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. This will be our third service. If I'd have known it, we'd have
brought candles and we'd have had a Christmas candlelight or something like
that. Anyway. Somebody will ask, James Tippins
had a candlelight service? Yeah. Anyway. Let's see if I
can get the Gospel of John open here. And then we will pray,
and God will be blessed, and we will be blessed, and the Lord
will work. Let's pray. Father, we are glad
to come together. Oh, how fitting with this text,
Lord, in John 9, that You would turn out the lights in the church. That Your Son is the light of
the world. God, that Your glory and Your grace is all that matters
to us. Father, if it were not for Your
Spirit, God, my mouth would not open this day. For I am weak
and labored in my body and my heart and my mind, and God, it
is just so often that we are so tired of just what we experience
every moment in life that it's difficult to know if we're going
to be able to breathe or take another breath. But God, by Your
infinite wisdom, You purposed all things before the foundation
of the world that we would walk to the praise of Your glory,
that we would see by faith the infinite power of Your purposes,
even when we're face to face with Christ, Lord. If it takes
that long, God, it is just a second. It is just a brief moment in
time. And so, Lord, I pray that as we hear Your Word today, most
of all, that You would speak, that I would not speak, that
Your Word would be true, that I would not be true, but Father,
that everything that is done this day would be done for the
sake of Your name. And we thank you, Lord, for the
luxuries of life. We thank you, God, for the gifts
of the season. We thank you, God, for the richness
of our culture. But, Lord, let us not lose sight
of what is truly infinitely worth all things, and that is Jesus
Christ. His blood shed for us on Calvary's cross that we might
be your righteousness. Not that we are righteousness,
but we are your righteousness. And I pray that that would be
the heartbeat of our worship today, of our congregation. We
pray for those who have seven families, Lord, who are called
in sick this morning, one or two that are traveling. Lord,
just be with them. Be with our households, with our marriages,
with our work, and everything in between, Father. Every aspect
of our lives, those seemingly insignificant to us at times.
God, it is important to You because You love us so much that You
teach us that You know the number of hairs that fall from our heads.
So we are valuable to You because it is the blood of Christ You
shed for us. For Your glory and in His name we pray. Amen. Well, I can't see the Bible,
so I'll just go with the tablet. Chapter 9 of John's Gospel. We've been talking about this
miracle, and we've been taking our time in this miracle for
a couple of seasons, if you will, for several weeks. And I want
to remind you that John is teaching in this gospel, not so that we
can have a narrative of every jot and tittle of Jesus' life,
but so that we can indeed understand the theological truths of who
Christ is through His power. Jesus did not come to demonstrate
His own glory. He came to do the will of the
Father, and in glorifying the Father, the Father then will
glorify the Son, as Jesus talks about in John 8 and 7. The blindness
of this man, in reminder, is not because he sinned in vitro
or that his mother worshipped idols or anything of that nature,
but this man's blindness, according to the Gospel of John, is so
that the glory of God may be revealed in him. so that the
glory of God may be revealed." Now, how is it, as we consider
what we've already learned thus far, that the glory of God is
revealed in blindness? Well, some people would say,
well, it's because of the miracle of sight. Well, yes, that's the
surface end of things. Of course, it's the miracle of
sight. We know that Jesus healed this man, and thus God was glorified
in it. But as you'll see today, there
is no glory in the religion of man. So no one glories in Christ. No one glories in God. No one
glories in the face of other men in this miracle. Even the
blind man's like, I don't know where Jesus is. I mean, I would
think that there would be some ecstatic condition where this
man would be considered insane. But yet we don't see that in
the narrative. It's not that he wasn't excited, but he was
not giving glory to God in the way that we can as a New Testament
people. that we understand and can see.
So how is it that God was glorified in the blindness of this man?
He was glorified in that now 2,000 plus years later, God has
written through His Apostle John the reality of this miracle and
what it means for us in the perspective of the gospel of grace. so that
we know that the sight that was given to this man physically
is nothing but a picture of the sight that would be given to
this man spiritually when Jesus, through the power of the Holy
Spirit, made him anew. That's the point. And then all
the interaction, all the discourse, all the dialogue that comes with
the Pharisees as every moment of John's Gospel depicts these
things, They fail to see what is obvious to the logical mind.
Those men like Nicodemus who would confess in John 3, we know,
speaking of the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin specifically, we know
that you are from God, for no one can do what you do except
that God be with him. So in that very confession of
faith in Jesus Christ as the one come from God, it seems coupled
with the thousands of years of understanding of the Old Testament
Scripture, plus the fulfillment of all the prophecies, plus the
obvious divine nature of Jesus Christ, they should go, wow!
I see this! What in the world? How did we
miss it? That's just the alarm saying the battery's dead. No
sweat. How did we miss it? What is happening? Wow, Messiah has come, but instead,
they double down, they root their self-righteous feet into the
ground of their own assurance, into the ground of their own
works, into the obedience of centuries of families before
them, and they say, we are the people of God, and they stomp
their proverbial toddler feet and refuse the very glory of
God before them. They refuse it. They will not
have a party to it because they are not born of God, you see. We have a confusing idea of the
evangel in our culture that from Finney to date, we have had this
minutiae of demonic expression of gospel teaching that is so
prominent, it's hard to see the error. It's hard to see the mistake. It's hard to see the heresy.
The gospel is all of grace. The gospel is not what we can
do to convince someone else to see. It is what God does to cause
his people to see. You see? And this man who was born blind
was not even looking for sight. He was looking for alms. He was
looking for someone to grease his palm with a little bit of
money that he might buy bread. For he was an ostracizing and
a curse man, not just from the culture, but also from the point
of view of his own spiritual leaders who were given the direction
to care for him. They rejected him because obviously
a man born blind must be a wicked man. And Jesus heals him. He doubles
the mindset of the blindness by covering his eyes with mud,
and then tells him to go and be washed in the waters of scent,
because he is the one who came down from heaven. He is the one
whom the Father has sent to give sight to the blind. You see all
this as it starts to unpack. And then the people saw him.
