Well, we come to John chapter
9 this morning. John chapter 9, a whole chapter
of 41 verses devoted to one incident, the incident of the Lord Jesus
Christ restoring sight to the man who not only was blind, but
was born blind. He'd never seen anything. And
if you want a text for this message this morning, it's in verse 39
at the end. And Jesus said, for judgment
I am come into this world, that they which see not might see,
and they which see might be made blind. Gosh, what a stark saying. That's not what the Jesus of
religion says, is it? For judgment I am come into this
world, that they which see not might see, and they which see
might be made blind. Gosh, there's a stark contrast. There is a great division among
men, people all around us. When I say men, I mean men and
women, I mean people, boys and girls, I mean human beings. A
great division among mankind. And Christ says here in that
verse that He came into the world, He who is God, He who is God
become man, God incarnate, came to make a difference. That's
what He means by judgment. He came to make a difference
between people. He came, on the one hand, to
confirm those who were not His sheep from everlasting in their
self-righteous blindness. and by contrast, to shine divine
light of redeeming grace into the souls of His elect multitude,
as the Scripture calls them. You see, the majority of people
today, as in all ages, the people that live all around us, are
content to make the best of life without any knowledge of God.
They're content to do their work, to run their business, to bring
up their families, to interact with others, to grow old, to
get ill, to die, because that's just the lot of life. The reality,
and I say this confidently, the reality of God's kingdom, the
bliss of eternal glory, The blessedness of holiness. Being holy. We don't
know what it is as people in this life, in this flesh, to
be holy. But in Christ, if you believe
in Him, you are made the righteousness of God. In Him you have the holiness
that you must have if you would see God. They're brought to know
the blessedness of holiness. in communion with their Creator,
but to those outside of it, to the majority, all of that remains
hidden from them, in their unbelief. You know what unbelief is? I've
told you many, many times. Not believe God is basically
to call God, the God who is sovereign, the God who created, the God
who upholds all things now, who gives you your next breath. You
are calling God a liar if you do not believe him. So it was
with the Jews in John chapter 8 that we saw last time. Many,
many Jews, even verse 30 of chapter 8, if you look there, verse 30,
as he spake these words, many believed on him. Many said they
believed on him. But in the course of the conversation,
in the remainder of chapter 8, they had their own self-righteousness
revealed, and that they were, as he said to them in verse 47
of chapter 8, He that is of God heareth God's words. Ye, therefore,
you who have said you believe me, you, therefore, hear them
not. Why not? Because you are not
of God. You are not of God. Why were
they like that? Why were they like that? Why
were they as the majority are today of people all around us?
Maybe one of two of you that are listening to me now. The
answer is because of the fall in Adam. Because of the fall
in the Garden of Eden. Beginning of Genesis, go to Genesis
chapter 3, read it, you read about God creating all things,
then in Genesis chapter 3 we read about Satan's delusion of
the woman, deceit of the woman, and Adam, not deceived, doing
that same thing, falling into sin and disobedience against
God for love of the woman. That's what we see there, the
fall in Adam, and that has had its impact. on all of the progeny
of Adam, everyone coming from him, that's all of us, you, me,
everybody. Because of that fall, we are what we are in this flesh.
By nature, we're sinners. We're alienated from God. We're
alienated from all that is good. We're wretched. We're blind,
spiritually. We have no spiritual sight of
the things of God. That is our condition. That is
the condition that the fall in the Garden of Eden has left us
in. You know, if you go out into
our garden now, you'll find a corner and you'll find a big flat stone
and you lift it up and it's cold and it's wet and it's dark and
it's horrible and you will find all sorts of creepy crawly things
under there that love to live in the dark and the cold and
the damp. And do you know something? Spiritually,
that's a good picture of the majority. In relation to the
light and the warmth of the day that is God and his kingdom,
the truth of God, the holiness of God, the beneficence of God,
the goodness of God, and yet the majority of people, like
creepy crawlies, prefer to live under a dark, wet stone without
that light shining on them, without that sunshine and warmth. That's
the natural man. All of us, as we are in our natural
state, as Paul said, that is in me, in my being, in my flesh,
there dwells no good thing. We prefer by nature spiritual
darkness. We prefer not to know about the
things of God. Jesus said to Nicodemus, In John
chapter 3, in verse 19, he said men prefer darkness rather than
light. Spiritually, men and women prefer
darkness rather than light. And he says why? Why? Because
their deeds are evil. Their deeds are contrary to the
goodness of God. All deluded by nature, by Satan. All deluded and alienated from
God by sin. All under just condemnation. Listen, there's an appointment.
