I AM Under Investigation

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I have a confession to make. I'm enjoying this trip through John. That's not really much for confession, is it?
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I really enjoy verse -by -verse preaching, and one of the reasons not to get too much into philosophy of ministry as you open your
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Bibles to John chapter 9, but I enjoy it because we really get to get into the mind of the
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Apostle John as he kind of gives us his first -hand tour guide, as it were, through the ministry of Jesus Christ and what a blessing it is.
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Well, you know, when I was a child, I used to enjoy mythology and different stories, and, you know, one story
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I could never really wrap my head around was the emperor's new clothes. Here comes the emperor, and he has nothing on, and everybody's like, oh, that's a fine -looking set of apparel there.
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And they just go on and on and on, and I'm just like, I don't get it. Because if I was there,
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I'd go, what are you guys talking about? I mean, this is just, pardon me for saying it, stupid.
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This is dumb. And of course, we'd all like to think we do that, but I just have no kind of,
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I guess I'm just impatient. When people just deny what is evident in front of them, it just kind of drives me crazy.
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And here we are, this week, how many times did we see that in action?
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That shooting in Chattanooga, and I don't know if you watched any of the coverage of it, but some of the news people really kind of twisting themselves in knots to explain what it was.
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You know, maybe it was, he was just a gun fanatic, or maybe he liked to hunt.
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Maybe he just kind of slipped a cog. You know, sometimes that happens. What could possibly have motivated this fine and seemingly perfectly normal young man?
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I mean, he was on the high school wrestling team. What happened? There were no such questions a few weeks ago with the horrific shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.
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There was evidence of the young man's racism there, and the media called it out.
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But in this case, there's a desperate effort to ignore the obvious. One expert even said he wasn't sure if the young man's name was
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Muslim or not. I don't know. Mohammed, you said,
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Abdul Aziz, sounds pretty Muslim. He was born in a predominantly
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Muslim country, and he attends a mosque. Doesn't seem that hard to sort out.
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In fact, the tactics he used in this attack, someone said, were very similar to a recent attack in Paris.
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He took several trips abroad over the past few years to countries near terrorist hot beds in the
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Middle East. But it's a mystery what his motivation was. In fact, one newspaper read their headline read this way,
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Chattanooga gunman's motive remains a mystery, officials say. It's not a mystery.
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It's not difficult to sort out at all. It's just not what some people want to believe.
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Let's turn our attention to the Bible, and we're going to see a group this morning that just don't want to believe something.
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John chapter 9, verses 13 to 34, long section, they being the neighbors that this blind man was brought to or came to, they brought to the
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Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now, it was a
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Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight.
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And he said to them, he put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.
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Some of the Pharisees said, this man is not from God, for he does not keep the
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Sabbath. But others said, how can a man who is a sinner do such signs?
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And there was a division among them. So they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him since he opened your eyes?
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He said, he is a prophet. The Jews did not believe he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, is this your son who you say was born blind?
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How then does he now see? His parents answered, we know that this is our son and that he was born blind.
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But how he now sees, we do not know. Nor do we know who opened his eyes.
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Ask him. He is of age. He will speak for himself. His parents said these things because they feared the
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Jews. For the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be
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Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. Therefore, his parents said, he is of age.
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Ask him. So for the second time, they called the man who had been blind and said to him, give glory to God.
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We know this man is a sinner. He answered, whether he is a sinner,
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I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now
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I see. They said to him, what did he do to you?
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How did he open your eyes? He answered them, I have told you already and you would not listen.
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Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?
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And they reviled him saying, you are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.
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We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.
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The man answered, why, this is an amazing thing.
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You do not know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will,
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God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind.
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If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.
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They answered him, you were born in utter sin and you would teach us and they cast him out.
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Now at the end of chapter 8, as you recall, Jesus escaped, miraculously escaped and attempted stoning by the
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Pharisees on the temple grounds after he claimed to be God. And make no mistake, his statement that before Abraham was,
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I am was a claim to deity in John 8 .58. And the response by the
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Pharisees was to try and kill him right there and then. By an act of God, Jesus was delivered from their hands.
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Suddenly they could not see him and he left them without injury. And last week, we saw the power of God at work through Jesus as he miraculously gave sight to a man who had been born blind.
