This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. With the Pharisees today, that's
the argument that we've seen in John 1 and other places. And
not only can God alone give sight to the blind physically, but
most explicitly, only God can give sight to the blind spiritually. Now let's put that in perspective
today and let's take and recognize just a minute together that there
are a lot of presuppositions, a lot of things that we have
learned just indirectly in our life as believers that the text
of Scripture contradicts. There is a desperation, let me
say this, and listen, I haven't had to say this in a while, but
don't hear what I'm not saying, hear exactly what I am saying. There's a desperation in our
culture amongst many evangelicals for the lost to be reached with
the gospel. Fact, correct? And in that desperation,
there have been great many attempts to proclaim and to reach them
with the gospel, and this is where we start seeing the rub. We see the narrative of Scripture,
we see the theater of the New Testament, where God goes not
to just great lengths, but with divine proportion He goes into
the place of redeeming His people that He has decreed before the
foundations of the world. So the work of Christ is first
and foremost not something that God did in response to the fall
of man. It is the eternal purpose of
God and it is the reason God created
the world and everything in it. Yes, we as believers, we who
have been born of God, we have a great desire to see many more
come to faith. As a matter of fact, I would
say that it would be really weird if we didn't desire every person
in the world to be saved. I think it would be strange.
But the Scripture shows us clearly that not everyone will be saved.
The Scripture shows us clearly that Jesus did not die for the
totality of the human race, for if He did, He is atoned for the
sins of all men. And if He did that, then there
is no possible way, justly, that God could condemn any human being.
The trouble is that we have come so far in our culture away from
the authority of the context of Scripture, that we have mistakenly
placed the onus of redemption on the evangel and what we can
do to get it out there. Paul in Romans 10. How are they
to call the one in whom they have not believed? See, calling
on Christ is not salvation. Calling on Christ is the cause
of salvation. That's the context of Romans 10. And he makes that
clear. How are they to call on the one whom they have not believed?
How are they to believe on the one whom they have not heard?
How are they to hear if no one teaches and preaches? And how
are they going to preach if they do not go? Blessed are the feet
of those who preach the gospel. So the command is there. The
command of Jesus and Matthew where He says to go and teach
all people of all nations. the gospel, the truth of Christ,
to obey Christ and His proclamation of redemption. But we are in a culture where
what that looks like in our day and what it looks like in the
day of Jesus and the scripture is completely opposite. We beg and we plead and we try
to argue, we try to debate, we try to reason with people to
such a point where we believe that if we could just have one
more audience with them, that there would be the catalyst that
would push them over the edge of redemption. When we have learned
for 79 weeks of Gospel of John sermons, that there is no possible
way that anything that man can do can bring him to the knowledge
of life. Nothing. Now see, what I'm not
saying is what many people often think. So you're saying you don't
believe in evangelism? Look around. This body evangelizes
more than any congregation I've ever been a part of in the history
of my tenure in ministry. Praise God. Keep doing it. And not only that, you're teaching
a true gospel. Who Christ is, what Christ has
accomplished, and for whom. That's the gospel. But friends,
the enemy, the devil, does not have an agenda that He is operating. He is obeying the sovereignty
of God. So everywhere the enemy works
to seemingly circumvent the truth, everywhere the enemy works to
seemingly overcome the true gospel, out of every mouth of false,
unconverted pastors in the world today who preach every other
gospel but the true gospel, which is no gospel if it's any other
gospel, are doing so by the will of God. And we are not counted and called
by God to defend Him to the degree that God will, if we do not go
and defend truth, lose. God will not lose. The darkness
will not overcome the light of Christ. When we see the multitudes
walk away from Jesus, when we see the spiritual leaders walk
away from Jesus, when we see people who followed Him, sell
Him for silver, when we see all this, we think, what could we
have done? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. You can lead 40 billion people
in 40 billion prayers of salvation, and 40 billion of them will stand
in judgment. We have a love affair in this
culture with salvation experience. We have a love affair in this
culture with religion. We have a love affair with this
culture in churchmanship. We love to see what we can do
as a church and what we can accomplish as a church and what we could
be as a church rather than who Christ is as His body. We are
His body. Don't mistake the property that
we utilize as the church. We are the body. because Christ
has purchased us with His blood. And not just us, but all the
believing ones from all the centuries, from before Christ was, from
Adam to the end of day, Christ has purchased all of His people. And God's gospel will not be
hidden from them. God's gospel will be heralded
and we, and we alone as the church of Jesus Christ, have the call
and the authority and the power to proclaim the good news of
the gospel of Christ. The redemption of God and His
sovereign grace to do something for His people that they could
never accomplish in 40 billion eternities on their own. Now this brings a lot of questions
for a lot of people. And this text that we're in today,
in the last few weeks, in John 9, answers those questions very
emphatically. No one can bring to life any
person except God do it. God must do it. God doesn't enable
belief. God doesn't prepare the way for
belief. God does not do something incredible
with His Spirit by wooing people. John 6 eradicates that silliness. God snatches His people out of
darkness powerfully when they hear the gospel at the will of
the Spirit. Blindness was so prevalent in
the day of Jesus And beloved, I continue to make the parallels
today, blindness is all the more prevalent today than it has ever
been spiritually. Because we have a culture where
the government does not dictate to us what we shall and shall
not believe. We do not have a crown telling
us to bow the knee. We are kings of ourselves according
to the establishment of the government of this nation. The people are
the power. There is no family, there is
no lineage, there is no household, there is no coat of arms, there
is nothing. A man who lives in a box could,
if our culture would do what is right, rule the nation for
four years. And even then, he's a puppet to do what is necessary by the
will of the people. We are the kings of America,
all of us. That is the government that God
has established. And because of that, we can say what we want
to say, we can do what we want to do, we can live how we want
to live. Sounds like the Adams family,
doesn't it? We can play what we want to play and all that.
