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Logic – John 9: 29-33

“We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” The man answered,’’Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing’’

Do you remember who is speaking here? This was a poor blind man begging beside the road when Jesus found him. When asked why he was born blind, Jesus replied, “… so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

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Whose Disciple Are You? – John 9: 28

Then they hurled insults at him and said, ”You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! ”

The Pharisees claimed to be disciples of Moses. This is interesting because the function of a disciple is to be like their teacher. According to the Old Testament (Numbers 12: 3), Moses was humble. In fact, the Bible says he was the most humble person on the planet. In addition, as I read the books of Moses in the Old Testament, what seems to leap off of the page is that Moses did whatever God instructed him to do. He only improvised one time, that that one mistake kept him from entering the Promised Land. Even so, Moses trusted God and was faithful to follow his instructions.

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Guts

I wonder what I would think of a blind man sitting to the side of the road begging? For me, begging always seems to conjure up images of someone unwilling to work. Of course, if a person is blind, that makes it hard to do any kind of productive work. That doesn’t mean, however, that a blind person does not have brains or would not do work if they were able to.

Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”

John 9: 26-27
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Facts

A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”
He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

John 9: 24-25

Have you ever noticed how some people will try and change the subject when they are losing an argument? In this story, the Pharisees are on the losing side of the argument, and whether they admit it or not, they seem to know it. When they demand to know the “truth” they are really saying that they think the truth is a lie. When they claim that Jesus is a sinner, they are making a claim to something that they really do not understand.

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CAUTION!

So far in this story, Jesus happened by a man blind from birth. When asked why the man had been born blind Jesus replied, “…so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Then, he healed the man. Immediately people started arguing about whether or not it was the same man. After all, it is not natural for a person who has been blind to gain their sight. The argument is continued in front of the Pharisees who, not believing the man either, demand to hear it from his parents.

“Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”
“We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

John 9: 19-23

I give the parents full marks for caution. They literally did not “know” what had happened to their son. They answered as if they were in a court of law. (This was before Perry Mason was on TV, too!) They were wise to do this as in fact, they were in a kind of court.

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Disbelief

They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents.

John 9: 18

What is a formerly blind man to do when people don’t believe he was blind? Even people who knew him or had at least seen him often argued about whether or not he was the same man. To my knowledge blindness was not one of the illnesses that would be considered “unclean” so there was no need for this man to go to the temple to be declared “clean” after he was healed. Even so, he was taken before the Pharisees by those who first encountered him after he was able to see. After explaining what happened to the Pharisees, they did not believe the man’s story.

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Untimely Summons

Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”
The man replied, “He is a prophet.”

John 9: 17

Have you ever had someone rain on your parade? Most of us have. You are minding your own business, enjoying life as you see fit, and **BAM** something happens to totally turn your day upside down.

In today’s verse, we rejoin the man who has just been given his sight by Jesus after a lifetime of being blind. He is, for the first time in his life, able to see the sky above, the sun, the faces of people he has known only by their voice, the colors and shapes of fruits and vegetables, people’s clothing, buildings, even the wisps of dust that follow behind people as they walk through the streets. I can only imagine his joy! Suddenly he finds himself hauled in before the Pharisees and being treated like a criminal.

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Work

Again and again, the issue of the Sabbath comes up as a point of contention between the Pharisees and Jesus. Jesus intentionally provokes the Pharisees on this subject over and over. Why?

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”
But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.

John 9: 13-16

Did it ever occur to the Pharisees that complying with rules about what you can and cannot do on the Sabbath might be considered “work” in itself? In the name of avoiding work, they had made work out of the Sabbath.

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I Am the Man

When my youngest son was in high school, he had worn glasses for most of his life and as was the custom for many young people, he had let his hair grow quite long. When he decided to switch to contacts instead of glasses, he also arranged to cut his hair short so that when he went back to school the next Monday he looked like a different kid. In fact, he looked so different that nobody recognized him. For a whole day, he enjoyed being the “new kid” until his friends finally figured it out.

His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, ” Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” Some claimed that he was.
Others said, ” No, he only looks like him.”
But he himself insisted, ” I am the man.”

John 9: 8-9
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