John 9:13-29
What Real Blindness Looks Like
In the first 12 verses we saw Jesus heal a man who was born blind. He gave sight to this man who had never seen before. This week we’re going to cover a little more ground and look at verses 13-34. And it is in these verses that we are going to see what real blindness looks like. Whereas last week we saw a man who was physically blind, this week we’re going to see people who were spiritually blind and could not see Jesus Christ’s true identity.
As we go through, I want to point out 4 “Blinders” to Jesus Christ: 1) Wrong Criteria, 2) Worry over Consequences, 3) Works-based Confidence, 4) Willful Condemnation. These are 4 reasons why someone will remain spiritually blind and never come to see the truth of Jesus Christ.
Blinder #1: Wrong Criteria (v13-16)
The first blinder is the Wrong Criteria. People use the wrong criteria to judge Jesus Christ. Notice verses 13-16, “_________”.
So, for the 2nd time the man who was formerly blind gave his testimony. The key here is that when the Pharisees heard how Jesus healed the man and when He healed the man, they immediately thought Jesus broke the Sabbath, and concluded that He must not be from God. However, as we discussed last week, Jesus didn’t break God’s law about the Sabbath, He broke man’s law about the Sabbath. He broke the traditions and the rules that Jewish rabbi’s had invented concerning the Sabbath…
The Sabbath was the 4th commandment of God (Exodus 20:8). No regular work was to be done; it was not a regular day like the other days of the week. It was a holy day unto the Lord. Six days of work, but, the 7th was a day of rest.
In order to help people know what it meant to honor the Sabbath the Jewish leaders began prescribing guidelines to help the people know what it meant not to do any work. These became known as the traditions of the elders.
Over time these traditions became a whole law by themselves. The commandments of God became buried underneath all the rules and traditions of men which often times contradicted God’s law (Mark 7).
Does God consider spitting on the ground to be a violation of the Sabbath? Does God consider making mud with your spit to be a trespass against His Sabbath law? Saliva in those days was considered to have healing powers (similar what moms use with their thumbs on their children’s grubby cheeks!). Does God consider it unrighteous when someone puts healing salve on their eyes on the Sabbath day?
No! These are additions to God’s laws by men. These are not what God has required but these are the requirements of men. Jesus said it is lawful to do good and to heal on the Sabbath. Man was not created for the Sabbath, but, the Sabbath was created for man He said.
And so when the Pharisees say Jesus does not keep the Sabbath, they are judging Him based on the wrong criteria. They looked at Jesus through the lense of their own made up religion. And when He didn’t fit with their rules they condemned Him – they condemned God’s Son. That’s what man-made rules do – they make men so proud of themselves for having a form of righteousness that they’ve created to feel good about themselves that it gives them a gauge to condemn others by. The Pharisees loved their self-made religion so much that they couldn’t even recognize the truth of God when it stood right in front of their face.
What’s the point? The point is this:
Notice however that the Pharisees are divided. In verse 16 we see there were some who weren’t ready to conclude the worst about Jesus just yet. Two groups within the Pharisees: the hard-liners who were convinced Jesus was not from God, and, a second group that thought that He may be.
We learned about this 2nd group in chapter 3. Nicodemus was a Pharisee who was from this second group. He came to Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” When Nicodemus says “we know” he isn’t referring to all the Pharisees, he’s referring to the minority group within the Pharisees that he was representing. This minority group is referred to here in verse 16, “But others [Pharisees] said, ‘How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?’ So they [the Pharisees] were divided.”
That’s what Jesus does. He comes to divide. In Matthew He said “Don’t think I came to bring peace, I did not come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword. I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” I came to divide. I came to break things up and cause separation. Jesus was going to be the reason that some relationships come to an end and new ones begin. The reason is that for many people their new faith in Christ is not well received by those who are closest to them. But where relationships end with hostile unbelievers new ones begin within the family of God.
I would suggest a principle here: that the more the church is divided from the world the more unity there will be in the church. And perhaps the reason for disunity in a church often is because there is not enough of a division from the world. There is the desire to be liked by and to be like the world. Worldliness ruins the purity and the unity of the church.
So, after arguing among themselves over Jesus, they turn again to the man who has been standing there. They ask him what his opinion is of Jesus. Who did he think Jesus was? “He is a prophet”.