And they say, wasn't this the man born blind? I can't read
the text, I'm just going to have to paraphrase it here. Wasn't
this the man born blind? And some say, yes, it was. And
some say, no, it couldn't be him. And he says, no, it's me. And they're like, well, how did
you get your sight? If it was you, how did it happen? I don't
know. He put mud on my face and I went and washed and I received
my sight. Who did this? Jesus. Where is he? I don't know.
So now with all of this happening, their first response is to do
what? That's where we are in verse 9. They brought to the
Pharisees the man who had been born blind. They brought him
there. Why? Well, let's keep reading. Now
it was the Sabbath day when Jesus had made mud and opened His eyes.
So the Pharisees again asked Him how He received His sight.
And He said to them, He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and
I see. And some of the Pharisees said,
This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.
But others said, how can a man who is a sinner do such signs? And there was a division among
them. And that's all I'll get to today. We remember that Jesus has already
said, the light is shining. And as long as the light is shining,
let us do the work of God. Speaking of His own mortal life
in His human body before the glorification, Jesus is in the
world and He's shining. Imagine this reality. I thought
about it yesterday when our men were meeting, and I might have
even vocalized it, but I can't remember what I talk about from
day to day. So, we're looking at the noise of false religion
and self-righteousness and partial gospels all throughout our culture.
We look at the constant noise of everything that so-called
ministries are doing every single day. and they're doing them, and the
things that they do, and the things that they say, and the
type of instruction they try to give, and life lessons, it's
not that they're evil in themselves, but anything that usurps the
perfect Word of God and the essential nature of Christ as God and Savior
and Lord, it is wasteful. It is a worthless thing. And it's hard because in our
day, I have a lot of friends. I don't know if they're brothers.
Some of them probably are. Some of them probably aren't.
But some of them come off like charlatans because they're constantly
cutting people. They're constantly stabbing people,
not literally. You're like, well, it's the violent
folks you hang out with. You know, there's just this problem
that always seems to be on their lips, that they want to spend
hours upon hours upon hours arguing, debating, and you look at their
social feeds and it's just constant, this person's a heretic, this
person's a loser, this person's a girly man, and one thing after
another. It's constant, and you try to
encourage them in the word, or you're a compromiser, and you
know, one thing goes to another. And this is the point of the
world, and if it's not interdenominational fighting, or if it's not doctrinal
fighting, it's political issues. And we have, well, what is the
church supposed to do about social justice? What is the church supposed to
do about the poor? What is the church going to do about this? What
are you going to do about that? Oh my God, they banned gun parts. Okay, that's terrible. But I'm
not going to preach about it. You see the point? I'm not going
to spend my life dealing with the problems of our culture when
the answer to the problems of our culture is the answer to
sin, who is Jesus Christ. That's the point. The light is
in the world. And I'll be honest with you,
it's very difficult. It is such an illustration here
of my day that the lights would go out. I'm not kidding you in
so many ways, but to the sublime we stick. And no matter how dark
it seems, John has promised us in the word, in the prologue
to this letter, he says that the light has come and the darkness
will not overcome it. I'm going to tell you something,
friends. In our world, in the world of
Christendom, that's the life of Christianity that we know,
the world of so-called religion, it is darker than it's ever been.
It is darker than it's ever been. There are people who cannot find
the truth to sit under. There are people who cannot find
a dozen more people to sit together in a room and hear the teaching
of Scripture effectually. There are people in this country,
in this world, all over, who are begging for men to answer
the call of the eldership so that they can be trained and
go and plant, not a social club called a church, but a living
organism, a family of God who have been redeemed by the blood
of Christ. This is the darkest time. When I love church history,
it is one of the places I've spent most of my time, historical
theology, all of these things. If I had nothing else to do,
I would waste my life away and look at these things. But I don't
have that time, but it is interesting. And what I see, looking back,
even in the days of the darkness that they call the dark ages,
I can see the Gospel. But if we had a map of doctrinal Fidelity. And we threw a dart
at it, we wouldn't hit the gospel. It's difficult to find. It's
much less than a needle in a haystack. It's like a camel going through
that needle's eye. It's almost that impossible. But Christ has
not failed. The church is not in decline.
The church is increasing by the will and the power of God. The
problem is many people who think they are the body of Christ are
not the body of Christ. Many people who think they are
called by God to defend some truth, they believe that in themselves
they have been given the power to do something great. And that if it weren't for them,
multitudes would be cast into the fires of hell. Friends, that
is not true. Look at that. I should have said,
let there be light right there. Multitudes would be cast in their
mind. This is not true. None of the
sheep of Christ will be lost. No person for whom Christ died
will be lost. None. None of them. And so in this, wow, that's neat,
that all comes back. In this reality, we need to recognize that as
I just said all of that, that's where the Pharisees are here
in this issue. That's where the Pharisees are.
The Pharisees are in the place where they think they are the
point of life for these Jews. They think they are the spiritual
heads, the spiritual leaders, the people who know everything
there is to know about God, and everybody succumbs to them. Remember
what I said last week when I said, please, by all things holy, do
not hold me up to a pedestal so that God might cause me to
fall? Well, I've had some people sort of push back on that. We're
supposed to honor our teachers. Yes, honor what I do, but not
who I am. Honor the role that I hold, but
not the person that I am. Because if you really knew this
in here, you'd run for the door. You'd turn your lights out when
you left. It would not be, we use the big thing now, Trey,
on the stream. It would not be, it would not
be good for you to know my mind. Just like it would not be good
for us to know each other's minds. It would be devastating, to be
honest. These Jews, these people, they saw a miracle. They knew
this man. You think the Pharisees ever
looked at this guy? No. These people, these common people walking
through the city, they saw this man every day. They knew him.
