It's John chapter 9, and we're going to look at verses 35 to 41 for a sermon I've entitled, What the Blind Man Saw. And here's what it says. Jesus heard that they'd put him out, and finding him, he said, Do you believe in the Son of Man? And he answered, Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him? Jesus said, You've both seen him, and he who is the one talking to you, or he is the one who's talking to you. And he said to him, Lord, I do believe. And he worshipped him. And Jesus said, for judgment I came into the world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind. Now those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and said, we're not blind too, are we? Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would have no sin. But since you say, we see, Your sins remain. Back in 1997, the Hallmark Company released a movie entitled, What the Deaf Man Heard. This made-for-television film was seen by some 36 million people at the time. It's based on a 1996 novel by J.D. Guarino. It's a movie about a man who pretends to be a deaf mute, and in so doing, becomes the keeper of the small town's secrets. said in the 1940s, the movie opens with a scene of a single woman named Helen Ayers who is on the bus with her young son, Sammy. They're leaving Birmingham to go settle in a small town for a better life. Sammy's a talkative kid who just peppers his mom with questions after questions, and finally she gets annoyed and she says, not one more word. And of course that's the last thing she ever hears, or he ever hears from her. At a rest stop, Helen leaves Sammy asleep in the seat and goes into the bar for a drink. She ends up getting dragged out and murdered. Sammy's still asleep when all the other passengers get on the bus. No one notices that Helen isn't there. So when they finally reach the destination and everyone gets off, the driver wakes Sammy up, but doesn't say a word. The driver assumes Sammy is deaf and that his mother had abandoned him. Norton Jenkins, the manager of the bus terminal, feels sorry for Sammy and so he prepares a place for him to stay in the bus terminal. No one suspects that Sammy can't hear except for one young nasty boy named Tolliver who lights off a cherry bomb firecracker with a hope of scaring him. But Sammy sees it in a reflection and so he's prepared for the blast and he doesn't flinch. From that point on, no one ever questioned Sammy, and everyone assumed that he could, in fact, not hear. So for the next 20 years, Sammy works as the town's handyman, never speaking, but always listening, listening to all the things that town folks are talking about. By this time, the bratty Tolliver kid has grown up. His father died earlier, leaving a large trust fund, which he is set to inherit when his mother dies, which he is hoping is going to happen pretty soon. In the meantime, Tolliver is embezzling money from the church to fund his get-rich schemes. Unknown to him is the fact that Sammy heard him talking about this to someone, so Sammy knows about this. He also knows about the Moonshiners and their illegal activity. Now on one occasion, not knowing where to store their alcohol that they had been brewing, they decided to put it in the baptistry of the church. Later on in the story, the church hires a new pastor, Reverend Pruitt, who reads in an article in the paper about some rock band that claimed to be bigger than God. And so Pastor Pruitt decides that they're going to have a bonfire and invite the kids to come and burn their records. Yeah, the records burned and the embers rose high into the sky and some floated over to the church and through the window and one of those smoldering embers landed in the baptistry. The church goes up in flames and is burned to the ground. According to the Wikipedia article, it says this, Tolliver is put on trial for his embezzlement at the church is revealed to be uninsured. Sammy is called as the first witness and everyone's surprised when he speaks. Tolliver's mother collapses and dies from shock. Tolliver believes he's finally entitled to his inheritance. But Norm reveals a notarized affidavit that he found decades earlier in which Tolliver's father identifies Sammy as his illegitimate son by Helen, born before Tolliver. As firstborn, Sammy is the legal heir to the Tynan family fortune according to the terms of the will. And so Tolliver is sent off to jail. Now, interesting side note on this movie, the actor who played Sammy, Matthew Modine, in order to really get into the role, he did not speak to any of the other actors on the set the whole time they were making the movie. What the deaf man heard is a movie well worth seeing, but since I just spoiled it for you by telling you the whole thing, don't bother. Now, I'm sure that you've already gathered that the title for my sermon is kind of a takeoff on the title of this film. Two weeks ago, we saw the actual healing of Jesus by this man born blind. Last week we saw the aftermath where the parents and this man himself were interrogated by the religious leaders who accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath. Well, here we have the conclusion of the story where Jesus again meets up with this newly sighted man and then has his final words with the religious leaders. It's here that we learn something about spiritual sight and spiritual blindness. So again, with the hope that God would open our hearts and eyes and minds to see the truth that he has in his word, let's pray and get into the text. Father God, I pray for grace and mercy. Open up our hearts and minds so that we understand these things, so that we might be transformed by the truth. We ask now in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I think if you want to outline this sermon, we can do it with just two headings. One, you can put down spiritual sight, that's