He Opens Blind Eyes

(John 9:1-12)

I. Introduction.
A. Orientation.
As you know,
Weve been looking in the evenings
At how Jesus evangelized.
First how He dealt with Nicodemus
Telling him that even though he was a member of the church
He was yet unconverted
And needed the new birth
Reminding us that its not enough
To go to church,
Or even to be a member of a church.
You must be born again
If you ever hope to see the kingdom in Christ
And enter it through faith in His name.

Second, we saw the parable of the Sower,

That reminded us
That the Seed of the Gospel must be sown,
And that it must fall into good soil
Prepared by Gods Spirit
Before it will bring about the new birth.

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But we also saw
That the Lord can and will
Use any of us who are willing to sow that seed
To bring salvation to others.

This morning,
We see something of what the Lord does
In the faculties of the soul
To bring the lost to Himself.

B. Preview.
In verse 1, we read, As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth.
This is likely now no longer
The last day of the Feast of Booths,
But a different time.
As Jesus continued His ministry
As He continued to travel and preach throughout Palestine
He passed by a man who couldnt see
One who had been blind from his birth to adulthood.
But were going to see
That He didnt just pass by:
He opened this mans eyes
In more ways than one.

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What was true of him
Was true of every one of us spiritually:
We also came into this world blind:
There were certain things
We had never seen
The beauty and glory
Of the One who made the heavens and earth
Because we didnt have the ability to see them
At least we didnt
Until the Lord opened our eyes
Through the Gospel.
Thats why we needed the Gospel.
Thats why those around us who are blind
Need it as well.

This story of the healing of a man without sight

Reminds us that Jesus is the only One
Who can open the eyes of the spiritually blind,
That they might see and be saved.

II. Sermon.
A. First, we see the disciples question.
When they saw him,
They wondered how it happened;

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And so they asked Jesus, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he
would be born blind? (v. 2).
They knew this must be the result of sin
But whose sin? His or his parents?

The Bible tells us

That the Lord doesnt overlook sin
He deals with it every day.
Paul writes, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom.
1:18).
Thankfully, He often does this
To lead people to repentance
But not always:
He also judges those who wont repent.

Sometimes He does so because of the sins of the parents.

When He appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai
To give him the Ten Commandments,
He said this, The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to
anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for
thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means
leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and
on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations (Ex. 34:6-7).
The Lord visits the sins of the parents on their children.
Does this mean He punishes children for their parents sins? No.
But it does mean

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That He will withhold the mercy
He might otherwise have shown these children
Because of the sins of their parents.
Just think about what happened to Canaan because of Hams sin (Gen. 9:25),
Or to the firstborn in Egypt because of Pharaohs sin (Ex. 11:4-5),
Or what happened to the children Achan, or Dathan and Korah (Num. 16).
In the case of these latter,
Their sin brought about the destruction of their whole households.

We do need to remember, though,

When God punishes the children,
He does so for their own sins,
Not the sins of their parents.
The sins of the parents
Is the reason He passes over them in His mercy.

Heres one very important reason

That we as parents should follow the Lord as closely as were able:
How we live can affect not only ourselves, but our households
For good or ill.

Now was this the reason this man was born blind?
Jesus says no.

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But now look more carefully at the first part of their question:
Could it have been this mans sin
That caused him to be born blind?
Was there some sin he committed before birth
That could have brought this about?

Its interesting that both John Gill and Matthew Henry

Note that there was a belief among the Jews
Both of the transmigration of the soul
And that it was actually possible to sin personally before youre born.
Gill writes, This notion [i.e. of transmigration], Josephus says (a), was embraced
by the Pharisees; though, according to him, it seems, that they only understood it
of the souls of good men; and if so, this could lay no foundation for such a
question, unless these disciples had given into the Pythagorean notion of a
transmigration of all souls, which was to be known by defects, as blindness, &c.
(b); or else this question proceeded upon a principle received by the Jews, that
an infant might do that which was faulty and criminal, and actually sin in the
womb; of which Dr. Lightfoot has given instances.

Just because they might have believed this, of course,

Doesnt make them right.
Even though the Jews had the OT Scripture,
They still got a lot of things wrong.
If that seems strange to you,
Just read some of the ideas
That were circulating in the early NT church,
Just following the completion of the Bible

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And the death of the last apostles.

Its also possible that the disciples thought

That the Lord looked ahead
And saw some great sin this man would commit in the future
And was punishing him for that.

Was the blind man guilty before he was born?

Yes, but so is everyone else.
David writes, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother
conceived me (Ps. 51:5).
Eliphaz said to Job, What is man, that he should be pure, or he who is born of a
woman, that he should be righteous? (15:14).
Jesus said to Nicodemus, That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is
born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6).

Was this mans blindness the result of sin?

Yes. Thats true of all sickness and disease.
But it wasnt his personal sin
Or the sins of his immediate parents It was the result of the sin of his first parents: Adam and Eve.

Thats why we were all born dead in sin,

And blind to Gods beauty and His glory
Because of the choice of our first parents to disobey God.

B. But the good news is,

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Jesus came into the world
To reverse the effects of sin.
God allowed sin to enter into the world in the first place,
So that He might show us His mercy and grace in Christ.

