What it Takes to See Jesus
Tom Shrader teaches from John 9 about the healing of the man born blind, emphasizing that God sometimes allows or causes difficulties in our lives not as punishment for sin, but to make us display cases for His work. The lesson explores how the blind man's transformation from beggar to worshiper illustrates true belief, while the religious leaders remain spiritually blind despite their physical sight.
“You are a display case for the work of God, that He wants that light to shine on you in such a way that people will look at you and see Him.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: John: The Essence of Life
Recorded: 2008
Duration: 43 min
Themes: healing, blindness, faith, transformation, worship, suffering, purpose, belief, struggling with suffering, questioning god's purpose, dealing with disability, experiencing rejection, new believer, facing opposition, seeking understanding, religious leader
Scripture: John 9:1-38, John 20:30-31, John 6:29, 1 Samuel 1:5-6, Matthew 5:14, Romans 12, John 8:56-59
Theological Themes: miracles, divine sovereignty, spiritual blindness, regeneration, saving faith, theodicy, christology, soteriology
Full Transcript
**Session 5 of a 12-week flyover in the Gospel of John**
There's been a certain repetitiveness to this. If you remember, we told you the key to understanding the gospel is John's purpose statement which he gives us in John chapter 20 verses 30 and 31, where he says Jesus did other things other than this, but these I've hand-selected. These I've written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and as a result of believing you will have eternal life.
We saw in John chapter 6 Jesus say in verse 29, "This is the work of God, that you will believe in Him whom He—that's God—whom God has sent." So that word "believe" in the noun and verb form appears more than 80 times in this gospel. This gospel is driven by a desire on the part of John humanly, the Holy Spirit in the divine nature, to help you believe this, to know this. And believe is more than mental assent—it's transformational belief, and we'll talk about that in a bit.
The Timeline and Context of John's Gospel
If you take the four Gospels and lay them out chronologically, the Gospel of Mark was written in the 50s. It was the first of the four Gospels written, so we can arbitrarily assign it a date like 55, maybe off a year or two. We're really comfortable that we can date Luke's Gospel around 60. Matthew comes along and is written after Luke, sometime in the 60s. Then there's really a gap to get here to the Gospel of John, written somewhere between 85 and 90 AD.
John is now at the end of his life. He is a prolific writer, so he's written what we have in the text here in the Bible: 1st John, 2nd John, 3rd John. He's also the one who wrote the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, and wrote this gospel. If you've been around the scripture, John's all over it—John's in there. He is the disciple whom Jesus loved. He has given you in many of these instances a firsthand account. He's there.
He is really unique in his presentation in the gospel. He has none of Jesus' parables in here. There are stories and a lot of miracle stories, and it lines up with what you would assume in his purpose, which is to have us look at this and say there's something different about Jesus, something unique about Jesus. His desire is that we would understand that indeed Jesus is the Son of God—that we would more than just understand it, we would believe it, and when we do, our lives are transformed.
The Growing Tension with the Jewish Leaders
As we get to John chapter 9, I might back up just a bit because there's a confrontation at the end of John chapter 8 between Jesus and the Jews. Jesus is beginning to answer their questions. He begins to talk about in verse 56, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it and was glad." And the Jews said to Him, "You're not yet 50 years old, and you've seen Abraham?" "Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am." And therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, and Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.
My point in mentioning that—and I think we'll mention it again in a week or so—you will have people periodically who will say to you, "Jesus never claimed to be God." That's exactly what's going on there. The relationship between Jesus and the Jews, the tension—we say Jews here, we mean primarily the Jewish leaders—the pressure of this is ratcheting up. The tension is increasing, and today is an example of both what John's trying to do to show us an incredible story.
I love these first three, four, or five verses of John chapter 9, and I go back to them again and again. Obviously, I'll make those points to you. But you see this relationship intensify. You see the Jews more and more angry and intimidated by Jesus, and you see now the effect of these miracles. You get this wonderful transforming story.