They knew he was blind. And they knew that it was him. They knew that it was him. And
so, when he said that Jesus healed me and gave me my sight, they
didn't want to really relish in that. They wanted to go to
the spiritual leaders that they esteemed as divine people, and
they wanted to get a sort of a, thank you for bringing me
this heritage. That's what I believe. I believe
that this light that is shining, who is Jesus Christ, shines so
brightly in the opening of this man's eyes to show that without
the divine work of the Lord, even the religious people who
have all the knowledge of the gospel would still be condemned. That's what the point is. The light will not be overcome.
We don't have to convince. Back to where I was going before
the lights came back on. We don't have to convince others to be
saved. We don't have to convince others
to see the truth. We don't have to come with a
big formula and an argumentation that would help somebody truly
believe. We don't have to do that. Because
only God can do that. We forget that it's not about
the presentation. It's about the Holy Spirit, the
paraclete. There's a P if I want to alliterate
it. It's about the helper, the one that comes, God, who is the
Holy Spirit, who is God. This is who does the work of
regeneration. He is the one who comes and applies
the work of Christ to the people of God, to the elect. He is the
one who saves on the occasion of hearing the words of Christ.
This is the work of the gospel. This is why it's called gospel.
And this is all in the power of God. There is no synergistic
inkling that a man can move toward in order to come to God. There
is no way to inch into a place where we can sort of look and
touch the hem of the robe of Christ. We cannot grab hold of
Christ if God has not grabbed hold of us. But when He has, we can embrace
our Savior. We can confess Him as Lord. We
can cry out to Him. There's a lot of things that
we can do. But these people, instead of grasping on to Christ,
they went and found their spiritual leaders. And sight has come to this man,
while those who held... This is the irony. They used
to be able to see, to help this man to go where he needed to
go. And he told them it was Jesus. And instead of letting Him guide
them to Christ, they took Him to the Pharisees. So I want you
to picture this. The lights were just out for
20 minutes and we were in darkness. And the lights are on now. And
now let's say that y'all love the darkness so much that you
just closed your eyes very tightly. I like the darkness. Or we just
go flip the switch back there. No, that was nice. Get the blankets. We're taking a nap. See how absurd
that is? But that's what we do in our
human nature. That's what we do. That's what we do if God
does not bring us sight. When we see the light of God,
we close our eyes. That's what happened at Sinai
when Moses came down in the reflection of the shadow of the robe of
the back of the rear end of God. He wasn't even near him. It's
like the lint off of his bathrobe. Brushed by and Moses looked at
it. And the glowing of the glory of God that reflected from his
countenance. The people said, hide your face.
We don't want to get close to that. What does that look like in our
day? When we teach the Bible, when we proclaim the gospel,
when we hold fast to the confession of our hope, which is in Christ
alone, and people go, oh no, this is too deep, this is too
much, oh no, no. They close their eyes. These
people saw the light of God and they closed their eyes and clamped
down and led the man who once was blind to the other blind
leaders. That's what we're in. That's the world we're in today. I trolled for the first time
yesterday, but I did it, I did it Socratically, so they responded
positively, but I was trolling. Anybody who has, you know, this
particular object in your house, I knew the point where they were
saying, is not of the Lord, and I'm thinking, uh-oh, let me clarify
here, you know, so I ask the question, oh, okay, I see what
you're saying. No, the use of that object is evil. Okay, great,
we just, we got it there. But as I look on social media
and I see so many people, they seem to think that trolling,
and if you know what trolling is, it's taking somebody else's
business, making it your own, and then making them mad. That's
sort of it, through whatever means necessary, whether you
make fun of them, whether you mock them, whether you call them idiots
or whatever, and it just causes a big, and then you get a lot
of attention, just like a toddler who doesn't get their way and
they pitch a fit, and then they get the prize that they wanted to
start with plus a cupcake. Unless you were my parents and
you just got your butt whipped. And then you never ate a cupcake
again because you couldn't talk for a couple of weeks. So that's
what people do. Well, that's what these Pharisees
are doing. That's what these people are doing. They're running into
the circle that gets them the most attention. They're running
to the people who they know will affirm what they have to say.
You know, good job bringing this man here talking about Jesus.
Good job. It's like the drug dealer turning
in his buddy to get props for the police. Who he's paying to
help him stay out of jail. I mean, you see? I mean, it's
just a conspiracy. It's a bunch of charlatanism.
Friends, nothing's different. We don't fall in line with that.
We stay clearly to the hope of Christ, and we teach the gospel
of grace, and we preach the Word of God, and we hold each other
in the arms of Christ by the Scriptures. And that's all we
need. We don't have to defend the Lord. We don't have to mark
people. We don't have to come out. Now,
I'm not saying we don't do that in our relationships, but it's
not our calling. And we can see that people who
constantly want to talk about everything but the gospel, maybe
they don't have the gospel. Maybe their eyes are shut. Maybe
they can see the man once born blind has sight, and that's as
much as they can see. So they're going to make that
their mission. They're going to make that their mantra. They're
going to put that banner on their wall and say, look, we're the
people who found the man born blind. Come see the yak woman
and the bearded lady. They're all they're all attractive
and we sell tickets And we get paid and that's evangelicalism
in my opinion as a whole That's the Church of America in my opinion
This mindset of men in the face of glory who have not been born
again are these Jews. What do they do? What do they
do? Just the same thing they did.
They do the same thing they did when Jesus in John chapter 4
or 5. What did He do? He healed the
paralytic at Bethesda and He walks in with His towel under
His arm. That's what their mat was. I
mean, you could roll it up like a tube of towel, you know, toilet paper. And here he is, ta-da, I can
walk, praise God. 38 years in invalid. Look at
me, cha-cha-cha. I mean, you know? And what do
they go? Who told you to pick up your
mat? That's what they did. Who told
you to pick up your mat? How dare you break the law of
God? You unholy, wicked, evil sinner,
you coming into our presence with your mat under your arm
on the Sabbath. Matter of fact, you walked a little too far,
not way too far, just far enough to make God mad. About seven steps too much. Back it up, son, and put that
mat back on the ground. Undo what you did." And then,
when he said, it was Jesus, or this man commanded me to get
up and walk, and I did, and he commanded me to take up my mat.