We can do anything that we want to do in the confines of what
is moral and ethical according to our laws, and part of that
is we are free from the reins of religion. And we are a free society, to
a degree, and we have free thinking. Or we used to. I don't think
we have much free thinking at all. I could prove that if it
were important. We don't have much free thinking.
You aren't thinking freely right this moment. I have captivated
you with my wonderful dialect. That's why you laughed. You're
like, that is funny. No, I'm being serious. I mean, we're
always being inundated with other information, stuff that's coming
into our minds, and things that are already there, and it's mixing,
and it's making a cocktail of the expression, the outcome,
just like in computer language, garbage in, garbage out. Well,
friends, you can put a lot of new fresh stuff in there, but
the garbage is still there, so it taints it. Christianity is
tainted in our culture. The Gospel is tainted in our
culture. Church, the idea of church is
tainted in our culture. It's tainted in my mind, in your
mind, and we continue, the last seven years we've been working
hard to get it out and cleanse it out, and it probably is a
lot better than it used to be, but I'll tell you what, friends,
it's still in need of cleansing. We still have to cleanse the
palate of our prior learning and our assumptions. so that
we can see clearly the truth of Scripture. This surprises
people when they dialogue with me. People that don't necessarily
know me that well and they feel because of their past experiences
when they confront something for clarity that they're going
to get pushback. I love clarity. I love enunciation
of words. I like a clear sound out of a
stereo. I want to hear all the bits and
pieces of any kind of orchestration. I want to hear it. When somebody
talks to me, I want to see their mouth so that I can clearly understand
what they're saying, because I do have hearing loss, and so
if I can't see your lips, I might not understand what you're saying. I want clarity. So if I want
clarity like that in my life just generally, how much more
do we want clarity doctrinally? If I use terms that I know what
I'm talking about, but you don't know what I'm talking about,
then what happens? Nobody knows what anybody's talking about
and we all think we do. When we say gospel, what does
it mean to you? When the word redemption comes
along, what does it mean to you? When we see that Christ is our
propitiation, what does it mean to you? When we understand that
we have been given sight, what does it mean to you? And it doesn't
mean that what it means to you is what it really means, but
I'm asking you to evaluate your own thoughts and beliefs. Because there's a lot of people
in our day who live really good lives, and good is a relative
term based on the cultural understanding of it. Jesus would say to the
rich young ruler who says, oh good teacher, and he says, why
do you call me good, for no one is good but God. So from the
level of a biblical worldview, we realize that God, by the term
that we use to call Him, the High One, the Highest One, He
is the most glorious, highest possible Establishment of goodness
expressed as a being. It's what God means, it's not
a name. We don't know his name, except
Jesus, we know that name. But only God is good. So anything
that is not God or of God or exactly like God is not good
in comparison. I mean, you all may be very good
in comparison to me and vice versa. Some of us can play instruments. Some of us can sing. Some of
us can dance. Some of us can cook. Some of us can do all sorts
of things. And you and I are good at the
things that we can do, but others might not be so good. Don't put
me in the kitchen. I can chop stuff up. But when
I put it in the oven, it's going to catch fire. I don't know why,
it just happens. Turkey sandwiches have never
burned. They work. Bologna, I can burn that if you're
not careful, if you fry it. We have goodness relative to
each other, relative to our idea or our ideals. But when it comes
to absolute goodness, only God is good, therefore the only one
that comes from God who is Christ is the epitome of goodness. He
is the impeccable One. Christ is God and is also man,
so Christ as the perfect God in human flesh is also the perfect
man. And so Christ in His humanity
is equally as holy and righteous and good and perfect as God is
in His essence. In His humanity, Christ is divinely
good, humanly. And Christ in His divine nature,
And Christ in His human nature dwelt among this earth, and He
obeyed, and He learned, and He did all that was required of
Him by the Father, and all of His obedience is considered the
righteousness of God. It's like Moses, and we've seen
Moses come up in a couple of chapters already. We'll see Moses
again soon. Moses is the instrument through
whom God gave the law. The law is to bear witness to
the righteousness of God. That means all the perfect goodness
of God. The law is to bear witness to
that. That's what the law was given for. And the law then also was given for
the reality for the elect that they could not establish a righteousness
of their own. even monergistically with God,
we will not in our flesh right now ever establish a righteousness
of our own. We may mature, we may grow, we
may mortify our flesh, we may see ebbs and flows of things,
but friends, if anyone sits here to the sound of my voice, or
any of our church who listens to this sermon later in the week,
who thinks that they have an impeccable righteousness in their
own life, in their own flesh, they've misunderstood some things.
