Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text today is found in John 3:16 through 9:41. If you want to follow along in your orders of worship, there should be both an outline as well as the actual text. The text has been laid out in the structure that from my perspective at least seems to indicate the way it was written. So please stand and we’ll read all of John chapter nine.

Now as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. The night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

When he had said these things, he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva. And he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And he said to him, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is translated Sent.” So he went and washed and came back seeing. Therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was blind said, “Is not this he that sat and begged?” Some said, “This is he?” Others said, “He is like him.” He said, “I am he.”

Therefore they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?” He answered and said, “A man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and I received sight. Then they said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

They brought him who formerly was blind to the Pharisees. Now it was a Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also asked him again how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes and I washed and I see.” Therefore some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath. Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” And there was a division among them.

They said to the blind man again, “What do you say about him because he opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a prophet.” But the Jews did not believe concerning him that he had been blind and received his sight until they called the parents of him who had received his sight. And they asked them, saying, “Is this your son who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”

His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But by what means he now sees, we do not know. Or who opened his eyes, we do not know. He is of age. Ask him. He will speak for himself.” His parents said these things because they feared the Jews. For the Jews had agreed already that if anyone confessed that he was Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue.

Therefore, his parents said, “He is of age. Ask him.” So he again called the man who was blind and said to him, “Give God the glory. We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered and said, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I do not know. One thing I know that though I was blind, now I see.” Then they said to him again, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”

Then they reviled him and said, “You are his disciple, but we are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses. As for this fellow, we do not know where he is from.” The man answered and said to them, “Why, this is a marvelous thing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he has opened my eyes. Now, we know that God does not hear sinners. But if anyone is a worshipper of God and does his will, he hears him.”

Since the world began, it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. They answered and said to him, “You were completely born in sins, and are you teaching us?” And they cast him out.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and when he had found him, he said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” He answered and said, “Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen him, and it is he who is talking with you.” Then he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.

Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world that those who do not see may see and that those who see may be made blind.” Then some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these words and said to him, “Are we blind also?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say we see, therefore your sin remains.”

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for the delight that your word is to us. We thank you, Father, for this account, the significance of it being placed in the context of the Gospel of John. We pray, Father, that you would open our eyes. We know that we’re blind apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. We cannot understand these scriptures, but you’re spiritually discerned and understood apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. We thank you for the work of Jesus that led way to the spirit coming and indwelling us and writing this word upon our hearts.

Open our eyes and ears to hear and see wondrous things from out of your word. Transform us, Lord God, that we may be those who acknowledging our blindness, see the truth of Jesus in his name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated. Our second sermon on this particular passage of scripture. For those of you that weren’t here a couple of weeks ago, we’ll be taking it up about the middle of the outline. What we said was that it seems that the way this passage is written draws our attention to something at the center of it. We’ve said we’ve seen that before in John chapter 5 and three accounts, three instances of John chapter 6. We’ve seen it in various portions of John’s gospel where our attention is drawn to the heart of the matter, the center of a particular narrative.

And it seems like the heart of this narrative is this equivocation of the parents which if we did not have the explanatory note at the very heart of the passage here, we would not understand was equivocation necessarily. We could have written off the parent statement as just really telling the truth. But God calls us to witness to the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ and to the truth of his works in a full sense. And the text tells us explicitly that the parents spoke the way they did because of fear of the Jews. Fear of being cast out of what we now know is in the writings of the same writer John and the Revelation, the synagogue of Satan.

So the parents describe to us here at the very heart of this matter a fear of men that retards our full and complete witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and his work. This is the lesson. This is a major lesson of this text for us. And we talked about that two weeks ago that the fear of man brings a snare. And it snared these parents. God has not given us a spirit of fear or timidity, but a spirit of great power. He’s given us the spirit of the beloved son who cries out, “Abba, Father.” He’s given us courage.

And in the book of Revelation, we see described a series of people that are assigned to a part in the lake of fire. And in the middle are things that we would say, “Yeah, yeah, it’s owed to them, adulterers, etc.” But the beginning of the list is liars. In the end of the list are cowards or vice versa. The book ends of the list at least are cowards and liars. And that’s what these parents are. Now in the grace of God, they repent, hopefully, or a tie. I’ll bet you probably half of you would not remember what I preached on two weeks ago. You wouldn’t remember that the fear of man was at the heart of that.

This tie is to help you remember today as you see me. What is pictured is a failure of witness that brought God’s judgment upon Jonah. Now, his wasn’t a fear of man. He was more like the Pharisees. He was kind of proud. But in both cases, the Pharisees here and the parents of the man represent a failure to witness to Christ. And in the case of this incident reminds us of, it’s a reminder of God’s judgments against us. It’s a fearful thing, but it’s a great thing of delight and hope because Jonah, he didn’t stay in the belly of the whale, right?

So, I want to know what happened to these parents after this incident. But in this incident, they’re recorded as those who don’t give witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know, we just cannot avoid the truth of the scriptures that this is required of us. We’re told in Luke 12:8 and following, “I say to you, whoever confesses me before men, him the son of man also will confess before the angels of God. But he who does not confess me before men, he will not confess before the angels of God.”

So we have a positive requirement according to the Savior to not be motivated by the fear of men and let that retard our witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and our seeking to speak forth who he is and in the case of the blind man what he has done for us. So we saw this at the heart of the narrative. If you look at the outline that’s provided that’s Roman numeral seven there right at the heart the fear of man right around that the parents equivocate.

The parents are quoted four and a half times. The explanatory statement at the middle calls our attention to the fear of men on the part of these parents. And then before and after that we have a couple of statements that line up as well. Two things happen in the context of the inquisition of the man by the synagogue. They ask him how it happened and they say, “Who is this guy?” And their affirmation is that Jesus is a sinner. And when it first starts out before the parents are called to testify, they begin by asking how. And then they say, “He was a sinner.” And then after the parents testify and they bring the man back in, they say he’s a sinner and then they ask how again.

