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. The thing about that is not just
that there are so many people who have a false hope, though
that is not necessarily as frustrating as it is burdensome. But there
are so many true believers who are called up in the minutia
of works and cultural Christianity, and the labels go on and on and
on, who are taught and told continually to look in the mirror of their
soul, to measure themselves by what they see so that they can
have the assurance of the work that God has done. Tonight at our Q&A at 8 o'clock,
I have a dozen or so questions. I don't know how I'm going to
get through them all. So I think I might go 90 minutes. But one particular
is dealing with dress. Another is dealing with language.
And the questions are similar to this. Does a true Christian
speak this way? Can a true Christian wear a tank
top? Can a believer drink a glass
of wine? Can a Christian listen to country
music? I don't think so, but anyway, that's my opinion. A mature Christian would not.
No, I'm playing. I mean, anything but that, right?
Don't leave, I'm just joking. People are walking out now as
we speak. You call people's baby ugly, they take it personally.
And so on and so on. But the point is, is that most
of what we deal with as a culture, we deal with from the point of
view that everybody else is looking at us and we need to measure
up to their standard. And the sad thing is, is if their
standard was the standard of Christ, then we might have an
argument to listen. But it's not the standard of
Christ. Not to quote a man that is a
heretic, but he said very clearly, I heard him in 1988 say, that
if our God is not bigger than a tube of lipstick or an eyebrow
pencil, we need to be shopping around for another God. In response
to the question, how much makeup should a woman wear if she loves
the Lord? His answer, I don't know, it
depends on her face. And that's about the most biblical
answer I could give. See, we find guilt in so many
things. We find guilt that we didn't
get up on time. We find guilt that we didn't tithe enough.
We find guilt that we didn't love enough. We find guilt that
we didn't pray enough. We find guilt that we didn't wear the
right thing or that we didn't have the best clothes. We find
guilt that we didn't save enough or that we didn't parent well
enough or that we didn't love our spouses enough or that we
didn't discipline our children correctly. That question came
up last Wednesday night about discipline. And everywhere I
look, it seems to be every single day more and more people who
come for counsel. Many of you. And you're overwhelmed
and enamored by the cultural distinctives of what Christianity
is supposed to be, instead of what the Bible shows us that
Christianity is. As a matter of fact, many people
have converted, quote, quote, quote, converted to Christianity
just by changing their morality. Just by changing their location
on Sundays. Instead of being over here at
the bar watching football, they're in the fellowship of the so-called
church in front of the so-called pastor preaching a so-called
gospel. How do you know that you're not in the same vein?
How do you know that I'm not just another guy running amok
with false teaching and just enjoying the benefits thereof?
You better read your Bible. You better pay attention to what
I say and what I teach and not just nod your head in agreement
because I stand here before you, but nod your head in agreement
because it is exactly what you have already been taught by God.
That it agrees with the scripture. Friends, we are not condemned
because of Christ. We are free in Christ Jesus.
We who are the saints have eternal life, and nothing can separate
us from that. Nothing can separate us from
Him. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God. God who loves His people before the foundations
of the world, He purposed to save them through the finished
work of Jesus Christ, and God is mighty to save. He's not an
opportunist. Yes, when the Holy Spirit, God,
convicts us of sin in our lives, we do what? We run to the cross
of Christ with our hope in the confession of Him alone. It is
the whole measure of what the Gospel does as the fruit of the
faith in the life of the church, is that we continually confess
and run to the cross of Christ. Where He cried, it is finished. It is finished. But there are so many people
who have yet to be born again who carry the mantle of Christ,
but it is not the Christ and the finished work of the Christ
that we find in Scripture. It is the Christ of culture. I know it seems that I labor
on this over and over again, but it is the context of John's
writing, you see. I told you last week that John
did not write this gospel so that we would have a historical
narrative of Jesus. As a matter of fact, it is one
of the weakest narratives of Scripture in the context of the
ministry of Jesus. But there are seven miracles
that do take place in this writing. Many, many more that he did that
we see even over in the synoptics. Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The
synoptics. But the purpose of John's writing
is that through the sharing of the history of these miracles,
and moreover, the teaching of Jesus around these miracles,
we see the divine nature of Jesus Christ, the man. And we see what
He was sent to do, and by whom He was sent, so that He could
save His people from their sins. And these things are written
that you may know that Jesus is the holy, set-apart One of
God, come from God. That's what Christ means. That's
what Messiah means. The One who comes from God that
is set-apart for God. So Jesus continually teaches
that He is the One sent from the Father. And that's the full
purpose of John 9. It's to show us again and again
and again, but to fulfill the reality that unless you go to
the One that was sent, you cannot have sight. But all these miracles,
what are the miracles? You know the miracles. The water
into wine was the first miracle. Jesus is the better bridegroom
and the healing of the noble man's son. Without even being
there, Jesus heals him from afar. And then the paralytic at Bethesda. the feeding of the 5,000, where
the discourse of John 6 begins to get very intense with the
Jews, as we see, the high Christology, the teaching of who Jesus is.
That's what that Christology means, the study of Christ. We
must study Christ. If we study Scripture, if we
study John, we are studying Christ. If we read the Gospel of John,
we are studying Christ. So that is Christology, and the
study of Christ is the study of God, which is theology. And
all of the teaching that comes from there, the word is doctrine.
