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. We're revisiting this text again
this morning because it's just not sufficient to preach it quickly
in the narrative and then move on to different things. Remember
that John, as he writes this gospel, he does so because God
the Holy Spirit gave him the utterance, gave him the words,
guided him perfectly, as we'll see later in years to come, that
Jesus says that God the Holy Spirit will cause them to remember
all things that he said. So it is not about the quality
of the apostle, the academics of the evangelist, the ability
or the cognitive function of the pastor. It is not about anything
that man has to offer or can do in talent, in treasure, in
time, but it is always and forever about what God has done. Only
God can bring to mind the perfect recall of what Jesus has said. Only God the Holy Spirit can
help you remember in that time that you need it, the words of
the Lord. Only God can keep you in the
faith. There's nothing that you can
do. Yes, there are disciplines that we are called to. There
are levels of obedience that we are commanded to as believers. But even in that, as imperfect
as it is, our only hope is in Christ. And only God the Holy
Spirit keeps us therein. He is the guarantee of our hope.
He is the seal of our inheritance. I know I transferred those, but
they are equally the same. The Scripture shows us who God
is, and it is the Holy Spirit through the Scripture that helps
us to see Him. As John wrote this, he did so
by the power of God, and he orchestrated this argument one after the other
in order to build upon the reality of who Christ is. I say this
often. I might have even said it last
week. We cannot read the Scripture as if it were a storybook, though
it does contain stories. We cannot deal with John's gospel
as if it's just a narrative of the life of Jesus because it's
not just a narrative of the life of Jesus. As a matter of fact,
there is so much more that Jesus said and did, as I said last
week, that the scripture says that the world cannot contain.
There are not enough volumes. There's not enough space in the
world to contain the volumes that could be written about what
Christ has said and done. Although some of you might see
pastor's libraries and say, well, you're close. But God, the Holy Spirit, orchestrated
the writing of John's gospel in the order that it's written
for the sake of the argument of who Christ was. So that as
Jesus passed by this blind man, we see in John 9, one, the topic
of conversation is much like it is with us. There's some of
us brothers who, you know, we might be doing anything. We may
be cleaning a toilet or fixing a wall, but there's going to
be an opportunity where somebody's going to mention something about
the scriptures and we're going to be able to have a conversation
about them. There's not a day that goes by
that I don't get a question from somebody, either from our fellowship
or from my house or from the online communities or an email
or my own head. I wonder what this is. And we
all have a presupposition about many doctrinal things and theological
things. And I will tell you that even
as you've already seen, remember what I said in John six, in the
beginning of this, go back and listen to week one, this is week
76. I challenge you all to recognize that God would really work against
the status quo of your theology when you study the gospel of
John. And so John's gospel, then starting in chapter six, really
begins to press against the grain of our cultural distinctives
in relation to what? What we think Christianity is
as a community, as a culture. And not necessarily us, as in
we, Grace Truth Church, but we as a culture, America, evangelicalism,
Protestantism, What people think about Christianity as a whole,
90%, let's just make that number up. You know, good statistics
are made up all the time on the spot. And when we think about
it though, most of our culture believes in a false Christ. Most
of the culture of Christendom in America doesn't even know
the gospel. Ask them, what is the gospel? The best they can do is that
Jesus died for my sins, which is not the gospel. It's an incomplete gospel, so
it's not the gospel. How do you know you have eternal
life? Well, most people say, because of what I did, because
of what I believe. What do you believe? I believe
I asked Jesus into my heart. That's not eternal life. It will
not save you. And we have a problem in our
country with mainline Christianity and even reformed circles where
they love to tout the idea of sola, sola, sola, sulo, soli.
We're all in the solas. We love Christ and His faith
and all these things. Oh, we believe the gospel. No,
the solas are not the gospel. Who Christ is and what He did
and what He accomplished is the gospel. And for whom He accomplished
it is the gospel. That is the root, the foundation
that Paul talks about with the church of Corinth. Where he says
that if we build on the foundation of Christ and the prophets with
any other thing, it will not stand. We can build on the foundation
of Christ. We can build walls of morality. We can build trusses of righteousness. We can do all sorts of benevolence.
We can build false intentions, good intentions, but false pretenses
all over the place. But whatever is not the gospel
of grace, Christ saving His people from their sins perfectly when
He says, it is finished. There is therefore now no condemnation
for those who are given to Christ Jesus. That is when and only when God
the Holy Spirit calls His children to faith. When they hear that
gospel. And it is the gospel we have
been preaching here since the beginning. We see John's narrative as a systematic theological approach
to the divine nature of Christ. He outlines it well in the first
chapter. The light has come into the world. Jesus says that they love the
darkness rather than light. Who? Nicodemus. the spiritual
leaders of that day. A friend of mine who was born
Jewish, he's an ethnic Jewish person raised in a Jewish home.
God saved him many years ago from Judaism. And I just ask him because I
have been getting in the last three or four months from without,
you know, you sound anti-Semitic. You just seem to hate Jews. because
I preach John 5, 6, 7, 8. Wait till 9, 10, 11, 12. If you think Jesus is anti-Semitic
through these verses, you should see what he's going to say next.
