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. ...enemies of God, and those
people are enemies of God, and everywhere we turn there's the
enemy of God, the enemy of God, the enemy of God, but we're not
the enemy of God. Now that's true as the body of
Christ. It's true that as the church,
as those who are redeemed, we are not God's enemies. But we
have to remember that Paul teaches very clearly in Ephesians 2 that
we were once dead in our trespasses. We were once, by nature, children
of wrath. We were once hostile to God. That in our unregenerate state,
we, like the rest of humanity, were objects of wrath in that
sense, in nature. We were fallen and just as sinful
as anyone else. But we have this problem in our
world and our culture today that it's very easy for us to feel
spiritual pride. It's very easy for us to feel,
in some sense, a little bit superior. because we know the truth. And
then when we take the intellectual paradigms of the growth of the
faith and the learning of the Scripture, it is even more easy,
it is even easier for us to begin to think that we, in some sense,
are extremely wise. But we are not wise. Christ is
our wisdom. We are not bold. Christ died
for us. We are not the power of God. He is the power of God. We do
not display the glory of God. He, in all of His fullness, displays
the glory of God. In the next few years, as we
continue in this Gospel, we are going to see really an uptick
in hatred. We're going to see people who
claim to be godly. We're going to see people who
claim to believe. We're going to see people who claim a lot
of things about Christ and who He is and what He's done. We're
going to see people who seem to be justified in their own
mind, their own sin. We're going to see that there
are even forces at work outside of the will and the volition
of men, whereby they choose freely to make decisions that they think
are best for them. And in doing so, they actually
are fulfilling the very decrees and the purposes of God in the
destruction of the person of Jesus in His flesh, so that what? So that we, the elect of God,
can be saved. I've entitled this message, that all men are born blind. All men are born blind. People like to teach the narrative
of Scripture sometimes in a way that just makes it a good story.
And if we were to take John chapter 9, as it says there, as He passed
by, a lot of people say, oh, see, Jesus went into the temple
and He was teaching to the Pharisees, He talked about Abraham and He
walked outside, and as He passed by, whoa, there's another guy.
It could have been like that, but it also could have been weeks
later or months later. As He passed by is just telling
us in the narrative that Jesus walked by someone. It's not supposed
to give us this firm timeline of events. If we think that Jesus'
life and ministry can be encompassed by a short 50 pages of text and
the four Gospels, we are not thinking very properly. As a
matter of fact, the Scripture says that if we were to write
down everything that Jesus ever did or said, there would not
be enough volumes in the cosmos. There would not be enough pages
in the world. There would not be enough parchment to put it all
down. And if you think about it, God
has been speaking from the very beginning. In Hebrews chapter
1, it says many times, in many ways, God has spoken to our forefathers
through the prophets. But in these last days, He has
spoken to us through His Son. And He created the world through
whom He did all things, and all glory, and all honor, and everything
is done. And when He finished paying for
sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Father, the position
of all majesty and all glory and all honor. Remember the prologue
of John, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
God, and the Word was with God, and all that has been created,
He created. Nothing that has been created,
He didn't create. And then the Word became flesh.
We have seen the fullness of the glory of God in the person
of Jesus Christ, the man who was born of a virgin, who lived
in this life, in this world, who learned and grew as a human
being, but in the same sense was also truly and fully God. This is a mystery that we cannot
comprehend, but the Bible teaches very clearly that Jesus is truly
God. in all of His fullness, and He's
truly man in all of His fullness, simultaneously, and that His
humanity and His divinity was not intermingled, and that He
was this superhuman or this weak God, but yet He has two distinct
natures. That Jesus then, as we see in
the construct of Scripture, as we see in this teaching, Jesus
in His humanity. We forget this, beloved. When
we talk about Jesus' ministry, we are talking about His human
body, His human mind, His human soul, His human person. Jesus in His humanity displayed
perfectly and fully, that means complete without any missing
parts, the glory of God. And the Scripture says that the
only way we will ever know and see with our eyes, spiritually
or physically, is to behold, to look at Jesus in His flesh. Now think about that for a second. See, how many times have we erroneously
dealt with the idea of Jesus and His revealing of the glory
of God from His eternal perspective as God? But that's not how Jesus has
revealed the glory of God. Of course it does, for He is
God, but Jesus reveals the glory of God in His humanity. So in
that there, we must rest. We must understand that as human
eyes fix upon human people, And as these humans looked at Jesus
and His humanity, they were perplexed, they were puzzled. How is it
that this man claims to be from God? How is it that this human
being claims to be God? How is it that this man claims
to be before Abraham? You see how that's troubling?