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Rather than return to Jesus and thank him, the man left the pool at Siloam and went back to his neighborhood.
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After all, I mean, just think about it. Put yourself in the place of this blind man. Who would you most want to tell? Family, friends, people known you all your life and had pity and compassion for you, but now things were different.
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Now there were some of his neighbors, his family probably, who would not believe it in spite of his repeated claims that it was him.
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They just wouldn't believe it was him. It's really me, he kept saying. He told them of the man called
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Jesus and how he spat on the ground, put the resulting clay in his eyes, told him to wash and how he obeyed and then received his sight.
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When they asked the man where Jesus was, he said he did not know.
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And that's where we left off last week. This morning, we're going to see really three stages of an investigation.
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We call it I am on trial. Well, now I'm going to change it to I am under investigation. I like that one too because it just has a special meaning for me.
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Three stages of an investigation by the Pharisees into this healing, into this restoration of this man's sight.
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Actually, you can't call it restoration if you never had it. What you will see is a simple, straightforward response to intimidation and persecution.
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The response comes from this man and he's going to be intimidated and persecuted by the
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Pharisees. First thing you do in an investigation is you interview the informants.
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That's our first stage of this investigation. They're going to interview the informant.
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Now first the neighbors take the man to the Pharisees in verse 13. They, that's who they are, these neighbors, the people that he went and saw.
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They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been formerly blind. Why would they do that?
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Shouldn't they just hold a celebration, a big party? I mean, after all, he'd never been able to see before and now he could see?
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Well, part is because they didn't want trouble. The Pharisees kind of, you know, if we think of this in Old West terms, they ran the town and you don't want to challenge the power structure.
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The Pharisees' hatred of Jesus was known and his connection to this man had to either be judged by the leaders, well it had to be judged by the leaders of the local synagogue, the
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Pharisees, the authorities. Now look at the charge.
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By the way, the reason I call him the informant, the blind man, is because when you went to a call in the
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Sheriff's Department or when you wrote any reports, the person that you first contacted had to be an informant or a witness.
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That's just the way things work. So he is an informant. He knows what happened and you would go to him to investigate the situation.
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So here's the charge and the charge is healing on the Sabbath as we saw last week. Look at verse 14.
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Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the
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Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. I spoke of this last week.
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The Pharisees had extensive, innumerable rules on what was permissible on the
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Sabbath. In fact, I've said this one before but it's true. If you go to Israel today, you go into Jerusalem, you go into a business building on the
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Sabbath, which by the way is Saturday, and you go into a business building and you want to take a ride on the elevator, well you can't push the button because that's work.
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So you have to wait and what does that mean then? The elevator comes to your floor and it's going to stop on every floor.
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I mean I just wonder how that would work like in the Empire State Building or somewhere if you're going to the top. That would be an all day trip.
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But they had all these rules and one of them was making mud.
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You weren't allowed to make mud on the
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Sabbath rules unless the person's life was on the line. So they would leave this man in his blindness.
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If it was up to them, they'd be like, no, sorry, we could heal you. I mean not that they could. And you just have to marvel at this.
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What kind of faith, what kind of people would say it's a sin, it's a violation of God's law, and especially when we know that this has to be a miraculous work of God.
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It's a violation of God's law for a miracle to happen on the Sabbath. That's pretty crazy.
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But the Pharisees were asking this man really for the first time because they didn't know about it until now. So what does the text say that they asked him again?
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Because the people had been asking him over and over again. He'd been pestered by these people. In fact, last week when we talked about when they were having this conversation about whether it could actually be him and what he kept saying, yes, it's me, it's me, it's me, over and over and over again.
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And so he was probably tired of answering this question, what happened?
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But they hadn't asked him yet and so they're going to get right down to it. They were the detectives on the case and at the beginning of any investigation you have to start with the most obvious questions.
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So how is it that you now see? Look at the informant's statement here in verse 15.
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This is the man. He said to them, he put mud on my eyes and I washed and I see.
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Pharisees had to ask but look at how, I mean he just gives them the bare sketch, the bare truth.
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His answer is brief and really, I mean, we don't have textual evidence to support this but it would seem kind of odd if the conversation between Jesus and the disciples was completely out of his earshot, if he didn't hear any of it.