And I asked him, I said, you know, what do you do with that?
He says, well, if anti-Semitic means we hate the Judaism of
first century because it's satanic, then we're anti-Semitic. He said,
as a Jewish person, the Judaism of first century was not the
Judaism of Abraham. Abraham looked toward Christ. Well, we have a misunderstanding
in our culture to think that everyone who uses the name Jesus
is a believer. Well, there are thousands of
cults who would use that word. There are thousands of people
who sit in the confines of buildings and call themselves Christians
every single day who will reject the core issue of the atonement. They will not receive the idea
that Paul and Jesus very clearly, the apostles teach that Christ
satisfied God's wrath. He is a noun. He is our propitiation. So that at His death, God the
Father then is fully and completely and forever satisfied to bring
no more judgment against His people. And then we have this
real misunderstanding, as they did in the first century, that
God's people are those who are ethnic Israel. And Jesus says
very clearly, you are not the sons of Abraham. You are the
sons of your father. Satan. Now see, if we went around
saying that to people today, it would be really bad because
people would come against us because we were just being rude.
And some people like to take the narrative and say, well see,
Jesus said things like this, therefore I can say things like
this. Jesus is God and knows the heart of all men. No one
had to tell him what was in man. He knew Nicodemus before Nicodemus
ever was created. And he knew Nicodemus could not
see unless he was born again. And I believe Nicodemus, from
a worldly standpoint, was a good Pharisee. I believe he was a
kind man. I believe he was a man who loved
to teach people the truth, but he was as blind as Caiaphas,
who said, we've got to kill him. We've got to kill Jesus in his
murderous, Cain-like heart. So this narrative, As all of
these theological things were taking place, all of this teaching
was taking place, imagine walking the world and the earth with
Jesus. Do you know I believe that the disciples belly ached
more than they rejoiced in that? I believe there are many times
when we get a little insight there, John especially, he'll say, you
know, we were murmuring about who gave him food. Or we were
murmuring about, why was he talking with that Samaritan woman? We
dare not say anything, because it's rude. We don't call out
our teacher like that, but, oh, we were talking about it in the
locker room, not on the field. We were talking about it in the
break, not in the classroom. We were talking about it over
there at the fountain, but we weren't saying it out here in
public during the ministry times. Oh, but we surely didn't understand.
We see that very clearly. They didn't understand. They
could not really see. And they still had all sorts
of presuppositions, a lot of doctrinal things that they just
assumed were right because they'd always been taught them. For
centuries, these people have been taught things from Scripture
that were absolutely heinous and wrong. And one of them was
that this man was blind because he was a sinner in the womb.
And he'd done something gravely disastrous before he was born
to cause his blindness. And if it wasn't him, then it
must have been his mother. Maybe she worshipped a pagan
idol. Maybe she didn't give her tithe the way she should have.
Maybe she forgot and kept a better sack of flour for herself rather
than donating it to the temple for sacrifice. See, some of us would say, well,
that's just ridiculous. We don't have that type of mindset.
Yes, we do. You know how many years that I sat under the bondage
of this? Why are you robbing God? I'm robbing God? Oh my goodness,
how am I robbing God? Because you're not tied in a tenth of
your income. That's demonic. You can't rob God. He owns it
all. 2 Corinthians 9, you know? is how
we as the New Testament church, we give out of the abundance,
we give as the desire of our heart, as the Lord has granted
us the ability, and we are thankful, we do it with a cheerful heart,
not because we're scared of God. Oh, you know, teetotalers, I
love you guys. I'm one of you. But we can't
say that God prohibits the use of alcohol. For it is a symbol
of joy and is a command to Timothy because of the constant nervousness
and angst that he had that Paul told him to drink wine. That
it would calm his nerves. It would calm his stomach. But
if he had been drunk, of course he would have been in sin. So
you see the cultural things that we're talking about? Or how about
how people speak? Or how they might like sports? Can we worship sports? Yes, just
as much as we can worship buildings and cars and children and each
other, our spouse. And yeah, we can see people,
but is it a sin? Is it wicked? Is it evil? You
see, some people will hear what I'm saying now, they'll say,
oh, you're preaching a license to sin. What's sinful about anything
I've said? There's a difference in what
is wise and good for us in our conscience and what is sinful
and evil before the Lord. There's a big difference. And
the Jews of the first century were no different. Friends, I
will tell you this, that many people who would hold to a high
standard of morality and state to themselves that they know
that they are right with God because of the continuation of
how they are growing in their own righteousness, are absolutely
lost and blinded spiritually and they cannot believe. You
know why? Because it's the exact thing
that we've been learning over the last few months. People that
trust in themselves. while saying, it is all of grace.
