If you're familiar with the book of John, you know that John chapter nine, the entire chapter is one story. It's all one story. So instead of having, sometimes we have a miracle that we're talking about, preaching on, teaching on, that has like four verses in a text that make up the entire miracle or something like that. And it's just within the narrative of a text, it shows up. And this passage, though, in John chapter 10, of course, 41 verses that deal with one miracle and all of the controversy that surrounded it. And I believe that it's important, but it'll take us a few weeks to accomplish covering all 41 verses. This morning, I'd like to center our attention on just the first, the reporting of the miracle, the first seven verses. And as Jesus passed by, He saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while at his day the night cometh when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. And when he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground and made clay of spittle and anointed the eyes of the blind man with clay and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, which is being, by interpretation, sent. He went his way, therefore, and washed and came seeing. So now, beginning in verse eight all the way to the end of the chapter, This is a huge controversy that arises because of this, okay? And so here is the beginning of this miracle. It is reported. And we have here the providence reported, the first point. But it is one of those other miracles of the healing where Christ healed the blind. And I'd like to go to a couple Old Testament passages, if you would. Go with me to Psalm 146. Psalm 146. You have those outlines correct? Okay. Psalm 146. And let's have, let's see, Jason, your voice carries fine. 146. Read, if you will, please, verse number 8. The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind. The Lord praiseth them that are bowed down. The Lord loveth the righteous. Alright, now notice in that verse that the Lord, the name Lord is all capitalized. So, who is this in this passage? What does that refer to when it's all capitalized? Jehovah. Jehovah, right. And so who is this that opens the eyes of the blind? It is Jehovah. Alright, and We compare that to where we introduce the name Jehovah in Exodus 4, down about verse number 11, where the burning bush, he says to Moses, I am, has sent thee. And so then, go to Isaiah then, Isaiah 29. Isaiah 29. We're just going to do a little comparison here by way of introduction. Verse number 18. And let's see, Brother Joe, can you read verse 18 for us? Isaiah 29, 18. And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of the obscurity and out of darkness. Okay, so it's a prediction of the coming of the Messiah. Alright, how about chapter 35, Isaiah 35. And go to verse number 5. Again, talking about this same thing. Brother Mike? Isaiah 35, 5. I didn't know if you were eating breakfast. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. All right, so even in the context, the coming of the Messiah, and then in 42 verse 7. It's a great passage, but you could read in verse number one, behold my servant there. Verse number one, it's talking about the coming of the Messiah. But look at verse number seven, Rick, can you read that out loud? You open the blind eyes, bring out the prisoners from the prison, and then let them sit in the darkness and out of the prison house. Correct. And you remember this being quoted somewhat from Luke, the book of the Gospel of Luke. But I think what you notice is that the healing of any blind person in the New Testament was a work that was to be done by the coming of the Messiah. and also in conjunction calling the Messiah Jehovah. And He is God in the flesh, but He is the covenant-making God, the God of the book of Exodus. And so really this story, and going back to John chapter 9, if you will, John chapter 9 is referring to the deity of Christ. And what you're going to, if you read the rest of the chapter, maybe this week you could read it and be prepared for next Sunday. But the issue comes up that the Pharisees are very upset. Very upset. Because here's a man that is doing, walking around on the Sabbath day and is healed on the Sabbath day. And their rules and regulations cause them to be blind to the very presence of the Messiah. So there was plenty, there were plenty. The people of our Bible, the prophets, are not ignorant of God's word. The Pharisees and scribes were experts, and at times they really did, they were able to go back and quote. Remember when the Magi came for a visit in Matthew chapter three and said, where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star. Do you remember that? We preached on that in the book of, I'm sorry, in the month of December. about how that in the book of Numbers, it talks about that the star shall arise out of David or out of Israel, rather. And it is all prophetic about the coming of the Messiah. The scribes knew this. It is not hidden from the scribes. And this is the case that Jesus comes and he's and we'll go back to it in a minute, but back in the last chapter, he is ending chapter 8, confronting the scribes and Pharisees, and really puts them in their place. And then he does this miracle, which was against their regulations, not the Bible regulations of the Sabbath, but against their regulations. And they couldn't handle it. because to say Christ was right about healing was to call him God in the flesh, the Messiah. So it was impossible that they could be supportive of this. And so their hatred for Christ caused them to be a lot more blind than the blind man started out. I mean, they were blind inside in their heart of permanent blindness. And so it's a very interesting part of this miracle. And in spite of the great testimony of who Christ was, most of people