The Blind See, The Seeing Are Blind

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.

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John chapter 9. As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.

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His disciples asked him, Rabbi who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind?

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Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

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We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work.

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As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world. Having said these things he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, then anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent.

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So he went and washed and he came back seeing. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, is this not the man who used to sit and beg?

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Some said, it is he. Others said, no it just looks like him. He kept saying,

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I'm the man. So they said to them, well how then were your eyes opened? He answered, the man called

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Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and I received my sight.

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And they said to him, well where is he? He said, I don't know. They brought to the

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Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.

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So the Pharisees again asked him how he received his sight. He said to them, well 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 Sabbath. But others said, well how can a man who's a sinner do such signs?

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And there was a division among them. And they began and they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him since he opened your eyes?

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He said, well he's a prophet. 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.

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And they asked them, is this your son who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?

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His parents answered, well we know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we don't know, nor do we know who opened his eyes.

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Ask him, he's of age, he'll 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 to him, he's of age, ask him.

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So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.

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He answered, well whether he's a sinner I don't know. One thing I do know, I was blind and now

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I see. They said to them, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? He answered them,

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I've told you already and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?

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Do you want to become his disciples? 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 don't know where he comes from. And the man answered, why this is an amazing thing.

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You don't 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 can do nothing. They answered him, you were born in utter sin and you would teach us.

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And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out and having found him he said, do you believe in the

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Son of Man? He answered, and who is he sir so that I might believe in him?

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Jesus said to him, you have seen him and it is he who is speaking to you. He said,

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Lord I believe and he worshipped him. Jesus said, for judgment I came into this world that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind.

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Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things and said to him, are we also blind?

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Jesus said to them, well if you were blind you would have no guilt but now that you say we see your guilt remains.

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This is the Gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. What a great text.

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What a wonderful story. Something seems to be terribly wrong with the Pharisees though.

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The irony here is thick as they like to say. Now to help us understand what is going on here, the

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Pharisees are not, and we must always remember this, they are not representatives of orthodoxy.

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They don't represent true Judaism. They are self -righteous and they have added to God's Word.

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If you pay attention to the Gospels we learn that, well, the Pharisees have created their own body of religious works called the

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Tradition of the Elders, otherwise known as the Oral Torah. As the story goes, when

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Moses went up on Mount Sinai he came down with the written Torah, which we have in our

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Bible, but he also gave the Oral Torah. And this is where all of these other teachings come from, and it's the

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Oral Torah that teaches that you are saved by your works. It is the

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Oral Torah that teaches that if you are born blind it is because you sinned, or maybe your parents did.

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Think of it this way here. Self -righteousness kind of works with this logic. Two farmers.

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One we'll call Leroy Brown. We know about him. He owns a junkyard too, right?

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Baddest man in the whole, whatever. You get what I'm saying. Can't say that here. But the idea behind Leroy Brown, he's a farmer out here, and then you have

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Olly Olson. We all know Olly, right? But Leroy Brown, this is a fellow.

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He, in his farming endeavors, has a year where the crops totally fail.

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He loses everything. And we say, haha, God's punishing him.

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But Olly has a farm next to Leroy Brown. They don't really get along. And Olly's crops failed too, and he lost everything too.

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And you sit there and go, well, I guess that means Olly is up to no good. He might have some secret sin that he hasn't confessed.

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And so, of course, our farm just down the road, we had a bumper crop showing that we are blessed by God because we are so righteous.

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We are so obedient. You see, you start to look at circumstance and you start to figure out who's the sinner and who's not based upon, well, what comes down the pike.

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But this story, this wonderful text, totally upsets the self -righteous apple cart.

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And the Pharisees are not having none of it. And the irony here is those who claim that they can see, we'll find out, are utterly blind, totally in the dark.

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The story is fantastic. So we'll work our way back through it. John chapter 9.

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As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth, and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, that this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

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And there it is, the self -righteous doctrine of the Pharisees. Let me use an offensive metaphor here.

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This is like a turd in the toilet that Jesus is about to flush. All right, we got to get rid of this thing once and for all.

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It's stinking up the place. So Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

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Oh, wow. This guy was born blind for different reasons than you would expect.

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This is akin to why Job suffered. Think about that. But Jesus says, we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.

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Night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

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In the whole gospel of John, there's this wonderful interplay between light and darkness, blindness and seeing, deafness and hearing, these wonderful interplays.

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And Jesus is the light who has come into the world, but the darkness has not understood it. So having said these things,

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Jesus does this. And everyone goes, what's he doing?

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Right? Makes a big old loogie in this mud, makes it into this anointing thingy, and everyone's going, ew, ew, ew.

