John 9:39-41 (The Curse and Cure For Blindness)

The Shepherd's Church

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In Psalm 1, you see this downgrade that happens. Blessed is the one who does not walk in the wicked way, nor stand, he's no longer walking, he stopped moving, he's standing.

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Nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit, now he's no longer standing, he's sitting. The path of wickedness will take us down and down and down until we end up totally blind.

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That's what we're going to be talking about today, is how does the judgment of God come to bear on the blindness of man.

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Now when we talk about blindness, there's essentially three categories in the

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Bible that describe what blindness is, three kinds of blindness that the Bible is going to attempt to show us.

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And the first is probably the most obvious, it barely needs explanation, it's the physical blindness that happens when our human eyes don't work.

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Whether you're born blind with a congenital birth defect like the man in John chapter 9, whether you're injured or attacked like Samson after he's arrested by the

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Philistines and they literally put out his eyes, whether you're blind based off old age like Isaac the patriarch who at the end of his life could barely see and he became blind over the course of his life, or whether it's a divine punishment like when the angels of the

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Lord struck the men of Sodom with blindness so that they groped about in the darkness and they could not enter in.

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There's a physical blindness that the Bible describes. And the entire

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Bible actually, it's funny, most issues that you look at in the Bible can be traced from the beginning of the

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Bible to the end of the Bible, most of them. That's called biblical theology. Systematic theology is when you look at one topic and you read all the verses about it and you kind of come to one idea about what it is.

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Biblical theology starts with Genesis and it traces an idea through the books of the Bible and it shows how it develops and it shows how it becomes grander and it shows how it anticipates

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Jesus. Well, if we look at blindness in the Bible, we can see how it begins, we can see how it anticipates

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Christ, and we can see how it is eradicated in eternity. So for instance, the

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Bible did not begin with human physical blindness. People were created good, they were created with perfect eyes so that they could see.

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And the indication from Genesis is that if Adam and Eve had not sinned, then their children would have never been born blind.

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Generations and generations of descendants would have come and would have gone and they would have had perfect eyes.

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Which is an amazing thing because as I am now 38, I realize that my eyes are not perfect.

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Staring at a screen for probably the last 15 or 20 years has not been well for me. And maybe you feel the same way.

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Blindness enters into the human condition because of the fall, just like every other malady of the human condition.

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Blindness enters because Adam and Eve decided to rebel against the holy God and not just spiritual consequences, which was death, which was separation from God, physical consequences entered in like cancers, diseases, and blindness.

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Like the man born blind in John chapter 9. They're wrestling with the question, did he sin or was it his family who sinned because he was born blind?

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Now blindness also in the Bible offers us this sort of rumbling of redemption.

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We get to see how blindness anticipates Christ and how he's going to heal blindness.

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It's interesting and fascinating. For instance, God did not leave humanity in their broken state.

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He comes to them and he covers their sins in the garden of Eden with the skins of an animal.

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He pursues them in relationship with Abraham. He saves them out of the judgment through the

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Ark. He draws them out of Egypt and brings them to a land that is not their own at that point.

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He gives them a law and in that law, it's going to teach them how to live with the holy God. So there's a certain level of redemption that's happened from Eden to this law.

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This law is going to help them overcome the curse and yet the law is powerless to heal the blind man.

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So we see that some progress has been made in the story of God, but yet blindness cannot be healed by the law of God.

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There's actually conditions in the law that if you were born blind, you could never enter the temple.

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If you were born with broken body parts, you could not enter the temple. And there's reasons for that.

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Reasons that we don't have time to get into this morning, but they are fascinating. But the law anticipates that a certain level of redemption has come to the people of God, but not enough.

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We need someone who is greater than the law. Someone who's more powerful than the law. Someone who can turn the eyes of the blind into sight so that they can now enter into the presence of God forever.

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This man in John 9 grew up living in the Old Testament period, even though the book is in the New Testament.

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He grew up blind, incapable of going into the temple because that's what the law of Moses said, but yet the greater

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Moses had come. And he healed the eyes of this man who was born blind so that now there was no separation between him and God forevermore.

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And that's just physical blindness that Jesus healed. The law anticipated a healer, and Jesus was the long -awaited hope.

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Jesus claims this fulfillment in Matthew 11, verses 2 through 5. He says, I am the one you've been looking for.

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This is what he says. Now when John, while imprisoned, heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, are you the expected one or shall we look for someone else?

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Jesus answered and said to him, go and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight and the lame walk.

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The leopards are cleansed and the deaf hear. The dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

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John in his weakness, in a moment of weakness, he says, are you the one we're supposed to be looking for? And Jesus points to the miracle of eyes being opened because he came to do what the law of Moses could not do.

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Jesus ushered in a period, and there's only three periods in the

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Bible of miraculous activity. We can sometimes read the Bible as if there's miracles happening all over the place.

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There's actually only three periods of miraculous activity in the Bible. Moses and Joshua, which all kinds of miraculous things happens in Egypt and also happens in the promised land.

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It's about 70 years of miracles and then it ceases. Then you get to Elijah and Elisha and there's another period of miracles that happen for about 70 years.

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And we know that what God is doing is he's, he's ushering in new periods of redemptive history through miracles.

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The law of Moses is ushered in through miracles because God wants us to look to that. So he's establishing the veracity of it through signs and wonders and miracles.

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God wants us to look to the prophets, the next period of redemption so that we will see and so that we will look for the signs and the wonders and miracles.