missed the message of the miracle. They saw the miracle, but they missed the message. The religious leaders did not miss the message, but they persecuted the man and Jesus because of their hatred for this. They said, if Christ, if this Jesus really healed the blind in the way that he did, well, it would threaten their very calling, their position. And by the time of the New Testament, those positions weren't what they had started out to be, like an exercise of studying the law so that you could teach the children and the others the law, but they had risen to places of prominence in society, control over parts of the population, political. In fact, as you know that Caiaphas is the high priest and Annas is father-in-law. Actually, five sons of Annas end up serving as high priest and none of them were qualified. It was deteriorated to a, instead of a succession of Levitical priests, it was offered to the Roman government, whoever had the money to pay their way into this office, okay? So it is really a setting of great graft and corruption. And the answer is that the scribes and Pharisees were not after the truth. They were after what advantaged them. Does that sound familiar? Like in our country today, we don't have news people that want after the truth, or political leaders that are after the truth, and they'll destroy people who are the rare exceptions to that, that want to actually benefit our country. I think one of the greatest testimonies of that is in the news, I think it was yesterday or Friday, They came down to summarize the results of being the President of the United States, Trump lost half of his personal net worth in four years. You know, not only did he give away, you know, he's required by law to take his salary as a president, but he donated it to a charity, but he lost half of his net worth. So I think now he's only worth five billion, but you know, The point is, the rare person like that gets destroyed, and the political viewpoint today is that the ones who are winning in our country today are the ones who are after what is politically helpful for themselves. It's like I used to be an NRA member, and I won't join now, because the NRA doesn't exactly exist for the purpose of the Second Amendment. They exist for the purpose of perpetuating the NRA. And the same is true today with the pro-life movement. And a lot of what they do, they could really be more effective, but they're not after that. They're after the perpetuating of their own existence. And so we could better use our funds, the little bit that we have, in other ways. So in this position, these scribes ought to have been on Jesus' side. They should have been the ones that clearly saw, this is the Messiah, we better get ourselves in order. But not only did they not do that, they persecuted Christ and eventually are part of that group with the Pharisees, many making up the Sanhedrin who crucified Christ. And it was prophesied also. He came unto his own and his own received him not. He had to be offered to Israel and they would reject him. And that was prophesied, if you want, in Isaiah chapter 53. So this is really a controversy that comes where it appears from the language that's used that this man is excommunicated from the temple later. and his parents are possibly excommunicated, all because Jesus healed him and he still doesn't come to believe in Jesus until the end of the chapter. And this all happens to him simply because of Christ. And so we get into the providence. That was the first point I already mentioned to you. The providence reported. In verse number one, and as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was born blind, sorry, blind from his birth. Now, Jesus passed by. The blind man couldn't see Jesus, but Jesus saw him. Now notice that in verse number, don't miss these things. Don't miss the absolute statement of the grace of God, that while we do not deserve salvation, God loved us. And as he passed by, he, Jesus, saw a man. It's important that we see the world as Jesus sees them. That's in a song that we sing. You know, we need to see as He sees, as Jesus sees, with a compassion for the multitude. And the Lord saw and had compassion. One of the commentators wrote on this, quote, A marked feature of this man's case is that he never requested a cure, nor was he brought by others to Jesus for healing. So there are, and it's interesting, here's a statistic, in 18 of the 33 miracles, I'm sorry, yeah, 18 of them were requested, while 15 of these were initiated by Christ himself. This is one of those. Here's a blind man that is begging. He is on his own, and Christ passed by, and he sees him. And Christ initiated this contact. This emphasizes the grace of God. How many of you deserved Christ to come to your life? Nobody. But yet the Lord was gracious to each one of us. And your testimony is a testimony of the grace of God. One of the most important things you have is the testimony of how you got saved. Some of your testimonies, I know your testimonies. But some of you, I don't. And it is one of the greatest tools you have in reaching other people. Remember the Apostle Paul, every time he was confronted, what did he do? He went back to the story of the road to Damascus. And God's great grace, always remember what God has done for you. I think you have to notice that the Lord is not in a multitude of people praising Him. I want you to go back now and look a little bit behind the scenes and look at the controversy that's happening in chapter number 8. And notice what's being said. Go back to verse 44. This is the same setting. The chapter divisions are not inspired, just so you're aware, except for in the Book of Psalms. Those were individual songs. But here's an example of it just runs right one into the other. Verse 44. He tells these scribes and