So it's John 9, 1-12 for a sermon entitled, Secus Ad Gloriam Dei, which is Latin for, Blind to the Glory of God. Follow along as I read. As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind? Jesus answered, it was neither this man that sinned, nor his parents, but so that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me as long as it is day. Night is coming when no man can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. " When he had said this, he spat on the ground, made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes. He said to him, Go wash in the pool of Silom, which translated means scent. So he went away and washed and came back saying. Therefore the neighbors of those who had previously saw him as a beggar were saying, is not this the one who used to sit and beg? Others were saying, this is he. Still others were saying, no, but he looks like him. He kept saying, I'm the one. So they were saying to him, how is it that your eyes were open? He answered, the man who's called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. And so I went and I washed and I received my sight. They said to him, where is he? And he said, I don't know. One of the challenges raised by atheists against the Christian faith is what's called the problem of evil. You know, the Bible teaches that God is good and it also tells us that he's powerful and sovereign. As Job confessed to God, I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. So the atheist argument goes something like this. Premise one, an all-powerful God could eliminate all evil. Premise two, an all-good, loving God would eliminate all evil. Premise three, there is evil in the world. Conclusion, therefore, there is no all-powerful, all-loving God. God doesn't exist. Now, in response to this, some Christian apologists make what's known as the free will defense. They say, well, God gave man free will when he created us. That is the ability to choose between good and evil. He granted this so that the love that we had for him would be a genuine love, not something pre-programmed into us. Now, even after the fall, we still have this free will. God respects that free will, so if people misuse it, It's not God who's blamed, but the individual. Now, some people find this to be a persuasive defense. I don't. I mean, Jesus, we saw just a couple weeks ago, said, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who sins or commits sin is a slave to sin. That doesn't sound very free. And as to God respecting man's free will, why would he respect the free will of the Nazi guards who put Jews in the ovens, but not the Jews who didn't want to go into the ovens? Now, a lot of times, though, this debate is not merely theoretical, but personal. One man who tackled the issue of evil and suffering was Rabbi Harold Kirshner, who wrote a book entitled, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Kirshner's son, Aaron, suffered from progeria, which is a terrible disease that causes the body to degenerate quickly. So when you look at a 10-year-old with this disease, he looks like a miniature 80-year-old, bald, wrinkled, and frail. There's no known cure for it, and the average life expectancy is about 13 years. 90% of the patients who get this die from complications such as heart attacks or stroke. Aaron Kushner was 14 years old when he died. Now, Rabbi Kushner agreed that an all-good, all-powerful God would indeed eliminate all evil and suffering. Wanting to still believe that God exists, he argued that God is good and loving, but he isn't all-powerful and sovereign. Evil is outside of his ability to control. As one of his critics said, he made this comment, he said, against evil. In other words, God cares and is concerned, but he can't do anything about it. Well, in this story, the problem of evil and suffering is faced by Jesus and his disciples as they encounter a blind man. Here, Jesus corrects the disciples' faulty understanding of evil and suffering, and then he heals the blind man by granting him sight. So let's pray and get into the text so that we can have a biblical understanding of this as well. Our Father God, we do pray for grace and mercy. Open up our eyes and mind to understand what's in this text, just as you open up this man's mind and also his eyes to see the truth that Jesus would later reveal to him. So bless us now, we ask in Christ's name. Amen. Well, what do we see in the text? I think we see four things. First of all, the question that's asked. The question asked, that's verses 1 to 2. Secondly, the answer given, that's 3 to 5. Third, the miracle performed, that's 6 and 7. And finally, the response made, and that's 8 to 12. There was a band in the 60s, Moody Blues, who sang a song called Question. It starts this way. It says, why do we never get an answer when we're knocking on the door with a thousand million questions about hate and death and war? Because when we stop and look around us, there's nothing that we need in a world of persecution that's burning and it's greed. There's a lot of questions that are found in the Bible, aren't there? The first one was asked by the serpent. when he said, did God really say that you can't eat from any of the trees of the garden? Of course, he was calling into question God's truthfulness of his word and also his goodness, suggesting that God was perhaps holding out on Eve. The next question comes from God. It's