I love simple hymns that I can understand and that I can sing. That was arranged by Ira Sankey, who was D.L. Moody's song leader in the 1800s, and it's so easy to read and to sing. It's like a child's hymn, and yet I greatly appreciate the simplicity of that hymn, and I greatly appreciate artists that can do things like that. Please turn your Bibles to John chapter nine. We have going through this chapter. It is the healing of the man born blind. This is our sixth message. And this morning we're going to be dealing with verses 13 through 17. And we've subtitled this message, the first inquisition, the man before the Pharisees. But let us read verses one through 17 this morning. As he passed by, that is the Lord Jesus passing 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? It was the general consensus of all of Israel that if you had great calamity on your life, it was because of hidden sin, either by you or by the parents before you. And so you were automatically denounced as a great sinner that could be ignored. and even ridiculed because of the physical calamities that you were enduring. We see this in the attitude of even Jesus' disciples after sitting at his feet for three years. Jesus answered, it was neither that this man's sin nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. Jesus tells us unashamedly that he ordained the blindness of this man from birth in order to reveal the works of God, the works of mercy later on in this man's life. He says, we must work the works of him who sent me as long as it is day. Night is coming when no one 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 and made clay of the spittle and applied the clay to his eyes and said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is translated scent. So he went away and washed and came back seeing. Therefore the neighbors, so he's done all this, he walks home, and the neighbors recognize him, but they don't really recognize him. Verse 8, therefore the neighbors and those who previously saw him as a beggar were saying, is not this the one who used to sit and beg? Others were continually saying over and over again, this is he. Still others were continually saying, no, but he is like him. But he kept saying over and over again, I am the one. So there was this scene, this constant argument back and forth. It can't be him, but it must be him. No, this is not the one. And all along, the man who everyone is ignoring, because after all, he was just a blind beggar. No one ever really cared about him. was crying out so they would listen to him. I am he, I have been healed of my blindness. So they were saying to him, how then were your eyes open? They finally said, oh, okay, it's you. How then did this happen? He answered, the man who is called Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. And so I went away and washed and I received sight. They said to him, where is he? He said, I do not know. Before chapter 9, it's obviously chapter 8. And chapter 8 is the great discourse between Jesus and the ruling elders of Israel at the temple. Chapter 8 chronicles the account of the best biblical scholars of the day attacking the veracity and the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ that he is the very Son of God. He told them, before Abraham was, before Abraham existed, I am. He used Old Testament language to tell them that he is the God of the Old Testament. Ego eimi, ha'on. The same words God used to Moses at the burning bush. Before Abraham was, before he ever existed, I am the eternal existent one. That's what he told them in John chapter eight. So these men were defeated at every turn. in this long, protracted discourse that takes us through, what, I think, 51 verses in John chapter, 59 verses in John chapter 8. Their defeat by the Lord Jesus Christ at that public meeting, that public argument, if you will, was so devastating to that small band of ecclesiastical oligarchs that they lost their temper, they lost their composure, and they simply picked up rocks and tried and attempted to stone Jesus to death. That's losing your cool. So now we have the opposite of this discourse. Again we have the Son of God having this discussion, although intense discussion, with the top lawyers, the top theologians of the day. But now again this is completely opposite of all of that. This passage, the passage that we're going to study today in chapter 9 and verses 13 through 17, begins with Jesus sending this recently blind man, healed blind man from birth to this court, to this court of these Pharisees. This man was not just a babe in Christ, he was an embryo in the faith. He knew nothing. All he knew when he entered those doors was that the man that healed him was named Jesus, and he did not know where he was. He knew very little about the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet this is the man that God chose to represent him in this kangaroo court. That's an amazing thing. He was aware of two things, and we'll find out in this passage, that he was aware that Jesus' name was Jesus, and that he was a prophet. And that is, to say the least, not a very good description of the eternal son of God. But that's all that he knew, and we'll talk about that in a minute. What is important to know is that this man was not on trial. the Lord Jesus Christ was on trial. But the irony was that now that all of this