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The third period of miracles is with Christ when he comes and with the apostles, roughly 70 years period.

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And then the history of the church records that miracles began to wane. Miracles were not commonplace anymore.

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There's still missionaries all over the world who are preaching the gospel in places that have never heard the gospel, who will report that miraculous activity is happening.

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But what I find so fascinating is once the gospel had been established as God's means of saving the world, once it had been established with miracles to validate the power of the message, then the miracles began to cease.

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Jesus opens up a period of new redemption history by doing miracles, by healing the eyes of the blind, showing that he was here to bring about what the law could never bring.

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And he's showcasing to us what heaven is actually going to look like because Jesus healed the eyes of the blind because we know in history that when

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Jesus returns and when he calls us home to be with him forever in heaven, there will be no more blindness.

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There will be no more backaches. There will be no more knee pains. There will be no more injuries or death or cancers or diseases.

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In that moment, we will be given brand new bodies, brand new eyes to see and behold the face of Christ.

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Do you see how all redemption can sort of pick up the theme of blindness? From the beginning where there was none until the end where there will be none forevermore,

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Christ is at the center of that story, eradicating blindness. Now, that's a short biblical theology of a nutshell of physical blindness, but that's not the only kind of blindness that the

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Bible talks about. There's another category of blindness and actually physical blindness is not the primary category if you think about it.

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The amount of verses are actually, the majority are talking about the last two categories of blindness.

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That's spiritual blindness and that's divine initiated covenantal curse of blindness.

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I'll wait for you to write that down. I couldn't decide on a pithy title for that, so I might change the words a couple times in this, but God essentially goes above and beyond the spiritual curse that is inherent in all of us and he further, deeper, more intensely blinds the eyes of some who are his enemies.

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We'll look at that in just a moment. Let's look at spiritual blindness, the second category. In the

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Bible, we see that spiritual blindness is the inability of human beings to see, perceive, and understand the things of God because of sin.

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Spiritual blindness is example for us in Romans 3 verse 18 in a section where Paul is talking about the entire human race and he says, there is no fear of God before their eyes, meaning that all of their eyes are dead and blind, that all have been born blind, all have been born without seeing, all have been born not being able to comprehend the light of the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ because it strikes the deadness of their eyes and they cannot comprehend it.

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They can't see it. They don't rightly fear God because they cannot understand God and they cannot understand the things of God because of sin.

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So what this means is biblically speaking, blindness affects both the body and the soul.

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Some people are born blind physically, all people are born blind spiritually.

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I think that's why John 1 begins the way that it does. There was the true light which coming into the world enlightens every man.

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He was in the world and the world was made through him and the world did not know him.

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And the reason that he didn't know him is not because Jesus wasn't the true light. He was the true light and he came into the world to shine the glory of the gospel.

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The reason that the world could not know who Jesus was is because sin had so permanently disfigured their eyes that they could not see the light when he came to his own people.

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And this is incredibly important for us to understand. All people are born spiritually blind.

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All of us. Every one of us. But yet, this condition is curable.

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Spiritual blindness is curable and it's curable by Christ and Christ alone. For those who have been chosen by God, spiritual blindness, incapable of seeing, all of those things can be cured by the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, where he will awaken us to the power of the gospel, where the

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Holy Spirit will come into us and awaken us and enlighten our eyes and give us desires that are brand new for who

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Christ is. Before Jesus, we were bumbling around in the darkness, but yet because of Jesus, our eyes are open.

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In that moment where you look and you're saying, God, save me. I want to know you. I want to love you.

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That's because your eyes are now open. What we often think about is we think that the moment we call out to God, God is responding to us.

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You don't call out to God until God has first opened your eyes. You don't see how desperately wicked your sin is until God opens your eyes.

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You can't see that if your eyes are broken, but yet when he gives light, when he does like he did to the man in John 9, where he smears the mud on that man's eyes and he creates brand new eyes for us, when he creates brand new spiritual eyes for us and we see for the first time, there's many who will weep because their sin is so ugly.

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There's many who will cry out in brokenness and say, dear God, save me. How could you save me? Look at who I am.

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That's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing to see how desperately wicked we are because if you see that, then you will see how

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Christ is the only hope. You can't save yourself. You can try for a million billion years and you will just be a million billion years further away from being able to save yourself.

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His gospel opens our eyes, but not for the damned, for those who are condemned.

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I said this condition is curable, but for those who are not of Christ, the same gospel that awakened us and opened our eyes can be preached all throughout the world and they will not be saved.

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They will continue to reject it. They will argue that God's word cannot be trusted.

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They will try to invalidate the veracity of his word. They will say, well, that was then. This is now. Times have changed, which means that they are now the standard of truth instead of God.

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No matter what the excuse is, no matter what the reason is, you can preach the gospel to those who are not

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God's people over and over and over and over again, and they will not see.

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And there's a variety of ways that this happens. They'll do it in angry rejection. It's our brother

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Cheekay witnesses on college campuses all the time. There's a great quote from a man named

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George Whitfield who said, I was privileged by God today to have pieces of cat thrown at me.

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That's weird. Like, what kind of evil do you have to have to first of all make pieces of cat and then throw it at a preacher?

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This world hates the gospel, but there's also different ways. There's men and women who come every single week to churches all across this country who are there for something other than Christ.

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They're there because they grew up in the church. They're there because they want their children to have traditions.

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They're there because they, they like feeling the community. They like, they like the friends that they have there, but they're not there for Jesus.

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That's a way to be spiritually blind while smiling in church services, while walking confidently and ignorantly towards hell.

