John 9:35-41

00:00:00:41 – 00:00:22:27
Clint Loveall
Friends. Thanks for being with us again. Finishing the ninth chapter of John today. A great chapter, a great story. We’re just finding ourself at the conclusion. And I think, we’ve made the case that John has really carefully crafted this story. And I think that conclusion, is well done, kind of brings that home. Let me read it for you.

00:00:22:31 – 00:00:44:30
Clint Loveall
Then we’ll we’ll work our way through it. Jesus heard that they had driven the blind man out. And when he found him, he said, do you believe in the Son of Man? He answered, and who is he, sir? Tell me so. I may believe in him. Jesus said to him, you have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.

00:00:44:34 – 00:01:09:49
Clint Loveall
He said, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him. Jesus said, I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind. Some of the Pharisees near him heard him say this and said to him, surely we are not blind, are we? Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would not have sinned.

00:01:09:54 – 00:01:37:05
Clint Loveall
But now that you say, we see, your sin remains. So remember yesterday we saw the conflict between this man and the Pharisees. They had been having this conversation. The man said, well, maybe you want to follow him. They insulted him and put him out. And the idea is they sort of ran him off. Really interesting. Kind of a pastoral note here that Jesus finds him.

00:01:37:06 – 00:02:03:09
Clint Loveall
It’s very interesting that we enter this last part of the text with the words Jesus heard. They had driven him out. And when he found him, implying that he went looking for him. And I think you know, that falls in line with other images, the lost sheep and the prodigal son, the father who was way. So the idea that Jesus sought this man out and then he he has this conversation.

00:02:03:09 – 00:02:29:22
Clint Loveall
Do you believe in the Son of Man? Who is he? Tell me that I may believe in him. And Jesus says, you have seen him. And again, we’ve made the case over the last couple of days that so much of this chapter is about what is seen and what is missed, what is believed and and what is, forfeited, what is refused.

00:02:29:27 – 00:02:57:40
Clint Loveall
And so, Jesus, when Jesus says you have seen him, the idea here is not just physically that this man’s eyesight has been restored, but he’s learned something spiritual. He’s seen a spiritual truth. And we know this because the response that John tells us is that the man says, Lord, I believe and remember, believe is one of the operative themes of this chapter.

00:02:57:45 – 00:03:22:09
Clint Loveall
And then he said, it says, and he worshiped him. So belief and worship, John connects those two things in a powerful way. The response of seeing Jesus is to belief, to believe the response of belief is to worship. Really well done, Michael. A powerful conclusion here. This is most of the end of the men story.

00:03:22:13 – 00:03:31:12
Clint Loveall
There’s the essentially that for all practical purposes, him worshiping is kind of the tail end of his role.

00:03:31:17 – 00:03:52:14
Michael Gewecke
So I just another note to make sure that we all catch it is we do see Jesus, as you point out, so helpfully, Clint finding this man, seeking him out in verse 35, the beginning of this section. But remember, it was Jesus who also came to this man in the very beginning of this book, or, sorry, in the very beginning of this chapter.

00:03:52:19 – 00:04:15:46
Michael Gewecke
As Jesus walks along in 91, he sees a man blind for birth. And then, following the questions of the disciples, Jesus engages this man. So I think actually, this is a way of bookending that experience, even here at the end of the story, that Jesus is the first actor. Jesus is also the last actor that ultimately Jesus is the one who does the revealing.

00:04:15:46 – 00:04:33:19
Michael Gewecke
And that’s so important in John. Clint, we we might pass by it, but in modern Christianity there is this temptation to think that we would know Jesus because of reason, or we would. We would be able to sort of work our way to who Jesus is. But a story like this, and John really does push back on that.

00:04:33:19 – 00:04:57:06
Michael Gewecke
I think this story makes it abundantly clear that Jesus is the one who does the revealing of God’s will and presence in the world that you look to Jesus, and it’s his prerogative. You get to see a window into God’s perfect plan. What is fascinating is then the call. Or as you’ve already pointed out, Clint, to what response is to that revelation.

00:04:57:10 – 00:05:23:20
Michael Gewecke
And here Jesus asks a very simple question and an ultimate lie. The question is, well, sorry. The man asked. Jesus, who is he? And and Jesus is the one who then says, you’ve seen him? The one speaking to you? Is he that that seeing has multiple senses? The question, then is, what does it mean that this man believes?

