The following message by Alistair Begg is
made available by Truth For Life for more information visit
us online at truthforlife.org. Father, what we know not, teach us. What
we have not, give us. What we are not, make us. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Well, we’re turning now for the third time to John chapter 9. It won’t be our
last time. And these studies in John chapter 9 have emerged from our consideration of what
John says at the end of this particular Gospel. In John 20:31, he explains to the readers of
the Gospel of John that all of the signs that Jesus did in the company of his disciples, all
of the miracles that he performed, have not been written down. He simply says there wouldn’t be
enough space for a book to contain them all. But rather, a selected number have been provided
for us in the Gospel of John, and they are in the Bible to provide evidence—an evidence which may
in turn produce belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and then that belief in Jesus as the Son of
God may issue a life which is really life. And we’ve been thinking very much about the
privilege that we’ve been given as a church to go into our communities and amongst our friends
and neighbors and to encourage them to consider the claims of Jesus—in a very straightforward
way to say, “Have you ever examined the evidence? If you will consider the evidence, the evidence
provides a basis for belief, and belief opens the door to spiritual life, to eternal life.”
And it has been our desire that in studying this record of a man who received his
sight—a man who’d been born blind—that we as individuals might recognize that we too are
as spiritually blind as he was physically blind and that our eyes may be opened by Jesus, just
as his were. And at the same time, that those of us who have come to a knowledge of Jesus in
this way might be better equipped to go into our communities and to speak to folks in light
of the fact that we understand what the Bible says concerning this absence of spiritual sight.
We need to be very, very clear, or we will lose our way very quickly in this chapter, that
in providing physical sight to this man, Jesus is displaying his purpose and his power
to provide spiritual sight to men and women who are as devoid of spiritual seeing
as this man was of physical seeing. Now, I think most of us know the hymn “Amazing
grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”—certainly the opening two lines.
And many of us will know the following two, in which John Newton, the writer,
employs this particular metaphor. Remember? “I once was lost, but now [I’m] found;
was blind, but now I see.” John Newton there is not referencing some physical impairment that had
marked his life, but he is testifying to the fact that although he’d gone through his life thinking
that he understood and saw things properly, it was only when he was brought face-to-face with
Jesus that he first of all discovered that he didn’t see things properly—indeed, that he didn’t
see things correctly at all. That he was actually spiritually blind. And then, when the truth of
who Jesus is and what he had done upon the cross dawned upon this slave trader’s hard and stony
heart, he said, “My eyes were opened to it, and I, who was once John Newton the
blind man, became the man who could see.” Now, we need to be very clear that the Bible
makes plain to us that sin has robbed us of spiritual vision, and that in this respect, we too
are, like this man in John 9, blind from birth. Like this man, we are unable to
rectify our condition. And like him, each of us is in need of Jesus to re-create
in us the faculty which sin has destroyed. Now, all of that by way of introduction,
but purposefully, because without that as the framework, we will very quickly
lose our way in this particular chapter. Last time, some of you will remember that
we noted in the opening twelve verses or so that the transformation in the life of this
man had really set the cat among the pigeons in his community. Now, communities are used
to things happening as they normally happen, and it often takes some time to adjust
to something that is out of the ordinary. Well, this was definitely out of the ordinary,
because this man was familiar in his neighborhood as a blind man, and as a man who begged because he
was blind. And as people would go about their day, they would listen to the familiar sounds; they
would almost disregard the man, he would be so much a part of the surroundings to them. They
knew he was there. They heard his cries. They knew his desire for money. And now, all of a
sudden, he’s reappeared in the streets, and he’s no longer asking for money, but he’s
walking around, and he can see perfectly well. The neighbors, according to verse 8,
who had formerly seen him begging, said to one another, “Isn’t this same man who
used to sit and beg?” And some said, “Oh yes, I think it is,” and others said, “No, I think
it’s probably someone who looks like him.” And they asked him, “How is
it that your eyes are opened?” He said, “The man they call Jesus
made some mud and put it on my eyes and told me to go to Siloam and wash. And
I went and washed, and then I could see.” “Well, where’s the man?”
