Granite Bay Hilltop SDA Church Live Service with Doug Batchelor

good morning friends we'd like to welcome you to sabbath school study hour coming to here from the granite bay seventh avenue church in sacramento california we'd like to welcome our many online members who are tuning in and those who are watching wherever you might be whether you're in north america or maybe you're watching this on the internet outside of north america perhaps you're participating in the service uh several weeks later and you doing the lesson we'd like to welcome all of you our list today is lesson number nine in the series of studies dealing with the book of isaiah and today is particularly important it's called to serve and to save that is the title of our lesson now if you don't have a copy of the sabbath school lesson we want to encourage you to go online and you can download a copy of the lesson you can visit our local seventh-day adventist church you can ask for a copy of the courtly the lesson guide and you're able to study along with us well before we get to our study we always like to begin by lifting our voices in song and so for those of you at home you're welcome to join us we're going to be singing that well-known hymn amazing grace it's hymn number 108 in the hymn book and i think we're going to be doing three of the verses [Music] so amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me i once was lost but now i am found was blind but i see the lord has promised his word [Music] me as long as life endures when we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun we've known last days to god's praise then when we first let us bow our heads for prayer dear father once again we are so grateful that we're able to gather in your presence and invite your spirit to come and teach us as we open up your word and so father we invite you to draw close to us give us understanding it's such an important lesson such an important book that we are studying so we ask your special blessing lord be with those uh who are listening or watching wherever they might be and we ask this in jesus name amen our lesson today is going to be brought to us by pastor doug good morning happy sabbath we are trying out a new microphone so you may hear a little echo as they try to get adjusted to it you know they've got a couple of microphones they use for public speaking these days they've got the ones that kind of hang over your ear and it looks like a fly is trying to land on your face and then they've got these old lapel microphones but the technology's gotten a little better with these and so i'm trying to get away from the one that i always feel like someone's tapping me on the shoulder with that one that hangs off the ear and so we'll see how this works today good morning we're continuing in our study on the book of isaiah we want to welcome everybody and today we're going to be dealing with lesson number nine and the title of that lesson is to serve and to save and we have a memory verse and the memory verse is from isaiah chapter 41 i'm sorry isaiah chapter 42 verse 1 and if you have that you're welcome to say it with me for those that are here and those that are home behold my servant whom i uphold my elect one in whom my soul delights i put my spirit upon him he will bring forth justice to the gentiles now our assignment today is to be studying a number of just magnificent chapters from the book of isaiah and that would be isaiah chapter 41 all of chapter 41 isaiah chapter 42 verse 1 through 7 isaiah chapter 44 verse 26 through 45 and isaiah chapter 45 through isaiah chapter 45 verse 6 and isaiah 45 1-12 and i know the writers of the lesson had a real challenge because they've got these 66 chapters in isaiah to study in 13 weeks and they tried to find out the best way to break it up so that there were common themes in the different sections that were being studied so there's a lot that's being said in isaiah chapter 41 a matter of fact if you have your bibles you may want to just join me and go to isaiah 41 we're going to read some sections there and i don't know if we'll get the whole chapter done that talks about uh the servant now i should tell you probably right at the outset that there's two things that are being spoken of in this theme one is that god is going to work through a human instrumentality as a servant to be a type of christ and you'll find out later in the study that's talking about a persian king named cyrus and then it's also a type of god's people jacob is the servant of god and then you're also going to be hearing about christ who is the ultimate servant and so you know one of the wonderful things about prophecy is there are different adepts that you look at there's like layers to it now let me see if i can give you an example of what i'm talking about before i even go to isaiah 41. if you have your bibles if you turn real quick to isaiah chapter 14. i think it's important to understand just kind of this principle about how why these prophets seem to bounce around a little bit if you go to isaiah chapter 14 and you see in the beginning of isaiah chapter 14 he has this prophecy you can go to oh let's say verse 4 isaiah 14 4 that you will take up this proverb against the king of babylon who is the proverb against king of babylon okay but then you get down to chapter 12 how you are fallen from heaven o lucifer the son of the morning how you are cut down to the ground you who weaken the nations for you said in your heart i will ascend into heaven now who is this prophecy talking about the devil why you just said he's talking about the king of babylon let me give you another example if you go to revelation chapter 12 you don't have to go there right away and it says that the the dragon stood before the woman to devour the man-child as soon as it was born now who is the dragon in bible prophecy it's the devil but what kingdom did the devil use to try to kill jesus as a baby rome all right so you see it's talking about the spiritual power behind this government but god often he can operate through governments and the devil can operate through governments if you go to ezekiel in ezekiel chapter 28 you can go there real quick and you'll see it starts out go to verse 11. ezekiel 28 verse 11 moreover the word of the lord came to me saying son of man take up a lamentation for the king of tyre okay who is this oracle prophecy directed to king of tyre that was up north it was the phoenician kingdom but you get down to verse 14 you were the anointed cherub who covers and it says in in verse 13 you were in eden in the garden of god the king of tyre was not there every precious stone was your covering says it was prepared for you on the day you were created the king of tyre was not created he's a human he was born so who is this prophecy talking about it's talking about lucifer who is the power that was manipulating the king of tyre to persecute god's people and so the prophets often talk about earthly powers but then you can see they're being transported behind the veil to see what is the spiritual power that is behind these political powers now surprisingly when we study isaiah today we're going to see that the spiritual power behind an earthly political power a pagan political power it's not always the devil it's going to actually be the lord who is working behind a pagan political power to accomplish his purposes okay with that lengthy introduction i hope that made sense that sometimes these prophets you say it seems like he's bouncing around he's often going from the the physical and then he's transported back to the spiritual behind the scenes all right let's go back to isaiah chapter 41 and we're just going to read a few verses here keep silence this is verse 1 isaiah 41 1 keep silence before me o ye coastlands and let the people renew their strength let them come near them let them speak let them come near together for judgment who raised up one from the east who unrighteousness calls him to his feet who gave the nations before him and made him to rule over kings who gave them as dust to his sword a driven stubble to his bow it's talking about this power now here we believe he spends several chapters and he's talking about the persian king who will overthrow their enemies he comes from the east he conquers babylon that has oppressed and destroyed jerusalem and this persian king is cyrus he is a type of christ christ who is the king who comes from the east and so it it leads up and you know later it'll mention him by name as you get closer it says that verse 3 who pursued them and passed safely by the way that he had not gone with his feet who has performed it and done it calling the generations from the beginning i am the lord i am the first and i am the last now do you find a place in revelation where you find that term isn't jesus called from everlasting to everlasting the alpha and the omega the first and the last that means as far back as you can go in the back of history and as far forward as you could ever go in the forward that you never reach the end of god he is eternal from everlasting to everlasting he says i am he verse 5 the coastline sought in fear the ends of the earth were afraid they drew near and they came everyone helped his neighbor and said to his brother be of good courage so the craftsman encouraged the goldsmith and he who smooths for the hammer inspired him who strikes with the anvil saying is it ready for the soldering then he fastened it with pigs that it might not totter let's talk about the nations that turn to their idols but you israel contrasted to these pagan nations you are my servant jacob whom i have chosen now why does god call jacob israel the servant of god you're going to find that a lot of things that a lot of titles that god has for his people israel are also titles for christ himself israel is called the servant when moses came to the pharaoh and if you look in exodus chapter 7 verse 16 he says let my people go that they may serve me why does god save us so that we could go on an all-expenses paid vacation why does he save us we are ultimately saved to serve it says in exodus 19 6 you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation is a priest a person who just relaxes or is a priest busy in making atonement he's a mediator he's bringing people to god and we're to be a nation of people kings and priests that are bringing people to god that are defending others now you look again in isaiah 44 1 hear now jacob my servant israel whom i have chosen was jacob brought out of egypt do you remember reading in matthew where jesus did he spent some time in egypt and god has his prophecies he says out of egypt i have called my son not only is that true that jesus was called out of egypt jacob was called out of egypt and you read isaiah 41 verse 8 but you israel my servant jacob whom i have chosen the offspring of my friend abraham now jesus reminds us if you look in matthew chapter 23 verse 11 he who is greatest among you will be your servant you look in matthew 20 verse 27 and whoever desires to be first among you let him be your slave just as the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many so in the same way he saved israel jacob to serve and jesus is an example of one who is among us to serve why are christians saved to serve is that does that diminish our happiness or does the real happiness come from service you know i remember reading this report a few years ago that after hurricane katrina a number of christian churches basically sent missionary teams to go help rebuild different communities and facilities and infrastructure and and it was amazing how many of the families and the contractors that had donated this time they said this was the best vacation of our life we took our families to serve you know i found that out in my own life karen and i we've traveled many times many parts of the world to do different you know mission projects evangelistic programs camp meetings whatever and sometimes we go to exotic countries and it's great we find whenever we go somewhere to do some mission work we have our best vacation we went to roa ten years ago to we did both an evangelistic meeting and we helped maranatha in building some sabbath school rooms but we got in some spare time diving and spending some time for the people that was a great trip and then we said we're going to take a pure vacation no preaching no responsibilities you know i won't tell you who said it but i've heard doug every time you go somewhere you always have to preach it'd be nice if we just went on a vacation with no responsibilities so we did that went to hawaii rained every day we were there a matter of fact it was historic rain it rained every day in hawaii for 40 days including every day we were there we went to the beach in the rain anyway but we thought how much more fun we have when we take the family and we go do a mission project and so you know jesus said it's more blessed to give than receive and if if we look upon service as a blessing that's where you find your greatest happiness he who seeks to save his life will lose it it'll rain every day of your vacation but he who forsakes his life you give your life to christ that's when you find it that's when you get the greatest blessing so we like israel like christ our purpose in life is to be his servants i remember and this is a great message for churches you know a lot of people that come to church come they sit they try to just soak it up they may bring their offering and then they leave and you don't hear from them again for another week they say well i kind of put in my time i gave my offering but they're not really involved in service and you know god has really called us to serve you've heard the statistics before that 80 of the work in any church is done by 20 of the people you know that's true eighty percent is usually done by twenty percent do you know eighty percent of the giving is usually done by twenty percent of the people are you aware that twenty percent