The Power Of Christ And Change

So we have a multifaceted task in front of us. How many of you know what my job is?! What is my job?

It's to faithfully preach the Word of God. What is your job? To pray and to listen intently.

You actually have more work to do than I do. You know, it's like, I preach, you pray, you listen, you ask the Holy Spirit to help you apply the Word of God to your life.

Let me explain something, that the faithful preaching of the Word of God is part of God's plan for the well-being of His people.

And the faithful preaching of the Word of God should bring about progressive sanctification in the life of believers.

Isn't that right? 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18 says this, We beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are what? Are being changed.

And so, let's get this clear. You should be different today than you were a year ago if you're a believer. And hopefully, by the work of the Word and the Spirit of God, you should be different later today than you were this morning.

Now, don't you wish that the evidence was more profound and externally evident than it is? It's a little more... How many of you have looked at yourself in the mirror and said, So? What's going on?

You know? Besides the fact that I have more gray hair and less of it, you know, it's like... But, the Word of God brings change in the life of the believer. Isn't that right? That being said, turn in your Bibles this morning to John chapter 9.

And allow me to read. And by the way, I do also want to say thank you to Pastor Saul for preaching in my absence last week.

We had a wonderful week of vacation. Enjoyed it. And then, when I got back in the office, was able to read his notes and be blessed by it.

John chapter 9, verse 7. And he said to him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent.

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

Some said, It is he. Others said, No. But he is like him. He kept saying, I am the man. I mean, can you imagine that, having to argue with people about who you really are?

I'm the guy. I'm him. I'm it. I like the drama in Scripture. You know, it's kind of, I am the man. So they said to him, How were your eyes opened?

He answered, The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, Go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and received my sight. And they said to him, Where is he?

He said, I do not know. Let's pray. Our Father God, for us prayer is not something that is just a mere schedule event, but really is an unrelenting expression of our confidence in you.

And in the blessing we have when we come with humility and dependence and confess our inability and call upon you to do a great thing in lifting up the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we ask at the outset that the thing that might be clear is our Savior and His gracious work in the lives of people who have been broken and ruined by the fall.

And also in the lives of those who have been redeemed for the glory and testimony of Christ. We ask this because of Jesus. Amen.

I want you to think with me about this passage. It's actually a fairly extended one. It carries all the way through chapter 9. And as you have heard me, and I know Pastor Saul say, the characteristic of John is different than the other three Gospels in that there's very little actual history or narrative.

There are not that many stories. There are only seven miracles that are described. And the thing that holds the book of John together is the one singular focus John has of making it clear to the listener that Jesus is the Christ so that you might believe.

And in believing you might have everlasting life. And so when we pick up John chapter 9, we know ahead of time that John chapter 9 is going to be drilling down on that one point.

Who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? And as we look at this passage, we are going to see without question that Jesus is one who was and is supremely able to heal the needs of individuals, in this case a blind man.

It's interesting to find that the man after his healing really didn't know exactly who Jesus was yet. And so we find a very interesting little picture here that while the glory of Christ is a thing that stands out and is clear as an overarching picture of this text, we also find that this very unassuming, unnamed man has significance in the story.

And I want you to understand that you who are here this morning, in particular, who know the Lord Jesus Christ, have a very similar role to play.

And I've got to tell you that getting your head around that role and understanding it is supremely important. So probably to help focus that a little bit, it's a practical question I suppose you should ask yourself.

So why do I exist and why do I draw breath? Why are you not here, but why are you here? What really does your life amount to?

And so understanding the question is pretty important at this juncture in looking at the passage. You could put it another way. You could say this, do you exist for yourself or do you exist for Him?

I want you to pencil that down so it's stuck in your minds. Do you exist for yourself or do you exist for Him? I've got to tell you, that is fundamental to every one of our lives.

And I want you to listen and look at me just for a minute. You can figure out whether or not you are living for yourself or you're living for Him.

How can you tell that? Well, for one, all you have to do is listen to your own conversations. If you're the center of the story or if you're whining about yourself, how many of you understand what I mean by whining?

Have you ever been around people that whine a lot about how bad things are? Do you know who they're whining for? Hello? They're not whining about people suffering in Africa.