Look what God has made me from grace. God's not going to judge
us based on our performance. He is going to judge us in comparison
to Christ's performance. And if we are in Christ, then
His obedience gets credited to us, and we are holy. If we're
not in Christ, then we surely shall be found wanting in the
comparison of Christ, and in that, beloved, And that, beloved,
we hope, we hope, we hope that in Christ, not wish upon a star,
but we hope in Christ, we trust in Christ, we do not trust in
ourselves. So these people thought, well,
this man who's been begging his entire life must be accursed
from God because he's a sinner, he's a wicked and evil man. We
established that last week, that it is a picture of depravity,
that all people, there is no person who has ever lived in
this world that is born under man who has ever had the ability
or the freedom of the will to see and believe on Christ without
a divine work of Christ. And I'm not talking about the
doctrine of demons in the context of pervenient grace. And I know
that's a very harsh dogmatic statement, but let me tell you
something. God's grace is effectual. It always does the work that
it does, because God's grace is given through the power of
the Spirit, and the Spirit of God does not woo, as we've learned
already, it drags. There is no wooing. I have a
story, but I won't tell it today. I'll tell you after church. Just
happened this week to a friend of mine. It's very similar to
that. We don't have the ability because
we're dead in our trespasses and sins. There is this weird
supernatural blindness that's over us that even the smartest
of people can't see the simplest of logic. Brother Michael and
I were talking about this before service in John 9. It is such
a simple, simple, simple argument that a four or five year old,
if they can read, could understand the argument that these people
are blind and they can't see. They can't see. But they say
they can see, but they can't see. And they can't see what's
simply before them, that Jesus is God in the flesh, come to
save His people from their sins. And it's a simple logic. But
even in the simplest of things, without a divine work of salvation,
of regeneration, we would not see it today, beloved. What does
it do? It promotes the humility of grace. Grace is getting that which you
cannot earn, which you cannot be worthy or found worthy to
receive. And grace is the will of God,
after the counsel of His own desire and His own will, God
saves who He wishes, when He wishes, how He wishes, and then
He reveals it fully through the written Word, 100% in every text
of Scripture, old and new, God reveals His sovereign grace,
and when we say we can't see it, it's because we are not born
of God. You see that? But we have a love affair in
America with the experience of salvation. People would rather
confess the testimony of what they felt, rather than who they
know. Oh, that service, man, I just
felt the Lord. You didn't feel the Lord if you didn't learn
the Word. And if the glory of God through
the pages of Scripture does not wash you over, then no amount
of good music and anything else that I have practiced before
will ever get you there. What's the point? These disciples
were debating with Jesus. They're like, OK, here's the
master teacher. I want to know, teacher. Tell
me, we've all for years, this man's been sitting out here and
we've all had the same question. Is he the center or is his mom
a sinner? What causes blindness? This is last week's sermon. The
blindness was caused sovereignly by God in order that the glory
of God might be revealed in it. And it was not for the blind
man's sake. It was for the sake of Christ. See, that's a teaching that many
people have a very hard problem with until they're born again
and mature in a gospel teaching fellowship. Because they cannot
imagine that the suffering of the world, that God has anything
to do with it. Well, if He doesn't, then He's a weak God. Let's find
another one. Matter of fact, I know some of
you who could sculpt one a little bit better than that. He passed by and He saw this
man blind from birth. He's already said previously
that He is the light of the world. In the very instance of the Feast
of Tabernacles where at the evening they would light all the torches
and from a distance that Israel or Jerusalem could be seen from
a distance, a lit up city. Remember we talked about that
and I talked about my long travels across country, those nine trips
that we drove from San Francisco to here and just... Sometimes
you go on two and three hundred miles with nothing, at three
in the morning, and then you see a glow on the horizon like,
yes, something, I don't care. If it's on fire, I'm stopping.
I don't, you know, whatever it is. If it's a bonfire, I'm stopping.
I don't care what it is, I'm stopping. I'm going to find something
to do. I'm going to get out of this car and I'm going to walk
for a minute. There's this hope. So this illumination of Jerusalem
was this beacon that people could see for miles. And people would
go, wow, they're worshiping that weird God over there. And sadly, they weren't worshiping
the God of heaven. Judaism isn't close. It's not
like, all right, plus Jesus needs to come. No, that doesn't work.
Paul says anything that's added to Christ is anathema. The devil's
work in deceiving the nations is granted to him by God and
empowered by God to do so. We see it in the teaching of
Paul to the Thessalonians. Or he says that God will grant
power for great power and deception and signs and wonders to deceive
the nations. We see 2 Corinthians 4 that the
gospel is veiled, but it's only veiled to those who are unbelievers,
because the God of this world has blinded our eyes to keep
them from seeing the glory of God. You see this judicial blindness. And God is evil if He takes this
blindness away, having not first satisfied the judgment of that
person's sin in the death of Christ. It is finished. This is a simple gospel. It runs
throughout all the veins and capillaries and arteries of the
Scripture, and there is no escaping it, but you cannot see it except
you're born again. This man was born blind. so that the works of God might
be displayed in him." Jesus said, as I've mentioned, He is the
light of the world. He continues that there in verse
5. I am the light of the world.
The person who comes to Me, the person who sees Me, will never
walk in darkness. The person who approaches Me
and believes in Me will never walk in darkness. Now, some people
say, well, see, you just said that you can't believe. Absolutely.
Jesus says in John 6 that no one can come, no one can believe
unless the Father drags him and gives him to Me. And all that
the Father draw will come. They will believe and they will
be raised up on the last day. You see that? This is an imperative.