The Man Born Blind
John chapter 9 verse 1: "As Jesus passed by, He saw a man"—and here's all we know about the guy at this point—"he was blind from birth." His disciples asked Jesus, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus said, "It was neither this man who sinned nor his parents, but it was so the works of God might be displayed in him. He 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'm in the world, I am the light of the world."
This is a wonderful scene, and this is the way—by the way, there are a whole bunch of different ways to go with this lesson, so let me cherry-pick some of them. Obviously, I'm going to leave out huge applications. But Jesus is with His guys. The best way to train anybody in anything is to do it with them, is to let them see you do it. Now they have to go out and experience it on their own, but this is a living classroom.
A Personal Application on Mentorship
We're talking about this now, trying to figure out what I want to do the next 10 years of my life. Here are at least where I'm starting—the givens: I want to keep doing Priority Living, I want to keep doing the teaching at the church, but I'm not sure about these other things. I'm honing in—I got 90 days invested in this—and I'm honing in on something that I feel and something that I sense. I have this semi-new aspiration.
Part of that is identifying really key, especially younger people, and giving them what little I have to give, but giving it to them in an intensified way. Which is not: come and take a class, go away, come back and take another class, but to live life in an integrated way with them. Now I don't even know what that means. I don't even know what I just said. But I know this: coming and taking a class and then going away has some value, but it's very limited.
But when you're walking along with Jesus, doesn't life happen? Aren't the most significant moments in your life never on your Blackberry? They just are. They just happen. Well, this is one of them. They're walking along, here's a blind guy, and they ask the question of the day because it's conventional wisdom. "Jesus, help us here. Was it this guy's sin?"—which is really odd because he's born blind, so he would have had to sin
Jesus confronts conventional wisdom head-on in this passage. When His disciples ask if this man's blindness was caused by his own sin or his parents' sin, Jesus says it wasn't either of those. He's busting walls down on conventional thought processes right there. It was neither of those. He is there, you see it in verse 3, "so that the works of God might be displayed in him."
Let me apply some of this to our lives. Frequently we try to measure our spiritual temperature or condition by our circumstantial or physical setting. We assume if everything's going well, I must spiritually be doing well. If everything goes south, is there something that I did wrong? Your friends might even come that way—that's what happened to Job. Everything's going south in Job's life, so what do his buddies do? They don't come to his aid in his comfort. They go, "Job, you obviously done something." His wife says, "Job, curse God and die."
The Reality of Divine Discipline
That happens, and there's a reason for it because we understand that in our life there is this idea of sowing and reaping of consequences to what we do. So if you've sinned and you're one of God's kids, He's going to discipline you. If you're here today and you're involved in some ongoing sin—we all sin, I got it—but you got this ongoing unrepentant sin and God has not disciplined you, two things. One, duck because something's coming. Worse than that, too, He may not be disciplining you because you may not be His kid. That's worse.
Susan and I were with Haley and Tyler and Braden the other day, and I said to Susan, "Man, they are really strict with these kids." She said, "Hey, slick, do you remember at all what kind of dad you were?" I said, "Father of the year, if I remember correctly." She said, "No, no, you didn't let them breathe. You were all over." Well, I don't think that's true. I think a little hyperbole—the drugs periodically affect her mind, so I discount it. That's what I'll tell her: "You're sick."
But she said, "Do you remember?" I don't really remember it, but I know this: as strict as I might have been, the only kids I ever spanked or disciplined really were my own. There were kids all around me that needed to be disciplined, but they weren't mine. If you're God's kid, it's because He loves you.
Discipline in Love, Not Anger
I remember having to do that, and I had one of those moments that sounds like you're making it up because you've seen it around, but I just remember one day sitting with Sarah, explaining what she did, explaining and accepting her apology, but explaining consequences to behavior. I told her that I had to spank her, that I thought this was what needed to come down, that she had other issues we were going to deal with, but she had to be spanked. I remember saying, "I just want you to know, this is really difficult, Sarah, and this really does hurt me and will hurt me more than it does you." She just looked me right in the eye and said, "I just don't think that's true, Dad. I don't think that's true." So I said, "All right, maybe not." Then I spanked her, and we were done with it.