Now, why do we have this repetition? Well, God wants us to remember how, right? I mean, it’s asked over and over. The neighbors ask the same thing. How did this happen? How did this happen? How did this happen? The text tells us, it drives home how it happened. It wants us to think about what happens at the very beginning of the story, the details of it as we work our way through the text. And the details involve a new creation, spit, dirt, creation of clay eyes. Well, maybe not clay eyes, but anointing the man with clay, a mixture of Jesus’s holy water, okay? Saliva of our savior along with the dirt.

And it’s just a picture again as all of John has been giving us a picture of a new creation. God forms up dust, breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. That’s going to involve humidity, right? And it’s the picture. It’s the picture of us. We’ve been born in the Adamic curse. We’re just dust. We’re dust bags. That’s what Adam was, a light bag of dust. But he becomes a living creature, an image bearer of God with the spirit of God put into him, water.

And we become living creatures through our baptisms. Baptism is to be associated with in our minds with the new creation. Don’t get hung up in the rationalistic explanations. At what point in time did it occur? God wants us to connect our baptisms with the fact that we are new creatures in the Lord Jesus Christ. And this guy is, you know, he’s baptized dirt. He’s clay again and he sees that the details are, you know, important.

It’s important to remember that he went to this pool named Siloam. And it’s so important that we know that it actually translates it for us. It didn’t have to. The text itself translates it and said this means Sent. Jesus is sent from the father. And he brings us into being into a new creation so that we would be sent by him that we might do the works of the father that we may look for those opportunities to glorify God this week this day not in general in our lives.

Jesus is passing by and sees the man looking for opportunities to serve his father in love. Oh that God would give us children, young children in our homes who would look for opportunities to please mom and dad to give an approving smile and may God give us homes where parents give that approving smile and not condemnation to their children in spite of their work which sometimes is very poor. Nothing at all like the work of the savior. They could break what they try to fix for you.

The attitude you see of the savior always turned to the father always glorifying him sent by the father to do his will and looking for opportunities. Details of the text how but also I think in terms of the literary structure this how sin parents sin how again draws our attention to the middle and then before and after these questions is the combination the actual holding of the investigation and then the determination of the investigation.

Neighbors get involved. They take them to the Pharisees. They start an investigation and they start this investigation about the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the day when this healing took place. And by the end of the text, they’ve made their determination. It is an ungodly one. It’s the opposite of what they should have done. And they cast him out. In y and then judgment at the end of the inquiry. And we think that the judgment is the judgment of the Jews casting out the man from the synagogue.

But what’s really going on? What’s always going on is the people are not judging Jesus. Jesus is judging people. Because Jesus says at the end of the text, at the great climax that we’ll get to here in more specific detail in a couple of minutes, he says that for judgment I’ve come into the world. And all of a sudden, our eyes open up and we think, “Oh yeah, we thought that the Pharisees were judging this man.” But in reality, Jesus was judging the Pharisees by sending them this man.

This man was a sent one to witness to the works of Christ. And what happened in relationship to the Sabbath, the day of evaluation, was not the man being kicked out of the synagogue. That’s true. But what’s really going on is that these Pharisees have been judged and remain in their sins. And Jesus makes that clear at the end of the text. Never think that the world ultimately is evaluating and testing Jesus. Jesus is testing this world. And he will test this world the same way he did in this incident by sending you into it.

You the sent ones. You the watery stream coming out from the throne of God. The fire and water mixed to bring new life saver of life but also a saver of death to those that are perishing. So the text has these beautiful connections if we understand the flow of how the text works, how it starts, takes us to the middle, but it doesn’t want us to forget the details and then takes us to a great climax at the end where the whole thing is kind of revealed in a newer way.

Now you kids, the crossword puzzle outlines that I provide from now on, the solution will be in the hallway downstairs in the CE wing, the educational side of the building. So if you can’t get all the crossword things, that’s where the answer will be. And today’s children’s outline is the same as last week or two weeks ago. So this is a good review for you. How many of this stuff do you remember from last week’s sermon?

We got through probably the first 12 or 13 questions. How many of these things could the adults take care of? You know, are we understanding these things? Are we talking about the truths of God’s word during the week? What sin’s at the heart of the passage? The fear of man. The fear of man for our children, young people. This is a tremendous problem for teens. The fear of man. We have to get them to focus on that and get over it.

Excellent book on this subject that went around our church a couple three years ago. I think Lonnie Arnold originally was the one up in Seattle that kind of encouraged people to read it and I’m sure it’s in the library. The bookends of our text concerns sin and blindness. So sin and blindness at the beginning, sin and blindness at the end. Jesus wraps up the story that way. Jesus looked for opportunities to do his father’s work. And so should you this week and on into the rest of your lives, children, our trials are for the glory of God.

You know, I thought can’t help but think about this in terms of Yuri and Jennifer today, huh? Wow. Two surgeries in a couple of weeks. God loves those two. He trusts them. You know, that’s I think I said this a couple weeks ago. Trials and difficulties are compliments from God. He knows we’re able to get through them. Okay. He’s maturing us, but he’s also demonstrating what he’s already done in our lives. So, our trials, our difficulties are for the glory of God. Continue to pray for Yuri and Jennifer as they work their way successfully through this.

Who is the light of the world? Jesus or Christians? This whole section, this is why we sang the songs we did leading up to the sermon today. This whole section of John’s gospel here, chapter 8, chapter 9, chapter 10, which we’ll get to beginning next week. That’ll be fun. All involve the light of the world. Jesus is the light of the world. This is the fourth section, major section of John’s gospel, the fourth day of creation, sun, moon, and stars. Reflected glory of the first day. Jesus comes as the reflection really of the glory of the father.

But we also Jesus tells us later in the same gospel that we’re the light of the world. He says that in the synoptics so both is the right answer. It’s a two question and the answer is neither Jesus nor Christians. Both. Jesus is the light of the world in the definitive sense. But he calls us to be lights in the context of the world as well. In this passage Jesus says we have to work while the day is still there. Night’s coming probably means death. Death. You have an opportunity you know. I’ve got maybe 20, 30 years left max. You, you know, some of you have, most of you have more.

