This is a rush transcript.

[00:00:03] It is good to be back with you this morning. I got to spend some time away with my wife last Sunday. Got to go even to Disneyland with my kids. This week's got to have family time. And just like with my family, when I'm away from them, I miss them of a man with my wife. I miss her if I don't see my kids for a while. I want to see them. I can honestly say I don't want to come on too strong or too emotional. We're just getting started. But I can honestly say that just one Sunday of not being here and seeing you and sharing this time and God's word together. I missed you guys. I can turn it on. I can honestly say that. And it feels like part like my family. Like if I'm not with you, even for a short amount of time, I want to be here with you. And so it is with that excitement to be back that I ask you to grab a Bible and open it up to the gospel of John. And I would ask you actually to go all the way to the end of the gospel to Chapter 20 towards the end. And I want to remind us why we're even going through this book. We've been going through it now since about September. This is our twenty third sermon. We're gonna be getting into Chapter nine here this morning. And we have chosen this book for a very specific reason. In fact, the reason I love whenever the apostle John writes a book in the New Testament, the reason that his books are kind of my favorite. I love them all. But the reason I really like his books is because he always says exactly why he wrote the book. And he says here in John, chapter 20, verse 30 and 31, you can see even the heading there. You got one of our Bibles is the purpose of this book. Here it look what it says. Here's why you wrote it. Now, Jesus did many other signs. That's a word that would describe a miracle. But it's not just about the miracle. It's what the miracle points to. Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. So there's so many things I could have written about that Jesus did.

[00:02:07] But these the signs I've written about here, these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. And so this if you're just joining us, this will catch you up or if you've been with us all the way since we started the Gospel of John, this will be review. But this is what he's doing in this book. He's given us some signs, OK? Miracles that are supposed to point us to a greater reality, specifically today as we get into Chapter nine. We will see the sign of Jesus giving sight to a man who has been born blind. And these signs are supposed to cause us to believe. That's why he wrote them the way that he did. As he wants us to believe in who Jesus is, the Christ the son of God. And when we believe in Jesus, we end up with life, this eternal life that John's talking about, not just living forever, but a higher quality of life. Whereas, you know, God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent you now enter into a relationship with God. So he's telling us of these things, these signs that Jesus did. So we will believe in Jesus because he wants us to have this eternal kind of life in Jesus. And so we started out with this awesome declaration of who Jesus is at the beginning of the Gospel of John. That in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Jesus is the expression of God to us. And we are saying just a few minutes ago that the word became flesh. God sent his son, who now reveals to us who God is, so that we might have a relationship with him. And then we see as Jesus starts to meet people, they start to follow him. And Jesus says, hey, come and see. And the word starts to spread. Hey, come and see who Jesus is. And he has conversations like with this man, Nicodemus, this religious man where this man ends up, we think, getting saved after talking to Jesus or with this questionable kind of sketchy woman at the well. Jesus meets with her and she ends up following and believing in Jesus Christ. And so we see Jesus who he is. And he's on this mission to save our souls, even individual souls. Jesus wants to save you. We see.

[00:04:35] But there's a lot of rejection. And starting in Chapter five, we kind of see this overwhelming rejection of Jesus from the religious leaders who are trying to lead the people away from Jesus in chapters five, six, seven, eight. They've been kind of rough because here's Jesus saying I'm God. And here's people literally picking up stones because they want to kill him, because they hate that he's claiming to be God. And so that leads us now into Chapter nine, if you'll turn their. With me, it's going to take us two weeks to work our way through this chapter, but we just want to focus in on the first seven verses this morning and see a specific sign that John tells us about the Jesus does with this man who's born blind in this sign is supposed to cause us to believe in Jesus and to have life in his name. Read with me our passage, John, Chapter nine versus one to seven.

[00:05:26] And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind.

[00:05:40] And Jesus answered, it was not this man that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

[00:05:51] We must work the works of him who sent me. While it is day, night is coming when no one can work as long as I am in the world. I am the light of the world.