00:05:23:20 – 00:05:43:52
Michael Gewecke
Because remember, he’s already been brought before the Pharisees, and there’s always been already been this question brought to him of, you know, who is the man? Jesus. Well, now, when the man has an opportunity that the formerly blind man can now in this moment, address Jesus, he simply asks him the question. And I think it plays back to a previous theme.

00:05:43:57 – 00:06:09:54
Michael Gewecke
This man responded to those Pharisees and said, hey, listen, I don’t know who he is, but I was blind and now I can see that should be enough. Well, hear the that same man. When faced with the personal question, Who is Jesus? He simply asks him. And Jesus answers that if you see me, that then you know, and the man does believe, and then that immediately leads to his action, which is worship and belief and worship.

00:06:09:54 – 00:06:38:33
Michael Gewecke
And John, they’re going to be intertwined in some really interesting ways, as they have already. I just think this story is beginning to incorporate these many different layers while simultaneously maintaining the kind of simplicity of this man’s character, which is essential to John’s understanding of what it means to be a disciple. You don’t need to be a PhD or a priest or some kind of spiritual, you know, a saint to follow Jesus.

00:06:38:42 – 00:06:44:42
Michael Gewecke
You simply need to ask the right, simple question and then give the right simple response.

00:06:44:47 – 00:07:14:51
Clint Loveall
It’s it’s somewhat subtle, and it can get lost because of the conflict narrative in this story. But I think if we follow the man’s tragic trajectory through this chapter, it’s really interesting. So we have first a blind man in need and he encounters Jesus or experiences Jesus first as healer. And then he says, the man Jesus. And then he says, well, I don’t know if he’s a sinner.

00:07:14:51 – 00:07:47:11
Clint Loveall
I know he healed me. We know that he must be from God. Right? And so you have this movement that culminates here in these words. He calls him Lord. So the man Jesus, the one who healed me, the a prophet, the one from God, all of that leads him ultimately to this profession, Lord, I believe and and then it leads him also to worship.

00:07:47:11 – 00:08:11:40
Clint Loveall
And for John, I think this is a pattern, a paradigm of what it is to encounter Jesus. And it would be, I think a case could be made that it would have been nice if the story ended here, but because John is always telling the bigger story that forces the question of who Jesus is, he instead adds some conflict at the end.

00:08:11:45 – 00:08:39:20
Clint Loveall
Jesus says this thing, I came so that people who don’t see can see. I came to open the eyes of the blind, and those who think they can see. I came to show them that they are blind. And the Pharisees overhear this, and they assume he’s speaking to them, or they sort of figure that out. And he says, they say to him, we are not blind, are we?

00:08:39:25 – 00:09:07:28
Clint Loveall
And then the words that do conclude this story come from Jesus. If you were blind, you wouldn’t have sin. But because you say, we see, your sin remains. And again, what a wonderful way to to sort of summarize some of, not all of but some of the themes of this chapter, your convinced you know the truth and yet you are blind.

00:09:07:33 – 00:09:38:31
Clint Loveall
And the man who started the the story blind is proclaiming Jesus Lord and worshiping him. The ones who claim that they can see and that they know the truth are ultimately at the end, still blind to the truth. And I just think it’s, it’s not it’s a less positive way to end the story, Michael, but it makes sense, I think, for what John is trying to do, and it allows him to really hammer the point home.

00:09:38:36 – 00:10:06:09
Michael Gewecke
This story is carefully told from start to finish. I just want to point out that we see that again in the way that it ends. Because remember how this story began by the disciples asking, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind, right? The question was the sinfulness of this man, which, by the way, the Pharisees have already used to their benefit in the way that they’ve used this man to sort of prop up an argument against Jesus.

00:10:06:23 – 00:10:33:11
Michael Gewecke
Now look at this. Jesus just essentially lands a blow to say no. The third character, it wasn’t the man or his parents who have sinned. They’re not the issue. It’s the the ones who think they can see and are unwilling to confess the brokenness of their hearts. They are the ones who have been sinful from the start. This is not an accidental kind of turn at the end of the story.

00:10:33:12 – 00:11:00:56
Michael Gewecke
This is a very carefully told way of helping us to see that no matter how threatened the Pharisees are, when they come after Jesus, when they seek their own power, they seek some privilege over him. The Pharisees are fundamentally scared of who Jesus might be in their physical circumstance, right? He might become popular. He might become famous. He might draw people away.

