I AM At Work - [John 9:1-12]

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Well, I would invite you this morning to take your Bibles and open them to John chapter 9. What a blessing to see four
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Blackstone children up there this morning. I was watching little Jack and just thinking, he looks just like his grandpa, just like Jack O 'Leary.
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Well, as we open our Bibles, John chapter 9 again, I would just like to ask you a question.
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If a miracle is commonplace, if we should expect a miracle, is it a miracle?
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Biblically speaking, miracles were basically confined to three eras, concentrated in those eras, covering about 100 years.
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We have the era of Moses and Joshua, we have Elijah and Elisha, and then we have
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Jesus and the apostles. And outside of those three eras, miracles, relatively rare.
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But what about this idea of expecting a miracle? One televangelist had that as his kind of his theme, his motto as it were.
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Can you, should you, wait expectantly for God to suspend, and here's the definition of a miracle, to suspend the laws of nature and do something that only he can do.
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I mean, I have a more technical definition which is God entering the space -time continuum than suspending the laws.
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I mean, I don't know why I like to say that, I just do, sounds technical. But what about this idea of expecting a miracle?
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Should we expect one? Well, in a word, no. In 1983, this man who had this motto, expect a miracle, announced that Jesus had appeared to him in person and commissioned him to find a cure for cancer.
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Now if I were following this man, I would think to myself a few things. Number one, why would
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Jesus appear to a non -doctor and tell him to find a cure for cancer? But secondly, if Jesus appeared to you and then you died and there was still no cure for cancer,
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I would think that Jesus did not choose wisely. That's not how Jesus works. The same man wrote 120 books on how
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God performs miracles, getting some kind of feedback here, how
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God performs miracles. In fact, he sold 8 million copies of his books with titles like, of course,
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Expect a Miracle, Miracles of Seed Faith, this is my favorite one,
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A Daily Guide to Miracles, The Three Most Important Steps to Your Better Health.
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Well, that sounds like something you'd find in a whole food store. This one, Miracle Living, and then he also wrote this one,
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The Seed Commentary on the Whole Bible. You say, well, what does that have to do with anything? Well, this is the idea that you have to plant a seed in order to receive from God.
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So every time where he would think this is an indication that somebody planted a seed, he would do that.
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This is kind of, anyway. It became obvious that this man focused on miracles.
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In fact, he said things like this, how about this? Miracles are always coming toward you or they're passing you by.
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Are miracles always coming toward you? And here's an even better question, can a miracle just pass you by?
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Thinking about what a miracle actually is, a work of God, a supernatural intervention by God into the natural order of things.
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Can it just sort of pass you by? Can you miss a miracle? Well, today, we're going to see a genuine miracle.
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In fact, I'd go so far as to say that in our text today, you should expect a miracle.
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So let's go to our text. We're going to be reading verses 1 through 12. I think
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I told Tracy 1 to 11 because I am fallible. It's 1 to 12. As he passed by, speaking of Jesus, he saw a man blind from birth and his disciples asked him,
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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 and made mud with the saliva.
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Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, go.
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Wash in the pool of Siloam, which means scent. So he went and washed and came back seeing.
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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, but he's like him.
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He kept saying, I am the man. So they said to him, then how were your eyes opened?
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He answered, the man called Jesus, made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash.
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So I went and washed and received my sight. They said to him, where is he?
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He said, I do not know. Now just by way of review, chapters 7 and 8, really kind of a game,
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I guess you could say, of cat and mouse between the Pharisees and the Lord. They wanted to arrest him.
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They wanted to try him. Why? Because he dared to heal a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years on the
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Sabbath. He did a work on the Sabbath. And they likely expected
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Jesus to come to Jerusalem, as most faithful Jews did, for the Festival of Booze, which was also known as the
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Feast of Tabernacles, where they would set up all these temporary tents and lean -tos throughout the city and just kind of pack everybody in and have these great celebrations.
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And if you recall, Jesus' brothers invited him to go with them from Galilee to Jerusalem, but he told them, in so many words, go right ahead, it's not my time.
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And what he meant by that was it wasn't his time to be captured, which is what would have happened if he'd gone with his brothers.
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He knew the Pharisees were still after him. He went to Jerusalem later in a less predictable way, and then he taught several times on the temple grounds, both claiming to be sent of the
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Father and to be saying exactly what the Father wanted him to say. There were close calls, times where the
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Pharisees tried to get him arrested or the temple guards were called to arrest him, but they never did.