Now, why would Jesus command him to take up his mat? Because
he wanted to violate the Jews' Sabbath. Dude, if I didn't walk
for 38 years, I wouldn't even pick my wallet up. I'll be like
the woman in Sychar in John 4. She left everything. She left
her picture and everything and ran back to Sychar. Behold, I
met a man who told me everything I've ever done. So what happened? No, Jesus made
sure that the mat was under the arm. And Jesus made sure that
this man walked to the Pool of Siloam. And Jesus made sure that
there was mud on his eyes. And Jesus made sure that there
was some time frame that this miracle would take place so that
people would notice it. Imagine this guy walking to the
pool. I mean, there's the blind guy everybody hates. Now he's
got mud in his eyes. Can you imagine what we would
do with that? It would be a meme. Dirty-eyed Bill, that's what
we call him. Look at dirty-eyed Bill. He thought
he could put mud on his eyes and it'd make him well. You know,
the pagans thought that saliva would heal people's illnesses. There was some sort of like witchcraft-type
stuff in the first century. People thought saliva had powers,
magical powers. You know, in the South, saliva's
nasty. You spit on me, you're gonna have a problem. For the
Jews, saliva was an unclean thing. You don't spit. You don't dig
in the dirt. And here's Jesus doubling down on the blindness,
blinding him some more, washing off that physical blindness.
But Jesus is showing that as the washing off of his spiritual
blindness. But what do they do? The mindset
of unregenerate men in the face of glory. These people knew that
the Pharisees hated Jesus. And then this man confessed that
Jesus gave him his sight. So their first thought is, let's
take this man. who has been healed by the one
that our leaders hate, and let's make a deal out of it. Let's
do something with it. Now, does the text give us that?
No. So, I'm assuming, based on this
narrative, based on what they know... See, there's some things
we know. Speculation, maybe. It's assumption,
probably. But I think it's a good inference.
Everybody knew that the Jews hated Jesus. I mean, this was
public spectacle. Every time they had a problem
or had a discourse with Him or an altercation, it was public.
It was never private. It was always public. There was
always someone upset with Christ And the Jews would always, I
mean, talking about Christ, and the Jews who were upset with
Him would always show up and make a spectacle. Why? They wanted
to hurt Him. They wanted to show people on
their wall that this man was a heretic. They wanted to continue
to burn people's minds against Jesus. But here's the glorious
thing about it. No matter what we do to try to
conflict people in their mind against the gospel of grace and
against the truth of Christ, no one can overcome the light
of Christ. So no matter how much darkness
is compounded in the mind of an unbeliever, if that person
is to be saved, God in an instant will open their minds, and open
their eyes, and give them life. And no amount of programming,
drug abuse, sin, wickedness, paganism, philosophy, or community
college can take away the power of Christ. None of it. You know, those comparative religion
classes you take your first year. Oh, the Bible's false, oh no. This mindset, the Jews hated
Jesus and so these people take this man who claims Jesus did
it to them. The elemental attitude of unregenerate
people is to placate to those who humanly are able to engage
with them and give them what they want. That's what we're
supposed to see here. These people went to the very
ones who knew they would not receive this testimony because
they felt, you know, if the Jews like me, if, man, just think
if Nicodemus tweets my name. Man, I'm going to be somebody.
What if that athlete or that superstar, that entertainer or
whatever, what if this person, what if this really big pastor
says my name on their live feed? Oh, then I'm gonna sell some
books. It's no different. These people just wanted some
favor from their spiritual overlords. That's what it was. And they could give them what
they want. They wanted to be honored by them. They wanted to be gloried
in them. They wanted to be adored by them. They wanted glory from the highest
social class of people possible. highest social class of people
possible. And sadly, in religious circles,
those always tend to be the teachers of Scripture. the cult leaders,
the pastors, the overseers, the deacons, the elders, those who
teach. They are always the ones who
get the greatest glory from those who sit before them. And if those
people who adore them so are constantly oppressed by them,
there's nothing better than for those people to try to give you
a thumbs up or wink. I remember the days in my childhood
when Michael Jackson would be on tour and they'd show this
on TV and he'd be overseas. You know who I'm talking about,
Michael Jackson? Okay, just making sure. And he would, I mean, thousands
of people would just stand in the street and they'd be looking
up at the hotel where he was and a glove would come out like
this, not out of the glass, but just out of the curtain and just
wave and people would pass out 12 stories down. What could have been the cleaning
woman? You know? Passed out. Michael Jackson waved
at me. No, maybe he was cleaning spit, like I'm doing right now.
He's cleaning spit off the window. I don't know, but that's the
idolatry that we have in our day with theologians and pastors.
And sadly, most of them who are followed to the T are not worth
their weight in toilet paper. I used to say salt, but salt
is valuable. These people, in spite of what
they could plainly see, they shut their eyes tightly and they
went to their religious traditions and they found their leaders.
They followed their leaders, though their leaders hated them.
Remember what Jesus says in John 7? Remember what John shows us,
the Pharisees say, I mean? No one, anyone who doesn't keep
the law of God is accursed. Talking about their constituency,
talking about their congregation, talking about their followers. Their leaders hated them. They
followed their leaders though they saw the glory of God with
their physical eyes. They followed their leaders though
their leaders were self-glorifying. In John 12, we're going to see
that. I mean, what else can Jesus do to prove who He is? I'll tell
you what else He can do. There's one more miracle. And
what is it? The raising of Lazarus from decay.