I had to always be very careful to discipline her in love, but not punish her in anger. There's a big difference. I was very comfortable getting away a little bit and then coming back. I would say, "Babe, you know why we do this? Because we love you. This is why we don't let you do this or tell you not to do that." God's the same way.
When God Allows Difficulty for Growth
So all of a sudden, something comes into your life, and you go, "Oh, I must have screwed up." Let me give you the other side of the coin: not necessarily so. Sometimes God causes or allows things in your life to teach you a lesson. We're studying 1 Samuel at church right now. In 1 Samuel chapter 1, there's this gal Hannah who is barren. She has a rival wife who's ridiculing her year after year. Here's why she's barren: 1 Samuel chapter 1, verses 5 and 6 say the Lord closed her womb. We hear it twice.
Well, why would you do that, God? What kind of God? See, that's kind of that human thing, because He's going to do something so big that she and her son become, as verse 3 of John 9 says, a display case for God's work. Sometimes God causes—and I'm very comfortable with that—or allows things in your life, and it may not have any punitive or disciplined side to it at all. He's simply teaching you stuff.
For example, how is God going to teach you patience unless He puts you in trying circumstances? You don't know if you have patience until you have pressure. If every light is green, we don't know if you're a patient driver. See that?
Understanding God's Purpose in Our Trials
We don't want to make the mistake that these guys make to say, "Okay, my circumstances are bad, there must be sin." We do want to take an inventory, but we want to understand that God allows—and I want to say this now—He allows or brings into your life junk, hassles, pain, so that you might become a display case. God's never in with His kids trying to tear you apart to destroy you. He may tear you apart so that He can reassemble you so that you are more His kid. But this guy becomes a display case.
I love that imagery. I love to think of walking through the mall and seeing a display case, and going into a store and taking the time to look around, to see on a display case something that they really want to highlight. Walk into a department store to the cosmetic section, and look at strategically the lighting. Look how the lighting, the tone of it, the wattage of it, the direction of it, how it's hitting certain things in certain ways to highlight that product.
That's what you are. You are a display case for the work of God. He wants that light to shine on you in such a way that people will look at you and see Him. Don't make it about you. You always want to make it about you. I always want to make it about me. It's not about you. It's about Him. It's about what He's done in you.
The Light of the World
This is a beautiful potential here. Jesus says, "Listen, this is the way this is going to get done. I have to do the work of Him who sent me." Look at verse five: "While I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world."
So here you go. Who is the light of the world? He is. Because here's what He said: "While I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world." If you go to Matthew 5, verse 14, He says in the Sermon on the Mount, "You are the light of the world." That's that idea of me and display case.
Now this is a little new agey. I want you to see this. When He says "I'm the light of the world," He means I'm the direct light of the world like a sun, S-U-N. I'm the source of the light. You and I, this gets a little weird, I know. Give me a second. You and I are like moons, meaning we aren't the source of sun. We're just reflecting the sun's light off of us.
When I look at you, I should see Jesus. That's why in Matthew 5, He says you're the light of the world. Let your light shine in such a way that people see your good works, but then glorify your Father in heaven. And the only way they're going to glorify the Father in heaven is if you tell them to. Because instinctively, they're going to worship you. Instinctively, they're going to think you're a heck of a person. "Boy, do you know that Bob? He's a heck of a guy." And so they're going to come to Bob and there's your opportunity when they come to you to say, "It's not me. It's the Christ in me."
Our Opportunity in Hardship
So along comes whatever it is in your life. And by the way, boy, this is a long introduction. By the way, in the midst of this economic hardship is even a better time to display this. Things are bad. They're going to get worse. Everything we're doing is wrong. Now, I'm sure there's a little bit of hyperbole there, but if you said, "Do what you think got us here, and just do that again and see if it'll get us out," that's all we're doing. This makes no sense.
But that's okay. And it's going to get worse. Here you go. Government figures are saying unemployment is going to 10 or 11%. What does that tell you? It's going to 14. You know that they're not right.