I've got an appointment with the doctor tomorrow morning.
Isn't electronics good? Because I've just been pinged
on my phone to remind me that I have to go. But do you know
we've all got an appointment. Hebrews 9 verse 27 says, it is
appointed unto man, that's you and me, all of us, to die once
and then? The judgment. That's what God's
Word says, the judgment. We all ought to be asking the
question that Job asked. You know the question of Job
in Job chapter 9 verse 2? How should a man who is a sinner,
how should a man be just with God? If I have an appointment
with God, the judgment, if I have an appointment after death in
the judgment, I ought to be asking, how should a man be just with
God? Because if God finds me guilty,
he must condemn me to hell. And the answer is in the whole
of Scripture. That question is answered throughout
Scripture. That answer is in Christ and
Him alone. It's not in the things you do.
It isn't in the religion you follow. It isn't in the places
that you go on pilgrimage to. It's got nothing whatsoever to
do with any of those outward things. It is Christ and Him
alone. It is Christ who is God who became
man. became man in time when the fullness
of the time was come God sent forth his son made of a woman
made under the law to redeem those who are under the law that
we those who he redeemed might receive the adoption of sons
sons of God children of God there is none other name given among
men whereby we must be saved his is the only name because
it's he who knew no sin second corinthians 5 21 look it up commit it to your heart, commit
it to your memory. He made Him who knew no sin to
be sin for us. to take our sin, the sin of his
people, that he might pay its penalty and satisfy the justice
of God. Why? That we might be made the
righteousness of God in him. Not make ourselves, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him. He who is God came
from heaven as a man to satisfy divine justice for a spiritually
blind multitude so that they might see. so that they might
see what? What is it that they might see?
He came to those who are spiritually blind, like we all are by nature,
to redeem us from the curse of the law so that we might see. See what? Answer, the truth of
God. the reality of God, of who God
is, the truth of saving grace from the curse of sin, the truth
of saving grace, the truth of the sin penalty of a multitude
paid in the blood of God who became man, of the qualification
of those people for heaven. He qualifies his people, his
multitude, for the kingdom of God, citizens of the kingdom
of God. And all of that is illustrated here, in John's Gospel, chapter
9. Here, we find just one man, one
of that innumerable multitude, one being called out of his darkness
in a very graphic way, because he was physically blind, and
he ends up seeing. He sees the light, the light
of day. But it's an illustration of spiritual
things. We're all in our natural state
in darkness. The people that walked in darkness,
says Isaiah chapter 9, first verse of it. The people that
walked, it might be the second verse. The people that walked
in darkness have seen a great light. And what is that light?
It's the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. And here he is. He's called out
of darkness in a very graphic way. And then in verse 38, we
see him believing. He said, Lord, I believe. He
said this to Jesus, the man, the Christ of God. Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. You know,
you can tell that's true heart faith. It's one thing to have
mental assent to the truth of these things. It's one thing
to say, yes, this all sounds very right and proper to me in
my mind, and not have heart faith. But this man had heart faith
because he worshipped him. You know, worship is not just
what we do when we gather together for a service. It's not what
you do in a particular place at all. It's a state of heart.
Worshipping God in Christ is a state of heart. This man believed
and he worshipped. So let's see him, the beggar,
as Christ found him. In verse one of chapter nine,
as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
This is straight after the encounter of chapter eight in the temple.
