged, even though it does not equate to the salvation
of the soul. Had the scripture left off in this passage at about
33, when he said, I know I was blind, but now I see. Had the
scripture left off there, we might think that his experience
was his salvation. We might be left to think that.
Remember the context of the whole episode. It's about being blind
and seeing and seeing and being blind. Disciples knew Christ
but were blind to their own prejudice and blindness to the purpose
of the blind man's sightlessness. The blind man saw by the power
of Christ but did not know Christ did not see him by faith. The
Pharisees saw Christ but were blind and judicially blind and
willfully blind, conveniently blind, determinately blind to
who Jesus Christ was and they remained in their sin. These
all had experiences. They all had experiences with
Jesus. Think about it. But they were
not salvation. The issue is not whether you
have experienced a thing, it's whether or not you know someone.
This is eternal life, that you know the true and living God,
even Jesus Christ, whom God has sent. Experience cannot be discounted,
and it's aptly proven by the defense that this formerly blind
man puts forth in his experience. The Pharisees found this man,
and they could not shake him. He had an experience. So don't
try to shake people from their experiences. Oh, that can't be
right, because that ain't the way God operates. You don't know. You don't know what He does for
people, what He does to people. We have no idea. You see, He's
put the world in our heart. It says in Ecclesiastes chapter
3, and that means He has put an understanding of things. We
look at things and we think we understand them, but that's of
the world. And all that's of the world is not of God. It's
not what we see and what we experience. That's the truth. And this is
what's going on here. The issue is not whether you
experience this thing, it's whether you know Christ. The Pharisees
found this man, and they tried their best to shake his experience.
But they couldn't shake his experience. They did not question the fact
of his experience, however, because first of all, experience cannot
be questioned. And second, they had an ulterior
motivation for grilling this man. They hated Jesus Christ.
They despised him. They wanted to get rid of him.
They wanted to trick him. They wanted to catch him in some
little religious mishap and accuse him. That's all they were there
for. They were blind men that didn't want to see Christ. They
hated Him. As is often the case, those who
believe in another Jesus, or believe not at all, really do
not care what you know or what you believe. Their agenda is
simply to get you to not believe what they do not believe. That's
what they want to do. To agree with them in unbelief.
These men would not care if you believed that God was a turnip.
They wouldn't believe, they wouldn't care, as long as you believe
that He was not God. Not really God. Truly God. These would not have cared what
this man said about Christ as long as he didn't say that he
was a prophet. They didn't want him to say that. Or that he was
sent from God. They don't want him to say that.
And that was how they approached him. Who is this man? You know
this man. Whoever healed you, he's a sinner,
isn't he? He's a sinner, isn't he? He said,
I don't know, maybe a prophet. I've been sent from God. I don't
really know, but I know I was blind. And I know he healed me
and made me see. The experience of this man revealed
that Jesus was sent from God. And he logically used the Pharisees
own arguments against them. Not all the Pharisees were in
agreement. There's some that disagreed with this. There was
a little bit of an argument going on in verse 16. It says, therefore,
some of the Pharisees, this man has said, some of the Pharisees,
this man is not of God because he keepeth not the Sabbath. The
other said, how can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? So there was an argument. Some
said it was probably Nicodemus that was doing the arguing there.
I don't know. It may be it. They thought that they could
use their exalted position as a threat to this healed man,
but it didn't work on him. It did work on his parents. When
his parents were questioned about it, they got afraid of being
thrown out of the synagogue. Verse 18 says this, but the Jews
did not believe concerning him that he had been blind. that
he had been blind and received his sight until they called his
parents. They weren't sure that this guy, they thought it might
have been some kind of scam going on, you know. He said he really
wasn't blind. He said, you know, maybe I can
get a little money out of this deal, you know, or something.
That's what they thought. And they asked him saying, and
they asked him, his parents, is this your son here? Is this
your son whom you say was born blind? How then do you now see? And his parents answered him
and said, we know that this is our son, and that he was born
blind. But by what means he now seeth
we know not, or who hath opened his eyes we know not? They knew. He's old enough, ask him. He's
of age, ask him. He'll speak for himself. These
words spake the parents because they feared the Jews. They feared
the Pharisees. For the Jews agreed already that
if a man did confess that he was the Christ, he'd be put out
of the synagogue. So they'd be afraid of being
disassociated with the synagogue. Religion can be scary. Religion
can be scary. I've run into some mighty scary
folks in religion in the mountains. Some of them pastors up there,
buddy, they run people's lives completely. Tell them what kind
of cars to buy. One man I know went to his pastor
So he had a toothache and his pastor said, well, I had all
my teeth pulled out and put new ones in. Why don't you do that?