They're talking about what? I'm suffering. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, you know. Are you here for yourself or are you here for Him? And it's a fair question to ask at the very beginning.

And as we're looking at this passage this morning, I want you to fix in your mind that this blind man is an illustration of an individual who understood eventually, and the text makes it very clear, that his life and his existence was all about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Look at verse 3. John chapter 9, verse 3. The last part, it says, that the works of God might be displayed in him. Why do I draw breath?

So that the works of God might be displayed in me. And so John 9, as we look at this passage of Scripture, we're going to kind of get into the text and understand that this man was used by God to emphasize and amplify the person and the work of Christ.

And at the center of the thread of this story is this unrelenting focus on the Lord Jesus Christ as the key and most important person in the text.

So let me come back again and have this fixed in your mind. Do you live for yourself or do you live for Christ? Do you live for self or do you live for Christ?

When it's all over, when it's finished, when you are in the last three days of your life, will you want to be able to say to those who are gathered around your bedside, hey, I got to tell you, I live my life and my favorite memories in these last moments are my fishing experiences.

I did that last week. Or my golf experience. I would never say that. But you know what I mean? It's like, what are you going to talk about? Is it going to be the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ or is it going to be any other thing?

And as we think about this man who was born blind, I want you to understand that while he takes up the predominant portion of the text in chapter 9, the focus really is on the Lord Jesus Christ.

So let's look at this passage as it plays out for us, beginning there in verse 13. And mark what it says there. They brought him to the Pharisees. They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been born blind.

You see, after the healing, we find that Jesus actually had slipped away. He hadn't stayed around to have everybody kind of give him high fives and congratulations.

And he was not all about kind of, hey, listen, if you want to buy one of my CDs, there's a table over there. And, you know, $14.99, I could also do a little healing for you if you'd put something in the offering plate for me.

You know, that kind of thing. Jesus kind of fades out of the scene, and the man becomes the focal point of tension. And people are asking him, so what happened? Are you the guy? Yeah, I am. I really, I was born blind.

Now, the healing was spectacular in and of itself. Born blind, healed. But the thing that actually made this a little more dramatic was, guess what day Jesus chose to heal on?

I've kind of chuckled to myself on more than one occasion as I've been reading through the Gospels to recognize that Jesus over and over again kept on doing dramatic miracles on the least appropriate day in the week.

I mean, the Pharisees, they were really irritated that Jesus healed at all. They wished that everyone that Jesus ever healed had immediately fallen back into some kind of cataclysmic disease.

But, no, He healed them, and they were really healed. But to top it all off, He kept on healing on their favorite day, Sabbath. And so here was this kind of conflict, the undeniable fact that Jesus had healed, that couldn't be refuted, and the undeniable fact that He had healed on the Sabbath.

You get it? It's like, uh. And so, it's fair to imagine that this reality was confusing to the people.

They had heard that the Sabbath was something that was to be venerated and revered, and you were to do no work, and in order to help the average generic lowlife who really didn't get the Pharisaical attitude about how to keep the Sabbath, the Pharisees had put together an absolutely extensive list of rules about how to keep the Sabbath.

You remember, if you read in Luke, that after Jesus had died and rose again, and the disciples didn't know it, they were taking a Sabbath day's journey.

You were allowed to go so many steps, and after that, it's like, that's it. One of the other little rules in relationship to the Sabbath was that you could walk around within the confines of your home.

And so, one of the things that creative Jews did was they built homes that had walls that kind of were, I mean, they encompassed more than the normal, you know what I mean?

And the reason is, is that you were free within your home. How many of you know that we can be inventive with rules to make them work for us, right? I mean, we all know that the speed limit really has a, well, 15 or 20 mile, it depends on where you are, right?

Sorry, John. Yeah. Particularly with Beth sitting right by you, right? Okay, stop while you're ahead.

See, the Pharisees had it all figured out. Set of rules. And in their economy of making it just all right and doing things just the way to kind of earn your own way into heaven, here was Jesus who just right up stuck his finger in their eye and healed on the Sabbath.