In the middle of this hurt and the middle of this pain, when they're looking to you, if you're just there whining like everybody else, if you're just like everybody else in the approach, then you have absolutely no testimony in the midst of it. This is our opportunity to stand and to look distinct and to look different.
I don't like it. I hate it. It makes me sick. I think of the money that I lost that I worked so hard to put away as I get closer to the end of my life. But you know what? Whatever. God caused it or allowed it. It's His job. He took it away. I either didn't need it or He's going to come in some incredible way and bring it back. That's why He's God and I'm not.
And in the midst of this, it's to let people see you in that. That's a wonderful place. When you are stripped away of all of your cleverness, your intelligence, your plans, that's a great place to be. It's an uncomfortable place to be and it's a hard place to be, but it's a great place to be because God works best there. Our inabilities and our inadequacies are God's starting place in our life.
The Blind Beggar's Life
So this is great. You can see here all the potential. You can see it in place. This guy's been blind from birth, so he has no shot at moving. He's not going to be Ray Charles. He's got no shot of moving up in this culture. He's blind. He's a beggar. He's going to stay there.
Reminding you, a beggar is not a guy that's going, "Hey man, got any extra change?" These are guys who would sit in the public place. They would cower. They'd be intimidated. They were outcasts. They were hated. They were seen as nothing of any value. That's him.
The Miracle
Verse six: "When He'd said this, He spat on the ground, made clay of spittle, applied the clay to his eyes and said, 'Go wash.'" He went away and washed and He came back seeing.
Now I'm moving outside the text here. I'm making some assumptions. If they're wrong, I don't think any huge damage, but I want to do disclosure. I want you to see that. Come into the sandals of the blind guy now. He's sitting there. He's hearing this. What's going on? They've had another discussion of sin. I'm sure that's been nothing new. I'm sure he's been an object lesson for a thousand Sunday school classes and have walked by and said, "Don't be that. Look at that. What's his problem?"
We know, we're going to find out in a minute that his parents are going to say he's of age, which in that culture would mean about 30. So for 30 years, he's been sitting as an object of public ridicule. He hears this discussion. He hears a pause. And the next sound he hears is Jesus going, "grrr."
Now, for you and me, we're going, "Oh, we see what's going on." Here's what I want you to get. Get his 30 years, get his experience, get his position, because I think he's heard those words before. I think he's heard that sound before. People walking by going, "grrr." So I'm guessing when he hears this, there might have even been a physical reaction. But the outcome's totally different. Because now he sees.
The Neighbors' Reaction
Well, you got to know that that's going to create a reaction, right? The first group are the neighbors in verse nine. Therefore the neighbors, these are all the guys that have been around. They had previously saw him as a beggar. They said, "Is this not the one who used to sit and beg? Is this not the guy that used to do all the begging all the time?" And others are saying, "Yeah, it's he." Others are saying, "I don't think so. Somebody looks like him. Everybody has a double. I think it's his double."
And he's down there saying, "No, no, no, no. It's me. I'm the guy." And they said to him, "How then were your eyes opened?" And he said, "The one who is called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes, told me to go and wash, I went and washed, and I received sight."
my sight." And they said to him, "Where is He?" And he said, "I don't know."
He's going to go from the neighbors to the Jewish leaders, in this case the Pharisees. The Pharisees are going to go to his parents, and then back to the Pharisees again.
The Absence of Joy
This is unfair. So I'll just ask the question rhetorically and then give you an answer. Is there something at all that you notice in this interaction with the neighbors that strikes you as odd? Because the same thing happens when they come to his parents - they say, "Is this the guy?" and they say, "We don't know, ask him," because they're afraid they're going to be put out of the synagogue. The Pharisees are coming and going, "Wait a minute, did He do this on the Sabbath?" Is there anything that strikes you as odd in all of that?
Here's what it is to me. There's no joy in this. This guy's been blind for 30 years. Wouldn't you think they'd be high-fiving him? Now there's a human side to this - God's doing something, and they're just mystified by it. But there's a human principle here.
"Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep," Paul writes in Romans 12. And he puts them in that order, I think, for this reason. It's far easier to weep with those who weep than to rejoice with those who rejoice. It's far easier to climb into somebody's bad news and be there with them than to rejoice in the good news.
So if I come in today and say to you, "We got back from the doctor last night, and this just isn't looking good for Susan. We're at the end now. This is it - it's going to be just a matter of days," well, you're going to cry. You're going to ask what you can do. No problem.
But if I come in and they say, "What's up?" and I go, "It's the strangest thing. We had this uncle that lived in Oklahoma. He was a nut, and we all thought he was nuts. We never understood what he did, and he just kind of was out there. He was a little bit of a rancher, a little bit of a farmer. We could never figure it out - just a goofy old guy. But although we didn't understand it, what he would do is farm land and then buy land. He just did it long enough that he had a whole bunch of land. They just got a survey report back, and they hit oil there. He's got all this money. Well, he died last night. When I was 10, I went to stay with him one summer, and apparently he really liked me. So this attorney called to tell me that I've got 10 or 12 million dollars coming my way."
The deafening sound of one hand clapping at this moment. The only possible rejoicing you have in that is, "What could I get out of Tom's 10 million dollars?" That's all you can think of.
So there's probably some of this human nature here, but I think generally, there's bewilderment. This guy says, "Listen, I don't know. Where is He? Don't know. Haven't got a clue."
The Pharisees Enter the Scene
They brought him to the Pharisees. These now, let me remind you, are the religious guys. These are the leaders of the day. These are the big shots. The man who was formerly blind - now it was on the Sabbath that Jesus made clay and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees also were asking him how he received his sight. And he said, "He applied clay to my eyes, and I washed, and I can see."
Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying, "This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath." But others were saying, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And there was a division among them. So they said to the blind man again, "What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes?" And he said, "He is a prophet."
The Parents' Fear
The Jews then did not believe it of him, that he had been blind and received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight. And they questioned them, saying, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?"
His parents answered them and said, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind. But how he now sees, we do not know, or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself."
Now I just tell you, humanly, as a parent, I can't imagine having a child that's been blind for 30 years who can now see, and having that kind of very sterile, very academic response. Why would they talk like that?
Verse 22 is the answer: "His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue." Therefore his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."
The Weight of Excommunication
To be put out of the synagogue is more than to say, "Well, you can't go to church." This would be the end of their life as they know it. It would be the end of commerce. It would be the end of interaction, relationships. They would be ostracized. It would be virtually impossible to function within that setting.
Sabbath Legalism
So they come back to the Pharisees, and you've got someone going, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Check the calendar. This happened on the Sabbath. I see a violation here," because they had strict laws - strict laws about what they could do. And to the point where it got silly.
So they could not on the Sabbath travel. What does it mean to travel? It means to go further than a certain distance from your house. But what defines a house? A place of personal possessions. So they would have somebody go and strategically along the way drop an article of clothing, drop something that they owned, so they could make a trip on the Sabbath by claiming multiple residences based on their possessions.
Sabbath, because they never left home, because they had a little peace of articles, it had gotten silly. Jesus now had worked on the Sabbath, and even when you spit, was it okay to spit on the Sabbath? It depended where the spit landed, because if it landed on a hard surface, fine, if it landed on dirt, it would create a little trough, and that would be the equivalent of cultivating or gardening. I mean it's silly, it's silly the point that this had reached, so now they apply it to Jesus.
Has Religion Gotten in the Way?
Now here's the point for us today. Religion had gotten in the way of seeing Jesus. Now we can climb right into your face here: has your religion gotten in the way of you seeing Christ? I'm not saying, have you been to church. One of the great places to run from God is to church, hide from God in church. Be an usher, be a greeter, climb in a choir, God's not in there, climb in a choir, you're not going to find Him there, get behind a pulpit.
