John 9 - God’s Show And Tell

Main Idea: Your life is meant to display God’s ability to transform people.

• Display God’s work by being saved by Jesus. (vs. 1-7)

• Display God’s work by speaking about Jesus. (vs. 8-34)

• Display God’s work by submitting humbly to Jesus. (vs. 35-41)

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

We're continuing our series Pick a Side, walking through John 5 through 10. And I have been very blessed and encouraged and challenged as we've been looking at these portions of scripture.

As Jesus plainly declares who he is, and the religious leaders of the time, and the main, if you will, sects of Judaism there in the first century, they do not want the kind of messiah that Jesus is.

And in fact, they continually from chapter 5 on are trying to find out how they can kill him for what he is saying about himself and his relationship with God the Father. And John chapter 9 joins in that story.

The title for today's message is God's Show and Tell. God's Show and Tell. Now, how many of you in school ever participated in Show and Tell?

Can I get a raise of hands? Okay. I want what is the best item that you ever had for Show and Tell?

The thing that to this day you're like, listen, I think this was the best. Okay. I mean, a ferret.

Okay. Does anyone think they have a ferret beat? Okay.

I think, I think, sure, you might have won best Show and Tell item is a ferret. Do you have the ferret here with you today to bring? Okay.

All right. That's probably for the best. In today's passage, God tells us that he has something that he wants to display, to declare, to show off to the world.

And it is in fact better than a ferret. It is of much greater eternal worth. We're going to look first at the verses 1 through 3 of the passage today to see what this item is that God wants to display and declare and show to the world.

Because if God wants to display something, then it's probably pretty important. In John 9 and verse 1, it says, As he, Jesus, was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth.

And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind? This was a very popular way of thinking about the world, especially here in first century Judaism.

It was this, good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people.

If you have some debilitating illness that has affected your whole life, then you must really have done something super bad in order for bad things to be happening to you.

We can see this even in the Book of Job in the Old Testament, talked about at length where Job goes through his trials and all of his friends go like, dude, what in the world did you do? Why did you get God so angry at you?

And the whole time Job's going, I didn't do anything. Like, put me in front of God and I'll plead my case and go, God, why have you done all of this to me? But Jesus gives the answer that's going to affect how we look at all the rest of John 9.

And as we think about good and evil and what we receive in this life or what we don't receive in this life, it ought to be filtered through the words of Jesus in verse number three. Neither this man nor his parents sinned, Jesus answered.

He's not saying that they were sinless. He says, they did nothing to earn this. He says, this came about so that God's works might be displayed in him.

So that God's works might be displayed in him. Today as we look at John chapter 9 and see this amazing story that I'm so excited to go over with y'all, we're going to see this central truth.

Your life is meant to display God's ability to transform people. Your life is meant to display God's ability to transform people. In God's show and tell, the item that he wants to show off to the world is you.

Now, I don't want any of you thinking, yes, God wants to show off my parents or my grandparent or my kid. Yes, they are great. They are holy.

They are wonderful. God wants to transform you in such a way that other people look at you and go, oh yeah, God's really powerful. He can do some great stuff.

I've seen how he transformed Brian. I've seen how he's transformed little Brian. I've seen what he's done with Glenn.

And I believe in this God. Let's pray together. We're gonna walk through the passage.

This is one of my favorite accounts in all of Jesus's life. And certainly in the Gospel of John. And we're gonna be encouraged through the Word of God today.

Let's pray together. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us so much that not only have you forgiven us, not only have you made us your children, but God, you actually want to display your might and power through our lives.

God, it's not so that we can show other people how wonderful and how holy and how perfect we are. Lord, you know we are none of those things. But God, you are holy.

And God, may our lives be willing pictures of what you want to do in every person in our world. God, I ask that every person here today would have a desire to hear from you personally, what you have for their life for this week.

And Lord, I pray that there would be some people here today that right now, they don't know you as Savior. They've never given their life to you as their Lord. God, I ask that today would be the day that they choose to become a follower of Jesus.

We love you, Lord, and I pray that you would be with my words, help me to only say what you'd have me to. I pray all of this in your name. Amen.