The righteousness of Jesus Christ, the goodness of Jesus Christ
and His humanity, all the obedience of Christ is considered to be
the righteousness of God, so that as we want to see God's
pure holiness, we look at Jesus' pure obedience. And knowing that we could never
come close to that, for all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God, And the wages of sin is death, but the free gift
of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. God put forth Christ as
propitiation to satisfy His wrath. How could Jesus die temporarily
to satisfy the wrath of His people? Because Jesus Obedience. Jesus' humanity is the righteousness
of God. So it did not deserve death.
So the one who was not deserving of death, who had no sin, became
sin that we might be the righteousness of God. So now we're called the
righteousness of God. How? How? How are we the righteousness
of God? Because we're in Christ who is the righteousness of God.
because we've been declared righteous by Christ, because His perfection
has been imputed to us. That means we have none of our
own, but everything that Christ has and is has been credited
to us. And so that God in His justice
looks at us and goes, innocent, when we know we're guilty this
very morning of sin. We know. This very morning. Now people like to argue that,
and I'm going to say something now that's going to really ruffle
some feathers. Maybe not in here, but people
like to argue that, and people like to stand on the so-called
rock that there is something that must take place Other than
God's work of redemption in Christ Jesus, there's something that
humans must do. There's some exercise of something
that we must accomplish. There's something there, some
people say, and they claim to be born again. But what Jesus
is showing us, what the Word of God is showing us in John's
Gospel thus far and in chapter 9, is that there are so many
people who claim to be in Christ who cannot see Christ as their
only righteousness. and the Bible would say they
are blind. This is not an in-house debate
of doctrinal differences. This is a debate of life and
death, the glory of God and the glory of men, being raised to
life through the work of Christ and dying in one's sins. The Sabbath Verse 15, this Sabbath,
the Jews, Pharisees, ask this man again, how is it that you
can see? And the Jews would think to themselves,
we are really suffering for the sake of God with this Jesus on
the scene. And they want to know how it
is this man who is not of God, as you'll see, did this? What did he do? What trickery
must it have been? And this man said, he put mud
on my eyes and I washed and I see." Now, of course, that isn't all
that he said. He probably told the whole story. He probably
elaborated, I was standing there and the sun was hurting and I've
never seen anything and nobody was helping me and all of a sudden
this Jesus comes and talks to me and stands me up and, you
know, four hours later they're going, okay, just what did he
do? I mean, get on with it. So John, to spare us that, says
this. This man's testimony was probably
very excitable for the people around him. They had to take
him to the Jews, as we talked last week, how people placate
to their spiritual leaders to get what they want. He put mud on my eyes and I washed
and I see. Then these spiritual leaders said, verse 16, this
man is not from God. What are they talking about?
The man who put mud on the blind man's eyes. This man that did
this to you is not from God. You hear me? This man that gave
you sight is not from God. Now here's the kicker. Haven't
the Pharisees already established that Christ was from God? Yes. Nicodemus confesses that to Jesus
in John 3. We know, the Pharisees, that
you are from God. For no one can do that which
you do, except God be with him. So we know that in some sense,
you've been sent by God, that you've come from God. They didn't
know that he was begotten of God. That he was God. But they said, there's no way
that this man has done that. He is not from God. Why? Not because he blasphemes. Not
because he preaches a false gospel. Not because he refuses the truth
or twists the Scripture. Because he does not keep the
Sabbath. He does not keep the Sabbath. See, the blind, the
spiritually blind are unable to see anything except what they
deem as holy. I want you to hear that, church,
because it's going to have great application for us in the next
few weeks. The spiritually blind are unable
to see anything except that which they have established and declared
as holy. Who is the Sabbath for? for the sake of God and His glory.
He's the God of the Sabbath and He says later in some of the
other Gospels that the Sabbath was created for man, not man
for the Sabbath. And so these Jews have done a
very good job for hundreds of years of creating all the rules
necessary for the honoring of God and their rituals. This must
be here. This must be here. It's like
I said last week. We don't have to sit in chairs. We don't have
to have lights. And God took them out for about
20 minutes. We don't have to do any of this
stuff. We need to get together and hear the Word of God. And then get through with that
and live it out together in each other's lives intimately as much
as we can. In prayer and in all sorts of
things. We do that. That's all that's
necessary. That the gospel is paramount.