of the carpet in your house gets eighty percent of the traffic i know it takes it a different direction it's called the 80 20 rule it's true in many areas of life you ever notice that your carpet most of your carbon's really good because you don't walk on it but you have trails 20 of it you wear out well that's kind of the way it is in life it seems like there's always 20 of the people doing 80 of the work i heard a story one time years ago this man was waiting for a stagecoach to take him from one city to another in the west and he went to the office where they were selling the tickets and it said first class one dollar second class ticket 50 cents third class ticket 25 cents he looked out the door he saw the stagecoach was just arriving and all three groups first class second class third class climbed out of the same cabin and had the same seats he thought well i'm done but i'm not stupid i'm gonna get a third class ticket he thought he was pretty smart he'd saved a lot of money so he got on board he's riding along and he's looking at this fellow he's got a first class ticket he's thinking he's not very bright he said he paid a dollar i paid 25 cents we're getting to the same place we're riding in the same coach i don't know how they can do that until they came to the first steep hill and the stagecoach driver he said okay second class passengers get out and walk first class passengers remain seated third class passengers get out and push problem in most churches is we're full of first class passengers we need more third class passengers that are willing to get out and push amen you know paul in romans chapter 1 he refers to himself as the servant of jesus christ matter of fact in several of his letters he refers to himself as the servant matter of fact is some of your versions it'll actually say paul a slave of jesus christ now in the bible you know now we think of people as employees you've got the the boss and then you've got the employee but in bible times those who served were not employees it was a whole different mindset you didn't punch hours and have all these rights and all these safety measures and you know it wasn't all for your convenience you really were at the beck and call of your master 24 hours a day and so when we talk about serving the lord you don't punch a clock um sometimes as i'm traveling between one speaking engagement and another speaking engagement i might be tired and i'll get on the plane and i'll think well i hope nobody sits in this seat next to me so that i can have a little more room to spread out and maybe do some writing or reading and and then someone will sit down next to me and i'll hear a little voice say doug maybe you should witness to him strike up a conversation i don't think but lord i'm off duty i'm going from i'm a pastor and i'm going from one speaking occasion to another speaking occasion and when i get there then i'll be back on duty and god says you're never off duty you're my servant and you know you're to serve me whenever an opportunity presents itself so and that's the way it should be with a christian we don't say when we leave church okay i'm off the clock now right matter of fact that's when you really own the clock i remember seeing this church that you drove onto the church premises and they said had a sign it said enter to learn and then as you left it said leave to serve i know another church that has people drove out we might do this it's a good idea as they left the parking lot there's a big sign that said you are now entering the mission field and it kind of reminded everybody that your work really begins you're here to kind of worship and learn and then you leave and you are in the mission field now sometimes even in the church you're in the mission field right but i think that just helps keep it in our minds that we are called to serve it's not just about saving ourselves so isaiah often identifies um god's people as his servants now go to chapter 42 i'm going to read the first six verses here i think our lesson is telling us for seven verses behold my servant whom i uphold mine elect one in whom my soul delights now how many of you in your bibles when you read verse 1 of isaiah 42 the word servant is capitalized and it says my elect one it says elect one is capitalized why is that who is that servant that means it's a proper name this is a special one this is a prophecy about jesus so you notice chapter 41 it says isaac jacob my servant and talked about abraham his servant here it says behold my servant is talking about the messiah i put my spirit upon him and he will bring forth justice to the gentiles he will not cry out or raise his voice nor cause his voice to be heard in the street matthew actually uh refers to this passage in one of his prophecies saying that you know he would not make a stir jesus often healed a person and then he wouldn't say anything about it look in matthew chapter 12 verse 14 and just so you can see that if you have any doubts about who this is the apostles tell us who this is matthew 12 verse 14 then the pharisees went out and plotted against them how they might destroy him but when jesus knew it he withdrew from there and great multitudes followed him and he healed them all yet he warned them not to make him known how often did jesus heal somebody and he said no don't tell anybody like that man who is born blind i'm not the man who's born blind that's the sermon later today the man who was full of leprosy jesus healed him he said now don't say anything so often jesus would heal a person even some of the blind people he said don't say anything why did he do that well one the too much notoriety was gonna hinder his work and the other was just the meekness of christ going on here it says here in matthew chapter 12 he healed them all yet he warned them not to make him known that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of by the prophet isaiah saying behold my servant whom i have chosen my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased i will put my spirit upon him and he will declare justice to the gentiles he will not quarrel or cry out nor will anyone hear his voice in the street a bruised reed he will not break and smoking flax he will not quench till he has sent forth justice to victory and in his name the gentiles will trust this is a very vivid prophecy what does it mean when it says there in isaiah chapter 42 a bruised reed he will not break a little piece of grass it might be bent a little bit but he won't snap it off he didn't want to do anything to discourage anybody he was tenderhearted smoking flax he will not quench you know as they sometimes carried fire from place to place they did not have matches and bible times and they would get a piece of smoking flax and they would keep it smoldering to get to the next place where they'd start a fire because i don't know if you've ever tried to start a fire rubbing wood together i you know you hear both boy scouts can do that it is really hard uh you'll work up a sweat and they didn't always have a steel and a flint and it wasn't always easy and they would try to keep some smoking flax going so the idea of smoking flax he would not quench it means he will not discourage the flame of hope in any heart he will not take a little bruise read and bend it he cares about the poor and the weak he cared about the the sinners and those who were discouraged he will bring forth justice for truth he will not fail or be discouraged even though he encountered so much opposition till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands meaning the gentiles will wait for his law so this is one of the prophecies that the messiah his ministry was not just for the jews but it was principally that he was going to then take the message the jews were to be a nation of kings and priests kings and priests for who they were to be a nation a priest to present the word to the gentiles the whole world in other words and so this is just one of those vivid prophecies and the coastlines shall wait for his law thus says god in isaiah 42 verse 5 the lord who created the heaven whose heavens and who stretch them out who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk on it i the lord have called you in righteousness and i will hold your hand i will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people as a light to the gentiles to open blind eyes to bring the prisoners out from the prison and those who sit in darkness from the prison house now does that sound familiar if you look in isaiah chapter 61 when jesus began his ministry he quoted from a very similar passage i forgot to put it in my notes here the spirit of the lord is upon me because the lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of prison to those who are bound what was the first sermon that jesus preached when he stood up in nazareth in his hometown church isaiah 61. which is repeating the message from isaiah 42 tells about the ministry of lord to proclaim justice to set the oppressed free to liberate those who are in prison all right well there's still a lot to cover here and it says that my spirit will be upon him i want you to notice that behold my servant whom i uphold i put my spirit upon him what does the word christ mean when i was first going to church and i heard them refer to jesus christ it's like i'm douglas batchelor i thought his last name was christ i had no idea what that meant i had heard it all my life but i just assumed it was his name and that his father was joseph christ and he his mother was married christ and he was jesus christ the word christ of course is a title and it means anointed it it you know when they christen a ship christos it means to anoint something when you christen a baby they put a little water on the baby's forehead when they splash a bottle of champagne or something on a ship they christen the ship it means to anoint so it's simply the greek word for the anointed messiah is the hebrew word and so when it says jesus anointed anointed with what martinelli's champagne water or the holy spirit is talking about jesus being anointed with the holy spirit and when was he anointed with the holy spirit let me read to you here in acts chapter 10 verse 37 that word you know which was proclaimed throughout all judea and began from galilee after the baptism which john preached how god anointed jesus of nazareth now there that would be the closer to his name jesus of nazareth god anointed jesus of nazareth with the holy spirit and with power at his baptism the spirit came down who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil for god was with him so when we pray for the holy spirit what are you praying for a good feeling or power to go about doing good and healing those who are oppressed by the devil shouldn't our ministry be the same as christ why does god give us the holy spirit that you might be my witnesses isn't that what jesus said and so it's not just that we might say i've got the power of the spirit and i can now you know do miracles it's it's really to preach the gospel to be witnesses for christ all right if we go to the next section here it says the persian messiah and you look in isaiah chapter 44 we're going to start with verse 26. this is really fascinating here it's foretelling well first of all i isaiah talks about the babylonian captivity but if you go to isaiah chapter 44 verse 26 who confirms the word of his servant and performs the counsel of his messengers who says to jerusalem you will be inhabited and to the cities of judah you will be built now why would he be saying jerusalem you'll be inhabited you know when isaiah prophesied that jerusalem was already inhabited see isaiah is looking beyond to the time when jerusalem is uninhabited because the babylonians have destroyed the temple and carried them all away and he in advance i think is one of the most amazing prophets prophets because he prophesies very specific events with such incredible precision and this is an example of that he foretold that babylon would destroy them destroy the temple they'd be carried away but he said don't be discouraged when this happens it says you will be inhabited the city of judah you will be built you will raise up her waste places and saying that they would all be wasted by the enemy who says to the deep be dry and to the rivers and i will dry up your rivers who says the cyrus he is my shepherd now isaiah is making this prophecy 150 years before king cyrus now when you say cyrus there is one really great persian king he was cyrus ii technically if i say nebuchadnezzar we all think about king nebuchadnezzar but did you know nebuchadnezzar's really nebuchadnezzar ii nebuchadnezzar the great was really the second guy by that name and so um cyrus the great who had one of the most vast empires and you know i really enjoyed bible study when i got into these prophecies because i was good at history and i do remember studying the persian empire and i do remember studying the babylonian empire back in new york city public school so when i read these things the bible said yeah i remember that so he was this person general who conquered babylon how did he conquer babylon well he was his beginnings are a little bit vague in history some of the historians can't contradict each other but herodotus the historian says that he was from a median mother the medes and the persians kind of joined together and he created an alliance and he conquered nabadonis who was the real king of babylon at that time he had put his son bill schauzer in charge of things down in babylon while he was off in another kingdom that's why we think belshazzar was king of babylon he was actually the vice regent he was king while his father was gone cyrus defeated nabadonos and then he made his way towards babylon well babylon was an extremely large city that nebuchadnezzar had built several walls inner walls outer walls one historian says the walls were 60 miles around so some historians can test that and that they were hundreds