And you know, they'd brought that woman caught in adultery
and Jesus said, he that is without sin among you, let him cast the
first stone. And they all disappeared and
left him and the woman. And then there was all sorts
of discussions following that. Here he found when he came out
of the temple, you see they took up stones to cast at him in the
last verse of chapter 8. They took up stones to stone
him, to kill him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple
going through the midst of them and so passed by. And so here
he is out of the temple and here he encounters this man. an object
of God's electing grace. In other words, what I mean is
of the sovereign choice of God before the beginning of time,
which is what his word tells us. Here he finds him in his
natural state, and there's all sorts of aspects of how he found
him that are illustrative of the state of all of us as we
are by nature. He was outside the temple. That
speaks of him being in his natural state as all of us, alienated
from God. In the temple, in the Old Testament
temple in Jerusalem, there was the Holy of Holies in the center
of it. And it was... barred to ordinary
people to go in there. Only the high priest could go
in, and only that once a year, with the blood of an acceptable
sacrifice on the Day of Atonement. There was this thick, thick veil,
immensely thick, heavy veil, that kept anybody other than
the high priest on that one day of the year out of that inner
holy of holies. We're all in that state, separated
from the holiness of God in our natural state. We're all in our
natural state in relation to God, enemies from God, because
Isaiah 59 verse 2, God says to all of us, your iniquities, your
sins have separated between you and your God. Your sins have
hid his face from you and he will not hear. He will not hear. You cannot come to God with sin. You cannot. He is of purer eyes,
we read, than to behold iniquity. He cannot look upon sin. We are
by nature in the flesh enmity with God. He was this man outside
the temple. And in that respect, we are all
outside the presence, the body of God, the body of Christ. And
secondly, he was blind to the presence of God. He was God in
flesh. He was Christ. made the case
in chapters 7 and 8 again and again to the Jews that he was
God in flesh. He'd said it so clearly, you've
got to put your hands over your eyes and your fingers in your
ears not to see it. He was blind to the presence
of God in Christ, and he was completely unaware of the Lord
Jesus Christ when he approached. Paul told the Athenians in Acts
17 that God is not far from each one of us, but in our sin we
are separated from him. We're in willful disbelief. Don't
be in any doubt, you can't say God made you disbelieve, you
willfully disbelieve him. We are incapable of seeing the
things of God. Nicodemus, a leader of the Pharisees,
came to Jesus in John chapter 3, and he said, we know a few
things about you and the kingdom of God. We know that you're a
prophet sent from God, because nobody can do what you do unless
God sent him. And Jesus said to him, except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus, don't come
talking to me about the kingdom of God. If you're not born again,
you cannot see the kingdom of God. Never mind talk about it
and tell me about it. No, that's what we're like by
nature. We're blind to the things of God. We're blind from birth. This man was blind from his birth. Is that not what the scripture
says of all of us? Psalm 58 verse 3, the wicked. What is it to
be wicked? According to the book of God,
it's to disbelieve God. It's to call God a liar. Fundamentally,
that's it. Everything else flows from it.
It's to disbelieve God. The wicked? Those who disbelieve
God are estranged from the womb, as soon as they're born. They
go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. They go
astray, speaking lies. As David said, I was conceived
in sin. It doesn't mean his mother was
an immoral woman, as society counts immorality. What he meant
was, he was a descendant of Adam. Adam's sinful rebellion against
God, and he had inherited that sinful rebellion against God.
We're all blind from birth, and utterly beyond the aid of any
man, helpless and hopeless. All he could do was beg until
God intervenes. In verse 8, he was clearly a
beggar. It's not this he that sat and
begged. He was a beggar. He was entirely
dependent on the charity of others, on the mercy of others to give
him of their own possessions that he might live. And we are
without the currency that God requires, until in grace he gives
us some of that currency, which is righteousness. The righteousness
of God is what we must have. He didn't appeal to Christ. He
was unaware. He was blind. He was born blind.
He had no sense of Christ being there. He didn't appeal to Christ.
He didn't beg for mercy. Others did in other accounts
of different encounters with people who were blind and begging.
But this man didn't. He was unaware of the infinite
divine resources that are in Christ and in Him alone. And so are we all in our worldly
contentedness, like those creatures under that cold, wet stone. That's
what we're like. He was unpitted by his fellow
men, no sympathy from them. Even the disciples, verse two,
the disciples asked Jesus, Master, who did sin? What a terrible
state this man's in. Look at it, he was born blind.