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And each time, we would read something along the lines of, it was not yet his time. And finally, at the end of John 8, which we went through last week, in verse 58,
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Jesus proclaimed what, before Abraham was, I am, his eternality, his ever -existence, his coming from of old, that he existed actually before Abraham did.
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And if you recall, the Jews just exploded with rage. They'd had enough. They'd already been through this a few times with him, and now they just, they couldn't even restrain themselves to hold any kind of a trial.
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They picked up stones and tried to kill him. But miraculously, and I don't use that word lightly, he was hidden from their eyes.
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They could not see him, and he escaped. And that's right where we are this morning, right after John 8, 59.
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And this morning, we're going to see something that the God of the universe can only do, something he can only sovereignly do, something that is naturally impossible, because God is not restricted by nature.
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I mean, you remember those old commercials, you know, you won't remember them. God created nature.
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You know, we talk about nature as if it's some independent force. God controls everything.
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He is the master of nature, and Jesus, as God, is fully in control of nature.
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And this morning, he's going to perform a demonstration of his deity. We're going to see three waypoints here this morning.
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First, we have the object of Jesus' work. Second, we have the objective of Jesus' work.
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And third, we have the objectors to Jesus' work. So first, the object of Jesus' work.
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Now where and when did this take place? As I said, it's sometime after chapter 8, obviously, it's in chapter 9.
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But sometime after the Feast of Booze, and sometime before the Festival of Dedication, which takes place in chapter 10 later on.
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And this is definitely in Jerusalem, somewhere near the temple, as will become obvious as we see it, or as we go through this.
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But it's difficult to be exact about the timing. Some think it was directly after his escape.
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I don't think that's likely, because as we'll see, or as we read, his disciples were with him, and it's not evident that they were there at the escape.
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But we know that it's sometime after his miraculous escape from the Jews, the ones who wish to stone him to death.
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And then before this festival that's coming up here in a month or so.
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And as I said last week, there was no confusion in the original audience.
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The ones who heard him say, before Abraham was, I am, they weren't thinking, well, what exactly is he trying to say?
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What's the message that Jesus is trying to get across? They understood very clearly he was claiming to be Yahweh, the covenant
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God of Israel, come to earth, and they didn't like it one little bit. And as we'll see this morning, this does take place near the temple, somewhere in Jerusalem, not far from the temple.
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And I think, you know, just, it's not really hard, well, let me put it this way.
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Let's just take a step back here. Verse 859, he escapes. And then you just start reading in John chapter 9, you see, as he passed by, wait a minute.
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So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus himself and went out of the temple. As he passed by, as he passed by what, where?
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What we need to understand is in the original Greek manuscript, there is no paragraph marker.
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There's no chapter break. There's no big blue nine like I have in my Bible. There's no little subheading there that says
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Jesus heals a man born blind. None of that stuff is there. It's just the word, I'll just use the
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English words, temple. And then the next word is as. They're just mashed all together.
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You go, well, that's kind of an odd thing to do, isn't it? Isn't that a weird thing to just talk about his escape and then to talk about as he's passing by, he sees a blind man, well, what's he doing?
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We have to go back to John's purpose in writing this book, which is to demonstrate that Jesus is
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God. It is the Christ. So here he's just said, I am
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God. He miraculously escapes out of the temple. And now John is going to give us an illustration of the deity of Christ says, look, this is who he said he is.
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Let me show you that he is, in fact, who he said he was. We see what, sadly,
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I have some sub points here. You don't have to keep up with the sub points. This is a very common site.
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That's my sub point, a common site in the ancient world. In verse one, as he, Jesus, passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.
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Well, why do I call that a common site? Because in. The ancient world, it was common,
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I mean, in our modern world, we sometimes think. That it's a very cruel world, right?
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I mean, we know about the horrors of abortion, the millions of babies that are sacrificed on the altar of personal convenience.
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We're shocked. We see ISIS doing unspeakable things in the
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Middle East. In fact, in our own country, we've recently revisited the history of slavery, racism and civil rights.
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Our world and even our country can seem hard hearted, cold.
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But the ancient world was brutal. When we think about a blind man, a man blind from birth, there was no
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Braille language back then. There'd been no Helen Keller. There was no government assistance program for people who had lesser abilities.
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For example, not being able to see. There was no help at all other than the kindness of strangers.
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To survive was not a guarantee. You could die. You could be put to death by somebody and not ever know what happened.