00:11:01:01 – 00:11:29:51
Michael Gewecke
Maybe there’s some spiritual, you know, theological kind of emphasis there, but there’s very clearly a willingness to do whatever it takes to put Jesus down. What’s fascinating is that at the end of the day, Jesus is a threat to them in truth, because he represents the world turned upside down. That sinfulness is not a thing that humans do and pass on to the next generation that causes blindness and then needs to be argued about in the synagogue.

00:11:29:51 – 00:12:05:47
Michael Gewecke
No blindness is when you are unwilling to be transformed in the presence of God incarnate. And make no mistake about this is so important in this book. We should not pass by it without seeing it that the man’s belief immediately leads to worship. And this is the antidote to misunderstanding what belief means. Belief in Jesus is not in the book of John simply, oh, I assent to the fact that he’s a good teacher, or I think he’s a, a good human and a moral exemplar.

00:12:05:49 – 00:12:38:41
Michael Gewecke
Now, Jesus is those things. Absolutely. But from John’s lens, from his perspective, his belief in Jesus will always lead to divine worship of Jesus. Because Jesus is at the core, Lord in the messianic sense. He’s the one who renews, transforms, redeems, justifies. Jesus is both judge and the one judge. And all of this occupies at the same time this human living and revealing God.

00:12:38:42 – 00:13:08:08
Michael Gewecke
And so this movement that we see in this man is an unbelievably important movement, because it shows us how he goes from a man blind, a physical illness, to a man who gets jostled around by the Pharisees, trying to use him to accuse Jesus of sinfulness, to, in the end, being a person who is suddenly able to see Jesus for who he is spiritually as he sees him physically.

00:13:08:13 – 00:13:34:15
Michael Gewecke
And that man then is moved to worship the one who stands in front of him. That’s the amazing circle that this story takes, is it? It both serves as a kind of repudiation of those who can see physically but are spiritually blind, while simultaneously showing us a journey of a man once physically blind, then able to see Jesus spiritually, and where that leads him to the foot of worshiping the one who had come to redeem.

00:13:34:15 – 00:13:47:44
Michael Gewecke
I mean, that’s the kind of turn in this story that makes it so incredible. And I understand why this is likely your favorite passage in John, because it it takes us on a journey with this man.

00:13:47:49 – 00:13:52:09
Clint Loveall
There’s a really nice bookend here.

00:13:52:13 – 00:14:33:02
Clint Loveall
In a passage that starts with Jesus saying that the man’s sin. Has not caused physical blindness and ending with the condemnation that in refusing to leave their spiritual blindness, the Pharisees persist in their sin. So what is John telling us here? That sin causes spiritual blindness, not physical blindness? This man isn’t blind physically because he sinned or his parents sinned.

00:14:33:07 – 00:15:06:23
Clint Loveall
The Pharisees are spiritually blind because their sin keeps them from seeing what is painfully evident to those around them, including a blind man, that Jesus is Jesus. And so I think a really nice contrast here between the opening lines of the story and the ending lines of the story, where we see that we’ve moved from the question of, of physical blindness, and we’ve centered on the question of physical blindness and sin.

00:15:06:23 – 00:15:37:41
Clint Loveall
While not responsible for the first, is a condition of the second, and that it not surprisingly, the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees is going to continue to spiral downhill. This is a significant moment in it, but it’s not over yet. But I think here, John is pretty clear with his the charge that he’s laying out, or at least that he hears in Jesus conversation with them.

00:15:37:46 – 00:16:03:49
Michael Gewecke
This is maybe example par excellence of why the Bible should not rightly be understood as some kind of pure history book seeking to tell the story exactly how it happened. Not saying that it’s not interested in those details, but Clint, this could be read as a sermon and it have impact without being interpreted in in the way that we think of interpretation.

00:16:03:54 – 00:16:31:31
Michael Gewecke
The narrative itself reveals the transformation of this man’s life because of his encounter with Jesus. There is a devotional nod built into this text itself, and I think that it reveals, for any believer willing to see it, that there’s a kind of faithfulness to the gospel that looks in our own life to see those concrete, physical, maybe even to you.

00:16:31:31 – 00:16:52:03
Michael Gewecke
It’s not the the enormity of being blind and then being healed, but but the the things that we might think of, non spiritual things that can lead us to deep spiritual awareness and gratitude for what Christ has done in our life. I think that a text like this illustrates what even a modern Christian is called to do in our life.