Notice two things here. First, his opinion of Jesus is higher than it was in verse 11. In verse 11 he said, “The man they call Jesus”. This is very impersonal. But we’re going to see a progression throughout this chapter of how he saw Jesus. As he learns more and more about Jesus his estimation of Jesus gets higher and higher. In verse 11 the man sees Him as the man they call Jesus. He is a prophet in verse 17. He is a man from God in verse 33. And finally in verse 39 he believes Jesus is the Son of Man and worships Him.
The more you interact with the Word of God the more your view of Jesus will elevate. The more you know Him by His Word, the more you will hold Him up in your estimation of Him and the more confidence you will have in Him to turn to Him. That’s what was happening with this man. His opinion of Jesus was going up.
Secondly, his opinion of Jesus is higher than the Pharisees opinion of Jesus. He was putting himself at risk. What he thought of Jesus was getting farther and farther away from what the Pharisees thought and that was moving him closer and closer to being in trouble with them.
The world has a low opinion of Jesus Christ. When you know the truth, your opinion of Jesus will always be higher than the world around you. And that will get you closer and closer to being in trouble with the world around you too.
The Pharisees were not going to listen to this for long. Their problem was that the real Jesus didn’t fit with their idea of what He should be. Here is the application: do not invent what Jesus should be. Don’t use your own criteria for what He should and shouldn’t be. Don’t assume He is like this or isn’t like that. If you do, then when the real Christ is presented to you, you won’t recognize or respond to Him because you will be looking for someone and something else. Like them, you will be blinded by using the Wrong Criteria to judge Jesus.
Blinder #2: Worry over Consequences (v. 18-23)
The 2nd Blinder that will keep you from seeing the truth of Jesus Christ is to Worry over the Consequences. In other words, some people don’t want to be associated with Jesus Christ because they are afraid of what others will think and do. Notice verses 18-23, “_______________”.
Well the Pharisees aren’t going to accept that Jesus is a prophet and so far they’re not convinced the man was born blind. So they pull in his parents and put them on the stand. Now, I am sure that this is not the first time they heard that their son who was born blind could now see. This blind man had no one else, so who would he run to go and see? His parents! He wasn’t married with children – he couldn’t work. He didn’t have co-workers or many friends if at all. The only ones who could share this new joy were the ones who shared the pain of his blindness with him all this time – his parents.
You might ask, so what? The problem is that they betray their own son. They back down and don’t support him in front of the Pharisees. What happened to the tears of joy and celebration and feelings of bewilderment and elation they no doubt shared with their son? Certainly they heard the same story from their son that he has explained twice now – that Jesus healed him by putting mud on his eyes. Did they stand in their home with their son and praise God at the sight of their son who could now see, only to now stand there in front of the Pharisees saying they don’t know how it happened or who did it? How could they do that?
And can you imagine how the man who was blind felt? Here he was watching his parents distance themselves from him and leave him to stand alone in this trial. The pain of betrayal must have made his heart sink. He was going through a terrible betrayal by those who were closest to him. Do you know what it’s like to be betrayed? Maybe this man asked the question in his heart: How could God let this happen? Let me tell you why I think something like this was happening to this man. This was all part of the plan of God in this man’s life. Listen: who can truly know the sweet joy of being received by God if one has not been rejected by man? Psalm 27 says, “Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.”
And that’s what Jesus did as we’ll see next week. When his parents betrayed him, and his own religion disowned him, Jesus received him. I think God allowed this man to feel the pain of being rejected by man so that he can know the depth of joy that comes from being received by God.
He stood with Jesus and was betrayed. Jesus stood with His Father and was betrayed. Jesus was received by the Father. This man was received by Jesus. Do you see the pattern? Do you see the common ground there that can bring a closeness with Christ?
Paul said, “I want to know Christ and and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings.” There is fellowship with Christ that comes from suffering like He suffered. John 1:11 says “Jesus came to that which was His own but His own did not receive Him.” We saw how His own brothers in chapter 7 didn’t even believe in Him. In Luke 4 Jesus was rejected in His own hometown of Nazareth. Peter, who the very same night that he pledged to follow Christ to death, denied Him 3 times. Judas stabbed Him in the back and sold Him out to the Pharisees for 30 silver coins. Three years with Jesus and Judas sells Him for 30 silver coins! All the disciples deserted Him the night He was arrested. All of Israel cried out “Crucify Him”. All the world left Him to die on a cross. If you have been betrayed you have a Savior who knows your pain. You are in good company.
