Life of Christ 104
We find ourselves today
sometime in October or November of the last year of Jesus' life. He will die
the following April. He is still at Jerusalem, having remained for some time
after His recent dustups with the Pharisees during and immediately after the
Feast of Tabernacles.
Today is the Sabbath,
and as Jesus and His Apostles are walking through Jerusalem they see a blind
man, begging. It wasn't permissible to give to a beggar on the Sabbath, but if
this story (John 9.1-41) took place in the vicinity of the Temple people would
likely remember his presence on the Sabbath, and be more inclined to give to
him on another day.
One of the Apostles,
seeing the blind man, is driven to ask a question he had always wondered about:
'Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?' (John
9.2). In so speaking, he reveals himself to be a partaker of the common
superstition that such terrible handicaps were the direct result of sin. This,
of course, enables the onlooker to feel superior, for he himself was not
handicapped.
Certainly the Old
Testament taught that God punished sin, but nowhere does it even hint that
physical handicaps are the direct result of personal or parental sin. In fact,
the Old Testament specifically says that God will not punish a child for a
parent's sins (Jeremiah 31.29-30). Since this blind man was born that way, he
obviously had not committed some grievous sin while still in the womb which
would cause God to punish him with blindness. Ergo, the answer to the apostles'
question was rightly neither.
Jesus, though, as He
often did, uses the opportunity presented to Him as a springboard for some
larger lesson. He informs the Apostles that this blind man has lived in this
condition all of his life so that he could glorify God (John 9.3). He then
proceeds to heal him in an exceedingly unusual way. He spits on the ground and
forms mud or clay, and then plasters that into the blind man's eyes. He then
sends him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam, and in this way brings the blind
man sight.
I must confess, as a bit
of germaphobe, that I find this scene fairly grotesque, but Jesus had specific
reasons for doing the healing this way instead of the 'normal' way. 'As long as
I am in the world, I am the light of the world' (John 9.5). Jesus had just
recently stood in the light of the 75 foot high menorah in the Court of the
Women in the Temple, and proclaimed Himself to be the light of the world. The
Pharisees, of course, completely disagreed. Jesus, knowing that word of the
blind man's healing would spread, was using this miracle to send a message to
Israel's religious leadership about Himself.
The blind man washed in
the Pool of Siloam, which literally means 'sent'. The One sent from Heaven,
Whom the Jews refused to recognize, is the One Who told him to do so. The blind
man's sight was restored by mud, made from dirt and the saliva of Him who had
first breathed life into dirt when forming Adam. The mud was then washed off in
the Pool of Siloam from which the water had been drawn for the closing ceremony
of the recent Feast of Tabernacles. This water symbolized the Holy Spirit, Who,
rather than the devil, empowered Jesus with the ability to do miracles, and
Whom Jesus would freely give to whomever believed on Him. Not only this, but
the blind man, who previously walked in a darkness deemed by all to come from
sin, now walked freely in the light of Earth's sun because he had met the Light
of the World. Truly, this man's life of blindness followed by a sudden healing
on the Sabbath manifested God, revealing Jesus to be Who He said He was, and
thus brought God great glory.
As the story progresses
through John 9 we find that the Pharisees struggle greatly with how to deal
with it. Their first attempt is to insist that the blind man was never really
blind at all so no genuine miracle was done. This is quickly put to rest by the
testimony of many witnesses who have known the blind man for years. Their next
attempt is to assert that the miracle worker, whom all but the blind man knew
to be Jesus, was not of God since He did such a work on the Sabbath. But this
old saw has been so thoroughly discredited so often it doesn't hold an ounce of
water.
Later in the day, Jesus
makes it a point to find him, and to explain to the formerly blind man that it
was He Himself who had healed him. The formerly blind man immediately places
his faith in the claims of Jesus Christ.
With this by way of
explanation let me give you two lessons I draw from this story. First,
sometimes you must live a long time with an awful circumstance in order to
greatly glorify God. 'Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his
parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him' (John 9.3).
I can only imagine the
physical cost of being blind all your life. It is certainly dangerous, since
you cannot see an approaching threat, and even common, ordinary tasks such as
crossing the street become a risk to your life. Just the everyday job of living
would be incredibly complicated and time consuming. Not only that, but blind
people aren't known for their great wealth. Almost all of them live in poverty.
