Classic Christianity – Book of John Part 47 (07-17-19)
Synopsis
Bob George finished the story of the account in John where Jesus healed a blind man. The Jewish leaders of the days attacked both Jesus and the man once blind but now can see. All they could see was a violation of their law, of breaking the Sabbath by spitting on the ground, making mud, and washing the man’s eyes on the Sabbath. Everyone is born spiritually blind. Jesus came to make the blind see. Bob shared his own testimony of those early years he was blind and lost. He also shared the testimony of John Wesley, a pastor and minister who was blind and lost, sharing simply what he thought was true but was blind until the day he understood justification by faith alone in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ upon hearing a message from the book of Romans. Prior to that, the teaching he was under was by blind men. Prior to being born again, he thought he could see. He was blind thinking he could see. So too all of us once were.
There are two kinds of people in the world today. You have people with self-righteousness and people indwelt with God’s righteousness. Those attitudes are manifested in two different ways. The self-righteous person says, “Thank God I am not like them.” You who say such things are full of self righteousness. The other person says, “But for the grace of God, there go I”. That is a man with a humble heart. There is a man ready for the grace of God. You see two attitudes. There is no sin you and I are not capable of committing. Do you have compassion and mercy when you see someone trapped in sin? You see a man born physically blind, who can now see physically, who was also born spiritually blind, but when confronted with truth could see spiritually. Do you rejoice with the truth? In comparison to men who thought they could see, but when they saw they could not see.
So you have lost and saved people. Whatever you think could save you apart from Jesus, you are blind. How many kinds of salvation are presented in the world today, by people who think they can see but are blind? You have people today thinking that if you worship Allah, if you are a Muslim, you are saved. You could not be more blind. Others think that if you join the Catholic church you are saved. You could not be more blind. Others think that if you join the Baptist church you are saved. You are not saved by joining a club. You are saved only by God. No one else can save you. Bob once asked a Church of Christ person, “Who died for your sins?” Jesus, who was raised from the dead, and I was baptized by my pastor. “Who baptized you?” The pastor. So if you say baptism is what saved you, then you are saying part pastor and part Jesus. Nothing natural can co-mingling with the spiritual. It is all of him and none of us. If you think anything else you are blind. You think you can see but you can’t.
Jesus is described in scripture as the gate for the sheep. His sheep hear his voice because they belong to him and will not follow a stranger’s voice. Those who have ever observed a shepherd with sheep will know what Jesus is saying. If you are not hearing his voice, then you are not his sheep. There is one way to get into the sheep gate. So if you don’t go through the gate, but climb over the fence it means you are trying to get in some other way than the way to go in. He calls him a thief and he calls him a robber. It is like people trying to get into heaven some other way than through the sheep gate. A person says, “I am trying to get in by my good works”. Jesus responds, “You are climbing over the fence. You are a thief and a robber”. A person says, “I am trying to get in by belonging to this church”. Jesus replies, “You are climbing over the fence”. A person says, “I am going to get there because God chose me. He did not choose you but he chose me”. Jesus replies, “You are climbing over the fence. You are not going in through the gate but you are thinking God dropped you in there because he likes you. You are not going through the gate. You are a thief and a robber”. That is a reformed theology, going by a parachute drop and not through the gate.
Transcript
Let us turn together to the 9th chapter of the book of John. We just finished the story of the account in John where Jesus healed a blind man. The self righteous were calling Jesus everything under the sun, including demon possessed, not because he healed somebody but because he healed someone on the Sabbath, which was contrary to their Jewish law. Now it was not contrary to the law of God but it was contrary to their interpretations they had made in regard to what the law said. What the law said is that you cannot work on the Sabbath, from the evening on Friday night to the evening on Saturday, which is the Sabbath. You if cannot do any kind of work, so you have to say what work is there then? So you make over 613 laws around the Sabbath. You cannot work on the Sabbath. One of the laws is that you cannot spit on the ground on the Sabbath for spitting on the ground would make mud, and that would be considered work. So if you must spit, you spit on a rock. Well, Jesus did not spit on a rock but he spit on the ground. You could imagine hearing his disciples say, “Why don’t you wait for tomorrow?” He did that in order to show the hypocrisy of religion. So he spit on the ground, scooped up some dirt, made mud with own hands, put mud on the blind man, and then told him to wash in the pool of Siloam, and then the man could see. The Pharisees had no rejoicing in that truth, that a man born blind was healed. Three just have been great rejoicing, but there wasn’t. All they could see in that event was that Jesus spit on the Sabbath. The only thing they could see was a violation of their law. Because of this he was called as someone being demon possessed. He was literally being thought of as being killed. They quizzed his parents of this man. They know one thing, that he their son, and said who healed him they did not know. The leaders and Pharisees went back and then quizzed the man who had been made whole. The blind man made whole said, “All I know is that once I was blind but now I see”.
