What Did He Do?

If you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to open them to John chapter 9 and hold your place at verse 1. Have you ever been in a situation where you have seen someone going through a time of difficulty or a time of grief or a time of tragedy and asked yourself, I wonder what he did to deserve that?

That brought this terrible tragedy into his life. We live in a world of cause and effect. And so we have a natural inclination that when we see something bad happen to someone there must have been a cause.

Karma, Sowing and Reaping, and the World of Cause and Effect

I remember growing up I had my high school band director and he was much more than a band director to me. He was a very dear friend and we stayed friends even after high school and into our late 20s. We were friends for years and years.

And I remember getting a call shortly after I left high school, said, hey, did you hear Don has liver disease? That was what ultimately took his life. And I remember hearing that he had liver disease and then telling other people and the initial reaction and you probably know because we know that excessive alcohol can damage the liver.

But he wasn't a drinker. He didn't have this malady because of some problem. It just happened to be that genetically he had a liver problem and that liver problem for people was, had to have been his fault.

Had to have been something that he did personally that caused this. Oftentimes I think we think a principle in their religion and it is called karma. And karma is a of getting what you deserve. And so if you do good, you will get good.

And if you do bad, you will get bad. And this is a universal mechanic of cause and effect. And you'll hear people usually even hear Christians say that something good will happen. That must be good karma for you.

Understand this is where the doctrine of reincarnation comes from in Hindu theology. Because why are people reincarnated? Well they're reincarnated in the last life. They have to go through it again so that they can either get the benefits of a life well lived or get the reward of punishment for a life poorly lived.

The Bible does teach something called sowing and reaping. Which says that there are consequences for our actions and we know that there are negative things and there are things that we do that bring out positive things.

And the Bible says we will reap what we sow. But that's not simply a mechanical universal principle that's based on a Jedi like force that causes the light side to shine bright and the dark side to be the darkness.

No. God has established principles. And God is sovereign over this world. And God has said that there is blessing where it comes from. But it's not some invisible mechanical mechanism called karma. And we have to be careful when we see someone suffering.

Assume that the person who is suffering has done something that has brought about this tragedy or this pain in their life. And that's what we're going to see today in our text. We've come to John chapter 9.

As you know we go verse by verse through the Bible. And we're going to see the disciples asking Jesus, who sinned? This man or his parents? So with that in our minds let's stand together and read the text.

It will be on the screen if you'd like to read along or you can follow along in your own Bibles. Speaking of Jesus it says, And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?

That Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. Night is coming when no one can work. 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. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sin. So he went and washed and came back seeing.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before used to sit and beg. Some said, It is he? Others said, No, but he is like him. And he kept saying, I am the man. So they said to him, How? He answered, The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, Go to Siloam and wash.

So I went and washed and received my sight. They said to him, Where is he? He said, I do not know. Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. I seek to give an understanding of your word today. And I pray to drive home some very important points.

Lord, I know that ultimately it is not my preaching that will be effective, but Lord, the work of your spirit on the hearts of these people. So I pray that he would remove the distractions from our minds and from this room.

And Lord, that he would cause us to be free from Jesus Christ and all that we can learn from it. And for those who have eyes to see, may they recognize, Lord, the blessing that is in this text, the blessing of truth and the blessed reminder of what Christ does for those of us who were once in darkness.

And Lord, for anyone still in darkness today, who has not yet bowed the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, may today be the day that, Lord, you remove their hand and all your glory. And we pray this in Jesus name.

Amen. We are moving past the long discourse of the last few chapters that we've seen between Jesus and the Jewish people. And in this particular chapter, which is centered around one event, this entire chapter is all about the healing of the blind man.

The Healing of the Man Born Blind in John 9

We're going to see that Jesus is actually not in this chapter as much as he has been in the chapters before. In fact, we're only going to see him here at the beginning and then a few the outline. It's the first 12 verses are about the healing miracle of this blind man.

And then we have from verse 13 to 34, a long investigation into this man's healing, where the Sadducees and the Pharisees will bring him in before the court and they will ask him, what has happened to you?