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And he goes over to the blind man and he anoints his eyes, and everyone's going, oh, that's sick. That's disgusting.

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But there's important things going on here. You remember back in Genesis 2, how man was made?

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God took the mud, formed it into a man, and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

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This has creation stuff written all over it, and also tells us something about the means of grace, if you would.

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Does mud made with saliva have medicinal properties like this? Well, of course not.

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Okay? So think of this as like a sacrament in a way. So he anointed the man's eyes with the mud, and all the girls in the congregation said, ew.

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And he said to them, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means scent.

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And so he went and washed, and he came back sane. Now, I want you to note the parallels between yourself and this blind man.

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Our sermon hymn, Amazing Grace, this important opening stanza, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

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I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now

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I see. All of us, and I mean every single one of us, were born dead in trespasses and sins.

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We were born in darkness. We were blind. And God has opened our eyes.

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And I want you to think for a second here, where have we been sent to have our eyes opened?

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Which pool of water have we been sent to? That one. So now you can start to see there's a parallel between this fellow and us.

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So he washed, and he came back seeing. Keep this in mind. He hasn't seen

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Jesus with his own eyes. He's only heard Jesus's voice. Same with you.

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You have not seen Jesus with your eyes. That doesn't count. You have not seen

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Jesus with your own eyes, but you have heard his voice in the preaching of his word.

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Keep that in mind. So the neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, is this not the man who used to sit and beg?

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Some said, it's he. Others said, no, it just looks like him. So he kept saying,

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I'm the man. I'm that guy. So they said to him, well, how then were your eyes opened?

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He answered, well, the man called Jesus, made mud, anointed my eyes, and said to me, go to Siloam and wash.

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So I went, and I washed, and I received my sight. And they said to him, well, where is he?

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He said, I don't know. I don't know. Well, at this point, it's time to get the religious authorities involved.

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Now, I want you to note how what follows next sounds like an interrogation.

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This sounds like, well, when the Pharisees arrive on the scene, they have to grab that yellow tape.

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The pool of Siloam is now surrounded by tape. Don't cross this barrier.

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We're investigating a crime. A crime has occurred. A blind man has been healed.

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He can see. That sounds like a miracle to me. Maybe God is at work, don't you think?

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But they're going to treat this like a crime. So they brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.

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The soundtrack of the story now changes. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

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And you'll notice the religious authorities are not the good guys here, because they're heretics.

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They are self -righteous. They believe that they, well, they will be saved by how good they are.

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And they're not even sinners in need of a Savior. They're doing it all on their own. They're just fine. They don't need no

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Jesus. So it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.

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And if you know your tradition of the elders and the oral Torah, oh, lots of time is spent on the oral

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Torah of the many different ways in which you can break the Sabbath. So think of it this way.

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One of the rules regarding the Sabbath goes something like this. So you're, it's the Sabbath. The sun has set on Friday evening, and you're enjoying a fine meal with your family.

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You're sitting down and having your Shabbat meal. You happen to live in a home, well, where you can't afford the tile or the carpet.

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And so you have a dirt floor. And so you say, oh, that was just a wonderful meal.

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And you push back from the table, but the legs of your chair then in the dirt create furrows.

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You have just broken the Sabbath, because you are plowing, and plowing is work, and work is a sin on the

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Sabbath. And you sit there and go, really? Yeah. So this mud making thing, oh, that's over the line.

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But Jesus didn't break the Sabbath. So the Pharisees pulled out their clipboard, their pencil.

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They're going to take a report. So they asked, so the

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Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. He said to them, well, he put mud on my eyes.

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I washed, and I see this thing, mud, wash, see, got it? Any other important details as we're conducting our investigation?

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So some of the Pharisees then upon hearing this said, this man is not from God, for he does not keep the

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Sabbath. No, he doesn't keep the oral Torah. Let's be specific here. But others said, how can a man who's a sinner do such signs?

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Now their theology is starting to short circuit. The inconsistencies are starting to show through.

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But others said, how can he do such signs if he's a sinner? And so there was division among them. And so they again said to the blind man, what do you say about him since he opened your eyes?

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Man, talk about an unsafe question. Well, he said, oh, well, he's a prophet. And the

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Jews did not believe that he had been blind. No, no, this is a joke. This is a total joke.

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Somebody's pulling one on. They're punking us. You know, you weren't really born blind, were you?

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Yeah, this is a, you know, you guys are just scamming us. So they didn't believe that he had been blind and had received a sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight.

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And they asked him, watch how the interrogation goes. Is this your son whom you say was born blind?

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What's going on here? The man was blind. A miracle has happened.

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He can see strike up the praise band, man. We should be on our faces worshiping

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God. And these guys literally are trying to figure out who they can send to court because someone needs to be crucified for this.