Now, let us look at John 9:30-31, on how the blind man made whole responded to the leaders and Pharisees questioning of him.
John 9:30-41
30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will.”
This is the answer by the man who was healed to those, the leaders and Pharisees, who said he was full of sin and the man who healed him was a sinner.
John 9:32-33
32 “Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
How are you calling him a sinner when he performed a miracle we have never seen before, of a man who was totally blind from birth, but now totally able to see.
John 9:34
34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
They could not come up with an answer to that so what they do is attack those who attack the credibility. So the Pharisees retort, “Who are you to question me?” Like people today, who say, “I have a Doctor’s degree.” or “I have been to seminary?” and so attack the credibility of those by boasting of their own credentials. That is all the more reason to question those who think they know it all. But they threw him out.
John 9:35-38
35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
He had been the recipient of a miracle of God, of being blind from birth, and suddenly able to see with his eyes. When Jesus revealed himself as the one who restored his sight, then he believed in him.
Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind
There are two kinds of people in the world today. You have people with self-righteousness and people indwelt with God’s righteousness. Those attitudes are manifested in two different ways. The self-righteous person says, “Thank God I am not like them.” You who say such things are full of self righteousness. The other person says, “But for the grace of God, there go I”. That is a man with a humble heart. There is a man ready for the grace of God.
Luke 18:9-14
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
You have two attitudes that will tell you immediately where you are in this realm of the Christian experience. If you see someone sin, do you say, \“if not for the grace of God, there goes I”. When you see someone caught in drug addiction, you say, “but for the grace of God, there go I”. There is no sin you and I are not capable of committing. There are some sins I may say I think would be hard for me to do. But I should never say I would never do such a sin. You hear examples of that, of men growing up in a pastor’s home and end up in adulterous relationship and commit adultery, or a woman killing their husband. Bob knows a father and mother of people who have done things like that. So whenever you see sin, you say, “There for the grace of God, there go I”. There is a heart of compassion and sympathy.
The very opposite of that heart is the example of this illustration. What is our attitude when you look at sin? So we have to say to yourself, what do I say in my heart when I see sin? Test ourselves to see if you are in the faith.
2 Corinthians 13:5
5 Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test?
You may have come to the Lord and you are very grateful and in those early days you would say “but for the grace of God, there go I” but then you get more intelligent, more in the word and start doing certain things. Then your attitude tends to shift. Are you prepared or were you prepared for the gospel? But you were not prepared for the gospel with the attitude, “Thank God I am not like them, a sinner”. You were prepared when like Paul you said, “I am the worst of sinners and I need salvation”.
You see two attitudes. You see a man born physically blind, who can now see physically, who was also born spiritually blind, but when confronted with truth could see spiritually. In comparison to men who thought they could see, but when they saw they could not see.
John 9:39
39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
How many kinds of salvation are presented in the world today, by people who think they can see but are blind? In Bob’s case, he never heard of salvation. He sat in church thirty six years, from grade school to high school and hardly missed a Sunday. He was always in church, in the basement playing basketball and other fun games. He was always in a church setting through his young life. There was a YMCA across from the church. He went to church for that is where everybody went to play. He never heard the gospel. He never heard he was lost. He never heard the word, “saved”. Saved from what? He never heard those words. Such words never entered his mind. Whether lost or saved, he never gave such things a thought. It was a place to go. You go to church on Sunday and do your thing. That carried on into adulthood. He took his children to church and picked them up. No meaning to it at all. At church, he would be thinking about business when service going on, giving a dollar generously. The thought never entered his mind as something hypocritical. The thought never entered his mind he could get blasted on the weekend. He never even thought of it as hypocrisy at all.
Bob recalls something that got his attention. He was down in San Diego, a mill representative of a company he represented. He was with the guys just the night before, drinking all over the place. He remembers walking into that and thinking that it sounds like church. He recalls that he was totally wrong. Bob asked the guys, “You go to church?” They surprisingly replied, “What are you talking about, you go to church?” Bob was thinking, “What is wrong with these guys?” He saw no inconsistency in that. He only saw church as a nice place to go. In a church setting, something had to be taught. What Bob thinks what was taught is that if you are basically a nice person and good enough you will be okay. If someone asked, “Are you going to heaven?”, Bob would have answered, “yes, sure”. Bob never ever thought he would go to hell, no matter how bad he got. He grew up in a nice house, hasn’t killed anybody, haven’t stolen anything, at least recently. That is being taught by people blind as a bat who think they can see. Others say, “if you come into my church, baptized in my waters, by my pastor, you will be saved. That is all it takes”. That is a person who is taught by a blind person who thinks they can see.
