I love our God. I love the sovereignty of our God. It’s often objected to those of us that recognize and love the sovereignty of God. How could you believe in a God who is in control of all things and yet Evil things happen. Terrible things happen. How can you believe in a God who’s in control and lets that happen? Once again, Lamentations chapter three, verse 37, who is there who speaks and it happens unless the Lord has commanded it. Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good go forth?

How could I not believe in a God who is in complete control of every detail? How could I not believe in a God who is doing these things. What kind of a God is it that would allow things to happen that He did not will? That is a weak and powerless God. No, I can’t help but believe that my God is in control and He’s doing things that I may not understand, but I can trust Him in that. And I know we’re all aware of that because of where we are right now as a church. The things that we have seen, the things that we’ve experienced, the things that we’re going through right now.

And what a passage of Scripture to be in this morning. Please turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter nine. John chapter nine. What a fitting and helpful passage of scripture for a church, like every church, that goes through hurtful, painful, hard things.

Aren’t we lucky that God just has us in this passage this morning? or our God is sovereign. And this is where we are, in our verse-by-verse exposition of John’s Gospel. And we return this morning, after a few weeks off, to this awesome chapter of God’s Word. We’ve already spent time here looking at this miracle.

The miracle Jesus performed in healing this man born blind. As he was passing by, after fleeing the temple, as they were once again trying to kill him. As he passed by, he saw a man. He saw this man born blind, and as he saw him, his disciples began to try to figure out the cause of his suffering, as we’ve seen. Why is it that this man was born blind? Whose fault is it? Was it because he sinned? Or was it because his parents sinned? Somebody has to be to blame here.

As is often the first reaction that we humans have in our finite understandings of the circumstances that God is sovereign over in our life. But Jesus doesn’t answer their question. Not in the way that they asked him. Jesus says there in verse three, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but. This was so that. The works of God might be manifested in him. God is not a responder. God does not react. God is a purposer. God purposed this blindness.

Yes, even though a man lived a whole lifetime of suffering, so that God’s purposes could be accomplished. He does that sometimes. And I can promise you one thing. That if you ask this man today, if there’s any injustice on God’s part for purposing that he was born blind and lived life as a beggar, so that one day the man they call Jesus would see him. That man would say, are you kidding? Of course, there’s no injustice on God’s part. I met Jesus. He would trade 10 lifetimes of blindness and begging all to meet this man they call Jesus. He would say with Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter four, Paul, a man well acquainted with suffering. Paul says in verse 17 of 2 Corinthians 4, for our momentary light affliction, I don’t know if you know Paul’s life story.

I wouldn’t call that light momentary affliction. For our momentary light affliction is working out for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things which are not seen are eternal. Our suffering is temporal. It’s only for a moment. It’s only right now. There are things in life that are important. There are sufferings in life that are real. But despite the reality of our pain and our hardship, we need to keep the right perspective. We need to play the long game. We need to read the end of the book.

God is doing something more than my momentary happiness or satisfaction can measure. And that is why Jesus is response to these. Disciples includes the words in verses four and five, where he says we must work the works of him who sent me as long as it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. And Jesus is setting the stage for all that is about to happen in the rest of this chapter. He is telling them he has more to do here.

This miracle was about more than just this blind beggar. As great as that was for him to finally be able to see. Because Jesus didn’t just happen upon this blind man. Jesus was orchestrating this whole situation and we’ll see that even more today as we uncover more miracles or more details of this miracle. But these circumstances and this account we find here in John 9 are not simply about this healing. It’s not simply about an amazing miracle of creating sight for a man who never saw anything in his life.

Jesus is doing something more. He’s showing us our need for him because of our desperately lost condition. As he says at the end of the chapter in verse 39, Jesus said, for judgment I came into this world so that those who do not see may see and that those who see may become blind. There’s a lot more going on here.

