Take your Bibles now and turn
to John chapter 9. I want to look at the first 12
verses here in John chapter 9, which gives the account of the
healing of this blind man. And as Jesus passed by, he saw
a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked
him, saying, Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was
born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath
this man sin, nor his parents, but that the works of God should
be made manifest to him, for in him. I must work the works
of him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh when
no man can work. As long as I am in the world,
I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat
on the ground, made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the
eyes of the blind man with the clay. And he said unto him, Go
wash in the pool of Siloam, which is by interpretation scent. He went his way therefore, and
washed, and came seeing. The neighbors therefore, and
they which before had seen him, that he was blind, said, Is not
this he that sat and begged? Some said, This is he. Others
said, I dislike him, but he said, I am he. Therefore said they
unto him, How were thine eyes opened? And he answered and said,
A man that is called Jesus made clay. and anointed mine eyes,
and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash. And I went, and washed, and I
received sight." Now, all of the miracles which
Christ performed on this earth are to be viewed, I believe,
in four distinct ways. We look and read about these
miracles and we need to look and consider these four things.
First of all, that they are actual miracles. These things actually
happened. They are not just stories or
parables. These things actually took place. They had a reason for taking
place. And they actually happened. In 1 John 1, verse 1, John said
this, he opened this general epistle that he was going to
send out to these professed believers scattered throughout the land,
and here is what he said, that which was from the beginning,
which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word
of life. For the life was manifested,
and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that
eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto
us. That which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you." And then Peter, he mentions this in his
second epistle. He said, when I came unto you,
he said, we didn't come with cunningly devised fables. These
are not stories that we made up. This is not something we
sat over here and got together with a little band of men and
say, here's what we're going to say this means. Here's what
we're going to say happened. They were not cunningly devised
fables. But he said, we made known unto
you, when we made known unto you the
power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses
of His majesty. That's 2 Peter 1, verse 16. So these things actually happened.
Miracles were actually performed. And then secondly, these miracles
were done to establish His person and office as the Christ. Now
this office means very little in our day, this day when people
just use the word Jesus and have no understanding whatsoever that
there was a promised Messiah that was promised all the way
back in the garden. And this Messiah was described
and foretold in detail all the way through the Old Testament.
He was pictured in figures and types. He was prophesied of. To him give all the prophets
witness. At Pentecost, Peter stood up
and he told the multitude gathered there that Jesus of Nazareth
was a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and
signs which God did by him in your midst. And then the third
thing, we're going to look at these miracles and understand
they actually happened. They happened for a reason. They
happened to verify Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. And then thirdly,
these things are to be seen as acts of generosity, sympathy,
and kindness showed by the Lord to those who were in desperate
need. He didn't pass by and ignore the needs of the people. There
was a multitude gathered out there on the mountainside that
listened to him preach. And later on, He tells that people
that they weren't there to hear, they didn't rejoice in Him for
who He was, they didn't understand His message, but still He took
those fishes and loaves and fed them. They were hungry and He
fed them. And all through His life, I could
read for you pieces over here in the book of Acts, different
situations where the apostles, when they described the Lord,
said, this is He that went about doing good. This is what he did. He went about doing good. He
performed good. In James 5, verse 11, James said
this, The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. Pitiful. He pitied the poor and the homeless. He pitied these people. How tender
and kind he was with the woman with the issue of blood. You
think about that. He was the last one she came
to. She totally ignored him. She
took every other avenue there was until she had exhausted herself
of every means and all her money and then, then, she said, if
I could just but touch him. And tenderly and graciously,
he allowed that touch in his providence and was pitiful. He pitied her. and allowed that virtue to flow
into her vile body by an uninvited touch. And how tender and merciful
he was to the harlot, we studied that here just a little while
back, that was cast at his feet and judged, taken in the very
act, how kind and merciful and pitiful he was to the adulterous
woman of Samaria, that filthy leper kneeling at his feet. So
when we see these things, I see by example I see my Lord is of
tender mercy. He's kind. He's not short. He doesn't ignore things that
go on around Him. But He has pity. He's merciful
toward those situations. And then fourthly, and this is
very important here, this is what this lesson is all about,
all of the healing miracles of Christ are examples and demonstrations
of how God reconciles chosen sinners to Himself. You can just
go through these miracles, and you that have experienced the
grace of God, you'll find yourself in every one of them. You'll
find yourself blind, sick, caught, lame. You can identify with every
miracle that the Lord performed. And if I do not see the saving
grace in the miracle, I've missed the main reason why the miracle
was done. I'll show you that here in just
a minute. Now, let me give you four things to think about as
we look at this miracle of God in the healing of this blind
man. First of all, I want to point out to you the obvious,
that this miracle came to this blind man as an act of sovereign
grace. This blind man was not seeking
the Lord. He was not calling upon the Lord.
