Jesus & The Man Born Blind

Good morning. It’s good to see all of you that are gathered here today on this holiday weekend. So happy 4th of July and we’re so glad that you’re here.

Can you believe that we are actually halfway through 2025? Time is just flying by and it’s so good to see all of you. You know, you never know what you’re going to get on a holiday weekend. So, so glad that all of you that made it here this morning and all of you that are streaming in online.

We know many of you may be up at your cottages or we know people even watch the service right from their boat. So how cool is that? And we especially want to welcome our new friends at First Lutheran in Algonac as this is week three of streaming our services right into their worship services at the same exact time that this service is taking place. So if you ever want to go to Algonac and check it out, you could see our service there and get to know some of the people there.

It’s a great way to just go make a day of it. Go have lunch in Algonac. We actually have some of our members that are there this morning as well.

But the reason we’re able to do this is because of your generosity that we have the equipment and the capability and the technology to do it. But also because of the incredible volunteers back there that make this happen. So can we just give God praise for the volunteers? And we are in week three of a sermon series we’re calling The Pursuit where we’re looking at Bible stories, actual accounts of Jesus pursuing people.

And we specifically picked these ones because if you were privileged enough to grow up in church you might remember certain elements of it. These are very popular stories to have as part of a Sunday school curriculum or a VBS curriculum. And so when you become adult and you go back and you reread these accounts, kind of two things happen.

One is you remember what it was that you learned as a child, but so often in the same way you go like, wow, there’s some stuff in here that I never knew existed before. And it really just elevates it to another level. And likewise, sometimes there’s some things that we think happen in scripture that didn’t happen in scripture or things that we assume about the scripture that aren’t actually true.

And so that’s kind of what we’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks. And so today we’re gonna be looking at Jesus and the man who was born blind. And really to kind of get an idea to wrap this around your mind as we began this this morning, because the theme today in John chapter nine is really going to be about one word.

And that one word is sin. Do you actually believe in sin? Do you believe that you sin? Because, you know, not everyone believes in sin. It’s a biblical word.

Some people don’t sin. You know what they do? They make mistakes. And if you make mistakes, what does that make you? A mistaker.

Because if you don’t sin, then you’re not a sinner. And if you’re not a sinner, then you’re not in need of a sinner. And you’re gonna see that in multiple ways this morning as this plays out.

And really, I believe that what it is that we believe about sin actually determines how we live our life. Did you know that? That there are people that are in our families, that are in our neighborhoods, and maybe even here in the church that don’t believe in this whole idea of sin, this biblical principle of sin. And so because they just make mistakes, you just say you’re sorry for your mistake and you move on.

And so what you do is you create a comfortable lifestyle, you build up your bank account, you know, your family is your family, and you kind of just live for the here and now. You don’t really think about the things to come or the life after this life. And so there’s no reason to really go to church, there’s no reason to sacrifice your finances or your time to help anybody else on the planet.

You’re just here to make life as best as possible, and then when your time comes and you die, you die, and that’s it. And sadly, let’s be honest, there’s hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people, even in our lives, that have bought into that lie. And so this morning, again, we’re going to see where Jesus specifically goes and pursues someone for a far greater reason than simply healing them physically.

So if you have your Bible, you want to follow along, we’re going to be in John chapter 9. John chapter 9 beginning in verse 1 says this, as Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. Who saw who? Who pursued who? Now, I want you to think of this next verse. It says his disciples, these are Jesus’s disciples, these are the ones that Jesus handpicked, they’ve already seen him perform miracles, they’ve already put their faith in him and believe that he is the promised Messiah, that he is the savior of the world.

They are the ones that turn to him and say, Rabbi, which means teacher, who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind? Why are the disciples asking this question? Shouldn’t they know better? And this is one of those moments when the disciples become real human real quickly. And it can kind of show us how they are on their own spiritual journey. They don’t fully understand who Jesus is.