We're going to see three truths, three ways today that we display God's work. First is being saved by Jesus. Secondly is by speaking about Jesus.

And then lastly, by submitting humbly to Jesus. And the first of these we see in verses one through seven. We display God's work by being saved by Jesus.

Here's how the account goes. So Jesus, he's walking, he's in Jerusalem. They've had several encounters with the religious leaders who now want to kill Jesus.

Jesus has made it clear even to the general populace of Jerusalem and to those in the temple about who he is and his relationship with God as his father.

Which, as we just read in verse number 59 in chapter 8, resulted in the people picking up stones to throw at him to kill him, and Jesus evades them and goes out of the temple.

And John places us now here, where Jesus passes by a man, and he was blind, he was born blind, and so his entire existence was based on the benevolence of others. He couldn't work a job for himself.

The only way that he would have food to eat or clothes on his body or any sort of shelter would be through other people being generous to him. And so the disciples, they see this man in this tough condition, they say, Jesus, who sinned?

What awful thing did this guy do or his parents do that God cursed him like this? And Jesus says, no, no, no, no, no. This is not punishment for sin.

This is opportunity for God to display how great he is. So Jesus goes to the man after telling the disciples, I have work to do right now before the night comes. And he says, as long as I'm in the world, I am the light of the world.

That Jesus is the one that provides not just light like we have here, but light to the blind. That those that could not see would be able to see. And so Jesus spits on the ground in the dirt.

He picks up this mud that he has made from his own spit in the dust of Jerusalem, and he rubs it in this man's eyes. I don't know about you guys. I feel like we've got, you know, a good relationship.

Miss Clara, I think you consider me a friend. But if you were blind and I rubbed mud from my spit into your eyes, you'd probably freak out a little bit. You might not be particularly happy with me if I were to do that to you.

But Jesus does this to the man, and he tells him, go and wash in the pool of Siloam. So the man leaves, he washes his eyes, and as he washes his eyes, he gains his sight for the very first time.

Can you imagine what that moment must have been like for someone that had only ever seen the darkness to finally be able to see the world clear and in color?

And knowing how our God operates and how he works, he probably wasn't giving him some eyes that still needed contacts or needed bifocals. It was clear and crisp. And for the first time in his life, this man could see.

Then this man's neighbors, those that lived around him, they saw this guy walking, but he could see. And so they go, is this the blind beggar? And some people are like, yeah, it is him.

And then other people are like, no, it just looks just like him. It's his doppelganger. And the man tells them, no, I'm the one, it's me.

And so they asked him, how were your eyes opened? In verse number 11, the man, he answered, the man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes and told me, go to Siloam and wash. So when I went and washed, I received my sight.

Where is he? They asked. I don't know.

He said, today, this, this, I got so far ahead of myself. I jumped like five more verses than I was supposed to go to. I love this story.

First today, as this man experienced physically, we display God's work by being saved through Jesus. You might say, okay, being saved, I think I'm pretty comfy right now. I'm in a building.

The building is not burning down. I don't have any sort of terminal illness. So I don't know that I really need saved from anything, Pastor Brian.

Truth is this, every single person, every single human that comes into this world, we come in with a desperate need for salvation. You see, God created our world. He created it very good.

He created it perfect, that everything aligned with his character of perfect holiness and goodness and love. And he gave humanity when he created us just one instruction of what we were not supposed to do.

And our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, as every one of us since, disobeyed God. And instead of living a life that was centered around the life and love and goodness of God, we pursued instead the opposite. As a result, all of us have sinned.

We have thought, said and done things that go against God's law and his character and his nature. And as a result, there is a just punishment for my sin and for your sin. The Bible says that the wages, the earnings of sin is death.

Not just physical death, but eternal separation from God. But the Bible says that God loved us too much. He didn't create us to be headed to hell.

He created us for relationship with him. So the Bible says, for God loved the world in this way, that he gave his one and only son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

Jesus came 2,000 years ago as a human, and as a baby boy that grew up, he lived a perfect, sinless life in which he never did anything counter to the nature and character of God.

And 2,000 years ago, he died on the cross in our place, taking the punishment that we deserve for our sin, and he paid the price in full on the cross.