Because logic and common sense tells you that a human being
cannot be God. And after millennia of religion
and spirituality, quote, the Jews could not fathom that all
of the mystery of God could be encompassed in this human being. But that's what it is. And the reason, as we've already
seen in John 5, and John 6, and John 7, and in John 8, and we'll
see it again in John 9, and we'll see it again in John 10, We'll
see it in John 11 and we'll see it in John 12. Jesus continues
to do miracle, after miracle, after miracle, after miracle,
after miracle, and He does not do any miracle for the sake of
the flesh of the recipient. You've already seen the healing
of Bethesda. There were many, there were hundreds, if not a
thousand people who were invalid. Jesus never had a ministry of
healing for the sake of the joy of the temporality and the flesh
of the person. He did everything for the glory
of the Father. And people say, oh, is God not
glorified in giving man sight? No. Not if it's temporary. Not if it's temporary. If you're
bankrupt and losing everything, and I put a million dollars in
your bank account, but I take it back out the next day, you
had a million dollars, oops, now you don't. Lazarus was raised
to life to his despair. Not to his good, except that
his being raised to life was for the glory of God. This is
where we start to see that very clearly. Beloved, everything
that we know as a culture is inundated, is intertwined. It's like finding ants in a sugar
bowl. You ever done that? How do these ants get in a sugar
bowl? I remember years ago in Virginia, in the winter, when
the snow would get thick and deep and ants would come in the
house. I'm like, how do they get in
the second story, in the top cabinet, in the sugar bowl? So
you put the sugar high because you're thinking, ants can't get
there. How did they climb 40 feet inside the wall, through
the brick, behind the cabinet, across all the extermination
boundaries, and get into this thing? We see all these ants.
How did they get there? What's the point? We think that just because things are natural in their sense, we
have come to be inundated with this falsehood. And no matter how many ants you
pick out of the sugar bowl, they're still in the sugar bowl. And you can clean them out, you
can do the, you know, because they're only eating the surface,
it's not that they're swimming in it, but you can dig them out. But it's
contaminated. You don't dip them out and keep
using the sugar, some people do. But there's always an ant. You dump the sugar out, you clean
the bucket, and then you see an ant on the counter. There's
always something. In the same way that you can't
really get rid of the ants, even if you can't see them, so is
our culture paving like ants into the sugar bowl of our theology.
There's something every turn that keeps us captive to something
that we can't see. And beloved, all of us have some
misunderstanding of the gospel in some way. Not in a legitimate
way. We don't denounce the gospel,
we're not legitimate. But some of us have some misunderstanding, even
if it's a small lacking of the depth of the gospel. Let me see. And that's why the Bible tells
us we must grow in our knowledge of grace. No one is an expert
of the gospel. The man who claims to be an expert of the gospel
is a fool. We must know the gospel, the simplicity of the gospel,
the reality of the gospel. Jesus is God. He came to earth. He lived an obedient life in
His humanity. But see, when I talk about the
humanity of Jesus, we just sort of just like, oh yeah, we got
it. He's a man. He's a God-man. But He's God. But He's man. And we forget that the fullness
of the glory of God is seen in the humanity of Christ. Not just the miracles. Not just
the resurrection. Of course these display the glory
of God. But Jesus, as He lived in His
person, displays the glory of God. Paul says in Romans 3 that
all have sinned and fall short of what? The glory of God. See,
we also have a misunderstanding of the application of that in
that we look at sin sometimes as just these vile things. that
are just so wicked and evil. The debauchery, the lust, the
murder, the killing, the lying, the greed, the hatred, all of
these things, which we'd be right, that's certainly sinful. But we forget that even in the
best of our days, the striving of righteousness in our obedience
is still never enough to match the glory of God. And in the greatest of men, women,
or children, the greatest of the apostles, Paul, was the chief
of sinners. And the Pharisees and the Jews
and unregenerate spiritual people You notice it was never the pagans
arguing with Jesus. It was never the atheists arguing
with Jesus. It was never the culture arguing
with Jesus or the government arguing with Jesus. As a matter
of fact, He wasn't even on their radar, except that this man had
truth and He saved me and told me everything I'd ever done.
It was always the religious. It was always the spiritually
minded people, so they thought. We saw in John 7 and 8 that even
the Jews considered their own constituency, their own congregation,
condemned. Because they did not keep the
law as well as the Sanhedrin kept the law. They did not keep
the law as well as the Pharisees kept it. People could just be
like the Pharisees. And Jesus says, what does He say in the
Synoptics? Unless your righteousness is greater than that of the Pharisees,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. That means that your
morality must be impeccable before men and much, much more. See, sin is not just the evils,
but sin is missing the mark of God's perfect glory at any stroke. So unless I absolutely, in a
divine way, am able to love the Lord my God with all of my heart
and soul and mind and strength, with every jot and tittle and
iota of my soul, I fail to meet the glory of God. I fail. And you do too, beloved. Now, many men would hold you
bondage to this second tier of this type of teaching, and they
would say, you better get your act together, church! And you know what we would do?
One of two things, as believers. We would come to a place where
we would beg of God to make us righteous, and never measure
up, and live in a state of fear and despair, never experiencing
the reality of the new life this day, or we would just give up. But if we were unbelievers, we
would go, okay, I can do this. I can do this. I can pull myself
up. I can tie up my shoes. I can
put on my righteousness. I can put my phylacteries on.
I can pray, O Lord, O Goddess. We can do all the regalia of
all these wonderful expressions of spirituality according to
the world around us, and people would laud us for our great divine
essence, and we would be condemned before the Lord. And some of
you are thinking, yeah, I know those people. Be careful. We
may be one of them. Sometimes when we mock that which
is absurd, it's because it looks like us. Our hope is not in what we have
done, but it is only in what God has finished. It is finished. The gospel is that God made salvation
certain and fulfilled the conditions of His covenant. And He created
for Himself a people who were not His people. Through the blood
of Jesus Christ, And the blood of Jesus Christ is effectual,
was effectual, because Jesus in His humanity was impeccable.