directed towards Adam. Where are you? Of course, he and his wife were hiding because they had eaten from the forbidden fruit, and now they realized that they were naked, and they were ashamed. In the very next chapter, we find God confront Cain. He asked him, where's your brother? To which Cain said, I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper? He knew where his brother was. He had bashed his brains in a few hours before. Abraham asked God, will not the judge of all the earth do right? Of course he will. Job asked, if a man dies, will he live again? And the answer is a resounding yes. All people will be resurrected. either to eternal life or others to eternal judgment. Well, here the question comes from the disciples. We read, starting in verse 1, as they passed by, he saw a blind man from birth, and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind? Now, sometimes in the Bible study, they'll ask this question. If you had to give up one of your five senses, which would be the one you'd give up? Smell? Taste, those two are connected. Touch, hearing. I would guess for most of us, the last one we'd want to give up would be our ability to see. Now today, for blind people, there's a lot of resources that are available to help them get through life. You can get braille books. You have C&I dogs. A lot of crosswalks. They'll have audible sensors that alert a blind person of upcoming traffic. By the way, can you name some blind singers? Ray Charles? Stevie Wonder? Jose Feliciano? Ronnie Millsap? Andrea Bocelli? I mean, you can carry a tune even if you can't see the notes. But in Jesus' day, if you were blind, there was really only one option for a job, and that was simply to be a beggar. Now, we're not told where this took place, but it's likely that it took place just outside of the temple where the people would gather together hoping to get alms from the people who were going in to worship. Now, to their credit though, the disciples were looking at this problem from a theological perspective. I mean, they connected the man's plight to sin. And in one sense, all suffering and hardship goes back to the issue of sin. Paul tells us in Romans 5.12 that, therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned. Natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes and droughts and plagues are all just the groaning of the earth under the weight of man's sin. and all the diseases that we have, birth defects and cancer and mental illness, and a thousand other evils traced back to that first act of disobedience by our first parents. And you know, one of the great problems that we have in our culture today, in the modern world, is we try to understand social and personal problems without using a biblical framework. I mean, think about the field of psychology. The goal is to understand why people do what they do and how they think. But the two fundamental truths of human beings is that we're created in the image of God, and we're in rebellion against our Creator. Psychology doesn't deal with either of those issues. And so in a sense, it's like studying the ocean, but saying, we're not going to talk about water here. So the disciples are thinking right in theological terms, but they were wrong in putting out only two possible options for this man's present sad condition. They asked who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind? Now, in thinking that his parents might have sinned, the disciples probably were drawing on Exodus chapter 20, where God warned Israel against idolatry and said this, Now the Bible is clear that the children are not supposed to be put to death for the father's sins nor the father's for the children's sins. But it's certainly true that the sins of a parent affect and can show up in the succeeding generations. I mean a man might become an alcoholic just like his father or his grandfather before him. The other suggestion the disciples made, though, was that perhaps this man sinned before he was born. That seems odd. How can you sin before you're born? Did you know Vice President J.D. Vance took some plaque recently from his critics? J.D. Vance was raised in a very nominal Christian home. He got involved in a Pentecostal church some when he was a teen. Later he became an atheist, but eventually converted to Roman Catholicism. Now his wife, Usha, is an Indian who was raised in a Hindu home. The question asked by one of the reporters was, how do you navigate and negotiate these religious differences? Well, Vance said that they talk a lot about it, and that someday he hopes his wife will convert. Oh, man, did that cause a stir. And people charged him with bigotry. I mean, does he think that his religion is the true one, and his wife was false? Well, duh. Everybody believes the beliefs that they hold are true. Otherwise, they wouldn't hold them. Well, I read some of the comments by people who are from Hindu backgrounds, and some of them stated that they didn't like the idea of Jesus dying for your sins, because that tells people you can live any way you want and still be forgiven. They thought the Hindu belief of reincarnation and karma, where a person is paying for their sins in a past life, was much more just, logical, and fair. Was this man's blindness a result of bad karma from some sin committed in a previous life? No. Or perhaps he sinned when he was in the womb. You know, Jacob and Esau were