And they had to drag the poor healed guy into the presence of the Pharisees to say, Okay, help us here. Real healing and really on the Sabbath.

The fact of the matter is, is that by healing on the Sabbath, D.A. Carson comments on the fact that Jesus broke four Sabbath rules. Now, are these rules in the Bible?

No, but they are rules in the Targums. And that's just kind of the, well, how should we take the Bible? Well, he had plowed. Don't ask me how that's the case, but D.A. Carson says that he had plowed.

He had spit, made the dust, and, you know, kind of, you know, circled the dust together. And I actually was debating spitting on the ground and trying to make a little pile of mud, and I decided I didn't need to know that.

But then he had kneaded. Got that mud in his hand and kind of kneaded it around. And that was rule number two that he had broken. And, you know, number three, he had anointed.

And, you know, stuck it on his eye. And number four, this is a really biggie. He had performed a non-life-sustaining miracle on a day that was prohibited.

You could do CPR on Saturday. But you couldn't go to the doctor. I'm sorry, Mattia, there was no Saturday visits to urgent care.

You're suffering? Tough it out. Wait till Sunday. And so Jesus had broken four of the rules. I mean, he was deep into the problem of messing with the Sabbath.

And so they brought this man, and the underlying question was this. Had Jesus done this miracle, and was he doing it through God's power?

That was the question that was really at this verse 13. They dragged this guy up to the Pharisees, and they want to figure out the deal. Okay? So I kind of like the logical way this hearing plays out.

You can kind of get the court scene. How many of you have ever been in a court? Don't tell me they're out of necessity, but you've observed it, right? And so here is the court scene, and you have the Pharisees kind of sitting there real serious, being the observers.

And here's this poor guy, and they brought him to the Pharisees on the Sabbath day. And the Pharisees again, verse 15, asked him how he had received his sight.

And he said to them, He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see. This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.

And the conversation goes back and forth, and you can kind of hear this a little bit. There's the fact of, well, you've got to keep the Sabbath holy and don't do any kind of work on that day.

And that issue of keeping the Sabbath holy is a matter of having a regard and respect for the person of God and the law of God. And yet, here was a guy who'd been healed.

And the healing was undeniable. And so the struggle that was going on is that the Pharisees and those who were kind of thinking along those lines were inclined to believe that he had not been healed by God.

Now, what's the problem with coming to the conclusion that he had not been healed by God? What's the problem with that? Who else heals besides God? Anybody know? Are there any other options besides God?

And the answer is, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. Now, remember the guy who was let down through the roof? And that also really irritated the Pharisees.

And instead of doing the healing first, what did Jesus do for that guy? He said, hey, Bubba, I'm going to forgive your sins. And there are the Pharisees, when Jesus forgave that poor, you know, lame guy of his sins, what did they think?

Do you remember? Remember? Who can forgive sins? Only God. Good answer. And Jesus said, well, hey, just to show you who I am, why don't you get up and walk out of here?

And Jesus demonstrated his divine power not only to forgive sins but also to heal. And so here's the problem we find in this text. The man born blind had been healed and without question, everybody in that context.

And we would also believe that sinners don't do healing events. I do want you to remember that as this thing plays out, this man became the principal witness to this event and the question.

And we kind of follow along. And eventually in verse 17, it says, okay, they come back to the blind man. They heard this business going back and forth, arguing among themselves, etc. And so they decide they're going to ask him a question again.

Verse 16, they say, how can a man who is a sinner do such sign? They don't have it figured out. In verse 17, so they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him since he has opened your eyes?

It's a fact. We get it. He did do this. But tell me what you think about him. For us, the word prophet in our contemporary culture does not tend to carry the weight that it did in the Old Testament time and in the New Testament time.

And one of the reasons for that is that all you have to do is turn on the TV and listen to one guy after another tell you that they're prophets. I mean, everybody's out there prophesying.

And all kinds of harebrained ideas get floated out there on TV about, well, I'm a prophet and I'm going to tell you this and I'm going to tell you that. And there's a lot of prophecy going on. But in that day, when you said you were a prophet and you stepped out on a limb and said, here's what God is going to do, how many of you know what the Old Testament said should happen to a prophet who made a prophecy and it didn't come true?