Why did the Lord allow this particular man

To experience this particular problem?
In verse 3, He tells His disciples:
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.
It was that Jesus might heal him
That He might reveal Himself and glorify His Father.

But how could God to that?

How could He cause this man to be born blind
In order to bring glory to Himself?

We need to understand first

That the Potter has the right over the clay
To do with it what He wants (Rom. 9:21).

We also need to understand

That God didnt directly afflict him with blindness,
Just as He also didnt directly cause sin to come into this world.
He allowed it to come

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Through the free choice of Adam.

When He created Adam

And put him in the garden to guard it,
He knew Adam would fail.
But He allowed him to fail
That sin might enter the world
So that He might show us the riches of His grace and mercy in Christ.
Here we see the Lord
Using the results of sin blindness
To bring about something wonderful
Not only to reveal who He is,
But to save this man.
The Lord was about to give him
Not only physical sight,
But spiritual as well.

The Lord allows evil to exist

That He might bring good out of it.
He allowed sin to invade His world,
So that He might conquer it.

Thats why Jesus came into the world:

To overcome the curse sin brought.

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And that was the work He would continue to do
As long as He was in the world:
To shine the light of the Fathers Word.
Jesus said to His disciples, 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 (vv. 4-5).

Isnt this what the ministry of Jesus was all about?

Bringing good out of evil?
Reversing the effects of sin?
Isnt this why He healed the sick?
Made the lame to walk?
Delivered those who were demon-possessed?
And made the blind to see?
Man, by falling away from God,
Brought a curse on himself.
But the Son of God came
To free men from that curse.

The Fall brought with it a lot of work

The potential for a great deal of ministry.
But there was only so much Jesus could do.
He characterizes His life and the lives of His disciples as a day
The time of their opportunity.

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Night was coming the physical death that eventually overtakes all of us
When they would no longer be able to work.
While He was here, He was the Light of the world
He was the source of the Gospel
Pointing men to God.
The same was true of the disciples.

The same is true of us:

This is our day,
This is our opportunity
As long as health and strength permit.
We need to be advancing Gods kingdom while we can.
Soon night will fall for each of us,
And we will enter into His rest.

In verses 6 and 7, we read, 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, Sent). So he went away and
washed, and came back seeing.
Jesus healed the mans eyes
To show that He is the One who heals the eyes of the soul.

But why in this way?

Why didnt He just speak the Word?
Or simply touch his eyes,
As Jesus did on another occasion (Matt. 9:27-30)?

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We can only speculate here.

Perhaps this was to remind him what he was made of:
God made man from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7),
And now God is repairing him from the dust of the ground.
Perhaps it was to show us who He is:
God was the One who made man from the earth,
God now reverses the effects of sin on this man.
John Gill suggests that it was a picture of the Gospel:
Just as it seems foolish that anointing this mans eyes with clay
Would do anything towards his healing,
So the Lord has chosen
The foolishness of the Gospel preached
To save men from their sins (1 Cor. 1:21).

The important thing to see is that Jesus healed him

He opened his eyes.
This was something completely unheard of
It had never happened before
There is no record of such a miracle in the OT.
This was something the Lord reserved for Messiah
As the evidence that this was He
Well see more about this next time in the following verses.

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But this is also one of the reasons
Those who knew him didnt recognize him.
We read in verses 8 and 9, 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.
They just couldnt believe he was the same man.

When the Lord opens your eyes,

And brings you to Himself,
In some senses, it makes it hard
For those who knew you to recognize you.
Youre not the same person you were.
You no longer see things the way you used to
The things of the world you thought were important
Are no longer important;
The things you thought were foolish
That had no value
The things of the Lord
Suddenly become the most important.
You also dont behave the way you used to
You begin to go a new direction,
So much so that those who knew you
Dont really know you any more

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They dont recognize you;
Often, they dont want to be around you any longer.

But sometimes they will for a while

For curiosity, if for no other reason.
These were curious.
They wanted to know what happened to him.
We read in verse 10, So they were saying to him, How then were your eyes
opened?

When that happens

When those who knew you
See the difference Christ makes in your life
You need to be ready to tell them.
In verse 11, 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.
He didnt know much about Jesus:
Only what He had done for him.
But thats all it takes Just telling others what Jesus has done for you.
I was blind, but now I see.

Finally, we read in verse 12, They said to him, Where is He? He said, I do not
know.
After Jesus healed this man,

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He left that place,
So when the man returned,
He was gone.
But his testimony had done its work:
The crowd wanted to see this Man
Who had performed this miracle.

This is what we ultimately hope for

When we witness to others.
In our case, we know where He is,
And we know what to tell others who want to see Him:
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.

Do you know those who are blind and without Christ?

Jesus came into the world to open the eyes of the blind.
He wants you to sow the seed of the Gospel in their lives.
He wants you to share your testimony with them.
Thats how He brings the lost to saving faith
Thats how He breaks up the hard soil of the heart,
Thats how He gives the new birth,
This is how He gives sight to the blind.

Are you blind and without Christ this morning?

Then come to the Savior.

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Hes passing where you are right now.
Hes drawing near with His Gospel.
Reach out and take hold of Him by faith:
Be willing to leave your old life behind;
Trust Him to save you,
And He will. Amen.

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