I like to say decay because he was smelly. And what like we
do today with all the technology that we have in medical science,
I mean, he raised Lazarus from decay, death and decay. Lazarus, huh? No, Lazarus come
out. The command of Christ raised
Lazarus to life. Why? Because he is the resurrection
and he is the life. And all who hear his voice will
be raised to life, some unto everlasting righteousness and
life, and some unto everlasting judgment and death. Can you hear the words of Christ
today? And they saw Nicodemus, I mean they saw Lazarus alive
and they knew Jesus rose from the dead because he intended
for it to be a spectacle and all of the Sanhedrin were there
at the tomb of Lazarus along with a lot of other paid mourners
that the family bought. And what does Caiaphas say? That
man needs to die. We've got to kill him because
he's raised to be from the dead, for crying out loud. And we've
got to kill the man that he just raised from the dead. And when
I get to John 12, John 11 specifically, I'm sorry, John 11, it's going
to be, I really get absurd with that argument. Because it is an absurd argument.
It is insane to say we must kill the man who can raise the dead
and the man that he just raised from the dead, thinking that
that's going to stop him. The blindness of the natural
condition of humanity, especially the self-righteous, is so blind,
they're stupid. But when we see their stupidity,
we cannot say, they're so stupid. Because if God had not raised
us to life, we would be too. So we mourn and we hold fast
to what God has done and we praise Him for His glorious grace. These
leaders sought the glory that comes from men. These people
sought the glory that came from these leaders. These Pharisees,
like many today, were not working for God. They were not God's
people. Friends, if you don't learn anything
else in your average daily lives about discernment, learn this. When people have a Bible in their
hand, they're not a Christian. When people talk about, well,
praise the Lord, they're not a Christian. When people say
all these, it doesn't make them a Christian to use Christian
vernacular. It doesn't make people a Christian
who have been in church their entire lives. It doesn't make
someone a Christian who has a PhD in youth ministry and they're
preaching. It doesn't make someone a Christian
because they know Greek or can preach well or teach well. I
mean, Tony Robbins can speak well, but God help us if we listen
to what he has to say. I have training in psychology
and it causes me to literally lose my thought when I hear this
man speak. I'm like, what did he just say? People are like,
oh, that's so profound. I'm going, it doesn't matter
what people do or what people say or how religious they are.
Matter of fact, the more religious most people are, the less likely
they're born again. The very fact that we have Christian
clothing companies that are making millions of dollars makes me
wonder. We're glorifying Christ at $25
a t-shirt. Come buy it. These Pharisees were not working
for the Lord. They did not belong to God. They were not pointing
to God. They were not God's people. They were not God's men. They
were not doing anything for anyone except for themselves. You know, before televangelism
started, there were still circuit preachers who did that show.
Most of those who were not on television came out years later, and several of them,
three if I can remember, actually came and stated that they were
a scam. Todd Popoff, for instance, was
caught by people manipulating folks, had this inner ear type
thing where he could communicate with his wife who took the prayer
cards from the door and he would get a word from the Lord and
fall. I mean, you know, he defrauded people and he was busted by the
FBI. And then after he was done doing
all whatever he had to do, ten years later he's right back in
business. He's still in business today. And there are more people, and
you think, well, that's an absurd example. No, it's not always
that extravagant. There are more people who do
more damage with less flash and flare. And you know what? They're standing in the pulpit
saying, this is the Word of the Lord. This is who God is. This is the Gospel, and it's
not. There's no such thing as a man
who's just a little ignorant on the gospel if he's called
to preach it. There's no such thing as a person who's been
born again by the Lord, and when the Bible shows us clearly the
depths of the riches of His grace, we go, no, I don't trust in that.
That doesn't happen. People point to themselves. The
God of the religious is not the God of truth, neither is the
God of self-righteousness, neither is the God of legalism, neither
is the God of the Jews, neither is the God of antinomianism,
or the God of the judgmentalists, or the God of the free will people,
or the God of the M&M folks, or whatever label you want to
put. If it's not the God of Scripture, who is Jesus Christ in the flesh,
it's not true. And one of the worst things to
say to someone when you're debating, quote, the Bible, is to say,
well, that's just your interpretation. What does my interpretation have
to do with truth? That's a first-grade fallacy. I know you are, but what am I?
I mean, you know, that's what that is. It's a first-grade fallacy. It doesn't matter how I interpret
it. How about what it says in context? What does the paragraph
say in the midst of the letter? What is the letter talking about?
Who is the object of this? It's simple syntax. Context always
overcomes word meaning. If the word is orange and it's
in the Bible, but the context says they're talking about shoes,
orange means shoes. It's just what people call shoes.
You see the point? And if you want an example of
how to misuse words, just listen to my preaching over the last
ten years. It's like, no, that wasn't the
right word. I thought I was going crazy, but my brothers are telling
me I'm just getting older. Thanks. These people consider themselves
honoring God by going to their spiritual leaders. They went
to their spiritual leaders and they thought, we'll honor the
Lord in this. And these same spiritual leaders who continually
bark at them and malign others for not being pious enough to
be considered holy. How pious do you need to be to
be holy? Impeccable. That's why we will never, ever,
ever in this life physically and personally be holy, except
that we are in Christ. Holiness is not a scale. It's
not a graduating line. I'm a little more holy today.
It's like I'm a little more set apart today. I mean, that's the hokey
pokey. I got my right foot in, I got
my, you know. That's not the work of God. That's not being
set apart in Christ. That's not being given to the
Son. That's being pointed to the Son and shoved. Hope you
make it, blind man. See, that's what most Gospels
are in our world today. Well, it's spin you around like
pin the tail on the donkey and you're blind and I'm just going
to shove you in the right direction. Hope you stick the right Savior. It's ridiculous. It's damnable. It's evil. So what do they do
now? Well, the religious liturgy of
self-righteous people is at play here. These Pharisees are a little
upset. And so they ask him, how is it
again? Why do they say that? They ask
again. How? Because these people told
him. They didn't just walk up and
go, ta-da! Can you see it? Can you see it? No pun intended.