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The gospel will divide. Some will hear it and some will respond to it in ways that are biblically authenticating, where it has fruit, where it produces hatred of sin and love for the savior.

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And then some will hear it and be hardened. Some will hear it and recoil.

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Some will have their eyes open and some will have their eyes slammed shut by the gospel.

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The gospel does both. It does both. It's dividing. It's a dividing gospel. I think this is why

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Paul describes this reality for us in 2 Corinthians 4, 3 through 6 this way.

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He says, even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

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In whose case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

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For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus is Lord. And ourselves as bondservants, that word is slaves, for Jesus' sake.

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For God who said, light shall shine out of the darkness. It is the one who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

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You see the two categories there, you see the two groups. Some are veiled because the

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God of this world has shrouded them in lies and in darkness. Because the

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God of heaven has given them over to the God of this world. And yet some, not by their own power, not by their own strength, not by their own wit, not by their own ingenuity, have seen the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ because he shined it in our hearts.

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Because he pointed it and healed us. He gave us, instead of hearts of stone, he gave us hearts of flesh and he converted us because his light was shone in us.

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His light was shone and his light is the glory of the face of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament benediction says that we are blessed to be in the presence of God in his face.

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Look at this, the face of Jesus Christ is the light and the knowledge of the glory of God. And God had to shine it in us before we would see.

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Again some will have their eyes open and some will have their eyes slammed shut.

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Now, we see both of these first examples in John chapter 9.

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We see the man who was born physically blind whose eyes were healed in John chapter 9. And it's that same man we talked about last week who had his spiritual eyes opened by Jesus as well.

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And we know that he had his spiritual eyes opened because at the end of the passage he believes and he worships.

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Jesus receives it. You don't believe Christ rightly and you don't worship

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Christ rightly if you're not truly saved. But there's a final category of blindness.

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Remember all people are born spiritually blind. But there's a further category that the scripture talks about, a category that goes beyond the spiritual blindness.

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A category that is a divinely initiated woe of particular and peculiar madness that God sometimes evokes upon his covenantal enemies.

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Sometimes God curses his enemies with a deep and abiding blindness which renders them outside of grace, outside of mercy, and outside of forgiveness.

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Remember we just said that you can be healed of spiritual blindness if Christ is the one who saves you. When God evokes this kind of blindness, it's incurable.

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It grips them and it will never let them go. And we first learn about this in Deuteronomy chapter 28.

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Now Deuteronomy 28 is an interesting chapter. It's near the end of the law. The new generation of people are getting ready to enter into the promised land.

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You remember their mothers and fathers actually died in the wilderness because of disobeying God. So this is the final charge.

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This is letting them know what is your life going to look like if you follow the law of God and what is your life going to look like if you do not follow the law of God.

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These are people who had a unique relationship with God. They had a unique law that was given to them so that they would know and so that they would love

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God. They had a unique blessing that they would be the people who were considered special of all the nations on earth.

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Not because they were greater, not because they were mightier, not because they had better swords. They didn't have swords in the wilderness yet.

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They were considered unique because God was with them. Because his presence was with them.

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And they had a unique presence where they got to know and be in relationship with the covenantal

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God. And yet, because this unique presence brought about unique blessings, it also brought about unique curses whenever they fell.

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Like Icarus in Greek mythology who in hubris and pride soared too high, too close to the sun.

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And the wax that held his hastily put together wings melted and he fell, plunging from such astounding heights to his death.

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The people of God who venture too far away from God, who venture too far away from covenantal obedience, sometimes fall from such astounding heights.

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And while they can be known as the most blessed people on earth because of their relationship with God, sometimes they're seen as the most pitiful, cursed, and ruined people on earth in the

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Bible. To whom much is given, much is required. They had a unique proximity to this

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God, they had a unique responsibility to be in relationship with this God, and Deuteronomy 18 lays out the terms.

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And the first half of Deuteronomy 28 is beautiful. You read it and you're like, this

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God loves me. This God wants to see me blessed. Blessed when

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I go out and blessed when I come in. My whole life is blessed. My food bowl is always full.

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My family is always well. There's no sickness or disease. This God really wants this nation to be blessed, but yet in the back half of Deuteronomy 28 when we see the curses that come upon these people, it's so severe.

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We'll look at just a single section, verses 28 and 29.

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It says, if you break the covenant, the Lord will smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart.

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And you will grope about at noon as the blind man gropes in the darkness, and you will not prosper in your ways.

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You shall only be oppressed and robbed continually with none to save you.

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This is the same people that God said were going to be his blessed chosen people. And yet if they do not live under this unique law, respecting and honoring this unique relationship and presence and proximity that they have to their creator, they will be worse off than any pagan on earth.

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This is a unique God -initiated curse of blindness. Text says that they will wander around like a blind man at noon.

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I don't think that's an accidental metaphor. A blind man at noon is walking around when the sun is at its most beautiful and brilliant.

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A blind man at noon is stumbling about in pitch black darkness when all of this light is available and they have no access to it.

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That is what God is saying of Israel. They will stumble about in a world that has so many blessings of God and yet they will have no access to it if they do not follow his commands.

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Now we look at the story of Israel. They didn't take this very seriously, did they?

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We look at the reason why the wilderness generation was cursed to wander for 40 years and dies because as soon as God rescued them and gave them everything, they're worshiping a golden calf.

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They're murmuring and complaining and blaming God for their very small inconveniences.