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And nobody would really, sadly, care. Men who had such afflictions tended to gather near religiously significant places.
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Well, why would they do that? Why do people call churches now? Because they want help and they recognize that, generally speaking, people who at least are trying to, even if they're not
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Bible believers, even if they're just trying to salve their consciences, people understand that the religiously driven people, those people who are trying to prove themselves to a
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God or just trying to serve the true God, are more likely to be charitable. So they gather in these kind of places.
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And this poor man, this blind man, would have been a pariah, a social pariah from birth.
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But things were about to change for him. So we've seen a common side. Second, a common question.
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Look at verse 2. And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, teacher?
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They're addressing him properly as teacher, with great respect. Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
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Now, his disciples are just doing what the theologically astute people of their day did.
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This was the prevailing teaching of the times. The rabbis of the day would go to great lengths to try and sort out how such calamities occurred.
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They would try to attach blame, a fixed blame, for some sad situation like this.
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It had to be a particular act or a particular sin that someone had committed that caused it.
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Who is at fault? Who is responsible? Who did this horrible thing that this man is blind?
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And really, there are only a few options, theologically speaking. And this is what they're sorting through. And I mean, it really is amazing if we just think about it.
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This is like a discipleship group, a discipleship lab, as we would call it in seminary. And they're just the teacher and all the students.
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So they're walking along and they pass this guy who's blind. And he says, you know, one of the disciples says, teacher, let me ask you something.
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Why? What happened? Who sinned that this guy is blind? So here are the options.
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The blindness was caused by something the man himself had done. Listen, in the womb.
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This is actually taught by some rabbis based on the idea that Esau had tried to kill Jacob.
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So babies, some rabbis taught, can sin. So maybe this man, when he was a baby in the womb, did something that was so bad that God made him blind.
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That's the result of his sin. Second option, the blindness was caused by some sin the parents committed.
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It was commonly held that a mother, if she visited some kind of pagan temple or something while she was pregnant, her child might have some kind of birth defect.
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Another possibility was that the father had sinned sexually during the pregnancy, and this was a result of that.
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So was it the man? Was it the parents? And here's the third one that's not mentioned here, but this is the one that they really, the reason why the rabbis stress the first two, because this third one is just unthinkable.
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That it was of God. That he did it. Like so many, their objective was to protect the reputation of God.
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Well, God certainly would never cause such a thing. Somebody else had to be at fault.
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This can't be a God ordained, as we would say. This can't be of God. And doesn't that happen today?
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When some terrible event happens? I mean, bigger than one person being blind. 9 -11, many people said, well, you know,
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God is sad today. God is shocked today. Why?
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Because if God knew about it, then the idea is that he should have prevented it. Many people seem to worry about God's reputation, but they don't worry much about his glory.
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This problem is one that theologians, theologians, theologians. If they have something lodged in their throat, they're a theologian.
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Theologians call theodicy, which is, simply put, the problem of evil. How does a good
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God allow, does he permit evil to exist?
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I remember a pop song when I was growing up that said, you know, if there's a God in heaven, what's he waiting for? That's the idea of the atheists.
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They love this. They say, well, here's proof that God doesn't exist because there's evil in the world.
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Is that proof that God doesn't exist? Well, we'll get to the answer here in a minute.
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The answer, short answer is obviously no. But the disciples asked this question.
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They asked Jesus this question because they want him to give them the answer. Sort it out for us. Tell us what's going on.
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So we have a common site and a common question. And now we get the uncommon answer.
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Jesus goes for option number three. Jesus answered. It was not that this man sinned, option one is done, or his parents, done, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
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The true causation is none of the presumed reasons. It's like every disease and every malady in history, its result is what?
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Or why does it happen? It is a result of the fall. Adam and Eve living in idyllic
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Eden, and when they fell, sin came in, disease, and every complication of life resulting from sin.
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But Jesus says that there was a purpose to this, an eternal purpose, that the works of God might be displayed in him, might be shown in him, in his life.
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Now isn't God working out all things for his glory?
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Isn't he controlling everything for his glory? It's kind of a mind -boggling idea, but it's true.
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Even sin redoubts the glory of God, and that's hard to accept.
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Disease, war, things that we hate. But these works, the works of God, here in our text, are miracles that display both
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God's power and his love. We're going to see him set his power and his affection on this man.
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Why does evil exist? What's the answer to theodicy? Ultimately, it's so that God might defeat it all through Christ Jesus, his son, for his glory.