[00:06:03] And having said these things, he spit on the ground and he made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means scent. So he went and washed and came back.

[00:06:24] See, this is a miracle that Jesus does, right?

[00:06:29] Something that defies the laws of the world that we're living in, where a man who was born blind suddenly, somehow by the work that Jesus does here, this man can see all of us. And miracles is something that a lot of people struggle with these days. We've talked about other miracles of Jesus that he would walk on water or on a Sea of Galilee. That's a very deep lake that Jesus could just walk on top of it. Well, we've talked about how Jesus just took a few loaves of bread and a a few fish and he broke them and he fed thousands of people. And some people today they would say, I don't believe in miracles. Well, we believe in miracles here at this church. Anybody want to say amen to that? We believe in it. And here's why we believe in him, because we believe that God created the heavens and the earth that we're living in right now. And if God can create the world, well, then given one man's site, one man blind and creating eyeballs that can see, well, that's not actually that big of a deal when you're comparing it to where did eyeballs even come from to begin with?

[00:07:35] Who even designed these wonderful features? All right. In fact, if you get into it now, some of us have had problems with our eyeballs. Some of us some of us are looking at me with four eyes right now. Right. And some of you guys, just to make sure you look nice. You stab your eyeballs this morning and put in contact lenses. Right. And so some of us, our eyeballs haven't worked that well. And so we've encountered these people called eye doctors. And every once in a while, they start telling us all this stuff that they know and there's charts in their office. And you realize, you know, this whole eyeball business is highly complicated. In fact, if you were to really study the science of the eye in the human body, it is one of the greatest arguments that there must be a creator, because what is happening when you see something is so complex to act like.

[00:08:25] It just evolved over time. Well, there's three things that would like to need to evolve simultaneously somehow for the eyeball to work like eyes. The fact that any of us can see is a clear statement that design was a part of that. There is a creator who had the vision to give us sight. And because we believe that the fact that a man born blind could all of a sudden see by washing mud off in a pool of water when we believe in miracles like that, because we believe the Jesus his God, who is the creator.

[00:09:00] And so we worship Jesus for these kinds of things. Now, what's interesting is not only the physical miracle that takes place, but this fascinating conversation that John puts in mind. Really, this miracle starts a whole lot of controversy. You would think a blind guy seeing would be like happy news in in just a good day there among God's people in Israel. But it actually creates this incredible controversy, which we'll get to next week. But the conversation, look back at verse two. Look at what the disciples are saying. And when they see the blind man, rabbi or which means teacher who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind. See? There's an assumption here, but disciples are coming in with and we need to understand this assumption because I don't know that we have the same way of thinking today. Most people don't. Maybe a few of us do. But when we see somebody who's blind or we see somebody who has some kind of physical issue or some kind of trial in their life for some kind of. Tragic circumstance, we think, well, something bad happened to that person because they did something bad, like they did a specific sin. And now this problem in their life is a specific consequence to their sin. That was the understanding here. OK. So who's sin? Was this guy just a bad guy from even the womb, from even before he was born that he was blind? Or did his parents do something that dad. Now this guy's paying for by being born blind, like the disciples are trying to figure out theoretically, how did this guy get blind who sinned to make it happen?

[00:10:37] And you can kind of see this wrong thinking through out scripture. And one example of a man who endured bad things is a guy named Joe. Maybe you're familiar with his story. There's a whole book of the Bible about this guy, and he has terrible things happen to him. His children die as possessions are taken away. The roof just literally falls in on his life. And he has friends that show up to comfort him in his time of need. Right. And his friends, they're good friends for a while. And they just sit there and say nothing. Right. And they just feel his pain. And they are just there with Joe bearing with him in his grief. And then friends do sometimes the worst thing that friends can do. They open their mouths. Right. And they start acting like they know exactly what's going on. And let me tell you why you're in this spot, Jobe. And they start to confront Joe that clearly he must have sinned to be in this bad condition with these bad things happening to him, including sores all over his body. And it's just gone really wrong. Well, if you read the whole story of Joe, you'll know that that is not true.