He says, “I don’t know where he is.” Now, we pick up the story from that point.
They’re unable to resolve their dilemma, and so they do what was customary to do:
they determine to take this man to the court of public opinion, as it were,
represented by the religious leaders. The place of the synagogue in the small towns
and communities of the time was a significant place. And in the same way that, in
events unfolding in contemporary life, journalists go to ask for a statement from certain
significant individuals in the community, so in this context they were essentially going to the
significant individuals in the community—namely, the religious leaders—to see if they could shed
some light on what had happened to this man. Now, Peterson, who paraphrased the New Testament,
might be a little zealous when he paraphrases verse 13—“They brought to the Pharisees the
man who had been blind”—he paraphrases that, “[So] they marched the man to the Pharisees.”
Almost as if they took him by the ear and said, “Come on, you’re coming to the Pharisees.” You can
imagine the man saying, “Oh no, not the Pharisees! Please, not the Pharisees. I don’t want to go
to the Pharisees.” And that would have been with some justification, because what follows is not so
much a conversation as it is an interrogation—an interrogation which at the beginning has the
Pharisees, the religious leaders, very much in the driving seat, but by the time it reaches the end,
the man himself has turned the tables on them. Verse 26, they ask him again, “What did
he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” And the man said, “I told you
that already! Why do you keep asking me the same question? You didn’t
listen when I told you the first time. Why do you want to hear it again? Aha! You
want to become his disciples too, don’t you?” Oh, well, that infuriated them! No, they were
angry then. They insulted him. They threw him out. “Who is this upstart that can see?
Who does he think he is? Smarty-pants, going around the community, coming to us, the
religious leaders, we who know everything, and speaking as if there is something
he knows that we don’t know? We don’t usually like people
knowing things that we don’t know.” Now, in an attempt at clarity and simplicity, I’m
going to draw our thoughts around three words. Word one is formalism. Word two is fear. Number
three is faith. Formalism, fear, and faith. First, the formalism that is represented by
the attitude and the actions of the Pharisees to whom we’re introduced in verse 13. These
religious leaders were focused on the externals without any real regard to the inner significance
of the things that they paid lip service to. Jesus was on one occasion to refer to these
religious leaders as sepulchres: he said, “You’re white on the outside, but inside is dead
men’s bones.” A graphic picture. A reminder to us, incidentally, that Jesus was more than willing to
get down beside those whose lives were in disarray and who were aware of their predicament and who
sensed themselves in need of the salvation that he came to bring, but at the very same time, he
reserved his most stinging and scathing rebukes for religious orthodoxy that was only skin deep.
And you can see that the religious orthodoxy of these individuals was skin deep. Because
they brought the man to the Pharisees—the man who had been blind. And instead of these
individuals rejoicing in the man’s story—instead of them saying, “We’ve been hoping for a chance
to meet you! The word is out in the community that you could see, and we’re so glad that you’ve
chosen to come along and meet with us.” No, there is none of that at all. Instead, they react
in such a way as to challenge what he’s saying, looking for ways to discredit him and
at the same time to incriminate Jesus. Now, you say, “Is that not surprising? Does that
not represent some kind of callous heart on the part of these men? Surely, the normal milk of
human kindness would say that when somebody whose life has been marked by darkness is ushered into
light, irrespective of our particular focus and concerns about our own interests and so on, don’t
you think that we would find it in ourselves at least to say, ‘We rejoice with you that although
you have been blind from birth, and although we cannot understand what has happened, we share
the wonder of what has taken place’?” But not so. Now, their problem, John tells us—at least
on the surface—was the Sabbath. Verse 14: “Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and
opened the man’s eyes was [the] Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees … asked him how he had received his
sight.” It’s interesting that it’s a “therefore.” Why “therefore”? Why “so they asked him”? Well,
because they were the custodians of the Sabbath. They were the ones who knew what was to
happen on the Sabbath and what wasn’t to happen on the Sabbath, and they knew for sure
that there was no spitting on the Sabbath! You see, the Pharisees not only had
the bald statement of the law of God in the fourth commandment—that you shall not work —but they had decided that that needed a little
help. And so they had added to it a whole list of their own regulations. For example, if a man had a
runny nose, and he was downstairs in the kitchen, and he knew his handkerchief was up the stairs,
it was a violation of their perspective of the Sabbath to go upstairs and get the handkerchief,
let alone start rubbing his nose with it. It was not possible, from their perspective on
the Sabbath, for a man to cut his toenails. Nor, if he found that he had one of those strange
hairs that grows right out of the front of your eyebrows—if he happened to see that, as sometimes
happens, he was not allowed to reach for it and pluck it out until the day after the Sabbath. And
certainly there could be no spitting in the dust and stirring around and making up any kind of
paste, no matter what you’re trying to do with it. Now, Jesus had already run into this. Turn back
a few pages to chapter 5, and let me just show you that these folks had a fixation with this.