Not only are there
physical costs to blindness there are also emotional costs. This man had not
once, in his entire life, been able to see the face of his loved ones. He
hadn't been able to work, and without work there is no sense of purpose and
fulfillment in your life. As a child he would have missed much of the fun of
playing with other children. And we could go on and on and on enumerating the
costs of being a blind man in that day.
God purposely put this
man through decades of difficulty in order to give Jesus the opportunity on
that Sabbath day to display just exactly Who He really was to His rebellious
people. Our life is His to spend how He will, for His own purposes. I'm a Baptist
but I agree with the Presbyterians that the chief end of man is to glorify God
and enjoy Him forever. George Mueller said once, 'My life is a platform on
which I want God to display Himself', and if God chooses to do that via my
suffering then that is His business.
I sometimes joke with my
people and say that discouragement is one of my spiritual gifts. I seem to have
an uncanny ability to notice all the things that are going or have gone or
might go wrong in my life. But when I stack up all of those things against the
life of a man who spent the entirety of his days blind just so that Jesus could
heal him on that Sabbath day I suddenly discover I have nothing to complain
about.
I know so many good
people who are enduring awful circumstances, not as a consequence or a
punishment, but simply because God has brought it to them at this stage of
their life. Sometimes they ask me, 'But when will God fix this? I've been
asking Him to for years!' Maybe, just maybe, He gets greater glory by leaving
it the way it is. Beloved, we must never forget that the Christian life is
lived how it is birthed – in faith.
Secondly, sometimes you
have to be willing to no longer be accepted in order to follow Him. 'These
words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed
already, that if any man did confess that he was the Christ, he should be put
out of the synagogue' (John 9.22). The blind man's parents were not willing to
undergo this, but the blind man was, and did.
To put that into
perspective, we must understand that, to the Jew of Jesus' day, the synagogue
was everything. It was the center of their educational, social, cultural, and
religious life. Excommunication, while rare, and exercised for different
lengths for different crimes, was always harsh. Edersheim reveals it this way:
"It seems to me that thy companions are separating themselves from
thee." He who was so, or similarly addressed, would only too well
understand its meaning. Henceforth he would sit on the ground. He would allow his
beard and hair to grow wild and shaggy; he would not bathe, nor anoint himself;
he would not be admitted to any assembly of ten men, neither to public prayer,
nor to the Academy; though he might either teach, or be taught by, single
individuals. Nay, as if he were a leper, people would keep at a distance of
four cubits from him. If he died, stones were cast on his coffin, nor was he
allowed the honour of the ordinary funeral, nor were they to mourn for him.
Still more terrible was the final excommunication, or Cherem, when a ban of
indefinite duration was laid on a man. Henceforth he was like one dead. He was
not allowed to study with others, no intercourse was to be held with him, he
was not even to be shown the road. He might, indeed, buy the necessaries of
life, but it was forbidden to eat or drink with such an one.
In our day, we don't
face excommunication for following Christ, at least not in America. Some of our
Christian brethren in Muslim countries do, but we don't. We do, however, face
the fact that the crowd that we used to run with, or that we often want to run
with, the 'in' crowd, will no longer accept us if we choose to follow Him. Such
peer pressure often traps the spiritually immature young person, lancing their
passion to follow Christ, and draining the spiritual strength right out of
them. This blind man is a wonderful example of someone who stood up fearlessly
for God in the face of mass disapproval.
Beloved, the day may
come, and sooner than we think, when we here in America will have to be willing
to pay a price to follow Christ. Our venerated Constitution is only a piece of
paper, and one that is easily and radically reinterpreted by the God haters of
our day. As time marches on our American society, which has already moved from
being a Christian one to a post-Christian one, will increasingly move to a
pagan one. When this happens, the beliefs that are important to us, and that we
are now free to hold will become, not just unpopular, but illegal. I say again,
when, not if, this comes, we must be ready, like the blind man, to be 'cast
out' for following Christ. And then what a privilege shall be ours! 'When they
had called the apostles, and beaten them, they commanded that they should not
speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. And they departed from the
presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer
shame for his name' (Acts 5.40-41).
May God grant us the
strength to follow Him, no matter the cost. May God grant us the grace to trust
Him, no matter how long and how awful the circumstance. And may we rejoice, as
now we can see, and may He be manifested and glorified in how He chooses to
spend our lives.
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