There is nothing more. We can't graduate to deeper things,
beloved. See, the Pharisees thought they
had graduated to deeper maturity, to deeper spirituality. Oh, we've
memorized all the Bibles. Oh, we've put on the regalia
of holiness. Oh, we speak with the tongue
of articulation. We know the law. And the list
goes on and on and on. We do not flip a switch on the
Sabbath. We do not strike a match on the
Sabbath. We do not take a journey on the Sabbath unless we've got
a string tied across the properties because then it's still one property. We don't spit upon the ground
on the Sabbath unless we pharaoh the ground and blaspheme God. We don't heal on the Sabbath
either. But guess who doesn't? Guess
who doesn't what? Have to stop working on his own
Sabbath? God. Man has to stop his labors. That means don't make money on
the Sabbath. Rest. Give that day to the Lord. That's
what it means. Oh, I've got something come up,
I have this, I have that. It happens sometimes. But you
know a lot of people who just, well, I don't really want to
be in church. That's a whole other conversation,
a whole other sermon. The point of the Sabbath was
to set it aside for the sake of looking toward Christ. looking at the redemption and
the rest that comes in the gospel of grace, looking at what God
has established for His people, temporally through Israel, as
a shadow to the true who is Christ and the eternal hope of glory
that we will receive in Christ. This is what the Sabbath is all
about, is to point to these things. It's not a rule in and of itself
that is so imperative that God Himself cannot do His work. This man is a sinner for he does
not keep the Sabbath. He does not do what is required.
What is it that he did that was wrong? He spat in the dirt. He told this man to wash, but he gave him his sight. Certainly
this was some work. However it happened, Jesus was
not a man of God according to these people. Friends, when you
hold fast to the gospel of grace, when you hold fast to the authority
of Scripture, you are not a person of God to the world and to the religious. Because to those who are blinded
from seeing the gospel, they can only look at the outside.
and they can only measure each other by what they have established
in their own requirements of what is and is not godly. I've read a lot of history and
I've read a lot of journals. I love to read old journals that
are published. I think it's amazing to see how
some of these men that I've read throughout the centuries, who
have lived centuries ago, I have not lived centuries, have some
of the same thoughts we have in our culture." I thought, man,
they were thinking the same way we were. And I'll never forget many times
in different places where I've seen pastors labor over the apathy
of their congregation when it came to the Scripture and to
the Gospel and to each other. And how they've labored over
it. And I can relate to that in some sense, but, you know,
I've never been one to be upset if someone falls asleep during
the service. Because if I sit down, like if I wasn't up here,
I've never liked these on-the-stage type chairs in the larger churches
where you have to sit there. I mean, I may go to sleep. Or
I may hear something I don't like and frown real big and everybody's
like, oh, the pastor's upset about what's going on. So I understand.
I'm not upset about those things. I mean, I remember reading some
articles where during Spurgeon's two-plus-hour sermons, people
would just fall out on the floor and go to sleep. It's not offensive whatsoever,
it's not frustrating. I don't even consider it apathy,
I consider it just the same as the disciples who were at the
Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus, the God-man, was walking in there
to pray with the Father, the Holy Spirit, to minister to Him,
for He died for the sins of His people, and He said, just stay
here and pray, please, and they went to sleep. Who am I to be upset with anybody
who goes to sleep? As a matter of fact, if I'm upset
with people who sleep in church, I need to quit the ministry. I need to just leave and go find
me a job digging a hole somewhere and then stick myself in it,
because I'm worthless. The Jews were worthless people.
The Pharisees, let me say it that way, were worthless people,
spiritually speaking. Spiritually speaking, because
they did nothing to point to any hope whatsoever, but they
hung burdens on the souls of all of their people. Do this,
be this, act this way, live this way, and you will please God.
None of those things are pleasing to God. Yes, tame your tongue. Don't
use profanity. Love one another. Quit being
hateful. Have no sexual immorality. Do not let coarse joking come
out of your mouth. What are these? These are written to the church,
to the elect who have been born of God. But as I've confessed many times,
I believe it's coarse joking to watch someone hurt themselves
on a video and laugh. And I can't not laugh, so I just
need to not watch. Why is that funny? I don't know.
Before YouTube, we saw somebody fall down and, oh my goodness,
call and get some help. This person needs help. And I
was like, oh, send it to my friends. See, we're weird people. Our
culture is so strange. We laugh at that which is not
funny. We cry at that which is not sad. I mean, we worship that
which is not God. But these spiritual, supposedly
spiritual people were blind. They only had their own idea
of what was holy. And this is their argument. There
were two arguments amongst them. The first argument was this.
This man is not from God for he does not keep the Sabbath.