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And isn't that the point? Someone needs to be crucified for this.

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So is this your son whom you say was born blind? How then does he now see his parents?

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Watch this squishy answer. Well, we know that this is our son and yeah, he was born blind, but how he now sees, we don't know, nor do we know who opened his eyes.

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Ask him he's of age. He'll speak for himself. Goodbye. Thanks mom.

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Thanks dad. And you'll notice here, the persecution is thick.

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They know it is not safe to answer these questions. And so, well, you'll notice that the gospel and Jesus create division in synagogue as well as family.

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So they said these things because they feared that the Jews, feared the Jews. And here's the reason why. For the

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Jews had already agreed if anyone should confess Jesus to be the Messiah, that's how we should understand Christ here.

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He was to be put out of the synagogue. Let me rework the word synagogue here. Synagogue is the assembly of those who come together, who have the faith of Abraham to hear the

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Torah and the prophets. Think of synagogue as well a prototype of church. So the

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Pharisees had already agreed if anyone should confess Jesus to be the Messiah, he's to be excommunicated from church.

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What kind of church is that? What kind of synagogue is that?

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This should clue you in on the fact these fellows don't have the faith of Abraham. They don't have the faith of David.

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They don't have the faith of Isaiah or Jeremiah or Micah or any of the prophets of old.

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These men hate Christ, which doesn't make any sense.

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They're in Israel. Jesus is the God of Israel and human flesh. So, second time, they called the man who had been blind and said to him, give glory to God, we know that this man is a sinner.

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Makes me wonder if, you know, two of them had agreed. I'll play good Pharisee, you play bad Pharisee. See if we get this guy to crack.

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Give glory to God, we know this man's a sinner. And he answered, whether he's a sinner, I don't know.

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One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.

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What did this fellow do? What has this fellow done?

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He was minding his own business, doing what he normally does, begging.

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Because that's what, well, blind people did in the day. And Jesus gave him his sight by grace as a gift.

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And what is happening? He is being persecuted for this. And in a similar way, we

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Christians, who have received Christ, who have had our sins forgiven, have been united with him in the waters of our baptism, have had our eyes opened, we too, well, suffer persecution of this type.

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Because the world and false religion hates, hates

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Jesus and wants him dead. So, the one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now

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I see. So they said to him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? 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 want to become his disciples? Man, chutzpah, this guy's standing his ground.

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And so they reviled him saying, and here comes their false doctrine. You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.

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Now, wait a second. Here, Moses was a disciple of God. Moses was a prophet.

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He was not somebody that we are to be disciples of. You could be disciples of Yahweh, but not disciples of Moses in the truest sense.

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And by the way, they're not telling the truth. They've added to Moses's works. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we don't know where he comes from.

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And so he answered, why, this is an amazing thing. You don't know where he comes from. And yet he opened my eyes.

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We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him.

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Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind.

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And here comes the kicker. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. Can you say conflict?

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Now note the armor of, well, the Christian faith talked about in Ephesians.

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You know, our armor that we have tells us to have our shoes ready and our belt fastened and our sword in hand so that we can stand our ground.

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This guy is being assaulted by the darts of the enemy, by the devil himself, and he stands his ground.

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And with just a wee bit of knowledge of the scripture, is able to take those fiery darts aimed right at his head and knock him down and proclaim

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Christ. Wow, what amazing faith he's been given.

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If this man were not from God, he can do nothing. And now they start to vomit out their false theology.

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You were born in utter sin and you would teach us. So they excommunicated him.

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They cast him out. You see, notice by saying you were born in utter sin, they're saying we weren't.

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You are inferior. We're not. We're not scumbag sinner like you are. The fact that you were blind proves that you were hated by God.

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But we're not blind. That means we're loved by God. We're righteous and we're keeping his law. No, they're not.

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Through all of their actions, they show that they are in utter darkness, that they are children of the devil.

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They are blind to their own sin and their need for Jesus, and they revile and hate the light because their deeds are evil and they love the darkness.

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So they excommunicate him, really excommunicated for believing

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Jesus, excommunicated for being healed by Jesus, excommunicated for having my blindness turned into sight.

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And many of us, if we've had any exposure to self -righteousness and this religion of works, we think that God is a lot like these

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Pharisees. And here's what I mean. Have you ever had that time? You know, it's the middle of the night, maybe two or three in the morning, and you have kind of a startling dream or something wakes you up and you come out of your sleep with a start and you go,

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I'm going to die someday and stand before God. And you're terrified by the thought because no sooner do you say that, that out comes the list of all the ways in which you have seriously fallen short.

