Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. If I'm excommunicated, I can never go to the synagogue. I can't go to the temple.
I'll never be right with God. My family will not speak to me again. My friends will not speak to me, and I can't do business with other Jews.
I said, we have the leverage on you. Now, throughout Christendom, they used to say they'll excommunicate you. And what that meant for almost everyone who was in fear of excommunication is, and you're going to go to hell. If you're excommunicated, you're out. God has now turned his back on you, and you'll spend forever in hell.
And we'll decide this. And so that's what they do. These people are terrified. They're living a normal Jewish life, and they find out this is all going to change because my son can now see. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt.
Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's word meets our world. What's the reason for this miracle? So a blind man could see?
No. That's not why Jesus healed this man. You're going to see in a moment why.
Here it comes. They brought him to the Pharisees, the man who was formerly blind. Now it was a Sabbath day that Jesus made clay and opened his eyes.
That's why he sees. It's a Sabbath day. From here on out, you're going to see another main point of this whole miracle. Religion makes you spiritually blind to the light of the world. Religion will make you spiritually blind to the light of the world.
That's the real reason for this miracle. It's a Sabbath. By the way, they had a lot of Sabbath laws, hundreds and hundreds, but let me give you a couple more. You can't give medical treatment to anybody on a Sabbath.
That's against the law. Sometimes it's life and death you might be able to try, but no medical treatment can be given to anybody on a Sabbath day. Secondly, on a Sabbath day, you're not allowed to take saliva out of your mouth and spread it on anything. That's a violation of God's law to the Pharisees. Now, you're also not allowed to cut your nails. You're not allowed to pull gray hair out of your head.
You're not allowed to do any work like that. That's breaking the Sabbath. That's why Jesus did this.
He knew exactly what they thought. He did it for this confrontation that he's having here. So then the Pharisees also, in verse 15, were asking him how he received his sight. And he said to them, okay, he applied clay to my eyes, I watched, I see. Can I get out of here and go look at some things? You know, why am I talking to you? I've just told you what happened. Therefore, some of the Pharisees were saying, this man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath.
Well, what do they mean? Jesus failed the test. Jesus cannot be from God. He failed the test. He violated the Sabbath. No man from God would violate the Sabbath law. That's their view. Now, remember, they distorted the Sabbath completely. Jesus has already told them more than once, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath.
You see, but they're like, no, you violated our law. You cannot be from God at all. But others were saying, how can a man who's a sinner perform such signs?
And there's a division among them. Now, I don't know for sure because John doesn't tell us, but I'm guessing one of the others was Nicodemus, who ends up converting. But remember, Nicodemus came to Jesus. And what did he tell Jesus the first time they met?
No one can do what you're doing unless he sent from God. He tells Jesus that. So I'm sure Nicodemus is there saying, wait a minute, there's something else going on here. You see, there's something more here.
So there's a fight among the Pharisees. Some of them are beginning to see a little bit. The others are blind. They don't see anything. And so then they move on. It says, so they said to the blind man again, what do you say about him since he opened your eyes?
Now, this is this is funny to me in this sense. The blind man's thinking the whole time. His mind's got to be racing. Remember, he's blind.
That tells you a lot of things. He's obviously illiterate. He's also ceremonially unclean. He's never been in a synagogue. He doesn't go to the temple. I think you're going to find out that his parents have probably disowned him completely.
They're going to get involved in a minute. This man has no training. All he's ever heard of people talking, going and coming from the temple. But he says these guys are talking theology. These guys are saying, is he from God or he's not from God?
So he said, OK, I'll weigh in on this. Who's from God? He said, I know who's from God. And then he says it. He's a prophet. That's a great line.
Why? Prophets come from God. This guy came and now I see. So I'm saying he's a prophet. So he got a little bit theological. The Jews then did not believe it of him. He's no prophet. That he had been blind and had received sight until they called the parents of the very one who received his sight.
This probably isn't the guy. This whole thing's a sham. So they call the parents. Now, please understand what happens to them. And they questioned and they said to him, is this your son who you say was born blind? And tell us, how does he see? His parents answered and said, we know that this is our son. And we know that he was born blind. But how he now sees, we do not know. He said, or who opened his eyes, we don't know.
You ask him. He said, he's of age. He'll speak for himself. Why did they say that?
It was true. They're terrified. They're terrified.
You're going to see why in just a moment. They're terrified. These guys' whole life's going to change because of the people who are the religious leaders are going to make it very bad for them. So his parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews. There's another thing about religion. Almost always you live in fear. If there's something consistent about religion, all over the world is we're going to get you. You can't disagree with us.
You simply can't. And it's happened all over. Christian religion, no different than others. When you start reading books like Fox's Book of Martyrs and you start realizing how many thousands upon thousands of believers were executed by the church. Not by the Muslims, not by the unbelieving pagans, but by the church itself. They killed them. But there's another word that they really love to use.
And you're going to see it in just a moment here. It said his parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed him to be the Christ. He's put out of the synagogue. We will excommunicate you.