This is an absolute. This is not a possibility. This
is a certainty. Jesus is a certain Savior. He
has done the work of redemption. He has done the work of salvation.
He has finished the atonement. This is not a lingering possibility. It is an absolute certainty that
no one who has been given to Christ will perish in their sins.
They will believe by the power of regeneration. And that is
only given to those for whom Christ died, beloved. This is
the gospel. It is good news. And we aren't
here to discern if we are yet to be elect or not elect. We
are here to discern are we believing in the finished work of Jesus
Christ this day, who says He paid for the sins of His people. Without seeing, there is no believing. Believing is seeing. Seeing is
believing. And we have this picture here.
Jesus is walking in the world and He says there in verse 4,
We must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day.
for night is coming when no one can work." Now, I explained that
to you last week, and I know that seems odd. Are you just
going to give a summary of your sermon last week? Yes. And then
we're going to just really punch it in the face, because going
forward, we need to have this foundation as we see where the
Jews come in. Because Jesus heals this man
from blindness, and then he's not in the narrative for a little
while. Because then people start to see this man who was blind,
and now he sees. And then they start to take him
to their spiritual heads, the Pharisees. And then the Pharisees
begin to ask, how were you healed? Because we already see what?
Jesus healed the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda. and he walks in healed after
38 years and invalid, and the only thing they see is the towel
under his arm. Not that he's walking. And they
don't say, glory be to God, you're walking! Oh! Let's worship! They say, who told you you could
take up your towel? Who told you you could pick your towel
up? How dare you hold a sleeping bag on the Sabbath? How dare
you walk over here and take a journey? You should die." That was their
mentality. What a wicked, evil man of debauchery. Pick up his towel and walk to
give glory to God for his legs. You see? And it makes us laugh. But this is the seriousness of
depravity. This is the seriousness of depravity,
and it's the seriousness and the gravity of sovereignty, as
we talked about last week, if you don't remember. The severity
of sovereignty is that there is a judgment on humanity, but
the grace of sovereignty is that there is salvation in Christ. And here, Jesus is saying, we
must do the works of Him who sent Me while it is still day,
night is coming. This daylight is while Jesus is in the world
in His earthly ministry. He is the light of the world.
There have been no people as close physically to Jesus as
they were in that time. Even the Jews in the dispersion,
Peter rests on this reality that though you have not seen Christ,
you love Him. And though you still do not see
Him, you love Him and are filled with a joy that is inexpressible,
though you suffer. Why? Paul says it very plainly
in Romans 8. For we are His children. We are
heirs, as he would say in Colossians and Ephesians. We are joint heirs
with Christ. We have all things in Christ. We are the beloved. We have been
purchased through the blood of Christ. And Jesus is the light of the
world. There is no closer relationship, listen to this, that the Jews
had with Jesus except when He was there before them. Think about this. They lived
in utter darkness and the light of the cosmos stood before them. There is no greater light. If they were going to see in
their natural minds, there is no one else in the world that
could cause them to see. I've had people even say, well,
you know, if Jesus and the apostles would have just used Isaiah, then the Jews would have seen.
No, they wouldn't. As a matter of fact, Jesus does
use Isaiah. And we see in Luke's Gospel where Jesus reads the
words of Isaiah and they try to kill him. At first they go, oh, it's the
year of salvation, the year of jubilee, it's the year of forgiveness,
it's the year of redemption, praise be to God! And he goes,
but it ain't for you. It's not for you. They rejoiced
at the blessedness and the graciousness of this man's teaching as he
took the scroll, not even a real rabbi according to the tradition.
of men." And then he says, but just like
God sealed the wombs of His people, just like God refused to rain
upon the crops of His people, and they died in starvation,
so shall you be barren and crippled. And they tried to push Him off
the cliff. This is a continuation of this
reality. Jesus asserts two things here
in this text that are vital for the rest of the book. One is
He is the sent one. Well, three things then. Two,
He is doing, only doing, the works of the Father. And what's
the third thing? He is the light of the world.
He's the sent one. Here we see continually, over
and over again, Jesus saying, I am from the Father. I come from heaven. I come from
above. I have been sent to do the will
of the one who sent me. And every time He talks with
the Jews, they continue to assert that they are God's people, that
they are God's representatives on earth, that they are the vicar,
if you will, And then, lo and behold, Jesus says, no, it's
Me. I'm the living water. I'm the bread of life. I'm the
light of the world. I'm the temple. Destroy it, I'll
show you in three days what it looks like to be rebuilt. I'm the Holy of Holies. I'm the
mercy seat. I'm where God meets man. Can't see. His very first miracle
to teach His disciples that no one but them knew, and His mother.
He takes the water of ceremonial cleansing, the water of the image
of preparation for righteousness, and He turns it into wine, and
not just bottled box wine from the dollar store. He turns it
into the best wine these people have ever tasted, and they are
amazed. And who gets the credit? The
bridegroom gets the credit. He failed to plan to begin with. There's a theological teaching
in the miracles of Jesus. Jesus did not do miracles just
to say, ta-da, like David Carperfield. There's a piano, and now it's
gone. And everybody's, wow. There's
my thumb, and it's coming off. I fixed it. I mean, that's where
most people looked at Jesus. Well, there's a miracle. There's
another miracle. Let's see another miracle. Let's get some more. And you
know what? This miracle man even makes bread. He's like a bread
machine in a fish factory. Let's follow him over there to
Capernaum and see if he can't do some more miracles. Hey, I
bet if we placate to his power, he'll feel all excited. Well,
they really love me. Let me give them some more fish and bread.