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After they finally get to the edge of the wilderness border, they say, we're not going to go in. These people are too strong. Your God just rescued you from the strongest nation on earth, which is

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Egypt, and now you're afraid of a few Philistines and a few Canaanites.

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You didn't even lift a finger in Egypt and God delivered you. God said they couldn't enter.

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And we would like to say that Deuteronomy affected the next generation and they changed their ways and they didn't actually follow in the same footsteps, but they did.

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They went into the land of Israel and one of the first things that they do is this man named Achan. God says you cannot take the spoil when you conquer because these people worshiped idols.

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So what does he do? He grabs an idol. He hides it in his tent because he secretly wants to worship anything other than God.

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And his people are devastated when they go up against the tiniest little town called

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Ai. It would be like Boston getting decimated by Tingborough, millions of people getting chased down by thousands.

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It's because they didn't follow God. God cursed them with a type of blindness in that situation that caused them to run away and be afraid and be scared and be terrified because they refused to follow him.

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At the end of the book of Judges, this book, the book of Judges, darkest book in the Bible, you have awful, awful things happening in the book of Judges.

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At the end of the book of Judges, it says everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

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They were so morally debased that they would not follow God. They didn't do what was right in God's eyes, the covenant.

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They did what was right in their eyes, lawlessness, hedonism. It doesn't get any better.

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After the book of Judges, they get this brilliant idea that they want to have a king. God is their king.

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God is the one who rules them. So they pick the tallest and the man with the nicest parted hair, and they give him the kingship, and he leads them into absolute ruin.

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God gives them what they desire. Eventually, he gives them a good king and a righteous king, but even David, he murdered one of his soldiers, impregnated his wife, brought a plague upon the nation where thousands of people died.

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His own son died. And David says, against you only have I sinned.

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And you're thinking, well, you also sinned against Uriah and you sinned against Bathsheba and you sinned, but, you know,

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I get it. You look at the line of David, his people, they didn't learn from his mistakes.

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At the end of Solomon's life, he's bowing the knee down to idols. Solomon's son, Rehoboam, rips the kingdom in half so that the kingdom now is a tenth of its former glory.

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You've got Manasseh, who is a king in the line of David, offering his child in the fire, literally sacrificing his male son to a demonic god.

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You've got all of these Davidic kings who are not following after the commands of God, but who are following after what's right in their own eyes.

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And God, throughout this entire season and life of Israel, has been unbelievably patient.

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You and I, our patience is very short. Someone can say the wrong word to us and we're ready to hurt them and wound them with our own words.

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Think if God was like us, the people of Israel would have gotten one step into the promised land before gone.

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And yet he waited hundreds and hundreds of years to punish them.

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He said in Deuteronomy 28, if you do not follow my commandments, you will be cursed. And yet, look at the graciousness of God, that he waited hundreds of years before he brought down these covenant curses upon his people.

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But by the time we get to Isaiah, things have changed. The people have exhausted the patience of God.

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The people have run God out of his grace, and now God is going to rain down upon them terror.

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This is a famous passage, actually. It's Isaiah 6. We often think about it from Isaiah's perspective, and we think about it from evangelism's perspective.

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Here I am, Lord, send me. This passage is in the midst of one of the darkest moments in Israel's history.

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And Isaiah is not being sent to go see thousands of people, one to God. He's being sent so that no one will be converted and all of them will be left in their stupor.

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Think about us. It's a blessing to be your pastor.

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It's a blessing for so many reasons, so many interactions, so many victories we've seen in Christ, where we've met together and we've talked about something and a light bulb has gone off, or we've been in small group together, or something like that.

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We've seen victories. Think about Isaiah. A lifetime of people mocking him, hating him, rejecting him, for the entire nation to go down in flames.

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You'd want to quit if you weren't absolutely called by God. Isaiah 6, verse 5, begins this way, woe is me, it's

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Isaiah talking. The reason Isaiah says that is because the holy God has come into his presence.

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The terrible, fierce, beautiful, goodness, weighty goodness of God has come into Isaiah's presence.

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And Isaiah, as a man who wants to follow God, maybe the only one left in his nation who wants to follow

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God, who is actually what we would consider a good guy. Maybe he's a pastor, maybe he's like someone who just loves

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God. When God comes into his presence, it rips him apart. Imagine every molecule in your body being strained to the point of almost breaking, so that your heart feels like it's coming out of your chest, your legs feel like they're breaking right there in front of you, and all of it because God is so terribly good, that we and our wicked frame can't stand it.

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He says, woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the

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King, the Lord of hosts. Isaiah's being attacked by the holiness of God.

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He's being ripped apart by the holiness of God. And if it weren't for God doing what he did in the passage to cleanse and purify

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Isaiah, Isaiah would have died by the holiness of God. Now again, we often focus on Isaiah in this passage.

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I want us to focus on Israel. Isaiah says, I live among a people of unclean lips, and that was true.

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The state of the nation at this point is a nation that was completely lacking in repentance.

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A people who had perpetually for hundreds of years broken the covenant of God, they have gone even beyond what the pagans were doing.

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And this is a people that God's patience had run out on. God announces in the next verses to Isaiah what he's about to do, and it is striking.

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Verse 8 through 13 says this, it's Isaiah, then I heard the voice of the

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Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I, Isaiah said, here I am, send me.

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And he said, go to tell this people, the people of the Jews, keep on listening, but do not perceive.

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Keep on looking, but do not understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their eyes dull, their ears dull, their eyes dim.