So anyone that tells you that theology, Christology, and doctrine
is not necessary for salvation are wicked. Why are you angry? I'm not. I'm
passionate. There's a difference. Because these things I hear continually
over and over and over again. Oh, you know, you guys are a
church. You just want to be all heady. Friends, I don't care
if you're heady or not. God uses the dumb and the foolish
and the stupid and the ignorant and the unwise to bring to nothing
the things that are, and I am the example of that. You are the example of that.
You call me stupid? You better believe it. We all
better be stupid in our earthly wisdom so that Christ might be
our wisdom. We all better pay attention to
what our worldly and fleshly righteousness looks like. Dirt
and filth and garbage and all sorts of manner of uncleanliness
to God. But we sang it this morning,
ironically, by an Armenian who wrote the song. It's so amazing
to me. A righteousness divine, not of
our own. We sang that this morning. Did
you see it? That means there is no working of your flesh,
even by God himself, that counts your obedience as righteousness
whatsoever. And that's why we call evangel
the good news of God. because even in the best of divine
workings, we cannot be righteous. Christ is righteous. He is our
hope. He is our righteousness. It is
by Him that God will judge His people. And glory, hallelujah,
we will be made like Him when we are recreated in our bodies.
Never to sin again. Never to sin again. This gospel, is to show you the
articulate dimensions of the truth of what Christ has done. We teach our children the stories
of the Bible. Great. Teach them what Jesus did. Teach
them that Jesus walked on water, teleported a boat. They're like,
wow! Do it again. It's like when you
pull a quarter out of a child's ear. Smart children know that's not
true because they haven't cleaned their ears in weeks. A quarter
is always clean. Don't worry about it. Do it again. Let me show you
this. Do it again. Let me show you
that. Do it again. Everybody wants to see a trick.
Everybody wants to see power. Everybody wants to see something
manifested that they can ooh and ahh over. And people wanted
to see Jesus do the same thing as He did a miracle. He didn't
do the miracles for the benefit of the people. He did the miracles
to prove who He was and to give teaching to those who He permitted
to see. Why did Jesus walking on water
have anything to do with the Gospel? Because no matter how
hard we go, no matter how far we try to ride, no matter how
much effort we put into things, no matter how much planning or
decisionism or anything that we might try to strive to go
to find where Jesus is, we cannot do it except Jesus meet us where
we are in the midst of our impossible task and take us to where He's
going to be. That's the point. That's the point. And here we
see this man born in blindness. We've talked about this. This
is the third week we've been in this text, this portion of this text. The
third week. And I was going to go on. I'm like, no, I can't
go on. I'm going to keep hitting this a couple of weeks so that
we can get ready to see the interaction when Jesus comes back on the
scenes. This man born from birth, we
know what happened. The disciples saw Him. They weren't
talking to Him. He wasn't talking to them. He
could not see them. He laid there day after day after day in his
adult life, as long as he was alive, laying there, begging. Saying something like, help,
or please, or I need food, or like you see in the old movies,
alms for the poor, or whatever it might be that he said. We
don't know what he said, but he said whatever was necessary
in that culture to gain attention and for people to have pity upon
him. But people didn't have pity upon the maligned and the crippled
and the blind and the diseased during that time, especially
in the Jewish culture, because to have this disease was a sign
of God's cursing. And that's why the disciples
asked the question, who sinned, him or his mother, his parents?
That he was born blind. And we've talked about the implications
of that and the weird things that we see in the Mishnah, along
with Judaism of the first century, which, by the way, is completely
devoid of truth. I'll repeat this, and this will
be the last time I say it until we get to John 12, but the Jews
of the first century did not worship the God of the Bible,
they worshipped Satan himself. And they called him God. Because
Jesus makes that very clear in John 6, 7, and 8. You are of
your Father. The devil, the enemy, the adversary,
Lucifer. See? Why is that important? Because that's the point. Everybody
looked at the Jews and thought, well, this is who we need to
be. This is how we need to act. This is how we need to dress.
This is how we need to speak. This is how we need to spend
our time. We need to follow in their footsteps. But Jesus says,
if you follow in their footsteps, you will perish in your sin.
But it's so easy in our culture because we don't have the societal
distinction and the caste system of these high echelon people
who are spiritual and these low, poorly peasants who are hoping
to just get in the presence of these spiritual people. We don't
have it like that in social circles. But oh, do we not have that in
spiritual circles? Do we not have the very title
of man of God called out to me when I'm in this community? Jesse,
you can attest to that. It's all the time. It's constant.
I even had somebody call me father the other day, and I'm like,
you got that right, five children, I'm a father. Somebody this morning
called me Padre, I don't know if he was being funny or what,
but you see where I'm coming from? Oh, that's Reverend Dr. Pastor, Professor Patrick, you
know, for the SpongeBob fans. Half of you got it, the other
half going, what? And people esteem spiritual leaders.
And the bigger the audience, the bigger the stage, the tighter
the shirts, the longer the beard, the cooler the hair bob. I love peers of mine who are
in their 50s who are dressing like they're 20. They look ridiculous. They look ridiculous. It'd be
like you teenagers wearing a onesie. I just like the dress of my youth.