Do you know there are people who will indict you in your life
because you don't look like they do. There are people who will
indict you because you watch a movie. They will indict you
as an unbeliever. People will indict you because
you wear new clothes instead of the TJ Maxx or the Goodwill. People will indict you sometimes
because you wear a hat indoors. People will indict you sometimes
because you wear a beard or you don't wear a beard. Ladies? People will indict you because
you're late to church, or you don't seem to have a spiritual
sense about you, or you never seem to pray in the gatherings,
or one thing leads to another and they are not loving you.
These Pharisees did not love this man. He was a curse to them. The Pharisees did not love their
congregation. The Pharisees loved themselves. And they were the
highest of spiritual leaders, and everyone looked to them to
make sure that they would see how it was to be right with God. But everything the Pharisees
were from start to finish was not right with God. See how this
is already confronting our worldview as Christians? So the argument, this man cannot
be from God in any way because he's a sinner, because he violates
the law of God by doing this deed on the Sabbath. So they
would say that all people who are from God keep the Sabbath
the way we say they should keep the Sabbath. Jesus did not keep
the Sabbath, thus Jesus is not from God. And that was one of the arguments. In the same group, though, here's
the other argument. The other argument, what I think,
is weaker than the first one. The first one's somewhat strong
if what they're saying is true about the Sabbath. But it wasn't,
so it's ridiculous. The second one, well, this man
must be from God. What do they say there? How can a man who is a sinner
do such signs? So here's one group saying he
cannot be from God, for he violated the Sabbath, and the other group
saying he's got to be from God, because he did a miracle. Now
I can imagine the debate going back in between these two groups
of Pharisees, right there in front of this man who just received
his sight. And someone saying what? Moses
performed signs because he was from God. And some of these other
guys, the legalists of the group, saying what? Well, the magicians
of Egypt performed signs too. It's a big difference. No one else could ever do what
Jesus did. No one else could make a paralytic
walk. No one else could ever give sight to the blind. No one
else could raise someone from the dead. This is a unique miracle
set. But even then, the scripture
says that these miracles will not save you. Seeing them and
going, oh, he's from God, doesn't give what? Salvation. How does salvation come? Christ
pays for our sins and God opens the eyes of His people. That's
how salvation comes. Regeneration. Faith. This man must be from God. And
they do this in what? A question. How can a man who
is a sinner do such signs? So even then they were being
very careful And some people would see this and go, okay,
see, they're divided, and they're divided. Some people believing
in Christ, some people not believing. No, neither one of them believed
in Christ. They all believed in their own
set of standards. We know that God can give sight
to the blind, so this man must be from God, and if he's from
God, he can't be a sinner, so he can't be a sinner. But you're
saying he's a sinner because he's violating the Sabbath. Oh no,
now what do we do? How do we deal with it? We can't
come to a right conclusion. Why could not they come to a
right conclusion? Because they were not spiritually minded. They'd not been born again in
order to see what was plain. And what was plain is, this is
the one who has come from God for hundreds of years prophesied
to us, And we know that he is from God
because we see the power of God in his word and in his work. So we must be wrong about our
interpretation of God. See, that would be what they
should have said. But the religious who are blind are unable to see
clear enough to do that. They're unable to see. They cannot
reason spiritually because the unregenerate mind is what? Hostile
to God. It is not spiritually minded.
It is not spiritually focused. It cannot receive the truth of
God. Jesus says this in John 6, you cannot bear to hear my
words for you have not been given to me by the Father. See how the gospel and the not
gospel starts to divide like oil and water? See how the truth,
the doctrine of Christ, begins to just separate from all these
other peripheral things that have so tainted our thinking
relating to Christ and the Word for so long? These people, even in their division,
could not get it right. They were both arguing against
each other in the negative, relating to the truth of who Christ was.
So we'll say what we've said now for four weeks one more time,
and probably two more times before I'm done today. Unless God birthed
them anew, they will not see. You must be born again, Nicodemus. You must be born again. You must
be born again. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation
is the work of God when He, as He wishes, regenerates His people
at the time He desires, coupled with the hearing of the Word
of God. And then God the Holy Spirit,
through the assembly and the teaching and the growing together
as a family, will teach us all the truth. and grow us in righteousness. It's so much easier to just pick
a couple of topics off the top of my head that would be good
for us. and then to go to my Bible and dig out verses that
match it, and we just feel real good about coming and going,
may get a little toe stomping every now and then, may get a
little bit conviction, but then we get out of it, and we can
just go about our business and stay away from this Christology,
stay away from this doctrinal stuff, stay away from theology.
But if we do that, we stay away from the text of Scripture. We
stay away from it. And there are some who confess
to being Christ who find this utterly ridiculous, and they
find it worthless. For me to expound upon the division
between two groups of Jews, they seem it ridiculous. Give us something
we need. Give us something we can use.