has passed away, we can see that Jesus may have been on trial because these men organized this court, but these men were on trial. Because once a man, and I don't care who you are on this planet or where you live or when you live, if you decide to attack the very word of God and place God on trial, you in fact are the one that is on trial. And that is what happened to these men. This was a mock trial. It was a kangaroo court. It was an inquisition. And some of you young people might not know what an Inquisition is, but we have had several Inquisition periods in world history, in church history. The most famous, of course, was the Spanish Inquisition. There were other Inquisitions in Prague in the 1400s. In England, there were Inquisitions in England that many people lost their lives. There were Inquisitions in Germany and France. And these inquisitions were very, very evil indeed. An inquisition is designed to put fear into people. Not necessarily the man that they are subjecting to this horrible inquisition, but so all can watch what's happening to this man and his family. They want the whole region to be in fear that if they don't stay in line with the ruling class, this could also happen to them. When you are brought before the inquisitors, you're not innocent until proven guilty. You have already been deemed guilty. You are guilty of the crime that they've accused you before they even bothered to talk to you about it. In fact, they don't want to talk to you about it. They simply want you to recant of your sins. They want you to get back on track. They want you to reaffirm your loyalty to the Catholic Church, for example. So what does they do to a man that they arrest? Well, the first thing they do in an inquisition is arrest a man. Now, this man in our story was not arrested, but an inquisition is very, very brutal. They arrest the man. They take his positions. possessions, they displace his family where they cannot earn a living. Everybody has to scorn them because the family has to suffer greatly. So this man will then go to prison where they're going to starve him to death, torture him and break his spirit and also be worried about his family. So usually it takes about a year to go through all of that. They bring them before the inquisitors and they basically demand that he recant of his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. If he does not, they will simply torture him more and then kill him, usually by fire or drowning or many other ways in those days. If he does recant and reaffirm his loyalty to the Mother Church, the Catholic Church, Rome, then they will still remand him to prison for the rest of his life, which will be very short because he will die of dissipation very, very soon. So that's what happened during the periods of the Inquisition. Upwards of 50 million people were murdered during the periods of the Inquisition, the Dark Ages. The most probably famous would be John Huss and his friend Jerome of Prague, who were placed, what I just described happened to both of them, and both of them were put to death in the end. It happened to, Ridley and Latimer in England. They were brutalized and they were having a very difficult time with all this. They were imprisoned in Oxford. You can go there and there's a gate called Baccaro Gate and that was the prison of Oxford. And right outside the gate, the gate, this Bacaro gate, there is just a regular paved road, black top road, and right in the middle of that road, there's a brick layout, about as big as this pulpit, brick crosses, no insignias or anything, and this is where Ridley and Latimer were put to death. And when they lit the fire, it was very, very tough on on Ridley. He started to panic, and Latimer calmed him down, and he said, ìEverythingís going to be okay.î He said, ìPlay the man, Master Ridley.î And he did, and they were burned to death in front of all of these Catholic monks. That's what this is going on here. Maybe not as intense, but the whole point to what's going on in this courtroom is to murder the very son of God, to put him on a cross and kill him. So no doubt these scribes and these Pharisees, who was in the courtroom? Was it the getting together of the 70 rulers of Israel, the Sanhedrin? Was it just the Pharisees who were the religious court of the day? We're not told. But the point is, I think that these men were glowing in anticipation. They had just been defeated. In fact, they were stopped from putting Jesus to death at the end of John chapter seven by Nicodemus himself. Does our law allow us to condemn a man who has not been heard? And everyone went to their own home. Chapter eight, they try to pick up rocks. Now they've got this guy. And they are very, very excited about it. They're going to crush this insignificant sinner in the name of the law of Moses. Little did they know that they were about to be confounded by this man. That this man was not the man that they expected. They did not understand that he was an actually wise man. And he knew his Bible. We'll find that out as we go through this passage. This man was literally the least of all the saints. He had only spoken to Jesus and been healed and he knew nothing about him. And yet the wise were about to be confounded by the foolish things of the world. I'd like to read first Corinthians chapter one, verses 26 through 29. Paul is writing to the