I have every reason to believe that he wasn't even thinking
about the Lord. He was out there begging for
a living because that's where God's providence had shut him
up. And if you go throughout the Scriptures, I find that when
God comes to men to do them good, it's always by grace that He
comes. We've been studying back in the
book of Genesis. You know what it said about Noah
in that day? Noah found grace. When the Lord
came to him, He found grace. He found grace because that's
how God comes. Abraham. The Jews loved to brag
on Abraham. The Lord told them that Abraham
was a heathen idolater living over in the land of Mesopotamia
worshipping snakes and animals. That's who your father was. But
I came to him and called him out of his father's house. How
did he come? He come in grace. He wasn't worshipping
God. He was worshipping idols. He
wasn't thinking about God, he was thinking about himself. He
wasn't walking with God, he was walking the ways of his Father.
Exactly what he was doing. And God came to him in sovereign
grace and called him out. And this man became the prime
example of how God saves sinners. Abraham. You'll find him as the
example of faith throughout the New Testament. The blind man wasn't seeking
the Lord, he wasn't calling on Him, and he wasn't thinking about
the Lord, but the Lord was thinking on him. Now here's what believers... I mentioned this about Noah after
God delivered him from the flood. But here's what David said. He
said, I'm poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh on me. The
Lord thinketh on me. Noah stood there, one man in
a new world. Everybody else dead. Everybody
else is laying on the ground, their corpses picked clean by
the ravens. Everybody else is, here they
are, just dead, dry bones all around them. Noah's standing
there alive and his sons and their wives. And that's it. Ain't
anybody else around. Nobody else is around. I guarantee
you, here's what was on his mind, the Lord thought on me. It wasn't
me thinking on him, it was him thinking on me. It wasn't me
coming to him, it was him coming to me. Paul viewed himself, this
proud Pharisee, he viewed himself as the chiefest of sinners. And
he sums up in Ephesians chapter 2 both the work of God for him
and the work of God in him, and he makes these two statements.
By grace ye are saved. By grace are ye saved. I don't care where you want to
look at it, whichever way you want to look at it, it's all
by grace. It's all by grace. Here's how this passage opens,
and Jesus passed by. You see that? That's where it's
at. That's where it's at right there.
He has to come to you. You can't come to Him. He has
to come to you. It has to come to you. The Lord
passed by. The Lord saw the man. The Lord
pitied him in his blindness and graciously gave him his sight.
Grace and truth, it says, came by Jesus Christ. That's how it
comes. That's how it came into the world. That's how it comes
to the individual. He's full of grace and truth.