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If there was no darkness, there'd be nothing to measure light against. Without sin, we wouldn't understand holiness.
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We wouldn't understand guilt. We wouldn't understand a lot of things. For those who believe in God and trust in his
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Christ, in his Savior, in his Son, evil is something that we are beset by temporarily, but we have the promise of God that what?
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One day, we will dwell eternally free from sin and all of its emanations, namely, every form of evil, every form of disease, every form of suffering.
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This man was not guilty of any sin that caused this. His parents were not guilty of any sin that caused this.
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And this man's life was about to dramatically change why? That God might be glorified.
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So we've seen the object of Jesus' work, this blind man. Now we see our second waypoint here, the objective of Jesus' work.
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Ultimately, the objective of Jesus' work is the salvation of souls by the demonstration of his person.
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Once we know who Jesus is, once we believe in that, then we will be saved.
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Look at our first subpoint here, the work of the Father. Verse 4, we must work the works of him who sent me.
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So instead of trying to sort out whose fault this is that this man is blind, maybe we should help him.
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Instead of treating him like he is some kind of calculus problem to be put up on the board and solved, well, his blindness to be solved, maybe we should actually stop and help him.
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Now notice we, I was reading the New King James Version this morning and it says I. And so I presume that the
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King James says I as well, but it really is we in the best manuscripts. The emphasis really is on Jesus and the disciples doing the work of the
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Father. That's not to say that we're not to do the work of the Father, but in this context he's just emphasizing the immediacy, the importance of doing this.
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And he again repeats the theme, look at that, the works of him who sent me. This is not, this is something he repeats over and over and over again.
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In order to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you have to believe that he is the Son sent from the
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Father. Now we see our second sub point here, the work of the lights.
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We saw the work of the Father, now the work of the light we call the work of the Son. He 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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Jesus is stressing to the disciples the importance of being about doing the Father's business in that immediate time frame while he was with them.
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Jesus' time was indeed drawing to a close on the earth. He probably had less than about six months to live until he would go to the cross.
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And what he says there, you know, it's impossible to work in the dark. Well, what does he mean? Well, it's pretty hard to do some things in the dark.
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And he was talking about the difficulty after he would leave. And if you recall, what happened right after the crucifixion?
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The disciples were really defeated. They scattered. They just kind of went home, went back to, you know,
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I guess it's over until he was resurrected, until they saw him again.
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But for Jesus, his day, his life, his time as a present light of the world, as the source of all spiritual truth and illumination was coming to an end.
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So there was this sense of urgency that he wants to give his disciples. And shouldn't we have that same sense of urgency?
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You know, we're not with Jesus, not in the same sense. We're not walking around with him. But here's the truth.
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The truth is there's a time limit. There's a time limit on how long we have to do the works of him we serve.
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Once we are dead, we can no longer do this work. Once our friends and relatives are dead, we can no longer do this work.
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Once the Lord returns, we can no longer do this work. There is an urgency, a nowness to what we need to do.
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We need to be preaching the gospel to people now.
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Back to our text, look at third sub -point here, the work of healing, the work of healing, verse 6.
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Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him,
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Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means scent. Now just imagine for a moment that you're this blind man.
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You're sitting by the side of the road. You're begging. This is all you can do. Day after day, you're just begging to eke out an existence.
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It's a hard life. And so here this group of men just go walking by you.
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And the man who's obviously in charge says, We need to do something for this guy.
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You're just sitting there and you're listening to all this. He says he's the light of the world and all this. And then all of a sudden, he does what?
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Spits on the ground and puts some mud in your eyes. Now, I don't think he's saved yet.
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We'll see that later on in the chapter. But I'll tell you what, if that was you, you're going to let some stranger approach you and put mud in your eyes?
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I mean, just think. It's not hard to imagine that during the course of this man's lifetime, children have probably played tricks on him.
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People had mistreated him in all manner of ways.
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Probably even people had promised to heal him or to do something for him and not done it. But we do know this, that there was absolutely no deference to those who were handicapped in those days.
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There'd be no, Oh, let's have pity on this man. I mean, some might. But generally, as a society, there wasn't a whole lot of compassion for people.
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And the idea of spitting into the ground and making mud, that just seems odd. But there was a common teaching in this area in the ancient
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Near East that spit had some magical powers depending on who the person was who spit.
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I mean, I won't go through all the permutations. But rabbis just generally condemned it, the use of spittle because it was associated with magic.
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And furthermore, as we'll see a little bit later in verse 14, we'll see that next week, this was a Sabbath day.