And thus He displayed the glory of God in His humanity. His humanity. So we, then what? We as Christians
will be judged by God. How will we be judged, beloved? We will be judged by the works
of Christ, by the obedience of Christ, by the holiness of Christ. For
if we are judged by our measure, we will be found wanting, and
we will be condemned. For God does not have wiggle
room. We either display His glory in
absolute fullness, or He is just in our destruction. Do you see
that? That's why it's sort of absurd
to say, well, the Ten Commandments are the standard. No, God is
the standard. The standard is the impeccability of God, the
holiness of God. Why do we call God Hagios? Why
do we call Him holy? Why does He call Himself holy?
Because He is set apart beyond all things. He is so absolutely
different in every aspect of His person, His mind, His being,
His doctrine, His decree, every attribute which is immutable
in themselves, and simple in themselves, that there is no
one like Him. There is no comparison to Him.
Nothing in all of creation can stand in the presence of God
and be measured to even any type of comparison. except one man,
Jesus Christ the righteous." And that is the context in which
Jesus begins to teach this portion of John. As He passed by, chapter
9, verse 1, He saw a man blind from birth. Now I might just
preach that one verse today. Blind from birth. See, It's important
that this man was blind from birth. How many blind people
walked the streets of Jerusalem? There's no telling, a bunch. Why were they so destitute? Why were the lame constantly
outside? Why were the blind sitting on
the street? Why is it that these people who had malformities and
disease, why were they so ostracized in the culture? Unclean, unclean. If you had a disease of any kind,
you had to walk around and ring a bell and yell unclean so people
could get away from you. You couldn't buy, you couldn't
sell, you couldn't eat, you couldn't go to the doctor, you couldn't
go to the temple, you couldn't worship. So you were anathema. You were
condemned if you were not perfect in your body. If you're not healthy
in your body. Why? Because of this very next
verse. The disciples asked Him, Teacher,
who sinned? This man or his parents? That
he was born blind. Do you see what they were thinking?
When they saw people with calamity, when they saw people with disease,
when they saw people who had problems, they automatically
assumed that this person was being condemned by God and punished. Now we know, of course, that
what? There are times when our sin can bring consequences, but
this is not one of them. And Jesus makes that very clear.
As a matter of fact, it is very rare that illness comes from
sin. But we did see Paul writing to
the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians. He says, the reason that some
of you are sick is because you continue to defile the table.
The reason some of you are dying is because you continue to defy
the teaching of God through my letter. Ananias and Sapphira
were one of those examples, were two of those examples. And God
killed them that He might show the measure of His severity when
we do not hit the mark of His glory, which is sin. See, we need to understand a
couple of things that is really reminder here is that all men
are born in sin. And as a matter of fact, that's
a little bit of a misapplication. All men are conceived in sin.
All humanity are guilty in conception because of our federal head,
who is Adam, who is the first man who sinned. People think
of original sin sometimes. They think, oh, we're guilty
of eating the fruit of the tree. No, we're not guilty of eating
the fruit of the tree. That's Adam's sin. He owns it. but we're guilty
of being an Adam, and the consequences of sin is death, and we desert it." So it was
not a far stretch to say, who sinned? This man, since he was
blind from birth? It's not that hard. I mean, this
isn't rocket science here. It's just thinking a little bit. How
could he have sinned? How could his blindness have
been the consequence of him sinning from birth? Why were they asked
such a ridiculous question? Because that's how they believed.
This man must have sinned in the womb of his mother. Somehow,
someway, he sinned and God poked his eyes out. Now see, that would
get our children to behave, wouldn't it? Don't you do bad or God will
poke your eyes out. A lot of people come to some
type of faith or believing in God because they don't want God
to poke their eyes out. They don't want God to cast them
into everlasting judgment. Oh, no, I don't want to go to
hell. Sure, I'll say a prayer. Sure, I'll come down. I'll dance.
I'll moonwalk down the aisle if you want me to. Can you do
that? No, but I'll learn. Give me that
Michael Jackson video. Here we go. I mean, people will
do anything to escape punishment. My father had been in law enforcement
his whole life. I've met and counseled a lot of people through
the years who are escaping punishment. And they find Jesus as a real
good ticket to escape punishment. And the crazy thing is, is that
Jesus, in His salvation of His people, doesn't guarantee we're
going to escape the consequences of life. But we shall never face
the condemnation of God. There's a difference. So Adam
had the ability as the first man to not sin. Let's think about
that for a second. Original sin deals with this
idea that Adam could sin. He had the ability to sin if
he so chose to sin. He also had the ability to not
sin, but temptation of course, and we see the purpose of God
in the decree of the fall. That's why he created the world
and everything in it, so that he might be the savior of his
people. Adam would not be able to overcome the temptation of
the enemy. And moreover, he would not be able to dispose of his
wife when she was tempted. He could not do it. The picture
of the gospel is in the covenant of marriage. It is a temporary
covenant. It is a picture for the sake of the glory of God.
And that's why we hold marriage in high honor, because it is
a picture of Christ and His church. So Adam then sinned willfully. And then after that, guess what?