Pharisees, Year of your father, the devil. Whoa. Sometimes you think preachers preach a strong message. Hardly anybody can be stronger than the Lord Jesus Christ. He pointed his finger right down into their hearts. And they had said before this, we're Abraham's seed, we're not born of fornication. Jesus said, you know who your dad is? Your father is the devil. You're children of Satan. And he goes on to describe it in verse 45. And because I tell you the truth, would you believe me not? They don't want to believe the truth. Do you know people generally in the world only believe what they want to believe? And they have to be confronted with the truth. And they have to often be confronted with the truth patiently and over and over and over again until we have a saying that it finally sinks in. Okay. But some of them are more like Flint. They don't absorb very much. But that's the case. And he goes on in this controversy. But let's let's skip all the way down. And verse number 54, Jesus answered, If I honor myself, my honor is nothing. It is my father that honoreth me, of whom you say that he is your God. So he identifies himself as the son of God there. Did you notice that? There are some people that are really ridiculous. They say Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah. Well, He does through the whole book of John. You'll notice if you're wondering, verse 35 of chapter 9, go over there. Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and when he had found him, talking about the man that he had healed, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? 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. And he said, Lord, I believe. So did Jesus claim to be the Messiah? That's a direct claim to be the Son of God. And when you compare the scriptures of the Old Testament saying that the Jehovah God, the Lord, will raise the dead and heal the blind. And by the way, only they are the ones that the scripture only points to Christ in that office. Okay. You combine that and He's not only the Messiah, and there are other passages, like He does the same thing with the woman at the well in chapter 4. You know, when the Messiah comes and He says, I that speak unto thee am He. He did claim over and over again, but He did in verse number 54 of the previous chapter. He's saying, you call Him your God, He is my Father. I'm the Son of God. Verse 55, yet ye have not known Him, I'm in chapter 8 again. Sorry to confuse you. But I know him, and if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you. And I know him, but I know him, and keep his saying. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. Here's the short-sightedness of these Jewish leaders. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? And now what he does in this next verse, is very, very important. He says, Jesus saith unto them. Now, what could he have said? I know Abraham, but look how he said it. Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was Jehovah. That's what that means. It is the New Testament word for the Old Testament Jehovah. I am, I am And John centers on that. It's one of the many places that he claimed to be God in the flesh. He doesn't say, when Abraham was there, I was there. He could have made it any way he wanted. But he said, I am. And he's saying, I am Jehovah. And I am forever in existence in the past and will for the future. But look at the setting of our miracle in verse 59. Then took they up stones to cast at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them. And so passed by, and as Jesus passed by." Okay, what is that signal? Okay, so review this. Here he is, he's having this controversy with the religious leaders. They're going to lose. Jesus did not lose that controversy. He put them in their place. They wanted to kill him, but it wasn't the time to die yet. He came to give his life, and he was demonstrating what he's going to say later in chapter 10, that I have the power to lay it down. No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. And he said, I have the power to lay it down. I have the power to bring it back again, raise it up again. Now he's totally in control and he hides himself because it wasn't his time. But then as he's passing through the middle of these people, you imagine what the religious leaders are doing. Somebody grabbed that man. I have a little imagination and Jesus is looking back at them. I'm saying it isn't your time. And he's walking right through the middle, not in a rush, not in a hurry, because he's in total control of the situation. Somebody get him. We want to kill him. They have stones in their hands to kill the Lord. And he passing through the midst of them. Now that's a miracle. Now what happens? to prove that he wasn't running to hide, he's passing through and notices he has an appointment with this other man, a blind man, a man that has been blind his whole birth, a man who's been in the agony of this blindness. He's never looked into the eyes of his own mother, never seen a sunrise or a sunset. This man is locked in the grip of his disability. And the Lord, as he was passing out of the hands of these evil religious leaders, stopped and had an appointment with a man. And takes his time, takes enough time that in the healing, he makes mud of the ground, the earth, So you get the impression that the Lord's in such control that he's not even worried about the temple guard following. The temple guard had hundreds of volunteer soldiers that were part of it. They're part of the ones that, besides the Roman soldiers at Gethsemane, he is approached there at Gethsemane with a host of these hired guards from the temple. And where are the temple guards? The Lord knew. And if one came near, they were unable to get to him. The Lord stopped because he had an appointment with this man