That's what it says. Full of grace and truth. And
then secondly, I see in this miracle an ignorance of sin brought
into light. The Lord looked on this man and
pitied him. The Lord looked on this man because
he was coming to this man in grace. He came to him in mercy. His thoughts was of mercy. His
thoughts was of restoration and reconciliation, but not his disciples. His disciples looked down at
him, if you want to know the truth, at this beggar and said,
who did sin? They didn't see this man as an
object of grace. They seen this man as an object
of wrath. And why? Why did they see him
different than themselves? Because he was blind. He was
blind. Natural men always look... They
look at themselves as one who's not altogether a sinner. That's
how they view themselves. They always view themselves a
little higher than what they actually are. He's not altogether
a sinner. He always looks at people as
if they were all good, and then something they do in time causes
them to fall from their good standing. That's the view these
disciples were taking of this blind man. Somewhere in his past,
something messed up. Somebody sinned. Either he sinned,
but he was born blind. Now, something happened. Either
he sinned or his parents. Now, the Pharisees, according
to the Writers that I read, several of them say that the Pharisees
believed in this, I don't even know the term that
they used, but they believe in a reincarnation. They believe
that when a man dies, he comes back as another man and so on
and so on. And this is how they kind of
looked at the resurrection that the Scriptures talk about. With this teaching in mind, that
might give a little bit of explanation as to why they asked whether
this man did something or his parents. Did this man do something
in a past life that he's paying for or did his parents do something
before he was born that he was born blind? Men always look at disease, accidents,
death, crippling of the body as being a punishment for sin.
And of course then, perfect health, if you enjoy it, they look at
that as a reward for something they did right. Something goes well in business,
I've heard my boss in days gone by, I've heard him a hundred
times say, well, I must be doing something right. Not necessarily. Sin is a principle of the heart. Did you hear me? Sin is a principle
of the heart. Sin is a nature. You cannot discern
sin because sin is what we are. It's natural to you. That's why
you don't see it. That's why you don't recognize
it. It's seen over and over and over in the Proverbs. He talks
about what seemeth right unto a man, being an abomination before
God. Why is that? Why can't man see
this as an abomination? Why does it seem right to him?
Because he's born that way. It's natural to him. It's natural
to him. He doesn't see anything wrong
in it. In Ephesians 2, Paul defines the spiritual death from which
we must be raised. He said, you hath he quickened
who were dead. This is the subject of Ephesians
chapter 2. This resurrection from the dead. This spiritual death. Now listen
to what he says. He says two or three things here.
He says, first of all, that this death is seen and manifested
in our daily walk. Everything we do. our common
behavior, everything we do in this life, it shows and testifies
to this death. Everything we do. Secondly, he
said this death is manifested by the deceitful influence of
the prince of darkness. This walk that we walk is influenced
by Satan himself. He said we walk according to
the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh
in the children of disobedience. This is that nature of sin. Thirdly,
he says this. He says this death is universal. Nobody escapes it. Everybody
has it. I don't care if you're blind
or your vision is 20-20, it doesn't make any difference. He said
among whom we all had our behavior in times past, in the lust of
our flesh, fulfilling the desires of our flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." And
this nature is what constitutes children of wrath. It's our nature. It's not some disease, it's not
some people being crippled, having leprosy and all these different
things. Condemnation is demonstrated in our love for everything but
the truth. Have you ever noticed that? Man will love anything except
the truth. Anything. It doesn't matter what
it is. He'll love it. He'll love it. In John 3, verses
19-21, the Lord tells us that everyone that doeth evil hateth
the light. Why won't he like it? Because
it exposes what he is. He doesn't come to the light
lest his deeds be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh
to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they
are wrought in God. In this very coming to the light
is the work of God manifested. Now here in John 9, verse 3,
when the Lord said, Neither hath this man sin, nor his parents,
You have to understand that statement not in the light that his parents
were not sinners, not in the light that he wasn't a sinner,
but in the light of the question, who did sin that he was born
blind? And the Lord said, neither one
of them. Neither one of them. Both the blind man, his parents,
and the disciples who asked the question were all sinners before
God. There was only one there without
sin, and that was Christ. Sin is a nature, and as such,
it's seen and manifested in everything we do, everything we say, and
everything we think. And here it is manifested to
us right here in the Scriptures in the seeing of this blind man.