Paul shared in these sufferings too – he knew what it was to be deserted and abandoned. Men like Mark, Phygelus, Hermogenes, Demas, Alexander, and he says in 2 Timothy that “all of Asia” has abandoned him. Paul knows the pain of betrayal and abandonment as well. So, when this man sees his own father and mother forsaking him, he has entered into the sufferings of Christ, and joined the ranks of men like Paul and others who know that kind of pain.
Still we ask, “Why would they do this?” Why would they abandon their son there to the Pharisees? One word: Fear. Fear of man. They were afraid of what might happen to them if they stood up for their son. To stand with him meant they were standing with Jesus. The Pharisees had already made it known to the public that if anyone acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ they would be thrown out of the synagogue.
Now we need to understand what’s at stake for the parents. Becoming a follower of Christ in 1st century Israel was not like 21st century west Michigan. Getting thrown out of the synagogue isn’t like leaving a church around here. There weren’t other synagogues to go attend. Jewish life was very concentrated and the religious life of Israel was regulated by people like the Pharisees. To be kicked out of the synagogue meant you lost the ability to worship with the rest of your country. It meant you lost the ability to socialize because you were now an outcast. It meant you were shunned economically. You were cut-off. You lost your identity. This is a terrifying punishment for a Jew. It still is today, as well as for Muslims or Hindu’s who leave their old religion behind and become a Christian.
But as terrifying as it is, it is the work of God to separate us from our old life and our old identity so that we are found new in Jesus Christ. He is our life, our righteousness, our all in all.
Do you know what the problem with fearing man is? It says this: I want the approval of men more than I want the approval of God. In other words, the cost of losing favor with my neighbors, my co-workers, my boss, my family, my friends, is too much to pay to stand with Jesus. But, Proverbs says that the fear of man is a snare. It’s a trap. Paul said that if he were trying to please men he would not be a servant of God. That’s true for every Christian.
Do you know why? Worship. Fear of man is a disorder of worship, because the heart that fears men is a heart that worships the approval of men. The ultimate fear is rejection by men, not God. This is a heart of idolatry. It places man above God as the one who is served. A man-pleaser will do whatever is necessary to please men – even at the expense of pleasing God. A man-pleaser is someone who is not a God-pleaser. When it comes down to it, a man-pleaser lives to be accepted by men, not God. They worry about what man thinks and the consequences of commitment to Christ.
Worrying over the Consequences is the 2nd blinder. Fear of man blinds us to the truth of Jesus Christ and keeps us from accepting and standing in that truth.
Blinder #3: Works-Based Confidence (v24-29)
So we are looking at Blinders that blind people from seeing the truth of Jesus Christ. Blinder #1 is the Wrong Criteria. Blinder #2 is Worry over Consequences. The 3rd Blinder is Works-Based Confidence. Works-Based Confidence. Notice verses 24-29, “_____________”.
So the Jews were not satisfied with the man’s testimony so they bring his parents in. They’re hoping the whole time to catch the man in some inconsistency so that they can ultimately catch Jesus. They don’t get anywhere with his parents so they bring him back in to testify again about how he received his sight. They want the man to swear under oath that Jesus is a sinner. The man isn’t going to admit Jesus is a sinner. I like that because the man doesn’t testify beyond what he knows. He sticks with what he does know, “I was blind, but, now I see.” But, because he’s annoyed with them for asking him again how it happened, he taunts them with sarcasm, “You don’t want to become Jesus’ disciples too do you?” Whew, things are starting to boil now.
When they say, “We are disciples of Moses” they are saying that their religion is their guarantee that they are in God’s favor. They don’t need Jesus, because they’ve got Moses. To them, Jesus was a sinner and they were righteous. They thought they were disciples of Moses and that they were faithful to the law of Moses. In other words, the good religious works they did were what they banked on for getting into heaven. They had a works-based confidence.
But, Paul would later say in Roman 3, “No one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by obeying the law.” Well, why did He give the law? Paul tells us that the law was to make a person conscious of sin. In other words, my failure and inability to fully carry out the moral requirements of the law were to show me that I don’t have what it takes to be righteousness. It’s a standard that’s too high. I can’t do it. I can’t be what the law requires me to be. That’s what I was to see about myself, and if that’s what I saw then I was supposed to turn to God and look to Him for mercy. The law should point me to God’s mercy for my unrighteousness. It should not be something I can point to as my merit for righteousness. But that’s what the Pharisees did, they saw themselves as faithful followers of Moses and the law and they saw Jesus as a sinner who broke that law, and they didn’t look to God for mercy.