verses 35 to 38, spiritual sight. And then spiritual blindness, and that's 39 to 41. Now just to summarize where we've been in the last couple of weeks, Jesus encountered that beggar who had been born blind. And of course that got his disciples wondering, was it this man who sinned? or his parents that he had this plight. And Jesus said it was neither this man nor his parents, it was that the glory of God, the works of God, might be displayed. So then Jesus healed the man, but it was the Sabbath, and after the newly healed man was seen by his friends, they brought him to the religious leaders who wanted to interrogate him. Now they couldn't deny that he was sighted now, brought the parents in and they said, well, we know this is our son, we know he was born blind, we don't know how he got in this condition. But they argued that despite all of that, Jesus was not from God. And then when this man argued with them, they insulted him and they put him out. And that brings us to our first point, the spiritual sight. Jesus heard that they had put him out. Now let's camp on that for a minute. What John's means is that this now newly sighted man healed by Jesus was kicked out of the synagogue. In other words, he was excommunicated. The church is supposed to practice excommunication with members if they're confronted with egregious sins and they refuse to repent. Jesus tells us about the process in Matthew 18, 15-20 when he says this, if your brother sins, Go and show him his fault in private. If he listens, you've won back your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take two or three with you, that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact might be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, then tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. You might recall that situation in the church in Corinth where there was a guy who was in a sexual relationship with his stepmother. And Paul was shocked by this. Shocked only by this, but the fact that the church didn't seem to want to deal with it. Perhaps they were thinking, we're not judgmental here. But Paul, stunned on this, wrote to them and he said, you know, even though I'm not there with you physically, I'm there with you in spirit. And he said, I've decided to deliver such a one over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord. Turned over to Satan? Think of what happened when God allowed Satan to do what he did to Job. But the hope in the process is that the person will come to their spiritual senses and repent. And of course, that's what actually happened to this guy. As you read 2 Corinthians, the man repented of this. It's not only Christian churches, though, that practice forms of excommunication. The Amish have their shunning. Muslims, they have honor killings for those who leave their religion. Remember I told you before that I went to school at Northwestern College, and my first year there, there was an Orthodox Jewish girl who had converted to Christianity. Her parents had a funeral for her after she had left the religion. A nice note on that, though. She led her rabbi to the Lord on his deathbed. But every organization has to have some way of distinguishing between those who are insiders and those who are outsiders, and removing those who claim to be insiders but their life is inconsistent with the standards of the group. I mean, in the military, if you do something that's wrong, you can get what's called a dishonorable discharge. These religious leaders had determined that this man, by defending Jesus after he healed him, should be dishonorably discharged, and so they excommunicated him. That is, they kicked him out of their religion. Well, the sad news was that he got kicked out of the synagogue, but the good news is he's about to enter the kingdom of God. And notice the next words here, in verse 38, in finding him. You've heard about seeker-sensitive churches? Think about it. If an unbeliever really were seeking God and they went to a church where they preached the gospel, how long would it take to find God? It's not like he's hiding. The Bible actually teaches that people don't seek after God naturally in their own state. Romans 3, 11-12 says this, there's none who understands, there's none who seeks after God. All have turned aside, all together they've become useless. There's no one who does good, there's not even one. Rather than seeking God, unbelievers run from God, suppressing the truth they know about Him, with the hope that they can think Him out of existence, like an atheist would, or just not think about Him at all. In Ephesians 4, 18-19, it says this, Paul describes unbelievers as those who have been darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that's in them, because of the hardness of their hearts, and they have become callous, having given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness." If a person's ever going to gain spiritual sight so as to be saved, it has to begin with Jesus seeking and finding us. Jesus himself said, the Son of Man came to seek and save, that which is lost. He came to earth on a search and rescue mission. He had already healed this man of his physical blindness. Now he searched out for this man to find him because he's going to rescue him from his spiritual blindness. You know, in the third verse of that song that we sing, Jesus Strong and Kind, it says this, Jesus said, if I am lost, he will come to me. And he showed me on that cross He will come to me. For the Lord is good and faithful. He will keep us day and night. We can always run to Jesus. Jesus, strong and kind." Jesus, strong and kind. This man was an outcast because he was blind, but now he was cast out because he sees. But the good shepherd leaves the 99 sheep behind and goes and finds the one that was lost. And when Jesus found the man, he