You ought to do that. Next day he went to the dentist and had
all his teeth pulled out. He had a cavity. And that same pastor
said, if you ever leave me, I'll reprobate you. If you ever leave
me, that's proof that you're not a child of God. Well, thankfully
God showed him mercy and had him leave. But he still had that
fear in him sometimes wondering, you know, I wonder. Religion can be scary. They can
excommunicate. They do it a lot up in Cherokee
as a means of controlling folks or getting rid of folks they
can't do anything with. You take away a power of religion to shun
and you effectively hogtied religion. And after scared the gumption
out of his parents, they again began to examine the man. In
verse 24 and 25, then again called they the man that was blind and
said unto him, give God praise. We know that this man is a sinner. And he answered, he said, whether
he is a sinner or no, I know not one thing I know. Whereas
I was blind, and now I see. Give praise to God, this man's
a sinner. I thought of Peter, when that
man was healed outside the gate, beautiful, and went dancing into
the synagogue, dancing into the temple. And they said, by what
power has this man been healed? You know, he could have got off
really easy. All he had to say, well, God healed him. They would
have jumped up and down and amened and run up and down the aisles
and through pews, you know, and just had a great time. He said,
Jesus Christ healed this man. The one you crucified healed
this man. And it didn't go over well. Praise
God, they said, this man's a sinner. He said, well, I don't know.
I don't know, but I know I was blind, and now I see. This healed
man knew that these religionists were going against their own
belief, their own religion, and their own inclination to get
him to deny what happened to him. The Pharisees were quick
to account. Most people who did these miracles,
the Pharisees said they were from God. It was just a general
belief that a man could do a miracle. He was from God. That's what
they believed. But not this one, because they hated Jesus Christ.
They hated Him. Remember Nicodemus, when he came,
came to Jesus by night and said, we know Now would a man come
from God? Because no man could do these
miracles unless God sent him. Unless God sent him. And he said,
we know. And he was speaking for a whole bunch of other Pharisees
because he was a ruler among the Jews. We know. The healed man used this against
him with the facts of his experience. He said, well I don't know. But
you know. You know I'm healed. And you
always say a man of God does that. He was as much as saying, he
made me see, but you say he was a sinner because he did it on
the Sabbath. I don't know if that makes a man a sinner, but
what I do know and what you know also is that I was blind and
now I see. You can almost hear the legal
wheels turning in these fellas mind. And one of the means that
those use to interrogate is to ask the same question over and
over hoping to elicit a different response. I've watched a number
of interrogations in police stations. I've experienced a few interrogations
in these police stations. And they ask the same question
over and over again. Just ask it again. It goes on and on.
And the reason they do, they know eventually if there's a
lie involved, the suspect's going to change his story. And so they
did the same thing. They asked the question over
and over again. Verse 26, then they said to him, what did he
today? How open he dine. They keep pressing
him and keep pressing him. And I love this blind guy who's
made to see. They didn't care much for him.
They got really vexed and called up the big guns. Verse 28. Then they reviled him and said,
You're one of his people. You're one of his disciples,
but not us. We are Moses' disciples. We know
that God spake by Moses. As for this fellow, we know not
whence he is. We don't know who this Johnny
come lately and nobody from Nazareth. We don't know anything about
him. We're Moses' people. Can't tell you how many times
when I've caught a fella in a situation, a preacher, when just talking
and all of a sudden he says something that needs to be corrected and
you have to correct him or either walk away or one of the other.
They told me, don't, I've been preaching for 50 years. Preaching lies for 50 years,
but I've been preaching for 50 years. That's what they, who
are you? Who, who do you think you are? We're Moses' disciples. We're
Moses' disciples. That's petty and trite, but nonetheless,
it works. We're not the disciples of this
man. You're one of his disciples. Look at verse 30. The man answered and said, why,
hearing is a marvelous thing. This old guy's pretty sharp.
He might have been without sight, but he certainly wasn't without
thought all his life, I guarantee you that. Well, here is a marvelous
thing, that you know not from whence he is, and yet he's opened
my eyes. The equation doesn't line up. Now, we know that God here is
not sinners, but if any man be a worshiper of God, and doeth
his will, him he heareth. Since the world began, was it
not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was blind?
If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. Oh, can
you imagine these Moses men? They're getting madder and madder. Again, this is the man who spent
his life without sight. But he's been thinking, and he
uses their beliefs against them. Their final defense was that
Who do you think you are? And don't you know who we are?