Beloved, if you can't see the use of this, let me tell you
how to use it. Most of the people in your life,
or in one of these two groups of Pharisees. They have a superficial
belief that Jesus is some magic man from God, He may even be
God, but they're not born again. Or they may even hate the gospel
of grace and think that they have effected their own salvation
through some sense of work in some way that God would be pleased
with them. Both are utterly lost without
the divine intervention of God the Holy Spirit bringing them
to life and giving them eyes to see. That's why we need to
learn it. Someone asked me just on Friday,
well, how in the world is someone supposed to come to faith through
that message? I just told you that God opens
their eyes. Part of believing the gospel
is believing that God opens the eyes of His people. Because He's
opened our eyes and we can believe that He's opened our eyes. I
don't know. I don't know how He did it. I see. You see. That's not good enough. It's
not good enough for the religious. It's not good enough for the
legalist. It's not good enough for the antinomian. It's not
good enough for the spiritual people. It's not good enough
for the cultural Christian. It's not good enough for the
evangelical. It's not good enough. Must be
more, more, more. Give us something else. Tell
me how to talk. Tell me how to walk. Tell me
how to think. Tell me how to eat. Tell me how to dress. Sorry. You want to dress like Jesus?
Put on the love of Christ. You want to act like Jesus? Lay
your life down for your wife, husbands. Because your marriage
is a picture of the gospel. That's what it's for. It's not
for you, it's not for me. Our marriage is not for us. And
for us with kids, we're like, yeah, we knew that. After we
had kids. It's temporal. It's temporary. Have the mind of Christ? Want
to know all that Christ knows? Here's the mind of Christ. Though
he was equal with God, he... What? Did not take equality with
God, something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Paul
says God uses the nothings of the world to bring the nothing
to things that are. Friends, let me tell you what most people
in this category who even might have a good gospel in their mouth,
but it doesn't mean that they're born again. They make a name
for themselves. They stomp and they snort and
they do everything that they can do to make sure that they're
vindicated in their positions. And if it weren't for the mercy
of God and the power of the Spirit and the continual accountability
with us as a church, all of us could be in that same boat, even
as believers, where we would think we are wiser than most
people. Christians are not smarter than most people. It's not smart to believe the
Bible. You hear that? Because the world
looks at it and goes, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Where's my part in it? You got it. Where is my part? My part's not there. I'm the
recipient of the mercy of God. No man has to respond to the
gospel to be saved. God opens His eyes. And when
He hears, and He hears this truth about God's election of His people,
He hears this truth about the salvation and the redemption
before the foundation of the world of all who Christ would
die for, they go, wow, this is just glorious. That's my hope. That's my hope. My hope is in
the work of God and Christ. This is what it means to live.
This is eternal life. That God has saved me. Hallelujah. This is why it's called good
news. Only God can do this work. So
this man must be from God. Sinners can't do things like
this. He did things like this, so he must not be a sinner."
And these others argued, but even then, though there's truth
in that statement, neither group were saved. Remember that they felt that
the afflicted were accursed by God because of sin. Thus, this
man was accursed. Only people who are from God
can open the eyes of those born blind That's what Jesus would say if
He were to fix this argument. Only people who are born from
God can open the eyes of the men born blind. Why? So that
the glory of God might be displayed in this work. Why does God save us in the first
place? So that He might be glorified
in our salvation. Jesus has come from God in order
to open the eyes of the blind, in order that God may be glorified,
in order that we might see the spiritual implications of physical
blindness, and that only God can give physical eyes, so much
more can only God give spiritual eyes. Jesus is from God. But they can't even come to a
conclusion on their own. So what do they do? What do they
do there? Look what they do. They ask this man, I mean they
ask each other, and then they're divided. And how is it again
that you can see? I don't know, I can see. So they said again to the blind
man, verse 17. Isn't this the way it works? What do
you say about it? What do you say about Him since
He's opened your eye? You're the one with your sight. What do
you say? What do you say? You ever been asked that question?
Isn't that the same question that Jesus asked the disciples?
Who do you say that? Who are they saying that I am?
Some say you are the prophet, some say you are this, some say
you are that. Well, who do you say that I am? You are Messiah,
Son of the living God. Jesus says to Peter, Blessed
are you, son of Jonah, for man, listen to this, man has not revealed
that to you, but my Father who is in heaven. See, we play in a world of sound
bites. We live in a world, I said play
because that's what it feels like, we live in a world of just
pretext. And some people say, oh see,
if you can say those words, you're in God. Jesus is Messiah, the Son of
the living God. Words carry the meaning from where they come. If I think Messiah means Savior
of my nation? It's not Jesus or the Bible.
If I think the Christ or the Son of God is just some manifestation
of God, some mode of God, then that's
not the God of Scripture. That's not the Son of God according
to the testimony of God. If I think the Gospel is some
offer that I just have to pick up like a ticket at the counter,
then I'm not believing in the Gospel according to the Scripture,
see. If I hold fast that what I've
done has afforded me righteousness, then I don't understand Jesus
as my righteousness. So I may say those things, but
we need to understand that there are a lot of words that seem
to be similar. And Lord, I learn this more every
day. So much so that we can be deceived
by each other because we haven't defined the terms. And all the
more necessary is exposition and life together around the
Scripture and talking about the Bible and digging into the Bible
so that we might learn these things by the Spirit. But they
ask in verse 17, What have they just charged Jesus
with? Being a sinner, not from God, evil, wicked, false prophet
because He did not obey the Sabbath. And then here are the edicts
of these spiritual leaders who hold the keys of this man's life.