But there’s a particular day of opportunity to you before the night comes and you can’t work anymore when you go to heaven. God will evaluate your work. There’s only so many opportunities to live this life of faith now. And God wants us to be thinking in terms of using those opportunities. What did Jesus mix with dirt to make clay? He mixed saliva. Saliva. What does water picture in John’s gospel? The Holy Spirit.

The water comes upon Jesus. The description is the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus. We’ve seen this throughout this gospel. And so the spirit is pictured here. So we have a trinitarian emphasis. Two weeks ago is Trinity Sunday. And this is a wonderful text to remind us of that because the father is doing his work through the son and the son is bringing water both in terms of the saliva and the pool that are pictures of the work of the holy spirit as he brings to pass this new creation.

A trinitarian emphasis here in this text for us. What does Siloam mean? It’s the same as Shiloh in the Old Testament. It means Sent. Sent. Who is sent? Jesus or Christians? Another trick question. Answer is both. Jesus was sent from the father. Jesus sends the blind man. He’s in providential. He’s sovereign control over all these events. He sends the blind man and he sends us into the world. And so the best translation early in the section here, we must do the works. Not just I must do the works until well this day. We must do the works while there’s still day.

What character quality did the blind man get? Courage. And this is where we pick up the story today. We’ve seen that the center of this text and the way the text is written draws us into this central aspect that the parents were fearful of the Jews. So the fear of man is negative statement of what we will see positively demonstrated in terms of the man himself.

The parents after their equivocation, we’re now at Roman numeral 5. Prime declaration that Jesus is a sinner. Verses 24 and 25. They say, “Give God the glory. We know this guy’s a sinner.” He answers and says, “Whether or not he’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I know that whereas I was blind, now I see.” We see some courage on this man. He’s witnessing to the works of the Savior, to men that he now knows are very opposed to him.

He knew the same thing the parents did, that they were kicking people out of either the formal or in formal meetings of the synagogue if they believed in Jesus. So this man has courage to continue a full witness to what Jesus did for him in spite of the fear that his parents have and despite of the real danger the Pharisees pose to him. He’s got courage. So again the courage of this man is a reminder to us to you know gird up our loins when we go wherever we go today this next week and to be courageous to speak forth the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ not worrying what people think of us.

That’s why we have this horrible heresy abounding in reformed churches and other churches these days of somehow that the days of creation weren’t literal days, periods of time, theistic evolution or long periods of time, not taking a historical approach to Genesis 1 and 2. I think there are two factors involved with that and we see them both in this text. One is this fear of man which Psalms tells us is a snare. We don’t want to appear foolish to the intellectual community. Oh, we don’t believe that weird stuff in the Bible in six days. We know that can’t be right. No, we don’t want to be laughed at or mocked. So, we change our understanding of the word of God. We don’t bear a full witness to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I’m not saying where anybody’s going, but I’m saying that the lake of fire that burns in hell has in it cowards. And we want to bear a full witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. The other thing that prompts a departure from six day creation is pride and we see that pictured in these Pharisees and we’ll talk more about that in a few minutes. This man is courageous in response to these guys.

Now they want him to give God the glory. That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing to tell each other give God the glory. Now what goes on here? This is really remember we want to think of Old Testament roots for what happens in John’s gospel for all the scriptures for that matter. And in Joshua 7 we have the same phrase used by Joshua you know They went into the promised land. They conquered Jericho. And then at Ai, they were defeated because Achan had stolen things that were consecrated to God from the fall of Jericho. So God killed a number of Israelites in the next battle because of the covenantal imputation of this man’s single sin, Achan.

Another picture of Adam and the fall and all that stuff. We understand that. However, it is important once more to remind ourselves of covenantal obligations. You know, if the church is negligent to root out sin in the context of the church and aren’t diligent to be careful who we allow to the table. We can expect covenantal judgments. But so then a process goes by and they’re going to figure out who it is.

And God tells them a process and they got it narrowed down to Achan. And Joshua says to Achan and Joshua in 7:19, “My son, I beg you, give glory to the Lord God of Israel. Make confession to him. Tell me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me.” So they’re claiming to be Joshua’s here in exhorting the sinful man to give God the glory and give up Jesus. Say he’s a sinner. So what they’re doing, you know, is proper to encourage to beg one another to give glory to God through confession of sin.

That’s not a bad thing and it’s a good thing to cause us to remember. Our purpose in life, as we’ve seen in the context of this parable, is to give glory to God. The whole purpose of the blindness was so that God might be glorified. Purpose of our trials, that God might receive glory. God is all glorious, but somehow he creates the world and man and goes through everything for the last 6,000 years that we might add more glory to God who is all glorious.

We can’t understand that. It’s called the full bucket problem in theology. How can God get more glory when he has all glory? Well, I don’t know. But the scriptures say that we can give glory to God not just in the sense of admitting something, but it glorifies God when we confess our sin. It glorifies God, brothers and sisters, when we confess our sins to one another. You know, we might think, “Oh, we’ve been a failure.” And if we confess our failure, it’ll hurt God. Or no, no, no. When we confess our sin, that gives glory to God.

But their problem, of course, is there are they are not Joshua. They’re they’re they’re just the opposite of Joshua. They are the spirit of Antichrist in the context of this synagogue. As I said, Jesus refers to these synagogues as synagogues of Satan. In the letters to the seven churches, the Jews, those who say they are Jews and are not, are the synagogue of Satan. We have antichrist here, anti Joshua. And it’s interesting to me that in Jeremiah 13, we’ve got, I think, something we can take into account in terms of this desire supposedly they have to give glory to God.