That's what religion does. We will excommunicate you. Now you say, how big a deal was that? Huge.
This is a huge deal in their world. If I'm excommunicated, I can never go to the synagogue. I can't go to the temple. I'll never be right with God.
I cannot. My family will not speak to me again. My friends will not speak to me. And I can't do business with other Jews.
So we have the leverage on you. Now, throughout Christendom, they used to say, they'll excommunicate you. And what that meant for almost everyone who was a fear of excommunication is and you're going to go to hell. If you're excommunicated, you're out. God has now turned his back on you and you'll spend forever in hell and will decide this. And so that's what they do.
These people are terrified. They're living a normal Jewish life and they find out this is all going to change because my son can now see. Notice how they pass the buck to him. Why don't you ask him? Don't ask us any more of these questions. We don't want to know these. Well, that's the reason John writes that he is of age.
Ask him. So a second time, they called the man who had been blind and they said, give glory to God. We know that this man's a sinner. Give glory to God. Now, that's an interesting phrase, by the way, and one you have to think about for just a moment. But that goes all the way back to Aiken and Joshua. What it means is Joshua was talking about Aiken, but he says to him and the Jews understood this. You've got to give glory to God or in other words, you've got to tell the truth there.
You have to. So the Jews have always used that phrase means tell us the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. So when they say give glory to God, you're going to tell us the truth. That's what it means when they say that. And so they say it.
And it's interesting. We know that this man's a sinner. I love his answer.
What's how he changes. He said, whether he's a sinner, I don't know. One thing I know, I know that I was blind and I know that I see. Great Christian hymn writer sort of took advantage of those words, didn't he?
Amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost and now I'm found. I was blind. Now I see.
It's a great, great phrase. You see, when you became a Christian, the moment you accepted Christ, you know what you received? Spiritual sight. For the first time in your life, you receive spiritual sight. Now I can see.
You see, that's such an important thing. As I read early on, Paul said that the unbeliever has his eyes blinded. You see, he's been blinded.
He also wrote the natural man, the blind man cannot receive the things of the spirit, nor can he understand them. So don't ever get frustrated when you're witnessing to someone about Jesus Christ and they're just not getting it. You see, don't worry about that. They can't get it. They're spiritually blind. They don't see it. You see, they don't see what you're saying until. They see what you're saying. You see, that moment, all of a sudden, the miracle is they have spiritual sight now.
It's just the way that it works. As I've told you in the past, you know, the man who witnessed to me over and over again, every time I witnessed with him, I either argued with him or made fun of him. I just did it over and over and over and over and over. And then after a long period of time, he made the statement that I won't talk to you anymore about Jesus. And I asked him, why not? And he said, I was a spiritual hypocrite because you want to know truth, you say, but I have the truth right in front of you.
So I left his lab and went back to my lab, walked in my lab, went over to my desk, got down on my knees and prayed to receive Christ. How? That wasn't the words that he said.
He said, I'm not going to even talk to you anymore. All of a sudden you have spiritual sight. Now I see. That's exactly it. That's that's what happens when you come to Christ. You get spiritual sight.
And that's the way it works. Well. He said, I don't know, I just know I was blind and now I see. So they said to him, what did he do to you and how did he open your eyes? Same thing, he says. He says, I told you already, you did not listen.
Why do you want to hear again? You do not want to become his disciples, too, do you? Now he's getting feisty. Think about this. If you were a blind beggar for 35, 40 years of your life, would you get feisty on the day?
The greatest day of your life is the day you're seeing sight. And these guys are just giving them the business. Instead of glorifying God for what happened, they're giving him the business. So he said, maybe you want to follow Jesus now.
Is that what you're saying? Well, they got mad at that. And typical, they reviled him and they said, you are his disciple, but we are the disciples of Moses.
Good thing, you see, religious people always use something like that. Remember, they talked to Jesus and they said, we are of our father who? Abraham. What did Jesus tell?
You are of your father. The devil. You see, a very different perspective. So they tried the Moses card. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he is from. Of course, by now, he's told them many, many times, but they're just talking. The man answered and said to them, Well, here's an amazing thing that you do not know where he is from. And yet he opened my eyes.
You got to love that. Wait, wait. You're the religious leaders. I was born blind. I've been blind all these years. I see now and you don't know where he's from.
You're the leaders. I love that the man answered and said, Well, here's an amazing thing. Then he goes on verse 31. They say, We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is God fearing and does this, will we hear them? What's our inference? We're God fearing. We're the righteous ones.
We keep the law. You see, and please understand, I say this all the time, but we often make the Pharisees out to be the bad guys. They're not the bad guys in Israel. They're the most respected religious people in the country. Everybody respects the Pharisees except Jesus. He doesn't respect them at all. He calls them all kinds of names, whitewashed sepulchers, the blind guides of the blind.