Religion, if you're new to one of our studies, this could really shake you up. God hates religion, by that we mean a meaningless kind of ritual confirmation to some external behavior that somehow you think makes you acceptable to God. There's nothing you can do to make yourself acceptable to a holy God, and by the way, that's incredibly freeing.
God's Unchanging Love
I gave you this a couple of weeks ago, and didn't get near the response that it should have gotten, so let's do it again. Especially those of you that are Christians, exclusively those of you that are Christians, I'm going to give you something that is really freeing here. There is no way that you are Christ followers now, there's no way that God can love you more and no way God can love you less. So quit trying to make Him love you. He loves you. We're done with that.
So what motivates you is not trying to make Him love you, or trying to get acceptable to Him. What motivates you is the affection of your heart has changed.
Love as Motivation
Now let's take kids for example. With my kids, at some level, I know they obeyed me because they were afraid, or out of respect or something. They did what I wanted them to do for what I would say are the wrong reasons, but at least they did it, and I'm fine with that. I'd rather have them obey me for the wrong reasons than disobey me. But the best thing was when they obeyed me because they loved me.
So as a parent, I was constantly trying to take their affection for me and move it to God. I didn't want them to love me more than they love God. If their behavior was driven by loving me or being in my house or a relationship with me, that's going to change, even if we have a great relationship and I just die. All of a sudden, if it's me that's driving this, I'm gone, but their affection needs to move from me to God.
That's why if I'm in love with Him, all of a sudden I'm doing the things that I know He would want me to do and that are pleasing to Him and that don't quench the spirit. And I'm doing them not out of some duty or some behavioral modification, but I'm doing them because I love Him, and that's what a person does in a loving relationship. So it's not just changing my behavior, it's changing the affection of my heart, from the things that I naturally love, which are myself, my sin, my ego, my pride, my agenda, to loving God, His affection, His agenda.
Religion can just flat get in the way of that. Religion will just feed your ego, make you further insecure, drive you to irrational behavior, motivated by duty or repentance, rather than love of God, and it will eventually poop out.
The Blind Who See and the Seeing Who Are Blind
So these guys don't get it. There's a little irony too here. These guys physically have a vision 20-20 and spiritually they're the ones who are blind. They can't see it. It's incredible.
So a second time, verse 24, they called a man who was blind and they said, "Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner." We know Jesus is a sinner. And he said, "Whether he's a sinner or not, I don't know. Here's what I know. I was blind. Now I see." That's all I know at this point. I'll let you, because you're the experts, you have this ability to look into his heart, you figure it out.
They said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" Now the blind man, I love this, said, "I told you already. You didn't listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you not want to become his disciples too?"
The Man Born Blind Turns the Tables
He says, this is really interesting. I was blind, but apparently you're deaf. I was blind. I couldn't see, but apparently you can't hear. We've been down this road before. We've covered this territory. What's the problem? Are you wanting to follow him? Is that what's going on here? God really must be doing something in your life.
And they replied and said, "You are his disciple. We are the disciples of Moses." Now, let me tell you what this is. Self-righteous garbage. You follow that? We follow Moses, law, religion. "We know God has spoken to Moses, but for this man, we don't know where he's from."
Simple Truth from an Unlikely Source
And the man answered and said, "Well, here's an amazing thing. Now you don't know where he's from. And yet he opened my eyes." He said, this is really interesting because you're the guys that are supposed to know this stuff. You're the experts. We know this is still the man now. This is the guy that's going.
This is really interesting because I've been to school, I've been to seminary, not that sharp, can't read, can't write, blind, don't know much. But I do know this. "We know that God does not hear sinners. And if anyone is God fearing, he does his will. He hears him. And since the beginning of time, it has never been heard that anyone has opened the eyes of a person who's blind. If this man's not from God, he couldn't do these things."