that was born blind. And the disciples are with him. And the verse in 59 and the verse 1 of chapter 9, both have the words passed by. Matthew Henry said, though he was in his flight from threatening danger and escaping for his life, yet he willingly halted and stayed a while to show mercy to this poor man, but also, I believe, I would add, to show that he was in total control of the situation. And then we notice that this providence, that there's a picture of Christ leaving the Jewish leaders who sought his life and coming to the blind man. In Matthew Henry again, when the Pharisees drove Christ from them in chapter 8, verse 59, he went to this poor blind beggar. And some of the ancients, Matthew Henry says, make this a figure of the bringing of the gospel to the Gentiles who sat in darkness when the Jews had rejected Christ and driven him from them. So there's a picture here that is often referred to that Christ was presenting himself to the Jews And he turns to the beggar, to the blind beggar, and then he went after him. Now, don't get confused. It's a picture. The beggar believed in the Lord, and there weren't any Gentile believers until Peter met Cornelius and so forth. All right, so then we go on. Let's go on to the next point, the problem, the problem, the problem. I better hurry a little bit now that we have the introduction finished. The problem, is that a problem? That's a problem I always have, is that I never get finished. I got an amen over here, so. Blindness was a very serious disability. Blindness was a Very serious disability. They didn't have programs to take care of the blind, schools for the blind. They hadn't created, Mr. Braille hadn't put together his reading abilities through those dots. I know you've seen those. How many of you tried when you were a kid to learn the alphabet that way? Yeah, yeah, I tried. I tried to, you know, you try and then fail. You'd have to be convinced that you were depending on it to really read from that. And have you ever seen the entire Bible in Braille? I mean, I remember this one blind person had it on the mantle of their fireplace, and it took the whole mantle, you know, volume after volume at the time. And, you know, so they didn't have any of that. A blind man basically was destitute. So look at verse number 8. The neighbors, therefore, and they which before had seen him that was blind, said, is not this he that sat and begged? So the problem of his blindness made him destitute. It was part of being blind at the time. You know, so it was more than today. Today we have a lot of features, and though a blind person is very seriously handicapped, they are much more well off today than in the day of Christ. But notice he was blind not just for a time. He was blind from birth, from birth. And the man had never seen it all. He never enjoyed even the brightness of the light and a very difficult situation. The next point is the perplexity. Perplexity. And I think you'll start to gather that there's a lot of, I would call, secondary subjects that are brought up in this chapter. that make it important to take our time to go through the chapter instead of just saying, oh, a blind man is getting able to see. But there's even this, this controversy in verse number two and verse number three, okay? Hi, David. We're in John chapter nine, if you want to jump in. Verse two, and his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, but that he was born blind. Now Jesus has an answer for him. He said, neither hath this man sin, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest. So you can tell that the predominating thought of their time was that the things that happened to a person happened because of their conduct. And especially things that were ill and that were not good. So here they're thinking he's blind because he did something wrong. And then they're perplexed because he had been born blind. So he's saying, the disciples are saying, well, Lord, Who sinned? Do you think this boy was born blind simply because of the sin of his parents? Now, if you get sick in this world, you might be getting sick because of the chastening hand of God. That's a possibility. The Bible tells us if you misuse the Lord's table, right? He said, if you abuse the Lord's table, Then the Bible says, for this reason or cause, many are weak and sickly among you and even many sleep or are dead. The chastening of God comes on a person. So really, when you get ill, or if you hear some bad sickness, some news of that, that comes into your life, it is probably good for us, each of us, to go to God in prayer and say, Lord, Is there anything in my life that needs to be forgiven and taken care of? Well, that's good. But the fact is, some of these sicknesses are not caused because of our conduct or the conduct of our parents. And this was the predominating thought at the time. And who did the sin, this man or his parents? And Jesus said, He revealed here, what is the answer, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. So it tells us, first of all, that not all sickness is a result of sin, your sin or your parents. But then he goes on to say that the things that happen to us are to exist for a testimony to the world. All right, so things don't just happen to a Christian, did you know that? Bible says in Romans chapter eight, verse 28, and all things work together for good to them that love God, to them are the called according to his purpose. Things don't happen to you by accident. The Lord has promised to protect us, but he allows things in our lives and sometimes there's no other reason than that God would be glorified in your life. It would be, I'm not, let's just, a small example coming to my mind where one of the pastors that were receiving my texts when we were getting those constant gifts You know, and I was