You picked up big stones and you killed him. That had a tendency to kind of tamp down false prophecy, right?

And so here they asked this guy, okay, okay, we hear what happened, but tell us what you think about that guy. And look at verse 17. He is a prophet.

The man landed squarely on the side of calling Jesus a prophet. And I want you to understand that a prophet in that setting and understanding was someone who should be listened to because he was a messenger of the Lord of hosts and what he had to say was significant.

And so here was the man who was born blind saying, Jesus is someone you ought to be listening to. I want you to understand something else. Over and over again, as we work our way through the Gospels and we see the miracles that Jesus did, we understand that the miracles were undeniable proof of the deity and mission of Christ.

When you see the miracles, you understand these are things that validate or authenticate, make it clear that Jesus was the Christ. And a miracle was the proof that Jesus was from God.

Now, I want you to mark then in the verses 18 through 23 what plays out here is an ongoing effort of the Pharisees of trying to discredit the testimony of the man who once had been blind.

There in verse 18, the Jews did not believe that he'd been born blind and had received a sight until they called the parents of the man who'd received a sight. And you get the picture here? Okay, okay.

By the way, if you don't like the evidence, what do you do? Hello? You go try to find some others that discredit that. And that's what they did. Okay, this guy says he was blind, but let's hear it from mom and dad.

They bring mom and dad in and it doesn't go well. How many of you have thought you've had the solution to a problem and then wish you hadn't gone the path you did? I can see that playing out in the Pharisees' minds.

They call the parents in and they hope this thing's going to kind of all fall apart. And instead of having it fall apart, it just falls right back on them. The parents, yes, he's our son.

And I like that reading, didn't you, this morning? The way I pressed that passage together and you could see it pretty clearly. Yes, he's our son. He was born blind. Now they did that artful dodge.

Why don't you talk to him? He's 40 years old. He's an adult. He can speak for himself. And it's interesting. They understood the attitude of the Pharisees towards Jesus and they knew that at the heart of why they had been called was to discredit Christ and they didn't want to get into that.

And so what we come now, playing on from verse 24, is a summary judgment. Now, just to start with, how many of you know what a summary judgment is?

Wave at me if you know what a summary judgment is. Wave at me. Carol, thank you for helping me. Does anybody else here know what a summary judgment is? In simple terms, and Carol, you can amend this, a summary judgment is when the evidence is so convincing that it really needs to be no argument.

You got that? Ugh, gravity's here. Summary judgment. You got it? It's so clear you can't undo the logic.

Right? Got to walk up. It's one of the problems with jumping down. You have to get back up. So, you have this play out in verse 24.

For the second time, they called the man who had been born blind and they said to him, now this is subtle. Give glory to God.

How many of you wouldn't do that? Give glory to God. I'm with that one. I can do that. And then, immediately after the point A, they tag what?

Point B. And what is point B? Look at it carefully. We know that this man is a sinner. Years ago, I sold books for a summer.

And I was trained to be a salesman. And one of the things I know about being a salesman is that in order to bring people to the point of saying yes to your sale, it helps them, first of all, to think you're a nice guy.

But secondly, it helps to lead them in a path of saying yes to a lot of other things. Isn't this a wonderful day? Yes. Aren't you glad that we have the time to sit down?

You ask a series of questions to which the answer is intuitively obvious, and you kind of lay the groundwork. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Would you sign here? Yes. That's the logic that the Pharisees had going.

Do you understand that? I want you to see that. Give glory to God. Oh, yeah. I'll undo that. And this guy's a sinner. Now, this guy was sharp.

We don't have his name. And I'm not even sure when we get to heaven, there'll all be a bunch of us scampering around wanting to find where the blind man was to, you know, what it was like. You know, we're going to be so overwhelmed with the presence of Christ that we're going to be satisfied with that.

But here we have the story. The guy is on the spot. Yeah, sure, I can give glory to God. But now you're asking me to call him a sinner. I like what follows.

He answered, whether he's a sinner, I do not know. I do not know. But one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.