Jesus gives physical sight to a man born physically blind to show us that we need him and we need him to give us the gift of sight because each and every one of us is born blind. We would remain in our darkness if he did not step into our lives. call us to himself, and give us eyes to see him. And Jesus does heal this blind man, as we see in verses six and following. He spits on the ground, and he makes clay, and he tells the man to go and wash, and he did, and he received his sight.

And when he returns, as we saw, his neighbors have a few questions. They asked him how this happened. How did you receive your sight? So he told them about the man they call Jesus. Because that’s all he knew. That’s all he knew of this man. And again, we need to remember this is an illustration for us. We all start small in our understanding of who he is. But what’s important is that he believed what he knew. He believed what he knew. And that will continue as we follow the story in our text today.

And we’ll focus this morning on verses 13 through 17. And we’ll see this man question further about what happened to him. What we see in this text, we’ll see the circumstances that lead to this interrogation by the Pharisees, number one, and then secondly, the confrontation, and lastly, and most importantly, the confession that he makes about this man they call Jesus. So allow me to read our text for us this morning, verses 13 through 17 of John chapter nine. This is the word of the Lord.

They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind. Now it was a Sabbath day on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees also were asking him again how he received his sight. And he said to them, he applied clay to my eyes and I washed and I see. So then, 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 sinful man do such signs when there was a division among them? Therefore, 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.

First couple verses here we see these circumstances. They’re different than in the previous verses. He was there in his neighborhood where his neighbors, those who saw him and knew him, recognized there was something different about him now. We read in verse 13 that they brought him.

Something strange happened in their neighborhood. So they brought him. to the Pharisees. They had just interrogated him themselves. They only knew him as the blind beggar. And now he’s not that. And either they’re not satisfied with the explanation, or at least they want their religious leader’s opinion on the matter. So they bring him to the Pharisees.

And then in verse 14, John amplifies the problem like he does because in verse 14 he says, now it was the Sabbath on the day when Jesus made clay and opened his eyes. This isn’t the first time that John has told a story in this way, a story of a healing where he gives the account of all the details of what happened But then in John’s style, he drops the other shoe, that it happened on the Sabbath. Remember back in chapter five, the man who was lame, that Jesus healed. And in John chapter five, verse nine, at the end of that healing account, John tells us, and immediately the man became well and picked up his mat and began to walk. Now it was the Sabbath on that day.

And yes, that’s meant to make you pay attention. John’s original audience would have done just that as they read this account. You see, they grew up in this Jewish Pharisee extra-biblical rule-keeping society. Everybody was aware of the Pharisees. And they did whatever they could to stay out of their crosshairs. And probably the most obvious example of these Pharisees’ abuse of Scripture was their Sabbath day legalism.

So when John dramatically drops the detail that now it was the Sabbath day, dun-dun-dun, there’s the dramatic effect here. In fact, given the clues around this text, they probably brought this guy to the Pharisees a day later or so, so that they wouldn’t break the Sabbath themselves. Again, this wasn’t Jesus’ first Sabbath offense. There was that account in John 5, but throughout the Gospels, Jesus continually breaks the Pharisees’ rules concerning the Sabbath. Like in Matthew chapter 12, where he has to defend his disciples from picking heads of grains so they could have something to eat on the Sabbath. And then shortly after that, he heals a man with a withered hand on probably the same Sabbath day. And here in John 9, not only does he do this on the Sabbath day, He did it with clay that he made from his own spit.

His patousma, as you remember, that Greek word. It was vile. They were not to be dealing with bodily fluids like that. It was unclean. And he did that on the Sabbath day? This was way over the line. The question is, was it really breaking the Sabbath? Was he really breaking the Sabbath? What we cannot say is, well, Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, so he can do whatever he wants. Well, it’s true that he’s Lord of the Sabbath, but it’s not what happened because Jesus perfectly kept the law of God. Keeping the Sabbath was part of the law.