church at Corinth and he explains how the gospel goes forth. For you see your calling brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. What a perfect picture of this court. What a perfect picture of this recently healed blind man standing before this august court that is there for one reason, to do the, to do the bidding of their father, Satan himself. So let's look at verse 13 then. The man is taken to this court. Literally it says this, they bring to the Pharisees him that was before blind. Now we don't know who they were. Did a small band of Pharisees that were following Jesus wherever he went witness the miracle? It's very possible. Were they under orders to arrest this man and bring him before the court? In other words, was it planned? We don't know. or possibly after the neighborhood meeting where they were arguing about it, and they said, well, where is he? He says, I don't know. Maybe they said, you know what? We're going to bring you before the Pharisees. We're going to ask them to assemble an ad hoc court so we can settle this issue. Now, they shouldn't have. What they should have done was brought him to the temple praising God for the wonderful work that God has done in this man and offered sacrifices to the priest and praise God before anybody would listen. But that's not what happened. This man was again born blind and now he sues. So we're not sure what happened. But if it was the friends, if it was the neighbors, it's really sad because these were religiously oppressed people. They were Jews, and they had the Old Testament, and they had the synagogue teaching, and yet they sat under a false religion of Talmudic tradition. And so they were lost in this corrupt man-made religion that was placed alongside the Old Testament, and it was just confusing for every single person. And so these were slaves to their masters. And it's really sad because they were slaves to religious tradition. And so they were complicit in all this. They subjected themselves to their own pain and misery by following these blind leaders of the blind. And so it was very possible that these were the people that actually dragged their friend, dragged their neighbor before this council. This interrogation, this inquisition. So whether it was ordered by the court or whether the Pharisees arrested him and brought him to the court or the friends and neighbors just dragged him to this court, we do not know. It really is irrelevant. But what is important to remember, I think if we review this quickly, are these things. Number one, The Pharisees were obsessed with Jesus ever since he arrived at the temple at the beginning of John chapter 7. He had gone to the Feast of Tabernacles. It's been a couple of weeks now and he's been hanging around Jerusalem. And at the very moment that they found out that Jesus was coming to the feast, they said, where is that one? Where is Hutas? Very derogatory, hateful language. Number two, the friends and neighbors were definitely fearful of their rulers, of their religious oppressors. Number three, The people were all taught that physical calamity was due to secret sin. And therefore, how is it possible that a person that has been born blind can now see again? It doesn't fit with their theology. If he's being punished for secret sin, how can he now see? That is a struggle for these people. So, consequently, they sought counsel from the council. Number four, the religious elite wanted to accuse, convict, and put Jesus to death simply for working on the Sabbath. That's all this is about. That was their go-to crime. We'll see that in verse 14. He healed the man on the Sabbath. He broke Sabbath law. He must be put to death. Fifth, the council wanted to intimidate the man. They wanted to intimidate the friends and the neighbors. And they wanted to intimidate all that would even consider following the Lord Jesus Christ, because that's what's going to happen to them. And you can see this as the book of Acts starts to unfold. We see in Acts chapter 8 that James was killed by Herod Antipas, that the people had to scatter to all the different countries around the Mediterranean. And of course, the apostles stayed put. And so this was a very real thing. And this was the inaugural inquisition, if you will. It was only going to get much worse for Christians. So they wanted everybody to know that there are severe consequences that lay ahead for you if you desire in any way to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. So this is also very sad. Right? Because people love to hear about the gospel. The gospel is something that should bring joy and happiness to every human being on the planet. Jesus had healed a man born blind. He credentialed his Messiah ship. He proved that he is the very son of God for no man can do these things except God be with him. So it should have been enough to stop all opposition to Jesus Christ. This is not his first miracle. This is one of thousands that he has been doing for the last three years. And yet there was opposition. It should have been enough for everybody to stop what they were doing and say, you know what, I'm going to show respect. I'm going to talk to him the way Nicodemus came to him by night, and calmly and respectfully asked him a question. It should have been enough to rethink their murderous designs, but it wasn't. It wasn't. The opposite occurred. And