I want you to stop and think with me just for a moment about how powerful that is as an illustration of what our lives as believers are to be like.

Let me go back, because I want this to be hammered home. At the very beginning of chapter 9, we have this little discourse.

So, why was this man born blind? What's the answer? At the end of the story, the real issue is this. This man was to be a display of the glory and power of God.

Amen? My life, your life, is to be for the glory of God.

People looking at me, looking at you, should see something that is profoundly different and cannot be attributed to a better education or a better background or better upbringing.

You know what I'm saying? How did you end up like you are? Well, there was a man who came by, and he touched my heart, and I'm not the same.

I am bothered by how much unchristian behavior flies across the screen today that at every point diminishes the supremacy and significance of Christ.

professing believers who act just like absolute jerks, and then think they can stand up and whip a gospel verse on top of that and kind of remedy the mess they've made.

Listen, guys. You exist for the glory of Christ, and the one who should get credit and people should be curious about is who has done what's happened in your life.

I want you to think about that. So we look here at this summary judgment. Remember the gravity issue? And here's the guy who says, Hey, I don't know all the fancy issues here, but I was blind, and now I see.

Now, in verse 31 through 33, we find the argument really come to a head. Remember, they ask him again, and this blind guy, ex-blind guy, really has a little bit of edge with the Pharisees.

I kind of get the idea that he really didn't like them because, you know, they come back, and they want to give him another opportunity to recant. Okay, we're going to ask you one more time. You know what the right answer is, don't you?

We're going to ask you one more time. Go ahead and say the right things. Hey, do you guys want to be his disciple? Is that why you want me to tell you the story again? Got him. So anyway, let's look at verse 31.

Now, here's the guy. This is a poor lowlife who doesn't have an advanced degree in Old Testament theology. Verse 30, This is an amazing thing.

You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know, everybody here agrees, he was saying, God does not listen to sinners.

But if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. That was universally agreed in the presence of all those who were listening that morning, afternoon, whenever it was.

The Pharisees, all the Jews would have said, yes, yes, that's true. We agree 100% with that. Then look at the next part of his argument. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind.

There wasn't anybody in the crowd who said, hold it, I know of a guy over in Sychar that, yeah, he had his eyes open. You remember that guy? No. And there was a guy, no, nobody knew of anybody, and they're all sitting there.

That's true, that's true. Now, here we get the singer. If this man were not from God, what, what? He could do nothing.

How many of you know that sometimes you win arguments by the questions you ask, not by just louder voice?

That's what happens here. This guy is arguing with the Pharisees. I mean, this is the cream of the intellectual crop. These were the spiritual giants of Israel. And he kind of relies on this gentle argument.

He says, hey, you know what? God doesn't listen to sinners. Remember they said, this man's a sinner, right? Hmm. My eyes, I can see. God doesn't listen to a sinner.

Do you know anybody else that's had their eyes open? No. And then verse 33, if this man were not from God, he could do, boom, nothing.

Nothing. I want you to apply this in practical terms to your own life. Why is the account here?

I appreciate the statement that the preaching of the Word of God is designed to put us on the spot of saying yes or no to God. And there should be some application.

When you walk away from listening to the teaching of the Word of God, there should be a part of it that sticks in your mind. And you say, that's what God wants me to do, right? And so, for one thing, as you look at this passage, this text shows us that Jesus is God's Son.

And He came here to heal us and to save us and deliver us from the curse of sin. And if you are here this morning as a person who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ, I want to tell you without question, without hesitation, that there is no remedy for your present condition and for your eternal destiny apart from faith in the Lord Jesus.

You cannot save yourself. Only Jesus can save you. That's one of the reasons I love talking about Jesus. I'm not the hero in my story. Messy, ugly, unhappy life.

And the Lord Jesus Christ got a hold of me and did something for me that I could never do for myself. And I will spend the remainder of my life until I stop drawing breath saying, that's the one.

I want you to understand also that as you look at this passage, there is an application to us who were blind at one time.

You know, when you tell your story, it's appropriate to say, I was blind and now I see. Isn't that right? By the way, that is a characteristic of a personal testimony.

