[Machine transcription]
Jesus says for judgment I came into this world that those who do not see may see and those who see
May become blind you may be seated in the name of Jesus
Amen
Dear Saints was such a rich
Long gospel reading. I don’t know quite what to do
I told Jonathan this morning that I think there’s eight sermons here in this text and he said oh, that’s fine two minutes each
And I told the vicar, I think there’s eight sermons.
He said, oh, that’s fine, one minute each.
At least I think he thought it, that’s what he was.
But I don’t think we can cover it all,
but maybe just a couple of highlights
before we wanna hone in on the two riddles
that Jesus gives at the end of the text,
where he says, for judgment I’ve come into the world
that the seeing would be blind and the blind would see.
And then he has another riddle right after that,
because the Pharisees say, are we blind?
And he says, well, if you were blind,
And you wouldn’t have guilt, but because you say, we see, your guilt remains.
We definitely want to understand those texts.
But let’s pick up a couple of things on the way.
The first, if you can notice that the text opens with this question, who sinned so that
this man would be blind?
There’s an inclination in our own sinful flesh, for all of us, it’s for the disciples, it’s
it’s for the Pharisees, it’s for everyone,
to try to connect moral evil and natural evil.
Or when something bad happens,
it’s because someone did something wrong.
And so here’s a man who was born blind.
Obviously, someone sinned so that it happened.
Was it him or was it his parents?
And Jesus says, don’t connect those dots.
This did not happen because of the man’s sin.
It happened so that the glory of God can be revealed.
Now, what’s quite amazing is that
when we get to the end of the text,
The disciples say to this man,
you were born in utter sin,
and they missed the whole point.
That’s where we’re headed.
But this is also true for us.
You know, something bad happens to us.
One of the ways to tell if your conscience
is troubling you,
is that if something bad happens to you,
you immediately think it’s God punishing you
because of your sin.
If you get three red lights in a row,
and then you remember that thing you said
to that person that you shouldn’t have,
you know you have a troubled conscience.
The Lord does not connect the bad things that happen to particular sins.
The prophets do, but we don’t.
But we understand that we’re always to be repentant and that everything bad reminds us
also to repent.
The second thing we don’t want to pass by without noticing is the mud.
Jesus says, he said it in chapter 8, I am the light of the world.
He says it again here in chapter 9, I am the light of the world.
There’s there’s hardly a more majestic thing that Jesus says it’s there’s seven of these statements in the gospel of John
Remember, I am the way the truth and the life. I am the Good Shepherd. I am the vine. You are the branches
I am the door. He has these great magnificent
Universally true statements and this is one of the most glorious of all Jesus says I am the light of the world
the light that no darkness can overcome.
He’s the light come into the world.
And then what does the light of the world do?
Spits on the ground.
I just, it’s just a surprise.
All week I was thinking about what an amazing thing to do.
Right after Jesus says, I’m the light of the world,
he leans over and he spits.
And he makes mud.
And he puts mud on this man’s eyes
and tells him to go to Siloam, to the pool,
and wash it off.
Now, we can just ask, well why does Jesus do it this way?
Why does Jesus use mud that he made with his own spit
to heal the man?
Let’s remember that Jesus, whenever he heals someone,
he almost does it different every single time
because that’s just what he does.
He never does the same thing twice.
He’s always surprising us.
But then let’s also remember this,
that Jesus uses stuff to bless.
He created the world.
He doesn’t hate the world.
world, and he uses physical things to bring spiritual blessings.
We had it last week, a couple of weeks ago, when the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness
was healing the people from their snake bites, and we have it even into the New Testament
as well.
I mean, Jesus uses water to wash away our sins with his word in baptism, and he puts
his body and his blood with bread and wine for us to eat and drink.
There’s a way that we think, well, no, it’s not spiritual enough.
This little bread or this little sip of wine or this mud that Jesus makes, surely that’s
not spiritual mud.
But when the mud is combined with the Word, it’s a true washing away of blindness.
So the Lord uses physical things.
There’s a lot of people in the church today that say that if it’s physical it can’t
be gospel.
And we just see from the text, from all the texts, that that just can’t be true.
The other thing I think is really interesting that we don’t want to miss is that this blind man’s,
or as the text calls him, the man who was formerly blind, how his faith is growing.
And to see how his faith is growing.
If you look, can you look with me at verse 25?