[00:11:43] In fact, the whole reason is Satan is trying to make an argument with God about Jobe, because Jobe is described in the book as a righteous man, as a blameless man. And Satan's argument will, of course, he does what is right. And of course, he's a good guy because look how good you've been to him. God. If you start letting bad things happen to him, he'll stop living for you. That's Satan's whole argument. And so bad things end up happening to a righteous man like Jobe and his friends. I don't know. Have you ever tried to read the Book of Job before starts out and it's just compelling ends and it's amazing. The middle of the book is just brutal. Have you ever read it before? It's these friends given their opinions. And you're like, where? Who are? I can't even pronounce these guys names. Who are these guys? Where did they come from? And what is this malarkey that they're saying? The job bunch of nonsense. The Bible does not teach that bad things happen because of specific sins that people do.

[00:12:42] Now, once we've fallen into sin, we're living in a broken world where there are bad things happening all over the place, even in creation in our own bodies. People are definitely sinning. But the Bible doesn't teach this like, well, you did this. So now this bad thing is going to happen to you. Like the disciples are assuming here a passage you could write down about it is Luke 13 would be a good cross reference for this. And maybe there's even people here today who think this. I don't know. But in Luke, 13 Jesus, he's responding to some current events.

[00:13:14] And in Israel, there's a tower that falls over and kills some people. And then there's these people who end up getting killed by the authorities, by the Roman authorities, and their blood ends up getting defiled in the process, which if you're a Jew and you're trying to live clean and having your blood get to fire, the blood being the symbol of life, having not become unclean.

[00:13:37] That's like the worst way you could die in the Jewish mindset. And so people are like, well, why did this tower fall on these people and why did these people die in such a horrible way? And Jesus says in response to both of those scenarios, oh, you think they were worst sinners? Oh, you think that bad thing happened to them because they were like some supercenter now would know all of us. I better repent. Jesus says about us humans, all of us better repent or we will likewise anybody.

[00:14:05] Nobody says that we will likewise perish. No, we're all guilty of sin and judgment is coming upon us all. Bad things are going to happen to us all. But it's not like this, Will. There's this specific thing. So now this man is born blind. Jesus actually argues against that. Look at his response in verse three of John nine Jesus answered. It was not that this man Sand or his parents. That's that's not the way we should think about it. Now, the reason this man was born blind, that the works of God might be displayed in him. Hey, and that's kind of a key word for today there that were displayed in the Greek word. There would mean to show to make manifest if you want to write that down. OK. That's the Greek word here means to make manifest something that's being revealed, something that's being shown.

[00:14:54] So here, actually, in this quick conversation about a man born blind, Jesus is actually getting super deepening. Answering the problem of evil and why God is allowed sin in the world and why bad things happen, and here's the ultimate answer at the end of it, so that God might display his work, that God might show us his glory. No. The reason this man was born blind is God's going to do something. Literally, we're going to heal this man. Give him sight. And that's going to ultimately lead if you come back next week. We'll see. That's going to ultimately lead to this man's salvation. So why was this man born blind so that God might be glorified? He was literally born blind for the glory of God.

[00:15:33] That's the idea.

[00:15:35] It's a really fascinating concept. When you start to think about all of the evil that is happening is so that God can make manifest to us his glory. Surely in giving us his son to die for our sin and to rise again and to save us. And so that's what we get into here. And then Jesus even starts to draw a contrast here while it is day and night is coming is emphasizing kind of the idea of light and darkness. And then he says, as long as I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world. And so Jesus Stook makes it clear here that this healing of the blind man is really him kind of revealing bigger themes in the Bible. So if you were to read about this passage, you can see in verse six, look at specifically how the miracle happens here. Jesus spits on the ground. He makes mud with saliva. Very biblical word there, saliva. And then he anoints the man's eyes with the mud and he says, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means scent.

