Blind for the Glory of God

Blindness well illustrates man's spiritual darkness and lostness. He is like the sinner. God has to take the initiative with the blind man through Christ. God has to take the initiative through Christ for the sinner. That's how grace operates. We're lost, we're blind, and God sees us. It comes in compassion, grace, and bestows the spiritual Son. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. You may have an excellent memory. You can clearly remember family vacations or the Christmas when you got your first bike, or your wedding day.

And yet, when you look at the photographs of those events, no doubt you find details you've never noticed, or you've simply forgotten. So it's good to refresh your memory now and then, especially when the subject you're reviewing is the most important subject of all, the Lord Jesus Christ. With that in mind, today John MacArthur begins a close-up look at the Bible's most important character in a study John calls Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture. John, when you say Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture, it implies you're saying we've lost sight of some biblical truth about Jesus or his character. Why is that kind of rediscovery so necessary these days?

You know, just you asking me that question takes me back a couple of years to a discussion I had with R.C. Sproul before he went to heaven, and he always used to say when he was asked, what is the greatest need of man, what is the greatest need of the church, he would always say to understand the nature of God, to understand the holiness of God, to understand the glory of God. But he said something else a few years ago. He said it's to understand the person of Christ. And Ligonier Ministries actually created a document on Christ, and they geared conferences toward Christ. And then we joined in hands with that, and we had conferences featuring the person of Jesus Christ. It is obvious to all of us that there are all kinds of ideas about Jesus Christ, from the most rank, heretical ideas to the truest and purest ideas and everything in between.

And I'm not just talking about the world. I'm talking about in the church. Surveys recently, and you've seen them as well as I have, indicate that probably half of evangelical people do not have a clear view of who Christ is. Sixty percent said he was God's greatest creation.

Well, he's not a creation at all. So the chaos and confusion around the person of Christ is devastating, because unless you get Christ right, you can't be saved. You must understand Christ for who he is and what he has done. I can't think of anything more important in this hour than rediscovering the Christ of Scripture. And if you're sitting in some church, and maybe you've been going to a church and you are listening week after week and joining in the experience, but you're not clear on who Christ is, that is a fatal flaw in that church.

That ought to be crystal clear to everyone. That is the priority of every ministry. Preach Christ. Preach Christ. So we're going to do that in this series titled, Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture. You don't want to miss a day, and it's going to go for three weeks.

Right, and it's going to be a great three weeks. So follow along now in the ninth chapter of the gospel of John, and here again is John MacArthur to launch his series titled, Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture. Open your Bible to John 9, the ninth chapter of John. Let me read the opening twelve verses of this chapter. Verse 1, as he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind? Jesus answered, it was neither that this man sinned nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me as long as it is day.

Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and applied the clay to his eyes, and said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is translated scent. So he went away and washed and came back seeing. Therefore, the neighbors and those who previously saw him as a beggar were saying, is not this the one who used to sit and beg? Others were saying, this is he.

Still others were saying, no, but he is like him. He kept saying, I am the one. So they were saying to him, how then were your eyes opened? He answered, the man who is called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. So I went away and washed and I received sight. They said to him, where is he?

He said, I do not know. Sickness, disease, deformity, death have dominated life in the world since the fall of Adam, which means essentially all of human history, touches us all. We're all in the process of dying. We all are infected and affected by the corruption that came by way of sin, familiar with sickness, familiar with disease, familiar with deformity.

All of that is part of life. And it has literally dominated life since the beginning, since the very fall recorded in Genesis chapter 3. And if you go to the Old Testament, these corrupt influences falling on physical life are so dominating and so normal and so unabated and uninterrupted that throughout the entire Old Testament, miraculous healing is so rare, it is virtually non-existent. There was the healing of Naaman the leper, who was a border terrorist attacking the Jews. That's in 1 Kings. And then there was King Hezekiah, who had a terminal illness and God spared him and cured him of that terminal illness.

That's 2 Kings. And then in Numbers 21, God sent snakes that bit the children of Israel with a deadly poison. They would have died, except the Lord was merciful to them and healed their snake bites. So you have the healing of Naaman, an individual, the healing of Hezekiah, an individual, the healing of a group of Israelites, Jews, who were bitten by snakes. And as far as an outright individual healing, very, very rare and unusual. When you come into the New Testament, as the New Testament begins, there are a couple of other physical miracles of healing. One happens to Elizabeth, so that she who has been barren all her life is enabled to have a baby, John the Baptist. That is a healing miracle. And then there, of course, is Mary.