that's what's really sad about, an ungodly world, a lost world, a world that lives in darkness and their opposition to the gospel itself. We see this in such vivid imagery here. Jesus was not welcomed for doing this. He was being prosecuted as a criminal. How sad is that? How very sad is that? So now the crime is revealed in verse 14. Now it was the Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. There it is. That's the charge. That's the charge. That's all they've got. Amazingly, that's the charge. Amazingly, this is the reason everybody was so upset about the fact that a man born blind received his sight. Oh no, that's okay. But he did it on the Sabbath. In fact, if you go into Luke 16, I believe, Jesus goes to this unnamed synagogue in a small town, and he heals the woman who had an 18-year infirmity. No, she was a one that was doubled over. She had this bad scoliosis. And she came into the synagogue, and he healed her. the leader of the synagogue was outraged that Jesus would dare do this on the Sabbath. And Jesus, of course, argued. Any of you have an animal that's in a ditch? Is it not okay to get him out of the ditch if it's the Sabbath? What if there's a baby being born on the Sabbath? Do the midwives not deliver? This was a child of Abraham. Of course it's an act of mercy, and that should be the highest point of the Sabbath. But to show mercy on a fellow Israelite. They couldn't see it. Because they had created these laws. Jesus said that God made the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath. That's the difference in the religion right there. They turned it on its head and said you are made for the Sabbath and you will submit to all rules and our regulations which are not the law of Moses. The previous verse, which we just read, simply tells us the facts that they brought him before the Pharisees. And now we are told that Jesus again performed an act of mercy on the Sabbath. We can be sure that Jesus did this to reveal to everybody in the world, not just them, but for all the preceding generations, and we're talking about it right now, that man-made tradition can never, ever undermine or supersede the very law of God. And that's what they were doing. They were trying to place their laws as superior to the law of God. That's what the Reformation was all about. Luther basically said, I don't care what you believe, I need to find it in the Word of God. So the Rome came up with two simple points of argument. The authority of the church and the supreme authority of the Pope. And Luther said, the supreme authority of the word of God, Sola Scriptura. That's what the whole Reformation was based on. And here it is right here. It does not matter what man-made religion says. It only matters what the law of God said. So when you think that Jesus was antagonizing people by constantly healing on the Sabbath, he was doing it for a reason. He was doing it to show us that no man will supersede the law of God. Jesus was not breaking any laws. In fact, he was doing exactly what God would want us to do on the Sabbath. It was they who had perverted these laws, and no one else, certainly not the Lord Jesus Christ. And they did this for a reason, to control the people. That's what all man-made religions do. Mercy was never found in their vocabulary. Love was never found in their vocabulary. They did not care about the man. They didn't care that he was a blind beggar that had no life. They could care less. They certainly didn't care about the miracle that literally proved that the Messiah was standing in their midst, and they would not deal with it. How sad is that? That a man can be so blind and wicked in his sin, that no matter what happens, he just obstinately says, I will not believe. And we look at these men, and we say, well, they're the exception. No, they're the rule. They're the example for lost men. So very, very sad. So the Inquisition begins in verse 15. Literally, my literal translation, I do this because I want you to better understand the passage. Again, therefore, the Pharisees also asked him how he received his sight. And he said to them, look how short his answers are. Clay he put on my eyes, and I washed. And I see. That's it. That's all he said to these men. The designs of the council were exceedingly evil. It was a foregone conclusion that the man was born blind. Did they interview the witnesses? Did they interview the Pharisees that were spying on Jesus? Did they interview the friends and neighbors that had that conversation? I think probably all of it. These men prepared themselves the best they could. So there was no way to deny the miracle. There was no way to deny that this was the man that was born blind and now he sees. They wanted to. In fact, in the third inquisition, they're going to bring him back and try to get him to admit that he was never born blind. And they're going to try and intimidate his parents that he was never born blind. But for now, Their method, their strategy is to admit that he was born blind and how did this happen? Their motives couldn't be revealed in obvious ways, right? They had to hide their true motives, what they wanted to do. So they simply asked him, how did you receive your sight? Let us understand that they knew how. They knew that Jesus of Nazareth had healed this man. There was no doubt in anybody's mind that that happened. That was why the