He was buried, and three days later, he rose again from the dead as we celebrate each Easter season, and really as we celebrate each Sunday.

And Jesus ascended into heaven, and he gives the call to every man, woman, and child to say, will you accept the free gift of salvation that comes through Jesus?

The Bible says that if we confess with our mouth what we believe in our heart, that we will be saved, for with the mouth, confession is made as to God saving us, and with the heart, we believe in Jesus and his resurrection, which the Bible says

results in righteousness, right standing before God. And the Bible says that when we call on Jesus as our Lord, when we ask him to forgive us of our sin and to save us, when we turn from our sin and our way of living to following the instruction of

the Lord Jesus Christ, when we call on him in faith, we are taken forever from the kingdom of darkness, from heading to hell, from heading to destruction in our own way, and we are placed into the kingdom of his dear son. So today, if you know Jesus

as your Savior, and I know here on a Sunday morning, there's a lot of you that have done that, you are meant to display God's work by being saved through Jesus. That means the fact that you are a Christian, that you have been saved by Jesus, that

means you gotta tell someone else about it. That means that it can't just be your best kept secret that you are on your way to heaven, but it's something that you pass along to others as well.

Secondly, today, we display God's work by speaking about Jesus. This is where I got into. So the man, as soon as he gets healed, his neighbors start asking, hey, is this the guy that was blind?

He was a certain way, and now he is drastically different. And the man tells them why he is now in that state. He says it's because of Jesus.

It's because of what Jesus accomplished. So these people, as they're arguing about how in the world did this guy get his eyesight, they take him to the local authorities.

Now, in first century Judea, you had the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, that they were over every aspect of your existence.

So finance and religion and the like civil government, your community, all of it was wrapped up in the worship in and around the temple. And it was governed by these individuals, these religious leaders.

As these people bring the formerly blind man to the Pharisees, John gives us in verse number 14 a little insight.

He says, the day that Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes was a, does anyone want to take a random guess as to the day of the week that Jesus might heal someone on? Sunday. Well, yeah, for them, Saturday.

It's the Sabbath day. Guys, remember all the way back in chapter five, the very first thing that we read about that made the Pharisees incredibly mad? Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath.

Now, four chapters later, he's still doing the exact same thing. He heals a man on the Sabbath. So then verse number 15, then the Pharisees asked the man again how he received his sight.

He put mud on my eyes. He told them, I washed and I can see. Now, for all of us, we would think this is completely innocuous.

We have no problem. If any of you were like, listen, Pastor Bryon, my arm's all out of socket, would you pop it back into place? No one would have any other than our resident medical people who would be like, please, Pastor Bryon, do not do that.

But there's no religious law against any of that for us. However, making mud counted as work during this first century. And so these people thought Jesus has violated the Sabbath yet again by making mud cakes and by healing people on the Sabbath.

It's an incredibly sad outlook on life when God's working and God's operating and God's doing miracles.

Just mere religion, tradition will blind you to what God is doing, and all you will be able to do is wonder why something's not lining up with your expectations.

Instead of them going, the Messiah is in our midst, God himself is making brand new what we could not accomplish on our own. They're going, he did it on the wrong day.

Like, if Jesus had waited 24 hours that somehow they would have been, oh yes, I'm very enthusiastic about this. It was just an incredibly sad outlook in life.

So some of the Pharisees, verse 16 said, this man's not from God because he doesn't keep the Sabbath. But others were saying, how can a sinful man perform such actions?

You guys know this as we walk around our world today, not many people are giving sight to the blind, if you will. Glasses exist, contacts exist. I'm not denouncing that.

I'm saying no one is restoring full eyesight to those that are experiencing blindness. So they asked the man again, what do you say about him since he opened your eyes? They want to figure out what does this person think?

The man says, oh, he's a prophet. He said, the Jews did not believe this about the blind man, that he was blind and received sight, until they summoned the parents of the one who had received his sight.

So then they ask the parents of this man, is this your son and was he born blind? And why is he no longer blind?

Verse 20, they say, we know that this is our son and that he was born blind, but we don't know how he now sees and we don't know who opened his eyes. Ask him, he's of age, he's old enough, he's an adult, ask him for yourself.