of feet high and they were outer walls and inner walls and they all agree with that they had outer gates and inner gates and the euphrates river ran under the wall because it was the main water supply for the city and they had the walls built down by the wall the waters had flood stage so you couldn't really get under the walls and it irrigated the whole city provided water for the hanging gardens of babylon that nebuchadnezzar had built for his wife because she was from the mountains and babylon was a great plane and he said i don't want you to be homesick for the mountain so i will build you a mountain and he built these man-made mountains and took all these exotic plants and had clever engineers pumping water up to irrigate waterfalls and herodotus said it was one of the wonders of the ancient world so babylon still had that glory even after nebuchadnezzar died during the time of belshazzar so they had all the food in the city they had the storage of food plus they could grow food in the city and so when per when cyrus came with this very big army and laid siege to show they were not afraid and historians even support this it's not only in the bible it's in history it says that the king of babylon had a great festival to show they were not afraid to mock the persians outside the gate well cyrus made like he was withdrawing and he took his soldiers and he went out of sight and he did something he had done once before he made these canals to divert the euphrates river left the dams in place dug canals so that at the right moment they would break the dams and all the water normally in the river would run out of the river and the water level would drop precipitously and then they could send some men under the walls to sneak in at night open the gates and let the army in and they did that the historians said that now the euphrates river today is a shadow of what it used to be in fact something you might find interesting i've seen several articles right now today you can read them that says the euphrates river is running dry it's been drying up for years i've seen them talking about this for years because turkey has got like 40 dams upriver they damn the euphrates they're taking all the water before it ever gets to iraq and then they've had some droughts and there are so many places you could walk across the euphrates where before they used to fly ships up and down that those waters it was a mighty river back then but so cyrus he was able to divert it into some dry channels they all broke these dirt dams the water all went running out his soldiers just like clockwork they went under the walls the soldiers who were supposed to be guarding the inner city they had left the inner gates open because they thought well we'll see when they come we'll lock the inner gates they were drunk from the festival this is the great feast that belshazzar you read about in daniel chapter five they opened the gates they came in they stormed the city matter of fact the city was already taken by the time belshazzar heard in the banqueting hall that they had breached the walls that's how quickly they took the city now when you read what happened in history and then you look at this and it says i will raise up her waste places who says to the deep be dry and i will dry up your rivers that's what cyrus did who says the cyrus calls him by name i mean that's pretty amazing there were no jews named cyrus calls him by name says he is my shepherd he will perform my pleasure saying to jerusalem you will be built cyrus was the persian king who let them go from babylon back to israel who not only gave them permission to build he supported them in the project gave them funds to do it and to the temple your foundation will be laid he was the one who initiated all these things happening what a what an amazing prophecy and some people say well yeah that part of isaiah was written afterward and there's some people that argue that everything from isaiah chapter 39 on was written by a different isaiah because how could he possibly know all that was such detail now this the scholars look at in the theme the style of isaiah there's nothing in hebrew literature that shows there were two isaiahs it was one book in fact if you go to the dead sea scrolls all of this is one book and they know that it was written before the time of christ then you go to chapter 45 keep in mind the chapters were not there they were added later so it's still continuing with the theme of cyrus thus says the lord to his anointed to cyrus whose right hand i have held to subdue nations before him now cyrus in a way is a type of christ and you might be thinking how can a pagan king be a type of jesus well he was a great liberator he freed them from their enemies he made it possible for them to go to the promised land and any leader who makes it possible for god's people to go to the promised land who frees them from slavery is in a way a type of christ who says the thus says the lord to his anointed to cyrus whose right hand i have held god says i'm the one who's given you victory over these other nations to subdue nations before him to loose the armor of kings to open before him the double doors what did we learn that when the general of cyrus went under the walls with his men they had left the inner bronze gates open god had arranged that so the gates will not be shut this is exactly what happened i will go before you and make the crooked places straight have you ever had a difficult day where god all of a sudden straightened all the crooked places for you they say lord does everything fell into place today so many things could have gone wrong but you made the crooked places straight you made my going easy god remove the obstacles i will break in pieces the gates of bronze and i will cut the bars of iron they also had bars of iron on the other gate i will give you the treasures of darkness all the treasures that babylon had accumulated now greece was the bronze kingdom rome was the iron kingdom persia was what metal silver and what was babylon why was babylon called the golden kingdom because babylon under nebuchadnezzar was the wealthiest they had great treasures keep in mind nebuchadnezzar had conquered egypt you know how much gold they found in the pyramids and they had a fabulous amount of gold in the city and so he says i'll give you the treasures of darkness meaning the treasures that had been accumulated by the babylonians in the i'm in by the way i'm in uh isaiah chapter 45 verse 3. i'll give you the treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of secret places that you might know that i the lord and the one who has called you by name god is saying cyrus i am god who is calling you by name now what do you think it did for cyrus when after he conquered babylon when daniel or one of the other hebrews came up to him and said you want to see something let us show you this ancient scroll here we got a scroll it's 150 years old and look what our prophet said about you we'll translate it for you and i am the one who called you by name can you see why cyrus would be friendly to the jews you know it's interesting when you um you talk to the story you read what the historians say about cyrus and they try and figure out what his religion was and they say you know we really can't figure out his religion it doesn't seem clear that he was polytheistic or you know one of the other middle eastern religions and it could be that when he saw that he started worshiping the god of israel because he actually told the priest when they went back to rebuild the city he said build the temple for the lord and he uses the word jehovah and he said and pray for the king and so he at least acknowledged the god of israel that you might know that i am the lord i'm again and i isaiah chapter 45 verse 3 that you might know that i'm the lord who called you by name i am the god of israel for jacob my servant's sake and for israel mine elect i have even called you by your name god is emphasizing that i have named you though you have not known me i am the lord and there is no other there is no god's beside me he's telling cyrus there is no other god beside me i will gird you though you have not known me that they may know from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof there is no god beside me i am the lord and there is no other was there a time during the persian kingdom when the king of persia made a decree that everyone should worship the god of his of daniel you remember when daniel's brought out of the lion's den during the time of darius who's part of the medo-persian kingdom he issued a decree that nobody should speak against the god of daniel and so god said through your kingdom my name is going to be known everywhere did that come true can you think of now there's other people who were foretold by prophets by name did the angel foretell the name of jesus yeah and some others i forget what ishmael i think the angel maybe gave his name and some others but wasn't there another king where god foretold his name long before he was born yeah you can read about when god foretold king josiah you go to this prophet he's an unnamed prophet first kings 13 verse 2 an unnamed prophet goes to the king of israel and he prophesies against this false altar to baal and he cried out against the altar by the word of the lord said o altar altar thus says the lord behold a child josiah by name will be born to the house of david and on you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you and men's bones will be burned on you meaning that that altar would be defiled did that happen it did hundreds of years later josiah was born and he went up and he did the very thing that the prophet of judah had foretold and so every now and then god is going to really spell things out very definitively and he says not only am i telling you what's going to happen i'm going to tell you the name of the person who's going to do it you know moses gave a prophecy he said there will be a prophet this is in deuteronomy chapter 18 he says there's a prophet that well god is going to raise up a prophet to you who is like me and he's called the prophet and he prophesies about jesus and they always called him who is that prophet that would come that would be like moses and ultimately he's identified as jesus then finally in the last section here i talked a little bit about hope in advance that section already and god told them though you're carried away i'm giving you promises in advance the babylonians will carry you away don't get discouraged you will come back again you know there how many of you here remember um there were some books that went out years ago in the adventist church about um dan it was called dare to dan and i hope i'm seeing the title right and they would this guy would invite people to meetings and he would explain prophecy to them and it was just an incredible uh example and one of the things is that he foretells deliverance before it ever happens you can read in leviticus 26 for instance leviticus 26 40. he says if my people are unfaithful and they're carried off by their enemies if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers this is what daniel did in chapter nine with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to me then i'll remember my covenant with jacob my covenant with isaac my covenant with abraham and i'll remember their land and he says i will bring them back so god in advance way back in the time of moses he said if you're carried away by unfaithfulness i will bring you back what did solomon say during his dedication prayer and if your people by unfaithfulness are carried off by their enemies if they pray towards this place daniel literally prayed towards jerusalem so i will hear their prayer i will bring them back again god gives us hope in advance in his word and then finally you read in isaiah 49 about the feeling and suffering servant he says listen o coastlands to me and take heed you peoples from afar the lord has called me from the womb from the matrix of my mother he has made mention of my name and he's made my mouth like a sharp sword in the shadow of his hand he has hidden me and he's made me like a polished shaft in his quiver he has hidden me so he said you know i even foretold jeremiah says god said i've called you from the womb jesus was foretold in advance moses was foretold o israel in whom i will be glorified and you go down to verse 5 and now says the lord who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring jacob back to him so that israel is gathered to him for i for i shall be glorious in the eyes of the lord and my god shall be my strength indeed he says is it too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of jacob and to restore the preserved ones of israel i will also give you as a light to the gentiles this is a prophecy of jesus the servant that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth oh wonderful prophecies in isaiah that we can look back now and say how could they miss it because they were all so clear friends i think we've run out of time for today's study for those who are joining us late i want to remind you that we have a free offer it's called christ human nature and you can get this simply by calling 866-788-3966 ask for offer number 729 and you can also get it by texting sh017240544 this is for north america god bless you we'll study his word together again next week [Music] i went to church as a child i think more out of because that's what you did so i became an altar boy because it looked cool it was very ritualistic which was fascinating to me there was a pattern and a process to it and you got to be out in front of all those people and just do something after that we moved away i never really went to church again as i became a teenager drifted away from church never believed in god never thought about god got through high school did pretty good but again hanging out with the wrong people doing things i shouldn't have been doing just