man was there. There was no other reason for the man to be there except that Jesus Christ healed the man born blind on the Sabbath. Jesus of Nazareth again proved that he is the Son of God by doing something that had never been done by any man in the history of the world. And only a man that was sent from God, of course, could do something like this. So what is necessary for us to understand is how incredibly significant this moment was. because we are in a place now where these guys are in a way over their heads. They really, they are so blinded by rage and hate, they don't even care. All they know is they've got to put Jesus to death. That's all they care about. Nothing else matters to them. But this moment was so very significant. The leaders had put Jesus on trial. But again, the reality is they are now the ones who are on trial. They're the ones that are opposing the very work of God that everybody can see and that everybody has been seeing for the last three years. And we could make a list, but you can make a list in your mind right now, can't you? Of all the wonderful miracles that Jesus had done. The feeding of the 5,000, the feeding of the 4,000, the healing of the demon-possessed man of Gadara, Peter's mother-in-law being healed on and on and on. The woman's son of Nain being raised from the dead. I told you I wasn't gonna make a list. What a wonderful thing just to remember, you know? The miracle could not be denied. And the only explanation for it was that it came from God. Now what are you going to do with that? If you're these men, these judges, and that's the reality that you can't escape, what are you going to do? Well, instead of quiet submission, they put God on trial. And that's about as insane as you can get. Because of their evil motives, the man showed great wisdom, I think. great poise. He gave them the facts to their questions in very abbreviated form. That means this guy wasn't stupid. He had been born blind. He was a man that couldn't see, but he was watching everything. He was listening. And he became a very wise man. He knew what these guys were. And he knew that he had to keep his answers very, very short because they were going to dissect every word he said. He was afraid for his life, make no mistake. So he said, clay he put on my eyes, aorist tense. That's the facts of the past. Clay he put on my eyes. There's another aorist tense. And I washed, another historical fact, and now a present tense. And I see. That's it. He put clay on my eyes. I washed. Now I can see. That's the answer. That's the end of it. Beautiful. Okay, let's look at verse 16. The open and embarrassing schism among the Pharisees. This is fascinating. Literally, therefore some of the Pharisees kept saying, it's an argument. They are now arguing back and forth one with another, just like they were doing at the neighborhood argument. Therefore, some of the Pharisees kept saying, this one is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath. That's intimidation. We don't want to hear anything else. This is the rules. That's it. But others kept saying, how does a man who was a sinner such as this one have the power to do such miracles? And there was a division among them. Notice first, Who's on trial? Jesus. They don't bring up the blind man. They're talking specifically of Jesus Christ and no one else. This first group were hardened bigots. They were elitists and they were determined at all costs to oppose whatever Jesus said and whatever Jesus did. The question was simple. And we find them in a panic already. They simply ask the man, how did you receive your sight? He goes, he put clay on my eyes, I washed, now I see. So right away these men go, he is not of God. He did it on the Sabbath. He's a criminal. I think their response betrayed their true nature, their motives. And that was to contradict the very word of God at every turn. They needed to get people to believe that the works of the Lord Jesus Christ were evil. That's chutzpah, amazingly. So therefore they blurted out with as much force as they could possibly get inside their souls and to intimidate their colleagues, this one is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath. That's a cult. That's a demonic cult. So how simple their method was and how simple all cult methods are really. Crush anybody that gets out of line. Stop them. Threaten them. And don't let them influence the masses. So no matter how many wonder signs Jesus did, no matter how many miracles he did, in their mind, he was a Sabbath breaker. That's all that mattered to them. Therefore, putas, this one is not of God. They wouldn't even call him by his name. Why did they go through all that trouble? Why did they go through this trial? Why did they bring this man before them if they already convicted Jesus? They needed to set the man up in order to make their official charges against Jesus. They had failed at every turn, but they were going to continue on. They were not going to stop until they got the job done. They had to wait six months, and then God was going to allow them to to do what they were called to do by Satan himself. Look at what John Calvin said about these men. He said, hypocrisy is always proud and cruel. Being swelled with a false opinion of their holiness, they were chiefly wounded by the doctrine of the gospel, which condemned all their counterfeit