Here’s Jeremiah 13:16-17. “Give glory to the Lord your God before he causes darkness before your feet stumble on the dark mountains. And while you are looking for light, he turns it into the shadow of death and makes it dense darkness. Well, I you know just that verse is written for these darkened Pharisees. The light of the world has come. He identifies himself that way at 8:12 and 10:9. And here he is. And God exhorts them to give glory to the Lord your God before he causes darkness and before your feet stumble in the dark mountains. While you’re looking for light, he turns it into the shadow of death and makes it dense darkness.

If you will not hear it, my soul will weep in secret for your pride. My eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears because the Lord’s flock has been taken captive. So now we have the second kind of person that refuses to give God glory. The blind man was giving glory to God by testifying to Jesus. His parents were not because of fear of man. And the Pharisees themselves that knew this incident knew all about Jesus. They were not giving glory to God. Jeremiah exhorts them to give glory to God.

Jeremiah says, that dense darkness will now come upon them as they reject the light. And Jeremiah tells us what we already know really that these men’s problem is not fear of man so much. It is partly that the Pharisees were fearful of men. But it is also pride. This is the second aspect of our sin that causes us not to bear a full witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. To not talk about Jesus, that name, Jesus Christ, the God of the scriptures instead of just God as we walk around during the week.

Everybody believes in God. But make a claim to ultimate truth that there is light as opposed to darkness. Make a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ in his authoritative word and this world will hate you. That’s what the world is these days. No standards. Everybody, whatever is right for you. Everything’s deconstructed now. Everything is postmodern. There is no really ultimate value. Even man himself is no longer the center in people’s thinking. There is nothing at the center. There is no true meaning to anything.

And when you come with a truth claim for the Lord Jesus Christ, you didn’t expect for people to reject you. But that’s what you’re to do. You’re not to let the fear of man or your own pride cause you anything else. That’s what Jonah was, it seems to me, was prideful. He thought he was better than the Ninevites. They were the awful people that had killed so many of God’s people. He knew they would repent. God would have mercy on them. And he didn’t want that because he thought he was better somehow, not recognizing God’s sovereign grace upon him.

And so, we must be very careful. Children, be careful against pride and against the fear of men. We are to give God the glory with a full witness in boldness of what Jesus Christ has done for us. We are to be humble and yet courageous. That’s what this text tells us. We’re to do this in the context of our lives. We’re to give glory to God by confessing our sins. Not a husband here who doesn’t fail in his obligations to love his wife somewhat regularly. There’s not a wife here who doesn’t fail at her obligation to build her husband up to strengthen him for the task that he’s been called to do.

A tough task to run a household in these days. Very few patterns of godliness. The world everything is arrayed against us. Not a woman here, probably a wife here that hasn’t failed in some way to reverence her husband properly, to submit to him, and to build him up. Not a husband here that hasn’t failed to love their wives or their children. God says, “Give God glory.” Admit that to one another. Admit it to yourselves right now if you’re hiding it from yourself.

When you come up today to bring your offering, give God the glory. Confess to him your sins against your spouses, your sins against your children, children, your sins against your parents. God says that we have this tremendous great high privilege of giving God glory through the confession of our sins. May we do that and may he empower us to not sin in the same way as we go into this week.

Then they ask again in verse 26, how now the man gets really bold. He says, they say, how did he open your eyes? He says, I told you already you didn’t hear. Do you want to be his disciples? Again, this guy is bold. He’s full of courage. He’s following the lion of Judah. He’s not cowed by these fellows. We shouldn’t be cowed by any. These guys had huge authority over this man’s life. To be cast out of the synagogue and the church, so to speak, was a big deal. But he was courageous and bold.

May God grant us the boldness of our savior that we would be sent the same way this man is sent. Would that all of our thoughts and actions would be what he was kind of alluding to. Wouldn’t that our witness to Christ would have as its goal making disciples for the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, they’ve heard enough. They continue to talk to him and they revile him here. They say, you know, you’re awful guy. We’re Moses’ disciples and you’re not. And again, look at how his boldness in this text again builds and builds and builds.

And he says the fact that they don’t know who this guy is it is an amazing thing. You don’t know from whence he is and yet he’s opened my eyes. Now we know that God hears not sinners but if any man be a worshipper of God and does his will verse 31 him he hears. Notice here in passing if you have unanswered prayers or so that’s what you think maybe this is part of your problem. Says here that God hears listens to the prayers of those who are worshippers of God and that do his will.

Well, not perfectly. But if you fail to worship and reverence God, if this day is just a time to get together with friends instead of focusing on the worship of God, and if the rest of the week you’re not all that excited about trying to figure out how to do his will, well, don’t think that God’s going to answer your prayers. Jesus is the one, of course, who worships God the Father. Jesus is the one who does these works and his prayers are heard.

So, the blind man has it right here. Now, the formerly blind man has it right? And then he says something important. Since the world began, it was not heard that any man open the eyes of one that was born blind. As I said, we don’t have an instance of people in the Bible, blind people in the Old Testament receiving their sight. That’s a case of messianic fulfillment. Says if this man was not of God, he could do nothing.

Now, that’s what Jesus says, too. This man is sort of talking like Jesus. So, we have this witness of the man. We’ve got this great boldness of the man. And then we’ve got this horrific judgment of the Pharisees. Then cast him out. This is the judgment. So these are these are points that we should think through. It’s an amazing thing. Not that men have faith, but it’s an amazing thing, a marvelous amazing thing that these Pharisees don’t believe in Jesus.

They have all the empirical evidence they need. They have all the data that’s required. All the messianic prophecies are being fulfilled. They’ve tried real hard to have an investigation that would show that Jesus didn’t open the eyes of the blind. But it’s proved to them ever and over and over that indeed he did. Everybody knows he did. Everybody knows it’s amazing that they don’t come to faith in Jesus.

That’s the hardness of man’s heart. Apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is impossible for these men to exercise faith in him. They’re fully culpable for their actions. When you go and witness to the Lord Jesus Christ this week, it’s not amazing if some come to faith. It’s amazing that people don’t. It’s a picture of their moral blindness because everybody really knows what’s going on. Jesus, of course, is the greater Moses. There’s no division between Moses and Jesus. He is the true Sabbath of recreation. All of the recreation.