Go get a job, bud. Buy some clothes. That'd be simple though, wouldn't
it? Everybody wearing a onesie. I could say it's lack of sleep,
but I slept well last night. Here, this spiritual hierarchy,
these people looked at these Jews, and these Pharisees, and
these Sadducees, and the Sanhedrin, these ruling class, and they
admired them, and they honored them, and they longed for the
type of piety that they had. While these spiritual leaders
looked, as we saw in John 7, these spiritual leaders looked
at them with disdain, thinking of them all a curse, no matter
what they did, because they did not know the law of God. Neither
did they know the law of God. And this blindness, this reason
that Jesus takes these rejects of society, that these spiritual
leaders have shut them out of heaven. You remember that conversation
Jesus has with them in Matthew? You have shut the door of heaven
in their face. That's basically what He says.
You've put on them undue burdens that I do not permit or allow
or ask, and yet you don't make them your own selves. You do
not meet these standards yourself, but yet you shut the kingdom
of God in their face. You hypocrites. You blind gods. You fools. You pit of vipers. You dogs. You whitewashed tombs. You're all clean, but inside
you're nothing but decay and death. This is the words of Jesus.
Now, that's not a doctrine. That's not a didactic for us
to go, okay, be like Jesus, and every time we see somebody being
all holy and spiritual, we talk like Jesus spoke. Only Jesus
can speak that way to those people. We are to keep our mouths shut.
We are not to fight against heresy. We are not to stand and stomp
our little preschool feet and hope that we, by some measure
of our ability, can make God right again. You see? So beloved, hold fast in humility. Let God be God and He will not
lose. We must proclaim the foolishness
of Christ that is stupid to the wise and a stumbling block to
the religious. That's what Paul means when he
says that it's foolishness, it's folly to the Greek. The Greek
were very smart people. They were philosophers. They
didn't hold to a rigid view of any kind of legal aspect of thinking. It's, let's think this and what
about this and what about that and what about this. I mean,
think about Socrates from that point of view, in that vein that
he questioned everything and in the question and he found
the answers by questions, by gaining more questions. That
is the answer to the question, which is a question. And you
keep on moving and growing and understanding nothing, and that's
philosophy. Now all the cowboys and the philosophers
just left the building. And for the religious, who work
very hard, who act very good, and who live very properly, and
who hold themselves in such a piety that is just overwhelmingly amazing. And you tell them that it's all
for nothing, that it must be God's mercy. They go, what? You don't know who I am. You
don't see how I live. You don't know what I've been
doing. How dare you say grace alone? Grace upon grace upon
grace. God cannot overlook how I live. You better hope He does, pious
man. You better hope God overlooks
your religious life. You better hope God overlooks
your attempts at morality. You better hope God overlooks
your abstract obedience. Because if He judges me or He
judges you by the standard of our living, we are guilty before
Him and we will live eternally in His condemnation. But oh,
the blessedness of Christ. The blessedness of Christ in
that He saves His people from their sins, that Jesus obeyed
as no man ever could, and that Jesus took the penalty of sin
on Himself as no man ever will. to completely satisfy the judgment
of God that has been poured out, and the justice of God is empty,
gone, satisfied, because Christ paid it all. Then we get the
work of Christ and His obedience accredited to us, and then we
also, in that same way, through His death, are forgiven, as if
we have never sinned because Christ paid for them. And that is what grace is all
about. And people can see it if they've
been made alive and given sight, or people cannot see it if they're
blind. And that's what chapter 9, this is the point. The Jews
would say, well, we can see. They'll say that in a couple
of weeks, you'll see it. See? And Jesus is showing that all
men are blind. The man from birth, the rejected
person, he's not sinned, he's a sinner. Of course he's sinned,
but this blindness is not because of what he's done. This blindness
was for the sake of the glory of God. But this physical blindness is
nothing compared to the spiritual blindness of all. All are spiritually
blind. And the response to that we see
in the physical aspect of this man sitting there. He wasn't
allowed in the courts. He wasn't allowed to worship.
He wasn't allowed to pray. He wasn't allowed to bring offerings.
He wasn't allowed to seek restitution. He wasn't allowed to do anything
that the religious of his day said would make him right with
God. Because He was already accursed. There was nothing that He could
do, nor He was permitted to do, to bring Him into the presence
of God. Beloved, there is no greater picture of depravity
than that. We are dead in our sins and trespasses,
and there is absolutely no way possible for us to see the glory
of God in the face of Christ without being made alive. That's
why Paul, every single turn, says that faith is a gift of
God. Faith is a gift of God. Faith is a gift of God. And that's
why Jesus passionately, in the imperative of John 3, you must
be born again. Nicodemus, your confession, your
belief, your faith, your trust, everything you say, all the works
of your religion are evil. They will not get you to God.