You can go become a missionary and that if you take a mission trip, then you are on your way. There are people who think that if you become a missionary and take a mission trip that will do it. John Wesley was one of those. John Wesley came to America to minister to the Indians in hope to save his own soul. He was a pastor, educated and came here to America trying to work to obtain salvation. He went back to England in total frustration. On his way back, his boat got in a terrific storm. He was scared to death, petrified. In the same boat were Moravian, bible believing Christians. They were singing songs. He thought, “How can these idiots be singing songs about Jesus when this boat is about to go down and I am sitting here petrified as a pastor?” The storm calmed down and they arrived in England. In a few weeks, he arrived in a place outside London, called Altersgate. While there a man was reading about a premise from the book of Romans, about justification by faith and faith alone. While they were reading, he came to realize that although he was trying to work for God, he realized he never accepted what God had done for him in the person of Christ Jesus. He trusted in Christ alone 100 percent for salvation and said his heart grew strangely warm. He was born again and then went all over England sharing the gospel when he finally understood that it was not about what he did for God but what God did for him. The teaching he was under was by blind men. Prior to that he thought he could see. He was blind thinking he could see. If he wasn’t thinking he could see, he would not be over there trying to save others.
That is what Jesus is talking about.
John 9:39
39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
Whatever you think could save you apart from Jesus, you are blind. You have people today thinking that if you worship Allah, if you are a Muslim, you are saved. You could not be more blind. Others think that if you join the Catholic church you are saved. You could not be more blind. Others think that if you join the Baptist church you are saved. You are not saved by joining a club. You are saved only by God. No one else can save you. Bob once asked a Church of Christ person, “Who died for your sins?” Jesus, who was raised from the dead, and I was baptized by my pastor. “Who baptized you?” The pastor. So if you say baptism is what saved you, then you are saying part pastor and part Jesus. Nothing natural can comingle with the spiritual. It is all of him and none of us. If you think anything else you are blind. You think you can see but you can’t.
John 9:40
40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
Duh! Who do you think I am talking to?
John 9:41
41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”
You think you can see but you are going a different direction than me. Your problem is that you are blind but think you can see.
John 10:1
1 “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.”
There is one way to get into the sheep gate. So if you don’t go through the gate, but climb over the fence it means you are trying to get in some other way than the way to go in. He calls him a thief and he calls him a robber. It is like people trying to get into heaven some other way than through the sheep gate. A person says, “I am trying to get in by my good works”. Jesus responds, “You are climbing over the fence. You are a thief and a robber”. A person says, “I am trying to get in by belonging to this church”. Jesus replies, “You are climbing over the fence”. A person says, “I am going to get there because God chose me. He did not choose you but he chose me\”. Jesus replies, “You are climbing over the fence. You are not going in through the gate but you are thinking God dropped you in there because he likes you. You are not going through the gate. You are a thief and a robber”. That is a reformed theology, going by a parachute drop and not through the gate.
John 10:2-4
2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.
In the sheep herding business, even today in Israel, there is a guttural sound that a shepherd makes that is only heard by the sheep. The sheep immediately respond for this is the voice of the shepherd and they follow him. If you are not hearing his voice, then you are not his sheep. There are two fathers. If you do not belong to God then you belong to Satan. There is no in between. You are either in God’s camp or in Satan’s camp.
John 10:5
5 “But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”
You can have shepherds in a field and all have their own sheep. One sheepherder will make this guttural sound and only his sheep will hear and follow him. Yes, these sheep are very interesting, that this guttural sound with over a thousand sheep, and only his sheep will hear and follow him.
John 10:6-7
6 Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.
7 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.”
Another one of those “I am”s. Did he not say he is the way, the truth and the life and no man can come to the Father except through me?
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
John 10:8
8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them.
All this theology you have heard of how to be saved is made by people who are jumping over the fence. But the sheep will not listen to them.
John 10:9
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.
If you enter through me you will be saved. You can go out and intermix with the world but when you hear the voice of God you will know to follow him. Are you in the world? Are you able to know the difference between the voice of the world and the voice of God? We get trapped in many ways. The world is full of error of ways to discourage us, to put us down and make us feel like second rate citizens. We have to learn to listen to the voice of God. If you are anxious about tomorrow and we do get anxious, then you have to listen to the voice of God. My sheep hear my voice. The voice of God says, “Do not be anxious.”
Philippians 4:6-7
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
That is God’s voice. The world’s voice says, “Worry about it. Get discouraged.” Depression is almost in epidemic proportions in the world today. Did you know there is no such thing as being depressed apart from being filled with self pity? The deeper you are in self pity, the deeper you are in depression.