They don’t even fully understand the scriptures. They’re still actually caught in the culture and the rules of their time. They’re still believing the lie, which was very prevalent then, that if something was wrong with the person, it was because they sinned or because of their parents sin.

Well, Jesus answers them this way. It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but here’s what is the greater purpose. It’s that the works of God might be displayed in him.

And again, I said this last week, the more and more I dig into these stories and dig into these accounts, it is amazing to me the layers and depth of what it is that Jesus is really doing and why he heals people and ultimately why he did these things in the way that he did them on the days that he did them because it was serving a far greater purpose. Let’s continue. He says these words, we must work the works of him who sent me.

So Jesus is saying, I’m here to do the work of what God has sent me to do. My father sent me to do. Night is coming when no one can work.

As long as I am in the world, this is Jesus, I am the light of the world. And that’s a pretty bold proclamation to make. Again, after Jesus began his public ministry, we see this over and over again.

I’m the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the father except through me. I’m the door.

I’m the bread. I’m the gate. It’s me.

I am the savior. I am the promised Messiah. And for John’s gospel in particular, he has this theme throughout all of his writing in that he compares light and darkness.

And if you go back to the first chapter of John, this is how he puts it. That in Jesus was life and he is the light of men. That there is a light that can shine into the darkest parts of the world, yet the darkness has not overcome it.

So no matter what we face, no matter how frustrating it gets this side of eternity for us, we know in the end, Jesus wins. And the reason we know he wins is because he’s already won through his shed blood and sacrifice on the cross. Now, what’s about to happen gets really bizarre, but it’s really interesting at the same time.

And I think this is why it makes a really good Sunday school story. Because after Jesus said these things, he spits on the ground and he made mud with the saliva, which is really gross. I want you just to hear Jesus building up the phlegm in his throat.

And then literally, you’re watching him spit on the ground. This is the human side of Jesus that sometimes we miss. And then he bends down and he’s playing with his saliva and he’s making dirt.

And we all say together, that’s… And all the kids that are in the room, that you guys all say together, that’s cool. Then he takes it a step further and he grabs that stuff and he puts it in the man’s eyes. That’s disgusting.

How come there was never a Sunday school teacher that said, guys, you should never go and do this? This is not a good idea. Then he says, go wash in the pool of Shalom. And so the guy goes and he gets some water and he splashes it on his eyes.

And you can imagine the moment for this man that the first time in his life, all of a sudden now, he can see. Unbelievable miracle. Had to be overcome with emotion.

Had to be just incredibly blown away at what it is that Jesus had just done for him. Why would Jesus do this? Why didn’t Jesus just speak the word and heal the guy? Last week, Jesus just said, stand up, pick up your mat and walk. There’s other accounts in Scripture where Jesus didn’t even have to be in the same room, let alone the same town.

People would come and say, my daughter’s sick or this person’s sick. And he would be like, OK, you can go back home. I’ve already healed them.

They’re like, wait, what? Because he’s God. He can do those things. Why go to these lengths? Why spit on the ground and make mud just because it’s a cool story to tell? Couple different options here.

If you go back to the first book of the Bible, we find out how God actually created man. Do any of you remember that from the Genesis series? How did God create man? He takes the dust of the ground, picks it up, and he breathes into the nostrils of man, and man becomes a living being. Is this Jesus going back to Genesis? And is he doing this because he’s using the same material that he used to make man? And is it possible that this man did not have eyeballs? And so in this moment, God Almighty is doing the same thing he does in Genesis and literally makes this man eyeballs with his saliva in the dirt and tells him to go wash it off.

And then he comes back, and he can see. That would be kind of cool, isn’t it? That’s one possibility. There’s another reason for him doing this, and we’re going to see it in a few moments.

So imagine this guy gets healed, and he comes back, and he’s around all these people. And the neighbors, everyone loves neighbors. They all come to see him, and they’re like, is this not the man who used to sit and beg? And some of the neighbors said, yeah, of course that’s the guy.