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Otherwise, they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and return and be healed.

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God is saying, even if it was possible for them in their state of spiritual blindness to return to God and be healed by God, that he is going to push them down to a point where they cannot repent, where it's impossible, where their eyes are completely broken, where their hearts are completely insensitive, where their ears cannot hear.

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This is a deeper and darker blindness than they had ever experienced.

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This is a covenantal curse by God upon his people, evoked by Deuteronomy 28, that was overdue by centuries.

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And the only reason that God did not pull it forth sooner is because of his grace. He sealed their fate and Isaiah cries out in sorrow.

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He says in verse 11, Lord, you can imagine the man barely being able to utter the words.

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Maybe he was like us and he thought, the Lord is going to send me, the Lord is going to use me, the

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Lord is going to do something with me. And maybe for a moment he got excited. My people are going to repent. My people are going to turn from their wicked ways.

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And then when God describes this to him, he says, God, how long is this curse going to be upon my people?

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And God answers him. Verses 11 through 13,

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God answered until cities are devastated and without inhabited, houses are without people, and until the land is utterly desolate.

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The Lord has removed men far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

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Yet there will be a 10th portion in it. And I will again, or it will again be subject to burning like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled.

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The holy seed is its stump. The entire history of Jerusalem is captured in this statement.

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This city is going to be under the mighty hand of God until no one remains.

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Until Judah and Jerusalem has been utterly devastated, made waste and ruined, where their people are deported and carried 700 miles,

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I believe it is, with rusty shackles, with open wounds, marching in blistering heat under the hand of God's wrath for their indifference to his law.

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The 10th portion that's shown in verse 13 is that 90 % of this people will be erased, gone from history.

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The population, if we use nice round numbers, started at a million, only 100 ,000 of people are going to return.

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They're under the heavy hand of God. It says that it's going to this, it says that it will be subject to burning a second time.

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I think that that means that in the course of Jerusalem's history, it will rebuild, but it won't be like a mighty oak like it was before.

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It will be like a stump. It will not have the glory that it had in its former days.

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And eventually, as we know, in the New Testament, Jesus will pronounce the final curse upon that generation.

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And Rome will come in. A man named Josephus tells us that it happened on the exact same day as Babylon burned the city of Jerusalem.

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I'm not sure Josephus said it, so we'll go with him. On the exact same day, 700 years later or something to that effect, the city of Jerusalem burned a final time.

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The temple was destroyed for a final time. And the Jewish people never again will have a temple.

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The Old Testament period violently came to an end because of the violent and egregious hatred of God that was showcased by the

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Jews. We see that culminate.

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Isaiah ends his passage with the holy seed. What is that? That's Christ. The greatest act of rejection and hatred of God that the

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Jewish people ever did or any people ever did was when they looked at Pilate and they said, we have no king but Caesar.

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That was infinitely worse than when the Jews said, we want Saul to be our king. They looked at God in the face and they said, we have no king but a pagan

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Caesar. And Jesus said, on this generation, all of the judgment will fall, all of it.

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When John uses the language of their eyes seeing and not perceiving, and when

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Isaiah uses the language of them seeing and not perceiving, they are talking about a people who've been under the hand of God since the time of Isaiah.

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Since the time of Isaiah until the New Testament, they were a people who were under the judgment of God.

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You remember when they built the third temple, the people weeped because it did not have its former glory.

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We see in Leviticus when they built the tabernacle, God's fiery presence comes down from heaven and indwells the tabernacle.

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We see in Kings when Solomon prays and blesses the temple, God's fiery presence comes down and dwells among them.

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We don't see that in the book of Ezra. When they dedicate the temple to God, there's crickets, there's people crying and weeping.

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This is why John can open up his gospel and say that the light has shone in darkness.

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The people of Israel were supposed to be the light to the Gentiles, and yet the whole world is filled with darkness.

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The center of that darkness has been Jerusalem. John goes on in verse 11 to say, he came to his own and they were the ones who did not receive him.

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This is not talking about general pagans like verse 5. This is a special kind of blindness that's fallen on the people of God.

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They didn't receive their Christ. The downfall culminates and bubbles to a crescendo in John chapter 3.

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Jesus says, this is the judgment. This is the judgment.

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That light has come into the world and men love the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.

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For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

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This is the judgment of God. This is what the judgment of God looks like.

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So we have three kinds of blindness in the Bible. I want to recap those just for a moment.

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We have physical blindness. We have spiritual blindness, which can be healed by the gospel of Christ.

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And then we have a divinely enacted darkness and woe that is unbreakable, unhealable, and it's reserved for those who hate and reject.

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Now, that was the introduction. The reason why

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I went into such depth and looking at the different kinds of blindness in the

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Bible is because all three of them are here in this passage. The first one, physically blind, the man in John 9, he's healed.

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His eyes were blind. He was born blind. Physical blindness is here in this passage. It's the only passage in the Bible that has all three kinds of blindness to my knowledge.

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I tried finding another one. I couldn't. I think this is the only passage that has all three kinds of blindness in it.

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The second one is spiritual blindness. The man, once his eyes were healed and he was rejected by his community, he was rejected by the religion, he was rejected by the nation, he was rejected by everyone, is found by Jesus.

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That's how you're healed of spiritual blindness. Jesus comes looking for you, finds you, and points you to himself so that you will worship and you will receive him and believe in him.

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So his spiritual blindness was healed. This man was spiritually healed. But the third kind of blindness happens with the

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Pharisees. In this passage, Jesus pronounces a covenantal curse upon this people that cannot be healed, that cannot be broken, and cannot be lifted.