He no longer had the ability not to sin. It doesn't mean that
everything that we do is sin, but if we count it to the measure
of the glory of God, is it not short? It is not sinful to tell
the truth. It is not sinful to not murder. It is not sinful to read your
Bible. But yet, even in those things, the motivations could
be very selfish, which could be very sinful, and even in their
fullness, they are not completely perfect. And even if they were,
we've already sinned, so we're lawbreakers, so it will not carry
us to a place where we're justified before the Lord. What does it
mean? even to be justified before the Lord. It means that we stand
before the Lord and we have the privilege of standing before
the Lord and not be condemned. We are justified to stand in
the presence of God. We are justified to be called
His children. We're justified to say that God has satisfied
His wrath against me. How? Through Christ and Christ
alone shall we be justified. But because now we all are conceived
in sin, in the consequence of sin, we have what Paul says is
a hostility, which is a holy hatred of God. We do not love
God at all. We wholly hate Him. Not wholly
as in set apart wholly, but wholly as in complete. Humanity has
a hatred of God, and then because of that, we are enemies of God.
Because of that, we are dead. Ephesians 2.1, you were once
dead in your trespasses and sins. You were once giving over to
what? The lust of the mind. That's
right, he agrees. once given over to all of these
things, and like the rest of humanity, were by nature objects
of wrath, children of wrath, who were what? Being led by,
energized by the devil. Empowered by Satan to do that
which was wrong. But God, because of His great
mercy, because of the love with which He loved us, beloved, made
us alive in Christ. By nature, not by choice, we
are sinners. That's understood this way. We
are not called sinners because we sin. We sin because we are
sinners. And before we ever commit an
actual act of willful sin, before we're ever born into this world,
we have a nature, not a choice, to be separated from God. We
have a nature that has separated us from God, and God in His righteousness
is just and loving and perfect to bring condemnation. And it
has always been, as I've said about three weeks ago, it has
always been the venture of man to run the fool's errand of trying
to see how he might stand right before God in his own power,
in his own understanding. It cannot be done. Sin affects
the mind of the human being. It affects the mind in such a
way, from the beginning, the effects of original sin have
corrupted our mind, yielding us unable to see, unable to choose,
unable to believe. People hate this teaching because
they're not born again. Jesus just said that. The reason
that you do not hear Me, or He will say that, is because you
cannot hear My Word. You do not have the ability to
hear what I'm saying. You are not My people. You belong
to your father, the devil. He will reiterate that very clearly
in John 10. So let us not be frustrated with
those who cannot see. Let us not be irritated. That's
a sin, by the way. Let us not be irritated with
people who are a little weak in the faith. Let us not be haughty
and arrogant and think that because we now have sight that we are
something special and better and greater. No, we are objects
of mercy. to which the outcome is that
we believe because we've been made alive. We have faith that
Christ has died for His people and has satisfied the wrath of
God on their behalf, and that in the power of the Holy Spirit,
coupling with the hearing of the words of Christ, God brings
us to life, and we are at His mercy, and He has given it to
us because He loved us before the world began. And the outcome
of that is to praise Him for His glorious grace. When we see
sin in our life, we praise God for His glorious grace. And yes,
we pray, Lord, lead me not into this temptation, please deliver
me from this. We strive for that, but it has no effect on our standing
before God. None. We are not going to be
judged in the last day by how well we've matured in the faith.
That's an absurd, demonic teaching. We will not be judged in our
flesh as how we've matured, but let me tell you how we will be
judged in our flesh. We'll be regenerated. Well, we
are regenerated. We'll be glorified. So no longer
will this flesh be judged, but the new flesh that could be judged,
perfect as Christ is perfect, we shall be like Him. Not because
we've grown into it, but because with the Word He's recreated
us. And so I will never be tempted anymore. I will never worry anymore. I will never doubt anymore. I
will never weep anymore. I will never be wringing my spiritual
hands wondering how hard life is or how weak my faith may be.
I will not have to worry about the sinfulness of the world and
the persecution of life or the illness of this weird, strange
culture that we live in and all these things. It will never happen
again. We will never doubt. We will
never hurt. We will never sin. And beloved,
there is nothing greater than that day to me. Because the deepness
of our soul, we want to give glory to God in all that we do
and all that we are. And the only way that it's possible
today is that Christ glorifies God in the fullness of His person,
His obedience, His death, and His resurrection. And so now,
we who are in Christ, we are His body. As God sees Christ,
God sees us. No one has the ability to come,
Jesus says, unless the Father draws them. The drawing of God
is not a wooing. The same word there, and I mentioned
this two weeks ago, the same word there for drawing in John
6 is the same word used when someone draws water out of a
well. Water's heavy. The same word used when the disciples
drew the nets that were about to rip. They didn't say, come
on, net. Come on. Come on. Jump in the boat! No,
they pulled it with all their might. God pulls us to Christ
and gives us to Him, and we are alive because of it. where this idea of decisionism,
and free will, and social gospel, and all this other type of not
good news came from, I'll never be able to put my hand on it.
I've got a thousand hours of study in historical theology,
and it just fascinates me. There's something weird about,
I want to know how this started, and I read things that I never
thought I would read. But in the end, it all started in the
garden. It all started in the garden.
where the devil questioned the Word of God for the first couple. And they believed Him. And if
it weren't for the mercy of God, we would be just that blind.
Why tell all this now in John 9? Because if those who don't
understand Christ, it's because they have no ability to see Him.
And that's why this man was born blind, see. to prove this theological
doctrine and to display the teaching of sovereignty and severity.
And I'll share that with you, what that means. Regeneration,
being born again, John 3, is being made alive that gives us
in our mind, soul, consciousness, a new disposition, a new nature,
a righteous, if you will, What? Ability. God grants that through
the new birth. Repentance is a change of mind.