They won't believe him. So they'll bring his parents in and they will interrogate his parents. And then his parents will say, don't ask us, ask him. And so they go back to the man. And there's this long investigation about the healing of this man.

And it will end at the synagogue. And he goes out and he meets with Jesus again. And Jesus receives his worship. It's a powerful chapter. It's a powerful scene in the life of Christ. But it's all wrapped around this one event in the life of this one man.

This is the sixth of seven miracles that John, who calls to prove to us who Jesus is. If you remember the very end of John's gospel, I've talked about this several times. At the very end of John's gospel, John says, these things have I written that you may believe.

That is the purpose of John's gospel. John's gospel is an extended gospel tract. Its purpose is singular. John wants you to believe. And so what John sets before you so that you would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, is he sets before you all of these things.

And we have already seen the other miracles. The first miracle John records is the miracle of turning water into wine. The second miracle that Jesus, or excuse me, the second miracle that John records is the healing of the official son.

And then we have the healing of the paralytic. Then we have the feeding of the 5 ,000 and the walking on water. That leads us to this miracle, which is the healing of the blind man. And then it will finish with the seventh miracle, the great miracle.

The miracle, which interestingly enough, is only found in John's gospel. And that is the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus. Of course, someone might say, well, there's eight miracles because Jesus is going to rise from the dead.

Yes, I agree. There are eight miracles if we count the resurrection. But I put the resurrection in its own category, because that is a miracle that all of the gospels point to as the proof of who Jesus is.

And so we have in the gospel of John testimony after testimony after testimony to who Jesus is and what he has done. And these seven miracles sort of outline the book for us. And so we come now to chapter nine.

And we are, as we do every time, we're going to read through the text. I'm going to make some comments about the text. And we are going to address what it says. And so let us begin with verse one. It says, As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.

Now, right away, even though this is a short verse, it tells us a lot about the scene that we are looking at. This man who has been blind has not simply been blinded by some event in his life, but he was born with this debilitating illness.

And we all know that there are some really amazing things that blind people are able to accomplish. We look at our own history of the human race. And we see that blindness, while terribly debilitating, doesn't keep people from doing some pretty amazing things.

Fanny Crosby is one of the greatest hymn writers of her generation. And she was a blind person. In fact, one of the great things that she said was that someone asked her if she wanted to receive her sight.

And she said, no, she wanted to stay blind because she wanted the first face that she saw to be the face of her savior, Jesus Christ. That's a beautiful thought. That's a beautiful idea that the first thing she's going to see is the Lord Jesus Christ.

So certainly blind people have the abilities in many ways to do things that would seem almost miraculous. And yet at the same time, most of us would understand that blindness is a very difficult and very terrible condition to have to live with.

The inability to see takes away someone's ability to experience beauty. To appreciate light and darkness. To read with their eyes. They can learn braille, but they can't see to read. They can't experience the benefits of looking at a sunset or a beautiful painting.

My father in his old age, and I asked his permission to mention this as I was preparing this week. My father has been diagnosed years ago with something called macular degeneration. Which means that his eyes are beginning to go dark.

And he's getting spots on his eyes where he can't see certain things. And just this past few months ago, we had to take away his driver's license. Well, we didn't take it away. He gave it up freely, maybe.

No, we had to say, Dad, you know, it's really not a good idea for you to drive anymore. And that's been very difficult for him. A man who loved to drive. In fact, I've told this before. Growing up, if Dad wanted to have a talk with you, he took you on a ride.

And so truck rides were a big deal growing up with Dad. And him not being able to do that anymore has been a very difficult part of the aging process for him. And so when I think about someone who doesn't have the ability to see, it's just a reminder of how difficult that is.

And most of us can't really imagine blindness. In fact, we can't even really think about what it would be like if we didn't have the ability to see. And I'm reminded of Bill Cosby when he went to see Ray Charles one time.

They were both doing a show in a place and they were both staying in the same hotel. And Bill Cosby went to Ray Charles's room. He knocks on the door and Ray Charles opens the door and he's shaving. He's got an electric razor, shaving his face.