All of these incidents in the middle of this book where the Jews are rejecting Jesus. He came to his own and his own did not receive him. You know, they all seem to focus on the Sabbath or upon the sabbatical cycle of the Old Testament because Jesus is not getting rid of it. He’s saying what it was all about. He is transforming it into the future. They cling to the past and their place in the past. Jesus moves us forward to the new creation. And that’s what the new the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day, is all about.

I thought about this morning. We have some neighbors that we have, good Christian people. I love them. And I’m so pleased they’re an answer to prayer for us, our Seventh Day Adventists. And I was thinking about this morning that you know the problem with Seventh Day Adventism is that they cling to the past. They don’t understand the transformation of the world, the new creation that Jesus brought into being. Eschatologically, you know, they have no hope really in terms of the Sabbath. They look to the shadow, not to the reality of the change of day that was prefigured in the Old Testament comes about in the New.

You know, we don’t move from night to day anymore. Now, we’re in daytime. We don’t have lunar festivals. We’ve got sunlight festivals. That’s why I believe the Christian Sabbath or Lord’s Day is morning to morning. It’s not evening to evening the way it used to be in the Old Testament. There’s been entire movement. You see, we’re now future oriented. Jesus has brought about the new creation. And these Pharisees hang back in the old Sabbath and the old creation. And as a result of that, they’re judged by God.

We have a tremendous testimony here to the divinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah 35:5-6 says, “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened in the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped the times of Messiah comes.” Isaiah 42:6-7 “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles to open eyes that are blind and to free captives from prison.”

Now see, that’s really this is what’s being fulfilled in John chapter nine. Jesus has come to make a covenant for his people, to fulfill the covenant for his people to be a light for the Gentiles. And when we get to chapter 10 next week and the Lord is the good shepherd, we’ll see that sheep, not of this flock. The light of the savior was going to shine upon the Gentiles, as Isaiah says over and over. All of this to open the eyes of the blind and to free captives from prison. So when Jesus opens the eyes of the blind, it’s the picture of the great transition from the Sabbath to the Christian Sabbath, from Sabbath to Lord’s day, from night and day to day, from what’s happened in the past and now the bright future of the recreation of all things in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s why we’re bold and courageous. Not because we just want to witness. We don’t want to go out and take a ch one in the chest for Jesus and fail. Sometimes that’s required, but you know, we saw Patton a few weeks ago, a good show to watch in terms of cowardice. And it’s it’s difficulties, but you know, we don’t want to die for our country. God calls us to some of that, to die for the Lord Jesus. But most of all, he calls us to be victorious for Jesus. And that gives us a holy boldness to speak to the truth of who he is in the context of our world.

I mentioned that this that you know the man born blind who’s now changed. He’s talking like Jesus here, isn’t he? He says if this guy wasn’t from God, he couldn’t do anything. Now, I know you don’t study the text like I do every week, but to me, as soon as you read that, you think, bingo, lights go off. I’ve heard this before. John 5:19, “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Most assuredly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do, for whatever he does, the Son also does in like manner.’” John 5:30, “I can of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is righteous because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the father who sent me.”

See, Christians, sent ones, are like the ones who was sent by the father. We start sounding like Jesus. And that’s what we’re supposed to do. And this man is doing that in this encounter. And God wants us to recognize that. Jews cling to the past. And as a result of that, they’re judged. I mentioned how Siloam is the same as the Hebrew Shiloh in the Old Testament until Shiloh come. When Jesus comes, he’s the fulfillment of all the prophecies of the Old Testament. Isaiah 8 seems to talk about this incident in John 9 as well.

Verse 6 of Isaiah 8, we read this. “Inasmuch as these people refuse the waters of Shiloh that flow softly and rejoice in Rezin and in Romelia’s son. Now therefore, behold, the Lord brings up over them the waters of the river, strong and mighty, the king of Assyria and all his glory. He will go up over all his channels and go over all his banks. He will pass through Judah. He will overflow and pass over. He will reach up to the neck and the stretching out of his wings will fill the breadth of your land, oh Immanuel.”

So, oh, what’s going on here? In Isaiah, people didn’t trust in Yahweh. They trusted in other kings. They didn’t accept Shiloh, a picture of the gentle grace of Jesus or Yahweh in the Old Testament. And instead, they trusted other kings instead of King Jesus or Yahweh and as a result he sent them into captivity. So what’s going on in John chapter nine? Shiloh has come. The pool Siloam sent the gentle waters of Jesus have come to bring sight to the blind to pastor sheep to rule his flock.

And the Pharisees reject it for judgment. Jesus has come into the world. Because they reject it the gentle waters of baptism and creation. Then the harsh waters, the flood will overtake them. They’re Egypt. They’re not baptized as they come through the Red Sea. The Red Sea swallows them up. And what’s going to happen in AD 70 is the fulfillment of this judgment upon the Pharisees because of their rejection of Siloam or Shiloh.

Great judgment. The past is being judged definitively. The new world comes to pass in AD 70 as the result of the judgment on the old. Then the man receives true spiritual sight. Jesus again taking the initiative searches the man out brings him to the fullness now of understanding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that we’ve seen is a is certainly the grace of God. It’s the sovereignty of God at work.

But we really haven’t reached full salvation of this man, a full acknowledgement of who Jesus is until, as I say, the way this text climaxes. It has a center. We don’t want to forget that of the details, but the text moves ahead to these concluding remarks that really it kind of climaxes there as well. The center is a negative thing that we’re to remember but the climax is a wondrous thing.

But Jesus seeks out the man again and then reveals himself to him. “You have both seen him and is he that talks of thee and he said Lord I believe and he worships him.” Now Jesus is then going to have a postscript to the story where he declares what’s been going on but don’t miss the simple narrative and the neat way Jesus’s interaction with the blind man has climaxed and culminated here. What’s it culminated in? Worship. Worship.