[00:16:33] Now, we could give you reading for hours about all the deep imagery that is presented here with this mud and this saliva. And I've read commentaries and commentaries are great when they just kind of throw out ideas of what this could possibly mean. And the reason Jesus uses mud is because we come from the dust of the ground and to the dust of the ground, we will return. And the reason he uses saliva is because in many cultures, saliva is known for its healing properties. And I'm I'm reading this and I'm thinking not in this culture. I don't think of healing properties when I think of saliva. You guys known as, I think, gross. Keep it to yourself. You know, I'm not thinking. So we could conjecture on what the deep meaning of the mud here and then the pool of Siloam, which means scent. Oh, is that referring to Jesus being sent to us? Or the man was sent and he went, oh, the deep meaning of the pool. Like, we could talk about this for hours. And at the end of it, we wouldn't really know if what we were saying was true or not. So we try to avoid that kind of conjecture here at CompassHB Bible Church and we say no. What is this sign supposed to point us to?

[00:17:44] What do we spot when Jesus heals a man who's born blind and Jesus gives the man sight? What are we supposed to think? And the best way to come to confident conclusions from Scripture is to let scripture interpret scripture. So turn with me to Isaiah, Chapter 42, and let's see that this was prophesied long ago in the Old Testament that God was going to send. And here's a key word in the book of Isaiah, a servant. In fact, if you read Isaiah Chapter Forty's in the 40s of Isaiah into the 50s, most famously in Isaiah, 53 will read a lot about this servant of the Lord. This man of Sorrows. This one who is going to come is going to humble himself. And you can see that here in Isaiah Chapter 40 to look at this description of the servant, Isaiah 42, verse one. Behold my servant, whom I uphold my chosen and who my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him and he this servant that were prophesying about here, this is the God your way speaking, talking about this servant. He's going to bring forth justice to the nations. He's going to make things right among the nations of the world. And it goes on to describe this servant. And we could read all over this part of Isaiah to describe this servant. But look at what it says specifically in verse five, Isaiah 42, verse five. Thus says, God, the Lord, your way, the the I am who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it. So here's a message from God, who is the creator of the heavens and the Earth. He gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. And if anybody's alive, it's because God made him alive. He's given your soul into your body. And this is what he says. I am the Lord. I have called you in righteousness. I will take you by the hand and keep you. I will give you as a covenant for the people, light for the nations. Here's what this servant now is going to do. He's going to open the eyes that are. What is it?

[00:19:46] Say they're blind. Here's a prophecy about a servant of the Lord who is going to come specifically. He is going to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison, those who sit in darkness, those who sit in darkness. We'll see a great light.

[00:20:03] The blind will have their eyes open. This is the prophecy of the servant. And then it says in verse eight, I am the Lord. That is my name. My glory. I give to no other nor my praise to carve didle. So this servant isn't going to compete with God, isn't going to cause us to worship someone else other than God. No, actually we come to see that this servant is God and we should worship Jesus as the Christ, the son of God. The sign points to believing in Jesus Christ. Which points to who he is. He is the creator of the eyeball. And he can give it sight to anyone he wants to because he is God. Here's a prophecy of it. Now go to Matthew, Chapter 11 and let's look at a New Testament reference where Jesus now is going to talk about his ability to give sight to the blind as a reason that you should believe that he is God, that you should believe he is the Messiah, though anointed one that God promised who was coming, described as the servant, described as the Christ. And here in Matthew 11, we actually get to this time in John the Baptist life where he's having a a harder time.

[00:21:11] We met John the Baptist, says we were going through the gospel of John. What a great example John the Baptist is of a humble man who pointed people to God. He was a voice crying in the wilderness to make ready the way of the Lord. Well, when you call out to people calling them to repent of their sins and telling people to come and worship God, not everybody's going to like that.