involved in in doing drugs doing recreational drugs uh sometimes more than recreational drugs and from that i knew i needed some discipline in my life and i joined the u.s navy and i thought that would change my life and in some ways it did but i still had that big hole i was still looking to fill it i now had direction and i had discipline in my life i learned to trade and i never found god it just the circumstances never led me to god i got married while i was in the navy i married a naval officer we married we had son together we didn't go to church god was not a part of our lives and it reflected in our lives and it ended up in a failed marriage for a lot of reasons got in a second failed marriage we didn't have god in that marriage and then met my current wife from a career perspective i was doing what i loved i'd found this job it was great i loved what i did i felt i was good at it and that filled part of the hole but there was still a big hole in there that was empty and and i didn't understand why it was empty i just knew there was an emptiness inside of me package showed up one day and i opened it and it was a bunch of dvds and a bible study guide and it was doug batchelor and we had nothing else to do so we started watching the dvds and i was absolutely engrossed in it it was fascinating to me i was hearing things i had never heard and i learned more in that two or three weeks it took us to do those than i had in my whole life and it was amazing nobody talked about prophecy nobody talked about revelation nobody really talked about the sabbath and so it was fascinating to me and as i learned more i wanted to know more the amazing facts website was phenomenal i was able to go through that i could find studies on the sabbath i could find studies on prophecy and taking this journey hand in hand and going through it together it was amazing for us and what it did for our marriage and for our life and then the next thing i know i'm getting baptized then i became the sabbath school leader for that class and continue to teach to this day i'm able to take that information the resources the links and provide that to others and start multiplying that effort out without amazing facts i don't think i would have gotten to this point my name is bill thank you for changing my life [Music] we're here on the beautiful coast of the island of puerto rico and if you were to travel east about 2 thousand miles of course you'd be out in the middle of the ocean but you'd also be in the middle of a mystical sea called the saragasso sea it gets its name because of this common brown seaweed that can be found floating in vast mass the area of the saragasso sea is about 700 miles wide and 2 000 miles long now the seaweed itself is fascinating stuff it was first observed and called gulf weed by christopher columbus it gets the name sargon from the portuguese some people use it as herbal remedies but out in the middle of the saragasso sea the water is some of the bluest in the world it's there you can see 200 feet deep in places it also has a great biodiversity and ecosystem that surrounds the saragasso sea for years scientists wondered where the american and the atlantic eels were breeding they knew the adult eel swam down the rivers out into the atlantic but they never could find the place where they reproduced finally they discovered it was out in the middle of the saragasso sea so it's a fascinating place but if you're an ancient sailor you did not want to get stuck there being caught in the doldrums was extremely difficult for the ancient sailors of course their boats were driven by wind and sail and they'd be caught in the vast mats of the seaweed that would wrap around their rudder barnacles would begin to grow it's an area that is notorious for light and baffling winds and so they'd make no progress they'd get stuck the men would become extremely dispirited sometimes violence and even insanity would break out as people were trapped in the doldrums well friends perhaps sometimes you felt that you're trapped in the doldrums you've gone through episodes of depression you feel like you're going in circles life seems stifling you know the bible offers good news there is a way out the bible talks about a famous character that was trapped in a cycle of depression he was low as you could be matter of fact even had seaweed wrapped around his head his name was jonah but god gave him a way of escape in jonah chapter 2 verse 3 through 7 we read for you cast me into the depths into the heart of the seas and the floods surrounded me all of your billows and your waves passed over me then i said i have been cast out of your sight yet i will look again towards your holy temple the waters surrounded me even to my soul the deep closed around me weeds were wrapped around my head i went down to the moorings of the mountains the earth with its bars closed behind me forever yet you brought my life up from the pit oh lord my god when my soul fainted within me i remember the lord and my prayer went up to you into your holy temple you know friends the way that jonah got out of his discouraging circumstances he turned to god and he prayed and if god could hear jonah's prayer just think about it he was as far away from god as anybody could be he was in the belly of a sea monster in the bottom of the ocean in the dark yet he turned to god and god heard his prayer you know these ancient sailors when they were trapped on the deck of a ship for weeks stuck in the goldens discouraged sometimes they would have a prayer meeting and pray that god would send a breeze that would set them free and get their boats moving they turned to god in prayer and often miracles would happen and the wind would flutter in the sails and bring them out of their seaweed prison friends maybe you have been stuck in the dolphins maybe you've been caught in a cycle of depression if god can do it for jonah if he can do it for the ancient sailors he can do it for you turn to the lord in prayer trust his spirit to blow through your soul and to set you free so [Music] no more police stations no more sickness no more death no more suffering and it is real friends this pain and misery in our world was never god's plan he's going to restore things to its original plan blessed are the meek they will inherit the earth for i was hungry and you gave me something to eat in as much as you do it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it to me [Music] go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature through radio television print evangelistic events and the internet amazing facts international is heeding the call of jesus to go into all the world millions of individuals in over 150 countries have been blessed by the word of god amazing facts has spawned new spheres of influence in india africa china and indonesia with each new country come hundreds of translated booklets study guides and video presentations produced in each region for the people of that region armed with these precious truths gospel workers are empowered to spread bright rays of light on every path they travel please visit reachtheworld.amazingfacts.org to learn more about amazing facts international and how you can participate in this exciting soul-winning ministry that website again is reachtheworld.amazingfacts.org thank you for your support [Music] good morning friends we'd like to welcome you back to the granite bay church service here in sacramento california we'd like to welcome our online members and our friends who are joining us as well as those who are able to make it out today and join us in person we'd like to welcome all of you i do have some announcements that would like to bring to your attention uh if you have your bulletins you can kind of follow along the announcement section for those of you who are viewing online we encourage you to take a look at the granite bay church website we post the bulletin there every thursday and it's got all the announcements and upcoming events so you can be sure to take a look at that i'm not going to read through all the announcements as i said it's online it's also in the bulletin but we do want to highlight just a few items we have a midweek bible study that's on a wednesday at 7 p.m and it's available online so you can view it at the granite bay church facebook page and that's at 7 p.m pacific time also want to let you know about church updates from time to time we'll send out an email usually also on a thursday evening that'll give updates any announcements for the church and if you would like to be a part of that email you can just send an email to the office at office at granite bay sda.org and you can let them know and they'll include you in the email update that goes out once a week also something a little bit different for those of you joining us online or for our local members we're going to be sending out a link for our online directory for the church so if you're an active member you should get an email by tuesday i think they're going to send it out on monday and if you don't get an email and you're an active member of the granite bay church you need to contact the church office and so the phone number is there 916-659-6600 and let them know you didn't receive the email so the email goes out on monday you should receive it hopefully sometime monday if you don't get it by tuesday call the office i also want to remind you i think many of you have already received your tax deductible receipts from the church for tax purposes all of them should be out by the 15th and if you did not receive anything yet you can also contact the church office and let them know and they can get that sent out to you we'd also like to welcome into church membership two individuals at this time we just had witnessed the baptism of jessica willis and she is going to be joining the church through baptism but at the same time we would like to also welcome pamela givens on profession of faith she is an online church member she's been viewing for quite a while gone through the studies and the pastors have visited with her and she would like to join the church on profession of faith so we have two membership transfers or joining the granite bay seventh avenue church jessica that's joining by baptism and pamela that's joining on profession of faith for those of you here uh we need to make a motion to accept them as members of the granite bay church do we have a motion i see one i see a second all those in favor if you just raise your hand all right we would like to welcome pamela to the membership of the granite bay church and also jessica and we pray that god will richly bless you in your ministry and in your work for him at this time we would like to invite you to stand as we sing our call to worship it's that great anthem we have this hope the words will be on the screen and those at home you're welcome to join us as well [Music] we have this hope that burns within our hearts open the coming of the lord we have this faith that christ imparts faith in the promise of his word [Music] we believe the time is here when the nations far and near shall awake and shout and sing hallelujah christ is king [Music] we have this [Music] lord our loving father in heaven lord it is a joy and a privilege to be able to come together and to worship you this morning we would invite your spirit to be in this place lord be with all those who are watching wherever they are and i pray that we'll just sense that your voice is speaking to us lord this is your sabbath time you've promised to bless it and we pray that we receive that blessing of rest in jesus and that will all be drawn closer to him we pray in jesus name amen you may be seated happy sabbath i like your happy sabbath i can hear it from here i wish i'm gonna say it again happy sabbath there we go that just means that we're all alive and awake and vibrant and happy right i love it when the bible says that david was happy when he said let's go to the house of god and whenever someone says that to me i'm just so overjoyed that i get to go to god's house you know um one of the one of the core attributes of being a christian is the concept of priority right i mean all of us in one way or another we prioritize something everyone has a priority be that your health be that a family member be that making money a lot of people have a lot of different priorities another thing that's important when it comes to priorities is your your actions meeting what your mouth says because a lot of people say that they have a priority but they'll live and they'll act a different way you understand what i'm saying sometimes someone will say well no this is my priority my family is my priority but through their actions you see that their priority truly is something entirely different it might be their job it might be um fame or popularity or recognition and so in this way you'll see this duality this dichotomy between what is your priority on your lips and what is your priority in your actions what i really like about the bible is that we get to see not only the the priority on the lips of these people but you get to see that their lips or their words match their act uh their actions mac their match their words in their you know coming out of their mouth one great example of this is joseph i mean think about it joseph he uh he was born in a golden cradle he was the favorite son of a prince right jacob is called a prince a prince of the land a rich you know man and while his older brothers had to work and toil and he he learned how to read and how to write so he was born a golden crib he was privileged he had a lot of privileges in his life that uh that really gave him a really good life and and in in the book patriarchs and prophets we see that um ellen white she says that he was um he god was merciful to look at the words god was merciful to allow him to lose all these things what mercy huh and become a slave and we know the whole story of joseph where you know he goes through that whole experience of