Others said, no, but it looks a lot like him. Maybe he’s got one of those twins on earth. Has anyone ever been told that you look like somebody else? You know, does anybody get annoyed when people tell you you look like somebody else? I get this all the time.

You know who you look like? I’m like, no, I don’t want to hear what I look like. I look like Tim Bollinger. That’s who I look like.

But what does it say? He kept saying to them, I’m the man. I was the one born blind. And yet, they didn’t want to believe him.

So they say, well, how is it that your eyes are open? And he answers them, the man who was called Jesus. So this guy, his name’s Jesus, which by the way, Jesus was a very common name during this time. He made mud, he put it on my eyes, he told me to go wash it off.

And then when I did, I could see. And of course, they want to know where he’s at. Well, where is this guy? And he says, I don’t know where he went.

And don’t you love this about Jesus? He does this over and over again. He like just disappears in the crowd. Can you imagine being one of the disciples? Like how many times did they lose Jesus? Because you know, Jesus never lost the disciples.

But everything that Jesus did was so intentional. Well, Jesus is wherever he’s at, not out in the public anymore. And so they bring this guy to the religious leaders.

They’re called Pharisees. Now, here’s what’s important. Here’s the second meaning in all of this.

It’s the Sabbath day. Jesus purposely picked this day to heal the man. And the Pharisees are enraged that Jesus did this because in their minds, he didn’t keep the Sabbath.

He worked on the Sabbath. And so bending down and spitting and doing this with the dirt was a form of work. Is that not insane? Now, I don’t know how many of you follow Orthodox Jews to this day, but it’s amazing the lengths that they go through because of the technology that we have in our society to still honor what they believe they’re supposed to do to follow the rules to honor the Sabbath.

And it’s kind of funny because if you’re on TikTok, some of them make TikTok videos about it. How when they go to the hotel, they have to have the hotel personnel come and deactivate their key cards because they’re not allowed to use electronics. Or how many of us have refrigerators and stoves that have a Sabbath setting on them? Like it’s insane how you have to just go to all these lengths to not make God angry so that you stay in God’s favor, which is exactly the mindset that they have here.

And they’re saying, Jesus is not from God because there’s no way that God would ever break his own rules and heal somebody on the Sabbath, nor would he ever work on a Sabbath. So he must be a sinner. This guy has to be a sinner.

And then all of a sudden there’s division amongst them. So they’re arguing with each other. They go back to the guy and say, well, what do you say about him? And he’s like, listen, all I know is I was blind and now I see his name is Jesus, but can we at least go to the next step and at least acknowledge that maybe he’s a prophet? I mean, there must be something special about him.

He has some connection to God if he’s able to do this. Well, the Jews didn’t wanna believe it. And so what do they do? They go and they get his parents and they question his parents.

Number one, is this your son? Was he blind at birth? And how does he now see? Parents in the room, if this happened to your child, what would be your response? Would you embrace your child? Would you support your child? Would you defend your child? You’re awfully quiet on this holiday weekend. This isn’t a quick question. Yes.

Who wouldn’t do that? You love your kid. God placed that kid in your life. Of course you’re gonna say, yes, this is our child.

Yes, he was born blind. Yes, he now sees. This is how they answered.

We know that this is our son, but we don’t know who opened his eyes. Oh, by the way, he’s old enough. So why don’t you ask him? He can speak for himself.

Why are they deflecting? John actually tells us that his parents said these things, that they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. Therefore, his parents said, he is of age, ask him. Cowards.

What were they fearing? What was it that they were allowing to seep into their life? Social status. They were worried about being put out of the synagogue and the place that they would go and worship and the friends that they would have. And because their kid is an adult, that obviously he should just be able to take care of himself.

It’s kind of a sad part of this whole story. Now, some of you may know this. I bet most of you don’t know this, but my wife was actually born with one ear.

And whenever she wears her hair up and she’s in public, oftentimes people will do a double take. And it’s not because they’re trying to be rude. They just realized that like, where they’re supposed to be an ear, you look and you’re like, okay, there’s not an ear there, but there’s something else.