fighting when they were in Rebekah's womb. And some of the rabbis at the time taught that if a pregnant woman went into a pagan temple to worship false gods, her unborn child became guilty of idolatry. I mean, they were in the temple with him, right? That brings us to the second thing that we see in the text, and that's the answer. And this is verses 3 to 5. Jesus' answer said it was neither that this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. Now Jesus isn't denying that there's a connection between suffering and sin. As we've already asserted, all evil and suffering ultimately trace back to that first sin. And sometimes there is an immediate direct cause and effect relationship. I mean, if someone commits suicide, which is a sin, putting the gun to your head and pulling the trigger is the cause. The death that results is the effect. If you engage in homosexual activity and you contract the AIDS virus, there's a direct one-to-one relationship between those two things. But the problem is you can't always draw a straight line from present suffering to some particular past sin. You see, that was the problem with Job's friends. They thought, you know, Job was suffering greatly, so he must have sinned in some terrible way. Come on, Job, just confess it and God will restore you. Now, Job knew he was a sinner, but he knew he hadn't done anything in particular that would have brought this calamity out. of losing his health, his wealth, his kids, and his flock. Well, he must have done something. Bad things don't happen to good people, Job. But they were wrong. Very wrong. And God rebuked them at the end of the story. I knew a lady who died from cancer. When I went to the funeral, the pastor said, this is not from God. He had nothing to do with your mom's cancer. Really? Granted, God didn't give her the cancer, but couldn't he have stopped her from getting it? Or healed her after she did? I mean, there are people in churches that teach what's called the health and wealth gospel. God's will for you is to be prosperous and to heal you of any disease. Bill Johnson is a pastor of the Bethel Church in Redding, California. He argues that it's always God's will to heal you, and it's just a matter of us having enough faith for it to happen. But in their church, a two-year-old little girl named Olive died. So they put out a call for prayer for the whole church after she died, asking God to raise her back to life. People gathered in the sanctuary and they pled earnestly for God to do so. And you know what happened? She stayed dead. And to say that God has nothing to do with the maladies that we struggle with? When Moses protested to God that he couldn't be the spokesman because he wasn't an eloquent speaker, God responded by saying this in Exodus 4. 11. Who gives human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? The Bible tells us that God works all things after the counsel of his own will. So here Jesus corrects His disciples by saying this in verse 3, So this man's sad situation and lot in life was just the backdrop on which God was going to display the fireworks of His grace through the power of Christ. Everything in this man's life had been designed to bring him to this point that the works of God might be displayed in him. As Paul would later write in Romans 8.28, This man wasn't actually a believer at this point, but he was among the elect, and God always works for his glory and the good of those he calls. So Jesus goes on to say in verse 4, While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Jesus was aware that he was on the Father's time schedule. He was two and a half years into his ministry, and he only had six more months before he would be crucified, die, resurrected, and return to heaven. So I think he's speaking metaphorically here with day and night, referring to life and death. But there's certainly a lesson that he's teaching. Listen carefully. You only have a certain number of days to serve the Lord. And for all you know, 95% of all those days Already gone. George Orwell wrote a book entitled 1984, in which he envisioned a scary dystopian future where the government would control people by inflicting pain upon them. Think of like the Soviet Union. Aldous Huxley wrote a book entitled Brave New World. He envisioned a world in which the government would control people, not by inflicting pain, but by distracting them with pleasure. Neil Postman wrote a book back in the 70s, or in the 80s, entitled Amusing Ourselves to Death. He sided with Huxley. Now, if Postman thought people were amusing themselves to death back in 1985, what would he say about people with their smartphones today? YouTube, TikTok, Instagram? I mean, how many people waste how much time doing that? And a thousand other things. I mean, think about it. If you spend your money, you can earn more. But when you spend your time, you can never get it back again. And at some point, there are going to be no more moments for you to spend. Otis Redding sang that song, I'm sitting on the dock of a bay, watching the tide roll away. Oh, I'm just sitting on the dock of a bay, wasting time. We shouldn't be wasting time. Moses, reflecting on the brevity of human life, prayed and said, so teach us to number our days so that we might present a heart of wisdom to you. Paul wrote, therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your days, because the days are