I mean, can you see it? No, they didn't do that. They
went in there and said, hey, this man who was born blind,
so he says, was healed by Jesus, so he says, and can now see,
so he says. What do you say? So they ask him, what is it that
you have made? I mean, what is it that has caused
you to receive sight? Why do they do that? Because
all of a sudden, this very confrontational mindset of these Pharisees who
wanted self-glory, what happens when a better preacher comes
along? I got friends who never, ever
ask anybody to fill the pulpits for any reason whatsoever because
they're scared that somebody else is going to preach better
than they do. You know what I tell them? Quit the ministry. I'm
serious. And they hang up on me. They'll
call me back a few days, So what do you have to fear? I've got
deacons. Oh, okay. I'll make that joke. These Pharisees were feeling
threatened by Jesus. Here's Jesus perfectly teaching
the law of God, perfectly teaching the Word of God, perfectly proclaiming
Messiah has come, perfectly showing and proving in all ways and all
manner. And the people who have been paying attention for years
are going, wait a minute, this is different than what our preachers
are preaching. So who's wrong? Well, that's
your interpretation. See how silly that is? No. What does
it say in John 6.35? What does it say in John 6.44?
No one can come to me unless the Father give him to him. No
one can come unless the Father draw him. All who draw, I will
raise up. You see, the effectual pulling
of God proves someone is His. And they will believe and they
will come and they will be raised to life. Those who are drawn
will be raised to life. That's the outcome of that argument
in John 6. That's just your interpretation. No, that's what Jesus said. That's
what John said in the beginning of John 1. That's what He continues
to teach and show through the message of Christ and the Apostles
throughout the totality of the Gospel, and not just there. Then
we have the Apostles teaching in their letters, in their pastoral
epistles. But these religious people, they've
got their own liturgy, they've got their own way of doing things,
they've got their own traditions. They love to then slander those
who don't look exactly the way they look, even though they have
the truth in their mouth. Because that's what I like to
call the tabloid syndrome. If we can find some dirty dirt
on somebody else that the culture will convict them in the court
of public opinion, then we've got it. We've got it! No matter what it is. And so
their biggest problem was, what? It was the Sabbath. It was the Sabbath. That was
the Sabbath and these people questioned this man because they're
upset that this was done on the day of rest. The seventh. Saturday. 6 p.m. Friday up to
what? 6 p.m. Saturday. Basically. Sundown to sundown. And Jesus
did this on purpose. These spiritual leaders would
have been overly zealous to then put in order, get corrupted,
the requirements of their subjects. You know this is wrong. This
is, what did they say? Sinful. It's sinful for you to do these
things. It's sinful. How many things are sinful? A
lot of things, most things. Why? Because the heart of the
matter, not the action in themselves. I mean, I always wanted to teach
my children when they were little, it's sinful to pick your nose
in public. That would have been great. It's
sinful to chew with your mouth open. It's sinful not to brush
your teeth. It's sinful to not bathe every night. It's sinful...
I mean, you know, we would love to tell them this because we
would get them to admit, oh, God's going to judge me. It's sinful. But everything that
we think is sin is not sin. As a matter of fact, it's very
clearly what isn't is not sin. And most everything the Jews
thought was righteous was actually sinful. Everything that they thought
was good was actually evil. Everything that they practiced
was actually an abomination. And then they'd turn their nose
up, and they'd look with their one eye, because the phylactery
was covering the other one, because they were so righteous, they had to
keep the Bible in front of their face at all times. Because, you
know, the Word of God says, keep the Word of God near your heart
and in your face, or in your eyes. So they did. They put little scrolls in a
box and hung it here and here. See, if I were God, I would have
said that like this. Keep the Word of God near your
rear end. that had phylacteries on their
backside. I mean, just for the fun of it. Look at these guys.
But people would have looked at them and said, man, look how
righteous they are. Look how perfect they are. Look how godly
they are. Man, if we could just be... I just can't even afford
a phylactery, much less wear one. And I couldn't read it anyway.
Nobody can. You'd hurt your vision. That's
the absurdity. Don't work on the Sabbath. Today,
this very present day, there are multi-million dollar industries
established for the sake of practicing Jews so they don't work on the
Sabbath and violate God's law. Automated stoves, automated irons,
automated this, automated that. Motion-censored light switches
because you can't flip a switch on the Sabbath. You think I'm
joking. Look it up. It'll amaze you.
And if you want to make money, tell somebody they're going to
be condemned if they don't buy your stuff, you'll make money. Tell somebody they're condemned
if they don't follow your rules, they'll follow you anywhere.
Tell somebody that they could gain the world if they just do
like you say, and they'll jump off a cliff for you. The Jews had really forsaken
their spiritual duty. They were worthless. The Pharisees,
the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin, all of them, they were worthless.
They'd forsaken their spiritual duty to the people, and in no
way were they doing what they were called to do. Much like
some pastors, much like some church members, much like some...
We all fail at times, but friends, when we don't have the gospel,
we have no center of motivation, we have no center of power, we
don't have a center of focus, we can't see. So we create in
our way anything that we could come up with that would establish
some sort of order that may or may not even be biblical. Or
we may use Scripture in such a way that, sort of like fortune
cookie Bible. Just, oh there's a little piece
of, oh that'll work. Let's find another one. Oh, no,
oh that'll work. And we just paste it in there.
Until we get something that works. It's like this expensive Bible
software that one of my buddies bought up in Kentucky years and
years ago. And he was so excited. He bought all this expensive
software. And I'm like, that's great. Let's see. What kind of language
tools? I don't know. What kind of commentaries? I
don't know. What did you buy it? He said, I got a sermon that
I wrote last night in five minutes. Really? Watch this. And he gave
me the three points that all started with the letter E, and
he looked that word up in the Bible software, and he found
dozens of different versions of Scripture that would match
the word, and he could put it into his presentation, and voila,
Bible teaching. I'm not kidding. And I'm like, dude, that's not
preaching. That's not even the context of
that verse. Oh, it doesn't matter, it works. It doesn't matter, it works.