And so what’s interesting is when Lisa and I first started dating and I found out she had one ear, I said to Lisa, who sinned? You or her parents? And if you didn’t know, Lisa’s sitting over here in the front row next to my son who looks like he’s asleep in his baseball uniform and her parents are right behind them. So who sinned? And I said to my wife, I said, there’s this really cool story in the Bible where Jesus spat on the ground, made some dirt, put in ice, told God to go wash off and he was healed. What if I spit on the ground, make some dirt, put it on that side of your head that doesn’t have an ear and tell you to go rinse off and see if God doesn’t heal you miraculously in this moment? Don’t you think that was very nice of me to say that? And you know what she said to me? You’re an idiot, okay? Which is actually the proper response.

Why should we not do that? Why should we not go and try to mimic what Jesus does? Because we’re not God. Yet there’s TV evangelists and there’s people from the past and even currently that do weird, odd things and people flock to their tent meetings and flock to their shows on the television. They become obsessed with kind of the extraordinary type of healing things.

And it’s the same thing that I talked about with you last week, that people don’t realize the source of everything they need is Jesus. It’s not an idol. It’s not a saint.

It’s not some special water or a special cloth that was blessed by a certain person. Everything that you and I need can be found in the person and work of Jesus. The reason Jesus is healing this guy is for a far greater purpose.

He, again, is provoking the religious leaders. He is drawing attention to himself because he knows that their anger is gonna burn within them, that they’re never ever gonna have a heart that wants to believe that he’s the savior because he knows his ultimate mission is to go to the cross, to stretch out his arms. And the way that he’s able to pay for your sins and my sins is because he does not have sin within him.

He is the spotless lamb. He is the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament prophecies that were written about him. And yet here in this moment, in this miracle, we see humanity at its darkest level in these parents, separating themselves from their son, watching God at work and yet not wanting to be associated with him.

Who or what do you think we fear the most? Have things changed in the last 2,000 years? Because certainly nobody today is obsessed with their social status, are they? The connections that we have in our neighborhoods, in our places of work, even in our church. I hope none of you come in here and you care about your status as a member of this congregation. We’re all sinners.

We all deserve punishment, but thanks be to God, he’s the one that sent Jesus to pull us out of the pit that we put ourselves in. So now as the assembled people of God, as his church, we can devote our lives to him because he paid the ultimate sacrifice for us. And so as we look at this, we have nothing to fear because we have Jesus.

How about this? Flip it the other way. Who or what do we not fear? Ever thought about it from that perspective? I think there’s a whole lot of people they just don’t fear God. Life is good, life is comfortable.

Maybe they’ve had some hardships, maybe they have some things that they’ve had to overcome, but they give themselves the credit and the praise or they think they’re smarter than God or they think that what we do here on Sunday mornings or even opening the Bible and reading scripture is so antiquated and old fashioned. Look what happens with these religious leaders. It says a second time they call the guy in and they said, you need to give glory to God.

So they still in their head think they’re worshiping God and they call Jesus a sinner a second time. And that’s exactly what the devil does, isn’t it? Jesus isn’t the savior, Jesus wasn’t sinless. How is it even possible that one man could die for the sins of every single person that’s ever been born or ever will be born? This is an attack on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I love this because what happens next is phenomenal. This guy that’s been blind goes in and begins to debate the religious leaders. Imagine this guy is blind and he’s a beggar, that’s his occupation.

And he looks at them and he says, I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you wanna hear it again? Where does faith come from? From hearing, I’m standing in front of you, I’m the miracle, I’m not lying to you. My parents just confirmed that I’m their kid.

You can see me and yet you still won’t believe. Why is your heart so hardened? Why is it so hard for you to accept who Jesus is and what it is that he has come to do? And then this is so fascinating to me because what does he say? Since you guys are asking all these questions, do you wanna come and be his follower and be his disciples too? They were so enraged that he asked them this and that he was debating them this, that if you read the whole chapter, they kick him out of the synagogue. They banish him from their presence.