I don't know much, but I know this. That this guy you're describing, he couldn't do this stuff. We've never seen things like this. And they answered and said, "You were born entirely in sins and you are teaching us." And so they had it
I remember one time sitting with a guy who was a pastor. I'm not trying to equate these situations at all, but his card and everything out front had to have a thing displaying his title. I'm always suspicious of a sign out front that has the pastor's name on it to begin with, but then has "doctor" and degrees after it. To me personally, I can tell you a lot about that guy and about that church by that sign. I know this: it would be a drive-by for me. I'm not trying to put that down because some of you may like it. I'm just telling you for me, if you've got to say "call me doctor" and show me your degrees, I don't find that very winsome.
So I'm with this pastor guy and he's "doctor, doctor, call me doctor, doctor, doctor," and more degrees than a thermometer. As I'm talking to him, I'm asking him a question - a theological question. It happens to be one area in which I am not the Bible answer man. Many of you know this stuff better than me, but we happen to be in an area that I think I know pretty well. So I ask him a question and here's what he said to me: "Where did you go to seminary?" I said, "I didn't go to seminary, I went to St. Ambrose and I had to cheat to get out of there." He said, "All right, where have you done your graduate work?" I said, "I didn't do any of that." "Have you written any books?" I said, "I don't write my mom."
So we went through this whole thing and he said, "Well, here's the deal. I've gone to here, here, here and here. When you can elevate yourself to this level, we can have this dialogue." I said, "That's fine with me. This is just one less person I have to call a friend on my Facebook. I don't have to interact with this." I'm all right with that, and I probably am more aware of my weaknesses than you are.
Religious Pride vs. Simple Faith
I'll tell you what, I drove away laughing, going, "This guy should have been in John 9. This is perfect." Who are you, you little punk, to ask me these questions? I wasn't even asking him in a hostile way, and I'm responding to somebody who asked me to get a hold of him. He wanted me to come and talk to him because I'm not going to get in somebody's face. I'm not that kind of person.
Boy, I tell you, that's what religion does. Don't you confuse "doctor, doctor, Ph.D., blah, blah, blah" with a guy who understands God and His word. I'm not saying that isn't good. I'm inadequate in some areas because I don't have that. I got it. But with that stuff comes an attitude that I'm not that interested in. "You don't know enough. Get out of here, kid. Run away, buddy. This is the big leagues." That's what he's saying to the blind man.
Jesus Reveals Himself
Jesus heard that they'd put him out. Jesus isn't quite done with him. He said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" The blind man said, "Who is He, Lord, that I believe in Him? I don't know. I don't know what I believe. I was blind. Now I can see. I'm confused. I don't know."
Jesus said to him, "You have both seen Him" - now physically and now spiritually, two ways here. He's going both ways on this - "and He is the one who's talking to you." And he said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped Him.
Then Jesus pronounces a judgment here. Jesus said, "For judgment I came into the world so that those who do not see may see and that those who may see will become blind." Those Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, "We are not blind, too, are we?" Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would have no sin. But since you say that we see, your sin remains."
Physical and Spiritual Sight
I don't want to unpack that last part of that, but Jesus is moving and talking about physical and spiritual. He's saying what we said earlier: You can see physically, but spiritually, your heart's hard. You don't see. It goes back into last week's lesson. God hasn't opened their eyes and they haven't seen this.
Here's where I want to focus. Verse 38: "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped Him.
The Mark of True Conversion
We'll have conversations periodically, and I imagine there are some of limited value, about when were the apostles converted? When did Peter become a Christian in our vernacular? When did these guys - I don't know, whatever. When did you believe?
For me, I can tell you, it was March 6th, 1980, right over there at McCormick Ranch, you know where the little lake is. There's a hotel, restaurant and office building. The office building, we were just finishing. They were just getting ready to TI it, do the tenant improvements, and I was there to meet a client. It was about 8:15, 8:20 in the morning, and it was that place, that moment, that time, that day that God saved me.
Some of you are going, "I don't know when it was. It was like in 1999." Others of you are saying, "I don't even know." Like that would be Ruth Graham and Billy Graham. Billy Graham would say, "This place, this time, this moment." Ruth Graham would say, "I don't know. I just know that I am." That's the answer. It doesn't matter if you know the day or time. It's that you know that you are.
