“Why Don’t You Ask Him?” (Part 2 of 2)

The Pharisees thought of themselves as the rulers of the synagogue. But when a blind man was healed, they took their authority a little too far. And then they tried to prevent others from seeing the truth. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg reveals two obstacles that can cause spiritual blindness.

He continues his message in John chapter 9. 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. 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. Or 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 have done. While failing to keep the law of God, which they know themselves incapable of keeping, they create a convenient smokescreen by adding their own little rules and regulations, so that as long as they keep their list 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 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 the twenty-seventh verse of chapter 7. 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 I 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, Don't think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses.

Ha! Moses? Jesus—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, have 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. 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. Or 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, and 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 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 didn'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?

The husband looks at the wife, the wife looks at the husband, and then the wife responds. Because 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 sound so far away from us, let me finish by contemporizing the story for us.

Because this is not an uncommon story, and 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 hundred and eighty 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 navel 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? Oh, 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. A challenge from Alistair Begg for each one of us to be a light in the darkness. You're listening to Truth for Life and a message called, Why Don't You Ask Him? Alistair will close our program with prayer in just a minute, so please keep listening. If you are a regular Truth for Life listener, you often hear me talk about our mission, which is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance. The reason we do this is so that unbelievers will be converted, come to a saving faith in Christ, so that those who already know Christ will gain a deeper understanding of the Scriptures and become more established in their faith, and so that both pastors and church members will be encouraged to rely solely on the Bible as the foundation for worship and for fellowship. It's with this mission in mind that we recommend books that explore the depths of Scripture so you can continue making steady, forward progress in your relationship with Jesus.

Today's selection fits perfectly with that objective. It's a book titled Gentle and Lowly, the Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. This is a book that explores the very heart of Jesus, the immensity of his love for us and his desire to save sinners. As you read this book, you'll discover that Jesus never grows weary of our failures. In fact, when we come to him openly, no matter how discouraged we are, he welcomes us again and again with a heart of forgiveness.

In fact, the Puritans had a deep understanding of this. They wrote often about the forgiving heart of Jesus. This new book, Gentle and Lowly, includes many of their insightful comments. The author cites people like Jonathan Edwards and Richard Sibbes, among others, helpfully explaining that the grace of Jesus is limitless for all who seek him.

So if you have ever felt disheartened or even wondered if you've fallen too many times to ask again for grace, you'll find comfort and you'll deepen your love for Jesus in the book Gentle and Lowly. Ask for your copy when you donate to support the mission of Truth for Life. You can simply click the image you see in the mobile app or you can visit our website truthforlife.org slash donate. If you'd rather call, our number is 888-588-7884. Again, the number is 888-588-7884. Or you can mail your donation along with your request for the copy of the book Gentle and Lowly when you write to Truth for Life at post office box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio.

Our zip code is 44139. Now, here is Alistair to close our program today with prayer. 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 untrue or 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. 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. I'm Bob Lapeen. Hope you can join us tomorrow as Alistair looks at the simple faith expressed by a man who was once blind and can now see in a message titled, Do You Believe? The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.