So what happens to him is the exact thing that his parents feared. And he didn’t care, he didn’t care. Listen to what happens next.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out and all of a sudden he reappears. This is what happened last week, right? He found the guy that he had healed. He finds this guy and he says, do you believe in the Son of God? Do you believe in the Messiah? Do you believe in the Savior? And the man answered, well, who is he, sir? Because he doesn’t know who Jesus is up to this point.

Can you tell me so that I may believe in him? And Jesus says, you have seen him and it is he who is speaking to you. And his response is so powerful because he says, Lord, I believe. In this moment, he humbles himself.

He puts God in his rightful place and he puts himself in the place that he should be in, a fallen, sinful human being, even a guy that was born blind. And not only does he say, I believe, what does he do next? He worships him. And I wish we had more context to what that looked like.

I wish we knew exactly what it is that he did to worship him in that moment. We know we have other accounts where Jesus interacts with people, people that have fallen on the feet of Jesus, people that have kissed Jesus’ feet, people that have wrapped their arms around Jesus, people that have reached out and just wanted to touch the garments of Jesus. He worshiped him.

Worshiped him. And do you know that’s God’s ultimate goal for you and for me and for every human on this planet? Is to move us from what we see with our eyes and to awaken the reality of who he is in the spiritual realm, which is unseen. And yet again, that’s another barrier for so many people.

If I can’t see it, if I can’t touch it, if I can’t taste it, if I don’t have the facts, if my college professors, if this whatever source, if chatGBT says it’s not true, then certainly it must not be true. And Jesus comes along and says, no, no. That’s not how it’s gonna work.

I am the way. I’m the truth. I’m the life.

No one, absolutely no one, no other religion, no other source, no other awakening or enlightening leads to God, it’s me. And again, it was prophesied over and over and over again in the Old Testament. I am here and I am now and I am the God of the Sabbath.

If I wanna heal somebody on the Sabbath, you better believe that I can do it because he’s trying to change their perspective. He’s trying to get them to look at it from an eternal perspective. And even in that moment, there was hardening of hearts.

Even in that moment, after seeing a miracle, people still didn’t want to believe. Can I ask you this this morning as well? Why is humanity so stubborn? What is it? What is it about this life that people obsess about? Is it really having the house or the car or the race car or the boat or the vacation or the purse or the piece of jewelry? Really, what is it that you could buy in this life that’s really that great? Might give you satisfaction for a few days, maybe a few weeks. Every single thing that we try to fill our lives with other than Jesus always fades.

Jesus is the only one who gives us saving faith and strengthens us and gives us exactly what we need. You’re awfully quiet on this holiday weekend, just so you know. I hope the people in Algonac aren’t as quiet as you are in here.

So maybe this is what I should ask. Why am I so stubborn? Why? You know how I know you’re all stubborn? Let’s do this little tidbit this morning and those in Algonac, you do this as well. If you are seated next to a stubborn person, go ahead and raise your hand.

Go ahead. Some of you are gonna be walking home now. It’s gonna be great.

The answer is what we said was the key word when we started the message. Sin. It’s because we’re in this human body that’s fallen and sinful and is constantly at war with our spirit, constantly wanting to focus on ourselves.

And every day, the scriptures tell us we have to die to self, take up the cross of Christ and follow Jesus, even with the naysayers, even with the negative people, even with the people that pick on us for being Christians or tell us we’re crazy or tell us our religion is antiquated. Every day, it’s a dying to self. It’s a humility of having to say, I’m not God.

I didn’t create myself. In fact, I don’t even know when that day will come when my life will be done on this earth. But God, you are the one that created me.

You are the one that sent your one and only son to this earth to do what we couldn’t do for ourselves. You are the one that had interactions with people and there was people you healed and there was plenty of people that you didn’t heal. And ultimately, whatever it is that you have done and whatever it is that you continue to do in our lives, we know that you have given us every single thing that we need because you have given us Jesus and he is all we need.

Amen.