They were to keep the Sabbath day. In the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20, verses 8 and 10. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it, you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter or your male or your female slave or your cattle or your sojourner who’s within your gates. That’s the Sabbath law. But what is the Sabbath law really saying? It was instructing the Israelites to worship God with the day of the week. It says, for the seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your God. It’s his day. It’s his day. You need to worship God with that day. And God gave it to them as a gift to rest from all of their normal activities. It was supposed to be a day of rest, a gift of rest.

But these Pharisees had turned it into a burden. It was more work to try to keep their rules than treating this as an actual day of rest. They had to worry all the time about getting caught for doing too much. In fact, some of the things different commentaries point out about the ridiculous Sabbath day laws that they made. They couldn’t carry a handkerchief from upstairs to downstairs because that was bearing a burden. You couldn’t carry a handkerchief from one room in your house to the other because that’s considered work.

A man couldn’t light a lamp or extinguish a lamp on the Sabbath day. And even today, those that are still keeping the Orthodox Jewish customs, they can’t turn off or on a light switch. A man couldn’t cut his fingernails or pull a hair out of his beard on the Sabbath day. That was breaking the law. And an Israelite couldn’t knead dough for bread.

So certainly, he couldn’t knead this mud. that he used to heal this man. And the Pharisees even restricted practicing medicine on the Sabbath day. The only thing permitted to them was life-saving treatment. Anything else had to wait, even if it was something as miraculous as giving sight to a man who had never seen before.

So yes, Jesus was guilty of breaking their Sabbath rules as the Pharisees had constructed them. But again, these are man-made rules and Jesus understood God’s law perfectly, which he should since he wrote it. It’s his law. He is God. He is the I am who gave it to Moses.

And so he continued to expose their misuse of his law by making the Sabbath day a burden. These Jewish leaders, their spiritual leaders who were supposed to help them understand the scriptures, had twisted the scriptures. And they twisted his design for this weekly gift from God. As Jesus does point out in Mark chapter 2, The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath is supposed to be a gift for man from God.

And these Pharisees were famous for bragging about how they could keep their rules so well, but at the same time, completely missing the important matters. And Jesus rebukes them for that, that passage in Matthew 12, where the disciples were taking the heads of grain and then he heals a man on the Sabbath. Listen to how Jesus rebukes them for their Sabbath rules. Matthew chapter 12, verses 11 and 12.

He said to them, what man is there among you who has a sheep and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath will not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep? So then it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. They were missing the whole point. The Sabbath was not so you could prove how good you are by keeping these rules. As Dr. John MacArthur has said, they corrupted the Sabbath, turning it from a day of glorifying God into a means of legalistic self-glorification. Rather than taking a whole day to show how important God is to me, they used it as a day to show how important they were. for how well they were doing.

And here in John 9, this man, think about this blind man. He finds himself in the middle of their problem. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything wrong. He was sitting there. And Jesus healed him. He had been blind for his whole life, and now he is healed. As he points out later, this has never happened before. And these spiritual leaders and shepherds of Israel ought to be rejoicing with him. You have sight for the first time ever.

But instead, They’re dragging this man before their council to interrogate him about why this happened. Maybe they could prove that this carpenter from Nazareth was a fraud. Or maybe they could use this testimony to trap him for not keeping their rules. But these are the circumstances of this text we see before us this morning. And next we see the confrontation.

He’s a blind man and a beggar. These Pharisees had no interest in this man. They weren’t doing anything for him. He was sitting there begging. They had no interest in him unless maybe they trip over him as they’re parading around and repeating their prayers for everyone to see.

But now he’s a Sabbath day healed man to them. He’s a problem. And so yes, he’s interesting to them, as we see in verse 15. So the Pharisees were also asking him again how he received his sight. They wanted to hear it for themselves. They also asked again. Surely they’ve heard what happened, but now they want to hear it for themselves.