They will not allow you to see, you must be born again. And there is no logic, there is no
reasoning, there is no argument that will cause anyone to hear
this and see it and trust and have faith in Christ. It is only
the divine work of God. All men are banned from God because
they are born in spiritual decay and blindness. And it is only
that Jesus sees us and comes to us without us even seeing
Him and brings us to Him that we can have life. Jesus argues
continually that He is the One sent from God, the Christ, the
One set apart from God, the Holy Anointed One from God. That's
what holy means, to be set apart for the purpose of this is Christ, Jesus alone is the one sent from
God. No one, I haven't been sent from God. You and I might be
sent by God. God may send us to Claxton to
plant a church. God may send us to our neighbor to love on
them and to share the gospel. We may be sent by God, but we're
not sent from God. We didn't originate from God.
We originated from Adam. Well, God's our creator. We're
all his children. No, we're not. We're all his
objects. For if we, just by the virtue
of creation, are the children of God, then so are the trees."
Peter is right. I had a joke. I'll stop. Jesus is the only one sent from
God. And only God can change the condition
of blindness. Only God can change the condition
of death. Only God can change the condition of the spiritual
place of any human being. Only God can do it. Now friends,
I've said this a thousand times if I've said it once, or maybe
even more, but we have to get out of the cultural idea that
the Gospel is an offer. And we have to get off the high
horse of holding and esteeming people who got a large following
in large professions of so-called faith, in large expressions of
support. No matter who you were, no matter
what you believed, we have to stop holding these people up
as icons and heroes of the faith. Icons and heroes of the faith
can only be found in the Scripture. They cannot be found in this
world. And please do not hold me as a hero of the faith, lest
God cause me to fall so that you will stop worshipping me.
For my sake. Please. There's an egotistical, intrinsic
selfishness that comes with certain aspects of religion when people
hang on your every word. And it's so easy to manipulate
the mind of people when they don't pay attention to what's
being said, and they don't follow it in the Scripture, and it's
just this one philosophical debate or argument after another, and
after a while, just as if you tell yourself something every
single day, you will believe it. And then it's just like a hook
trying to catch fish. This is what the devil does.
what the devil in the pulpit looks like. Remember that, was
it 2012 that I preached that series? I need to go listen to
that, make sure it's still good, valid, I mean, not good as in
the A, that's great, but correct. But the enemy preaches, not through
the cults, of course he does, but Not through the atheists
and the agnostics. I mean, that's a given. That's
humanism. That's humanity. That's what we do without any
spiritual influence. The enemy's work in the so-called
church of Jesus Christ is to create continually a false church
and a false gospel under the guise of being true. And most of our heroes are not
true. I love to read. I love to read
people who are dead. I love to read people who are
alive. I love to read good thought and
good theory and good theology and I love to hear, I'd rather
read a sermon than listen to it because I could read it in
half the time or less. But the Bible is much more vital
to our spiritual growth than all of these things. And without the Word of God,
God will not bring us to sight. He will not bring us to life.
Jesus is the Word that became flesh that walked up to this
blind man and just picked him up and spit in his hands and
made mud out of the dirt and spread it on his eyes and said,
now go wash in the pool of scent. I thought he told him, go wash.
The people said, well, that man obeyed and that's why he saw.
If somebody spit mud in your eyes, would you not go wash? And the man probably had to have
several people help him there. He was probably not able to manipulate
his way around the city as we would. But he goes and he washes
his eyes and he can see. See, God can change this disposition. Man's free will cannot manifest
any transformative sight toward Christ. Jesus anointed this man. And I talked last week, didn't
I speak last week about a couple of options that people like to
discuss about why this mud was there. Oh, Jesus like created
man out of dirt and all this kind of stuff. Some people thought
saliva was, you know, mystical. The Jews, though, thought it
nasty and unclean, and it was the Sabbath. As you'll see as
we close this sermon out today, it was the Sabbath. So he violated
the Sabbath in many ways. I think that's what Jesus was
doing. But, you know, it could be also this. This is just thought. It's not exposition. Maybe he
was healed from the very beginning, but Jesus put the mud on his
eyes to keep him from seeing the light. Because Jesus wanted him to understand,
and moreover us to understand, and the disciples to understand,
that it was only by that which was sent by God that gives man
his sight. So the symbolic washing in the
pool called scent, which was given to the Jews by God, is a metaphor of Jesus being the
only one who can wash away the blindness of depravity. That's
the point that John writes it with. How do we know? Because
he says it. Jesus says it. And he goes on to talk with the
Pharisees who say they are not blind. And to be upset about
the fact that he was doing what he was doing on the Sabbath.
To be upset about all the works of God that violated their rules. Listen to this, back to the introduction.
Their rules of proper religious living. Now there are some things that
are proper manners in society. And learn them, if you can, and
we get along better. But people who don't know them,
why don't we just let them grow as we grew? But by all means, don't call
these things biblical. You know, when you're out to
eat and somebody smacks. And I'm not just talking about
every now and then, I mean just flat out like they're chewing a cud. You can
count the corn in their mouth, I mean, every bite. See, some
people are like, I gotta get up, I can't watch this. Well,
just sit beside them and they'll share their corn. As they're smacking, they'll
probably share some with you. You see, I mean, but to say, oh,
that's just ungodly is ridiculous. And you think, well, who says,
I've heard it. I've heard well-meaning old ladies
that that's just ungodly. Uncouth equals ungodly. Is it? Or like young men who don't shave.