losing everything and deciding in his heart to make god his priority above his master above recognition above any kind of privilege that him kind of you know uh uh um making his master his priority could have made him no god it was his priority and that continued into him becoming the second most powerful man in the world at that point because on his deathbed after you know years of of luxury really because he was powerful prime minister the bible tells us in exodus chapter 13 verse sorry genesis chapter 50 where did i put it verse 25 it says that then joseph took an oath from the children of israel saying god will surely visit you and you shall carry my bones from here he counted his priority as being one with the children of god and this actually happened when you read exodus um i believe it's exodus chapter 13 verse 19 where it says that they indeed took his bones so you see that joseph he didn't really count his lot in with egypt he counted his lot in with the children of god that was his priority and he wanted that to make that abundantly clear so today friends as you consider your priorities may our your priorities always be within uh the works of god that's why when we we participate here in tithes and offerings um we we are actually demonstrating with you know a very palpable way from our pocket we are saying god is my priority his work is my priority the preaching of the gospel is his priority the missions that we see coming out of amazing facts and out of the church works such as schooling education missions all of that are priorities to us and we can never forget that so may god bless you now as you participate in this moment i'd like to pray for our tithes and offerings right now dear lord thank you so much because you have granted to us the great privilege and honor and blessing to contribute in your work father as uh as little as we may contribute i i do ask you to multiply these blessings multiply uh the resources that are contributed that are gathered together for the witnessing of your gospel lord in far-off lands in places that we won't even be or go but that we know that your work is there and is active and it is helping people so allow us to always remember our priority in you in everything that we do way beyond just the material things but in the spiritual things i ask this and i thank you for this in the name of jesus our friend our lord and our savior amen and amen [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] today's scripture is from second corinthians chapter four verses two through six but we have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of god deceitfully but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of god but if our gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel of christ who is the image of god should shine upon them for we preach not ourselves but christ jesus the lord and ourselves your servants for jesus sake for god who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of god in the face of jesus christ please remain standing now dear lord as we pray take our hearts and minds far away from the press of the world all around to your throne where grace does abound may our lives be transformed by your love may our souls be refreshed from above at this moment let people everywhere [Music] join us now as [Music] we witnessed the baptism of jessica just a few moments ago but the bible tells us that not only do we want to be baptized by water we also want to be baptized by the spirit and so we wanted to include jessica in a special way in our congregational prayer at this time so those who are able let's kneel as we come before the lord in prayer dear father in heaven what a privilege for us to be able to gather together in your presence lord we are humbled when we read in scripture how that the angels in your presence veil their faces and their feet and constantly cry holy holy holy lord god almighty and yet father you are welcoming us into your presence today we know that you are high and lifted up that you are the creator of all things and yet you are also our father and you desire us to come to you even as little children come to their parents father we come with hearts filled with praise and gratitude for the many blessings that you've given us answered prayer providing for our needs and lord we come with great joy and we want to lift up jessica in a special way this morning as she has committed a life to you through baptism but not only do we want to experience baptism with the water but we also want baptism with the spirit and so we want to invite your holy spirit in a very special way to fill our heart and guide her we know lord the adversary the devil is never happy when somebody commits their life to following you and so we pray that you would give a strength and comfort and peace and also lord reveal to her those spiritual gifts that you have given her that she might be able to use the gifts you give for the furtherance of your kingdom and so lord we lift up in a special way this morning and then we also want to pray for those who have prayer requests we know there are many who are struggling with financial difficulties others who are struggling with health lord you know each heart you know each need and we are grateful that we can come to you and leave all of this at your feet and trust that you will work things out to your glory and for what is best for us and so lord we commit this time in your keeping we ask a blessing on pastor doug as he opens the word and once again we thank you father for the privilege i've been able to enter into your presence and we pray this all in the precious name of jesus amen a reminder of this event and we also have a gift that sabrina will give you and again welcome to the granite bay church family [Applause] i've been looking forward to this subject for a couple of weeks now and it's i think one of the great chapters in the bible and it's dealing with the gospel of john chapter nine so if you have your bibles you want to join me and turn to the gospel of john chapter nine message today is titled blind from birth and i think you'll find there's something here today that applies to everybody blind from birth you know i thought we're probably going to divide this study into at least two weeks and so we'll be covering all of john chapter 9 but today i'm going to focus on verses 1 through 12 and so if you've got your bibles open john chapter 9 verse 1 now as jesus passed by he saw a man who was blind from birth and his disciples asked him saying rabbi who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind and jesus answered neither this man nor his parents sinned but that the works of god should be revealed in him i must work the works of him who sent me while it is day the night is coming when no one can work as long as i am in the world i am the light of the world when he had said these things he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva and he anointed the eyes of the man born blind with the clay and he said to him go wash in the pool of siloam which is translated scent so he went and washed and came back seen therefore the neighbors and those who had previously seen him that he was blind said is this not he who sat and begged some said this is he mother said he's like him he said i am he therefore they said to him how were your eyes opened he answered and said a man called jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me go to the pool of siloam and wash so i went i washed and i received sight and they said to him where is he he said i do not know so here we have one of the great miracles in the bible now i don't know if you realize but you read matthew mark luke jesus does hundreds of miracles when you get to the gospel of john jesus only does seven miracles and uh he tells us that he gives us these seven miracles to highlight the power of jesus ministry he said and you read in john chapter 20 verse 30 and truly jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these are written he said i've given you the seven that i give you that you might believe that jesus is the christ the son of god and that believing you might have life in his name so he's saying i've given you these seven miracles that your faith might be strengthened that you might have evidence on which to hang your faith if you're wondering what those seven miracles are one jesus changes the water into wine he heals a nobleman's son he heals a lame man by the pool he feeds five thousand he walks in water what we're studying today is miracle number six he heals one who is born blind number seven raises lazarus from the dead and i guess you could argue the number eight would be he raises himself but that's not really one he performs on somebody else so those are the seven miracles we're going to talk about this miracle today a miracle where the eyes of the blind are open but not just someone who struggles with blindness but somebody born blind now just think about that for a moment if you lose your sight you know after you're two or three years old or 10 years old and you at least have a concept of what a circle is what a square is what a person looks like what's a tree what's a cloud what's the stars what's a sun what does a house look like what is a dog and a cat there's so many things we just take for granted if you're born blind you have none of these concepts to gauge your thinking most of us if you close your eyes right now and i start telling you about a yellow monkey that's climbing up a barber pole and he's got some purple ice cream and you can picture that in your mind it's crazy as it is you can picture it you will fill in the blanks but if you've never seen a monkey you don't know what a yellow monkey looks like and so so much just doesn't make any sense when you've never seen anything because sight is undoubtedly one of the most important if not the most important sense i understand that in most creatures that when an embryo is developing one of the first organs that becomes evident is the eye begins to show here's a few amazing facts about eyes you blink about 28 000 times a day each one lasting only one tenth of a second the body uses this reflex to keep the eyes clean and lubricated and this is very important when you consider ninety percent of the information that comes into your brain comes through the medium of your eyes furthermore your eyes come into your brain are able to compute a scene that comes into your brain in one one hundredth of a second your eyes focus on 50 different objects every second it's the only organ that is more complex uh the only organ more complex than the eye is your brain matter of fact even uh charles darwin said the eye makes it very difficult for him to believe in evolution a trained eye can distinguish about 10 million different colors your eye can detect a camel candle flame 1.7 miles away your iris the colored part of your eye has 256 unique characteristics your fingerprint only has 40. that's why they're using more and more iris recognition software to know that it's you and not somebody else only one six of your eyeballs actually visible we hope you keep it that way today heterochromia is the medical term for having two different colored eyes we've probably all met people before they got like one brown eye one blue eye or one green eye one blue eye your eyes are comprised of rods and cone cells rods allow you to see shapes while the cones are responsible for deciphering colors do you know the shark cornea is nearly identical to the human cornea and has been used in human eye surgery the optic nerve contains more than one million nerve cells your eye is the fastest contracting muscle in the body it can contract in less than 1 100th of a second and the average person blinks 12 times a minute and i bet you just blinked thinking about it now we're going to be dealing with a difficult subject blindness and you know even when you talk about this you know there are some blind people listening and you want to be sensitive but it is a serious subject and yet i think that even blind people can have a sense of humor i remember hearing a story about bob hope had a good friend his name was charles boswell who was a blind golfer now it's hard to imagine a blind golfer but they actually charles boswell he lost his sight in world war ii trying to rescue a person from a burning tank tank exploded lost his vision he went through the veteran therapy and finally after he kind of made his way around they said you need to take up a hobby or a sport he tried different things he'd never tried golfing before he tried golfing and what they did is they had a caddy or an assistant that would say all right here's your club there's the ball you got to see if you can hit the ball and uh the hole is this far away there's this kind of turf this kind of ground i don't know how you can have a blind golfer but i guess they had a league of blind golfers and this guy was pretty good he was a champion and he actually started a foundation he became a very successful insurance agent and he was friends with bob hope the famous comedian and one time he and bob hope were at a dinner where they were raising funds for this foundation and he's sitting up on the platform at a table and bob hope is at the microphone and and he bob pope began to tease charles both while he says a blind golfer that's so hard to understand he said i'd like to play you a game sometime and charles shouted out he said i'd be happy to play you a game mr hope and bob hope said well now you don't you don't know but this is when i play golf with someone i usually put a little money down to make it interesting and he said that'd be fine with me i'd like to earn a little money and bob hope said well charles how many points would you like me to spot you you'll make it fair he said no man on man we're going to go and bob hope said really i stand the chance to win a little money he says when do you want to do it charles said tonight at midnight so there's a couple of ways