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But he doesn't talk about any of that. Instead, he just gives them the bare bones description of what happened.
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And again, that's not unusual. If you go to the scene of a crime or if you talk to a victim, a lot of times they just give you the barest of information.
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You have to ask more questions to draw out the information. I was going to say to elucidate it but that wouldn't really elucidate the situation if you know what
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I mean. You want to draw the informant out. You want to get the full story. But it seems that he is just at the very least a little bit wary of these
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Pharisees, a little bit frightened of them because these are the most powerful people in the community.
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They're not just, it's not like you call the pastors and they come to your house. These are people who had a good deal of authority in terms of your entire life.
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And when they showed up, it was not necessarily a good thing. It was kind of like in the old days when internal affairs would show up.
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It wasn't really a good thing. And look at the Pharisees. Their opinions are split in verse 16.
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Some of the Pharisees said, this man is not from God for he does not keep the
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Sabbath. But others said, so it's in the same group. But others said, how can a man who is a sinner do such signs?
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And there was a division among them. Here we have the religious elites, the experts in the law.
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Really I would argue in many cases the makers of the law because there were the laws given to Moses but then they expanded on them.
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They added to them. What did Jesus say? He said that they added so much that they made, how many times?
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Twice the son of hell of their converts. In other words, the idea was that the objective of the
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Pharisees was to load burdens on people, to make life burdensome and filled with laws and rules and regulations.
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Now some in this group suppose that Jesus is a sinner because he violated their understanding of the
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Sabbath. And again just imagine how hard hearted you had to be to be angry to think that this was a violation of God's law for a blind man to receive his sight.
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But there were others in this group who were of the mindset of Nicodemus in John chapter 3.
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If you recall Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and what did he say? He said no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him and some kind of had that mindset.
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But unlike Nicodemus' definitive affirmation he said no one can do these things unless God is with him so he knew that God was with Jesus.
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They ask a question, the second group of Pharisees. How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?
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In other words they're not affirming Jesus but they're not condemning him either.
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They're just saying we have to examine this further before we make up our minds. They were what
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I call weakly pro -Jesus. They were kind of like we're not really going to jump into his camp yet because that might not turn out well for us.
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But on the other hand we're not willing to condemn him either. But here's the problem. If Jesus had genuinely violated the
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Sabbath, in other words if he genuinely violated God's law then he was in fact a sinner.
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So why would God work through such a man to perform such a miracle? On the other hand if Jesus violated just some man -made rules that weren't from God and God was using him to perform such a wonder then what does that say about their rules that they really are just made up?
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In other words this looks like a pretty clear case of their man -made rules not being anything that God approved of.
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But some people are so hard -hearted in this group that they're just not even going to allow for that possibility.
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So what do they do then? They've got a division between them. And the one thing it's like parents.
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Mom and dad have to be united while partners investigators have to be united.
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And since they're not they've got to keep pursuing the evidence so they seek clarity. Look at verse 17.
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So they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him? In other words we're going to give you kind of the tie -breaking votes.
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What do you say about him since he has opened your eyes? He, the blind, the formerly blind man,
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I should have come up with an acronym for this because we're going to say that over and over again, said he is a prophet.
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So they asked this man who had no letters, no education. He'd been blind since birth. There weren't a lot of educational programs for the blind then.
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They're the scholars. They're the experts and they have to ask him who he says he is.
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And they actually move the word you to a place of emphasis as if to say okay we're divided, we're confused, we're not certain as to who this
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Jesus is. So who do you underline, underscore say he is?
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After all maybe he knows something that they don't. Well yes he does. He knows quite a bit more than they do.
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His answer, a prophet is much better than the answer that one part of the group gave which is a sinner, right?
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But it's not as far as it should go. In fact it's not even as good as the Samaritan woman said in chapter 4 of John when she said he was or he asked, she asked if he could be the prophet and she had in mind one particular all -powerful prophet from the
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Samaritan religion. So they didn't even have as high a view or this, sorry, this blind man, formerly blind man didn't even have as high a view as she did.
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But there is a progression to his testimony and as we watch through this chapter we're going to see more and more of the truth come out of this formerly blind man.