And Bill says, hey, why are you shaving in the dark? And he said, Bill, I always shave in the dark. And he goes, you know, in that moment, he did like, why did I? I've never turned a light on in my life.

We don't think about what it's like for someone to have to live that way. But that's certainly a difficult thing. And when we look at the Bible's discussion of the subject of blindness, the Bible discusses blindness in some of the most vivid stories of the Bible.

Blindness is often used as a picture of either judgment or misfortune. You remember the time where the sodomites were trying to enter into Lot's home and seize the two angels who were there? What did God do?

He struck them blind where they were groping at the ground so that Lot could escape. It was the failing eyes of Isaac that caused Jacob to be able to fool him when he put the fur on his arm and caused his father to touch his arm.

And remember what he said? He says, that's the voice of Jacob, but that's the arm of Esau because his eyes were failing. Samson, of course, after being foolish and taken by his enemies, had his eyes gouged out to where he could not see.

Being blind is sometimes used as a synonym for weakness or helplessness. Isaiah chapter 59 verse 10 tells us that. And later in this very chapter, Jesus is going to actually use blindness as an analogy for spiritual darkness.

When he talks to the Pharisees and he talks to them about being blind, and they're going to say, are you saying we're blind? He says, no, you think you can see and that's your problem. You actually think you have sight, but you don't.

One of the great blessings of the messianic kingdom is that God was going to give sight to the blind. If you remember when John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus and they said, are you the one to come?

Or should we look for another? What did Jesus say? You go and tell John what you have seen. And then he said, the blind receive their sight. And he lists other things too. The poor have the gospel preached to them.

But the first thing he says, you go and tell John, the blind receive their sight. It's interesting. J .C. Ryle points out that the healing of blindness is actually the most common of Jesus's healing miracles.

There's a list of the different ways that Jesus healed. In fact, I have it here. There was one deaf and mute healed. There was one sick of palsy, one sick with a fever, two instances of lepers being healed, three raised from the dead.

But between five and six, depending on if you count whether or not it was a corresponding, between five and six accounts of Jesus healing those who were blind. So not only is this a miracle, this is a sign of his messianic power.

It's a sign of his, of who he is. He has come to give sight to the blind. And so Jesus sees this man healed from birth and his disciples ask him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Now, I want to say something about the disciples at this moment. I don't think that the disciples in this moment are necessarily being obtuse or foolish. I think they were very much trying to understand the subject of suffering as best they could.

Because even in our own day, we have to struggle with the question of why people suffer and why the seemingly innocent suffer. There's two theological principles that I wanted to point out to you today as we walk through this.

The first theological principle is called the principle of theodicy. That's a big fancy theological word. It simply means if God is good, why does evil exist? And that's a very common question, especially in apologetics.

People will say, well, if God is all good and yet evil exists, then he must not be all powerful. Because if he was all powerful and he was all good, he'd fix all the evil, right? That's the common argument of the unbeliever about the goodness of God.

And the answers to that are what we call theodicy. And it comes from theos and dikaios, which is the word righteousness or justification. It's the justification of God or the righteousness of God in the view of unrighteousness in the world.

And that's something we all have to deal with. We all have to answer the question, how is God all good and yet there's evil in the world? We say, well, because of sin. But then we have to ask, well, why did God allow sin?

Right? So I don't have time to do a full theodicy today, but I'm just saying that's one of the questions that arises when we think of this question. But even more, even if we were to agree and understand that yes, evil exists because people or bad things exist because people are evil, sin.

People say, but what about people who are innocent? Now, right away, all my good Bible students just groaned because you immediately said, well, no one is innocent. Because Romans tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Yet at the same time, we do use the word innocent when we talk about the subject of suffering, when someone suffers something that seems to be, at least in the moment, not caused by some external sin on their behalf.

Like, for instance, we talk about the innocent child in the womb who was aborted. Right? We talk about that child as having not done anything to deserve being destroyed in the womb. Or a child that's kidnapped or child trafficking.