This is sort of a cross-examination. Give us the details. They probably have a pen and a scroll, and they’re taking down every word that he says so that they can have some evidence. Write down what he says for the record. Tell us again what happened. Maybe the blind man will contradict himself and will show that this is foolishness, this is a fraud, this didn’t really happen. Or maybe he’ll say something that we can use in our case against Jesus. Let’s hear it from the beginning. Tell it to us again.

And you can almost tell by the man’s answer what his body language may have been. You can see him lean back and fold his arms. squint his eyes. What’s going on here? Because look at what he says. He applied clay to my eyes and I washed and I see. That’s it. That’s all I’m giving you.

This is something incredible that happened to him. You would expect a little bit more elaborate story as he’s telling them what happened. There I was, it was just another day in my normal spot. People were hustling and bustling all around. But that’s not what we see.

Because this guy gets what’s going on. He knows why he’s there. He knows what they’re doing. And not only can he see for the first time, he can see through them for the first time. Because they’re not encouraging him to tell his testimony about Jesus. They’re opposing him. And trying to discredit this man that is called Jesus. And so this man is faced with a choice.

He could do what that man in John chapter 5 did. Remember? Remember what he did when he was healed? John chapter 5 verses 15 and 16, the man went away and disclosed to the Jews that it was Jesus who made him well. For this reason, the Jews were persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.

That man in John 5 ratted him out. He went right to the Pharisees and gave them everything they needed so that they could try to kill him. but not this man. He’s not helping the Pharisees at all. He doesn’t even give them Jesus’ name, even though we know that he knows it, because he told the neighbors that man called Jesus.

All he says here is, yeah, he applied clay to my eyes, and I washed, and I see. Can I go now? but they already know who did it. And you’re starting to see some resolve build in this man. Last time he was interrogated by the neighbors, he does give a more detailed account. And they say to him, well, where is he? Well, I don’t know. I don’t know. Stop bothering me about it. But now that he’s facing opposition because of the name of Jesus, Now he starts to show a little more resolve and we’ll see his resolve continue to grow.

Next week we’ll focus on the second part of their conversation. Let me just read it to you so we know where this is going and you can see how this is developing in this man. Look down to verse 24. Therefore a second time they called the man who had been born blind and they said to him, Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner. He then answered, whether he’s a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know, though I was blind, now I see.

So they said to him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? And he answered them, I already told you and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to listen again? Do you want to become his disciples too? And they reviled him and said, you are his disciple, but we’re disciples of Moses.

We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we don’t know where he’s from. The man answered and said to them, well, here is a miraculous thing that you don’t know where he is from, but he opened my eyes. What he’s saying is that ought to tell you where he’s from.

We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is God-fearing and does his will, he listens to him. Since the beginning of time, it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. And they answered and said to him, you were born entirely in your sins and you’re teaching us, so they put him out. Oh, his resolve is growing. And we’ll cover that next time. But here today, we see this guy is not giving much up to these Pharisees. He gives them an abbreviated testimony of what happened.

He doesn’t help them persecute Jesus. And because he won’t help them, the Pharisees start talking amongst themselves. We’re not getting anything out of this guy. So verse 16, so then, Since that’s all that he told them, so then some of the Pharisees were saying, now this man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath. But others were saying, how can a sinful man do such signs? And there was a division among them. He can’t be from God. He doesn’t keep our rules. You have the first group that twists scripture and comes up with their own standard that he doesn’t measure up to. And by that standard, they conclude that he can’t be from God.

But then you have the other group who likes the signs. We’ve seen these people before. Oh, but the signs. How can a sinful man do such signs? They like the signs. but not so much what the signs point to. There was a division among them. And lastly, we see this confession in verse 17. Therefore, they say to the blind man again, what do you say about him since he opened your eyes? And he said, he is a prophet.