How do you know that? Because Jesus says, when they
said, oh, when did you get here? He goes, he rebukes them. Don't
labor for the food that perishes, but for the bread that endures
you eternal life. You know what he said? I don't care how hungry
you are. I'm not feeding you anything else because I'm the
true bread. You need to understand that what I did for you yesterday
is not going to give you life because you're hungry this morning. And if you don't eat of my flesh,
you're going to be hungry forever. And the only way you're going
to have spiritual satisfaction is if you eat of me. What is
he talking about? That my flesh and blood is spilled
and crushed for you. If what I do is not for you,
you die in your sins. The woman of Sychar had the same
argument, didn't she? Why would you ask me, a woman,
to give you water? If you knew who it was who were asking you
for a drink, and you knew what kind of water, I give you living
water. It wells up to eternal life. Eternal water? Give it to me. Why don't you go ask your husband
to come here? Well, I don't have a husband.
Nope, you've had five and you're shacking up. That's what he says. And that's why you're here at
a weird place at a weird hour getting water because you don't
want to be mocked by the women of the world. These self-righteous
people who look at you and you're in sin, I mean, there's no doubt
about it, but they make you feel bad. And you shouldn't be in sin,
but Jesus doesn't go there, does he? No. She starts to talk to
him about spiritual things. Oh, you're a prophet. Mr. Prophet. Are we worshipping correctly
on Mount Gerizim? Are we worshipping the one true God? Are we worshipping
rightly? And she closes that discourse
with, Messiah will tell me all things. Behold, I met a man who
told me everything I've ever done. She argued spiritual things
and argued religious things and argued theological things. And
when the Holy Spirit opened her eyes, she trusted fully in Christ.
And when He said He was Messiah, He was the Christ, she left everything
and ran and told everybody. Embarrassed to be seen, now she
runs into the town center. I don't care. Christ has set
me free. What is my sin anymore that Christ
has paid for it? Beloved, Jesus is the light of the world. He is doing the works of God. He has been sent by God, but
the question is, what is the work of God? John 6, he already
tells us, right? So you have to keep this stuff
in mind so you can keep going. That's why I think you need to
read this every week instead of just coming in here on Sunday and
hearing small little pieces. If you're not reading it, you're
not being fed very well this morning. And if I knew everybody
read it on Saturday night, I could get into a lot more of the text.
It's okay, I'm just picking at you. I'd still be just like this. So we come and see Jesus saying in John 6, what
does He say? They say, what must we be doing to do the works of
God? What does God require of us? What is it? And He says,
this is the work of God, that you believe on the Son that He
has sent. Sent. See, the divine nature
of Jesus is an essential. The virgin birth of Jesus is
an essential. The vicarious atonement is essential. The substitutionary atonement
is essential. The fact that Jesus was punished
for the sins of his people is essential. This is an essential
doctrine. That means that it cannot waver.
We can't say, well, I just don't really see that, but I know Jesus
is my savior. But if you don't know that he
saved you and how he saved you, you can't say that you believe
in what he's done. And quite honestly, beloved,
having faith doesn't make you born again. Being born again
allows you to believe. And we've seen that from the
very beginning. John 1, 2, then 3, we see it played out very
clearly. And in 4, we see it in practice. 5, we see the antithesis
where those would not believe. And in 6, we see the actual details
of the high Christology, the theological systems of Jesus
and His work, the intricacies of His personhood, that He was
sent from God, that He is God, that He came to do the work of
God, and the work that He came to do is to pay for the sins
of His people. and so on and so forth, and now
here we are, having understood fully that Jesus is better than
Moses and Jacob and Abraham. And the light of the world is
sitting in front of these spiritual leaders, and they are confident
in themselves and their own spirituality. Now see, some people say that.
They say, well, you don't want us to be confident? You don't want us to have faith?
You don't want us to have assurance? Absolutely! But if our assurance
is in ourselves, we have no assurance. Beloved, even if we're not tripping,
we're stomping all over righteousness. We're kidding ourselves to say
we don't have sin. All of you have sin in your life.