We say these are, this is a destruction of the innocent, right? It's not just because they're children. It's because they did nothing to deserve this on an external position. Or a woman who is coming home from work and she's attacked and raped.

And we say that she was innocent. She had nothing to deserve this. So that's what we mean. We don't mean ultimate innocence in the sense of they are without sin. But what we mean is in the moment, they did nothing to deserve this terrible tragedy that befell them.

So we understand the language and we understand what we're trying to say. And so the idea of the apostles was somebody had to have done something. Somebody had to have done something and it was either this man or his parents.

This is what's known in logic as a false dilemma. When you only provide somebody two options. Like if brother Mike is painting a house and somebody says, are you going to paint it blue or are you going to paint it red?

You might say neither. Because that's not the only two options. Well, the disciples have presented Jesus with two options. They've said, who sinned? This man or his parents? Meaning, did this man do something?

And here's how this is wild. And they may not know he was blind from birth, but the scripture tells us this. What could he have possibly done? Sin in the womb? Or maybe they believed in some form of reincarnation.

Maybe they were confused. I know that there were people in that context who believed at least in the idea. Remember when Jesus asked, who do the people say that I am? And what did some of them say he was?

Well, you're Elijah. Come back to life, right? So there were some who may believe he sinned in a previous life. Or he sinned in the womb. They said, did he do it? Or did his parents do it? Now, is there any biblical precedent for the sin of parents to be visited upon their children?

Yes, there is. I mean, there are examples in scripture where a parent sins and it has a result in the life of the child. I mean, we think probably the best, most common example would be David. David sins with Bathsheba and it results in the death of his child.

So we know there are times in scripture where this does happen. So this is what I'm saying. I think the apostles, though presenting a false dilemma, or at least presenting this false dilemma based on some understanding that there's some kind of a cause and effect that happens here.

But Jesus has answered to their question. The question is, was it them or their parent? Was it him or his parents? And Jesus says neither. It was neither him nor his parents that sinned. Notice what he says.

But that the works of God might be displayed in him. You understand that the Bible says that God does whatsoever he pleases in heaven and on earth. And that God has the freedom to do with us as he wills for his purpose.

That's easy to say. That's hard to live with. But that is what Jesus is saying. You know, one of the stories in the scripture that always moves my heart is when I think about the healing of Jairus' daughter.

Remember, Jairus' daughter died. Actually, the resurrection of Jairus' daughter. But you know what often people forget about that story? Is that when Jairus' daughter is dying and Jairus comes to Jesus and he says, Come and heal my daughter.

Jesus is going and a woman comes up and she touches Jesus' garment. And it says power went out from him. And Jesus turns around and says, Who touched me? And the disciple says, Everybody's touching you.

Like you're pressed in on all sides. What do you mean? Who touched you? And she said, Yes, but I felt power go out from me. And the woman comes and she falls down. And she says, I've had this issue of blood.

She'd been hemorrhaging for 12 years. You know what the scripture tells us? Jairus' daughter was also 12 years old. Twelve years before this day where Jesus would heal a woman with an issue of blood and raise a little girl from the dead.

Both began 12 years earlier. Because God had a purpose on this day to do two miracles through Jesus Christ. That God had a purpose in this event that he had planned 12 years before. Well, I would even go as far as to say that he had planned an eternity past.

Because God has declared the end from the beginning. God knew the moment he was going to do both of these things through his son Jesus Christ. And the same thing is here. He looks to the apostles. And he says it's not his parents who sinned.

It's not he who sinned. But God has a purpose in demonstrating to this man in this moment and to everyone who sees him the power of God in his life. You understand this? When that man received Jesus Christ.

When that man fell down and worshipped Christ. He had to have known that it was worth it. In that moment, it was worth it. We may not ever know in this life. But when we see Jesus, we will know. We will know.

It wasn't for nothing. It wasn't that God was out of control. But God had a purpose in it. God had a purpose in it. In Luke 13, some people come to Jesus. And they say, they report to him that there was a group of people who had been killed.

There were a group of Galileans who had been killed. And Pilate had not only killed them. But he had mixed their blood with the blood of sacrifices. Thus to shame them in their death. And ultimately blaspheme them in their death.