Growing up, you didn't have facial hair in my family. It was a taboo. Men with facial hair are hiding
something. Yeah, their ugly face. That's what they're hiding. And long hair was really the
thing when I was a kid. Bushy long hair that you had
to blow dry. Brothers, could you imagine having
to blow dry your hair? No. Some of you do and that's
fine. But I remember one of my great-grandparents telling me
one time, I was going to the barbershop, don't you let them
cut it short like you did last time, you look like a pinhead.
Well, I'm so glad you like the way I look, 90% of the time. I appreciate that. And well-respected,
godly young men don't need to look like pinheads. You see that
correlation? And that's just absurd things. Those are cultural
distinctives, not biblical mandates. Not saying that you should, but
if you ever read philosophers of antiquity or economists or
anybody, even B.C., you will see that every generation loathes
the generation before them. They loathed them. They could
not stand it. It was always ignorant, lazy, worthless. I mean, you
look at it, and I'm thinking, is this? I read Cicero. And I
was reading this not knowing it was Cicero, and all of a sudden
realized it sounded like people today talking about the millennials. And then I realized it was Cicero.
And I thought, wow, nothing's really
changed. There's nothing new under the
sun. And beloved, that is so true of spiritual things. We've
just created a new Romanism. We've created new Judaism. In
our culture, we've created many ways to God. And unfortunately,
some of them are so close to the veil because they use the
Scripture. They call themselves Baptists.
They call themselves evangelical. But yet, they are not following
the truth of Scripture. They're following the caricature
of God who brought them into humanism and false religion. just like
the Jews. That's why this is so important
for us to see, that we are born blind, and without the One that
God has sent, we will die in our blindness, which is dying
in our sins. Jesus anointed this man with
a darker blindness in the flesh, and he was told to wash from
the pool of scent water. In this image, Jesus is the water
of cleansing. Jesus is the water that was sent
by God. Jesus is the one that comes down
from heaven like the manna of John 6. What sign do you give
that we might believe in you? What must we be doing to do the
work of God? We're here at the festivals.
We're here to worship. We're here to sacrifice. We're
here to do all these things for the sake of God that He might
be pleased with us. And Jesus says all these things
don't matter. What matters is that you believe
in the One whom He has what? Sent. That is the work of God. That is the will of God. That
is what God commands. The Gospel is not an offer. It
is a proclamation of the finished work of God for the redemption
of His people. And we must proclaim it, because
in the coupling of the hearing of the gospel proclamation, God
the Holy Spirit, as He wishes, brings to life His people who
Christ has died for. But yet, you say that out in
the world today, and people go, well, where's the chance? There
is no chance. There's no chance of salvation.
You want a chance? Go to a theme park. We were there
this past week. You're thirsty? Here's $40 tokens to flush the
toilet. I mean, it's ridiculous. You're
gonna pay for everything. You cannot get away. Well, I
bought a ticket, now you gotta pay for parking. $50 to park
right up next to the door? $5 to park six miles away? I mean, it's your choice. All
right, kids, get out. Everywhere you look, there's
some kind of chance. You've got a ticket to get in and there's
all these games with stuffed animals, fun stuff, like whack-a-mole. You paid to get in, now you've
got to pay to whack-a-mole. To get a chance at winning a
stuffy that you can't take on any ride. So then you've got
to pay to get a locker to put it in because your kid's going
to cry if you throw it in the trash. You see, it's a racket. I want
one of those stuffies. Sorry, I'm not taking a chance
on that. As I walk by the whack-a-mole, oh, that's whack that you have
to pay for games. It's ridiculous. And people treat the gospel just
like that. Well, if you stick your coin in and spin it a little
bit, you might get a chance of getting saved. Oh, here we go,
and we're going down, almost saved. Oh, just so close. So close. You got to purgatory, maybe next
time. You think that's absurd? What are you talking about? I'm
talking about the cultural gospel that is in our world today. If
you just come down here, if you just pray this prayer, there's
an opportunity today that you can know that you know that you
know that you have eternal life. You do that so well. See, that drives the emotionalism
of your heart to do something about your condition before God
in a way that makes you feel secure about what you've done
until you start to doubt. Then it comes to a place of being
backslidden. It comes to a place of your works
and your actions. Oh, you're just not living the
way you ought to live. That's why you don't feel secure. It's not a chance. Christ didn't
say, I hope it's finished. Christ didn't say, I hope you
come. Christ didn't say, here's your opportunity. Christ said,
if you do not believe on the One whom He has sent, you will
die in your sin. And He says, and the reason you do not listen,
and the reason that you cannot bear My words is that you are
unable to. It is absolutely impossible for
you to hear unless you are given to Me by the Father, unless you
are born from above, unless the Holy Spirit makes you new, for
you are blind in your hope. You are blind in your sin. You are blind in your religion.