How dare you? We're the teachers, you're not.
We're the teachers and we can't be taught. If you have to tell
somebody you're a teacher, however, you're probably not a teacher. We're the teachers. And as a
last resort, the Pharisees realizing that their threats, their presumed
prowess, and their sheer magnitude of who they were, after all,
who they are, has not shaken this fellow, not one iota. And they did what they do up
in, call up in Cherokee, they churched him. I don't know if
they use that phrase up here or not, but they churched him. Have you heard that phrase before?
They churched him. They do that a lot in Cherokee.
They usually have these business meetings on Wednesday night once
a month or something and that's when they clean up the rows. They church people all the time.
Many years ago, an old preacher there churched about four people
and he said, go on up where Tim James preaches. He'll take anything. I will. I remember one time I was preaching,
and back before we had air conditioning, we had the doors open, and on
a Sunday morning, three chickens came down the aisle. Just right in line, just walked
right down the aisle. They're still on the roll. Get rid of them. Put him out
of the synagogue. His experience could not be denied,
but more than that, he refused to deny that Christ was sent
from God. Completely flummoxed. Their egos bruised, and their
intellects incapacitated, and their theology trounced, and
their power turned to pulp. They did what any self-respecting
religionist would do. They made this man a pariah,
and they got rid of the problem. You see, religion can only help
those who are slightly sick. It slightly healed the daughter
of my people. Those who are just a little bit
sick but still able to help themselves. Like the man at the Pool of Bethesda. That pool, as inviting as it
was to him, as hopeful as it was to him, was a curse to him. Because only those that were
able to get in the pool were cleansed. He couldn't get in
the pool. So he sat there and watched as
slightly sick people got better. That's what religion likes, slightly
sick people. It can make them better. But
get them somebody that can't be fixed except by God. They'll
get rid of them. They'll shun them. Note well
that this was not until this man was an outcast, however.
thrown out, a pariah, that Christ came to him and revealed himself
to him. What does this teach us? It teaches
that Christ will not be known by your experience. That simple. As great as that experience is,
whether a bolt of lightning or a river of tears or a deluge
of guilt, or even the healing of some horrible malady, our
Lord will not have you look to that for salvation. You have something to count on,
something to look to in order to prove that you are a child
of God. You'll not do business with the
Savior. When the hope of men is removed,
when religion de jure has cast you out, when you are nothing
and have nothing, when you are without hope and without a place
to stand and cast out of religion, Christ will find you. and make
you know what salvation is. Verse 35, Jesus heard that they
had cast him out. He had been outcast now. And when Christ found him, he
said to him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? And the blind man who had received
sight said, Who is he? Lord, who is he? I believe on him. I'll believe on him, who is he?
And Jesus said, thou has both seen him and is he that talketh
with thee. In Deuteronomy 32 and verse 36
says, for the Lord shall judge his people and repent himself
for his servants when he seeth that their power is gone and
there is none shut up or left. Not until. Why did he do it? Verse 39 and 40. Verse 39 through
41. For judgment I am coming to this
world, that they which see not might
see, and they which see might be made
blind. Some of the Pharisees which were
with him heard these things. These Moses disciples heard these
things. Are you saying we're blind? Is
that what you're saying? Don't you understand we know
the scriptures? Our Lord said, you search them.
You do search the scriptures, for in them you think you find
eternal life, but they are they which testify of me, and you
won't come to me that you might have life. You think, are you
going to tell us that we can't see? He said, that's exactly
what I'm telling you. That's exactly what I'm telling
you. The Lord said, if you were blind like this fellow, then you'd see. If you were blind,
You wouldn't have any sin. But now you say, we see, we understand,
we know. He says, your sin remains. You
without hope. You without hope. The gospel
comes to blind men. It says in John 1, that John
the Baptist gave witness of the light. Who has to witness if
the light's on? Who do you witness to and tell
that the light's on? Well, if you can see, you can see the
light's on, right? So John came and said, there's a light. I
don't see it. There's a light. What did Christ
say? As long as I'm in the world,
I'm the light of the world. If you are blind and know you
cannot see, even though you might have religious experiences that
profit into no eternal value, then Christ will give you true
sight. What is true sight? What is true blindness? True
sight is belief on the Word of God, on the Son of God. True
blindness is saying that you see, having never believed on
Jesus Christ. You're one of the other here
today, Either you were blind and have
been made to see by Jesus Christ and He has revealed Himself to
you, or you're still in your sin. You know, it always comes
down to that, doesn't it? It always comes down to that. May God bless you.