So, this is Jesus, the blind man, he has this sort of argument with the people in the street,
so they bring him to the Pharisees, and they’re not sure it’s not a scam, so they bring his
parents in, and then they don’t want to talk because they know they might be excommunicated,
so the blind man comes back in, and they say, verse 24, give glory to God, we know this
man, Jesus is a sinner, that’s the Pharisees’ accusation, and then look at what the blind
man says in verse 25.
He answered, whether he’s a sinner, I don’t know.
One thing I do know, I was blind, but now I see, quoting the hymn Amazing Grace, right?
I don’t know if he’s a sinner or not.
But look at what he says at the end of this, after he’s been in front of the Pharisees,
and they’re drilling him, and they’re trying to get him to curse Jesus and blaspheme.
As he’s facing all of this oppression, his faith actually strengthens.
His faith in who Jesus is strengthens, it’s in verse 31, where the man says, we know that
God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, God
listens to him.
Never since the beginning of the world has it been heard that a man born blind was healed.
So that at the beginning of the interview, the man says, well, I don’t know if He’s
a sinner or not, I just know that I can see.
But now at the end he says he can’t be a sinner. He must not be a sinner because he’s healed me
He’s delivered me. He’s rescued me
God’s listened to him and used him to answer my prayer
Now this is important for us to consider that the man’s conviction is made stronger through opposition
The man’s faith is strengthened through the trial of this of all these accusations
We are
I’ll just speak for myself, I’m nervous sometimes to speak the name of Jesus and the Word of
God when I know that it will cause trouble, that people will push back.
Not with you all, you love to hear the Word of God, but you know with people who don’t
believe it, with people who are unbelievers or have different doctrines, it’s slow to
speak it because I think I’ll have to suffer grief from it, but look at how the Holy Spirit
that strengthens this man’s faith
through the opposition of it.
It’s important for us to know that we are not authorized
to be afraid to speak the name of Jesus.
We’re not authorized to be silent
when a testimony is called for,
that we speak the name of Jesus,
even if it does cause trouble,
and know that that trouble the Lord uses
to strengthen our faith.
Pretty amazing.
Now we get to the riddles.
So the man is kicked out of the synagogue
for trusting in Christ, he’s excommunicated,
and Jesus hears about it.
In fact, it says that, this is a little detail,
it’s verse 35, Jesus heard that they had cast him out.
That word got around that he was excommunicated
and Jesus was paying attention to that.
He cares about you.
He’s paying attention to how it’s going with you.
It’s amazing.
So Jesus hears that he was excommunicated
and he goes and he finds them and he says,
do you believe in the son of man?
And the man says, well, who is he?
And he says, you’ve seen him, it’s me.
And he says, Lord, I believe.
And he falls down and worships him, like we do.
He worships Jesus.
And then Jesus gives these two riddles.
And there’s Pharisees listening to it.
So the first riddle is great.
He says, for judgment I’ve come into the world
so that those who see will be blind
and those who are blind will see.
And the Pharisees has a hint that Jesus is digging at him
but doesn’t think it’s gonna stick
and so he kind of sarcastically responds,
are we then blind?
And Jesus gives the second riddle,
if you were blind then you wouldn’t have guilt
but because you say we see, your guilt remains.
Now what is going on?
What does all this mean?
Jesus is holding before us and the Holy Spirit
through the Apostle John in the reading
is holding before us two pictures.
The picture of the blind man who trusts in Christ
and the picture of the seeing man
who doesn’t trust in Christ.
And the question is, which one of them truly sees?
The blind man has more sight than the Pharisees
who probably can see 20-20.
The blind man can see more clearly
than these religious authorities who are completely blind.
blind.
To see, then, is to know who Jesus is and to know what He’s done.
And the Pharisees simply cannot see it.
They’re blind to it.
But they don’t even see their own blindness.
So that, you know, He says, are we then blind?
And Jesus says, well, if you would only admit it.
If you could only admit that you were blind, then you would begin to see.
But because you cannot admit it, you can’t see it.
The way to sight is to admit that you are blind, just like the way to wisdom is to admit
that you are a fool, or what we are much more familiar with, the way to righteousness is
to admit that you are a sinner.
The way to health is to acknowledge your sickness.
Remember how Jesus says it to the Pharisees?
The one who is well doesn’t need a doctor, only the one who is sick.
So that repentance begins with contrition.
Sight begins with knowing your own blindness.
The Pharisees were blinded by their own self-righteousness.
They could see the speck in their neighbor’s eye
with extreme accuracy, but they missed the plank
that was in their own.