It's the transformation. It is the new birth, regeneration.
And we believe. It's a gift from God. We can see, we believe, He grants
us repentance. He gives us faith. And because we are made alive,
We belong to Him. It's proof that we belong to
Him. Romans 8, 16. The Spirit of God testifies to
our spirit that we are His children. If you want to know how that
plays out, listen to our Wednesday night teaching on the website. But they can't see this reality. So they ask, who sinned? Verse
2. Who sinned, this man or his parents? I want to call this blindness,
spiritual blindness. I also want to call the outcome
of spiritual blindness when we become religious, I want to call
the outcome of spiritual blindness for those who are religious,
judgmentalism. What is judgmentalism? I think
it's one of the many first fruits of depravity. We're always able
to look at other people and go, tsk, tsk, tsk. Little sinner, sinner, chicken
dinner. I mean, they're so bad. And by doing that, in the negation,
when someone does that, always looking like the spiritual police,
they've got their little badge on, little whistle. Tweet foul! What's the foul sign? I don't
even know anymore. And everybody's always on guard to show everybody
else they're evil, they're sin. And it's usually not even sin,
it's just pet peeves. And the violation of the ninth commandment
to bear false witness, to say this person is unregenerate because
they don't like the same kind of peas you like. Judgmentalism is really saying, I display the
glory of God better than you do. That's what it is. It's to say, you know, if you
met the standard, the fullness of God's glory like me, you would
not be where you are. And you know what that is actually
saying? I'm like God. The fall of Lucifer was exactly
that narrative. He felt in his heart, he said
in his heart, I should stand next to God and share in His
glory. Because I'm like God. Look at me. And God threw him
in a third of the heavenly host out of heaven. So to have that type of attitude
like these disciples, their culture dictated to them that when somebody
was on the street, they were accursed. When somebody was blind,
they were accursed. When somebody was ill, did Paul
not tell in his missionary journey, I came to you and preached in
illness? It was because of my illness
that I was able to come and preach? The thorn in my flesh? If Paul's
thorn, some people say it was a wife, some people say it was
a blindness, some people say it was an ailment, either way,
what if it was a sickness? Imagine Paul having been given
all the fullness of the revelation of God and then all of his culture,
people would look at him and what if it, what if, now this
is all just theory, what if his affliction was so visible that
it even caused others to say, this can't be an apostle of God
because he's afflicted. I remember some 14 plus years
ago in a deep depression that culminated in 2007 to a very
bad place for me. I remember being told, I remember
being told for years up to that, that, you know, if you're not
having fun in ministry, that you're not called by God. If this isn't fun for you, fun? Is it supposed to be fun? It's supposed to be joyful. And
it is fun. I mean, this is great to be together
and all, but at noon it's over. Then where's the fun? We've got
to swim to the car and, you know, hope the tornado carries us home
safely. I mean, there's a lot of things we have to worry about
in order to just leave our assembly. And somebody may sneeze on you
before you get out, and then you've got the flu to boot. So you've
drowned, blown, and sick at the same time. It would be a very
difficult day for you. It wouldn't be fun, would it?
It's not fun when we have to deal with sin in our own lives.
It's not fun when people die. It's not fun when people doubt. It's not fun when people are
judged by each other. And so these disciples, just
like the rest of the Jewish culture, thought, well, this man must
be some bad sinner to have been born blind. He did something
really rough. I mean, he must have pulled on
his mom's bladder for a couple of months and God just took him
out. We'll show you. And if it's not
that, it must be something his parents did. And if you read
history and you read the illustrations of how the Jews felt, they felt
that God would curse a fetus or curse a baby in the womb if
the mother worshipped a pagan god while pregnant. So the reason the parents had
to say, he could speak for himself, because for them to say anything
about it, they would have what? That's not even there, it's later. But they would have had to say,
yeah, we sinned. To which there was no forgiveness. You're condemned,
you're done. This man was blind because of
original sin. This man was blind because blindness,
just like cancer, just like arthritis, just like bad weather, and everything
else that is seen as disastrous in this world, is a result of
original sin. It's a result of the fall. And believers, the redeemed,
the elect, those who are born again, and the reprobates are
all experiencing it equally. As a matter of fact, compounding
the reality that we will be persecuted because of Christ and suffer
even more because of Christ, it seems as if unbelievers have
a better life than we have. So I guess the famous author
was right when he wrote, your best life now, to unbelievers. That might be true. Because no
matter how bad this life is, no matter how hard it is, if
we die in our sins and not in Christ, we have lived a very
good life. But Jesus says, it wasn't because
of this man's sin, verse 3, and it wasn't because of the sin
of his parents, he was born blind that the works of God might be
displayed in him. You see that? Now this is a proof
text that people use to say, that's why God wants to heal
every ailment. God doesn't want to heal every ailment, or God
would heal every ailment. I have a friend of mine who,
when my grandmother was passing away, mailed me things, overnighted
and FedExed me things. And I won't go into a lot of
detail there, but some of those things were purported to have the power
to heal her if I played them in her presence. It's superstition. It's witchcraft. But I so almost did it. What if they're right? If you
go down there and stick your finger in a pile of poopy and
smell it and sling it all over the house, I mean, how many people
would do that kind of stuff? I mean, I remember a great Old
people, when I was a young boy, and they always had superstitions,
you know. Somebody's coming, my ears are burning, or talking
about me, or somebody, you know. One particular person would get
up and open the door. Knock on wood. Get a splinter, you put
it in your hair, it won't make an infection. You take it out,
you put it in your hair. What's all that wood in your
hair? I don't want an infection. Now you've got nasty hair. There's a lot of superstition
that can befall us, beloved. Let me tell you something. God's
intention for this man to be born blind was to display his
severity. The fact that physical blindness
is nothing compared to spiritual blindness. but that this man
was born blind just as all of us are born blind. This man could
not see in his physical sight and he could not see in his spiritual
sight. The funny thing is that when God saved, when Jesus saved
Paul on the road to Damascus, what did he do with his eyes?