a person can be blind a person can be blind because you're in the world and you have no eyes to see and another way a person can be blind is you can have eyes but be in the dark and not have eyes to see with and so one of the principal lessons in this chapter is jesus is not just talking about physical sight he's talking about the light of the world and how so many people in the world are living in darkness because we are born blind we are born lost we are born handicapped by sin and some people have no idea how blind they are so blindness is mentioned about 100 times in the bible and even in the law of moses there was a curse pronounced on anybody who mistreated a blind person and when they entered the promised land they were to shout across the mountains to each other deuteronomy 27 verse 18 cursed is the one who makes the blind to wander off the road and all the people will say amen so the jewish nation was very sensitive that you should care about blind people and be sensitive to that of your five senses your vision seems to be the most important it seems like that if you have other senses that you lose one of the one sense people would hate to lose is the sense of sight but if you lose your sight all the other senses seem to be enhanced now bats are known for having incredible hearing some bats actually have good eyes but many of them have bad eyes but great hearing they can hear at night with echolocation dogs can find their way around with their nose raccoons have an incredible sense of feeling so do spiders catfish have the best sense of taste humans depend almost entirely upon our sight to get around and to be safe the world the bible tells us is in a state of darkness isaiah 60 verse 2 behold darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the people jesus said in john 3 verse 19 this is the condemnation that light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil for everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed but he who does the truth he comes to the light that his deeds might be clearly seen that they have been done in god so you can see all the way through the bible light is compared with truth darkness is compared with ignorance or evil you can read for instance in ephesians chapter 4 verse 17 this i say therefore and testify in the lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the gentiles walk in futility of their mind having their understanding darkened being alienated from the life of god because of the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness in their heart jesus talked about if the blind lead the blind they will all fall in the ditch there's a lot of blindness in the world spiritual blindness second corinthians 4 verse 3 but even if our gospel is veiled it is veiled from those who are perishing whose mind the god of this age meaning the devil has blinded who do not believe lest the light of the gospel of the glory of christ who is the image of god should shine on them the devil is blinded much of the world paul says isaiah 42 matter of fact isaiah 42 several places talks about vision and sight verse 6 i the lord have called you in righteousness and will hold your hand i will keep you and give you as a covenant of the people as a light to the gentiles to open blind eyes don't forget that they they often said that the gentiles are living in darkness because they do not know the true god this story we're about to study talks about jesus giving light to the gentiles to bring out prisoners from the prison those who sit in darkness from the prison house isaiah 42 16 i'll bring the blind by a way they did not know i will lead them in paths they have not known i will make darkness light before them and the crooked places straight these things i will do for them and not forsake them isaiah 42 18 hear you deaf and look you blind that you may see who is blind but my servant or death is my messenger whom i send who is blind as he who is perfect and blind as the lord's servant in some ways the bible says that god will hide his eyes from our sins and so blindness had to do with a spiritual understanding now i want you to go to the story that we're looking at in john chapter nine but to understand the context it's always good to go back a verse or two what is happening in john chapter eight if you've got your bible just turn real quick to let's see john chapter 8 and if you look in verse 54 jesus is having a dispute with the scribes and pharisees and he says if i honor myself my honor is nothing it's my father who honors me whom you say that he is your god that you don't know him but i know him and if i say i don't know him i'll be a liar like you but i know him and i keep his word your father abraham rejoiced to see my day and sought and was glad and the jews said to him you're not yet 50 years old and have you seen abraham and jesus said in those famous words most assuredly i say to you before abraham was i am who else said i am god said to moses i am that i am there's more i am's that jesus declares in john than anywhere else he says i am the door i am the light of the world i am the living water i am the good shepherd they understood that he was claiming divinity because it tells us they took up stones to throw at him but jesus hid himself and went out of the temple going through the midst of him so he's been in the temple he goes out of the temple through the midst of them and so passed by what did he do he passed by now i start with john chapter 9. now jesus as he passed by so this story takes place immediately of falling following an assassination attempt they had just taken up stones to stone him but he blinded them so they couldn't see him and he passed through their midst but he has not lost his care for the people around him as he's passing out of the temple where they were just getting ready to stone him this event takes place now as jesus passed by he saw now the blind man did not see jesus but jesus saw him because god sees all things right does jesus see us he saw a man who was blind from birth christ knows all things and he knew that the bible says jesus saw these people that were suffering by the pool of bethesda but he saw one man that he knew had been there 38 years and his heart went out to him he saw this man who had never seen anything and his heart was moved he saw him and he paused us to look at him and they must have been discussing it and maybe the disciples had some insight maybe he's holding a sign up please help me i've been blind from birth we don't know but somehow they knew this man was blind from birth the disciples asked him saying rabbi who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind now you know what's interesting they don't say who sinned that man they say this man which indicates that they're not far away from the man now he may be blind but are his ears working so can he hear them talking like this a matter of fact if you're blind your hearing is probably a little bit better and so the year i'm asking this question who is it that sinned that he would be born blind now as we dive off into this subject today i've divided the study into seven parts and i tried to make it easy to remember you've got first the wandering the working the washing the walking the witnessing the wandering and the worshipping it starts out wondering it ends up worshiping at the end of the chapter and we'll get to that part next week but let's first look at the wondering so they're asking jesus why was this man born blind whose sin was it now he's just escaped the stoning in the temple and they're very quick to judge this man and say well you know somebody sinned now you might be thinking what's wrong with the disciples how could they be asking is this man blind because of his sin was he born blind because of a sin how do you work that out do you sin in in vitro so that you and because you know you kicked too much in your mother's womb you're born blind and how do you get punished or maybe they had been influenced by some of the greek thinking that the soul existed and it was conscious and somehow it was a bad soul and in its reincarnation it's true that you know the greeks had occupied the jews and some of their greek philosophy about the soul's pre-existence had actually influenced some of the jews they were called the hellenists they were influenced a lot by the greek culture and maybe that thinking had contaminated the disciples theology and they're saying did this man somehow sin prior to his birth or was it his parents sin and then again there's the possibility that you know all jews believe that anyone who's suffering is suffering because of their sin or the sin of their parents not necessarily those who are born with a problem but really there is some truth to it is there any suffering in the world that can't be traced to sin all suffering in the world can be connected to sin in general right if adam and eve had not fallen in sin there'd be no suffering in the world and so they understand that and then they read the place in the bible where it talks about the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children under the third and fourth generation that's in the ten commandments it's the second commandment the sins of the fathers it says god visiting the iniquity of the of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those that hate me but showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandment what does that mean that verse is often misunderstood see the bible is really clear the father does not bear the iniquity of the son and the son does not bear the iniquity of the father the righteousness of the righteous will be upon him and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon him and there are these wicked guards who assassinated a king and when his son finally came into power he said i am going to kill the assassins but i'm not going to kill their children because they are not responsible for the sins of the fathers bible's very clear children are not responsible for the sins of the parents what does it mean in the ten commandments where it says the sins of the fathers are visited on the children it's when it says fathers there it doesn't mean daddies and mommies the fathers were the leaders whether they're the priests or the kings they were called the fathers of a nation have you noticed in the bible that when the king went south spiritually the whole nation went south when the high priest compromised like eli and his sons the whole nation suffered and so when the leaders misled the people those judgments often suffered the people suffered as a result of that but god is very clear the soul that sins they shall die children are not responsible for the sins of the parents and parents are not responsible for the sins of the children and i'll tell you everybody today is kind of preoccupied with their ancestry i'm curious how many of you have had an ancestry test i have so i'll just help you come out of the closet if you have and even come on fess up anybody yeah yeah okay something my kids bought it for me i you know so i did it and it was actually very disappointing because all of my life my father my uncles all told us that we were part cherokee they said yeah we're part indian and i just i played on that my whole life they all said it i believe it yeah your great grandma was full blood cherokee from oklahoma and so i got the test not a drop of native american blood i mean i i just i'm still recovering from that let down but i found out i am part indian from india so i think they just got mixed up about which like columbus did you know they got mixed up about which indian it was but everyone's preoccupied with they say you know the reason i've got problems with a temper is because you know part irish red hair i can't help it it's my ancestry have you noticed that everybody likes to blame their problems on their ancestry at least it used to be that way now they blame the problems on my ancestry you know what i'm talking about everybody's blaming somebody for their problems and no one really owns it everyone's a victim these days so who sinned this man or his parents that he would be born blind and jesus had to settle set them straight on this they all want to blame somebody do you know that all of us when we realize what jesus said next it's going to be i think very liberating for us christ answered neither this man this is in john chapter 9 verse 3 neither this man nor his parents sin now christ is not saying his parents were sinless because all have sinned and fallen from the glory of god jesus is just saying it was not due to this man's sins or his parents sin now it is true sometimes because of the sins of a parents if parents do not live right they can actually have a child that will have some deformity and do you know it is true that there are certain kinds of blindness that can be caused by venereal disease and so they knew that back then they said was it the sin of the parents that caused them to be born blind and so you know if parents have very bad health habits or something you know they can pass something on to their children i used to always wonder you know i had my mother and my father were fairly healthy but my brother was born with cystic fibrosis i was born healthy i used to always ask why well why it just didn't seem fair i just kind of always felt guilty that i was so healthy and and it used to bother my brother too he used to say it's not fair doug that i'm so smart and i'm sick and you're so healthy and you're stupid but so we always want to know why who do we blame and so jesus is saying neither but why that the works of god should be revealed in him now we're getting into the working part of the message notice just in this verse he said but the works of god should be revealed in him i must work the works of him who sent me while it is day the night is coming when no one can work as long as i am in the world i am the light of the world now notice he emphasizes the words i am the light of the world then he