As he sought to hurt them. And not only in their death. Or not only in killing them. But in their death. Bring about great shame. And they come to Jesus. And they say, did you hear about these men that this happened to?

Did you hear about this terrible thing that took place with these Galileans? And you know what Jesus said? You can look this up for yourself. Luke 13. Jesus said, do you believe that those men were worse than all the other Galileans?

And that's why they suffered in this way. But I tell you the truth. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or what do you think of those people that died in that tower that fell? Because at that time a tower had fallen and had killed some people.

He said, do you think the people who died in that tower disaster were worse than you? No, I tell you this. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. You see, one of the things that tragedy does do.

Is tragedy forces us to be reminded of our own mortality. And it reminds us that one day we will all have to face God. Whether you die in a tower. Or whether you die in a tragedy. Or whether you live to 97 years old.

And die peacefully with your family around you. Unless you repent, you will go to hell. And that's Jesus's point. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Jesus's point is tragedy is not the marker for fidelity to God.

Because think of how many of God's men and women have suffered great tragedy throughout history. Go to Hebrews 11 and read and read it. It talks about people who were sawn in two. People who were beheaded and burned.

Some of my greatest heroes of the faith were burned to death. Michael Sattler was a leader in the Anabaptist movement. And while I would disagree with some of his theology. Michael Sattler, I believe, was a godly man.

And Michael Sattler was captured, brought before the Inquisitor. And he was demanded that he repent of his teaching. He would not. So Michael Sattler had his tongue cut out. His eyes gouged out. They put gunpowder around his neck.

They put him on a pole. They lit the fire and they dropped him into the fire. So that the gunpowder would explode and blow his head off of his body. And the next day they drowned his wife. Beloved, suffering is no indication of lack of faithfulness.

In fact, the opposite is often true. Jesus says, or Paul says in Romans, that we will suffer with him if we are his. That we will suffer with him if we are his. And so I just think this is such an important part of this text.

Because Jesus is saying, don't look at it the way you're looking at it. You're looking at it as he did it and he deserves it. Or somebody else did it and he deserves it. But maybe God is working in this.

Maybe God has a purpose in this. You can't see. Now this next verse, verse 4. Jesus reminds them of the urgency of his work. He says, we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work.

Jesus is reminding them of a very important truth. Jesus is saying, my time is short. I'm here for a purpose. I am here to accomplish the things that God sent me to accomplish. I've come across this blind man who's been blind from birth.

And I am now going to work the work of God in his life. Because it is an urgent need and I'm going to do it. And here's the thing that this should remind us of. And please consider this. We also have good work that God has prepared for us to do.

And we ought to be urgent in that work. Because there's coming a time when we won't be able to do it anymore. Jesus says here, I mean, look at the text. We must work the works of him who sent while it is day.

Night is coming. I believe what Jesus is referring to there is we're less than six months from the crucifixion. We are less than six months from Jesus is going to be crucified. He's going to be in the ground for three days.

He's going to be resurrected. Then 40 days later, he's going to ascend into heaven. Where he now sits at the right hand of the father. His time is short. And while I am here, I'm going to do the works that God has given me to do.

Beloved, do we have such urgency in the works that God has given us to do? I think, I think as Protestants, one of the things that we struggle with the most is our understanding of salvation often stops at justification.

We're justified by faith alone. We believe that. We proclaim that. I'll die on that hill. But I will tell you this. Your salvation doesn't stop when you believe. That's where it starts. And we have been given works to do by God that we should be doing.

Everybody quotes Ephesians chapter two, verse eight. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And that's a beautiful verse.

I used to wear a bracelet with that imprinted on it because I love that verse so much. But we mustn't forget that it doesn't end there. It says, for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that he prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

God didn't save you for nothing. He saved you for something. As David Guzik said, if we neglect our opportunities for service, one day they're going to be lost forever. Thomas Boston said this. He says, we have no time to be idle.

Our work for eternity is great. It is long, but our time is short. Eternity is long, but our time here is short. As the old quote goes, only one life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last.