It was, I was thinking about this between the services.
I had forgotten about this story.
My family one time went on vacation to Yellowstone,
and my mom had gotten a new camera for the trip
that had some fancy zoom lens on it.
And so mom was there taking pictures of some buffalo
and she zoomed way in on this buffalo
and she’s talking to us and says,
you won’t believe how close this buffalo looks
while the buffalo was getting right in front of her.
And we were all backing away.
And she put down the camera and wha,
I jumped backwards because it was like 10 feet
in front of her.
or she thought it was, this is the Pharisee problem.
You zoom in so much on your neighbor’s sin
that you miss the big picture.
They had zoomed in so far on Jesus spitting on the ground.
Did you know that the rabbis had rules
about where you could spit on the Sabbath day?
This is a real thing.
And one of their rules was you could spit on a rock
if you wanted to, but you could not spit on the dirt
because if you spit on the dirt,
you might be watering a plant.
I’m not, that’s a real deal, that’s the Pharisee thing.
So that they see that Jesus, where did he spit?
Oh, he spit on the ground, he made mud, that’s breaking the Sabbath.
They were so zoomed in on that sin, they were so zoomed in on that made up transgression
that they couldn’t see that the Son of God was here in the flesh delivering this man
born blind.
They totally missed it, they totally missed it.
If they would have only admitted that they were blind, then they would be guiltless and
innocent.
But because they say, we see, their guilt remains.
The Bible calls Christians enlightened.
We confess it in the catechism.
The Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts.
You are the enlightened ones.
That means you have gone from darkness to light,
from spiritually blind to spiritual sight.
And that sight consists in two things.
Number one, that you see your own sin,
not the sin of your neighbor, you see your own sin.
You know your own guilt,
and you know the wrath of God that you deserve.
And then, more importantly, number two,
you see that Christ is the Son of God
who came to save sinners, you see that when this man, 33 years old, so many
hundreds of years ago, was nailed to the cross to die in darkness, you see that
all of your sin, and all of your guilt, and all of your shame, and all of your
breaking of the commandments, and everything that you’ve done wrong, all of
your regrets, and all of it is on Him, and that He is suffering in your place so
that God can look at you and smile, so that God can delight in you and forgive
you your sins and cover you with the robe of his righteousness. This is the
sight that the Lord gives us through the Word and the Spirit and this is what it
means to be enlightened. There’s an old theme that runs all through the
Scriptures and it runs through the writings of Luther, although I’ve never
seen anybody writing on it or talking about it, I’ve just been noticing it in
in my own study, Luther likes to talk about
seeing the world through the eyes of Jesus.
Here’s an example.
Do you remember when Jesus was called
to the house of the man whose daughter had died?
And they’re all mourning and weeping
and playing the flutes and crying
and Jesus walks in and Jesus looks at the little girl
and he says, oh, she’s not dead, she’s asleep.
You remember what they did?
They laughed, they laughed at Jesus.
Jesus, what are you looking at?
We have eyes, we can see, we see this girl,
we know that her heart’s not beating,
that she’s not breathing, we know what dead is,
we can see with our own eyes that she’s dead, Jesus.
You’re wrong, the things, whatever you’re looking at
is wrong, but it turns out Jesus was right.
Tabitha Coombe, little girl, stand up,
and she wakes up from the dead.
Jesus was right.
He saw things right.
And God, the Holy Spirit, wants to work this in us
that we would see things through the eyes of Jesus.
Oh, if you could see yourself through those eyes.
I don’t know what you see when you look in the mirror,
but if you could see what Jesus sees when he looks at you,
how he sees you holy and perfect and without spot
or blemish or any such thing,
He sees you radiant and glorious.
Oh, if you could see, how about this?
If you could see your neighbor,
how Jesus sees your neighbor.
Or if you could see the person who cut you off
in the highway, like Jesus sees them.
Or you could see the person who hates you,
like Jesus sees them.
Or the person who’s your enemy, like Jesus sees them.
Or the whole world as Jesus sees it.
This is the eyes of Christ, this is what it means to see, this is why Jesus came
for judgment so those who think they see would be blind but those who know they
are blind would see. See ourselves, see our neighbors, see our Savior all with
opened eyes, and faith to believe.
So may God grant it.
May God grant us His Holy Spirit so that we would be the enlightened ones.
So that with this blind man we would see
our own sin and most of all
our Savior Jesus Christ.
May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen.
In the peace of God which passes all understanding,
guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Cool.