They didn’t see that God had provided the mercy they needed in His Son Jesus Christ. They didn’t see that in reality they were the ones who broke the law and that Jesus was the One who faithfully carried it out. They were the sinners, not Him. He came and perfectly fulfilled the law – something that no one else ever did or could. By doing so, He was qualified to go to the cross and die as God’s Lamb, to be the sacrifice for man’s sins. The One who was sinless died for the many who are sinful. It is in Christ Jesus that the mercy we look to God for is found.
Listen, people who have works-based confidence say things like, “I hope that I lived a good enough life that God will let me in.” They say, “I tried to do right, and be a good person.” When people talk like this they show that they are relying on themselves for their eternal security. Their hope is that maybe God will overlook the bad and accept their good; that when their life is measured the good will outweigh the bad.
But the tragedy of this is two-fold: First, they never can be sure they’ve done enough good. In a man’s heart he never has any guarantee that he has done enough to be accepted by God. Secondly, the reality is that he isn’t good enough. All his effort to be good enough will in the end count for nothing. God will not accept the works of man. That’s not how it works.
I’ll close with this. You know how it works with God? By works. Let me explain. You and I can go to heaven because of good works. But not ours. God says that our works of righteousness apart from Christ are like filthy rags. Our works are worthless in God’s sight.
But there is someone whose work He does accept. The work that He did is the only work that God will accept. It’s the work of His Son Jesus Christ. The work that He did was to die on the cross for your sins. His blood was shed and His body was broken. His life was taken away so that life could be given to you. He left heaven to die so that you could go to heaven and live. The work of Jesus Christ is the only work that God accepts. Now, the only thing work that you can do is to believe in the work that Jesus did for you. If you would surrender all your own efforts to earn God’s favor and simply accept God’s Son, then you can have God’s favor, and He will accept you.
Don’t be blinded by confidence in your good works. Don’t be blinded by the Wrong Criteria. Don’t be blinded by Worrying over Consequences. When you see the truth of Jesus Christ you can have confidence that His work is what has saved you.
What Real Blindness Looks Like
In the first 12 verses we saw Jesus heal a man who was born blind. He gave sight to this man who had never seen before. This week we’re going to cover a little more ground and look at verses 13-34. And it is in these verses that we are going to see what real blindness looks like. Whereas last week we saw a man who was physically blind, this week we’re going to see people who were spiritually blind and could not see Jesus Christ’s true identity.
As we go through, I want to point out 4 “Blinders” to Jesus Christ: 1) Wrong Criteria, 2) Worry over Consequences, 3) Works-based Confidence, 4) Willful Condemnation. These are 4 reasons why someone will remain spiritually blind and never come to see the truth of Jesus Christ.
Blinder #1: Wrong Criteria (v13-16)
The first blinder is the Wrong Criteria. People use the wrong criteria to judge Jesus Christ. Notice verses 13-16, “_________”.
So, for the 2nd time the man who was formerly blind gave his testimony. The key here is that when the Pharisees heard how Jesus healed the man and when He healed the man, they immediately thought Jesus broke the Sabbath, and concluded that He must not be from God. However, as we discussed last week, Jesus didn’t break God’s law about the Sabbath, He broke man’s law about the Sabbath. He broke the traditions and the rules that Jewish rabbi’s had invented concerning the Sabbath…
The Sabbath was the 4th commandment of God (Exodus 20:8). No regular work was to be done; it was not a regular day like the other days of the week. It was a holy day unto the Lord. Six days of work, but, the 7th was a day of rest.
In order to help people know what it meant to honor the Sabbath the Jewish leaders began prescribing guidelines to help the people know what it meant not to do any work. These became known as the traditions of the elders.
Over time these traditions became a whole law by themselves. The commandments of God became buried underneath all the rules and traditions of men which often times contradicted God’s law (Mark 7).
Does God consider spitting on the ground to be a violation of the Sabbath? Does God consider making mud with your spit to be a trespass against His Sabbath law? Saliva in those days was considered to have healing powers (similar what moms use with their thumbs on their children’s grubby cheeks!). Does God consider it unrighteous when someone puts healing salve on their eyes on the Sabbath day?