righteousness. And above all, they fought for their power and kingdom under the pretense of endeavoring to maintain the law. They were lying about what they were doing. They were saying our job is to protect the law of Moses against this usurper, when in fact they were the perverters of the law all along. But there is good news in the narrative. There was a small band of Pharisees who were reasoned men. They were thoughtful men. They were level-headed men. They were honest men. They were looking at this through the eyes of Nicodemus, really. Nicodemus was the teacher of Israel. He was a Pharisee. He was part of this group. Was he there? I don't know. Did he have influence on these young Pharisees? You better believe he did. And these men were of the same stock as Nicodemus. They argued, okay, you're telling us that this man cannot be of God because he healed on the Sabbath. Okay, let's think this through. How does a man who is a sinner, again, not speaking of the sinner, the blind man, but of Jesus himself. How does a man who is a sinner such as this one, have the power to do such a miracle. It's contradicting all of our theology. If our theology is true, it's impossible for this man to be able to heal. But there he is, healing this man. These men were recognizing the many miracles that Jesus did for the last three years. They didn't point to the one miracle, Samia, wonder works. They said it in the plural. They were saying, how does a man that does all of these miracles the past three years not be sent from God? It doesn't make any sense to us. That's an amazing thing. So I think that Nicodemus had a great influence on these men. He was saved by Jesus Christ in John chapter 3 after he watched Jesus do all those wonderful things at the Passover feast in John chapter 2. He goes to Jesus by night, humbly seeking something. Jesus says, Nicodemus, you must be born again. And of course he was. How do we know? Because at the end of John chapter 7, they're about to condemn Jesus to death. And he stood up at the right moment and said, how do we judge a man before we hear him? How do we condemn a man? Is it not in our law to do that? And every man went to his own house. And now we have his influence over these young Pharisees, a minority, they were gonna lose. And yet that was his Christian testimony. And of course, his final testimony was the night of our Lord's crucifixion. He went to the grave, he went to the cross of Calvary with Joseph of Arimathea, and they publicly took down the body of Jesus Christ, a public profession of faith. What a baptism that must have been for him, he lost everything. All of those miracles were so very important because it dismisses the charge that Jesus is a sinner. It contradicts the false charge that Jesus is a lawbreaker because you can't have one in the same. Either Jesus is a lawmaker that cannot heal or he heals and therefore he is not a lawbreaker. Just like the neighborhood debate. Some of the Pharisees kept saying, but others kept saying. They just kept arguing over and over again. What an embarrassment, really. Look what this kangaroo court has turned into. There's bickering one back another. And the blind man just sitting there, the formerly blind man, just watching these guys. There's always somebody like this in history. I think that's such a wonderful thing. When all seems to be lost, We look back on history and see the wonderful things that God has done. You know, you think about the Dark Ages, 1,200 years of dark, demonic oppression by the Roman Catholic Church, and then all of a sudden God raises up this lowly monk in Germany that nobody's ever heard of, and he nails 95 theses on the wall, and revival breaks out across Western Europe. God just took one man, a minority, and did that. God does that a lot. And we need to really remember that. That's who Nicodemus was. He influenced a small group of people in this exceedingly evil court. Even things that are not religious. At the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler was so insane and so unreasonable and what he was doing was so horrific to the world that many of his top advisors, his closest friends attempted to murder him on several occasions. And of course they lost. They weren't able to do it. But they were good men inside these corrupt institutions. And that's a wonderful thing that we should always remember, especially in the days in which we live in America today. So lastly, the last verse. I know I'm taking too much time this morning. I'll make it quick, okay? Our last verse of the morning, we'll make an observation. The council asked counsel from the man. I love this. After all of that, after all their disrespect, after all their, how, well, let's just go on. Consequently, they say to the blind man again, what do you have to say of him that he has opened your eyes? He said that a prophet he is. So they're bickering back and forth. They're making fools of themselves. There's no decorum left in the courtroom. And so somebody who I don't know, one of the Pharisees stopped and he looked at the man and he said, what he said, look at verse 15. They asked the man how he received his sight in verse 15. An argument erupts in verse 16 concerning the implications of the man's answer. whether Jesus can be from God, but because of the divisions that were going on in the council itself, and their inability to deal