That's right. The devil has always used the Bible to teach a false
god. Somebody walks in here with an
Anton LaVey Church of Satan Bible. We're going like, what in the
world? What's the pastor got that up for? We're not listening to
this. But I have been hoodwinked by
a charlatan before who picked a fat Bible up off of his stool
in front of a thousand people and opened it up, didn't even
read it, just held it like this and all that. This guy's got
my attention. And I signed up for a network marketing company
and lost my rear end. Quarter million dollars rear
end. And I wasn't even married yet. It was bad. The devil uses scripture. And if he can do that to make
you go in debt, for a charlatan thinking you're going to get
rich so you can serve God, He can use it in a pulpit to make
you think that a man of God is teaching you the truth of God.
Read your Bibles. Study the Word of God. Agree
with me. Don't learn from me. I want to equip you as you grow,
not teach you all the insights that you should be getting. There's
a difference. And I have more time than you
do to study, but it's not an excuse. They questioned this man. And
these are good men, according to the world, but the blindness
of these men caused them to question the miracle of God. How can this
be? This cannot be. You know, if
somebody, if he had just come in there and said, I just started
to see, they probably would have worshipped God. I was sitting
there, and a bird dropped a plop on my face, and I said, Oh Lord,
have mercy! And my eyes came open. They'd
have worshipped God or the God that they thought they knew.
Oh, praise be to God who sent the plop and the man conceived. And now we have these people
who, when they learned it was Jesus, they're like, uh-uh. Oh, Jesus did it? It's like,
have you ever gotten a gift or a card from somebody, and you're
very pleasant, and you see who it's from, and you go, I don't
really like this. I mean, let's just be honest,
let's have confession. There's some gifts that you know come
with strings attached, and they're awesome, and then you see who
it's from and you're like, oh, oh. That's what happened with
Jesus Christmastime. So think about that as you open
presents over the next few days, for those of you who do that. They didn't know what to do except
scowl. They couldn't glory in the work
of God. I mean, only God can give sight
to the blind. They knew that. That's what makes this so egregious. They knew that only God could
do these things. Yet, there they were, questioning the miracle
of God because they were blind. See, the work of God in grace
always violates man's rules. The work of God in mercy always
violates man's will. The work of God in salvation
always violates man's choices. Following Christ is not a choice
that we can have. Because these people followed
God to the best of their ability. And historically, the Pharisees,
why do you think it was the Pharisees and not the Sadducees or somebody
else? Because the Pharisees were the most zealous, Expositors
that have ever lived in the history of humanity. Do you know how
the Pharisees started? After the Maccabean Revolt. Epiphanes went into the Holy
of Holies and sacrificed a pig on the altar of Israel. And that
was it. That was the end of it. The Maccabee
family, they're like, we're done with this. They revolted and
waged war against these people. And eventually, after a long,
dragged out season of fighting, they won. And they were given
their temple back. They were given their religion
back. They were given their rights back. And a group out of these
people formed to reform Judaism. There's too much Greek in our
culture, too much Greek in our religion, too much Greek in our
prayer, too much Rome still nastied up our holiness. The Pharisees were the reformers
of Israel. You say, oh, how far they'd come
to apostasy. That's why. Because if there's
anybody who would see the glory of God for what it is without
a divine work, it would be them. They would see it. Only they
would see it if nobody else could. There's no other person in the
world that should have been able to see in their natural mind
Christ and believe than the Pharisees. But grace violates man's Sabbath. The gospel violates man's traditions,
violates man's religion, violates man's attempt at righteousness.
And so they question Him. And He said to them, He put mud
on my eyes and I washed and I see. It's the same testimony that
He gave to the other groups. He did this work. I don't know
how, I don't know why, but He did. Is that the testimony of
your salvation? It better be. Do you have eternal
life in Christ this very day? How do you know? Because He saved
me. He opened my eyes. He caused
me to believe. All glory be to God in heaven
who saved me from this darkness. That's a gospel testimony. You
might not want to yell a lot like that if you're an Applebee's,
but you know, just the same. You might get arrested for just
being zealous. That's all this man has ever
said. His testimony was, I see. Jesus did this. Oh, I hate to keep doing this,
but it is the nature of applying this doctrine to us as a culture
and as a people. But today, how does that look?
People don't glory in that. They want to see the aisles full. They want to see the altars,
whatever. This is plywood we built. They want to see it just
laced with tears. They want to see people feeling
dizzy in their countenance and, oh, this is the presence of God. The total narrative, the theater
of the New Testament shows us the narrative of God. People
just said, oh, praise God for your mercy. That's what happened. Have mercy. Oh God, have mercy. Have mercy. That's the prayer
of a regenerate man. That's a sinner's prayer. And
it doesn't save you. It's because you have been given
sight that you can say that. But the response there, some
people say, well, I did this and I did that, and we celebrate
in this culture. Awful. People say, well, I don't
know, God saved me. Oh, okay. Ho-hum. Same thing happens here. Jesus
told me to wash. I washed, I see. I don't know
anything else. That's it. Sufficient knowledge
for salvation is regeneration. sufficient knowledge of salvation
is right here. How does it come? Together. But their response was, like
most people, this man is not from God. Jesus
is not from God. This man is not from God. I mean, imagine being in that
man-given sight. What? Why? Because He does not keep the
Sabbath. God's Sabbath. God's work. Parents, how would you think
if our kids came to us and decided to renovate the house that they
live in for free? Yeah, I'm going to take this
wall out here, put a game room. What? Yeah, I'm just going to
do this. Or worse, we decide to change
the color of the dining room. And the kids are like, I won't
stand for this. You said you wouldn't ever paint. It's my
house. It's my rule. God is the God of the Sabbath. It is His day. He does with it
as He pleases, just like He does with His people as He pleases,
just like He does with that tree as He pleases, just like He'll
do with this building as He pleases, just like He did with you, beloved,
if you believe in Christ this day alone for salvation. He does not keep the Sabbath. But others standing there said
what? How can a man who's a sinner
do these things? How if he's a sinner can he do
this by the power of God? This does not work for us. So
what does that show? It says it right there. There's
a division among them. Who? The Pharisees themselves. They
had division amongst them that there was something amiss with
the work of Christ being not of God because only God can do
this, but yet the legalists, the Pharisees, the religious,
the self-righteous said, well, He violated the law of God to
do it, so we can't be of God. Now, what's wrong with that picture? What's wrong with that picture
is that without regeneration, listen to this, without being
born of God, without being saved by the mercy of God, we will
always have a list of sins that is greatly longer than the true
sinfulness of them. Let me say it again. If we're
not born again, we'll continue to add to the things that are
evil. Why? Because we want to establish
some type of place, some type of foundation whereby we can
plant our feet and hold on with our hands and say, I'm right
with God. See? Look at where I stand. See? Look at how I've changed. See?