And Mary's is not a healing, but Mary is given the right and the privilege and the power to bear a child without a father, a human father, the virgin birth. But when you look at the Old Testament, you've got six occasions where an actual physical miracle brought about a change in someone's physiology. In the Old Testament, you have three resurrections.

That's all. Three, the widow's son in 1 Kings 17, the Shunammite widow's son in 2 Kings 4, and the man in Elisha's grave in 2 Kings 13. Three resurrections, that's it.

Very, very rare through the entire history, from the fall to the arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ. And by the way, by the way, you say, well, that's just the Old Testament. Yes, but if you just took the Old Testament, that would be religion central, wouldn't it be? That would be where God is most active. That would be where God is working.

God is acting through the fathers, through the prophets, through the history of Israel, the nation of Israel. And in all of that period of history where God is acting, miracles don't happen, except on extremely rare occasions, miracles of healing, until Jesus shows up. And when Jesus showed up, miracles explode in every direction throughout His three-year ministry.

This is an explosion intended to demonstrate that the Messiah, the Son of God, God in human flesh has arrived in the world. Matthew 12, 15 says He was healing all. So He was healing all the people in all the places.

That's why I've said many times that He banished illness essentially from the land of Israel. This is God attesting to Jesus as the Messiah by miracles. These are supernatural healings.

These are creative miracles. People with deformed limbs who were given new limbs. People with deformed and diseased organs given new organs. People with blind eyes given new eyes.

People who couldn't hear given new ears. Each is a creative work. This is consistent. John introduces the gospel by saying, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Nothing that was made was made without Him. All things were made by Him. He is the Creator, and we see Him create. All of these healing miracles are supernatural acts of creation, taking something corrupted, something deformed, something diseased, something infected, and replacing it with something brand new, the works of God through Christ.

It all exploded in a three-year period. The prophet Isaiah in chapter 42, verse 7, said the Messiah would come and heal. He would come and heal, and this is the fulfillment of that messianic prophecy in that servant's song of Isaiah chapter 42.

Now, here in this, obviously, let me say this first. Obviously, there are so many miracles that they're not all in the New Testament, but John tells us that because at the end of his gospel, he said, if everything that Jesus did was recorded, the books of the world couldn't contain it. We have the privilege here in chapter 9 of looking at one of the tens of thousands of miracles, creative miracles that Jesus did. We're going to examine this miracle alongside some unbelievers, and we're going to find out how unbelief investigates a miracle. This miracle alone should have substantially changed their view of Jesus.

If they hadn't already understood that He was divine, this should have been enough to affirm His claim to deity. But instead, instead of coming to faith, instead of acknowledging that there was no human explanation for what they had seen and experienced, all it does is elevate their animosity. It elevates their anger. The more evidence that Jesus gives, the more angry they become. Their hatred escalates. The conflict is ramped up.

So the inevitable happens. Jesus begins to abandon them. And that's why we see the introduction of conversations not so much with the Pharisees as with the disciples.

They have fixed their deceived ignorance in stone in most cases. They're merely laboring to gather more outrageous accusations against Jesus so they can press the issue of His execution. It's a sad, tragic fulfillment of the first chapter of John.

He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. Now, chapter 9 is devoted to the miracle and the investigation, the whole chapter. So we'll have to break it up a little bit. Let's just take verses 1 to 12.

That's a big chunk for me, as you know. But it's a narrative, and we'll get through that. I want to break these 12 verses down into simple points of contact. Darkness, light, sight, and back to darkness. Darkness, light, sight, and back to darkness. So let's start with the darkness. Verse 1, as He passed by, He saw men blind from birth.

Blindness. And we see it all over the New Testament. It's a very common experience in New Testament times. It was a very, very common reality in the ancient world. But even going back beyond that, if you go back into the Old Testament, go back into the Pentateuch, go back to the time of Moses and the patriarchs, you will find blindness mentioned many, many times, mentioned in Leviticus, mentioned in Deuteronomy. Then it's mentioned in the books of history.

It's mentioned in the prophets. Blindness was a dominating reality in the ancient world. And that's one of the reasons why Isaiah 42, 7 said that when the Messiah comes, He will open blind eyes. Here is an illustration of this kind of blindness. Jesus sees a man who is congenitally blind. He's been blind his whole life. He was born blind.