And they say to him, what say you about Jesus? Now if this man was in the mode
of self-preservation, you know what he would have said? I have
no idea. I'm just glad I got what I needed
from Him. I don't know why I even did it.
I didn't ask Him to. I was just minding my own blind business.
And He comes along and gives me eyes. I'm glad. You know,
I think if this had played out in some different way, not recorded,
it wouldn't surprise me if the Pharisees wouldn't have burned
that man's eyeballs out just to be righteous. You better pluck those out. That's
the wicked eyeballs you got right there. People call the gospel of grace
the doctrine of demons. That's some evil stuff you're teaching
right there. People see the work of Christ and they say, look
at that, the power of Beelzebub, a demon. And what does Jesus
say? That's the unpardonable sin.
You can't see the work of God and call it the work of the devil.
It's a blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Because they knew better. This man says these words. He's a prophet. And that might not mean much
for us, because we've got prophets in the Marvel Universe, we've
got prophets in cults, we've got prophets on TV, prophets
in comic books. We've got prophets everywhere,
prophets here, prophets there. You're a prophet, I'm a prophet,
we're all prophets. But in the days of Israel, to be a prophet
was that God had marked you and taken you out of everything you
were, that you might live a life of really isolation so that you
would be the voice of God. You would walk in as a lone person
in the midst of armies and say to a king, God will destroy you
and cause you to eat like a beast in the field, naked. And the king would chop off your
head. And then God would bring judgment
if you touched a prophet. He didn't touch a prophet. Touch
not thine anointed. I'd love to try to claim that
for myself, but oh Lord, it was for the prophets. This man is not just flippantly
saying, you know, Jesus is a prophet. He's saying, man, you touch this
guy, you're going to die. He speaks the words of God. How
did he know that? God opened his eyes. And you
know what he didn't care about that day? The Sabbath. You know
what he wasn't worried about? The lashes. He wasn't worried
about being ostracized. He was already ostracized. He
was already considered defunct and accursed before he was ever
born again. And the irony there is that time
after time after time, Jesus did not go en masse to the religious. He went to the pagans. He went
to the decrepit. He went to the sick. He went
to the lost. He went to the unclean. For the clean didn't need cleansing.
The well did not need a physician. The ones who could see did not
need their sight restored. This is spiritual blindness. This man received the blessing
of life and they wanted his take. And this man's eyes, as he was
asked that question, were opened wider spiritually. Jesus is a prophet. He's a prophet! And what happens to the Pharisees?
Their eyes are shut tighter and tighter and tighter. The blind will never receive
the testimony. of those with sight." You hear that? The dead will
never walk in life, the blind will never receive the testimony
of the seeing. Because until God makes one alive
and opens their eyes and gives them sight, they cannot stomach
the truth of God. Even when they manipulate it,
even when they rationalize it, even when they logically establish
it systematically, it's not truth until eyes have been given. So what do you see? What do you
see this very day? What happens to the Jews in verse
18? They did not believe. that this man had been born blind. They didn't believe Him. Because
they could not refute His testimony, yet what happened there? They're
thinking, this is a hoax. This is a lie. He wasn't blind
and received His sight. Let's call His parents. They're
going to say, he's not blind. What are you talking about? Man,
Billy, you're always lying. Playing that blind man act? Get
over it. That's what they thought they
would say. Bring his parents in. And we're going to prove
this man's a fraud. Because what do you say? Jesus
gave me sight? He can't be doing the work of
God if he's a sinner. This man can see? Who do you
say he is? He's a prophet. Now what? He must be a liar.
You're a liar. That's what the world says when
we give the gospel. And the remedy of people who
hate the gospel is not to debate. The remedy of this is not to
argue. The remedy of this is not to
make a ministry of fighting against the false gospels of the world.
Shut those down, God, in the name of Christ, please. Shut
those things down. and give us the passion and the
power to proclaim and herald the one true gospel that you
are glorified in the quickening and the regeneration and the
sight of the blind that we would all praise you for your glorious
grace together. See, that's what matters. That's what matters, and then
we learn as the believing ones, we learn as the body of Christ,
we go and we see what the Word of God teaches us, written to
us, written to our sisters and brothers of yesterday for our
behalf and for our good today, that we are instructed in it.
that we're able to learn deeply the things of grace, we're able
to learn deeply the attitudes of the Gospel and the power of
Christ in our lives, that we might get along together intimately, without division, even when we
need clarification, even when we need to deal with unpleasantries,
even when we need to deal with sin. We're not divided because
God has established us in Christ. We cannot be divided. For if we have the same Spirit
and there is some division among us, we are to put the division
to death that we might be reconciled one unto the other. Pharisees
can't see that. So they call in other people.