We have been given a work to do, and we ought to seize the opportunity to do those works. And Jesus says, as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. He's again referencing himself as Messiah.

He is there to be the light of the world. And he's about to be the light to this man as he does this work in this man's life. Verse six. Having said these things, he spit on the ground and he made mud with his saliva.

Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and he said, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means scent. So he went and washed and came back seeing. A lot has been made about Jesus spitting on the ground, making mud with the saliva and putting it on this man's eyes.

And I will tell you one thing right away. Jesus is not establishing a method. And I say that because I think this is one of the reasons why Jesus never healed the same way every time. Because I think he wasn't establishing a method for us to follow.

He wasn't established because you think if Jesus healed every man by spitting on the ground, making mud, every TV evangelist would keep a cup of spit and a bottle of dirt everywhere he goes so he can make mud and shove it in somebody's eyes.

Jesus is not here establishing a principle of methodology. But what he is doing in this moment is he's demonstrating in this a reminder of who he is. Because he is the very one who created this man. What does the dirt of the ground remind us of?

Remind us from where we came. We came from the dust of the ground. Adam was formed out of the dust of the ground and breathed in him the breath of life. Jesus takes the dirt of the ground, he spits on it, he makes mud, he puts it in his eyes.

One commentator says it was almost like he was giving him a new set of eyes. Now I don't believe that he did that. I don't want you to think I think Jesus turned those muddy piles into legitimate eyes.

But he did give him eyes to see that he didn't have before. And so in this symbolic gesture of taking the dirt from the ground, putting it on his eyes, it's as if he's giving him new eyes. And he tells him to go and wash.

And so the man goes and washes and it says he came away seeing. Such a simple sentence for such a profound thing. And you know what? There was a movie that came out a few years ago. It was called In Plain Sight I think is the name of the movie.

Val Kilmer was the actor and he played a man who was blind from birth. And they did a procedure on his eyes to give him sight. And the movie is very interesting. It's based on a true story about this man who was given a procedure to see.

And you know even after he was given sight, he couldn't understand what he was seeing. Because he had never seen anything before. Only thing he'd ever had from birth was darkness. And now that he could see, he couldn't understand.

And I remember one scene from the movie very specifically because they had a Coke can sitting there. And they said, what are you seeing? He said, I don't know what that is. I don't know. And he reached out and touched it.

And he thought, oh he said this is a Coke can. Because his whole life he had seen with his hands. Now he could see with his eyes. And so it was a whole different experience for him. And he had to grow into that experience.

He had to grow into what it meant to take information here rather than here and here. And I know that's a film. And I know it's maybe an interesting illustration to throw in here. But my point is this man not only received healing from his eyes.

But God gave him the ability to know what he was looking at. He gave him the ability to understand what he was seeing. So now he can run through. And notice what it says in the text. It says the neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar was saying, is this not the man who used to sit and beg?

Don't you think he was running around going, look at me. I can see. I've never seen anything. I've never seen a sunset. I've never seen a newborn baby. I've never seen a bird fly across the sky or a fish jump out of the water.

I've never seen anything. And now I can see everything with perfect vision. And how do the people respond? Some said that's him. And others said, nah, he just looks like him. This got me thinking this week.

Just about how one of the most striking parts of our life is the change that happens when we come to Christ. And oftentimes people who knew us before can't believe that that's us. Have you ever met somebody like that, that you knew from before they were a Christian and now that they're a Christian, it's like it's a different person.

You look like him, but you ain't him. There's a story of Augustine and I'm pretty sure it's apocryphal, but it's a good little side story. It says when Augustine after he... Because Augustine was a carouser.

Augustine was a womanizer. Augustine did not have a good reputation prior to being saved. And when he got saved, his life legitimately changed. And it says one time he was traversing through the market and one of his former mistresses saw him.

And she says, Augustine, Augustine, it is I. And he says, yes, ma 'am, but it is no longer I. It's not me anymore. Well, as the apostle Paul says, it's not I who live, but Christ who lives within me. When we baptize someone, what do we say?