Chapter 5—you’ll need to read it for yourself as homework—is the story of another dramatic healing,
one of the signs. The man who has been at the pool of Bethesda, an invalid for thirty-eight years,
is healed by Jesus. And as a result of that, off he goes walking down the street. And who
do you think he runs into? Ha ha! Our friends! “The day”—verse 9—“on which this [miracle] took
place was a Sabbath, and so”— therefore—“the Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the
Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.’” You’d think at least they might have said, “Hey,
nice to see you walking! How’s it feeling after thirty-eight years lying there on a mat?” But
no. Because the fact that this man could walk, and what they were then to discover
concerning how he came to walk challenged their religious formalism,
challenged their religious externalism. And so, once again, they use the Sabbath as the
mechanism from distancing themselves from the impact that the transformation in this man’s
life may potentially make upon their own. Now, you say, “Well, isn’t this all so very
far away from us?” Well, no, actually not. This Sabbath question was enough for
them to be divided amongst themselves. Verse 16: “Some of the Pharisees said,
‘[He’s] not from God, for he does[n’t] keep the Sabbath.’” What they meant by that
was, “He doesn’t keep the Sabbath our way.” Of course Jesus kept the Sabbath! He kept
the law in its perfection. Jesus was sinless. In fact, Calvin suggests that Jesus
performed these miracles purposefully, deliberately on the Sabbath. I kinda like
that idea! So that it wasn’t like he said, “Now take up your mat and walk,” and he healed
the man, and somebody said, “Hey, Jesus, don’t you realize it’s the Sabbath?” He said,
“’Course I know it’s the Sabbath. Watch this!” And then he does it again: the man born
blind, they go, “Sabbath!” He says, “I know! Watch this!” And right on cue, they come.
Religious formalism cannot cope with transformed lives. Religious formalism can’t cope with
conversion. Religious formalism cannot face the fact of the dramatic impact that Jesus makes
when he takes a person and turns them upside down, which is actually to turn them the right way
up. Why? Because the religious formalist then recognizes that he or she is upside down and
therefore needs as much to be turned the right way up as this individual, and not wanting to face
the challenge of that, they hide behind the smoke screen of their ability to maintain all of the
externals in terms of their religious experience. There’s no indication on the part of these folks
that they examined the evidence, that they had any interest in the evidence at all. Their interest
was to deny the miracle and to discredit Jesus. Now, I’m sure that some of you can identify
very quickly with this. You became a Christian; you may have become a Christian just recently.