They couldn’t get any good evidence out of him against Jesus. And they couldn’t even agree among themselves. So now they come back to the man again, and now they’re not asking about the healing. They’re not asking about the miracle. They ask him his opinion. Well, what’s your opinion of this guy?

What do you have to say about Jesus since you’re the affected party here? And he answered, he’s a prophet, and he’s right. Now that’s not the whole story of who Jesus is, but that’s what he knows. Jesus told him to go and wash, and he was healed, just like he said.

That much he is sure of, and he’s not backing down from that. He believes what he knows. And he confesses this before the men trying to kill him. And you can be sure he knows the danger in this. You think he’s a prophet? We’ve got to get rid of this guy. He doesn’t help our case at all. But this much he’s sure of.

This man was faced with this opposition and conflict After being exposed to Jesus for the first time. Just like each and every one of us either have been or will be. Faced with conflict because of the name of Jesus. The passage I’ve mentioned a few times in Matthew 12, Jesus controversy over the Sabbath day. It’s in the very next chapter. That Jesus tells this parable, Matthew 13, the parable of the sower. what we’re seeing play out here in John. This is what it says, Matthew chapter 13, starting in verse three.

He spoke many things to them in parable, saying, behold, the sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some of the seeds fell by the road. And the birds came and ate them up, and others fell on the rocky places where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched, because they had no root, they withered away. Others fell among the thorns and the thorns came up and choked them out. Others fell on the good soil and were yielding a crop, some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” John has shown us two men in this gospel who were given seeds of good news in the form of healing. They met Jesus, the man in chapter five and the man in chapter nine. The man in chapter five, when opposition to Jesus came, when the sun had risen, he was scorched.

And because he had no root, he withered away. And the thorns came and choked him out. He fell away. But this man in chapter nine, the seed he was given. didn’t get scorched or choked out. And it wasn’t because he didn’t have any sun or weeds to deal with. No, the difference is that the seed took root. The seed took root in him.

As Jesus goes on to explain later, Matthew 13 down in verse 23, The one whom the seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and brings forth some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30. This is a believer. This is a man who hears and believes what he hears. He believes what he knows. This man hadn’t been given all of the truth yet, but he heard Jesus and he obeyed.

And he was healed. And the seed was planted. And the seed was beginning to grow. And we will see that it continues to grow. And as a result, this man receives saving faith. He is growing in his understanding of Jesus. He’s putting the pieces together. In his first testimony, Jesus was just a man. That man they called Jesus. But now he’s coming to understand that he’s more than that. Now he says he’s a prophet. He speaks and acts for God. Later he’ll say even more. And his faith and understanding will keep growing. That’s what I want us to see from this passage. That’s why we only covered a few verses this morning.

God often purposes our suffering to grow our faith and understanding and dependence on him. We saw a few weeks ago that God has a purpose in suffering. We may not know the cause of our suffering, but we know the God who is accomplishing his purpose. in our lives. And when we face trials or hardships or opposition, whatever that may look like, sometimes the purpose God has in it is to grow our faith. To grow our faith in Him.

Trials strengthen our faith because we see that God is still there with me through it. and he’s still there on the other side of it. And if God can get me through that, he can get me through what’s next. And if I never had that trial, I would never know that God can get me through that. But now that I’ve been there, and he was with me in it, and he’s with me on the other side of it, Why wouldn’t I have faith that he’ll be there at the next time? One commenter, James Montgomery Boyce, has some really helpful applications for this text.

First, if you’re a genuine believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, conflict will come. Jesus promised us that. Conflict will come in one form or another. You may not always have conflict, but sooner or later, in one form or another, you will face trials. You will face opposition for the name of Jesus Christ. Some people are faced with life or death for the name of Jesus. Others are faced with the loss of relationships, or the loss of family, or the loss of approval, or the loss of standing with other people, the loss of opportunities. So don’t be surprised when it happens.