asked him a question. Do you believe in the Son of Man? Jesus claimed on a number of occasions to be the Son of God, but if you read through the Gospels, you'll find that he most often refers to himself as the Son of Man. We read of the Son of Man in the book of Daniel, where the prophet received a vision. He says this in Daniel 7, 13-14, And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all the peoples and nations and men of every language might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away, and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed." So the Son of Man was a title referring to the Messiah. Jesus was asking this man, do you believe in the Messiah? Dennis Prager is a politically conservative talk show, radio talk show host, who happens to be Jewish. I remember listening to him one time, and he said that in his yeshiva, that's a Jewish day school, when he was growing up, he said, we never really talked much about the Messiah. Or another Jewish man said, he always knew there was a messianic age coming, but he didn't know anything about the Messiah. But Jesus wanted to know this man, his opinion. Do you believe in the Son of Man? To which he responded, Who is he, Lord? But I might believe in him." Now, Orthodox Jews and conservative Christians both agree that the Tanakh, that is the Old Testament, predicts the coming of a Messiah. But what divides us is this question. Is Jesus of Nazareth that promised Messiah? The Jews say, no, Jesus was just another of a long line of failed claimants who showed himself to be a fraud. Christians say, he wasn't a fraud, he was the Son of God, Israel's promised king. But what I'm saying is this, it's not enough to believe in the concept of a Messiah. You have to know who that Messiah is. And this man wanted to know who he was so he could believe in him. I love the straightforward, tender response that Jesus gives to his inquiry. Jesus said to him, You've both seen him, and he who's talking to you is the one. A woman was visiting her aunt in the nursing home. She was suffering from Alzheimer's. So she kneeled down in front of her aunt's wheelchair, looked her in the eye and said, do you know who I am? And her aunt responded by saying, no, but if you ask at the front desk, they can tell you who you are. Now up until a few hours before this, this man had never seen a single face, but now he's looking at the face of the Son of God, Israel's Messiah. You know, one of the greatest hymn writers of the church was a woman named Fanny Crosby. Some of her better known hymns are, All the Way My Savior Leads Me, Take the World Would Give Me Jesus, Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine. Do you know she wrote over 9,000 hymns and a bunch of patriotic songs? She was a relative of the revolutionary war hero, Enoch Crosby, who was an American spy who had been captured and freed four times by the British. Well, Fanny was either born blind or lost her sight at six weeks of age, I'm not really sure. But later, reflecting on her misfortune, she said this, listen, it seemed intended by blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life. And I thank Him for that dispensation. If perfect sight, earthly sight, were offered to me tomorrow, I wouldn't accept it. I might not have ever sung songs to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me. She once also said this, When I get to heaven, the first face that is going to gladden my sight will be that of my Savior. Whatever hardships or heartaches or sufferings you have to endure, If you belong to Christ, it'll all be for his glory and your ultimate good. This man was born blind, but now he sees both physically, but more importantly, spiritually. And when his eyes were opened to see Jesus as a Christ, look how he responded in verse 38. He said, Lord, I believe. Now before this, the man had addressed Jesus as Lord, but by that he was just using it as a polite way of saying, Sir. But now when he calls Jesus as Lord, it's in the deeper theological sense. As it says in Romans 10.9, If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Or as it says in 2 Corinthians 4, 6, and this was his experience, for the God who said, let light shine out of darkness is the one who's just shown into this man's heart to give him the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. And then we're told, and he worshiped him. That's the end goal of all that God is doing in this world and in our lives. To bring us to worship him and to delight in his son as our highest joy. John later tells us why he wrote this gospel and recorded the miracles that he did. He said, therefore, this is John 20, 30 to 31, Therefore many other signs also Jesus performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these have been written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. So while this man had been granted spiritual sight so as to be saved, the religious leaders remained in spiritual darkness, as we see in the next part, spiritual blindness. This is 30-41. By the way, if you would have gone to the Soviet Union in the 1970s or 80s, one thing you could be sure of is that wherever you went, you would be followed by KGB or local police. Well, evidently, the religious leaders were keeping a close eye on Jesus, for when he made this statement, they were around to hear it. And reflecting on the incident and the blind man, Jesus said in verse 30, Jesus said, John 3.16 and 17 says, But then the next verse goes on to say this, He who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. You see, the result of Jesus coming into the world was that some might have their eyes open to see and be saved, while others become blind. But think about it, if you're born physically blind, you can't become blinder. But when it comes to spiritual blindness, we're all born blind, but you can