You came and acknowledged that you were blind and that you had things completely wrong, that
you were lost, and that Jesus came seeking to save the lost, and you asked Jesus to save you
and to be the shepherd of your soul. And what you’ve discovered now is that religious formalism
has no place for that kind of radical change. If you go to the religious formalist,
whether it is your pastor or your priest or your rabbi or your next-door neighbor, or
perhaps your mom and dad, or your brother, or whoever it might be, and tell them about this
amazing change, if they are religious formalists, they probably will not give you a wonderful
response. Oh, they may give you some kind of superficial, pacifying reaction, but they
will not enter into your joy. They can’t. Because, you see, religious formalists
do what these folks had done: while failing to keep the law of God, which
they know themselves incapable of keeping, they create a convenient smoke screen by
adding their own little rules and regulations, so that as long as they keep their lists of
what is acceptable, the fact that they are still confronted by the challenge of God’s law does not
really concern them. And there can be nothing more challenging, nothing more embarrassing to the
religious formalist than the presence of someone who comes and shares with them that they have
found Jesus to be their Savior, to be the one who has opened their eyes, to be the one who has
turned them from darkness into marvelous light. You see, if you look at the text, you see that
that’s exactly what happened to them. When they come a second time, in verse 24, and summon the
man, and they say, “Come on now, tell the truth. We know that Jesus is a sinner. This man’s
a sinner.” He says, “Well, I… I don’t have a comment on whether he’s a sinner or not. I don’t
know anything about that. But I do know this. One thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see.” And
they couldn’t cope with that. Very, very quickly, they began to insult him. “They hurled
insults at him”—verse 28—and eventually, in verse 34, “How dare you come and lecture
us!” they said. They just threw him out. See, what they were doing was they were
saying, “We have tradition and we have orthodoxy on our side.” Verse 28: “You are
this fellow’s disciple! We[’re the] disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but …
we don’t even know where [this chap] comes from.” Well, that wasn’t true, as I’ll show you from
7:27. But if you go back to chapter 5, I’ll show you that they condemn themselves right out of
their own mouths. John chapter 5, once again. The healing has taken place. The story of life through
Jesus unfolds. There are testimonies about Jesus. And they began to challenge this testimony. And
Jesus speaks to them, and he says, verse 39, “You diligently study the Scriptures because
you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about
me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” He said, “In one sense, you’re on the right
track. You believe that the Scriptures lead to eternal life.” In fact, the Pharisees used
to attach them to their wrists in little boxes. You may have seen some Orthodox Jewish people in
the Heights wearing the same thing—phylacteries, on their wrists, and also strapped
around their heads on their foreheads—as an expression of their devotion to the Scriptures, unashamed of what people may think in seeing
them walking around in such a strange garb, because of their commitment to the Scriptures. But Jesus says to them, “These are
the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” I
mean, if one might put it in terms of Parkside, what he’s saying is, you may have a big fat Bible,
and you may underline it in at least three colors. You may have symbols of diagrams, and triangles,
and circles, and all kinds of mechanisms whereby, when your Bible is around, you’re able
to show how much the Bible means to you. But that Bible may never have
brought you to faith in Jesus. You may still refuse to come to Jesus to
have life. It’s unlikely, but it is possible. So look what Jesus says. Verse 45: “Do[n’t]
think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses.” Ha! Moses?
What are they saying in chapter 9? “We are the disciples of Moses. We know that
God spoke to Moses.” Jesus said, “I already told you about Moses”: “If you believed Moses,
you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote,
how are you going to believe what I say?” He says, “You don’t believe the Bible. If
you believed the Bible, you would come to me. Oh, you talk about the Bible, and
you say the Bible is very important, and you strap parts of the Bible to yourself,
and you walk around and let everybody know…” You see, what these individuals
were saying was something like this: “Whoever does not bow to us…” This is really
what they’re doing in seeking to intimidate this young man, who knows, clearly, that
he was once blind, but now he can see. But they’re giving him a bad time. They’re
back at him again and again and again, seeking to intimidate him and rob him
of the reality of what he’s conveying. And what they’re saying is this: “Whoever does
not bow to us and our knowledge knows nothing. And whoever knows something we don’t know is a
fool. Whoever doesn’t bow to us and our knowledge doesn’t know what they’re talking about. And
whoever comes in here to tell us something that we don’t know, they’re foolish.”
That’s not only the approach of religious formalism. It is also the approach of agnosticism
and skepticism and intellectual elitism, isn’t it? Isn’t that what the young university student, what
the tenth-grader, is up against within the public square? If they would be bold enough, in a context
that is allowable and understandable, to say, “I once was blind, but now I see. I’ve
discovered that Jesus is the creator of the ends of the earth, and that he died upon the
cross, and that the death of Jesus is the pivotal event of human history, and that everything
needs to be understood in light of that.” “Ha! Oh, please. Sit down, would you? Unless
you bow to what we know, you know nothing. And if you think you know something that
we don’t know, you’re a fool. Sit down!” “Well, I believe that God created the heavens
and the earth out of nothing and out of chaos.” “Sit down, idiot! You exist as a result of time
plus matter plus chance. Bow to what we know.” See, religious formalism, when it is
challenged by the radical claims of Jesus, reacts in the same way.