Now let me give you the picture. Jesus has just declared in verse 58 of chapter 8 that He is the I Am, that He is God Himself. And they were so infuriated at what they saw as blasphemy that they picked up stones to throw at Him. But Jesus hid Himself from them and went out of the temple. He exited the temple. Now as He goes out of the temple, as He passes by, He sees a man blind from birth. This man is sitting at one of the temple gates begging as Jesus passed by.

How do we know that? Because that's a very apparent reality because beggars inevitably ended up at the temple gates. That's where this man is.

I just need to make the note that never too concerned with his own life, he stops even though he's at high risk and in danger because he's escaping from being stoned. He stops to demonstrate grace and power and mercy and compassion and even salvation on a blind beggar. This is very much like Jesus at the very time of His death collecting a thief on the way to His own death. Beggars go where crowds are, right? Beggars always go where crowds are. Even today, you go where crowds are, you find people begging.

They don't operate in isolation. Beggars knew where to be. They went to the temple. Why would they go to the temple? Because for one thing, the most devout people went to the temple. Good people ostensibly went to the temple, people with compassion, people who were kind, caring.

And then you just have the sheer volume of people there. So you have more to select from, if you will, because crowds were pouring in and out of the temple all day long. Also, beggars knew that where there are crowds of religious people who have doing good in mind, there is safety from robbers who would otherwise take everything a beggar had. So the temple was where they were.

They located there because it was the best climate for them to survive. The beggar can't see Christ. He's never seen anything. But it says, he saw the beggar as he passed by. Sovereign grace dominates this miracle.

Sovereign will dominates this miracle. The blind man can't see anything. He doesn't know anything about Jesus. Coming by that Jesus sees him. The blind man is a picture of the sin blinded man who has no capacity to see Jesus, who is profoundly, deeply engulfed in his desperate blindness and has no capability to see the Savior.

The analogy is irresistible. In fact, the gospels use this analogy. Paul talks about spiritual blindness a number of times. And the gospels record more cases of blind people being healed than any other specific malady. There is one healing of a deaf mute. There is one healing of someone with palsy.

There is one healing of someone with a fever. There are two healings of lepers, groups of lepers. There are three dead people raised, but there are five separate accounts of blind people. Blindness well illustrates man's spiritual darkness and lostness.

Helpless from the start, this blind man is at the mercy of somebody who comes up, chooses to help him. He is like the sinner. God has to take the initiative with the blind man through Christ. God has to take the initiative through Christ for the sinner.

That's how grace operates. We're lost. We're dead. We're blind.

We know no truth. We see no Christ. We have no God, and God sees us. It comes in compassion, grace, and bestows spiritual sight. It's a beautiful picture illustrated by this healing. So we see darkness then in verse 1. In verse 2, we see light.

Verse 2 through 5, and his disciples asked him, the rabbi, teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind? That will tell you where their theology was, essentially. But if something's wrong with you, it's a sin issue.

And not an indirect one, but a direct one. We would all agree that everybody's illness is related to the fall of Adam, right? But you can't make a direct link between I'm sick because three months ago, I committed a certain sin. But in their theology, that's how it worked. If you're deformed, if you're diseased, if you have some kind of illness, it's because of sin directly.

Not because of the fallenness of the world, but because there's guilt that you are bearing. So whose sin was it? Which means that, and they split that out, was it this man or his parents? That was what had developed in their system that people who were ill or infirm or whatever, were that way because either they sinned or their parents sinned. Now this question could have a physical, a physiological component, a medical component, if you will, because the greatest ancient contributor to blindness was gonorrhea. And since there was no treatment for that, when a mother had gonorrhea, a baby passing through the birth canal could come out blind, essentially. This was epidemic. Even in the modern world, where in third-world countries, there is no remedy for that.

Silver nitrate or whatever is used, there's no remedy for that. Blindness is multiplied. The rabbis were convinced that the sins of the parents were visited upon the children.

Where did they get that? They got that because they misinterpreted Exodus 20, and I'll come to that in a few minutes. But they believed that parents' sins could show up in children's guilt and punishment. But just before we get to that point, backing up a little, they made a direct connection between suffering and sin in the life of the person. Now you remember, the classic illustration of this is Job's friends.

Job hasn't done anything. He's suffering like mad. His friends come up chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter. They try to indict him, try to make him guilty, try to make him confess something he didn't do so they can find sin in direct cause for his suffering.