performs a miracle but before he says that he makes something very clear it's not this man's sin it's not the sin of his parents but that the works of god should be revealed in him now you may be going through a trial and wondering why am i going through this trial maybe you have some friends around you like job's comforters you know the whole book of job is written because it's dealing with a question job is going through all this suffering and everybody's assuming job is suffering because of his sin and all of the dialogue and the debate and the discussion in the book of job is basically saying job is saying look no i've been serving god i've been faithful to god they said oh man you're not only are you wicked you're proud and his friends you're supposed to be there to comfort him saying you know the cursed causeless does not come if you are surfing suffering under this obvious curse all this calamity is befalling you you must have some terrible sin that you've done because god will not send the suffering on someone unless they deserve it no the bible doesn't teach that why is it elijah goes to heaven in a fiery chariot and elisha has a double portion of elijah's spirit but he dies from a lingering sickness sometimes why did you know john the baptist who's called the greatest prophet why does he die beheaded alone in a prison and so people ask these questions have you ever wondered why was i not given certain advantages why was i born with some defect some congenital problem you know you could always answer the question by saying god must have a purpose god can be glorified in it and you might be thinking well that doesn't seem fair that he should have to live maybe he was he was a young man his parents had to kind of testify that he was old enough to testify for himself so he may have been 20 years old was typically the age when you're considered an adult old enough to fight in the army so he's a young man he spent 20 years of his life blind and you mean jesus would let him suffer that for his glory martha and mary they asked jesus why did you let your friend lazarus die you know what jesus said that you might see the glory of god what's the purpose for your existence why do we exist for the glory of god i know that when i first heard that i thought well that sounds like god's being sort of self-centered but you are created for the glory of god and when you recognize what the purpose of your existence is that's when you find your greatest happiness because you are designed for that the devil the whole reason sin is in the world is because the devil thinks that the purpose of life is to glorify him he rebelled against god he said neither this man sinned nor his parents but that i might works the work of him who sent me while it is day the night is coming when no man can work by the way friends that's true right now right now we have a certain amount of freedom to preach the gospel it's not always going to be that way i think the night is coming when no one can work romans chapter 8 28 we know that all things work together for the good of those who love god you might be suffering and wondering why you're going through a trial and god is saying it's going to be for his glory in the end i don't know how long that's going to last paul had some malady some people wonder if it was his eyesight and paul prayed three times about this thorn the devil was using to torment him and paul had raised the dead he had healed the sick and he says lord i've got this medical problem can you heal me he prayed three times and god said no three times and paul finally said my strength is going to be made perfect in weakness it was for the glory of god that paul was never healed on earth of his problem now if you're a christian you realize you're all going to get healed you will all be healed someday whatever your problem is and when it happens you're going to be so happy and when a million years go by in heaven and you've got your glorified body are you going to be thinking why lord did you let me suffer 20 years on earth will it you see you get the eternal perspective and you're going to realize it's our momentary affliction paul calls it it is a momentary affliction come prepared for what god has for us how long was joseph in prison for years why joseph said god allowed this for the glory of god the suffering of job job was double blessed in the end the resurrection of lazarus it magnified the glory of god the love of god the power of god and that's why jesus said john 11 40 said did i not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of god can you imagine how happy they were did they remember the pain of lazarus sickness when they saw the resurrection no it was all forgotten you know sometimes god has to do hard things to make things better i i got into a fight when i was a kid in new york city in central park and a kid punched me square on the nose broke my nose and for a good part of my adult life you haven't seen it because it was repaired since then my nose was cocked dramatically off to one side i looked like a boxer and i finally went to the doctor and i was struggling to breathe he says well the reason you can't breathe you've got a deviated septum your nose has been broken i said what can you do so i think i can help you so what's that involved he's like to break your nose i said what he says you want me to fix it i said yeah is it going to hurt he said not very much and so he said you know in order to get it where you can breathe again i gotta break it again so i'm glad i did it i wasn't real glad at the moment and this is the way god works sometimes in order to heal us he's got to break us he's got to take his true child he might have to bind us and blind us and send us through all kinds of difficulty but he's doing it because he loves us and he wants us to help other people see acts 26 this is one of the great verses that i'm going to share today acts 26 17. now this is jesus speaking to paul after paul has had his vision of christ by the way what happened to paul when he saw christ paul thought he had great theological insight he saw jesus on the road to damascus he was blinded by the light paul thought he had light also now he's in darkness he spent three days praying and an ice came laid his hands on paul prayed for paul that he might receive his sight something like scales fell from his eyes it's almost like his uh corny had been singed or something fell off and he could see and um jesus said acts 26 17 i will deliver you from the jewish people as well as from the gentiles to whom i now send you to open their eyes in order to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of satan to god that they might receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me that is a great verse the whole gospel is to turn us from darkness to light from the power of satan so you're not controlled by a life of sin to the power of god that we might receive forgiveness of our sins and an eternal inheritance in heaven by being sanctified through christ the whole gospel is in that verse and it's in the context of going from blindness to sight you know one of the only curses that paul ever pronounced is somebody was turning this man who was a false prophet named bar jesus was turning the pro council sergius paulus away from hearing the gospel paul turned to him and he said you son of the devil says you are going to be stricken with blindness and paul blind to them the bible tells about elisha praying that his servants eyes would be open so he could see beyond the spiritual veil they were being attacked by the syrians and they were surrounded it looked like no way of escape and the servant of elisha says my master alas what shall we do and elisha very relaxed he says lord please open his eyes and the eyes of the servant were open he saw that surrounding the syrian army on the mountains they were full of chariots and horses of fire you've heard that expression before that's where it comes from the chariots of fire the angels of god and camp round about those that fear him and then elisha said when the army came to attack he said lord strike this army with blindness and the whole army was blinded wouldn't you like to see that then elisha said to the captain of the enemy he says i'm i know who you're looking for let me take you there and he takes a hold of the lead horse and he leads his whole army into the capital city of samaria boy that's going to be one of those great heavenly videos i want to check out i want to watch that and then after he leads them all into the city the syrian contingent that had come to arrest elijah elisha he then says now lord open their eyes see god doesn't want us to be blind permanently then the syrian army's eyes are open now they're the ones surrounded instead of being the surrounders a great story in the bible the bible has a lot to say about opening the eyes of the blind you know it's interesting that in this story we're studying today jesus takes a man who has never seen and he opens his eyes when the disciples begin to do their work peter and john go to the temple by the way this was probably near the temple gates didn't we read jesus had just gone out of the temple when this happened the beggars used to be in the gates peter and john are coming in the temple gates and they heal a man who has never walked because they've got the power of christ something else i thought i should mention is many of the ancient church fathers when they studied this story they said it's not an accident that jesus walks away from the religious leaders that want to stone him when he says i am and then he goes to a man who has never seen after walking out of the temple and opens his eyes he says this is signa this is a symbol it's a type a metaphor for christ who was not only to give the light to the jewish nation but then open the eyes of the gentiles we just read that in the prophecies of both jesus to paul and in isaiah so he comes the man then and now we get into the the walking aspect of the study it says now after jesus says i am the light of the world then he does something about it he says i must work the works of him who sent me while as a day now he does something about it he starts he goes to work he didn't say you know the jesus tried to stone me i'll come back and meet you another time christ did not pass by somebody in need and when he said these things he knelt down by the man and the man must have heard jesus name because the disciples were addressing him because later they asked the man what was his name he knows his name and so he knows who it is maybe he's heard about jesus but he doesn't know very much as you'll see when we continue our study jesus kneels down and he spits on the ground and he takes the spittle and he mingles it with the dust on the ground and he makes this mud this clay and he anoints he gently spreads it over the eyes and you would normally think is that going to help your vision as i can obscure it even more if you close your eyes you can see a little light but if people put mud on your eyes after that it's going to be really hard he puts mud on his eyes and says now go wash in the pool of siloam which is translated scent any of you when you were young did you ever have like a mother or grandparent that tried to clean your face with spit now when i was little one of the first things you learn when you're little is if something comes out of your body you don't play with it or put it on you it's icky you stay away from it and so i i had that deeply ingrained in me when i was very young and it used to be so mortifying for me that if i was with my grandmother in public and she looked down and saw i had some dirt on my face she would lick her thumb or spit on a kleenex or a hanky that she always seemed to be able to pull out of her purse and wash my face with her spit anyone else am i the only one abused this way when i was young and so when i read this story about jesus putting spit on someone's face i'm thinking oh lord but you know what technically anything that came out of a person was unclean any issue from the body was considered unclean blood was considered unclean but the blood of jesus washes sin and even the spit of jesus can be better than the balm of gilead to open eyes because jesus when he came to a person who was unclean when he touched an unclean person instead of jesus becoming unclean from contact he transferred his cleanliness to that person and by the way how did god first make man from the dust of the ground god made clay and he formed man so this is almost like re-creation that's taking place here so you spit you know there's three times in the bible jesus you spit to heal there was a man who was dumb it says he spat mark 7. there are two blind men and the crowd of course spat on jesus to humiliate him you can read in mark 8 he took a blind man by the hand led him out of town when he had spit on his eyes he put his hands upon him and asked him how he saw at first he saw men like trees walking and then he touched him again and he was healed and saw everything clearly is there any limit to the ways that god can heal in the bible let's think about it did god sometimes use water to heal he told this man go wash in the pool of siloam what did elisha say to eli to naaman go washington jordan did jesus use oil what does it say in james about oil and healing the bible tells us that handkerchiefs have you read in the bible where it says that they took handkerchiefs from the apostles and they lay it upon people the bible tells us they would bring people out into the street that the shadow of peter might pass over them and they could be healed the bible tells us that they use clay hezekiah was healed by what a lump of figs jesus could speak a word it might be a touch i mean there's several different methods that god used in the bible to heal and i was reading the book desire of ages jesus was also doing this to basically say you know if you don't have a clinic at hand use whatever is available this cure could