Alright, here's the third thing. There is a deep but encouraging
truth declared here by Christ. Verse 3, it says, Neither hath this man sin, nor
his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest
in him." I'll give you a little English lesson. I was in the
Navy, and that word manifest is a mariner's term. That's a
seagoing term. Before that ship sets out to
sea, it has a manifest. And that manifest declares everything
that's on the ship. Everything. All the food, all
the personnel, treasure, money, whatever is on that ship is on
this manifest. Now the Lord said, I came not
to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. And this
is the will of Him that sent Me, that of all which He hath
given Me, I shall lose nothing, but raise it up at the last day.
So what he's talking about here, when he's talking about this
being manifest, is he's talking about this manifest that was
given to him before the foundation of the world, and now he's coming
to declare what's on the list. He's coming to claim what was
given him before the world was. Whenever he uses this term manifest,
you mark it down. That's exactly what he's talking
about. We've got people here in this
church that has all kinds of trouble. Heart trouble, cancer,
brain tumors, nervous conditions. We've got a lady that's been
coming the last couple Sundays with no legs. Whatever ails you
by the sovereign purpose of God, if you're His, has been given
to you to manifest the works of God. Now that's why you have
it. That's why you have it. Where would this blind man be
if he were in perfect health? He wouldn't be where Christ was.
Christ gave him that blindness to give him a sense of humility,
number one, but in his providence to set him in a place and give
him humility enough to hear him and listen to him and be where
he was supposed to be. He was what He was, He was where
He was, and how He was, that the works of God should be manifest
in Him. And this application is both
spiritual and physical. In 1 Corinthians 1.26, Paul exhorts
the church to look at their calling. He said, examine yourselves,
you that believe Christ, you in whom faith has been established.
He said, you do this. He said, you examine yourself.
You examine your calling. Not many mighty out there, is
there? There ain't very many Nebuchadnezzars
in the Scripture. Not many mighty. Not many noble.
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound
the wise, and chosen the weak things of the world to confound
the things which are mighty, and base things of the world,
and things which are despised hath God chosen. Yea, and things
which are not to bring to naught things that are, that no flesh
should glory in his presence." When this thing is said and done
and everything is over with, he is going to get all the glory.
All of the glory. There's nothing in the life of
God's elect that has not been designed, overruled, sovereignly
arranged for His good and God's glory. That's what it says in
Romans 8.28. Everything. Everything. Barabbas. You look at the life of Barabbas.
He was a thief. He was guilty of sedition. He
was guilty of murder. Look at the life of Barabbas.
And here he is sitting down in this cell And all of a sudden,
in joyous freedom, turn loose, free to go, all charges
absolved, because another was chosen to die in his stead, Barabbas. Is that an accident? Was that
just an accident? Did something happen? He just
happened to be there and they just happened to do this? And
this whole custom just happened to be there in the Jews and this
agreement with the Romans to do that? Was that all just an
accident? That thief on the cross, guilty
of the same thing Barabbas was. Guilty of the same thing those
on either side of him or the one beside of him was. He was
guilty. And here he is in the last moments
of his life, but enabled by the things that he had heard and
enabled by watching what was taking place on that cross and
listening to the conversation between the soldiers and Christ
hanging on that cross, he was able to see the King of glory
entering into his inheritance. He saw it. And he said, Lord,
remember me when you come into your kingdom. He saw the king
going into his kingdom. The Philippian jailer. Just the
right place, just the right time. Brethren, there are no accidents
in the lives of God's elect. Everything that comes their way
has been sent by the Lord and governed by the hand of God and
the will of God. And it's used to manifest the
work of God in them. Fourthly, the Lord demonstrates
God's work in him. That's where this word manifest
comes into play. This miracle that Christ was
about to perform and the blindness of this man in whom it would
be seen were all according to the manifest given to Christ
before the world began. He's going to raise it up. He's
going to raise it up. All that the Father hath given
me shall come to me, and him that cometh unto me, he said,
I will no wise cast out. It's all going to come to pass
because it's all on the manifest. It's all going to... Read Ephesians
chapter 1 where He said, "...having made known unto us the mystery
of His will, that in the dispensation of the fullness of time He might
gather together all things that's on the manifest." Everything
that's in Christ is going to be gathered into one place. Things
in heaven, things on the earth, things under there, it's all
going to be gathered to Him. How come? Because they're in
the manifest. And this goodness of God that
he does in this blind man, this pity that he shows him, this
love that he has for him, all of these things, they're all
going to be manifest in him. The condition of every chosen
sinner. You look at this thing and you
see the works of God manifest in him. Every chosen sinner has
a condition of blindness. He sees everything in time. He
sees nothing in the light of eternity. He sees today, not
immortality. He sees the physical, not the
spiritual. In everything he sees, he sees
the physical. He never sees the spiritual.