He doesn't let up on them. But everybody else, and I've said this in the past, if you had a daughter, you would pray she would marry a Pharisee because they're so righteous. And that's what they believe, because they jump through all the religious hoops.
So. He says, Since the beginning of time in verse 32, it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. They know it. See, how do you explain a miracle that occurred that no one has never occurred ever with anyone else? How do you explain it as a religious leader of the Jewish people? He said, If this man were not from God, he says back to him, if this man were not from God, he could do nothing. See, the logic to this man is so obvious. I see. If he's not from God, he couldn't have done anything.
So what's bothering you yet? Well. They answered and said, You were born entirely in sins and you're teaching us. So they put him out. That means he's excommunicated.
He's out. Notice one thing they said is true. You're born in sins. Now, one thing that's not true is so were they. And so are you.
And so am I. We are all born spiritually blind. All of us. Everybody is the only person born that wasn't spiritually blind is Jesus Christ.
He's the only one. They what they said was true. They just didn't believe it about themselves. Now, it's interesting. Jesus heard that they had put him out and Jesus went and found him and said, Do you believe in the son of man?
This is beautiful. Jesus is in an interest that for the rest of his life he can see. That didn't matter as much to Jesus as this does. He said, Do you believe in the son of man? That's a favorite phrase out of Daniel.
Jesus uses it for himself. And he answered, he said, Who is he, Lord? He said that I may believe in him. I don't know who he is. Jesus said, You have both seen him and he is the one talking with you. This is me.
I love this. And he said, Lord, I believe. That's exactly what you and I said. The moment of spiritual sight. I believe. And notice, instead of just washing his eyes out, notice his first response to his belief.
It comes right there after it. He says to him right after he does it, he says, and he worshipped him. Isn't that what we all did the moment you became a born again Christian?
I hope so. The first act of anybody who came to Christ is worship. Thank you. Thank you for doing for me that it's something I can never do for myself. Thanks for giving me spiritual sight.
It's a gift. You see, he just worships the Lord. Here's a guy that was never in the synagogue or the temple. And he's talking to the son of God and he's worshipping the son of God, God incarnate right there.
And he's worshipping him. And Jesus said this for judgment, I came into this world so that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind. What a great statement by Jesus. What a paradox, isn't it? That's the paradox, by the way, of grace and religion.
That's what the paradox is. Notice. So that those who do not see.
What does it mean? I know I'm spiritually blind. I know I don't see.
I know I have no hope. He said, what happens to them? They get justified. Remember the prayer life in the temple that Jesus talked about? The Pharisee went into the temple and remember he prayed out loud and he said, thank God I'm not like you guys.
Thank God I'm not like other people. I'm a righteous man. What did the tax gatherer do? He pounded his chest and said, have mercy on me, the sinner.
Who gets justified there? See, it's a moment of spiritual insight. Those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these words and they said to him, we are not blind to are we? Well, by now, you know, of course they are. They're as blind as a bat. They're blind. They said, that can't be possible.
Why? We're religious. You can't say we're blind. Jesus said, let me say it this way. If you were blind, you'd have no sin.
It's a great line. If you were spiritually blind, like this man was physically blind and spiritually blind and you came to me, you would have no sin because I'm going to take care of that for you. You will have no sin.
I'm going to be your substitute on the cross. You're going to experience eternal life because of the grace of God. You're going to see that. But notice what he says the next part of the phrase.
He said. But since you say we see. Your sin remains. You see, spiritual blindness. One of the great characteristics of spiritual blindness is the constantly say you see.
Because of your religion. You see, that's what this whole miracle was about. It reminds me just think about this. Remember the man who was an invalid for 38 years? And for the first time, Jesus said, you know, get up, pick up your pallet and walk. But remember what day did it on? Sabbath.
Why? He wants to confront and condemn religion. And that's exactly what he does here. We're all born spiritually blind. Jesus came to give all of us spiritual sight. But if we deny our blindness. We'll never be able to see him. That's what John 9 teaches us. Let's pray.
Father, nothing has really changed. People are incurably religious. They believe that they can invent a system. And by adhering to their system, they will impress you so much. That you will let them into your presence. The Apostle Paul said that when a Jew is given the gospel, he rejects it. Nothing has ever changed with religious people.
The initial response is almost always the same. It's too easy. I've got to do things to impress God. But Father, that just reveals spiritual blindness. We must confess that all of us at one time in our lives were spiritually blind. But the moment we received sight because of Jesus Christ.
Everything changed. We were blind but now we see. I pray Father that we understand the greatness of the magnitude of that gift. And that we worship you joyfully because of what you have done for us.
Father, give us a sense of great patience when we witness for Jesus Christ. Especially to religious people. Because understanding, they cannot understand what we're saying. They cannot see it. But if we persistently, kindly love them and give an account for the hope that is in us.
They too may be able to see. That's our prayer Father. Thank you for what you've done for us.
Use us to do it for others. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen.
Amen. If you're looking for, you can listen online. Or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-11-28 09:15:15 / 2023-11-28 09:24:38 / 9