become blinder. Remember what God told Isaiah? When he commissioned him, he said, go tell this people, meaning the people of Israel, keep on listening, but do not perceive. Keep on looking, but do not understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull and their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed. We proclaim the gospel. As Paul said, God manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance, a smell, of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing." Listen to what he says. To the one, an aroma of death to death, and to the other, an aroma of life to life. I'm a minister of the gospel. There are people that when they see me out on the street, smile. And there are other people that when they see me on the street, grimace. The same preaching that opens minds in some, in others it renders their hearts insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim. In verse 40, we read those of the Pharisees who heard him say these things said to him, We're not blind too, are we? Do you remember at the Last Supper when Jesus announced to his disciples that one of you is going to betray me? We read, being deeply grieved, they all each began to say, Surely not I, Lord. I mean, they were terrified that they might turn out to be the betrayer. But Judas also said, surely not I, Rabbi. But I'm sure he said it with a slight smirk on his face, because he already knew what he had planned on doing. Well, when these religious leaders asked if they too were blind, it wasn't with a sense of fear and dismay that they might indeed be spiritually blind. It was a cynical, dismissive question, for while others might be blind, they were sure that they as Israel's leaders were not. But Jesus said to him in verse 41, if you were blind, you'd have no sin. But since you say, we see, your sins remain. You know, there's a period of time in the 1700s which the historians refer to as the Enlightenment. It's also known as the Age of Reason. It was a time when the leading thinkers of the age threw off the shackles of the church and the Bible and looked to reason and science to interpret the world. Writers like Voltaire, Hume, Kant, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith believed that they were leaving the dark ages behind them and stepping into a dawn of light and truth. John Gerstner refers to this not as the Enlightenment, but as the Endarklement. In rejecting the revelation of God and scripture, these New Age thinkers were not bringing civilization to the light of day, but into the depth of night. Yes, it's true that the scientific revolution of that time has brought us everything, including cell phones today. But has it made us morally more advanced? A number of years ago, there was a news story. It was an older man who was out fishing on a pond. And he reached over to the side, and his boat tipped. and he couldn't swim, and so he started to drown. There were four teenage boys standing on the shore watching him. They didn't help. Instead, they took out their phones and they captured it on video. They were laughing, and in one part you hear one of the boys say, oh, it looks like he's going down for the last time. I don't think he's coming up this time. And then they posted it. Is that what the Enlightenment has brought us? I would say that's not an advance. Jesus is saying of these religious leaders, if you were blind, if you had no knowledge or revelation of God, you wouldn't have sin. But everybody has some revelation of God. If nothing, well, we have natural revelation. Remember it says in Romans chapter 1, 18 to 20, it says, For the wrath of God is being revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness. Because that which is known about God is evident to them, for God has made it evident are within them, for God has made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and His divine nature have been clearly seen and being understood by what's been made, so that they're without excuse." Well, others have special revelation available. The Jews had the Old Testament Scripture. Today, we have the Old and the New Testament. These religious leaders not only had the Bible of their time, but they had had experiences with the Messiah and saw the miracles he did, including the miracle of healing this man born blind. They had all that, and they refused to believe. All the while, they claimed, we see. So Jesus said, your sins remain. They say there's none so blind as those who refuse to see. That brings us to us. What the deaf man heard? Everything going on in town. What the blind man saw? That Jesus was indeed the Son of Man, who is the Lord, who deserves to be worshipped. Let me ask you this question as we finish up. How are your ears? Do they hear? How are your eyes? Do they see? If so, use them as God intended to take in his word and to live it out in your life. And if not, why don't you ask Jesus, the great physician, to heal you so your ears can hear and your eyes can see. May God give your eyes, you eyes, like the eyes he gave to this blind man. Let's pray. Our Father in God, we have to have our eyes open, otherwise we remain in darkness. And we know from earlier in John's Gospel, he said, men love the darkness rather than the light, and so they don't come to the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed as evil. Father, we thank you for the light of your Word. We thank you for hearing it even this morning. But only your Spirit can make a person see like Jesus did with this man that day. I pray for the people here, Lord, who may not know you, that you would call them soon. And for those who are going to listen over the internet and the radio broadcast, Lord, we pray for them as well. Open up hearts and minds and eyes, and do so that your son might be seen and cherished forevermore. For we ask in his name. Amen.