He can speak for himself. But verse number 22 says this, they did not say this, they didn't give the Pharisees the answer. He's old enough, ask him.

They gave the answer, they did because they were afraid. Because the Pharisees had told the people, anyone that says that Jesus is the Messiah, we're gonna throw you out of the synagogue.

Now, if I were to, let's say Darryl, if I were to throw you out of church today, like that would be pretty messed up, number one. Number two, it wouldn't then affect many other aspects of your life other than your religious life.

Like you could go to your job, you could go home, you could spend time with your family. It wouldn't affect every aspect. For these people, it would.

That every aspect of government for them, of religion, of family relationships, of the marketplace, all of it was wrapped around your religious identity.

And so, to be thrown out of the synagogue was to be treated like one of the tax collectors there in Israel during the first century. It meant that you were a hated, reviled person with no place in the community of God's people.

And so, these parents are nervous about what will happen to them if they say what they think about their son that was healed. Can I encourage you and I today? Let's not be scared to proclaim what God has done.

It will not always be popular with people. There are going to be people that are a little upset with you for maybe having some religious opinions or religious thoughts.

But the pleasure of God himself is worth so much more than the approval of people. So live your life. Speak your words.

Use your phones or your tablets or your computers to declare who Jesus is and what Jesus has accomplished in and through and for you.

Verse number 24, so a second time, the Pharisees summoned the man who had been blind, and they told him, give glory to God, we know that this man, Jesus, is a sinner.

So they say, stop talking about Jesus and how great Jesus is, just give glory to God. Because Jesus did it on the Sabbath, so he's a sinner, he's wicked, he's not following our rules.

And the man answers in verse 25, whether or not he's a sinner, I don't know. One thing I do know, I was blind, but now I can see. Then they asked him, what did he do to you?

How did he open your eyes? Verse 27, I already told you, he said, do you want to become his disciples too? And then they begin deriding him, and they're like, listen, yeah, you're Jesus' disciple, but we're disciples of Moses and of the law.

And we know that Moses comes from God, but we have no idea where this Jesus comes from. And the man says, well, this is kind of wild.

You have never ever in all of scripture or in all of history heard of anyone that could give sight to a man born blind, and yet you're saying, oh, we really don't know who the sight giver comes from. He says it's obvious that he comes from God.

As a result, they throw him out of the synagogue. He's no longer a part of that community that he had lived his entire life in. And frankly, that had given so much to him.

The fact that he was still able to like live and exist meant that people had given to him and been benevolent to him all of his life. And yet he had to turn his back on all of that in order to pursue and proclaim Jesus.

Some people have wondered, okay, can I follow Jesus and still have everyone in my life like me and love me? I'll tell you this, probably not everyone in your life likes you and loves you anyway. And it'd be much better for you to pursue Jesus.

And don't be shocked when this world doesn't love you in every aspect of your life because they didn't love Jesus.

And if they didn't even embrace the perfect Son of God, there's no way that they're going to embrace us entirely as we pursue and follow Him. So he gets thrown out.

Verse number 35, I'm going to talk about next after I finish this point, because I'm not going to read ahead this time. We display God's work by speaking about Jesus. You're called to talk about Jesus just as this person did.

He did it with his neighbors. He did it with his parents. He did it with the Pharisees.

He did it under fire. He did it while others were deriding him. Yet, he was still talking about Jesus and what Jesus had accomplished in his life.

And for you and I today, we can read that. We're like, yeah, that's really great that he did that. I don't really feel like doing that.

That's too dangerous for me. And there's a few reasons why we tend to avoid speaking about Jesus. First, we often feel like our story is too shameful.

But the truth is this. Let Jesus' healing in your life be your definition, not your shame. Sin doesn't disqualify you from love, from God or from other people.

And it does not disqualify you from fellowship with others.

Someone might not feel that they can become a Christian, or that they can be genuinely known because of their sin, because they struggle with doubts about God or the Bible, because they're in a relationship with someone that they shouldn't be.

But nothing is further from the truth. Share your story, your background, and be the bridge that allows someone else to see that God saves people from all sorts of sin and difficulties and families. God wants to use your story.

He doesn't want to just use some sort of like blank slate. People need to hear, Oh yeah, I used to have this problem. I used to struggle with this.