evil. Jesus went on to say, while I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world. And as the light of the world, he was going to shine into this man's life who had lived in darkness up to this point. That brings us to our next thing we see in the text, the miracle performed. This is 6-7. When he had said this, he sat on the ground and he made clay of the spittle and he applied the clay to his eyes and said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which translated means sin. So he went away and washed and came back seeing. Jesus used spit, his own spit, to heal this man. And I have to tell you, that seems bizarre to our Western ears. I've seen police camera footage where the person getting arrested spits on the cop. That's not smart. The officer is not only going to arrest you, but he's going to put a mesh hood over your head so you can't do it again. And by the way, did you know you can be charged with assault for spitting on someone, let alone a police officer? Spitting in our culture is a way of showing contempt. for others. But there are some cultures, strangely enough, where spit is connected with healing. Elsewhere, we actually read that Jesus spit into a man's eyes to heal him. Well, here, he mixes a bit of dirt to make clay and he applies it to the eyes of the man to heal him. You know the Disney cartoon Beauty and the Beast? The townspeople are singing the praises of Gaston, the egotistical man who wants to marry Bill. The crowd says, no one hits like Gaston, matches wits with Gaston. In a spitting match, no one spits like Gaston. I'm especially good at expectorating. That's all going to be on the audio. He spits and they say, ten points for Gaston. Well, Gaston, let me tell you something. Jesus can outspit you. I read of one tribe, I don't remember if they were in New Guinea or Africa, but they attributed magical powers to spitting. And after they got saved, they sang songs of praise to Jesus as the great spitter. Well, Jesus was sent in the world to be the Savior, and this blind man sent to the pool to wash. When he did, he found out just how great a Savior he had. That brings us to our next point, though, the responses made. By the way, do you know what the term clickbait means? It's when someone puts up an internet post or some kind of ad that seems shocking, but it's false and misleading. And so the goal is to get you to click on to their website. So for instance, a sports headline may something like this, Steelers trade Aaron Rodgers to the Packers. But then when you click on it, it says, that would be interesting, but you just can be sure that's never going to happen. Of course, you also knew when you were growing up kids who would do things with the hope of getting a reaction, didn't you? Jesus wasn't grandstanding here when he performed miracles. They were all designed to help the person who received them and to reveal something about himself and God's work through him. Well, here this man had been born blind, was immediately and fully healed as he washed his eyes in the pool of Siloam. And amazing to me, he didn't seem to have any problem adjusting to his new circumstances. Evidently, there was no lag time or period of difficult adjustment. Well, this newly sighted man did get a reaction. He caused some waves. He stirred up discussion. And debate, as we can see in the response that were made to the miracle just performed. Look what it says in verse 8. It says, Are you familiar with the term doppelganger? It actually comes out of German mythology. It refers to a supernatural double of a living person, especially one who haunts the doubled person. Now, as it's used today, doppelganger, it refers to a person, not a relative of yours, who happens to look just like you. On my phone, I have a picture of my son Nathan. I show it to my grandchildren, and I say, who is this? It's Uncle Nathan! Except for it's not. It's some unknown person who looks just like their Uncle Nathan. I came across a story in the local newspaper here a few years back about somebody who had recently died, and they had a picture of him from when he was in the military in World War II. I looked at the picture, he looks just like my cousin Brian. It is eerie. Well, some people seeing this newly sighted man were wondering if this was indeed the beggar that they'd seen so many times. Others saying, no, he's a doppelganger. Hey, he looks like Captain Kirk, but actually I think it's Janice Lester who switched bodies with him. You Star Trek fans know that episode. But the formerly blind guy kept saying, I am the one. You know, when you ask, which one of you is Spartacus? And 20 people say, I'm Spartacus. You don't know which one it is. For all you know, it could be Cory Booker, the senator. I knew that would take a minute for that to sink in. But while others were doubting that this was the blind guy who is now seeing, He keeps coming forward and insisting that he was indeed Sachus Mackenzie, the man completely blind at birth. So they were saying to him, well, how did he then open your eyes? He answered, or who opened your eyes? Try it one more time. So then he was saying, how then were your eyes open? He answered and said, the man who's called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. So I went away and I washed and I received my sight. The fact of his healing are just a straightforward event. Clay in his eyes, a trip to Siloam, a