You cannot see unless God causes you to see. And the only thing
that will cause God to see is the pleasure of His own good
will in the finished work of Christ for whom He has satisfied
His wrath. Jesus is the water of cleansing. He came as the light of life,
the light which is the life of men. Jesus is the One who came
into the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. So to say
that people will be lost for whom Christ died is to say that
God is a liar and a cheat. The darkness will not overcome
it. You know what the darkness is? Unbelief. The darkness is
depravity. The darkness is sin. The darkness
is death. And Christ is the light. And
the darkness will not overcome the work of Christ. It will not
be lost. Man's spiritual condition is
dead. Jesus is the only remedy. And Jesus' death, Jesus' life,
Jesus' resurrection, secured for the saints of God, the reality
of redemption, given to them by the Holy Spirit through the
hearing of the gospel of grace. John's Gospel is not something
we learn after we come to choose to follow Christ. John's Gospel
is the medium through which God brings His people to Christ. Through learning these things,
the Holy Spirit regenerates. God saves us by making us new. And the outcome of being able
to see is what? Believing. We believe. You cannot believe on this absurd
reality of Christ atoning for sins without God saving you,
making you alive. No one can find their way to
God without Jesus, and no one can find their way to Jesus without
the Father. And all that are given to the
Son will be enabled to see. All who see will believe, and
all who believe do have eternal life. All seven miracles in this
Gospel depict this thing. Depict the truth of who Christ
is. Christ is the one sent from God
to overcome the blindness of His people. So that they would
believe, so that they would see the salvation that has been accomplished
for them through Christ. The paralytic at Bethesda, He
gives them legs to walk. on the Sabbath to show several
things. First, that he shows that the
Pharisees don't care about people. They don't care about the work
of God. They only care about their own religion and their
own rules and their own following and their own piety. Who told you to pick up your
mat? You know, we talked about this last week. But Jesus is the one
who commands legs to walk. Jesus is the one who is the Lord
of the Sabbath. Jesus is the one who is righteous. So if He
does something that violates the law of men, the law of men
is wicked. You see. And in that context,
Judaism, cultural piety, religiosity, all these other made-up words
that we've had to create through the centuries so that we can
explain these absurdities. The feeding of the 5,000, no
matter what you eat in the flesh, it always leads to what? Death.
You must eat spiritually. You must eat of Christ's work,
His body crushed and His blood shed. It must be your only sustenance. How does that work? We can't
see this. We don't understand this. You must be given to Me
by the Father. You must be born again. Same
point. Same reality. The walking in
the water, the blind man from birth, and there's one more.
There's actually two more miracles, but one more miracle that Jesus
does in this text, and what is it? It's the raising of Lazarus,
where Jesus declares to Martha, I am the resurrection. I am the
life. All these things teach us that
salvation is of God alone. and that without Jesus causing
all the means to the ends of life, we would perish in our
sins, beloved. And now to verse 8. Sorry. The neighbors and those who had
seen Him before as a beggar were saying, is this not the man who
used to sit and beg? And some said, it is He. And
others said, no, but it looks like Him. He kept saying, I am
the man. So they said to him, then how
were your eyes opened? He answered, the man called Jesus
made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam
and wash. So I went and washed and received
my sight. And they said to him, where is
he? And he said, I do not know. I do not know. So they who inquired
brought Him, the man that was born blind, to the Pharisees.
Now it was the Sabbath when Jesus made the mud and opened His eyes."
So there's several things in closing over the next 20 minutes
that I want to point out here about this. When God brings His people to
life, And they believe there is a mystery and a wonder with
the world around us. They look, and they wonder, and
they go, what is it that we see? Now, listen to this. Some people
who have been really sold into fleshliness, to debauchery, you
know what I'm talking about. People who have just really abused
themselves, abused their body, abused others, stolen all sorts
of open sin that was just very, Edgy? I can't say very wicked,
because all sin is wicked. All sin is evil. All sin is worthy
of eternal justice. But you know what I'm talking
about. Those people that have just never obeyed even the law of common
sense. And God saves them. Yes, there
is a great character change in their lives. There's a great
struggle that comes to a lesser struggle. whereby these people
give up vices and things of that nature that are hurting them
or leading them to destruction. Yes, that happens. But for others,
we also see that there is a good moral line that everyone lives,
and in the end, there's no difference between the two. So, for some
of us who have come from that old lifestyle of very wicked-looking
thing, and for us, others who are pretty straight and narrow,
We all end up in the same place, bearing the same fruit that is
measured by one thing. Faith alone in the finished work
of Christ. Faith. In Matthew 7, that is
what Jesus is saying. You will know them by their fruits.
Who's He talking about? False teachers. The false teachers
lived a life of purity and morality, just like the Pharisees did,
but the fruit of their mouth was what? Lies. Teaching a false gospel. But the fruit of those who are
born of God is the truth of Christ. They have faith in Christ. So
many people, when they see us change, yes, there's always the
testimony, this bothers me. There's always the testimony
of, I used to do this, and I used to do that, and I used to do
this, and I used to be like that, and I used to love this, and
I used to think this way, but now, since I found Jesus, you
notice the operative words there, I don't do these things anymore.
Well, beloved, I've been a counselor for 20 years, and I've got a
lot of wasted money and education toward that end, but let me tell
you something. I've counseled unregenerate atheists
who have turned their lives around in the same way. So Jesus isn't the only way to
a better life of freedom from evil and addiction. Certainly
He'll give it. And when people see that in the
life of someone who professes Christ, they're not getting the
gospel of grace, of redemption. They're getting, and I'm not
knocking, if God has set you free from those things, glory
to Him, but let your testimony be true. God saved you divinely
through the finished work of Christ. God satisfied His wrath,
because whether you were living as a prostitute or a pimp, or
living as the Pope, you were equally guilty before God. That
doesn't hold the weight that it used to, does it? Whether you're a deacon in a
Baptist church, or a devil worshipper in the church of Satan, you're
equally guilty before God. And maybe God, when He saves
you, will draw you out of both. Deacon-possessed churches are
dangerous, just like demon-possessed churches. That wasn't a joke. People look at life and they
go, wow, I want that freedom. I don't want to smoke anymore.