And Jesus transformed me. I've been so thankful to hear story after story from people in our church of, Hey, I used to be really angry and I was cussing at my kids and God saved me. And I'm not the same person that I was 10, 15 years ago.

I'm thankful for the people that have said, Man, I was struggling with drugs and alcohol and I was all sorts of lost. And God transformed me and saved me. I'm thankful here in the second part, we feel our story is too boring.

I'm thankful that God saves people that grew up in good religious homes and they didn't really, you know, delve into any sort of craziness. But in their life, they realized just being religious or just growing up religious doesn't save me.

It doesn't give me a relationship with Jesus. I grew up in a Christian home, but at eight years old, I recognized, okay, just going to church, just knowing the songs, just reading the verses, that doesn't give me a relationship with Jesus Christ.

I need a personal walk with God. And I'm thankful that God saves the religious, God saves the anything but religious, and he saves everything in between.

So whether you feel your story is too shameful or you feel that your story is too boring, don't be ashamed. Don't shirk away from sharing your testimony with others. Often we can even think that telling our story is awkward.

But the truth is, if Jesus saved you from death and hell and destruction, then tell someone about it. They deserve to hear the gospel too. This is what the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 1.

He says, I am a debtor. I am indebted to the Greeks and to the Jews, that's the Gentiles, the non-Jews and the Jews, because if God saved me, then I owe it to everyone else to share what God did in me.

For many of us, we're like, listen, but Pastor Brian, I don't really know how to do like the salesman thing and close the deal. Here's the truth. God's not looking for you to be a salesman to get as many sales as you can of people into heaven.

God's looking for you to display God's work in your life, that you would just tell someone else what Jesus did for you. You don't have to have all of the answers. You don't have to have the New Testament memorized.

You don't have to be the next, you know, Wesley Huff or Gary Habermas or some great apologist who can answer any and all objections that someone has. God wants you to tell your story, because your story has value, because it's what God did in you.

Your story is so that God's ability to work would shine out through you. Last action today that we're going to look at is we display God's work by submitting humbly to Jesus.

So Jesus hears that they had thrown the formerly blind man out of the synagogue, and when Jesus found him, he asked, do you believe in the son of man? Now, for those of you that have been here in our series, who is the son of man? Jesus.

Jesus is the son of man. He says, do you believe in him? Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him, the blind man asked.

Jesus answered, you have seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you. And the man replies, I believe, Lord, and he worshiped him.

So this man, he comes to a saving knowledge and following of Christ. And then Jesus says this. He says, I came into the world for judgment in order that those who do not see will see and those who do see will become blind.

Some of the Pharisees who are with him heard these things and asked him, we aren't blind too, are we? If you were blind, Jesus told them, you wouldn't have sinned. But now that you say, we see, your sin remains.

Jesus is now talking to his disciples and he says, I've come into the world to give sight to the blind and to blind those that think that they can see.

Now, if you're like me, first time reading that, you're going, help me, like, what are you talking about, Jesus? Jesus is saying this, as evidenced by the Pharisees going, we're not blind, are we?

Jesus says, guys, if you knew that you were spiritually blind, then you would be able to see me. But because you say, yeah, we're spiritually fine. We see everything okay.

He says, you are blind. You are spiritually blind and you don't know it. Let's phrase it this way.

If I've got this going on, or if I've got a blindfold on and I say, listen, I can see all of you guys. It's really, really easy. Am I telling you guys the truth or am I lying?

I'm lying. I can't see anything. The Pharisees, instead of saying, like Jesus, you're saying things that we don't understand.

You're talking about the kingdom of God and what Christ has accomplished. And we're clueless. Those that come humbly to God find out that God gives answers.

They find out that God saves them. God saves not those who help themselves, but God saves those who realize that they cannot help themselves.

And so Jesus here tells these men, if you recognized, I need Jesus, I need the sight that God provides, the person that submits humbly to God, they are the ones that then receive sight.

But for the people like you and like me, that go, oh no, I'm, listen, you don't understand how holy I am. I'm real great. I do all the things I'm supposed to.