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In fact earlier in verse 11 he called him or he referred to Jesus as the man called
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Jesus and now he's a prophet. That's a pretty big advancement. But his statement really doesn't help the
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Pharisees. The ones who are convinced he is a sinner cannot bear the thought of him being a prophet.
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Imagine, okay we think he's a sinner, you say he's a prophet, okay we're convinced. So interviewing the informant again does not help.
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So what are they going to do now? Well they've got to go to stage 2 of their investigation, checking the informant's veracity.
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They don't want to believe him, so they're going to go to another source, they're going to try to essentially discredit their informant.
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I hate to admit it but we would do that sometimes if we wanted to just get rid of the whole report, we'd try to discredit the informant and say, you know what, we just didn't believe him and that's what they're going to do.
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How can you believe or how could they believe a man who tells them what they don't want to hear? Well they have to discredit him so what are they going to do?
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They're going to go back to his parents. Look at verse 18. The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, is this your son who you say was born blind?
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How then does he not see? Explain this to us. First of all, you know, we just don't believe that he actually was born blind and then secondly, how is it possible that he now sees?
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And remember again, their ultimate goal is what? I mean we could say in the short run it's to discredit this man but ultimately they want to discredit
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Jesus. They wanted to ruin this man's testimony because they wanted to discredit
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Jesus, you know, I put it this way. Erase the miracle, wipe out the miracle and you wipe out the problem.
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You don't have to explain anymore how he could do these things. And I would argue that trying to erase the truth about Jesus is a popular pastime of intellectuals.
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Many of you would know that the Jefferson Bible, I mean basically, you know, he just took his scissors and cut out all the miracles of the
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Bible. Why? Because if God is just a cosmic watchmaker and he's not intimately involved in the running of this earth, then all those miracles didn't happen.
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They're just made up. And theological liberals today deny the miracles of the Bible. Why? Because it leaves them with a moral problem.
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If God really is all powerful and he really does what the Bible says he does, then he's really going to judge them one day.
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But on the other hand, if the Bible can be discounted, if it can be proven wrong, then the
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God of the Bible can be discounted as well. No all powerful
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God means no consequences for our actions. So a liberal
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Christian will tell you that the Bible is a nice guide for life as long as you don't take it too seriously, as long as you don't really think that God does those things.
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And this is a tactic as old as Satan himself. This is what Satan and his children do.
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Question the word of God. Seek to undermine it. And these Pharisees are children of Satan, as Jesus has said, and they're eager to prove that Jesus is a fraud.
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Because if he wasn't a fraud, then they were frauds. And look at how they ask the parents, who you say was born blind?
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It's a clear inference that maybe he wasn't born blind. We can't disprove
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Jesus. We can't disprove the formerly blind guys. So let's attack their integrity even.
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If the only goal was to gather information, you would ask something like, was your son born blind? Just a yes or no matter of fact question, not a loaded question like, who you say was born blind?
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Tell us about your son who you say was born blind. Also notice the second question.
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There's an acknowledgment that a change has happened, right? Because he now sees. They understand that he was once blind, but now he sees.
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But they want any kind of information, anything these parents will give them that will lead them to a different conclusion than what they've got so far.
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The facts are not in keeping with what they believe. They have their, for those of you who are in Sunday school, they have their presuppositions.
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They have their foundational beliefs. And what has happened here challenges those foundational beliefs.
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The man's parents are intimidated by the Pharisees. Look at verse 20. His parents answered, we know that this is our son and that he was born blind, but how he now sees we do not know.
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Nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him, how weak is that?
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He is of age. He will speak for himself. His parents said these things because they feared the
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Jews. For the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be the
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Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, he is of age, ask him.
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Now again, the first thing he did was go home.
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It's just hard to believe that he didn't go see his parents, that that wasn't the first people that he would want to tell,
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I can now see. Now how would you respond? You have this little baby, blind, and I'm telling you, in that culture they would weep.
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Why? Because they knew what would lie before this young man, how difficult his life would be.
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And all his life he's begging and he has really no hope and no future.
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He's dependent upon the grace of other people. And he comes home and he tells you,
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I can see. This man named Jesus healed me. He gave me sight.