You know, I think I've said before, and I hope I'm not going beyond
scripture in saying this, I don't think so, but I think his blindness
was not just like, we know it wasn't an accident, he was blind
from his birth. And it looks as if he had sockets there, but
no eyes, nothing. It must have been an absolutely
pitiful sight. And they say, well, the condition
he's in, somebody must have sinned, somebody must have offended God.
Was it his parents who offended God? Was it he himself who offended
God, so that he was born blind? He was unpitted by his fellow
men and by the disciples. His disciples, just steered clear
of showing mercy to this man because they were discussing
what it was that led to his pitiful condition. That's all they could
do. How heartless of fellow men all
around. You see, the Lord Jesus Christ
came into this world to redeem. God became man to redeem, to
pay the liberty price of a multitude of sinners. sinners because of
Adam's fall, but sinners who this multitude called the elect
of God were loved with everlasting love. Jeremiah says this. He
has loved his people with an everlasting love. Before time
began, before the beginning of time, he determined this salvation
for his people, for this multitude which no man can number, the
elect of God, saved by sovereign grace alone, destined for the
citizenship of God's kingdom for eternity. That's what they're
destined for. Unaware of their status in relation
to God. Unable to think for themselves
beyond going with the flow of humanity. And the flow of humanity
is on the broad way that the Bible tells us leads to eternal
destruction in hell because of sin. Until, until, all of them,
all of them, the ones he's chosen in Christ and all the rest, until
God's grace works for them and in them. Here we have a chance
encounter. Jesus comes out of the temple,
passing on his way, and he saw a man which was blind from his
birth. A chance encounter. A chance encounter? Is anything
ever chance in the workings of God? Romans 8.28 tells us that
God causes all things to work together for good. To those who
love God, who are called according to His purpose. Nothing happens
by chance. All things are according to God's
workings of grace for His people. Jesus didn't just happen to pass
by. You know, when he met the Samaritan
woman in John chapter 4 at the well on the way from Judea to
Galilee, and he met the woman, was that a chance encounter?
No, of course not. He must needs go by Samaria. He had to go there because there
was a lost sheep of the house of Israel there. He had to go
and save her and a multitude of others in that area. he would
bring this lost soul. He would bring this one, this
blind man, this man born blind, lived as a beggar for many, many
years. In Romans 8, 21, we read what
he does for such. He brings them from the bondage
of corruption, of sin. into the glorious liberty of
the children of God. Do you see the shining, gleaming,
glittering difference? The bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the children of God. Look at Christ's dealings
with this beggar as he came out of the temple, as he came out
of the crown that was seeking to stone him to death. And in
verse 1, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. Here we
have God in flesh, the God of the universe, the one by whom
Hebrews 1 tells us that God upholds all things by the word of this
one's power. He speaks, as God said in the
beginning, let there be light and there was light. So he speaks,
he upholds all things. The laws of nature are all held
together by this one. And this one, just passing by
in the purposes of God, looked on this blind beggar with tender
pity. He told his disciples, no, it
was not his parents' sin, nor the man's sin, that caused him
to be in this state. Verse 3, Jesus answered, neither
hath this man sin, nor his parents. Well, of course, they were all
sinners, but what he means is, there was no specific sin that
they did, as opposed to the sins that all people commit, that
put this man in this state. This man is in this state, in
this fallen world, in this world of sin and evil. He's in this
state because he's going to demonstrate God's saving grace, that the
works of God should be made manifest in him. Then thirdly, verse four,
I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day.