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So, it's just amazing how many rules they had. But making mud on the
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Sabbath, that's a violation. That's work. And as I said before, going back to John chapter 5, healing somebody on the
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Sabbath is work. It's against the rules. Unless their life was in jeopardy. I mean, that would be okay.
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But if he's just blind, healing him would be wrong. If he's just paralyzed, healing him on the
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Sabbath, that can wait till Sunday. And you say, Sunday? Yep, Sabbath is Saturday. Don't forget that.
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The Pharisees are not going to be pleased when they find out about it, of course. But look, we can't pass up Jesus' instructions to this blind man.
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The Pool of Siloam was part of, if you recall, and you probably won't, but it was part of this whole water ceremony of the
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Feast of Tabernacles, where they had these great parades that would go for the entire feasting.
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And they would make this circuit from the Pool of Siloam all the way up to the Temple Mountain. They would ceremonially dump the water.
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All this is going on. So where does he send this man? To the Pool of Siloam.
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Why? Were there magical powers in this water? No. But there was a message that was going to be sent by this.
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It ties him, Jesus, to the Feast of Tabernacles.
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Because we know that he said he was... if anyone drank of him, he would never thirst.
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It's this idea. He's just again and again reminding people of all the things that he said. But Jesus had revealed himself in John 8, at the end there, to be
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Yahweh. And now... And he said he was sent by the
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Father. But the Pool's name means sent. He says he's sent by the
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Father. The Pool's name is indicative of the fact that it... The only reason this
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Pool of Siloam existed because the water was sent through a channel, the
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Hezekiah's Tunnel, which they had built to be a source of water in the event the city was laid under siege.
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And so this Pool was really sent via an aqueduct. So the sent one,
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Jesus, sends the blind man to a Pool named Sent. There's a message there.
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Fourth point here, we see the work of faith. The work of faith. So he went and washed and came back seeing.
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Now again, I don't think that this man... I think we'll see he was not saved yet. But he did what he was told.
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He went and washed and came back seeing. And it's like John just writes this in a very kind of matter -of -fact manner.
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So he went and he washed and he came back seeing. Just kind of... He was told to wash.
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He did. But this man had been led to believe that he would receive his sight.
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And he did. Now just to kind of take this in a metaphorical sense, this is a very real scenario.
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But if we think about this in a spiritual sense, what happens every time we proclaim the gospel to somebody?
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We're asking a spiritually blind person to do what? To receive their sight.
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We're giving them the truth and trusting God to open their spiritual eyes that they might see Jesus Christ.
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So we've seen the object of Jesus' work and the objective of Jesus' work to open this man's eyes and also to give testimony to exactly who he was.
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And third, we see the objections to Jesus' work. And these are just the initial objections.
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There'll be more objections coming later on in the chapter. But this is all we have time for this morning. The objections to Jesus' work.
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Look at the negative neighbors. Verse 8, the neighbors and those who had seen him before, people in the neighborhood, 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, I mean, you can almost hear them scratching their chins.
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No, but he is like him. Kind of resembles him. As a side note, notice that Jesus is not on the scene.
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He wants no credit. This man goes back to his neighborhood. He goes back to his home. He doesn't go back to Siloam.
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He doesn't go back looking for Jesus to thank him. He goes home and confusion just ensues.
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Who's that new guy walking around the neighborhood? Who is that guy? Isn't it the guy who used to beg?
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Isn't that the guy who's been begging his entire life? I mean, it's almost like an argument. Nah, it couldn't be.
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Yes, it is. No, it's not. Yes, it is. Well, I don't know. Kind of looks like him. And his answer, and we know it's like that.
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It's an ongoing conversation between a lot of people. Because look at what verse 9 says.
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He kept saying over and over again, repetitiously, I am the man. That's me. I was that guy.
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I was the beggar. I was the blind man. Not to them.
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They're not convinced. So they get a little more inquisitive. So they said to him, and you can almost see their eyes narrowing like, uh -huh, sure, kind of maybe with a little tilt of the head, disbelieving.
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If it's really you, the guy who's lived in this neighborhood for years and was blind from birth, well, what happened?
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How were your eyes open? Tell us. And he gives the answer. Verse 11.
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The man called Jesus, made mud, and anointed my eyes and said to me, Go to Siloam and wash.
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So I went and washed and received my sight. Done, done. That's not much of a testimony, is it?