I don't do a single thing that I'm not supposed to. Jesus looks at us and goes, if you've got no need for me, if you've got no need for the word of God or the Holy Spirit, you're blind.

So for you and I, we've got to submit humbly to Jesus, that we're not looking for God, how can I establish how great I am in front of people? It's God, I'm in desperate need of you, because I don't have this on my own.

You're the only hope that I have. These people in the face of Jesus calling for humility instead of pride, they say, listen, we have no need to be humble.

And Jesus says, no, no, no, you have every need to be humble, because it's only when we humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, that he will lift us up. Humility says, I'm in need, I'm imperfect, I may be seen or understanding this incorrectly.

Pride says, I'm right and everyone else needs to bow before me. Humility invites God's word into the conversation. Pride demands its own way.

Humility lifts up Jesus and pride lifts up one's own accomplishments or wisdom or history. This week, we can be humble in front of our God and in front of others. Three specific ways I want us to look at it.

First, we can change our thoughts, our vocabulary, our tone, our audience or our actions based on what God's word says that we should do. One way to be humble is to say, God, whatever about this you want me to change, I'll change.

If I'm thinking the wrong way about this situation or about this person, God, change me. God, I've been speaking with some choice language in my life.

God, if you want me to change my vocabulary that I don't use all the words that I used to, God, I'll change that.

My tone that instead of lashing out in anger and escalating volume, God, if you want me to change that, I'll change it based on your word.

My audience that there's some things that we should say to some people and some things that we should not say to some people, we say, God, whatever you want, that's what I'm going to change based on the word of God.

That says humility, not my way, but God's way. Not my will, but God's will.

Secondly, another way to be humble is to allow someone else to have their way, not insisting on our preference, with the goal of handling it so that they know that we genuinely love God and them. For many of us, we live Burger King lives.

We want it our way. That's not God's way. And this week, you're going to have the option of I can allow this to, I can allow this situation to benefit and bless someone else.

And I don't have to kick up a fuss about it. And in fact, they can know through how I treat them in it, that I love them and that I'm intentionally doing it.

And I'm not doing it just so I can kind of showboat and be like, listen, did you see what I did there? And I let you have it your way. Now, when it's this next decision, you let me have this one my way, because I did that for you.

It's not transactional. It's just true humility to say, Lord, I want to love others and not everything has to be on my way or my timetable. And then lastly, don't spend all your time talking about you.

Talk about others. Talk about what you see God doing in them, how they encourage or bless you, and how you love them.

That's one of the big reasons why church is not just meant to be God's people gathering together on a Sunday for an hour or an hour and a half. God wants you to be involved in the lives of other people in this room.

But then you'd be able to say, man, I praise the Lord for how God is working right now through Rhonda, or I love what God's doing in Ina. Man, I loved hearing Bill's testimony of when he was sharing the gospel with that person.

Man, I loved getting to hear about Gwen and the prayer requests that she has for a friend that she wants to come to know the Lord. I'm thankful for Ms.

Bobby and her being like, all right, I'm struggling with some health stuff, but I'm going to keep on going for the Lord. And I'm glad to know and to be praying for and to love and to care for each of these people.

Now, you might say, listen, I don't know that I can get to know everyone. And if I fill up five minutes in my calendar every week for each of these people, my calendar is going to be full. That's OK.

God doesn't want you to just jump into the deep end and know everyone. But he might have you to get to have a meal, to have a coffee or tea or whatever your thing is with someone else, with one other person this week.

That then next week it might be someone else. And then a week after that, it might be someone else.

But that we together as the body of Christ would begin to love and encourage and exhort one another because then when we gather together, we're able to praise the Lord for some stuff that's happening.

We're able to follow up with someone and go, hey, how did that job interview go? Hey, I know you were praying for this medical need. How is that going right now?

Or hey, I know you mentioned last week some prayer. You were struggling with anger. How did that go this week?

How can I encourage you this week? God wants you to have humility in how you interact with others so that you can build relationships and lift up what God is doing. Because today, God has a show and tell.

And He wants to show you off to be able to tell the world what it looks like for someone to be transformed by Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit living in us and transforming us.

Today, we can have the same life mission as this blind beggar that God's work would be displayed in us. This week, how will you display the work of God?