This very moment, as you hear the sound of my voice, and hallelujah,
so do I. And that's a joke to say hallelujah
there. We will have sinfulness affecting our lives. But we have
an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. We've
been called to put to death the flesh because Christ died and
therefore we died to sin. But it is a constant thing. And
so our hope is in the light of the world. Our hope is not in
to take the light of our life and shine it around and look
at ourselves in the mirror and look at all these other things
going on and saying, well, you know, I know I have hope, I know
I have confidence because look at what I've done, look at what
I can do, look at what I believe even. We don't put faith in the
exercise of our own faith. Because friends, how many times
in your life, in the last year even, has your faith faltered? How many times in the last year
have you sat there in the consciousness of your soul and thought to yourself,
am I really a believer? Be honest. See, if one of them old line
churches would have a microphone up here on a mourner's bench,
we'd have some confessions. But just yesterday, huh? Because,
I mean, we'd all have something to say, wouldn't we? And we tell ourselves, well,
I've just got to be stronger. I've got to be better for Jesus. I've
got to do more so I can feel secure. We can feel secure because
Christ secured us. That's the gospel. And we see
it because God has made us alive to give us spiritual eyes. Friends,
this is the hope. This is why we gather every single
week, so that we can be encouraged by this truth, so that we can
see that the Holy Spirit, God, teaches us through the hearing
of His Word because we belong to Him. And no matter how close Jesus
is in proximity, unless we are born again, He is not our Savior. We are not His people. But we
who are His people are born again. We will be born again. We will
come to faith. We will believe. And how is that? When we hear the gospel, the
Spirit gives life. It's a simultaneous thing. God
has chosen this weird, natural means of transmitting the teaching
of His Word through writing, through syntax. And then in that same time, as
He wishes, John 3, the Spirit of God blows into the hearts
and minds of His people, and they believe, and they see, and
they can see. They're no longer blind. And
that's the point of this. Jesus was sent to do the work
of God, and the work of God that Jesus was sent to do is to be
the light of the world. To be the light of the world.
To stand in the midst of spiritual depravity. And you notice, listen
to this church, you notice that where Jesus did His ministry,
and in the heartbeat of the religious center of the world, Salvation is of the Jews, Jesus
says in John 4. Jesus says that that's the darkness. And when Jesus dies and then
ascends, He will no longer be present personally in His flesh
with these people. And so in that reality, He says
that it will be night for them. It'll be night for them. It will
be darkness for them. And though we, as His people,
are sort of enveloped in the darkness, sometimes we feel like
that there's no spiritual hope to be seen in the world around
us. A new survey came... I don't even want to talk about
this. A new... let's just say somebody wrote
something, and just recently this week, and basically says
that the church is in decline. That the church of Jesus Christ
is diminishing daily, and things are getting worse, and they're
basing that on the number of butts in the seats. Friends, the true church of Christ
will never be in decline. Christ will lose none for whom
He has died. He will raise us all up in the last day. The reason
things are in a decline is because what they've been caught with
is now boring. The reason people seem to think
that there is the so-called church in decline, and by the way, the
gathering of people doesn't necessarily make it the body of Christ, it
just makes it a church, an institution. but the true assembly is a living
organism of human beings who have been redeemed by Christ,
not a bunch of people gathering around an institution. But the
reason that we see people leaving so-called churches is because
they no longer are interested in the entertainment. They're
no longer interested in that which... I mean, do you watch...
Have you ever watched a sci-fi movie from the 50s? The Godzillas of the 50s? You
know, the old horror movies of the 30s, and even before. I used to love those as a child,
and I'd be so scared I'd have to sleep with all the lights
on. And now you look at them, and I can do finger puppets scarier
than that. My five-year-old could build
something out of Legos that's more scientifically robust than
some of the sci-fi movies of that era. And you're thinking,
why were we ever scared? Because it's boring. We've gotten
newer and better now. We've got CGI that you don't
even have to have actors for. You just need a guy in a green
suit that looks like a green Spider-Man with no eyes, and
he can stand there and move, and then they can create an entire
character, he never says a word. And we're like, wow, that's amazing. And that's what the church, the
so-called church of America's done, starting with Finney in
the 19th century. Let's do this, let's do that,
let's make something happen. Let's make God work. Get in the circle. Get in the
circle. God told me if you get in the
circle, He'll save you from hell. The circle was too small, so
they made it bigger. And it was still too small, so
they made it even more bigger. And then Phineas is like, well,
just come on up front. If you just come on up front. There's
not enough front. Just stay in your seats. Just
raise your hand. Just look at me. Just check the
box. Just take the bag. Were you sincere? Did you mean it? You see? And there's no gospel
anymore. There's no proclamation of what God has done and finished.
There's no light in the world anymore in that aspect. So the
church is not in decline, beloved. Because God will preach the gospel
so that His sheep will hear it. And the heralders of peace will
be called fools in the face of our culture. Now that's a fallacy
in itself. Well, you know, you're persecuted.
Everybody who's persecuted says it's because they're following
God. I mean, the Mongols said they
were persecuted because they were following God. The Catholics said they
were persecuted because they were following God. You know
when they were slaying people that didn't convert? The Crusades, on both sides of
the coin. The cults say that they're being
persecuted because they're following God. But friends, we don't have
to say that if we preach the gospel, people hate the message.