His parents. And they asked them, is this
your son, verse 19, who you say was born blind? How then does
he now see? You see what they wanted. Are
they interested in knowing? They want to get as many Christ
followers as possible out of their way. They want to get people
who believe the gospel out of their lives. I'm not making it
up. John put it in a parenthesis
in verse 22. Anyone who agreed that Jesus was Messiah was to
be put out of the synagogue. You're done. It would have been
better to have died than to be put out of the synagogue in that
culture. They're thinking, let's just
get him. Maybe his family's in with him. They didn't care. They weren't going
to kick this man out anyway. He was already out. They didn't want any gospel around
them. They didn't want any grace around
them. They didn't want any mercy. They didn't want the work of
God who suffered for His people's sins. Who are you calling a sinner?
Oh, yeah, I have sins, but look at my life, the Pharisees would
say. And look at His life. And a sinner
violated the Sabbath and gave this sinner a scythe. His parents
were probably in on it too. Let's get them out of here and
let's fleece and purify our church. Let's purify our synagogue of
these ridiculous grace believers. Does that sound familiar? There are many in our congregation
who have had that as their testimony. And they came out of congregations
who, when they began to say, look what the Bible says about
the grace of God, and people are like, get out of here. We
don't want anything to do with you. What the Bible says about forgiveness
and love and the glory of God and salvation, look at what it
says about God's sovereign grace. Even the demons believe in the
sovereignty of God. but they will not trust in the
grace of God. Indeed, they cannot. And his parents answered, we know that this is
our son, they're very careful, and that he was born blind. He's
a big boy now, we're out of it. We don't know how He sees and
we don't know who opened His eyes. Ask Him. I plead the fifth. No comment. I'm done. They're
not getting involved because they love the glory of their
religion and man more than they love God. They don't know God. They had blind leaders that never
pointed them to God. He will speak for Himself. He's
of age. The Jews had already agreed that
if anyone should confess Jesus to be the Christ, he was to be
put out of the synagogue. Therefore, His parents said,
He is of age. Ask Him. And they do. And they
drill Him again. And He continues to say the same
thing. And that's what we'll talk about
next week. When we feel the drill of constant inquisition about
our lives, about our faith, about these things, and it's people
that want to learn, we learn together, we teach and we share.
But when it is just for the purpose of someone coming against us,
we just give the same answer. Christ gave me sight. I'm forgiven
because of what Christ did on the cross. God calls me to believe
because He made me see. We don't have to fight. We don't
have to carry the burden of unbelievers on our backs. We don't have to
work the Gospel in such a way that it makes it palatable for
others. We don't have to bring judgment
against people who cannot see, because the Word of God has already
established what that judgment is. And that if they are the
people of God, if Christ has atoned for their sins, in due
time, they will come to faith. So until then, we just proclaim
the Gospel. We just proclaim the Gospel.
Someone asked me that recently, what would you say to me being
that I don't believe? What would the Bible say? The
wrath of God remains. And the only hope that you can
have is the mercy of God through Christ who died for His people. You see? And then I move on. We don't have to hate them. We
should never hate unbelievers. We should never hate believers.
We should love our enemies. We should feed them. But don't
think that food's going to bring them to want to eat the bread
of life. John 6 shows us that's not true. It doesn't mean we're
not to clothe them. But don't think we can shine
them up and make them clean and think they're righteous because
they've looked the part. What is righteousness? Tearing our
clothes? bowing our heads and crying,
God propitiate me. Have mercy on me. That's who
Jesus said was righteous, not the Pharisee. Our hope, beloved, is in the
work of Christ and His righteousness alone. The blood of Christ is
the effectual cause of our justification. And we know that because we've
been born again and we have faith. We know that. We believe that
God has done the work of salvation. And we pray that God would be
kind, that He would continue to use us in the bringing of
His sheep home. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the
gospel. We thank you, God, for sight,
for causing us to see and helping us to understand. Lord, give
us peace in our spirit about those around us as we share the
gospel, not to be in despair over them, but Lord, to be resolved
to trust in your work. Help us to not be offended by
those who come against the truth, or come against us, or come against
our beliefs, for they are only persecuting your Son. And just
as Paul was saved on his way to condemn Christians, You snatched Him out of darkness
and You blinded His physical eyes while giving Him spiritual
sight. Thank You, Lord, that You use
this natural world to teach us so much. That You use the language
of our culture to show us and reveal to us Your Word. And that the Holy Spirit guides
us to all truth. Father, guard our hearts from
bitterness, Guard our hearts from feeling
as though we're victims. For we are not. We are more than
conquerors in Christ. So Father, as Your Spirit continues
to grow us, keep us in the faith. For You've promised to do so.
In Jesus' name. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.