The night cometh when no man can work. He owned, Jesus owned,
the mission for which he was sent. This is my mission, this
is the purpose for which God the Father has sent me, to save
his people, and here is an example of it. And then fourthly, in
verse 5, as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the
world. What he's saying there is, it's him and him alone. He's saying exactly what he said
when he said in John 14 verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No man comes to the Father but
by me. There is no other way. Don't
say I've got my faith, I've got my religion. If your faith, if
your religion, is not Jesus Christ, the Christ of the Bible, not
the name that so many called Christians abuse, if he's not
this Christ, you are lost and without hope. His mission is
to save His people from their sins, and He is the only one
that can do that. As Peter said in Acts chapter
4, I think it is, isn't it? There is none other name under
heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. He alone is
able to communicate God's grace to lost sinners. If you would
know the blessedness of God's kingdom, of communion with the
Holy God when you die, of that day of judgment which is such
a fear and dread, or it should be, it should be, to everybody,
but for the people of God, here are the words that are waiting
for you. Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Only he is able
to communicate that grace of God to lost sinners. And in verse
6, he graphically emphasized the beggar's blindness. You know,
look what he did in verse 6. When he had thus spoken, He spat
on the ground. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, that offends
our sensitivities, doesn't it? He spat on the ground and made
clay with the dust of the ground of the spittle and pasted it,
anointed, pasted it on the eye sockets of the blind man with
the clay. He put it on there, he smeared
it on there. He graphically emphasized the beggar's blindness. We're
all blind spiritually. This was clay made with the dust
of the ground. Do you remember what else was
made with the dust of the ground in the beginning? No, look at
Genesis chapters 1 and 2, look there. God formed man, Adam,
from the dust of the ground. The elements and the compounds
that make up our bodies are the common things of the earth, the
dust of the ground. Dust you are, it says in the
funeral service, dust you are and to dust you shall return
when our bodies decay, when the life leaves them. That's what
we are. And the Lord Jesus took some
clay and mixed it with his spittle and smeared it, pasted it, plastered
it on the eyes, the blind eyes of this man, or the bare sockets
if that was the case. Is this an act of divine creation? That working eyeballs? You know,
people are so confident in the theory of evolution and yet not
one of them, not one of them, can give you, they can spin all
sorts of stories, but not one of them can give you a convincing
account of how by Darwin's ideas of survival of the fittest and gradual
improvement that the human eye got to the state it is now. And
you know, all of us, I think, as you get older, you discover
what a perfect thing the human eye is, and how it requires such
complexity, all working together in unison, to work as it should.
And something starts to go wrong, and we all need these things,
don't we? We all need glasses. And then, mine went cloudy and
so I've now got plastic lenses in there and all sorts of things
to keep me seeing clearly and you seeing clearly, you know.
It's a wonderful thing. The human eye is absolutely phenomenal
in its complexity and here with the dust of the ground. Go and
wash in the pool of Siloam. Go and wash. He plastered it
on his eye, go and wash. What? What are you talking about?
Go and wash. Do you remember Naaman? in one king's, or was
it two kings? Elisha, two kings, five, wasn't
it? Elisha, Naaman, you know, this little Syrian servant girl,
and her master, Naaman, who was high-ranking official in the
army, in the civil service of Syria, and he's a leper. And
she says, you know, she'd been captured, and she's in the house
of Naaman, and she says, oh, that he would go and see the
prophet that is in Israel, so off he comes. And Elisha doesn't
even come out to see him, he just says, go and wash yourself
seven times in the river Jordan. What? Why do I need to do that?
Aren't there good rivers in Syria? I can go and wash in them. No,
go and wash in Jordan. And his servants say, would it
do you any harm just to do that? And off he goes and washes, and
he comes back clean. The leprosy has gone. And this
man obeyed, and he went, and he received his sight. What an
astounding miracle. Let's not underplay this. This
is an astounding miracle. But the physical miracle of the
man born blind, possibly without any eyeballs at all, receiving
sight, he came seeing. He came seeing clearly. It's
just illustrative of the spiritual reality that had occurred. They
were staggered. Can anybody do things like this
that is not of God? All knew this man was dramatically
changed. They knew he was the same man
as the one blind from birth. They said, he looks like him,
doesn't he? Doesn't he look like him? Some said, he looks like
him. Others said, I'm not too sure.
But he said, I am he. And then they said to him, how?
How did you get your sight back? You see, they weren't interested
in who caused your sight to come back, only how it happened. He was a new man by this stage. He knew he'd met the Lord Jesus
Christ in saving grace. And he told them who had done
it, a man called Jesus. The Jewish leaders, as usual,
were furious in their legalistic religion at the Sabbath breaking. Look at verse 16. Therefore said
some of the Pharisees, this man who has just given sight to a
man born blind, something that had never happened before, as
the man himself said later on, this man, Jesus, is not of God,
because he keepeth not the Sabbath day. He'd done some work, he'd
made some clay, he'd put it on the eyes of the man. How can
this man be of God? Because he's broken the Sabbath.