with the divine majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ and all of this, the incarnation of the Son of God who was in their midst at that point, one of the spokesmen actually turned to the man. They had no respect for him. They had no respect for his personal opinion of anything. He was a sinner, no doubt. He was born blind. And they said, what do you think? What do you have to say of this man? That's an amazing thing. Linsky said, quote, these Pharisees who considered themselves so far removed from blindness asked the verdict of a blind man, unquote. This was just the beginning of their inquiries. They were not going to stop here. It was already going very badly for these men. But, you know, when you're irrational, no matter how smart you are, it doesn't matter if you've got all these degrees in theology and you're the biggest landowner in Israel and you run the political parties. When you become irrational in your thought process, You just can't help yourself. And that's what happened to these men on that day. It was in their nature to behave this way. They couldn't help it. They wanted to hide it. They wanted to act normal. They wanted to act reasoned, but they couldn't do it. Isaiah speaks of these men, or I'm sorry, Solomon does in the Proverbs, Proverbs 16, 27. An ungodly man diggeth up evil, and in his lips there is a burning fire. Proverbs 16, 28. A froward man soweth strife. And lastly, Proverbs 17 and verse 20, the first part of it anyway. He that hath a froward heart findeth evil. That's who these men were. They were just bad men. So his answer was the last thing they wanted to hear. The man's opinions of Jesus had evolved from a basic knowledge of the facts that Jesus went to him. put mud in his eyes, had him washed, and now he can see. Those are the facts as he knew them, but now he believes he's a prophet. Now, Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophet, the priest, and the king of the Old Testament. So he did fulfill that, but this is such a bad definition of who Jesus Christ is. Jesus is much more than a prophet. He is the eternal Son of God, the creator of heavens and earth. He is the propitiation for our sins, and we could go on and on of what He is, but this is all the man knew. Why would he think that? Because he knew his Bible. Because there were certain periods in Old Testament history when prophets did miracles. Elijah did them, and Elijah did them. And so we have a man that was deducing facts from the scriptures, and this man did a miracle for him, so therefore he said, he's a prophet. I have no problem with that, because he doesn't know anything yet. Isn't that wonderful? I think his growth in knowledge is only half the story, though. I think more impressive was his growth in grace. We're seeing the man poised. We're seeing the man in a very, very respectable place here. These men asked this blind beggar for his opinion, and he was more than willing to reply. He wasn't intimidated. Wouldn't you be intimidated if you were him? He was a filthy, dirty, blind beggar for all of those years, and now all of a sudden he's standing before this very intimidating group of men. And yet, he was cool. Amazingly, he was already in his budding and developing Christianity, ready to give an answer for the hope that was in him with meekness and in fear. That's an amazing thing. I really like him. You're going to like him a lot more as the chapter goes on. The man boldly gave his expert opinion before the council. Jesus is a prophet. Again, was he wrong in saying that? Not according to what he knew. Far from correct. Far from a correct assessment, I would think. of the Son of God, but the man was growing in knowledge. He was growing in grace. And he's doing it right before our very eyes. I just think this is wonderful. When was he saved? That's the great debate. Was he saved when he was healed? Was he saved later on in the chapter after he was unsynagogued, after he was removed from Jewish life and culture? When Jesus came to comfort him, is that when he was saved? I go back and forth, I really do. But I'm seeing a man growing in knowledge and growing in grace every time we move forward in this wonderful chapter of the Word of God. So the sudden change of this man's countenance and personality is the picture of the change of a countenance of a newborn believer. It's the picture of a changed personality. when a man is saved by grace. This is what's so important about this thing. The man was changing right before our very eyes. He was brought before a hostile court that had the power to put him out of the synagogue. Now, he was never in a good position for anything anyway. He couldn't hold the job. His family life was horrible. And he was a blind beggar. So he didn't have much to begin with. Yet, if you went against them, and you were un-synagogued, it meant you lost your ability to be a Jew. You lost your ability to trade with your neighbors. You lost your ability to go to synagogue. You lost all of your social benefits of being a member of that wonderful society, and it was a wonderful society. So the implications are grave if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. It meant the loss of his family. meant the loss of his friends, meant the loss of a way to make a living, which he had never done before, and I'm sure he was looking forward to that. The man