I'm going to get Jesus. You see the problem with that? I don't want to be sad anymore.
I don't want to be poor anymore. I don't want to be sick anymore.
And the list goes on. You see all the demonic? Friends,
these people are not siblings in Christ. These people are not
preaching, nor do they have the confession of the gospel of grace. How can you be born again and
not know the truth of the gospel? How can you be saved and not
know that Christ has satisfied the wrath of God for you and
that His obedience is your righteousness? It's impossible! Because that's
the simplest message through which God the Holy Spirit will
birth you anew. In a few weeks, I'm going to do some teaching
on that very thing. Even from the Old Testament,
we see what? The penal substitutionary atonement
of Messiah as the only hope of righteousness for God's people. Just because the name Jesus wasn't
known in the Old Testament doesn't mean that Christos, Messiah,
was not the object of their faith. Because God, the Holy Spirit,
brings people to life only through the gospel of grace. Only as
He wishes. But many people like to look
at the outward expression. But what do people see with us? What
do people see in our lives? What great transformation is
there to see in the life of the true believer? Ultimately, it
belongs here. And this is where we see. People
say, this couldn't be this. This is the man that used to
be blind. Now we can see, wow, what's happened? Now here's the
kicker. If the man was accursed from birth, what made him not
cursed today? And He answers it very clearly.
He had no testimony. He didn't say, how is it that
you were caused to see? And he goes, I don't know. But
Jesus did it by putting mud on my eyes and telling me to wash
my face. I don't know. What testimony did this man have?
Christ alone. Christ alone. Christ alone. God, oh, has found me. I once was lost, but now I'm
found. I was blind, but now I see. I don't know how God has done
it, except that He did it, and this is all that I know. Where is He? I don't know. See, many people will look to
the outward appearance, and people are always astonished at the
miracles of Jesus, but these miracles would never regenerate
them. People would grasp onto what they can see, and touch,
and experience, and measure with their own minds and hands. But
when it came to the faith and life of a believer, We will be
marked. And I pray, as Paul commands
us, that we will be marked not by sin, but that we would put
away sin and be marked by holy lives. Now what's that mean?
That word has just become so synonymous with many things.
Lives that are set apart. The way I speak, I want it to
be done to the glory of God because of my love for Him, because He
loved me first. But the way I speak does not
change my standing before the Lord. The way I think. I pray every day that God would
help my mind focus on the ineffable glories of Christ. That I might
get up and not be irritated by this silly little world that
I live in. By these tiny little tacks in the floor called Legos.
Or whatever it might be that would cause us to just feel the
pain of life. That I would not be frustrated,
but that I would be joyful. God, please not lead me to that
position. But if I fall there, my hope is in Christ. It's not
because I have failed to the point of being lost. We should be marked with lives
of love for one another, and for our enemies, and for the
heretic, and for the lost, and everybody in between, that we
should pray that God would grant them repentance. That's regeneration.
That they could believe that God would save them if it be
His will. But most of all, the faith of
a believer will be marked by one thing constantly. And this
is something we all... See, we shouldn't measure ourselves
against each other. Well, if I could just be as pure
as James. You don't want to be that gross. If we had confession in this
church, none of you would show back up next week. Let me tell
you what I thought about. Let me tell you what I felt.
Let me tell you how I thought in my mind of what to say to
that person. You know what I'm saying? And I mean, these aren't
boiling over two and three hours at a time. I mean, but these
small little things that are in our flesh, friends, will always
be there. And God the Holy Spirit, in His
mercy, as He sees fit, will give us the power to overcome them. Little things that take place
in our fellowship, in our lives, in our world. We have the power
by the Lord, by the Spirit, to overcome them. Fear and doubt
and relational problems and worry. But there's one thing that will
always stand true for the true church of Jesus Christ, and that
is that we stand by faith in Christ alone. And we resolve
to trust in the Lord Jesus through all things and in all things.
And we stand knowing that our righteousness is only in Christ,
and that even when we sin, He is our advocate with the Father,
for He has finished the work of redemption, He has paid the
penalty of sin, and He has been raised alive, vindicating His
claim, and His power, and His authority, and His rule. And
He is alive, and He has promised us life forever, for we have
been given to Him by the Father. That is what will mark us united
across all cultures. Across all levels of maturity.
Across any issues of discipline. Faith in Christ alone. People
claim to be in Christ in our culture, but they cannot trust
the promises of Scripture. I know some of you might say,
well, I don't always trust. That's okay. That's part of trusting. is that
we realize we really can't, but the Spirit of God who prays for
us in our weakness through the power of His divine working,
1 Peter, causes us to do and to stay in the faith. We will
not forsake the truth of the Gospel of Grace. Even when it's
right there on our tongue, I just can't believe this anymore, God
will preserve us. We will persevere because God
preserves us. And that is not our own doing.