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Look, I can see you. For the first time I can actually follow everything. I can see you.
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How would you think, what would you think as his parents? Be irrepressible joy.
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But look at their response here. They're like residents of a high crime area.
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The police come in and they don't want to get involved. They don't want to answer the questions.
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They just want to give as little information as possible and just get rid of these guys. They confirm their son was born blind.
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But even so you can almost hear, it's almost like a stutter. Ask him. He's of age.
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He'll speak for himself. They don't want to talk to these guys. I don't think it's,
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I mean this is a little bit of speculation, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that this blind, formerly blind man was fairly young.
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Because otherwise this phrase here, he is of age, wouldn't make much sense. He would be of age at the age of 13.
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You know, so if this man was in his say 40s, you know, then it wouldn't be, it would be nonsense to say he is of age because he would obviously be of age.
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But they say it as if it carries some weight. So I'm guessing, just a guess that he's fairly young.
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But the formerly blind man's parents just want this interview to end. Why? Because they had reason to be afraid.
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Text tells us they could put him out of the synagogue. Now this was a big deal to not be able to go into synagogue because it would affect not just your
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Saturday worship. It would affect your whole life, your social standing, your ability to work, people to hire you.
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It was a big deal. Well so far this investigation for the
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Pharisees was not going well. They had interviewed the informant, didn't get what they wanted.
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They checked the informant's veracity. They went back and talked to his parents. They didn't get what they want.
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And there were no other witnesses. There was nobody else they could talk to. So what do you do? You go back to stage 1 and we're going to call it stage 3.
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They're going to re -interview the informant. This is their last chance. This is their last hope to disprove
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Jesus. And really what they want him to do, what they're going to challenge him to do, they want him to cinch up his belt and tell the truth is what they're going to say.
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Verse 24, so for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, give glory to God.
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We know that this man is a sinner. Now when you say give glory to God, you just say they want him to raise his hands and praise the
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Lord. No. This is a colloquial phrase and really what they want him to say is just tell the truth.
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We know that you've been giving us the monkey business here. We know that you've been lying to us. So tell us the truth now and we'll go easy on you.
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We won't kick you out of the synagogue. They're really pressuring him. They're leaning on him.
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They're turning up the heat. Now think about that for a moment.
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What has he done wrong? This is like threatening the victim of a crime, right?
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I mean they're putting him through the ringer. Why? Because his whole life he's been blind and now he sees and they're going to treat him like he's a crook.
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We're going to make your life miserable unless, unless what? Unless you deny the one who gave you sight and they go right after Jesus.
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We know that this man, and they mean Jesus, is a sinner. In chapter 8, if you'll recall, he challenged the
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Pharisees, Jesus did, to name a sin. No one did.
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They had no specific sin they could name, but it appears now that they hope to diminish him by getting, by calling him a sinner anyway and getting this man to give them some ammunition they could use on him.
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But this man is like a scene out of a movie. You want the truth? You can't handle the truth.
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Look at verse 25. He answered, whether he is a sinner, I do not know.
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One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now
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I see. This man was a non -cooperating witness.
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He wasn't going with their program. He declines comment on the issue of Jesus as sinner.
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However, there's one truth he cannot deny. He was blind, but he's blind no longer.
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It's amazing. It's amazing. The spiritually blind, the
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Pharisees, are trying to convince a man who was physically blind to join them in their spiritual blindness.
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Come on, he didn't really do that for you. That didn't really happen. Tell us the truth.
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There must be some other explanation. Even though these Pharisees have the power, the prestige, the education, and really the ability to make this man's life very, very difficult, he refuses to deny what
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Jesus has done in his life. He's like the guitar player who only knows one note.
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You know what they call him? Johnny One Note, of course. It's all he knows, and he just keeps playing it.
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That's what this guy does. I don't know. Here's what I do know. I was blind, but now
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I see. Look at verse 26. He really slams them after this statement by them.
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They said to him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? Tell us.
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What was his method? By what power did he do these things? He answered them,
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I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?
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Do you also want to become his disciples? Well, they can't give up.
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They have to try. There has to be some natural explanation. Like any good liberal, they want some natural explanation.