little bit of water splashed in his eyes, and Eureka! I can see! He doesn't know much about Jesus other than his name. He doesn't even know where Jesus is. He said, where is he? And he said, I don't know. All he knows is that he had an encounter with Jesus, and as a result, for the first time in his life, he can see. I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It's going to be a bright, bright, sunshiny day. I think I can make it now. The pain is gone. All the bad feelings have disappeared. Here's the rainbow I've been praying for. It's going to be a bright, bright, sunshiny day. Look all around. There's nothing but blue skies. Look straight ahead. Nothing but blue skies. Now this man was healed of his physical blindness, but we're going to see later in the story that Jesus used this healing to teach on spiritual blindness, and that he alone, as the light of the world, can cause people to see. In Psalm 36.9, David, addressing God, says, For with you is a fountain of life, and in your light we see light. It's through the light of the truth found in God's word that we see clearly, evaluate correctly, navigate safely past all the obstacles we face. Let me ask you some questions here. Has the light been turned on for you? Has the God who said, let light shine in darkness, shone in the heart, your heart, to give you the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ? Jesus said, you must be born again to see the kingdom. What I'm asking is, has that happened to you? You know, there's great value even if you're not yet saved to know the true condition of your heart. Don't deceive yourself into thinking that you're something that you're not, a true born-again believer. Perhaps you are unsaved, but you at least know the state of your heart, and you feel the weight of God's wrath upon you. Perhaps you're even starting to despair that he'll ever save you. If so, let that despair drive you to Jesus. Believe him when he says, whoever comes to me, I will never drive them away. Except for the invitation that's found in Revelation 22, 17, where the spirit and the bride say, come, and let the one who hears say, come, and let the one who is thirsty come, and let them, whoever wishes, take the water of life without cost. You'll never get a better invitation in your life. But for those of us who have already received the light of life, let me ask you this, are you walking in that light? Paul reminded us, for you were once darkness, but now you're light in the Lord. Live as children of light. Give yourself to knowing and living out the truth you find in the scripture. Peter reminds us that we have a prophetic word made more sure in which you do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your heart. Before we end, I want to go back to the beginning and address that problem of evil. You know, as the atheists frame the issue, they make certain assumptions that are built into their argument. They're assuming that God hasn't done anything about evil, that He isn't doing anything about evil, and He will not yet do something about evil. But God has done something about evil. He sent His Son to die on a cross to pay for the sins of His people. At the cross, evil and suffering were met head-on. It was that greatest act of evil, of humanity, that came into conflict with the suffering of Jesus, and he brought them together to bring salvation. It's also the case that God is doing something about evil even now. He's calling a people for his Son, who live holy lives, striving to be free from sin. We're the ones who try to abstain from evil. And it's also the case that God will yet do something about evil. Christ will return. He'll punish the unrepentant evildoers in hell forever. And He will so conform His followers' character to His own, that we will eventually be incapable of sinning. And the suffering that resulted from all the sins? Listen to what John tells us in Revelation 21, 1-5. He said, Then I saw a new heavens and a new earth. For the first heavens and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and he will dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be among them. Listen to what he says then. He says, And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, And there will no longer be any death, no longer be any mourning or crying or pain, for the first things have passed away. And he who sits on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. And he said, write down these words for they're faithful and true. For the believer, not only blindness, but all of our suffering is ultimately for our good and God's glory. May God give you the grace to believe that. Let's pray. My father and God, when everything is going well, when we've been promoted, when we've lost 10 pounds, when our health is good and the money is rolling in, it's easy to think, I have no concerns. But when we get a phone call from a police officer, when we get a response from the doctor saying it doesn't look good, then everything changes. In the midst of the suffering though, Jesus told us we can have hope because he's overcome the world and he will promise, or has promised, Lord, that he will someday do away with all the suffering. So we pray that you'd help us to live with that hope and to look forward to that day when Jesus returns and makes all things new. So bless us that end for we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.