How do I know that I am? Well, there's a heart change that takes place, and then I become - do you see it there - a worshiper of God. The affections of my heart change. I don't worship myself or my church.
Worshiping the Word vs. the God of the Word
Here you go. I think I got some people that I know that are really solid Bible people. Perfect. That's a good thing to do. I see a problem though. They tend to worship the Word of God rather than the God of the Word. They know chapter and verse, but it's become a gig. It's become a study. So you ask them about what God's doing in their life, and they get this blank stare.
If I say to you, "What's God doing in your life?" and you got a blank stare or something - I didn't make it up. The last time I talked to a guy, a couple of years ago, this one guy, and I said, "What has God done..."
And he said, "You know, two years ago at the mall at Christmas, I got a great parking spot." Well, that's pretty cool. And I happen to think, because I'm on a roll right now, I'm getting great parking spots where I go, and I give God the glory for it. I mean that. I got great spots. But I wouldn't put that on my top ten list. If that's all you got going is God got you a spot to park in, that ain't enough.
What's He doing in your heart? What's He doing in your relationships? What's He doing if you're dating? What kind of a Christian date are you? Are you just sleeping around and whoring around like everybody else? Because if that's true, then there's no different going on.
If you're married, what kind of a husband are you? What kind of a wife are you? What kind of a parent are you? What kind of a child are you? What kind of a co-worker are you? There should be a difference because you're now not a person worshiper. You're not an idol worshiper. You're a God worshiper.
A Transformed Heart, Informed Mind, Radical Life
So what has happened? I'm getting ready to do the most difficult thing I do every year—summer camp. It's the toughest thing I do. It's the most intimidating thing I do every year. Take 500 junior high and high school kids and I teach them twice a day like this for 45 minutes. It's the most difficult thing I do all year.
So I met with the guys that organized it a week ago. I said, "Here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, because we have kind of a leadership team now, why don't I take two sessions and then Tyler will take two sessions and Tim will take two sessions." So they came yesterday and said, "We've been thinking about this. And we think that it ought to be you at all six. We'll do whatever you want to do, but we think it ought to be you at all six. There's a continuity. There's a power of the position you're in. We think it's important."
And I said, "You're the guys we pay to run this. If that's your conclusion, then that's what we'll do." And they said, "What are you going to talk about?" And I said, "Here's what I've been thinking about. I've been thinking about that I have a transformed heart and an informed mind that leads to a radical life. So I think that'll be the theme. And then we'll just illustrate it from characters of the scripture."
That should be you. If you're a Christ follower, you've got a transformed heart. Your heart's been changed. Blind man's heart's changed. His affections are now for God. He's now an informed mind. He doesn't know much. He's just this side of the thief on the cross. All he knows is I was blind. Now I can see. But now he's beginning to see other things. And they're forcing him to answer these really tough theological questions. And now Jesus has told them. And now he has a transformed heart. Now an informed mind. And it's a radical life.
From Worship of Man to Worship of God
How radical is the life? He all of a sudden, though not much has happened and a short time frame has passed. All of a sudden, he's moved from a man worshiper, a false god worshiper, a religious man at best, to somebody who worships the risen Lord. And that's your testimony of mine.
There's a whole bunch of stuff in there. But that's a great lesson. For those of you that don't know Christ, it's come to Him in repentance and faith. We're going to show you more miracles and talk about them over the next seven weeks as we cover it. And drive you to that.
For those of us who know Christ, I want you to feel and absorb the weight of what it means to be a display case for the work of God. Because that's who you are. God's working your life so that people will see your good works, your unique behavior, and not worship you, but worship the God who's in heaven. That's great, great, great stuff.
Let's pray and we get you on your way. Father, thank You for these amazing, wonderful truths that You teach us each and every week. God, I pray that You would use these words, Your truth, to transform our hearts. When these doors kick open and we go out into this world, let the world see people who are different, not odd, but unique. Because our hearts have been transformed, our minds are informed, and our lives are radical in the way we live. God, we pray these things to You in Christ's name. Amen.