He took them. He opened his spiritual eyes
and then he blinded his physical eyes for a very long time. I
mean it wasn't just a couple of seconds, it was days. because he could see more blind
in his flesh than he'd ever seen in his entire life. That's why
this man was born blind. No one calls this blindness but
God. It was a natural outcome of a spiritual condition upon
all humanity. He was born blind, another man
was born dead. Another man might be born with
no legs. Another man might be born perfectly healthy, but he's
still blind. He's still blind. The point of this man's blindness
is the glory of God. The glory of God, the works,
the plural, the works of God, the truth of God. See, all things,
even the things that we call bad, are purposed and decreed
by God for His glory. What do we call that? Sovereignty.
Sovereignty. Unbelievers cannot grasp in their
judicial system of fairness how God is sovereign and good in
the working through malady and frustration and evil. But yet the prophets say that
God created the day of evil for His own purpose. Sovereignty. Jesus is saying
these things before the world ever existed. God purposed to
blind this boy by birth, to have him sitting out there wherever
he was, wandering around, rejected by his people who had the oracles
of God, so that he might walk by them, so that they would ask
the question. You notice Jesus didn't even
start talking to this man yet. Who sinned? See, Jesus, we've always wanted
to know this question, the answer to this question. This is the
Q&A with Jesus Christ. Who sinned that this man was
born blind? And He blew their minds. He said, this man was
born blind so that you'd ask this question, so that I'd teach
you the truth about my Father's works and show you the reality
of your own blindness and show you the mercy of God's sovereignty
over it. Sermon's over. That's it. It reminded them that God is
severe in His judgments. The consequence of the sinful
condition of humanity is spiritual blindness. And even when those
spiritually blind become religious, it is only to the point of their
own self-righteousness, and the outcome of that is a judgmental
heart toward everybody else who is born of Christ. And we will still fight that,
beloved. It's not constant in our lives, but we will fight
it. It's one of the first things we'll do in the confines of the
assembly. It's easy. It's easy for us to
think we're a little bit better. We don't think it in our conscious
mind, but we produce that very thing by the way we look at others. Look around the room, look around
the body, look at the 25 people or so who aren't here this morning,
and the first thing sometimes we think is, they're just skipping
church. They could be sick, could be
scared to drive in the rain, could be out of town, could be
called to work, could be depressed, could have had a fight, could
have had a wreck, could be dead. Why is it that our nature automatically
goes to the constant negative? because we need to remember the
gospel. People like to ask questions,
and I take questions for face value, even though sometimes
I know better. That guy's not wanting to know
this. He's trying to set me up. I mean, you know, you ever had
a question like that? It's like when your parents say, when you
were younger, man, what you been doing today? You wonder if they're
really just inquiring as to what you've been doing because they're
interested, or they want to find out if you have done anything
productive. so that they can scold you. Really? You played games for six hours.
Oh, isn't that nice? That'll go well for your future.
You know, stuff like that. But Jesus is showing the severity
of God in judgment. It's not just personal sin, but
it's original sin. But He's also showing the sovereignty
of God in His mercy, that only God can make the blind see. And
people would be amazed if blind people could see in the physical. People were amazed when Jesus
would repair legs. And I mean, I'm not talking about
stretch it that far, you know, like this. Look at there. I mean, you know, there's a lot
of that. I'm talking about literally growing
a limb back. I'm talking about putting the
ear back on the guard when Peter chopped it off. Ears on the ground,
Jesus goes, whoom, healed. He didn't stick it back on there
and stitch it up and say, now go home and take some aspirin and wait
a couple of months and come back to see me. No, he put it back. It was gone. It was done. People are amazed at that. They
go, oh, the glory of God is seen! Wow! But yet they saw it over
and over again, even Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead after four
days. The body had an odor. It's one of my favorite passages
of Scripture. He says, take the stone away.
And everybody's like, oh! You know, he's going to stink.
We're not doing this. Take the stone away. Lazarus, he says to a dead body,
decomposing, come out. And Lazarus came out. Only God can make the blind see
physically, and only God can make the blind see spiritually.
Man is the pot. He is the clay. We are the clay. God does with us as He chooses
and He is right with what He does. We cannot indict God on
the fairness of our own ideals. Romans 9 is a difficult thing
for people. I was asked one time years ago,
have you ever heard a sermon in a Baptist church on Romans
9? And I thought about it and I thought, no, never. I hear a lot of Romans 6. I hear
a lot of Romans 8. Oh, that's the greatest. I hear
a lot of Romans 1 and 3. Every now and then you might
have an Old Testament guy that loves to go in 4 and 5 and point
to Abraham a little bit. Twelve all day long. Nine, not
so much. Because it's there that God says,
I will do with what I want to, with whom I want to, as I want
to, and I'm righteous in it. And the unregenerate says, that's
not fair. The unequipped Christian says sometimes, I don't really
grasp this. But that's why we continue to
learn, so that God will teach us through the hearing of the
Word. the sovereignty of God in grace, to overcome the blindness. He does what He wants to do,
with whom He wants to do it, and He is glorified in His justice
against sin. And there's two ways in which
He's glorified. There's two categories. that
all humanity fit in in God's justice. How is it? God will
condemn us in our own works, or judge us in our own works,
or we who are found in Christ will be judged by Christ's works.