That is a gift of God. Many people can't trust the promises
of Scripture concerning Him. They can't trust the promises
because their marriage is a mess. They can't trust the promises
of Christ because their bodies are sick. They can't trust the
promises of Christ because they're suffering. Or they can't afford
to pay their bills. Or this, that, and the other.
They have pain. They have strife in their church.
They have a bad job. They have issues in their relationships.
But friends, we who have the Spirit of God will trust in the
Lord. in all these things. And when
we are faithless, this is part of the faith in Christ, He's
faithful. When we can't trust, He will
not fail us. That is why it is important,
beloved, to be in the Bible. That's why it's important, beloved,
to be together as a church. That's why it's important, beloved,
to strive to help each other, to get to know each other intimately,
not superficially, intimately, so that we can be there when
the walls fall. And as we are there, Christ is
there. Where we are gathered to and
more, Christ is with us. That's not just some kind of
a spiritual mojo type thing we're supposed to just feel happy about.
That's an actual doctrinal reality. The sight of the brethren. Many people try to emulate this
new effect of faith in their lives, but unless they're born
again, it's all for nothing. Others will see it and say, no,
no, no, no, no, this is all fake, it'll pass. Some people will
say, wait until, this man, he can't see, he was never blind. Oh, it's not him. But this man who had just received
his sight for the first time wasn't concerned with his sight
as much as he was the person that gave it to him. And these people had an interest
in how it happened rather than who did it. But even when He
told them, they could not bear to hear the answer of how He
came to see. Where is Jesus? What does He
say? I don't know. So even though His physical eyes
were open, He still couldn't see Christ with His physical
eyes. Now I know this might be a stretch, but think about it
for a second. Where is Christ for us today?
We don't have to say, I don't know, do we? For He said, I go
to prepare a place for you, and I will return again, that where
I am, you will be also." Christ is at the right hand of the majesty
of the Father. We too are there with Him in
the sense that all the workings of Christ and all the perfection
of Christ and all of the glories of Christ we shall share, for
we are His body. and we have been made righteous,
so we are fit for the presence of God. We are not getting more
and more righteous, or more and more holy, or more and more obedient.
It's not happening. Because if you're almost right,
you're wrong. And that's the simple of it. People can't bear to hear the
answer of the Gospel. The one whom God has sent has
made me alive. The one whom God has sent has
given me sight. We need to understand this not
only in our own worship and joy, but we need to understand this
in our prayers for our children and our family and those around
us, our enemies, our neighbors, those lost loved ones who are
sold out to a cultural Christianity. We do not need to wring our hands
in despair because we feel like what we're going through now
will never be better. It may not be better, but it
can be joyful because Christ is our satisfaction. He is our
hope. And people can't see it. Many
so-called believers who are just desperate to make sure that their
theology is pressed into the faces of all people. Friends,
this is not the evangelism called for in the Bible. We just proclaim
the finished work of Christ and God alone saves His people. In
the same way, when people come against us and people continue
to fight against us, as we'll see next week, we just need to
let God deal with them in His timing. And not all of the Sanhedrin
were condemned. There's evidences in Scripture
that Nicodemus was saved. But he wasn't saved because he
came to his senses. He was saved because God made
him alive in the Spirit. Because before the world ever
began, God purposed to give him to the Son. And God caused him
to live and he believed because of the One that God sent to save
His people. Religious people always want to find leaders that
will share their point of view. And that's exactly what happens
next week. They couldn't deal with what
he was saying, they couldn't make heads or tails of it, so they take this
man who was born blind and they take him to their spiritual leaders.
And they will tell them how this man got his sight. You see how
that works? These people thought their leaders could give testimony
about this man who experienced life in Christ. Beloved, we need
to know the truth of the gospel that we've been saved through.
I pray that you would grow and understand the fullness of what
God has done for His own glory in Christ. Let's pray. Father, as we've worked through
this text over the last few weeks, I pray that it is sufficient
for what You've called us to, Lord, that we would understand and acknowledge and believe and
trust in Your work alone and what the Word of God shows us
about Your work, about Jesus, Your Son. Father, I thank You that You've
caused us to be born again in Christ, that You've made us alive,
that You've given us hope, and Lord, that nothing can separate
us from this finished work. Lord, I pray for everyone here.
I pray for all of us. I pray for those who are watching
from their homes because they're ill today. Lord, I pray for our
church family. I pray for those who are outside
of this fellowship, Father, who depend upon the teaching of the
Word through several different pastors around the globe to feed
them. Lord, that You would give them
peace, and Lord, that You would help sustain them in their orphaning.
Father, that most of all that You would help us as a fellowship,
Lord, strive to be at peace with one another. Lord, to help teach
each other, to reach out to one another, not in a judgmental
way, but in a passionate way of, we love You, and how can
we serve You? Father, I pray that this season,
this holiday, vacation, Christmas, whatever it is that we might
call it, would not be a season of spiritual laziness, but God,
an opportunity to take time out and make use of the time to study
Your Word and to be intimate with it. Father, we give You
all the glory and the praise. for everything that you're doing,
for it is for your namesake and for our good, and it is only
in Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. 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.