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You know, how did Moses and the people of Israel get across the Red Sea? Well, it was really shallow there, or there were a lot of reeds during that time of the year, or whatever.
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I'll never forget the first time I heard Mike talk about the parting of the Red Sea, and he said, well, if it was really shallow there, then the real miracle was what?
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How the Egyptian army all got drowned by the shallow water. How did that happen?
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But they want some naturalistic explanation. Maybe he gave you some herbs.
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You know, he went to the homeopathic store and gave you some olive oil or something.
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Is there something we've missed? This really cannot be the full story. Johnny, one note, lets them have it.
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You guys really want to hear it again? He's just going to give them one note. Really?
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Do you want to hear it again? Are you guys just trying to convince yourselves to follow
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Jesus? Obviously, they didn't want to do that.
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And his question is phrased in such a way that he knows that they don't want to. It asks for a no.
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But he wants them to just stop all this. But then, and this sometimes happens during the course of an investigation.
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Somebody gets so emotionally involved in a situation, they're so angry that they just lose their cool and they act in an unprofessional way.
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And look at how, I mean, this is what we would call an unprofessional manner that they conduct themselves in.
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Look at verse 28. Obviously, they're not police officers, but this is just unbelievable.
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And they reviled him saying, you are his disciple. Well, he did say, you want to be his disciple too, so that would kind of indicate he was a disciple of Jesus.
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You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.
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By the way, when it says there, we do not know where he comes from, when
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Jesus said, I have come from heaven or the Father sent me, what he was saying is what they were saying.
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We don't know the source of his power. And that's what they're saying. We don't, they weren't talking about, we don't know if he's from Galilee, we don't know if he's from Bethlehem.
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They meant, we don't know what the source of his power is. We can't identify it.
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Since the formerly blind man, and here we go, I have the acronym now, it's FBM, has refused to give negative testimony about Jesus, they conclude he is
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Jesus' disciple. And they claim to be followers of Moses, disciples of Moses, whom they rightly point out heard from God.
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Moses was a prophet, and they know that. Jesus, no way.
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And one of these days they're going to prove it. His response, his simple testimony is really remarkable because they try everything they can to suppress the truth, to suppress his testimony.
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But look at his response, verse 30, the man answered, why this is an amazing thing.
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You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.
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They were so willfully and spiritually blind that the man is astonished.
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Hendrickson said it this way, he says, this is really a marvelous thing. Your unbelief in the face of the evidence is more of a miracle than my cure.
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I cannot believe how stubborn you people are. You refuse to believe and you just, you're going to continue to refuse to believe no matter how clear it is.
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Reminds me of the parable, not a biblical parable, but the parable that's told in the subcontinent of India about blind men and an elephant, how they all put their hands up on the elephant in different parts and they describe the different parts and then they start bickering about what manner of animal it might be.
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Well in this case, the elephant is right in front of them. They can see the elephant and they're saying, no,
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I don't see an elephant. You see an elephant? I don't see an elephant. They know this is a miracle. They know he was blind from birth.
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They know he can now see, but they're going to do anything in their power to try to discredit this.
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And this man doesn't stop in his testimony. He's now going to testify without using Jesus' name that Jesus does the will of the
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Father. Look at verse 31. We know that God does not listen to sinners, that he's not obligated to hear the prayer of those who are habitually sinning, but if anyone is a worshiper of God, and look at that, and does his will,
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God listens to him. What did Jesus always say? I do the will of the
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Father. I do the will of him who sent me. I do not do my own will. If anyone does that,
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God listens to him. If Jesus was a sinner as these Pharisees proposed, then how is he able to do such a miracle?
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On the other hand, if Jesus was one who always did the will of the Father, always did the will of the
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Father without fail, then how could the Father decline his request? The man's logic is really impeccable.
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And he goes on. Jesus ultimately is going to say, is from the
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Father. Look at verse 32. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone open the eyes of a man born blind.
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If this man were not from God, in other words, if that wasn't the source of his power, he could do nothing.
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This is a miracle, something that's never taken place in the history of the world. And this man concludes with a simple observation, again, not unlike Nicodemus.
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Such power can only come from God. Who else could give sight to someone who had never seen before?
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But the Pharisees reject Christ and this man, his witness. Look at verse 34.