“Well,” you say, “what about it?” Well, let me just say this to you. Some of you may
be here, and this actually describes you. You say, “Well, I hope not.” But let’s
just hold out the possibility, shall we? You may be here, and you actually are
a religious formalist. That’s been your whole background—forms and structures and the
doing of things. Do you have peace with God? Do you have the assurance of the forgiveness of
your sins? Do you rest in the reality of your hope that one day you will see Jesus and
be made like him? I wager that you don’t. You actually can’t. Because the religious
formalist is relying on their capacity to continue maintaining the externals
without the radical internal transformation which gives significance to the form
and structures of religious life. Indeed, these very forms and structures may prove
to be a barrier to you coming to faith in Jesus. Because if you have a little list of whatever
it is that makes you acceptable to God—and it’s easy for us to come up with this list: “Well,
I always go by the Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others as you would do to yourself.’ And that’s my
credo, and that’s my good.” Well, that’s fine. But what about your jealous heart? What about
your dirty mind? What about your dishonesty? How does this little Golden Rule deal
with these things? Of course, it doesn’t. You see, if religious formalism was
enough to get a man or a woman to heaven, then there would be no need for Jesus
to die upon the cross, would there? If doing it ourselves is sufficient, then
there would be no need for this amazing grace. Now, we’ve just got a moment to go to the
word fear. Don’t be afraid that we’re going to go much beyond our time. We’re not.
That’s not the fear that I’m referencing. The fear here is the fear that is found
in the reaction of the man’s parents. The Jews send for the parents. They “still
did[n’t] believe”—verse 18—“that he[’d] been blind and had received his sight until they sent for
the man’s parents.” After they sent for the man’s parents, there was nowhere for them to hide. And
they brought the parents there. It’d be a little intimidating for them, I think you would agree, if
somebody summoned you to the synagogue of the day, and there the elders sat in their robes
and in their finery, and you came along, Mr. and Mrs. Levi, or whoever you were,
and they said, “Thank you for coming out. We were hoping for a chance to talk with
you. We have three questions. Number one, the fellow over here, is he your son? Number
two, is he the one you say was born blind? And number three, how is it that he can now see?”
And the husband looks at the wife, the wife looks at the husband, and then the wife
responds—’cause she’s the braver of the two: “Well, we can answer one and two very easily.
He is our son, and yes, he was born blind. But when it comes to your third question, well, we
really don’t have a comment on that at all.” They’re reticent, they’re timid,
and they’re quick to pass the buck: “Why don’t you ask him? He’s a big
lad. He can speak for himself.” Well, clearly, they must have known something.
They knew that a person was involved; otherwise, they couldn’t have mentioned the person. Can it be that they were more concerned
for their reputation and for their status than they were thrilled and excited
that their son had received his sight? I mean, why are they not linking arms with
this boy and saying to these religious leaders, “This is the kind of thing we need in our church. I mean, we need some of this stuff, guys!
We’re listening to your sermons, and frankly, they’re like dust in your mouth. And now comes the
Galilean prophet, his sermons are understandable, and look what’s happening to people’s lives!
Yes, we know Jesus is the key to this. Our boy’s here, and we’re here, and what do you
have to say for yourselves?” But they don’t: “Why don’t you just ask him? He’s there.
He can speak for himself. He’s a big lad.” Now, admittedly, the prospect of being removed
from the synagogue, which is the explanation in verse 22—the reason the “parents said this because
they were afraid of the Jews,” because “the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that
Jesus was the [Messiah] would be put out of the synagogue”—we’re not going to make little of that.
There’s some significance in it, isn’t there? The embarrassment that would be attached to that kind
of removal. But if they had truly understood what had happened, if they had truly come to understand
who this Jesus was, then they would have taken their stand with their boy. But as it was, they
didn’t take their stand with the boy, because they couldn’t take their stand with the boy, presumably
because they had not come to trust in Jesus. So the Pharisees are distanced from this great
good news by their formalism, and the parents are distanced from this great good news by their fear.