He sees the earthly, never the heavenly. He is altogether blind
to the person and power of God. Peter so eloquently put it this
way, they being willingly ignorant of these things. That's how he
said it. That's what sin is all about. It's a willing ignorance. It's a willing blindness. It's
a preference of darkness over light. It's ignorant. Ignorant, he said. Ignorant of
these things. Ignorant of a sovereignty that
stays the seas and preserves the land out of the water. They're
ignorant about this, he said. They're ignorant that God reversed
it when He saw fit. and then brought it back the
way it was. They're ignorant about that. They're ignorant
of a sovereignty that commands and creates. That in the beginning
God is the one who stayed the waters and rose the land up out
of the waters. They're ignorant of that. They're ignorant of a sovereignty
that's able to do that. The ignorant of a sovereignty
that controls all things, orders all things, keeps everything
that is from falling apart. Ignorant of a sovereignty that
designs and brings to pass, that does what it will in heaven or
among the inhabitants of the earth. Ignorant of such sovereignty
that cannot ever be questioned. Isn't that what Paul said about
it in Romans 9? Who art thou that replies against
God? He's the Creator. He's the potter.
He takes the clay and spins the vessel He desires to make. Is
the vessel going to jump off of the wheel and say, why hast
thou made me thus? You're just clay in the potter's
hands. That's what spiritual blindness
is. It's ignorant of that sovereignty. It's ignorant of who God is.
Spiritual blindness goes about every day blissfully unaware
that in every sparrow that falls to the ground, every head that
falls from his elect head is counted and numbered, and the
sparrow cannot fall without the hand of the Father. That's absolute,
total sovereignty. Oh, you can't violate man's will.
Come on. You mean he can control the universe,
but he has no power over your will? And before I run out of time,
I just want to briefly call your attention to this fact. Since he's performing this miracle
to manifest himself as the light of the world, he chooses to do
this miracle by most unusual means. He's spit on the ground. He made a clay, he anointed his
eyes, and then he sent him to a pool to wash. Now, with blind
Bartimaeus, he just gave him the sight. He can do all that.
Now, Brother Mahan said this, and I wrote it down. Most of
this is a quote from him. He said, many writers spend a
great deal of time discussing the spittle and the dust and
the clay and the palm. And they go into great detail
about all these things. And most of what they say may
be so. But this one thing is clear to
me. He used means which had no virtue
in themselves. None whatsoever. Think about
it. Spit and dust and clay and a
pond. No virtue in them whatsoever. and means which were distasteful
and foolish in the minds of a natural man. So it is by the foolishness of
preaching that spiritually blind sinners receive their sight.
The preacher in his words have no power to save until they are
employed by the hands of the Lord of glory. What made that
clay and that dust and that pool sufficient and effectual? Huh? There was no virtue in them.
Where's the virtue? In the hands of him that used
it. Well, I just don't think I have
to listen to a man. You better if he's in the hands
of the Lord. You better hear him. Because
then his words become effectual and they become irresistible
in the power of God. And dead sinners are given life.
May the Lord bless the study of his word this morning.