Remember we said that the blind man comes to this realization of who Jesus is in a series of steps. The same way the woman at the well in Samaria in John 4 did. And you remember what Jesus told the woman at the well in terms of what was going on with her as well. he told her that really it was the father what he was doing was seeking out worshippers. And so the climax of this is the worship of Jesus. Now all of this happens as the sovereign result of who the Lord Jesus is and his work. Ultimately when Jesus talks about blindness and sin and the removal of sin and blindness, we see that what’s going on here is the sovereign God of all creation has revealed himself in Jesus.

That’s who Jesus is. And as a result of that, he’s removing the blind that we all have. In 2 Corinthians 4, we read that our minds, let’s see, we read that even if our gospel is veiled, it’s veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the God of this age has blinded who do not believe. So all of us really apart from the work and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, our eyes have been blinded. But then we see that for some that God has chosen, continuing in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness. Who has shown in our hearts? So our hearts were darkened but he has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

So why has the blind man moved ahead? Any initiative of his? No. The initiative is always the savior’s. The response of the blind man to do what Jesus said to let himself be spat on or have spitty stuff put on his eyes to go to Siloam. To go to his neighbors to go before the Pharisees then to respond in faith for the Lord Jesus Christ. Every bit of that is evidence of the spirit’s work in the heart of this man.

Remember, you know, it’s pride that gets trips up the Pharisees according to the Old Testament narratives. And pride ultimately says that we’re the ones who can determine or will determine if we’re going to believe or not believe. We want to have the initiative ourselves. I’m going to read a few quotes here from the Canons of Dort.

Now, it’s always bad to read quotes. People get bored with them and kind of lose attention. And maybe you will here. Children, shake yourself a little bit. Gird up your loins. We’re going to have some quotes here. But, you know, I just think it’s really unfortunate that the modern church, even the modern reformed church, has such little involvement with the Canons of Dort. Canons of Dort, of course, were the basis for what’s become known as the five points of Calvinism, even though he was long dead by the time they were written.

The Canons of Dort are under five heads of doctrine. It was a trial involving Arminians and Calvinists and a determination by a really a broadly reformed group not just Dutch reformed guys. Church of England was there etc. at this senate held at this city called Dor. Canons are just church law. It’s what the church declared. And it really is the basis for what has become known as the five points of Calvinism. These writings of these church fathers a broad assembly representing all the reformed church at that time. And it’s too bad we’re not more familiar with it.

We think of Calvinism and certainly as the Canons of Dort as dry dusty documents back there but you know they’re a very pastoral document their description of the new birth is beautiful and their description their painstaking description of how this works is really good and I’m going to be quoting several articles here under the third and fourth head of doctrine which have to do with the corruption of man the conversion to God and the manner thereof now this is what we call today total depravity that’s the corruption of man irresistible grace the way we’re converted then okay so total depravity and irresistible grace are the points that they’re going to be discussing in this section.

And here’s the first thing they say in article one. “Man was originally formed after the image of God. His understanding was adorned with a true and saving knowledge of his creator and of spiritual things. His heart and will were upright. All his affections pure and the whole man was holy. But revolving from God by the instigation of the devil and by his own free will, he forfeited these excellent gifts and in the place thereof became involved in blindness of mind.”

You see, they’re right. This is the summation. What happened in the fall was we became involved in blindness of mind. The reason why there’s not the reversal of blindness in the Old Testament because that save for Messiah has a special picture of what salvation is all about. We receive sight back instead of blindness. Blindness of mind. Horrible darkness. Not just blind, horrible darkness, vanity, pride, perverseness of judgment. We became wicked, rebellious, and obdurate in heart and will impure in his affections. All of a man’s being is affected by the fall. That’s what total depravity means. There’s no intellect left that’s not affected by the fall. In fact, the very intellect itself is now darkened with horrible darkness. Tremendous.

If you don’t understand the total depravity that mankind fell into by the sin, then you do not give God glory by recognizing tremendous elements of what salvation are all about. Article six. “What Therefore, neither the innate understanding nor the law could do. They’ve talked about how the law wasn’t enough to bring us into salvation. That God performs by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Spit pool of water. Operation of the Holy Spirit through the word or ministry of reconciliation, which is the glad tidings concerning the Messiah by means whereof it has pleased God to save such as believe as well.

Under the Old Testament, ultimately the thing that happens to bring us to salvation to make just like the blind man now given sight is the operation of the Holy Spirit. Article 10. “But that others who are called by the gospel obey the call and are converted. Some do and some don’t. But that some obey the call and are converted is not to be ascribed to the proper exercise of free will. This was the big hangup.

Some people say and most people say today that the difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is the Christian exercises his will to say yes to God. And the Orthodox Church proclaimed and still proclaims today that is heresy and sin. That the reason why some come to faith is not the exercise of their will, whereby one distinguishes himself above others, equally furnished with grace sufficient for faith and conversion.

As the proud heresy of Pelagius maintains, going back now to church history, for 2,000 years, that has been a heretical statement that it is our will that decides if we’re going to be saved or not. Heresy is what it is. But it must be wholly ascribed to God who as he has chosen his own from eternity in Christ. He chose you from eternity in Christ. So he now calls them effectually in time. Jesus’s love was set upon the blind man from eternity. And now in time he comes to the blind man and he confers upon them faith and repentance the gift of God. He gives the blind man faith and repentance, rescues them from the power of darkness, translates them into the kingdom of his own son.

Praise God. Takes us out of the realm of darkness, out of the synagogue of Satan, out of the false church, out of the world. And doesn’t, you know, we’re not, we have no loss in that. We’re brought into the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of the blessed savior. Praise God. It’s what the blind man knew. You should be saying, fear of man, fear of the parents from being cast out of the synagogue of Satan. They didn’t have a saving conception of what the kingdom of God was all about. That they may show forth the praises of him who has called them out of darkness into his marvelous light. May glory not in themselves, but in the Lord according to the testimony of the apostles in various places.