I'm teaching a new members class and I do that on a regular basis. And one of the things that goes with being a member here in Maranatha is that a person has to come down front here and say, I want to be a member.

And then later, all of us get to hear their testimony. And people say, what should my testimony be like? Don't make it complex. Keep it real simple. I was blind.

Now I see. There was a day in my life where I was absolutely buried in the hopelessness of my sin and I had no opportunity. Nothing could change me.

And yet Christ came into my life and saved me, took away my sins and given me new life. I like the passage in 2 Corinthians where it says, if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is what? Say it with me again.

A new creation. Look at me. If you're saved, you better be different than you were. Now, I wish I were more different than I am.

But I am thankful that he is at work and I can look in the rearview mirror and say, I'm not who I used to be and I'm not who I will be. I am who I am by the grace of God. And so hammer this in your life.

Genuine salvation means significant change. Genuine salvation means significant change. I've got to tell you, I think in the next 20 years there is going to be a significant winnowing of professing believers in America.

I don't mean that like a Gene Dixon type of prophet. I'm just telling you, I think our culture is headed for a spiritual meltdown.

Now, news to you. Listen to me. When the lights get turned off, real candles shine pretty bright. How many of you understand that? And let me tell you something.

The only one who really counts in that darkness is Jesus. Washington is never going to save our country.

It's the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ who gets a hold of broken, blind, dead fools and redeems them for the glory of Christ and then goes about the business of making them different than they used to be.

And it's a fair thing to say. Genuine salvation means significant change. So a sidebar is this. If you're sitting there and saying, well, yes, I'm saved, but you can't see any evidence of the transforming power of the gospel, let me appeal to you.

You go back and check your birth certificate. Finally, I look at this passage and I'm reminded that every believer has the same mission and call as the man born blind.

Do you understand that? Every believer has the same mission and call as the man born blind. I love that verse 3.

In fact, just think with me back to that passage. Here's what it says. That man was, as the story plays out, it says this, that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Why are you living? Why are you working where you are? Why are you retired? Oh, well, I can sit back and spend the remainder of my life drifting around the country in my RV and not paying any attention to anybody else, just me.

This sidebar, just give me a second. It just irritates me when I see bumper stickers saying, I'm spending my children's inheritance. Do you follow that? There's a Bible passage in the book of Proverbs that says, A righteous man lays up an inheritance for his children.

Do you understand that point? That Bible verse doesn't fit on that bumper sticker. But why are you who you are? For the same reason the man was born blind, so that the works of God can be displayed.

You ought to walk out of here this morning saying this, Man, that's why I'm who I am. That's what this is all about.

I live and draw my breath for one reason, that the works of God can be displayed in me. Now, don't be patting yourself on the back and thinking, Yeah, I'm up to that.

What it ought to do is you're just overwhelmed and say, I can't do that. No, you can't. No, you can't. But when we, in humility, call out and say, God, I know what you put me here for, and I know I'm not up to it, we may rely upon the power of the Spirit of God and the work of the Word of God and the family of God to help us be more than we would by nature.

I love telling people, I do, that I know the one person who can change their life. It's Jesus.

I love telling believers who are caught, and believers do get caught. I love telling believers who are caught in self-focus that they don't have to stay where they are.

I love telling them that the only person who can make any difference in their life is the Lord Jesus Christ. So, the purpose of preaching is to put you on the spot of saying yes or no to God.

let's pray. Father God, this morning, we stand in awe and humility as we recognize that you who are the Lord and creator of all life have given to us a noble and a holy purpose that is far surpassing.

You have called us to be your witnesses, to be your living examples of your glory and your power. And Father, we ask that your Spirit would give to us a heart and an ambition that desires nothing more than your glory.

I pray, Father, this morning for those who are here that do not know Christ that the preaching of the Word of God coupled with the ministry of the Spirit of God would bring them to the cross into recognizing that the sin and bondage of their life has no remedy but Jesus, repentance and brokenness.

I pray for those who are here today that are believers whose lives are marked by great struggle with unconfessed sin and issues that still have them enslaved to a point that this morning they would come to you in humility and say, I desperately need your help that we would get it and that we're like the blind man with one purpose and that is your glory.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.