Which one do you see yourself in today? God is glorified in the death
of His Son to pay for the sins of His people, so that He is
just, and God is glorified in the death of the wicked to bring
recompense for their own sins. And God is just. Jesus continues there in verse
4, the plural, We must work the works of Him who sent Me, while
it is day, for night is coming when no one can work. I'll read
verse 5, As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the
world. And there's a lot there. This man was born blind that
God would show His power and mercy and sovereignty and severity,
that God would show the spiritual condition of humanity in the
physical condition of this man, as I've said. So Jesus then says
that God's works would be displayed in this person. It was so that
Jesus would teach His disciples that God must make them able
to see in order for them to be redeemed, in order for them to
be believers, for them to see and understand and comprehend. And then Jesus says, we must
work the works of Him. Now, some people would say, well,
He's talking to His disciples and He's saying we. Now, that's
how they took it. But if we go and stick to the
narrative of John, I think a better we is in play here. And that
is that Jesus says in John 5 that the Father was working, now I
am working. And you've heard me give that
little triplet cadence over and over again. Jesus is doing the
work of God. Jesus is teaching the Word of
God. Jesus is fulfilling the will of God. So all that God
is doing, Jesus is doing. All that Jesus is doing is what
God is doing. And so in all of this, we, God
the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, are going to
continue to do the works of God the Father who sent Him while
it is still day. I love the mysticism that comes
out of such verses as this. It's very easy for people to
get very supernatural in these teachings and go outside of Scripture
to some sort of inference and say, well, I think this is what
it means, and maybe this is what it's going to say, and maybe
this is what Jesus is talking about. There's a light and there's
a dark, and then this is happening. And I'm not going to give you
all the different theories of creative humanity. They should
write poems and stick to theology be done by believers. But Jesus, in John 3, in talking
to Nicodemus, Nicodemus came to Him. Why is the idea of Him
coming at night important? Wouldn't it have been just as
effective if Jesus had said, I mean, if John had written Nicodemus
of the Pharisees? But no, He says, now there was
a man. Now there was a man. What's that
now? There was a man. Well, he just
got through writing. No one had to tell him what was
in man. For Jesus knew, Himself knew
what was in a man. Now there was a man. So see,
John, by the Holy Spirit, built this gospel narrative, not as
a history lesson on Jesus, but as a theological treatise on
the sovereignty of God in the face of Christ. That's what the
gospel of John is. It's what I've been saying for
75 hours plus. And this is how we should read
this text. What theology is Jesus teaching
us when we see Him heal a blind man? It has nothing to do with
the man being given his sight. It has everything to do with
God being glorified as the only possible way that a man can be
born again. And so because Jesus says something
about the night and the darkness and the light, then I automatically,
because I'm reading John's Gospel, think of John 3. Nicodemus came
to Jesus. He was of the Pharisees. He was
the teacher of Israel. He was a very, very devout man,
a very righteous man in a moral sense. And he came to Jesus at
night. I don't think it was anything
except that it was just He was finished with his day, like,
I've got to go see Jesus. I wanted to talk to him, like
we might meet up for dinner or something. I don't think he was
hiding, because he was sent by the Pharisees. We know that you
are from God, see. But it's important in the illustration,
and it's more important in the doctrine, in the theological
teaching, of Jesus that He came at night so that we would see
the contrast of what Jesus says when He gives Nicodemus the very
answer that he's had his entire life from day eight when he was
circumcised to this very moment. When Jesus says, for God loved
the world this way that He gave His only Son, the only one that
He had, that whoever are the believing ones will not perish
but have eternal life, but whoever are not the believing ones are
condemned already. And He says this is the judgment.
See, you came at night, darkness is hard to see, you need light
to see, you come at night, you're already blinded, you're already
at a dead end. That's why people burglarize
houses at night. as a majority. That's why crime is more active
at night. You can hide. You can sneak around.
You don't have to be seen. We can hide our own works. We can dive into corners and
get under tables. In this illustration of Jesus
to Nicodemus, He says this is the judgment. The light has come into the world,
and people loved the darkness rather than the light. Why did
they love the darkness? Just what I said. Because their
works are evil. And if we do evil works in the
light, everybody can see it. So we stay in the darkness so
that our works are not exposed. He's talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus probably very well
thought, because he was utterly confused. He had not been given
sight. Jesus said, you can't see the kingdom unless you're
born from above. You must be born again. And Nicodemus
was utterly confused. And Jesus tells him these things,
and he's thinking in his mind probably, Who's he talking about? Who is he talking about? Now,
I have studied John for so long that it sort of comes second
place for me to understand that in the context, because I've
read it thousands of times. And still am amazed every time
I see it. But for Nicodemus, he was going,
Is he talking about the Samaritans? Is he talking about the Romans?