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And it's based off of what we learned in Deuteronomy chapter 28. Now, of course, we tend to think about the

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Gospel of John as the one that talks about salvation and it's, it's on a lot of Hallmark cards and there's a lot of great memory verses from it.

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And John wouldn't talk about something hard like this, but he has. We've been prepared for this. John chapter 2 says,

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Jesus would not entrust himself to these people because he knew their hearts. That's Deuteronomy 28 covenantal language.

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He would not give himself to his people because he knew them. John 7 34 says, you will seek me and you will not find me.

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And where I am, you cannot come. Remember Isaiah. They will bumble around in darkness in the noon, or they will bumble around in the noonday light.

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And if they can't see this, people will seek him, but they will not find him. That's covenantal curses.

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John 7 or John 8 21. We looked at a couple of weeks back when he said to them again, I go away and you will seek me and you will die in your sins.

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And where I am going, you cannot come. Some people will follow

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Jesus. Some people will, will come after him. And some people will lose everything for Jesus. And like the thief on the cross, and he says today, you will be with me in paradise, but not these people.

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They will not come to Jesus because Jesus said, no, their blindness is deeper than the general blindness of lost sinful.

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Today in our passage in John 9 39, Jesus said, for judgment, I came into this world for judgment.

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I came into this world so that those who do not see may see.

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And that those who see may become blind. This is covenantal language from Deuteronomy 28.

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Jesus in this passage has healed the physical blindness of this man, showcasing that he's the only one who can do that.

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He healed the spiritual blindness of that man, showing that he alone is where salvation lies. He has also put the

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Pharisees under a curse that they can't break. John Calvin, in his commentary on John 9, said it like this.

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Christ came into the world to give sight to the blind and to drive to madness those who think they can see.

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To drive to madness, those who think they can see. So what I want us to do in the time that we have remaining,

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I promise you that the introduction link is not commensurate with the rest of the sermon link. I will give you that confidence.

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So let's pray for a moment. Let's look at our passage and let's see what the judgment of Jesus Christ does for the blind man.

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Let's look at what the judgment of Jesus Christ does for the Pharisees. And let's look at what the judgment of Jesus Christ has done for you and I.

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And then we'll conclude our time this morning. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much.

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For the fact that your word is so robust. That these passages in John's gospel are but the tip of the spear of a long story.

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That gives us lots of context and lots of details for why things happen. You're not a capricious

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God. You're not a God who comes to well -intentioned religious people who just don't understand and and then hit them over the head.

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You're a gracious God who bears with iniquity for generation after generation after generation.

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And then finally, when you come in the flesh and they murder you, the full force of your fury is felt.

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And Lord, I don't think a single person in this room would have been so gracious. Lord, let us see the grace in the fury.

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Lord, let us see the mercy in the terror. Let us see your love, even in the midst of your wrath.

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And Lord, let us as your people today celebrate what you have done for us. That these verses, if we are in Christ, are largely for our benefit to praise you for what you've not done to us and to praise you for what you have done for us.

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Christ's name, amen. I want us to look at three things, like I said.

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I want us to look at how he came to bring judgment. It's a dividing judgment. I want us to look at how judgment rendered these people ignorant and deeper in their hatred of God.

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And then I want us to look at the gospel. That's the three things that we want to accomplish today. John 9, 39 through 41, says it like this.

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Jesus said, for judgment, I came into this world so that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind.

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And then those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and said to him, we aren't blind too, are we?

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Jesus said to them, if you were blind, then you would have no sin. But because you say we see, your sin remains.

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Your sin is remaining on you. That's the point. This verb is a continuous verb.

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Continuous in Greek means that the action is ongoing, which means that their sin is ongoing.

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It's remaining. It's holding them. It will not abate. And this is a startling passage.

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Because a lot of times when we think about why did Jesus come? Jesus came to save sinners. Jesus came to forgive me of my sin.

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Jesus came to die on the cross. That's too simple. Jesus says that he came for judgment and his judgment will save sinners and his judgment will divide the world and condemn sinners.

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Jesus comes to a world like a runaway criminal. If you've been watching the news lately, there's wall -to -wall, hour -to -hour coverage of a tragedy that happened in Wyoming.

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If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. Someone's on the run. They're looking for them. They've got drones up in the sky with infrared sensors trying to see where heat is at in the middle of the woods.

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The point is this man will eventually be found. And this world, very much like that, was a criminal of God, running from God.

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And yet God found them in the incarnation. Jesus landed on the shore of earth 2 ,000 years ago and the invasion began.

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Heaven's invasion began on an earth that was stuck in rebellion against God. And once he had found them, the courts assembled.

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God sat on his throne, gavel in hand, and Jesus said that, I came for judgment.

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Some of us in this room will benefit from that judgment. Some of us in this room, I pray to God that it's not true in this room.

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But some of us may be on the wrong side of that judgment. His judgment brings two outcomes.

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It saves sinners and it condemns the damned. And the only way to be saved from that is to be on the right side with Jesus Christ.

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Now, we know that this blind man belongs to Jesus because of everything that happened in his life. We know that he's the one who was healed and he sees.

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And we see that a picture of salvation that God seeks us and finds us and saves us and draws us and woos us and brings us into relationship with him.

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We see that and we ask ourselves, how is that an act of judgment? Why does Jesus say that for judgment he came into the world?