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Not much of a giving God the glory. Look even how he refers to Jesus, the man called
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Jesus. Not this man of God. Not the sent one.
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Not the son of God. Not even the son of man. Just the man called Jesus. If you had been blind from birth and a man healed you, wouldn't you want to just grab him?
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Wouldn't you want to go find him? Wouldn't that be the first thing you'd think about? This guy is just like, I'm going to go home and show everybody what happened.
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It's like he just bought a new car. And really, the way he says this is like,
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I think, like I used to write maybe in the fifth or sixth grade, kind of like, yeah, he told me to do something, and I did it, and, you know, that was that.
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I mean, just the basics. Just the absolute facts, the mere skeletal facts. This is nothing like when he talks, when
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Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4, and he tells her, you know, everything in her life, and what does she say?
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How does she respond to everything that he tells her about? She says, she goes running back to her village, and she says, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.
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Can this be the Christ? She's excited. He's just kind of like, you know, this guy, he spit, he made a little mud, told me to wash,
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I did. So his neighbors say, they ask him, they want to know where the healer is.
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Where did he go? They said to him, where is he? His answer, not very helpful.
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I don't know. The man's neighbors seem more interested than the recipient of the miraculous power of God.
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Went from never seeing, you know, just this week, a friend of mine from high school posted this story apropos,
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I think here, he is a cameraman. That's what he does. And he was out with his crew, and one of the people on his crew, the very first time he ever was able to see in color, they just gave him a new kind of glasses that allowed him to see things in color.
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And he goes, just being with this guy and watching him see color for the first time was amazing. Just think what it would be like, you've never seen anything but darkness your whole life, everything has been feeling, everything has been dependent on everybody else, you've never been able to walk without something or someone to lead you.
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All of a sudden you can see everything. How grateful would you be?
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How awestruck would you be? Doesn't really seem to have that impact on this man. Let me just kind of shift things a little bit.
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Have you ever been talking about things of the Lord? You know, maybe even just modest things, like something about church, or you mentioned something about the
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Bible. And the person you're talking to, you don't expect this response at all, but all of a sudden they're very excited.
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And they want to know more, and they're asking you questions, and you're just like, I didn't see that one coming.
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And you realize for just a moment that maybe you were less excited about this than this person you think is an unbeliever.
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I remember that happened to me. It's happened on a few occasions.
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And all of a sudden you realize you have to shift gears, because you've not been thinking rightly about the grace of God in your own life.
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And the truth is, if you're in Christ, you have experienced a miracle. You've already had a miracle.
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As Pastor Harry said, how can I call it a miracle? Because you were born spiritually blind.
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But if you know Christ, it is because you have been granted sight. You had ears that could not hear, and you've been granted ears that can hear.
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You were a rebel, an enemy of God, a son of Satan, or daughter.
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But thanks be to Christ, He reconciled you to the Father. That's a miracle.
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That's something only God can do. If you've not been born again, if you've not been regenerated, if the
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Holy Spirit has not granted you new life, you need a miracle. In fact, it's a far greater miracle than restoring physical eyesight.
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The man's eyes were not in rebellion against God. They did not hate God. But everyone who does not love the
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Father and love the Son hates them. You say, that's strong. There's no neutrality.
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You're not going to appear before God on Judgment Day and say, you know what? I really have no opinion. I was kind of meh on the whole
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Jesus thing. That's not going to work. It's either yay or nay.
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You're either all in or you're done. We live in a culture where this is laughed at.
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They deny the spiritual realm. In essence, we pass by the blind every single day.
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Beloved, we need to be about the work of God while there is yet daylight.
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Preach the gospel liberally. Let's pray.
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Our Father in heaven, we acknowledge this morning your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, creator, sustainer, master of the universe, master of nature, able to command whatever
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He wills. Father, we are often failures.
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We pass by those in need and we do nothing. We offer them nothing. Lord, it is one thing to offer them money.
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It's one thing to offer them physical sustenance. But Lord, like this man, as we will see, there's one thing that can never be taken from him.
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There's one thing that can never be taken from those who love you and are called according to your purpose. That's eternal life.
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Our adoption cannot be revoked. Father, we need to be people who beg people to be reconciled to God, who will say to the people we know, the people we love, the people we don't know that we just passed by, friend, brother, sister, wife, son, daughter, you need
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Christ. You're a sinner. Apart from the
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Lord Jesus, there's no hope for you. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
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It's His life, His death in your place, His resurrection. Let us do this while there is yet time, we pray.