Is he talking about our constituency, those dirty people that never
get the worship right? I know he's talking about Nicodemus
because he's talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus cannot see because
he's in spiritual darkness, and Jesus is the light, and he can't
see Him. He's looking at Him, but he can't see Him. Why? Because
he has not been born of God. He has not been healed of his
spiritual blindness. And there's nothing Nicodemus
can do to affect God's healing of his soul. But the one who does what is
true, believes on Christ, comes to the light so that it may be
clearly seen that his works, his faith, his hope have been
carried out in God. And some people still argue with
me, you are really, really pushing the envelope there. That's not
what it says. That is what it says. In context of John 1 and
here and everything else, this is the narrative, this is the
argument that John is portraying through the teachings of Jesus
and the discourses of Jesus with these individual persons. But
if that doesn't do it for you, then just go back to where we
just finished. If God were your Father, you would not be trying
to kill me. You are not the children of God.
You are not the children of Abraham. You are the children of your
father, the devil. And you do the lusts of your
father, the devil. You hate me and your word has
no place in you, therefore I know that you are not God's children
because you do not hear my word. In chapter 10, Jesus expressed
that very clearly. The doctrine of this comes to
light in John 10 very clearly. Here, we, God Himself, three
persons, will do the work. He will do the work that the
Father sent Him to do while it is still day. So you were wondering
where I was going to get back to that, right? While it is still
day. The light of Christ, in this
context, is very simple. It's His public ministry. Jesus
is walking with people, He's teaching people, He's talking
to people, He's rebuking the spiritual leaders of His day,
He is correcting doctrine, and more importantly, the Spirit
of God, with the teaching of Christ, is bringing His people
to life. He's taken away their blindness,
and He's giving them life. because He's the light. Just
like He says, I'm the bread, I'm the living water, He'll say,
I'm the gate, I'm the good shepherd. There's a lot of I am statements
here. He is the light. And while it is still day, that
means while Jesus is still living in His earthly ministry, He says
there, we must do the works of Him who sent Me. So what I'm
doing right now by healing this man, or by you asking, this man
was born blind so that you may see the works that the Father
sent me to do. And it's not to give this man
physical sight. You think that's the amazing
thing. It's not the amazing thing. The amazing thing is that it
parallels the reality of your spiritual blindness, and I'm
going to give you spiritual sight. I'm going to give you spiritual
sight. But then he says night is coming
when no one can work. What's that mean? What is the
night? What happened when Jesus died? It went dark. And when Jesus'
body lay in the tomb, when Jesus' body was still and inanimate
and physically dead, it was dark. Christ was not working in His
person. He was not alive in His person,
in His physical person. Of course, He's God, He's eternal.
Even we have consciousness and souls that never die. But Jesus
now was separated from His body. which is the wage of sin, and
he knew no sin. This was darkness. The Son of
God being judged by the Father, this is darkness. The light of
the world being snuffed out, this is darkness. Now here is
something we need to see, beloved. The Pharisees loved this day. The light came into the world,
People love the darkness rather than the light. They rejoiced
in the death of Christ when Abraham rejoiced in the light of Christ. That's the contrast. That's the
teaching. That's the point of it. Jesus
died and night came. And beloved, that is a very dark
night. but it didn't stay night. As long as I'm in the world,
I am the light of the world. Jesus said in John 8, 12, He
says, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk
in darkness, but will have the light of life. Jesus gave physical
sight to this man, but more importantly, He gave light to the eyes of
this man. He gave spiritual life to this man. He gives light,
spiritual sight, to His people. The darkness, what does John
1 say, will not overcome it. I told y'all, remember? Week
1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I kept saying, don't forget the prologue. It's
the outline of the book. Don't forget it. The darkness will not overcome
it. Jesus gives the light of life to His people and they see
Him for who He is. They behold the fullness of the
glory of God. They recognize who they are and
they celebrate His mercy, His glorious grace. Oh, the light
of the glory of God. And next week we'll see what
Jesus actually does in verse 6 and 7. Having said these things,
He spit upon the ground and made mud with His saliva. Then He
anointed the man's eyes with mud and said, Go wash in the
pool of Siloam, which means sin. So He went and He washed and
He came back seeing. Beloved Jesus Christ, is our
only hope for spiritual sight. The work that He does is so beyond
this natural world that only we who have the eyes to see can
comprehend it. And my prayer for you is that
first and foremost that you could see and believe in Christ. and
that every moment of your life and every day that you live,
that you would continually go back to your only hope, who is
the light of the world, who gave you spiritual sight. Don't look
inside of yourself. Do not look at the physical aspects
of your being and wonder how you were going to change something
here in order to affect God's mercy for you there. It doesn't
work that way. Christ is our hope. The Gospel
is good news. And for those who doubt, and
those who cannot see, and for those who have unbelief, we pray
for them, and in due time, God will bring them to life if they
belong to the Son. Let's pray. Lord, You've given mercy. We don't deserve it, but You've
given mercy. Help us to walk. in the celebration
of sight, spiritual sight. And help us not to look with
the eyes of our flesh and try to work out our salvation that
way. Help us to look through the eyes
of faith, which is a gift from You, spiritually, so that we
would trust fully in Christ. Every moment, every day, every
doubt, every moment of despair, Father, help us to pray for each
other in that way, not to be irritated or short-tempered,
but to help through our prayers that You would help us to teach
and encourage one another in faith. And we pray these things
in the name of Christ. 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
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