No! These are additions to God’s laws by men. These are not what God has required but these are the requirements of men. Jesus said it is lawful to do good and to heal on the Sabbath. Man was not created for the Sabbath, but, the Sabbath was created for man He said.
And so when the Pharisees say Jesus does not keep the Sabbath, they are judging Him based on the wrong criteria. They looked at Jesus through the lense of their own made up religion. And when He didn’t fit with their rules they condemned Him – they condemned God’s Son. That’s what man-made rules do – they make men so proud of themselves for having a form of righteousness that they’ve created to feel good about themselves that it gives them a gauge to condemn others by. The Pharisees loved their self-made religion so much that they couldn’t even recognize the truth of God when it stood right in front of their face.
What’s the point? The point is this:
Notice however that the Pharisees are divided. In verse 16 we see there were some who weren’t ready to conclude the worst about Jesus just yet. Two groups within the Pharisees: the hard-liners who were convinced Jesus was not from God, and, a second group that thought that He may be.
We learned about this 2nd group in chapter 3. Nicodemus was a Pharisee who was from this second group. He came to Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” When Nicodemus says “we know” he isn’t referring to all the Pharisees, he’s referring to the minority group within the Pharisees that he was representing. This minority group is referred to here in verse 16, “But others [Pharisees] said, ‘How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?’ So they [the Pharisees] were divided.”
That’s what Jesus does. He comes to divide. In Matthew He said “Don’t think I came to bring peace, I did not come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword. I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” I came to divide. I came to break things up and cause separation. Jesus was going to be the reason that some relationships come to an end and new ones begin. The reason is that for many people their new faith in Christ is not well received by those who are closest to them. But where relationships end with hostile unbelievers new ones begin within the family of God.
I would suggest a principle here: that the more the church is divided from the world the more unity there will be in the church. And perhaps the reason for disunity in a church often is because there is not enough of a division from the world. There is the desire to be liked by and to be like the world. Worldliness ruins the purity and the unity of the church.
So, after arguing among themselves over Jesus, they turn again to the man who has been standing there. They ask him what his opinion is of Jesus. Who did he think Jesus was? “He is a prophet”.
Notice two things here. First, his opinion of Jesus is higher than it was in verse 11. In verse 11 he said, “The man they call Jesus”. This is very impersonal. But we’re going to see a progression throughout this chapter of how he saw Jesus. As he learns more and more about Jesus his estimation of Jesus gets higher and higher. In verse 11 the man sees Him as the man they call Jesus. He is a prophet in verse 17. He is a man from God in verse 33. And finally in verse 39 he believes Jesus is the Son of Man and worships Him.
The more you interact with the Word of God the more your view of Jesus will elevate. The more you know Him by His Word, the more you will hold Him up in your estimation of Him and the more confidence you will have in Him to turn to Him. That’s what was happening with this man. His opinion of Jesus was going up.
Secondly, his opinion of Jesus is higher than the Pharisees opinion of Jesus. He was putting himself at risk. What he thought of Jesus was getting farther and farther away from what the Pharisees thought and that was moving him closer and closer to being in trouble with them.
The world has a low opinion of Jesus Christ. When you know the truth, your opinion of Jesus will always be higher than the world around you. And that will get you closer and closer to being in trouble with the world around you too.
The Pharisees were not going to listen to this for long. Their problem was that the real Jesus didn’t fit with their idea of what He should be. Here is the application: do not invent what Jesus should be. Don’t use your own criteria for what He should and shouldn’t be. Don’t assume He is like this or isn’t like that. If you do, then when the real Christ is presented to you, you won’t recognize or respond to Him because you will be looking for someone and something else. Like them, you will be blinded by using the Wrong Criteria to judge Jesus.
Blinder #2: Worry over Consequences (v. 18-23)
The 2nd Blinder that will keep you from seeing the truth of Jesus Christ is to Worry over the Consequences. In other words, some people don’t want to be associated with Jesus Christ because they are afraid of what others will think and do. Notice verses 18-23, “_______________”.
Well the Pharisees aren’t going to accept that Jesus is a prophet and so far they’re not convinced the man was born blind. So they pull in his parents and put them on the stand. Now, I am sure that this is not the first time they heard that their son who was born blind could now see. This blind man had no one else, so who would he run to go and see? His parents! He wasn’t married with children – he couldn’t work. He didn’t have co-workers or many friends if at all. The only ones who could share this new joy were the ones who shared the pain of his blindness with him all this time – his parents.