Now, lest this sounds so far away from us, let me finish by contemporizing the story for
us. ’Cause this is not an uncommon story. In thirty-four years of pastoral ministry,
I’ve seen this happen again and again. A young man goes off to university. He leaves
his local community. He’s well known. He’s been well known in his school, perhaps for his athletic
prowess, and also for his ability on the debating team. In the debating team, he has chosen very
strongly to adopt certain positions which were clearly opposed to Christ and to Christianity.
At one point he had professed himself to be an atheist, but then he discovered that that would
demand knowing everything in the universe and knowing that there was no God there, so he backed
off that to just being a straightforward agnostic. He’d gone away to university convinced of
these things, and everyone anticipated that he would eventually come back reinforced by
all the information that he was to derive from his university education.
And yet, here he comes, and he’s back. And there’s something up
with him. He’s done a 180 in his views. And when asked, he actually uses this terminology.
He says, “You know, my sight has been restored. Yes, that was what I said in leaving, but
this is what I’m saying in returning.” For a summer job, he works as a
caddy at the local country club. And because the rounds of golf take such an
interminably long time at this particular country club, he uses the opportunity on every
occasion to put in a little word to these golfers about the straight and narrow, about telling the
truth, about life in the rough—and about Jesus. A couple of the guys are annoyed. Oh, they wouldn’t mind if he had become some kind
of religious formalist, or if he’d embraced some form of Buddhism, or if he sat down every fourth
hole to contemplate his naval just for a moment or two. After all, we can cope with all that kind
of thing. But this stuff he keeps mentioning about Jesus is frankly annoying. It’s infuriating.
And since a couple of them are the business associates of his dad, they can’t wait to get
to the father to find out, “Is this your boy? Is this the one who went away as an agnostic,
who despised Christianity and Jesus? And what’s he on about now?”
Well, you may be here, and that’s exactly your story—with little variations. One day your son or your daughter came into your
home and said, “I’ve discovered that Jesus is my Savior and my friend,” and you said, “You don’t
need that kind of nonsense. We brought you up in the way that you needed to be brought up. We
gave you every kind of opportunity for religion.” And you did. And it was good. And it was helpful. And it actually was a foundation that led the
youngster to the point where they said, “Doing all this stuff isn’t giving me forgiveness, isn’t
giving me peace, isn’t giving me hope.” And then they discovered that it wasn’t in the doing of the
stuff, but it was in what had been done by Jesus that there was faith and there was grace and
there was forgiveness and there was freedom. And the parents now have the same decision to make
as the religious formalists: “If we acknowledge that what has happened to Junior is true, then
that means it needs to happen to us as well. And that may be too high a hill to climb.” So I say to you, do not allow formalism
to keep you from Jesus, and do not allow fear of your peer group to keep you from Jesus.
See, the fear of going back to the country club and the friends saying, “What happened
to your boy?” and for you to have to say, “The same thing that’s happened to me.”
“What! You’re in it as well?” “Yes.”
“How did that happen? What did you do?” “Nothing.”
“Well, somebody had to do something.” “Somebody did do something. Sit
down, I’ll tell you what he did.” That’s the story. Get out
there and tell your friends! Get out there and turn Cleveland upside
down with this fantastic good news. Come on! Father, thank you for the Bible. Thank you that we can all go home now and
check and see if this stuff is in the Bible. And the bits that are made up or elaborated,
or are untrue, or are just off whack, we can immediately get rid of. But we cannot
sidestep the insistent demands of your Word. Save us from and out of our formalism.
Lift us, we pray, out of our fearfulness. And open our eyes, so that we might rejoice in the life that is really life.
We commend each other to your care and keeping, asking you to watch over and between us, to bless
us in the hours of this day and as we gather, many of us, this evening around your table
to look away from ourselves and what we do, to Jesus and what he has done, as our
only confidence and our only hope. And may the grace and the mercy and the
peace of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain
with each one, now and forevermore. Amen. This message was brought to you from Truth For
Life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with Alistair
Begg visit us online at truthforlife.org