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And don't forget all the little ways too. All those little white lies, they're not white.

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There's no such thing. They're all black. So you start to think about this and you go, oh my, what am

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I going to do? What am I going to say? And you begin to fear God's going to, oh man, when I see God, he's going to say to me, get out, be gone from me.

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You're a sinner. Well, yeah, actually we are.

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And when the devil reminds you that you're a sinner, which you are, and so am

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I, you just remind him that Christ died for sinners. And so you thank the devil.

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Thank you for reminding me I'm a sinner because Christ only died for sinners. I'm one of them. So we think, well,

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God's like the Pharisees, casting us out, having nothing to do with us, self -righteous, indignant, and just really kind of a jerk.

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But that's not how God is. And we see this in the actions of Jesus. Remember, he, like us, has not seen

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Jesus face -to -face. And so what comes next is a beautiful picture of what it's going to be like on the day when you or I, whichever of us goes first, gets to stand before Jesus and see him face -to -face.

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Watch Jesus's kindness and love and mercy juxtaposed against the blindness, hatred, and rage of the

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Pharisees. Jesus heard that they had cast the fellow out, literally excommunicated him.

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And so Jesus sought him out. And having found him, he said, do you believe in the

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Son of Man? He answered, well, who is he, sir, so that I might believe in him?

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Jesus said to him, you have seen him. It is he who is speaking to you.

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You're looking at him. You can see. You can see me. And he said,

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Lord, I believe. And he worshiped Jesus. Brothers and sisters, you who've been sent to the waters of baptism, who've been united to Christ in his death and his resurrection, you who've had your sins forgiven, do you believe in the

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Son of Man? You do.

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I know you do. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten

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Son, that whosoever, including you, including me, believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

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For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. You, brothers and sisters, believe.

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And on that day when you see Jesus face to face, you will hear from him that I do not judge you,

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I love you. And you will say, Lord, I believe. And you will worship Jesus just like this fellow worshiped there at his feet.

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You will see and hold and touch his scarred feet. You will see his scarred hands and head and side, all of the tokens of his death to save and redeem you so that he can open your eyes to him so that you may see and worship only him.

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And notice the kindness of Jesus compared to the hatred and rage of the Pharisees. You see, the religion of self -righteousness creates an angry, intolerable jerk of a

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God who actually, well, sounds a lot more like Satan to me than the

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God of Scripture. Jesus is not like that. Those who believe in him he does not cast out.

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Those who believe in him, he seeks them out to strengthen them, to comfort them, to assure them.

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And Christ has met with you today. He has sought you out today to feed you with his word, to have you hear in your ears his voice of the forgiveness of your sins.

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Next week we will feast on his body and blood broken and shed for the forgiveness of our sins. All of these ways in which he comes to seek you out to assure you of his love, his grace, and his mercy for you.

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And so Jesus then says this, is for judgment that 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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Those who do not see are those who recognize that they are sinners, recognize that they do not measure up and they are in need of a savior.

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And God opens their eyes. Those who see that become blind are those who in their self -righteousness believe that they can see but through all of their actions and their false theology prove over and again that they are totally in the dark.

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Proof positive? The God that they claim to worship is standing there among them and they hate and revile him and will excommunicate anyone who says they believe in him.

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That proves that they're in the dark. And so Jesus through his grace shows them to be what they are, utterly blind.

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So some of the Pharisees near Jesus heard these things and they said, are we also blind? And everyone said, yeah you betcha.

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You are. Jesus said to them if you were blind you would have no guilt and he takes their false self -righteous theology and shoves it right up their nose.

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If you were blind you would have no guilt but now that you say we see your guilt remains.

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You keep acting like you're not the sinner. You're wrong. You are a sinner and you are guilty of sin and guilty and stand judge before me and I'm God.

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But those who I give sight to who were born blind they have no guilt.

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And brothers and sisters that's the thing. If you are trying to get to heaven and save yourself on your own steam, by your own works, by your own piety, well

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I read my bible at least 45 minutes every day and I pray for at least an hour every day.

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So therefore I deserve to go to heaven. If you think that that's what's going to get you to heaven, you're blind and you deserve to go to hell.

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No amount of bible reading will save you. Yet if you recognize that you are by nature sinful and unclean, that you have sinned against God and thought, word, deed, by the things that you've done, by the things that you've left undone, and you beseech

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God and Christ to be merciful to you, to open your eyes, to forgive you, to remind you again, remind you again of how he opened your eyes in the pool of the waters of baptism.

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Your guilt no longer remains. You are forgiven. Your eyes have been opened.

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You can see and the one whom you see is Jesus. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota 56744. And again that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota 56744. We thank you for your support.

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