00:16:52:03 – 00:17:14:27
Michael Gewecke
That is, pay attention to look at what Christ is doing so that as you see it unfolding, you can return. Thanks. You can come to his feet and worship him. You can, return to the one who has enlightened you in the Johannine sense. And, and you can therefore bear that light so that others might see it as well.

00:17:14:38 – 00:17:35:13
Michael Gewecke
There’s an amazing kind of marching order that lives underneath this text. That. So as this man became a witness, in fact, he was schooled and even teaching in some senses, of the Pharisees. So the same for you. No matter how competent you feel or how many church words you feel like you have command of, that’s not the point.

00:17:35:25 – 00:17:50:04
Michael Gewecke
The point isn’t that you get a theology degree. The point is you’re attentive to where Christ is at in your life, that that moves you to his worship, and then that will ultimate, regardless of what you intend, send you out to be a witness to what has happened to you.

00:17:50:09 – 00:18:21:51
Clint Loveall
I think if you read this chapter just with an eye for what happened, the man was blind. He got healed. The Pharisees were upset by that. They argued with him. They argued with Jesus. If you stuck to this kind of bare bones facts of this chapter, I think you would miss those undercurrents, those themes that John has worked really hard, light and dark, seeing and not seeing, believing, not believing.

00:18:21:55 – 00:18:50:07
Clint Loveall
This is this is too well crafted to approach it as simply a story of what happened next. That’s all in there. That that’s fine. You certainly should understand what happened in the story. But John is doing much, much more than that. John is using that story and I think sermon is the right word. Mike. I think John is preaching at us, to us, with us through this story.

00:18:50:07 – 00:19:16:44
Clint Loveall
And I think if you only left chapter nine with the outline version and and missed the deeper theology and spirituality that’s happening here, I, I think you I think you would I think it would be very unfortunate, which is I think one of the benefits of kind of working through verse by verse and section by section, you slow down a little bit and you get a chance to see more of that.

00:19:16:53 – 00:19:46:00
Michael Gewecke
We’re going to come towards a conclusion here, but I just want to make sure there’s one last theme I can think of that we might want to tie up. And you mentioned this in the beginning, the idea that Jesus goes looking for this man after he’s been driven out. I just want to sort of quickly remind you that to a Christian in the earliest part of the faith who lived with the present reality, that they may be driven out of their synagogues, that they would no longer be welcome to the place where their family has lived out all of the rights of what it means to be Jewish.

00:19:46:04 – 00:20:16:15
Michael Gewecke
To those believers, the fact that Jesus came to find this man on the outside of being put out would be nothing but good news. And maybe that’s not your fear. You know that’s not your experience. If you live in 21st century America and you have a church family that you feel safe and comfortable in, but friends, no matter your circumstance, the truth and the hope of that remains the same, that there’s no place that we find ourself pull it out from in the name of Jesus, where Jesus doesn’t come to find us.

00:20:16:15 – 00:20:39:31
Michael Gewecke
And that’s the kind of present lived hope. I think that this story can can work to show us is that though we have many things to be afraid of in our lives, in the face of Jesus, all of them melt away that he can be trusted. He is faithful. And if we but turn our eyes to him, then the light of the world will do his work.

00:20:39:36 – 00:20:43:13
Michael Gewecke
And that’s exactly what we that’s our best hope for the world.

00:20:43:26 – 00:21:04:42
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think it’s a beautiful detail of the story that Jesus encounters a man in need heals him. That man is then hurt by the religion of his day or the religious people of his day, and Jesus seeks him out to heal him again in a different way to bring him. He’s brought him sight, and now he brings him life.

00:21:04:42 – 00:21:14:30
Clint Loveall
And I think, you know, again, I think that’s one of the it’s just a it’s just a simple detail that Jesus found him, but it says a lot.

00:21:14:34 – 00:21:32:01
Michael Gewecke
Thanks for being with us. Hope you’ve liked this part of the study through chapter nine. Give this video a like. If this conversation has been inspiring or challenging to you, subscribe. We are going to be coming back in a couple weeks. We’re taking a Christmas, New Year’s break here while we’re going through this study. So we’ll be back January 6th.

00:21:32:06 – 00:21:34:34
Michael Gewecke
Would love to see you then.

00:21:34:39 – 00:21:38:06
Clint Loveall
Hope you on. You and yours have great holidays and thanks for being with us.