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They answered him, you were born in utter sin and you would teach us?
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And they cast him out. For these Pharisees, the man has finally crossed the line.
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He's gone too far. Like the disciples when they first asked Jesus, if you recall, when they passed by this blind man.
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The Pharisees presumed that someone must be in sin for him to have been born blind.
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Remember the disciples said, who was it who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind? Did he sin in the womb?
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Did his mother sin? Did his father sin? Why is it that he's born blind? It had to be somebody's fault. And so they say he was born in utter sin and that's what they mean.
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We don't know what the cause of your blindness was, but we know it was sin.
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Whoever's sin it was. Since he was formed in such sin, he has no one to teach them.
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After all, they're the holy ones. They're the good ones. And this man's testimony will prove costly.
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Why? Because they cast him out. That means they disfellowshipped him. They precluded him from worshiping in the synagogue, which as I said would have social and economic implications as well.
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But again, in their vitriol they have shown that they know the truth. When they say he was born in utter sin, what are they acknowledging?
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That he was born blind. They also know that he can now see.
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So they know the truth of the miracle, but they want to suppress the truth about its source. And really they have no excuse.
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The Old Testament, several occasions in the book of Isaiah 3 to be exact, it spoke of this exact thing.
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If you recall even the beginning of the Gospel of Luke when he takes the scroll and he reads it.
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It's from Isaiah 42 and I'll read verses 6 and 7 of Isaiah 42.
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I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness. I will take you by the hand and keep you. I will give you as a covenant for the nations, a light for the nations, or a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison who sit in darkness.
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This man was once blind, but now he sees. The Pharisees are blind even while they see.
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Jesus called them what? Blind guides? Certainly applicable here. The clues, the evidence, everything they needed was there.
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But it didn't fit their paradigm, it didn't fit their worldview. This is true of unbelievers today.
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They will believe anything to avoid the obvious. How do we respond to that?
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How do we respond to people who want to ignore the obvious like there's no difference between a heterosexual marriage and a homosexual marriage?
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Yes there are, there are differences. Stop me when you've heard enough. You can list them all.
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But how do we respond to this lost and dying world? I would say that Mr. Johnny OneNote, since we don't have a name
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I'm just going to name him Johnny OneNote, he has it right.
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What's our response to this? I once was lost, but now
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I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. But what about evolution?
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But what about ad nauseum? I once was lost, but now
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I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. When we say that we were lost, what is that?
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It's an admission of guilt. It's an admission that we know that we stood condemned before the law, that we were violators of the law, that we were guilty of sin, of failing to live up to God's perfect standard.
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And the Bible says that we are like sheep who've gone astray, that we chose our own way.
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What does it mean to be found? It means that we're adopted by God. He places us in Christ, which is to say that we receive the righteousness of Jesus, His perfection imputed to us.
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In place of our sinfulness put on Christ, we get His perfection, His righteousness.
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Our sin, which would have condemned us to hell, is imputed to Jesus who paid the price for it on Calvary.
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And that price, the horrible, yet voluntary death Jesus suffered, was accepted by the
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Father, who then raised Jesus from the dead on the third day. To no longer be blind means to believe these truths.
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It means that we see the elephant. We see the truth.
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It's right in front of all of us. We know, as Romans 1 says, we know that there's a
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God. We know many things. We have an inherent knowledge of our sinfulness that comes from having a conscience, that comes from having the law of God written on our hearts.
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For those of you who are here this morning and not saved, will you not see, will you not repent and believe on the
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Lord Jesus Christ? Flee from your sins.
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Flee to the cross, even this morning. Let's pray. Father in heaven,
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Lord, we thank you for the testimony of this simple man, uneducated, unsophisticated, intimidated by the rulers of his day, and yet not being willing to deny what he knew, that he once was blind and now sees.
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Knowing this could only happen by the work of God. You are a gracious and loving
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God, one who is slow to anger, swift to forgive.
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Father, we praise you and would pray that you would open the eyes of many, even as we consider the headlines, the news of our day, and such utter willingness to ignore obvious truth.
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Father, there's a deeper issue, and that deeper issue is the suppression of the truth about you and about your son, whom you sent to save sinners like us.