March 24, 2003
LifeWay Family Bible Series for April 6
Spiritual blindness carries eternal consequences
___John 8:12; 9:1-7, 35-41
___By Tim Owens
___First Baptist Church, Bryan
___Helen Keller was blind, deaf and mute from the time she was 19 months old. Yet, she allowed God to give to her a spiritual insight few people have possessed. God revealed himself to Helen Keller through a teacher who communicated to her through the touch of the hand.
___In the eighth and ninth chapters of the Gospel of John, Jesus teaches that as tragic as physical blindness is, spiritual blindness is infinitely worse. Jesus demonstrates he has both the power to restore physical sight and the authority to open the spiritual sight of someone who is willing to receive him as the eternal Son of God.
___At this point in the ministry of Christ, people were questioning his true identity. Was Jesus truly who he claimed to be? Was he truly God in human flesh? Was it true that Jesus and the Father were one?
___Jesus had just made a claim to deity by saying he existed before Abraham's time and that Abraham had longed to see the coming of Christ. This claim made the Jews so furious they tried to stone Jesus for blasphemy. Scriptures indicates Jesus slipped away from the angry crowd and temporarily left the area. He and his disciples soon encountered a man who had been born blind. Jesus healed the blind man, and the blind man received Christ and worshiped him as his personal Saviorand Lord.
___This is what every person ultimately must decide: Am I going to receive Christ as the eternal Son of God, as the Savior and Lord of life, to whom I owe my supreme faith and allegiance?
___By most people in the world, Jesus is accepted as the founder of Christianity, a prophet from God, or a good man who performed many wonderful works and taught many wonderful things. It becomes offensive to most people when Christians make the claim Jesus is the only way to have a personal relationship with God. This is a claim he made for himself repeatedly, and his actions validated this claim time and time again.
___Jesus dispels life's darkness
___In this verse, Jesus clearly states, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." In this sentence, the personal pronoun "I" is placed in the emphatic position. It could read, "I myself" or "I alone am the light of the world." The phrase "I am" is Jesus' assertion to "eternal being." Jesus is clearly saying, "I am the only One who can open the spiritual eyes of men and women and guide them into the truth about themselves and about what God has done to satisfy their most significant needs."
___To "follow" the Lord Jesus is to place one's total trust and worship in him, the result of which is life and light for the believer. The "light of life" is found and experienced only in a faith relationship with Jesus Christ.
___Jesus does the work of God
___The miracle Jesus performed in the life of the blind man gave tangible proof to his claim of being the Light of the world. Jesus saw with a spiritual perception this man who was born blind. He saw a man who had a physical and spiritual need.
___The disciples saw only a problem. Their concern was the cause of the man's condition: "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered them by saying, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned." The work of God was then displayed in this man's life by Jesus both healing him of his physical blindness and bringing him to personal faith in Christ.
___One of the major points of this miracle is that Jesus calls his disciples not to answer every theological question but to lead people to personal faith in Christ. What Jesus said was, "I am not here to analyze those kinds of questions. I am here to remove the spiritual blindness of people." The mission of Christ is not to solve all the theological problems of this world, but rather it is to remove the spiritual blindness which separates people from God. This is accomplished by presenting to people the reality of Jesus Christ--who he is, what he has done for them and the change he will bring to their lives.
___Jesus summons belief
___and judges unbelief
___After Jesus found the blind man and led him to a personal faith in Christ, Scripture says the man "worshiped him." It is interesting to track the blind man's consciousness of Jesus throughout this whole encounter: "The man they call Jesus" (9:11), "He is a prophet" (9:17), "If this man were not from God, he could do nothing" (9:33), "Lord, I believe, and he worshiped him" (9:38).
___The encounter ends with Jesus receiving the worship of a man. The man was put out of the synagogue but was received into relationship with God in the act of his personal faith and worship of Christ. There is an attitude from which organized religion must be willing to turn: A blind loyalty to its own technicalities and traditions while refusing to love people and lead them to faith in Jesus Christ.
___Questions for discussion
___
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