And he keeps throwing that off and throwing that off. But that was a reflection of their theology, that where there is sin, there is suffering. And where there is suffering, there is corresponding, specific sin on the part of the individual who suffers. You see that in Luke 13. You remember the tower fell over and killed all those people? And you remember the Pilate's men went in and sliced up the Galileans who were worshiping?

And what did the people ask? They said, are they worse sinners than everybody else? If calamity comes, if a tower falls on you and kills you, or if somebody stabs you, that's a sign that you're worse than everybody else, right?

The worse people have the calamities and the better people escape, that's the same kind of theology. So their question comes out of the milieu of the thinking of the rabbis. The rabbis even had to explain congenital issues, congenital deformities, congenital blindness, born blind. How could that be the sin of the person born blind when they say, was it this man who sinned?

How could he sin? He was in the womb. They even developed, the rabbis did, the idea of prenatal iniquity, sinning in the womb. And there are some really bizarre discussions between rabbis on this subject, in which one rabbi eventually responds with Genesis 4.47, sin lies at the door. And he makes the door refer to the door of the womb. So he interprets that as some kind of insight into prenatal iniquity. And the other guy argues, the other rabbi argues, that if the baby was actually sinning in the womb, he'd be kicking harder.

Crazy. Some believed, like Plato did in the pre-existence of the soul influenced by Hellenists, so that somehow your soul was around sinning before you were conceived. So they did believe that somehow, some of them believed, that something a person did in the womb or as a soul before the womb contributed to this condition. On the other hand, they did believe as well that the children suffered from the parents' sin.

And that was Exodus 20, verse 5. I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. You've heard people use that, that there are cursed children, cursed generations. This notion that you're paying for the sins of your parents somehow has managed to survive to our time even today. But among the Jews, there was the idea that people could be punished for several generations for sins committed by their parents.

You say, well, what does that mean? First, it's a collective statement. The sins of the fathers, the leaders, the generation, the heads of a generation, the sins that they commit that define that generation are so influential that they can't be reversed and rooted out for three or four generations.

That's the principle that that is established. It's not saying individual sins for three or four generations, kids, grandkids, great grandkids are going to be cursed. That is completely alien to what Scripture says, and I'll show you that in a minute. But all it is saying is you better take care of your generation because if you are characterized by iniquity and sin, it's going to take three or four generations to turn it around.

Think about that when you look at the generation we're living in right now. This does not turn around fast. It penetrates deeply. This is not personal. Turn to Ezekiel because I need to show you this. Ezekiel chapter 18, one of the most important chapters in the prophets, Ezekiel 18, because it's directed at this question. The word of the Lord, chapter 18, verse 1. Ezekiel 18, when the word of the Lord came to me, says Ezekiel, saying, What do you mean by using this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers eat the sour grapes, but the children's teeth are set on edge. That's the proverb.

The proverb is that the children suffer the consequence of the behavior of their parents. So God says to Ezekiel, what do you mean using that? Verse 3, as I live, declares the Lord God, you are surely not going to use this proverb in Israel anymore.

Stop using that. And explained in verse 20, the person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity. The righteousness of the righteous will be on him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be on him.

Individual responsibility, period, paragraph. That's John MacArthur showing you how Christ gives spiritual sight to sinners like you and me. Today's lesson on Grace to You is the first installment of John's study, Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture.

Now keep in mind, you can own this series on eight CDs or eight MP3 downloads. Review these lessons at your own pace, or use them for a small group discussion, or give the CDs to an unbelieving friend or relative. Get your copy of Rediscovering the Christ of Scripture when you contact us today. Call our toll-free number anytime, 800-55-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org, to order the eight-CD album. You can also download the MP3s or the transcripts of each lesson free of charge.

Take advantage of the free MP3s and transcripts at gty.org. Of course, the sermon archive is just the beginning of what's available for free at gty.org. You can read hundreds of helpful articles on the blog, you can watch episodes of Grace to You television, you can listen along with Grace Stream, that's a continuous loop of John's verse-by-verse teaching through the entire New Testament. It's a great way to get fed the Word of God wherever you are and whenever you have time. So dive into the Grace Stream, it's available free of charge at gty.org.

That's our website, one more time, gty.org. Now on behalf of John MacArthur and the entire staff at Grace to You, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day, and join us tomorrow as we continue rediscovering the Christ of Scripture. That's John's current study, Don't Miss Another Half-Hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.