daily texting saying, we got 1,000, we got 2,000 here, 2,000 here. I felt like, you know, we were at an auction and I was an auctioneer. The one pastor wrote back and said to me, are you gonna get audited by the IRS? And it's possible, and I don't think I want to be. Anybody volunteering to be? I mean, let's all go down to the IRS and say, hey, would you audit my financial records and my tax returns to see if I owe you some more money? I promise if you go to the IRS and offer them money, they'll take it. All right, they don't even have to have a reason to take it, okay? It's government, and government's like that. But let me tell you this. He said, are you gonna get audited? Now, I wouldn't like to be audited, but my response was, yes, it would be good. I would love to tell an IRS agent, explain that there's a God in heaven that has worked on our behalf. I'd like that opportunity. So just an example. We don't we normally look at the things that happened to us and say, oh, no, or what was me or your pity or feel sorry for yourself when all the way around the whole purpose God had was he knew you were going to handle it according to God's plan and that God would be glorified in your life. And this versus teaching us. the fact that the things that happen to us happen so that others may be taught by the lessons that we learn. Sometimes the problems that you and I face come because God wants to have the time to teach you some lesson that you can teach somebody else. If nothing, you might comfort somebody who has also been through the same problem. And I've watched that happen. When somebody would come and have a problem, Some of you that have been and walked in that shoes, walked in that mile, you'd say, I know what you're going through. And this verse tells us that's God's plan. So let's give you these, the pursuit. The pursuit. In our outline, letter D is the pursuit. So quickly, verse number four. And I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day. The light night cometh with no man can work. The Lord was saying here that he had a job to do. This is telling us that life is like a pursuit. There are lots of wasted time. I believe that we should have leisure time. I believe in that. I believe there should be a break. You could wear yourself out and your family needs you. Not just as far as Moms and dads especially. They need a mom and dad to be at home and not just busy all the time. But they're understanding that, the need for that balance. There is a need for a Christian to view their life as having enormous purpose. And we had better get the will of God done while we have the opportunity. While we have the chance. Whatever God's will is for your life. And you better get to it. The pursuit. And the Lord had this viewpoint. So I think you're seeing that this chapter is just filled with important things that we can't rush through. But that is the pursuit. Look at the power. Look at the power in verse number five. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Okay. And So he was demonstrating that this miracle had a great purpose. Turn to chapter eight again, verse number 12. This is continuing from the conversation previously. Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of light. And then he refers to this again in chapter nine, in verse number 5, and he's looking at a man who has spent his entire life in darkness physically. In chapter 8, he's dealing with a group of men who are blind spiritually, and they remain blind, and this blind man, physical blindness, is healed. He is the light of the world, and he has the power. It has the power to cause the blind to be able to see both physically and spiritually. Do you know what will cause somebody to come to salvation? It's the light of God's word, the truth, and the way that God will enlighten your life. And then we have the preparation. He goes in verse number six, he spits on the ground and makes clay, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with that clay. And the preparation for the blind man for the healing consisted in this. Seems like the opposite thing to cover the eyes of a man who's blind. Rather, you'd want to open his eyes. But Jesus was proving that his miracle was a miracle truly of God. and would allow this blind man to feel the blindness. And then lastly, I have more notes on that, but I'm going to skip to the last, the precept. He tells him in verse seven, go and wash in the pool of Siloam, which is by interpretation, sand. And this was not a difficult task. The Lord always asks us to do things that are within the power and ability of God, us to do them, or God will then, if it's above us, He will empower us. We like to say it this way, that His callings, our callings are His enablings. All right, and then the promise is implied. So Christ says, go wash, and there's a purpose. The idea is that God's about to heal. And he was to go to the pool of Siloam and wash. And then he went and he submitted and he came seeing. All right, so we will take the middle portion of this chapter on our task for next Sunday. And try to see what the Lord has in this every week for what the Lord has in these miracles that we're studying in the life of Christ. Let's have a word of prayer and we'll Get ready, we have about 12 minutes before the morning service. Heavenly Father, thank you for your blessings. Thank you for the written word, the record of the miracle working that you did while you were here and the purposes that are plainly seen. Help us, Lord, not to be blind to the truths that you're trying to get to our hearts. Bless today, bless this service. I pray if there are those that are here in this service, the next service, that don't know you as their Savior, I pray that today, would be the day that they trust in you. For it's in Christ's name we pray, amen.