And in doing so, they wipe the messenger off the face of the
windshield. Jesus is the light of the world
because that's what God the Father sent Him to be. And what does
that mean for you? That's where we are. What it
means, what Jesus did physically to this man born blind, is a
picture, is a shadow, is a type to point to what He was doing
salvifically for His people. That's it. And so what did He
do? He declares. He didn't ask this
man if he wanted to be saved. This man didn't even know they
were talking about him. He walks over to this man, and he's standing
there in earshot, and Jesus says, I am the light of the world. The works that I do while I still
day. Night is coming when no one can work. As long as I'm
in the world, I am the light of the world. Now, this doesn't
mean that after Jesus ascended, He's no longer the light of the
world. But He's talking specifically about His ministry before the
cross. that he is in the closest proximity
fleshly that he'll ever be with these people, but he's in the
world, and this is what I've been sent to do by the Father,
and it is to find my people and show them how they can see by
looking at me. And you think, this is exciting,
wait till next week. So Jesus, having said these things,
verse six, this is where we'll be for six and seven for the
rest of our time, He spit on the ground. In most communities across the
colonies, there are still laws on the books that prohibit spitting
on the sidewalk or the ground. Why? Because it's unsanitary,
right? I mean, I don't even know if it's here today, but there's
a lot of old laws that have been enacted here from, you know,
about the 1800s and early 1900s, and there's some weird stuff. and they can't really enforce
those laws anymore. Just for example, like adultery
is a crime in Claxton. You can go to jail for it, and
all sorts of things are crimes, but they don't really enforce
it. But spitting on the ground is
a crime in some places, and they don't enforce that anymore. Why
would they enforce it? I mean, you imagine the advent of tobacco,
not so primitive, but in an early colonization. I mean, spittle
transfers and transmits what? Disease. And not just that, even
the proper society, I don't want to step in spit. I don't want
to step in all that stuff. I mean, it's just sort of gross.
I don't know of any culture where spitting on somebody or spitting
in general is like, man, that's such a classy guy. It's always
good when you're going into a restaurant and you're ready to eat and you're
hungry and the guy coming out of the restaurant decides he's going
to spit his whole wad of tobacco at your feet. You know? And you're
like, well, I'm not eating. You've seen it. Now people have
tried to come up with all sorts of interesting theories about
why Jesus spit. Do you even know, remember when
we talked about the breaking of the Sabbath, the silly laws
of the Sabbath that the Jews, the Sanhedrin and all, came up
with, the Mishnah and other areas of writing? It was against the
law to spit as a Jew in the dirt on the Sabbath because it was
considered work. Because it was considered fallowing
the soil. working the soil. It would make mud, so therefore
it would work the soil. The saliva would soak into the
soil, the soil would become mud, and that was a work. It was a
crime according to Jewish law. So in like manner, it was also
considered bodily fluids were considered taboo. You didn't
touch them, you didn't touch people who had fluids. If you
were like a, what do you call it, a leper, you couldn't even
be in the same vicinity as normal society. You had to walk around.
If you had to come near, you rang a bell and you yelled unclean. I mean, for some of us germaphobes,
that'd probably be pretty cool. I'm nasty. Don't get too close.
We weren't getting close anyway. It's okay. Shake my bottle of
sanitizer. How you doing? So people have supposed, well,
maybe it's this, maybe it's this, maybe this tradition. Oh, maybe
it's this, and this actually appeals to me in some way, because
I love connection. Some people say, you know, just
as God created man out of the soil, now Jesus is creating sight
out of the mud, and the like. Okay. Makes sense. But how about the immutability
of God and the congruency of Scripture? Is that what He would
do in these other parts of Scripture, especially John's Gospel, and
the intention and the motive that Jesus had, maybe it's the
same? So Jesus would tell the man at
the pulpit of Bethesda to get up and take his mat and go show
himself to the chief priest. Why not just go home and tell his
family, look, I'm healed? Because he wanted to confront
the idolatry and the unbelief of the spiritual leaders of that
day. For a lack of a better way of
putting it, it was the purpose of God in His sovereignty to
rub into the faces the wickedness of their religion so that they
would be exposed for exactly who they were. Now that doesn't
give us the license to do it because Jesus is God, He did
it. The apostles did not. And then Jesus tells us to love
our enemies and not defend ourselves and to be quiet. and not debate
and argue and become divisive. And I've had somebody even tell
me this morning, you're always talking about divisiveness, you're
just divisive, you just think we're divisive because we're
speaking the truth. I'm like, you know what? Block. Don't send me a message like
that on Sunday morning. And some of you who are watching,
don't read those things on Sunday morning. You can't get away from them.
But Jesus spit, I think, because it was a violation of their code
of ethics, their code of conduct. It was a violation to spit, it
was a violation to touch spit, much less put it in somebody's
face. Thank God he was blind. Can you imagine Jesus trying
to, somebody trying to heal you like that? Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'll
just stay an invalid. You'll walk because you don't want to
get spit on you. It's gross. I think that this is the nature
of why Jesus did this. This was His intention to just
do things in a certain way. I've heard people argue, well,
you know, Jesus spit had power. The power to be gross. Well, if we could just get Jesus'
blood, if we had a drop... Imagine, I've heard this before, imagine
if we had one drop of Jesus' blood in a vial. I said we'd
dip it in gold and we'd take it to the Vatican. What would you do? You'd just
have a drop of blood. The power of God does the healing,
not the spit, not the fountain that He went to wash in. None
of those things did healing. It was God who did healing, Christ
who did healing, and He did it so that He could show the principle
of life eternal as the light of the world to a man that was
born blind that had not sinned in order to cause his blindness.