2 Timothy 3.12 says, indeed, all who desire to live godly in Jesus Christ will be persecuted. Philippians 1 verse 29, for to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in him, yeah, that was given too, but also to suffer for his sake. It was given to you for Jesus Christ’s sake that you will suffer for him. You will face suffering and conflict for the name of Jesus Christ. And if you never do, you ought to examine if you’re actually living for Him. Because living for Him will bring opposition in this world. And secondly, even though conflict will come, you can know that God’s not going to abandon you in it.

No more than He abandoned the man who was born blind. When he was challenged for his opinion of Jesus. The man boldly said he’s a prophet. Maybe he couldn’t say that before. But he said it then. In his hour of need. God gave him the grace to say what he needed to say.

You know, it’s amazing what God brings to your mind. when you’re being challenged and you’re facing opposition for your faith and you’re sharing the gospel with people that don’t want to hear it and they’re arguing with you and then God brings these passages of scripture or truths to your mind that you didn’t even know were there sometimes. As Jesus promised he would. Later on in John’s gospel, Jesus promises the disciples in John 14 verse 26, the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and he’ll bring to remembrance all that I said to you.

Don’t be afraid to face conflict for him. He is with you. He’s with you in it. Thirdly, when you face conflicts and trials, you can know that God has a purpose in it. God is doing something. And that should encourage you. There may be a lot of different purposes God has in it, but among them are what we see in this case of this blind man.

Opposition can help sharpen your testimony. Again, it’s often when we’re faced with opposition like this that our evangelism becomes even more clear. The more you share the gospel, the better you are at it. This blind man shortened his testimony to the basics. He told them what they needed to hear. He put mud on my eyes and I washed and I see. And sometimes when you’re being challenged over the gospel, you need to do the same thing.

I was dead in my sins, he died for me, and now I live. That’s the gospel. I was dead in sin, Jesus came and lived and died on the cross for me. He rose from the dead and I believe that he’s my savior. And that I’m gonna live forever with him. You can say that much. That is the gospel, simple as that. And yes, there’s more to know and understand as you grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the gospel starts with Christ died for me. Christ died for me. And the opposition that you face can help lead you into a greater understanding of the sufferings of Jesus Christ. We suffer for Him because He suffered for us.

And just like this man born blind, we too should be bold in our testimony. If this blind man who had hardly met Jesus, he knew very little about Him, he knew His name. He hadn’t even seen Him yet. If he was bold, Why can’t we be? I’ll close with John Calvin’s words about this blind man and about how that should affect us. This is what John Calvin has to say. If he, who did not yet know that Christ was the Son of God, courageously and freely confessed he was a prophet, how shameful is the treachery of those who out of fear either deny him or are silent. though they know that he sits at the right hand of the Father and from thence will come to be the judge of the whole earth. If this blind man did not quench his tiny spark of knowledge, we should endeavor that a frank and full confession should blaze forth from the full brightness which is shown in our hearts.

If he can stand for Jesus, Why can’t we? Do you know Him? Can you say, Christ died for me? If you’re here this morning and you want to know more about how Christ can be your Savior, please don’t leave here today without talking to me or someone here. We’ll help you know Jesus Christ. But if you do know Him, Can’t you stand for Him like this blind man did? And isn’t it good to know that we have a God who is sovereign over all these things? He’s in control. How could He not be? Let’s stand and close in a word of prayer. Our God, we thank you. For a passage of scripture like this.

That shows us that you are in control of all these things. That you are not a responder that you don’t react to things that happen in the world, but you purpose them. You purpose all these things, and though we may not understand all that you’re doing. Though we may not choose the circumstances that you have sovereignly placed us in. We know that you are a God who is in control and who loves us and that you are still good.

We thank you for this example, this testimony of this man born blind. Lord, use that to give us boldness, to live for you even though we may face opposition and we may face trials because of your name. Help us to stand anyways. because it’s worth it. God, we thank you and we praise you and glorify you here this morning. In Jesus’ precious name, amen.