Look at what I've done. See? But that's not the gospel
of grace. The gospel of grace is only and
always God saves His people through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
God put Jesus on the cross, and only those people for whom Jesus
died are justified before the Lord. And the only way that applies
to anyone is if they are given to Jesus Christ, and the only
proof of that at all is that they have faith in Him. Do you
have faith in Christ? Do you believe that your righteous
works are nothing, but that Jesus' righteousness is yours? Do you
believe that the debt of sin that you owe is eternal justice,
but that God poured out His justice for you on Jesus Christ on the
cross? See, the gospel is so simple,
it's absurd. It's so easy that we think too
hard about it. What must I do to be saved? Change
the way you are thinking and believe in the truth that I just
taught you. That's what Peter says in Acts 2. Repent, believe
the Gospel. Change the way you're thinking
about how you must be saved and believe in what I just told you
about the only way you can be saved. See how much clearer that is?
Versus the self-righteous religious of the world say, well, you need
to get this sin out of your life and this sin out of your life and
this sin out of your life and this sin out of your life, then
come to Christ, whatever that looks like, grab hold of Him
and hold on tight because He's going to be running fast. And
hopefully at the end of the day, you haven't fallen off. and you
fall off, you're just going to go right back to these sinful
things. By the mercy of God, He may take these sinful things
away, and He has commanded us to put to death that flesh that
has been crucified with Christ, but lo and behold, even when
those things are gone, we see more wickedness in front. We
see violence in our hearts, violence, attitude problems. That's the
biggest thing with me. I don't say them, I don't speak them,
but they're really up there. They're up there. and they are a battle in me.
How about you? So where's the hope when I'm
angry that God doesn't condemn me right now? Christ was condemned
in my stay. Where's the hope when I just
don't love anymore? Let's not be coy. I just don't
like you very much. No, we hate folks. There are
times when we have hatred in our heart. The Bible says that
the man who hates in his heart is a murderer before God. Where's
my hope in that when I see that four nanoseconds of hate? Or
four hours of hate? And I lie to myself saying, I
don't hate, I love that brother. Punch him in his nose. I mean, you
know. No, it's hate, my son. It's hate. The Bible shows me
it's hate. Where's my hope? Okay, God, I'm going to stop
hating. No, I'm not. I'm going to stop hating now, but I'm going
to hate tomorrow. I'm going to stop feeling sorry for myself
today, but I'll feel sorry for myself tomorrow. I'm going to stop being
doubtful today, but I'm going to be doubtful tomorrow. What
happens? Where's my hope? It is Jesus. It is the Son of God
who gave Himself for me. It is Christ, and it is only
Christ. It is the only hope that one can have in this life for
eternity, is that Jesus is everything that we ought to be, and He gives
us all of His work to our account. And God is not condemning us
because He has condemned His Son. And He has been raised to
life, proving that we too will be raised to life. And one day,
this person that I am by faith, because of the work of the Lord
and regeneration, this internal consciousness of mine, that is
redeemed, will match the body of mine. Thank God. I would hate to know, even if
it'd be great, I'd hate to know what melancholy would be like
in heaven. That is my temperament. What
would it be like? It would be disastrous. We don't
need whiners in heaven. The Bible says there'll be no
whiners in heaven. There's no tears. There's no nothing. There's
no anger. The gnashing of teeth and the
frustration is not in heaven. Thank God, because He'll make
us new. Has He made you new? Can you
see this morning? Do you know the gospel of grace
is yours only by the mercy of God? Salvation is there only
because God wills it so? Do you believe in this gospel? Are you trusting in this truth?
I pray that you are, beloved. And I pray that you would see
that the light has not been overcome, and that the gospel of grace
will tear away all of our self-righteousness. Some of us may be sitting here
today and going, man, I really sound like a Pharisee. God will
tear that away from you. He will tear that away from you
through this teaching. He will tear that away from you
by the Spirit. He will mortify that area of your life more and
more and more, whereby you will rejoice all the more in His grace
for the sake of His name. And I pray that you will continue
to pray for each other. Pray for the sick. I mean, that's
seven. There's a lot of folks out today, but pray for them.
Pray for this season. This, as a counselor, this is
one of the hardest seasons of counseling that I've ever had
to do. I'm not talking about presently, but I mean, just holidays
in general. It's a very difficult time for
families who are in turmoil. People say, well, why does the
holidays bring so much problems to our lives? Because you're
together. You hate each other. You can't get along. You can't
stop being selfish. You can't stop being a victim. You can't
stop being hurt. So in this season, there's always these things.
The only remedy of that is to listen to the Word of God and
remember the cost of righteousness, which is the death of Jesus Christ,
who suffered by the hands of His own people, who had the oracles for millennia, but would not
see Him. So who are we to whine? That's where Paul says, do all
things without grumbling and complaining. Do all things. Impossible. But we strive in that way by
putting our minds on that which is eternal, which is the gospel
of Christ, not what is temporal, which is this life in which we
live. Let us live this life by faith. 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.