He was a sinner. So Jesus spit on the ground and
He made mud with the saliva, and He anointed the man's mud
with eyes. That's a weird picture. He anointed
the man's eyes with mud. And then He said to him, and John
clarifies this because it's important, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam,
which means scent. So He went. And he washed, and
he came back seeing. Now there's a hermeneutic. What
is that? It's how you interpret text, that people love to lay
over this and impart things that are not there. Oh, this is good
stuff! If you don't go, you don't get
your healing. See? Nah, you don't get your
healing whether you go or not. The reason the man went is because
Christ sent. And the reason Christ sent is
because He proved He was the sent one by giving sight to the
blind. And the reason He gave sight
to the blind is to prove that He was the sent one and that
He was going to help us see. And not just help us see, make
us see. Cause us to see. Create in us
the ability to see. Make us knew that we could see. And there's another healing of
a blind man where Jesus heals him. He touches him, remember?
And he looks and he says, what do you see? He asks him, what
do you see? I see people that look like trees. And he touches
him again and he was healed. The context there rules. Do you know
context, when interpreting Scripture, overcomes the meaning of words? Context drives the meaning. Syntax
is determined by context. If you interpret Scripture by
going to the Word and looking at what the Word means and getting
all the different definitions, oh, that's what this means. It's not okay. It's bad. It's a poor hermeneutics. Read the words. God does what
is simple through the Scripture so that we can read the words
and see very clearly what He's saying. Jesus sent this man to
the pool called Scent because He is the One that was sent. And the washing off that mud He went to the place called Scent
and he washed off the mud and he could see. So in a sense,
the pool itself is a picture of Christ. And I could give you
the history, oh my goodness, I could give you the history
of that pool and where it did and what it had use for in the
temple and all these different things and start making, you
know, connections and it'd be like, wow! But in simple terms,
this is what Jesus is showing us. Christ was sent to do the
work of God and He was sent to be the light of the world to
bring His people to sight because they are born blind. See how
short this sermon could have been? It's just that easy. but we have
to take it in the whole. Jesus is the light of the world.
He came to seek and save the lost. Jesus' only work is to
bring His people to salvation and cause them to see and believe. That's His only work. That's His only work. That's what He was sent to do. And look what happens in the
next few verses. Preparation for next week. And the neighbors,
those around, and those who had seen him before as a beggar,
were saying, is this not the man who used to sit and beg? Some said, it is he. Others said,
no, but it looks like him. That's what that means there.
He kept saying, I am the man. So they said to him, then how
will your eyes open? And then he says, 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 I received
my sight. And they said to him, Where is he? And he says, I do
not know. You know why the man didn't know?
Because he could never see Jesus in the flesh. The light of the world was in
the flesh, and there was a time coming when night would come.
He would leave the world, but He would send the paraclete.
He would send the Spirit, the Helper. And so Jesus, the Son, God the
Son, would go, and God the Spirit, same essence and authority and
omnipotence and omnipresence, is here and doing the work of
God as well as Jesus was doing the work of God, and He's still
causing people to see. as we continue to do the work
that God's called us to. Have the gospel in your heart
and mind. If you need clarification, I
can show you. If you don't know how much to
say, just get a start. Pray that God, because you see,
would help you to be ever more diligent, to know and to share
the gospel of grace. so that God would call His sheep
home. As we'll see in chapter 10, they
will hear His voice. It's okay if 25 people a day
reject your message or tell you to not speak of that again. You
know what we're not called to do? Stand on a table and preach
it. That's never been called of a man, woman, or child. When we share the gospel and
someone shuts the door in our face, we dust off the dirt from
our sandals and we move on. because they have heard with
their physical ears, and the rest is up to God. No amount
of begging, pleading, arguing, debating, apologetics, or anything
else will cause someone to see. It is only Christ, who is the
only light, who overcomes the darkness. The darkness will not
overcome Him. Beloved, you see, in spite of
yourself, we are born again because of the work of God the Son, who
was sent by the Father. Trust in that for yourself. Trust
in that for your children. Trust in that for your family.
Trust in that. God, the only hope I have...
That's how we pray for our loved ones and for our enemies. The
only hope I have that You will save them is that You open their
eyes and cause them to believe that Christ has died for them.
Pray that. Rest in the sovereignty of God.
And rejoice when we see the outcome of these things. We love You, Father, for all
that You are and all that You've done for us. Thank You, Lord,
that You have sent Your Son to be the light of the world, and
Lord, that there is no possible way that the darkness will overcome,
but in all things Your people will believe. You will not hide
Your face from us. Grow us in our understanding
of this truth. And Father, though many of us
are tired and fatigued for so many reasons, Lord, help us to
have a zeal and a life inside of us that's not puffed up and
out of control, but, Father, solidified in the teaching of
the Scripture, grounded in the gospel of grace. Lord, give us a resolve that
is unshakable and that we continually hope in Christ. not ourself,
not our hope, not our own ability, not even our own faith, but Lord,
in Your faithfulness to save Your people for the sake of Your
glory, that we see perfectly through the Scripture in the
face of Christ. And it's in His name we pray. Amen. Thank you
for listening. We hope that this message has
encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to these messages and
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More information about the church can be found at gracetruth.org.