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He looks at the blind man that he just healed and he says, after he worships him and he says, for judgment,

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I came into this world. Why did Jesus say that? He could have said anything. The man worships him and Jesus could have said, that's good.

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Good job. You're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Or thank you. I mean, Jesus would never say that. But you know what

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I mean? He could have said anything, but he says, right after this man kneels down and worships him, I came for judgment.

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Why does he say that? Because when Jesus found this blind man, where his sin had captivated his eyes,

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Jesus spoke judgment to his eyes. Jesus rubbed mud over his eyes in judgment. Judgment of what?

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The blindness. Judgment of the curse, not the cursed.

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So this is judgment. And this is what judgment looks like for the elect. It's what judgment looks like for the

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Christian. Your sin is what is judged if you're a Christian, not the sinner. And the reason that God can do this is because Christ stands in our place.

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God is not a capricious judge. If you and I went to a courtroom and we saw the most egregious serial killer on planet earth, killed hundreds of people, and then the judge says,

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I forgive you. I know you didn't mean it. We would say, what a wicked and despicable judge.

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The reason God can forgive you and I is because he didn't bring judgment on us. He brought judgment on Christ.

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Christ endured our judgment. So for judgment, Christ came to be judged for his elect.

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But for God's enemies, he did not come in that kind of judgment. He came to bring judgment on them.

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He came to make them blind. He came to make them not be able to see. It says, for judgment,

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I came into the world so that those who do not see may see and that those who see may become blind.

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This is what Jesus is doing in this passage. He is smearing their eyes so that they cannot see.

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And that is a fascinating word. And I want to share a little bit about that with you just for a moment. John 9 says that Jesus knelt down into the mud or into the dirt and he made mud out of his spit and he smeared.

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That's what the word is. It's epicreo. He smeared mud on the eyes of the blind man so that the blind man would go and watch and so the blind man would go and see.

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In Isaiah 44, 18, the same word, which is not a common word. You don't see a lot of Bible verses talking about smearing.

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This same word is used in Isaiah, but you notice that in John 9, he smears judgment on the broken eyes.

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In Isaiah 44, 18, he smears judgment on the people. It says in Isaiah 44, 18, they do not know nor that they understand for he,

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God has smeared over their eyes so that they cannot see and their hearts so that they cannot comprehend.

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The judgment of Christ fell upon the blind man in that his sin was judged and that his brokenness was judged.

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But the sin, but the judgment of Christ is also going to fall on sinners so that they will not be forgiven so that the judgment and the wrath will fall on them.

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They both use the same word. This is a dividing judgment, separating believer and unbeliever to the

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Pharisee. This judgment doesn't produce worship and praise like it does for the blind man.

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The blind man is thankful and grateful and he worships Jesus and he's so excited for the Pharisees. It increases their hatred.

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It says in verse 40 through 41, those are the Pharisees who are with him when they heard these things, which that's a fascinating point.

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We get this idea that Jesus is alone with the blind man and that they're having this intimate moment and you've got these, these snakes and these vipers who are encircling the scene, watching this man worship

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Jesus, seething with their hatred. And Jesus looks up from the blind man and he says, for judgment,

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I came into this world so that those who think that they can see will be made blind. And the Pharisees say, we're not blind, are we?

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It's like they're challenging Jesus saying, who do you think you are? We're the teachers of Israel.

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You're just a Galilean charlatan. They're high and mighty. Jesus is poor.

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They have prestige. Jesus has none. They're looking at Jesus, judging him. The judgment of Christ has made them more prideful, has made them more hateful towards Jesus.

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The judgment has come on them and that they hate Jesus all the more instead of weeping and gnashing their teeth like the good sighted people of hell who might teach these folks a thing or two about proper etiquette.

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These religious monsters scoff and delusion and they hate him. Their future has no more better been summed up than when

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Isaiah said they are forever seeing but never seeing, ever hearing, but never understanding. They are and they prove it when they crucify

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God's one and only son. Matthew 23, 35 through 36 seals their fate.

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Jesus says to the Pharisees, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood that's been shed on earth from the blood of the righteous

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Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakai whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

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Truly I say to you, all the covenantal curses of Deuteronomy 8 will come down,

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Deuteronomy 28 will come down upon this generation. The curse was lifted for the believer.

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The curse was more deeply applied for those who hated Christ. Now as we close out, these are very difficult passages and I pray to the

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Lord Christ that that kind of agony, that kind of blindness is not applied to you.

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I pray that you would respond in a different way than the Pharisees did. I pray that you would look to Christ and that you would respond by praising and worshiping him like the blind man.

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But as we end, I want us to remember the gospel. I want us to remember the gospel. Because we see in this passage that things go wrong in this world.

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We see that people are born blind. We see that people are born with diseases or maybe they have diseases.

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Currently right now, maybe you and your doctor are the only two people on earth that know about something that you're struggling with. Maybe there's something with your health or it's something with your mental health or it's something else.

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It's a relationship. We live in a world that's broken and it's evidenced all around us. We can either respond like the blind man and bowing the knee to Jesus and worshiping or we can respond like the

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Pharisees and hardening our heart and becoming all the more blind. There's no guarantee we live in a world where there's no guarantee that you're going to live tomorrow.

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There's no guarantee that you're going to walk out of here today and a drunk driver is not going to end your life on the way home from church.

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There's no guarantee that you're not going to get COVID. I think COVID is fairly weak, but we also know that COVID has hit people and has grabbed healthy people and has taken them and wrestled them down into the grave.