was going to be counted as a heathen man, as a Gentile, the hated Gentiles. He would be a vagabond in his own country. Yet we find poise and cheerfulness and joy and gratitude and goodwill during this whole inquisition. I see no fear in this man. Why? Well, again, I think he was set free. I think that he was no longer in bondage to his sin and misery and to the wicked religion of Talmudic tradition. He was set free, he could see everything, and he had no fear of these men. No amount of threats or intimidation would deter his thankfulness for what Jesus did for him. How could you be unthankful? How could you turn your back on the man that did this for you? and no man had the power to convict him or to force him to recant what he had said. He was not going to say a bad word about the Lord Jesus Christ. That was his testimony. That was the testimony of this man as an embryo in the faith. May we all have the same joy. May we all have the same courage and the convictions that this young man had. He was a babe in Christ and he was not at all afraid. Unbelief is a one-dimensional religion. What do I mean by that? Therefore, some of the Pharisees said, this one is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath. That's one dimensional. You see, that's unbelief. You have to find a way to keep unbelieving. Stop not believing, stop believing, whatever it is. The obstinate, these obstinate Pharisees could not interpret the miracles of Jesus through their religion or tradition. They couldn't do it. It was just a religion of oppression and they were being threatened by Jesus of Nazareth. The Jews had been anticipating the Messiah for centuries. Think of that. The son of God had proven himself over and over and over again. And I think that was the great aspect of his humiliation that the son of God had to take on flesh, become man. He had to veil his deity. And then he had to lower himself and prove himself to you and to me. That's the humiliation of the Lord Jesus Christ in this earth. He allowed this horrible treatment of him. So in closing. Human depravity stops men from seeing reality. Reality was right before them and they could not deal with it. No one could deny the facts that the man was born blind and now he can see. They can no way deny that it was an impossible work, a wonderful work, and a work and a good work. Yet, he did it on the Sabbath. But how did that change the facts? It doesn't. Mercy was showered upon a helpless man. But they could not rejoice in this great work, and they could not see love. They could not see compassion. They could not see mercy. They could not see God's grace in any of it. All they knew was the one thing that wasn't true. This man is not of God. Well, that's not true, and that's all they knew. They like all lost men could not deal with the implications of the miracles of the son of God. And that is a very, very sad thing. So how do we close a message like this? Because there's really no good news in any of this. We don't see anybody being saved. And yet, this is how God saves sinners. He reveals truth to people through his word, by the work of the Holy Spirit upon the life and the heart of men. He convicts men of their sin by hearing preaching. He convicts men of sin by hearing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the very Son of God. Why? How do I know that? Well, by faith. I believe by faith and it was given to me by God himself. And that's the only way anybody's ever going to believe, because if you think that you can change your will, like these men, who would not in any circumstance change their will to believe, it takes a supernatural work from God. So what is the responsibility of man? It is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Master, what works must we do to work the works of God? This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he has sent. What's the attitude? Don't be like these men. Don't put Jesus on trial. Don't go to the word of God with a critical heart and a critical attitude where you're going to prove him wrong. Can he overcome that? Can God overrule you and save you? He has to many men that have gone to the word of God with an attitude of I am going to prove to the world that this is false and God saves them, but it's not normal. The normal way is the Nicodemus way. Go to him humbly. If you need to go to him by night when no one's looking, then do it. But go to him. Don't even know what to say. Master, I watched you for a week. I am the teacher of Israel. I am one of the leading men of this society. I have been studying the word, and I'm a spiritual leader, and I know nothing. Master, we know that thou come from God, for no man can do these miracles except God be with him. That's humility. That's respect. That's going to Jesus without even knowing what to say and just starting the conversation. And Jesus knew what he needed to do. He knew what the man needed to hear. Nicodemus, you must be born again, and you must be born again. Flee to the Lord Jesus Christ in repentance and faith in him. May all listen to these words, not too well-delivered words, and may God save us through the weak things of this world. All right. Our Father, we come before you thanking you for the Lord's day. May you bless each and every one of us with true saving faith in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ's name we pray, amen.