The purpose is worship. That’s where the blind man ended up at the end of the text, worshiping Christ. The purpose is here and now. And what we’re called to do this very day In this very hour or two of worship, in this service, this is the purpose that God has translated us out of the realms of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. Article 11. “But when God accomplishes his good pleasure in the elect or works in them true conversion, he not only causes the gospel to be externally preached to them and powerfully illumines their minds by his holy spirit that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the spirit of God, but by the efficacy of the same regenerating spirit.

He pervades the inmost recesses of man, not just the intellect. The regenerating work of the Holy Spirit happens in the whole man. This is how God brings the blind man to light. He opens the closed and softens the hardened heart, circumcises that which was uncircumcised, infuses new qualities into the will. Courage, you know, commitment to follow Jesus and courage to witness. These are properties infused into the blind man, into you and I.

Through the work of the Holy Spirit, he gives us the Savior. These qualities that are infused into our will, which though heretofore dead, the will he now quickens from being evil, disobedient, and refractory, he renders it good, obedient, and pliable. That’s why the blind man is pliable to the suggestion of Jesus because the spirit has already done his work regenerating the man. He actuates and strengthens it that like a good tree, it may bring forth the fruits of good actions.

The blind man had good fruit of courage and witness because of the work of the spirit. I’m not asking you today to gird up your loins in the sense of getting your valition in place. But use the will that the Lord has given you back through the generation regeneration of the Holy Spirit to exercise obedience in receiving courage from the Savior and therefore witnessing to him in the context of our world.

Article 12. “This is that regeneration so highly extolled in scripture? That renewal, new creation. They understood this. It’s not some new neat transformational doctrine that James B. Jordan just came up with that Jesus affected a new creation. The church has known this for 2,000 years. Affects a new creation. Resurrection from the dead, making alive, which God works in us without our aid. But this is in no wise affected merely by the external preaching of the gospel, by moral sway.

or such a mode of operation that after God has performed his part, it still remains in the power of man to be regenerated or not. No, doesn’t all this external influence is that it’s up to you wasn’t up to the blind man to be converted or to continue unconverted. But it is evidently a supernatural work most powerful and at the same time most delightful, astonishing, mysterious and ineffable, nor inferior in efficacy is wonderful wording.

Nor inferior in efficacy and power or strength, in other words, to creation or the resurrection from the dead. What God does in regenerating man that makes him able to say, “Yes, go ahead, put the stuff in my eyes. Yes, I’ll go to Siloam. Yes, I’ll speak to who you are, even though I don’t know who you are yet. And yes, the end result of all that is an external affirmation of faith that we say, ‘This man is now a Christian.’” The entire process is the work of the Holy Spirit.

And this work is not inferior to creation. the fiat word of God bringing creation into existence in six days. No, it is the new creation. So that all in whose heart God works in this marvelous manner are certainly infallibly and effectually regenerated and to actually believe. Why does he believe? Because God has worked in him to bring him to believe. Whereupon the will thus renewed is not only actuated and influenced by God, but in consequence of this influence becomes self active.

God works it and now it is active and new and living. Wherefore also man himself is rightly said to believe and repent by virtue of that grace received. So it’s not just you know it is God at work in us but we do indeed exercise belief and make these statements and affirmations of the truth of the gospel of Christ. And then the last article I’m almost done kids. One more little quote. But as article 16 “but as man by the fall did not cease to be a creature endowed with understanding ing and will nor did sin which pervaded the whole race of mankind deprive him of the human nature but brought upon him depravity and spiritual death.

So also this grace of regeneration does not treat man and I love this wording too. Okay, the grace of regeneration does not treat men as senseless stocks and blocks. No. Nor take away their will and its properties or do violence to the will of man, but it spiritually quickens, heals, corrects, and at the same time sweetly and powerfully bends it. That where carnal rebellion and resistance formerly prevailed, a ready and sincere spiritual obedience begins to reign, in which the true and spiritual restoration and freedom of our will consist.

Wherefore, unless the admirable author of every good work to deal with us, man can have no hope of being able to rise from his fall by his own free will by which in a state of innocence he plunged himself into ruin.” The point is that it is God at work but God works to renew our very thing that was fallen but which we still have that is our wills. And so this blind man is pictured as exercising will but now the will of the new creation created again in righteousness, holiness, knowledge and dominion.

All glory to God that he has brought us together to this place. All glory to God the blind man now seeing would say, “All glory to God. God’s people affirm today that we did not cause this to come to pass. It was the sovereign God of all the universe. Pastoral implications of plenty. It’s my choice that brought me into the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I have room to boast and that is the way I will attempt my sanctification as well.” My choice.

But instead, God says that it’s his spirit that empowers us. It’s his spirit that bends and makes our wills pliable. And it’s his spirit that causes us to have that spirit of courage that’ll bring us to witness into the context of this world. And as I said, the very climax of all of this is worship. Jesus told the woman at the well in John 4:23, “The hour is coming and now is when true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and truth. For the father is seeking such to worship him.”

The father seeks worshippers. The father sent the son into the world from one perspective for one purpose and one purpose only that we might worship. The blind man comes to that at the very end of the text. Beautiful climax. He says, “I believe.” And he worships the Savior. That’s what we’re called to do today. I hope you understand the significance of what we do in the Lord’s day. I hope this isn’t just one day out of seven.

This is why we want you to dress up. This is why we want you to confess your sins and think about it more Saturday than you do Monday or Tuesday. This is why we want you to prepare to hear the word of God preached. This is why we want you to really focus on this day above all seven. You know, people get upset with me. They stop coming to church and I’ll call and they’ll miss a Sunday or two or three and I’ll call and they think I’m just Yeah, well, he’s the pastor of the church.