be wrought only by the power of the great healer yet christ made use of the simple agencies of nature he sanctioned the use of simple and natural remedies clay is something to be said for a mud bath i suppose and then you read on it says he tells him to go to the pool of siloam now i've actually been to that pool do you know that pool is still there today let me tell you a little story about it outside of jerusalem there was a spring called gihan it was a very strong spring during the time of hezekiah they were worried when the assyrians were threatening to besiege the city of jerusalem hezekiah said we don't want to get stuck so that we can't have water in the city because you can last a long time without food you can't last very long without water hezekiah said to his engineers any way we could take the water from gehan that's outside of the city and bring it inside the city and they did some calculating they said it's a lot of work but we can do it and you can read about this in the bible they then dug down inside jerusalem and they dug through solid rock it must be a mile it's a long it seems like a kilometer outside the city they connected with the source for the gihan spring and it's amazing they had they had excavating teams that were digging from the spring and others who were digging from jerusalem now the reason i know this is karen and i when we were in israel we got there a few days before the rest of the group and she and i and two friends from australia we went to hezekiah's tunnel it's still there today it's still bringing water today from the spring of gihon into the pool of siloam and people are still going down there today and you can use that water it's amazing and i'll tell you it's really for me it was the high point of the trip we were in the tunnel hezekiah by ourselves they said yeah there it is go ahead we're walking off there's no lights we're using our camera lights and you're walking in water that goes somewhere between your ankles up above your knees and it's very cold and you're in the dark and you're walking through this very narrow tunnel got a duck you'll hit your head if you're not careful ask me how i know and you're actually walking through history you said the bible is true this is the tunnel you can read about it in the bible that hezekiah built this tunnel to bring water inside the city that water came to the pool of siloam the word siloam is a greek way of saying shiloh you remember what it tells us in the bible about shiloh read in genesis 49 the scepter will not depart from judah nor a lawgiver between his feet until shiloh comes this pool of siloam is a type of christ read also isaiah chapter 8 verse 6 and as much as these people have refused the waters of siloa that's the spring the pool of siloam that flows softly and they rejoice in reason and rely his son he says you're going after the gods of the assyrians and israel instead of the doctrines of living water this pool was a type of christ the living water so when jesus sends them to this pool which is called sent he's basically sending him to the living water like he told that woman at the well in chapter four in the same way that elisha told nam to go wash and be clean it says it's very simple after you've got the walking now did this man have something to do in order to be cleansed he did jesus said i will do this i'm going to work a miracle for you but you have a part to play you go and you wash now it doesn't say jesus let him by the hand if you're blind man you've got to go to a location in jerusalem blind people drink he probably knew where it was he may have had a cane you may have found a friend that said hey can you take me to the pool but somewhere he made the effort to go to the pool he could have said this is crazy i don't appreciate your spinning on my eyes i can hear you spit i know what you're doing that wasn't very nice but this man he receives it his spirit is touched by the compassion of christ and he obeys what otherwise might seem like a ridiculous request i've never seen in my life you're telling me you're going to spit put mud on my eyes i'm going to see but he acts in faith simple childlike faith and you know it was easier for someone blind from birth to believe in the power of jesus than the theologians in israel it was easier for the gentiles to accept the message of christ than sometimes the church members simple faith the gospel is really simple go wash and you read in chapter 9 verse 7 this is part b of verse 7. so he went he obeyed and he washed and he came back seeing now friends you just got to stay with me for a minute i'm almost done with today so he stumbles along he goes down the long flight of steps i showed you the pool you've got to go down to it and someone leads him up and maybe they got a hold on him so he doesn't fall off in the water because he's blind after all and leans over and he splashes the water up on his face and washes the the clay off he does it a few times rinses it thoroughly away and then he flutters his eyes open and like an explosion like a shock light just comes booming into his mind and he can see but i'd like to suggest something i can't prove but i believe you know they say that a child when it's young there's a part of your brain that controls your sight and as your eyes are developing and focusing and you know when babies are real little it's like they don't see nothing they're looking around and they can't see and and pretty soon they start recognizing objects you hang a little mobile above their crib and they start pretty soon swat and they look and they're they're amazed at everything they see they got that look of wonder and everything they see and then they get a little older and they see something funny and they laugh they start recognizing that's funny and then you know they really see but for a person who's never seen they say that there's doctors that can perform surgery on people who have never seen and sometimes they even though their eyes are perfectly healthy the part of their brain that processes sight has gone too far and they never can't understand what they're seeing now there are some up until 1786 i think was the first time a surgeon performed surgery on a person who had never seen and restored their sight but up until that time that had never happened before this is a first-class miracle but i believe here's a theory that you may disagree with when adam was made did god send adam from the factory where he already understood what he was looking at did adam already know how to talk god didn't have to train or program adam i think adam came from the hands of god did he have to learn to walk or did he already know how to balance himself i think adam already knew how to speak i think god created him right from the creator's hand with certain abilities intact i think that jesus when he healed this man he not only gave him healing i think he gave him recognition because he would have spent weeks trying to figure out what's that that's a bra that's a rock what's that that's a per that's a person that's a woman that's a woman i mean all these things he just he'd never seen these things before never seen shapes never seen color so i think jesus not only healed him i think when his eyes were open all of a sudden he was given a gift of recognition at the same time but still can you imagine the wonder seen for the first time being able to behold these things and it happened after he washed after he washed he saw it you know the bible tells us at the baptism of jesus matthew 3 16 when he had been baptized behold the heavens were opened and he saw do you know with the baptism of christ it talks about seeing and hearing and i think that people see and hear for uh in a new way when we are washed by god paul when god prayed for him scales fell from his eyes and he saw now jesus did not put money in his pockets he did not give him a wheelchair or a cane because of his blindness he gave him eyes and he set him free was he happy even though he was born blind could jesus help him you know we are all born blind we're all born with sin now if you want you can go through the rest of your life and say i did not ask to be born with these sinful evil selfish tendencies god it's all your fault you made me this way or it's because of my parents adam and eve why did you do this and then transfer that selfish dna on to my parents the children of israel did not ask to be born slaves in egypt they were there because of a decision their parents made but you can you can get out of egypt if you want god has made a way for you to see if you want christ has provided his blood to wash away our sin he's provided the mud and the clay to open our eyes so all of us might see and you know for me this is an especially wonderful story because i know what it feels like going through life not knowing about god not knowing where i came from what i'm doing here where i'm going you know how empty and hopeless it is to live a life without purpose how many people out there have no idea what the purpose of life is they don't know why they're here they're miserable they're unhappy they're listening to all the lies of the world the fine self and happiness and it leaves them feeling just shattered and broken then you find out the truth and in jesus and in the bible you find out where i came from what i'm doing here and where i'm going that's called vision you're able to see i remember reading an incredible story about a man named bob edens he was blind for his whole life 51 years he felt his way through life and then a skilled surgeon performed a complicated operation he was one of those that was his brain was able to catch up with what the surgeon did for his eyes and he says he was overwhelmed some other things and this is a quote he said i never would have dreamed that yellow is so yellow he exclaimed i don't have words i'm amazed by yellow but red is my favorite color i just can't believe red i can see the shape of the moon and it's like i like nothing better than seeing a jet plane flying across the sky leaving a vapor trail and of course the sun rises and the sun sets at night and i look at the stars in the sky and the flashing light you can never know how wonderful everything is to see can you imagine seeing for the first time stuff we just take for granted some of you you see perfectly and you're still unhappy think about that you know similar but a little different there's true story about a woman named rose crawford who was blind for 50 years she was not born blind she became blind when she was young she spent 50 years blind and they took the bandages off after her eyes were restored and she gasped she wept for joy when for the first time in years she saw the dazzling beautiful world of form and color greeted her eyes the amazing thing about her story is that for 20 years her blindness was unnecessary she didn't know they had a surgical technique that could restore her sight and so she spent 20 years blind just accepting her blindness when something could have been done how sad is that how sad that so many in the world don't come to jesus to have their eyes open the lord tells us that he wants to give us sight he says i am the light of the world and then he opens her eyes and then he says you are the light of the world let your light shine and he's called us to do what he told paul we we are to bring people out of darkness into his marvelous light that's by the way what peter says and this is the story of the gospel how jesus opens our eyes and where there is no vision the people perish and right now we're in a world gross darkness covers the earth friends amen and darkness the people never before did the lord need the church to have our eyes open and then also to go and to be a light in the world i'm so thankful for this story we're going to continue our study next week but i thought it'd be appropriate to sing that uh that old classic amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved the wretch like me i once was what i once was blind but now i see we're going to stand together as our singers lead us in this and then we'll close with prayer we'll sing first second fifth verse sound that saved a wretch like me [Applause] i once [Music] i see fear and grace [Applause] how precious [Music] ten thousand years bright shining as the sun we've no last days to see god's great grace then when we first gone [Music] just a simple gospel story about how jesus opens the eyes of the blind and the man did not even ask christ just had compassion on him and he came to him it's like the bible tells us i was found by those that didn't even seek me [Music] and he had pity on that man the lord wants to open your eyes we just need to receive the blood of christ that healing the balm that opens our eyes you know what the problem in this generation is jesus says and the message to the laodicea people are poor and wretched miserable blind and naked he says i counsel you to buy of me the gold and the white raiment and the i salve that our eyes might be open i'd like to say lord please heal me open my eyes that i might see is that your prayer those that are watching you can ask jesus now to come into your heart to save you from your sins and to give you the light of his life father in heaven we do come we thank you for the miracle power of christ that can set the captive free and we can't use any excuse we can't say lord it was my parents it's the sin i was i was born blind there's nothing i can do you said that we can be born again and we thank you for that promise lord i pray that we might have that experience with child-like faith that we can wash and be clean we thank you and pray in jesus name amen amen amen god bless you friends and uh god bless you who are watching we look forward to seeing you again worshiping with us for a wednesday night for a meeting [Music] you

Channel: Doug Batchelor

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Length: 141min 5sec (8465 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021