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You have no assurances that tomorrow you're not going to be gone, but you do have the assurance of Christ.

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That everything in this life that is broken will eventually be healed by him. We have the assurance that in heaven one day there will be no more blindness.

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We have the assurance one day that there will be no more shoulder aches and there will be no more back pains and there will be no more mental health and depression and anxiety.

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There will be no more broken relationships with your spouse or with your wife or wife as a spouse or with your boss.

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Old age and wrinkles aren't going to continue because we have the assurance that Christ is going to physically heal this world in heaven when he gives us a new body and that new body is meant to worship him.

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We have the assurance that Christ came first and foremost to heal us spiritually first he'll heal us physically later and that spiritual healing is meant for us to today practice what heaven's going to be like for the rest of our time here on earth.

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We have been saved delivered from the darkness, delivered from the blindness, delivered from the curse, delivered from everything that Deuteronomy holds over our head because we don't follow the law either.

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We sin all the time and yet because of what Christ has done on the cross you and I can be made whole and you and I can be made well.

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So in a heavy passage like this I want us to remember that if you're in Jesus this is not for you. If you're in Jesus this curse is going to be taken from you, lifted from you and it's going to be put squarely on the shoulders of Jesus Christ.

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He was nailed to the cross for us and our sin was nailed on the cross with him.

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It says in Colossians 2 10 through 15 this is the hope that we have.

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It says in him you have been made complete. You're not waiting on completion you've been made complete and he is the head over all rule and authority and in him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands and the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

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Your sin nature has been cut out of you having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

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When you were dead in your transgressions in the uncircumcision of your flesh he made you alive together with him having forgiven us of all of our transgressions.

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Having canceled out the certificate of death of debt consisting of degrees against us which was hostile towards us and he has taken it out of the way having nailed it to the cross.

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When he disarmed the rulers and the authorities and he made a public display of them triumphing over them.

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Do you see what Christ has done? Your sin was crucified on the cross. Your sin was brought down into the grave by Jesus.

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He held on to your sin. He dragged your sin down into the grave and when he rose from the dead he left it there.

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When Jesus rose in victory over death he disarmed all the rulers and all the authorities and everything that could ever be against you and I.

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Even the blindness that we deserve and he left it in the grave. He rose in victory so that you and I who are in Jesus Christ now have the same victory of him.

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And that's true. Not because we know Christ but because we are in.

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You're so close to Jesus. That you're not beside of him in front of him behind him.

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You're in him. That's what the Bible says of you because of what Jesus has done for you.

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You are in Christ so that if any condemnation could ever come on him that it could come on you but because no condemnation can ever come on the risen

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Christ. No condemnation can ever come on you if you are truly in Jesus. Paul says this in Romans 6 3 through 4.

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Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death.

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Means 2000 years ago if you're a Christian you were baptized down into the death of Jesus with him. Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father.

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So we too were raised so we too might walk in the newness of life. So we too are in Christ.

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Joined with him clothed with him identified with him in his love and his grace and his mercy and his protection.

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He did all of that for us like God did for Israel and we didn't lift a finger. Which means that he is the only hope that you and I could ever have.

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When you look at a passage like this where the Pharisees are trusting in their strength they're trusting in their knowledge they're trusting in their in their spiritual ability and they're looking down their noses at Jesus.

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They're condemned because they think they have sight but they're actually blind. You and I can come to the cross saying we don't know anything.

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We're broken. We didn't do a single thing for Jesus to save us. We made down through the white flag and we closed our eyes like three -year -old girls and we did nothing.

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And he did everything and he did everything. If you're in Christ he did everything.

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He did everything so that he's the only one that we could ever hope in. The only one that we could ever put our trust in the only one that we could ever love.

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If you're not in Christ today whether it's here in this room or whether you're listening online or or whether this gets shared with you in some other way like these

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Pharisees. I pray that you don't trust in your own sight. I pray that you don't trust in your own wit.

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I pray that you don't try to figure your life out because you're so smart because those who think they see are actually blind.

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I pray that you come to Jesus as a child. I pray that you come to Jesus as someone who says

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I don't know anything. I pray you come to Jesus with humility and say Lord Jesus you must do everything.

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One of the things I've been convinced of lately is the whole Bible is about dependence.

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The Bible is not trying to teach us how to be self -dependent, independent.

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The world does that and it doesn't work. The Bible is teaching us how to lay down our lives, lay down our thoughts, lay down our actions, lay down our plans, lay down our emotions, lay down everything so that we are totally dependent on Christ because he's the only one who can save us.

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Let's pray. Lord as we finish out the gospel of John chapter 9 today and we move on in the future to John chapter 10,

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I pray that we would remember the purpose of your coming was judgment. Either your judgment will be against our sin and you will stand in our place and you will take the judgment that we deserved or we will stand before you naked and ashamed, judged and condemned.

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Lord I pray because I don't have perfect sight and because I don't know perfectly your will and because we don't know perfectly what you're going to do in this church and in this town and in the towns that we all represent and in New England in general.

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Lord all we know is that we have to preach this gospel and we know that it will divide. We know that some will hate it and some will love it.

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Some people's eyes will be opened and some people's eyes will be slammed shut. Lord I pray because we know that there is power in the gospel that we would declare it and that we would share it and Lord by your tender mercy

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Lord would you please bring revival to this nation. And would you please allow a new generation of people who right now no one trusts because it looks like that they don't know what they're doing.

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But yet they would be the ones who lead us back. They would be the ones who are captivated by Christ and they would be the ones who respond.