He wants the church. You know, he wants me at church and somehow it’s church, the institution of the church and you know, we’re getting in people’s faces. That’s not the point. I will call you from this church because the point of your entire Christian life is the worship of God. That’s why he created you. And if we fill that purpose on the Lord’s day. It sets up the week for the right thing. And instead, if we sit at home, we waste the day, we treat it like any other day, dress like any other day, whatever it is.

See, we’ve missed the whole point. Every Lord’s day is a reminder that we’re this blind man who receives sight. We’ve come together to express purpose of fulfilling the very thing that God has called us to be, worshippers of him. That’s why we take worship seriously. That’s why we don’t just decide what makes us feel good in worship. Why do we choose these songs? We choose worship is to be celebratory. Worship is to be joyful.

Worship is to be, you know, the people of God praising him for this incredible, marvelous work that he’s affected. That’s no less than the creation of the world itself that he’s brought to pass in our lives. This is what God has called us to do. God says, you know, this is the great height for which he has created us. And if we believe that, then what we’re going to do takes on a different significance.

Today I put out a pamphlet out in the track rack that guys over in Moscow produced on church music. This came about got a couple years ago, thoughts on worship music. It’s a small thing, but maybe you pick it up as a reminder to yourself about one point of application of this sermon that whatever we sing, whatever we do, what we come together to do in terms of the worship of God, this is the height of who we are. This is what we’re created to do. And this is what the parable or the story rather, the true story, the narrative of this man and shows us.

Jesus then returns to the sight and sin relationship in this text. Jesus says he’s come for judgment and this culminates the text then in terms of his evaluation what’s happened. He says he’s come for judgment to make a discern dis you know there sheep and there are goats. There are those on the right hand those on the left those who acknowledge their blindness, those who don’t, those whose sins are remitted and those whose stay on.

Thus endeth the lesson. Do you recognize your great need for the Savior’s sight? and the resultant strength, boldness, and joy that comes from this confession. This is a narrative. Your life is alike narrative. I’ve said this before. I think the Pharisees were the best of what the world has to offer apart from God. They were the institutional church at the time. You’re the institutional church today. So, you know, it’s all real.

We we write the Pharisees off and think of them as, you know, pagans outside of the faith, whatever it is. And we we don’t take The great caution that a text like this would have us take, we are the institutional church just like they were. And do we recognize our blindness apart from sight in the Lord Jesus Christ?

You know, we have these practices at RCC in terms of education, child rearing, dating, courtship, vocation, these things we stress over and over and over. And really the only thing the elders of this church are saying every time is that if we try to do any of this stuff, thinking somehow we don’t need the word of God to shine light upon our path, then we’re blind and we’re going to sin in those particular areas. There’s nothing we’re going to get right in and of ourselves. The word of God is the light and the light of Jesus should shine upon all of our paths.

Be so very careful, Christian, not to walk away from your next test, trial, or evaluation thinking that you’re seeing and in reality you’re blind. That’s what the Pharisees thought. May God keep us from that kind of presumption that has us reject the very light of the Savior himself.

Jesus says here that he’s come for judgment. Other places he says he’s not there to judge the world. He said he didn’t come to condemn the world but to save the world in John 3. And later he says the spirit’s going to come and bring conviction relative to judgment. How do we put all this together? It seems like the savior is contradicting himself and of course he’s not. In John 3 He says he’s come to save the world. He didn’t come to condemn the world or to bring judgment to the world. Here he says he comes to bring judgment. How do we correlate this? Well, I think the only way to is by taking him at his word.

His primary purpose in coming is to affect the new creation. It’s to create seeing people again. It’s to make new eyes out of clay and stick them in our heads and transform our hearts by his sovereign grace to fill the world with Christians. That’s why he’s come. He didn’t come to send a bunch of people to hell. He came that his kingdom might be manifest and established. But as surely as we pray that your kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. As surely as we pray for the manifestation and external visualization of the kingdom of Christ, we also must pray for the destruction of every kingdom that raises itself against Christ.

It is the inevitable corollary of Jesus coming and bringing salvation life that those who reject it are judged, are dead and cast to hell. And that’s how we understand this. It is the triune work of the father, son, and holy spirit bringing about the new creation. And it is the triune work of father, son, and holy spirit to as a result of that a corollary secondary emphasis of that is to bring judgment. The gospel is not neutral news. Jesus does not here mean that you know it’s going to be 50/50. The gospel is good news.

The whole point of the story with saliva and dirt is a new creation. A creation that will worship God the way Adam and Eve didn’t. That is the purpose of what Jesus is saying. That is the gospel. And the judgment of damnation is a necessary corollary, but it is by far secondary to what the Lord Jesus Christ is doing in the context of the worship of his people.

And as you are sent into the world as the light of the world, praise God for the Lord’s day. Praise God. We can get together in the midst of great trials and tribulations like Jennifer and Yuri are doing on the Lord’s day. They have a renewed emphasis that God is doing all things to bring about his creation to improve the worship of his people to bring us here with thankful gladsome joyous hearts every Lord’s day.

Not hoping that something will change in the world but knowing of a certainty that the light of Jesus is shining. As that Psalm 19 said, he’s come up like the strong bridegroom. He’s running his race. The world is increasing in light and he does this through you dearly beloved. May God give us as we come up to offer ourselves again the grace of the Holy Spirit. May he infuse these qualities into our will of courage, strength, humility, and a desire to do the father’s will even as the savior did.

May he send us forth as lights into the world today. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this beautiful narrative. We thank you Lord God for the great marvelous truth that we see reflected in it. Enable us, Father, to remember these things. Help us, Father. Empower us by the strength of your Holy Spirit. That we would witness to Jesus in all that we do and say, that we might be courageous and bold as lions.

That we may be humble as well, knowing that it’s your grace that’s doing all these things, not our will. Use us, Father, to bring light to our wives, to bring light to our husbands, to bring light to our children, to bring light to our parents, to bring light to our friends, to bring light to the other parishioners here in this church. Help us father to rejoice and be glad this week as we are the sent ones to bring light to this world. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.