You might ask, so what? The problem is that they betray their own son. They back down and don’t support him in front of the Pharisees. What happened to the tears of joy and celebration and feelings of bewilderment and elation they no doubt shared with their son? Certainly they heard the same story from their son that he has explained twice now – that Jesus healed him by putting mud on his eyes. Did they stand in their home with their son and praise God at the sight of their son who could now see, only to now stand there in front of the Pharisees saying they don’t know how it happened or who did it? How could they do that?
And can you imagine how the man who was blind felt? Here he was watching his parents distance themselves from him and leave him to stand alone in this trial. The pain of betrayal must have made his heart sink. He was going through a terrible betrayal by those who were closest to him. Do you know what it’s like to be betrayed? Maybe this man asked the question in his heart: How could God let this happen? Let me tell you why I think something like this was happening to this man. This was all part of the plan of God in this man’s life. Listen: who can truly know the sweet joy of being received by God if one has not been rejected by man? Psalm 27 says, “Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.”
And that’s what Jesus did as we’ll see next week. When his parents betrayed him, and his own religion disowned him, Jesus received him. I think God allowed this man to feel the pain of being rejected by man so that he can know the depth of joy that comes from being received by God.
He stood with Jesus and was betrayed. Jesus stood with His Father and was betrayed. Jesus was received by the Father. This man was received by Jesus. Do you see the pattern? Do you see the common ground there that can bring a closeness with Christ?
Paul said, “I want to know Christ and and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings.” There is fellowship with Christ that comes from suffering like He suffered. John 1:11 says “Jesus came to that which was His own but His own did not receive Him.” We saw how His own brothers in chapter 7 didn’t even believe in Him. In Luke 4 Jesus was rejected in His own hometown of Nazareth. Peter, who the very same night that he pledged to follow Christ to death, denied Him 3 times. Judas stabbed Him in the back and sold Him out to the Pharisees for 30 silver coins. Three years with Jesus and Judas sells Him for 30 silver coins! All the disciples deserted Him the night He was arrested. All of Israel cried out “Crucify Him”. All the world left Him to die on a cross. If you have been betrayed you have a Savior who knows your pain. You are in good company.
Paul shared in these sufferings too – he knew what it was to be deserted and abandoned. Men like Mark, Phygelus, Hermogenes, Demas, Alexander, and he says in 2 Timothy that “all of Asia” has abandoned him. Paul knows the pain of betrayal and abandonment as well. So, when this man sees his own father and mother forsaking him, he has entered into the sufferings of Christ, and joined the ranks of men like Paul and others who know that kind of pain.
Still we ask, “Why would they do this?” Why would they abandon their son there to the Pharisees? One word: Fear. Fear of man. They were afraid of what might happen to them if they stood up for their son. To stand with him meant they were standing with Jesus. The Pharisees had already made it known to the public that if anyone acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ they would be thrown out of the synagogue.
Now we need to understand what’s at stake for the parents. Becoming a follower of Christ in 1st century Israel was not like 21st century west Michigan. Getting thrown out of the synagogue isn’t like leaving a church around here. There weren’t other synagogues to go attend. Jewish life was very concentrated and the religious life of Israel was regulated by people like the Pharisees. To be kicked out of the synagogue meant you lost the ability to worship with the rest of your country. It meant you lost the ability to socialize because you were now an outcast. It meant you were shunned economically. You were cut-off. You lost your identity. This is a terrifying punishment for a Jew. It still is today, as well as for Muslims or Hindu’s who leave their old religion behind and become a Christian.
But as terrifying as it is, it is the work of God to separate us from our old life and our old identity so that we are found new in Jesus Christ. He is our life, our righteousness, our all in all.
Do you know what the problem with fearing man is? It says this: I want the approval of men more than I want the approval of God. In other words, the cost of losing favor with my neighbors, my co-workers, my boss, my family, my friends, is too much to pay to stand with Jesus. But, Proverbs says that the fear of man is a snare. It’s a trap. Paul said that if he were trying to please men he would not be a servant of God. That’s true for every Christian.
Do you know why? Worship. Fear of man is a disorder of worship, because the heart that fears men is a heart that worships the approval of men. The ultimate fear is rejection by men, not God. This is a heart of idolatry. It places man above God as the one who is served. A man-pleaser will do whatever is necessary to please men – even at the expense of pleasing God. A man-pleaser is someone who is not a God-pleaser. When it comes down to it, a man-pleaser lives to be accepted by men, not God. They worry about what man thinks and the consequences of commitment to Christ.