What hard-heartedness, what cruelty of the natural human heart. They
were blinded to the truth of what had happened in the hardness
of their hearts. But you see, not all Look, others
said, verse 16, how can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?
And there was a division among them. But let's just look quickly
at the conclusion of the whole matter. Here we have a sinner
who is saved. Here we have one of the elect
of God, that multitude that no man can number. One from before
the beginning of time, chosen in Christ. Here we have this
one who meets the Lord Jesus Christ and is brought to the
knowledge of his salvation in Christ. He is cast out of any
previous worldly confidence. What was his previous worldly
confidence? It was the people that gave to him as he sat and
begged. And he was found by Jesus, a man whom they were trying to
kill. What is it to believe on the Son of God? Look at verse
35. Jesus heard, you see, I'll cut the long story short because
in all the interaction with the Pharisees, the leaders of the
synagogue, the leaders there in Jerusalem, they had cast him
out of the synagogue because he said, this is a remarkable
man that has done wonderful things for me and given me my sight.
He says, you know, this is an amazing thing, there's such a
stark miracle that you've never seen before, clearly has happened
before your eyes, and yet you still do not believe. And they
said, who are you trying to tell us these things? And they were
absolutely furious with him, and they cast him out of the
synagogue. removed his membership, if you
like, of the church there, of the synagogue. They cast him
out of society. Everybody would turn the other
way. If he thought he'd had a hard time before begging, nobody would
give him work or do anything now. They cast him out. And Jesus
found him, verse 35, Jesus found him, and he said to him, do you
believe on the Son of God? And he answered and said, Who
is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him,
Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee.
What is it to believe on the Son of God? It is to trust The
redemption from sin's curse accomplished by the dying and bloodshed of
the Christ of God. The Christ of God is the seed
promised to the woman in Genesis 3, 15. At the fall, the seed
of the woman would come to deal with the fall, to deal with Satan's
deception, to destroy Satan, to overthrow Satan. that in the
dying and the bloodshed of that Christ, the seed, the Messiah,
the Messiah of God, the Christ of God, this is God Himself become
flesh to do what God in His spiritual nature, His unknowable, unseeable
spiritual nature cannot do for fallen man. So He had to become
man, God Himself paying the sin debt for His elect multitude
with His own blood. Did I say God did this with his
own blood? Yes, I did. How do I know that?
Acts chapter 20 verse 28. Paul tells the elders of Ephesus,
he tells them to take care of the church of God, the body of
Christ, which he has purchased with his blood. God's own blood. How did God purchase his church
with his own blood? In the body of the Lord Jesus
Christ. In the body of man. You are not
redeemed with corruptible things, says Peter, such as silver and
gold. That won't buy your salvation.
But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot. And hearing that, and seeing
it, the Holy Spirit made this man willing to believe it. He made him willing. Psalm 110
verse 3, He makes His people willing in the day of His power.
You who by nature are not willing to believe God, He makes willing
to believe Him. He believed, verse 38, he said,
yes Lord, I believe, and he worshipped him. He worshipped him. He gladly
embraced God who had paid his sin debt. And his heart was lifted
up to heaven in thankful praise. We're not told what happened
to him after this. But we know that God kept him,
and we know that God took him to his eternal kingdom, where
he now beholds the glory of his God and Saviour. We know that.
God cannot lie. He will not lose any. No one
can pluck his people out of the Father's hand. Have you, in the
blindness of your natural state, met the Son of God? You know,
here is what we might think of as a chance encounter. Have you,
in the blindness of your natural state, met the Son of God? Have
you heard the message of redemption that He has accomplished for
the multitude that God the Father gave to God the Son before the
beginning of time? And have you been persuaded by
God's Spirit that you are among that great multitude? And therefore,
because of what Christ has done, you are qualified for citizenship
of God's glorious kingdom of peace and righteousness. And
in this evil, fallen world where things seem to grow worse and
worse as every day passes, you have hope of eternal life. Well,
if you have, you are blessed of God indeed. Amen.