Worrying over the Consequences is the 2nd blinder. Fear of man blinds us to the truth of Jesus Christ and keeps us from accepting and standing in that truth.
Blinder #3: Works-Based Confidence (v24-29)
So we are looking at Blinders that blind people from seeing the truth of Jesus Christ. Blinder #1 is the Wrong Criteria. Blinder #2 is Worry over Consequences. The 3rd Blinder is Works-Based Confidence. Works-Based Confidence. Notice verses 24-29, “_____________”.
So the Jews were not satisfied with the man’s testimony so they bring his parents in. They’re hoping the whole time to catch the man in some inconsistency so that they can ultimately catch Jesus. They don’t get anywhere with his parents so they bring him back in to testify again about how he received his sight. They want the man to swear under oath that Jesus is a sinner. The man isn’t going to admit Jesus is a sinner. I like that because the man doesn’t testify beyond what he knows. He sticks with what he does know, “I was blind, but, now I see.” But, because he’s annoyed with them for asking him again how it happened, he taunts them with sarcasm, “You don’t want to become Jesus’ disciples too do you?” Whew, things are starting to boil now.
When they say, “We are disciples of Moses” they are saying that their religion is their guarantee that they are in God’s favor. They don’t need Jesus, because they’ve got Moses. To them, Jesus was a sinner and they were righteous. They thought they were disciples of Moses and that they were faithful to the law of Moses. In other words, the good religious works they did were what they banked on for getting into heaven. They had a works-based confidence.
But, Paul would later say in Roman 3, “No one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by obeying the law.” Well, why did He give the law? Paul tells us that the law was to make a person conscious of sin. In other words, my failure and inability to fully carry out the moral requirements of the law were to show me that I don’t have what it takes to be righteousness. It’s a standard that’s too high. I can’t do it. I can’t be what the law requires me to be. That’s what I was to see about myself, and if that’s what I saw then I was supposed to turn to God and look to Him for mercy. The law should point me to God’s mercy for my unrighteousness. It should not be something I can point to as my merit for righteousness. But that’s what the Pharisees did, they saw themselves as faithful followers of Moses and the law and they saw Jesus as a sinner who broke that law, and they didn’t look to God for mercy.
They didn’t see that God had provided the mercy they needed in His Son Jesus Christ. They didn’t see that in reality they were the ones who broke the law and that Jesus was the One who faithfully carried it out. They were the sinners, not Him. He came and perfectly fulfilled the law – something that no one else ever did or could. By doing so, He was qualified to go to the cross and die as God’s Lamb, to be the sacrifice for man’s sins. The One who was sinless died for the many who are sinful. It is in Christ Jesus that the mercy we look to God for is found.
Listen, people who have works-based confidence say things like, “I hope that I lived a good enough life that God will let me in.” They say, “I tried to do right, and be a good person.” When people talk like this they show that they are relying on themselves for their eternal security. Their hope is that maybe God will overlook the bad and accept their good; that when their life is measured the good will outweigh the bad.
But the tragedy of this is two-fold: First, they never can be sure they’ve done enough good. In a man’s heart he never has any guarantee that he has done enough to be accepted by God. Secondly, the reality is that he isn’t good enough. All his effort to be good enough will in the end count for nothing. God will not accept the works of man. That’s not how it works.
I’ll close with this. You know how it works with God? By works. Let me explain. You and I can go to heaven because of good works. But not ours. God says that our works of righteousness apart from Christ are like filthy rags. Our works are worthless in God’s sight.
But there is someone whose work He does accept. The work that He did is the only work that God will accept. It’s the work of His Son Jesus Christ. The work that He did was to die on the cross for your sins. His blood was shed and His body was broken. His life was taken away so that life could be given to you. He left heaven to die so that you could go to heaven and live. The work of Jesus Christ is the only work that God accepts. Now, the only thing work that you can do is to believe in the work that Jesus did for you. If you would surrender all your own efforts to earn God’s favor and simply accept God’s Son, then you can have God’s favor, and He will accept you.
Don’t be blinded by confidence in your good works. Don’t be blinded by the Wrong Criteria. Don’t be blinded by Worrying over Consequences. When you see the truth of Jesus Christ you can have confidence that His work is what has saved you.
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