[00:21:33] We found out in the gospel of John, particularly, John started calling out some specific people and they're saying even people in authority and those people in authority had John thrown into jail. And so at this time, John is now in jail. And if you know the story of John the Baptist. He ends up having his head cut off because of sin that he has confronted and people don't like it. So they literally cut off his head. That's what happens to what Jesus says is the greatest man to ever live. He has its head cut off. And so this is a dark time for John as he's here in this prison and he's maybe starting to have doubts or maybe he's just kind of surprised by the way that Jesus's his life is going. Like many Jews, he would have expected Jesus to be the king, the messiah who would reign, who would destroy the other nations, who would make everything right. And Jesus wasn't really doing that in his earthly ministry here. And so, John, send some of his guys. Look at Matthew, chapter eleven, verse two. Now, when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and he just wants to check. He just wants to make sure. And he said to him, Are you the one who is to come? Are you the Messiah, the Christ, the servant we're looking for? Or shall we look for another and look how Jesus answers. John the Baptist.

[00:22:56] He says, and Jesus answered them to his disciples. Go and tell John what you hear and see.

[00:23:02] The blind receive their sight and the lame walk. Lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear and the dead are raised up and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. So here's a question from John the Baptist. Hey, are you really the one I'm wondering? Or should we look to someone else? And what is the first thing that Jesus uses as an example to prove who he is? Hey, the blind are seeing that's how he says the lame are walking the poor. They're getting the gospel preached to them. That's his response. So he's using the fact that he can give sight to the blind as evidence that he is the one from God. So this miracle is supposed to make us believe not only in Jesus and who he is, but also in what he does. That Jesus is a saving God. And if you did a study on blindness in the scripture, you would see that more times than not. We are talking about the spiritual blindness of the souls of men. Then we are talking about a physical problem of those who can't see. It's a theme throughout scripture.

[00:24:18] In fact, if you open the theme of blindness and seeing up and you start to get into the idea of of night and day, and you even brought it up to the idea of darkness and light, you will see these analogies all over Scripture and Jesus repeats in our passage this morning what he said in Chapter eight, verse 12, that I am the light of the world, that I am the one who comes into the darkness and I shine the glory of God. And I actually cause people who are lost in the darkness to come out of the darkness and into my marvelous light, I actually cause the blind souls to see the glory of God.

[00:24:57] That's what Jesus is claiming. And so. You missed. You flip your hand out over if you're taking notes here this morning, we recommend a sermon that we did on Christmas Eve about Jesus saying that he's the light of the world. And if you were somewhere else on Christmas Eve with your family or if you were out of town for celebrating Christmas, if you missed that sermon about Jesus being the light of the world.

[00:25:19] I mean, really, you could make an argument that light and darkness is the major theme of the entire Bible. And you could go to page one where God said in the darkness, let there be light and you could go to the last page where there's a new Jerusalem, a city, a new heavens in a new earth, where there is light that never ends and the light is actually Jesus Christ himself, whose glory is so radiant and so bright it lights up the world that we're gonna be living it.

[00:25:47] And so this is the idea of bringing people that are blind, lost in the dungeons of darkness and setting them free to see the glorious light of God. This is one of the epic themes in all of scripture. And so when Jesus heals a blind man, there's no way you could not be thinking of all of these passages that that express this. Let's just look at one of them in a Friesians. Chapter five, then this not only points to the sign, not only points to who Jesus is, but to what Jesus has done for us. And here it's described in light, in darkness, in effusions, chapter five. Here's the here's the statement about all of us who have been saved for one time. You were darkness at one time. You couldn't see you were lost, but now you are light. And the Lord walk is children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. If there's anything good or right and true, it's because the light has been shined on it. That's the only way that anything gets good or right and true is because of the light. And so try to discern what is pleasing into the Lord. Make sure you're walking as a child of the light and no longer in the darkness. In fact, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness. Instead shine the light on them, expose them for it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, when something gets hit by the light of Jesus Christ, it becomes visible. That's our same word, that God might display his work, that he might make his manifest, that he might show it. Here's what the light does, is it shows us God, that's what the light does. And if anything gets exposed by the light and we can see all of a sudden, God, for anything that becomes visible is light.

[00:27:36] Therefore, it says and this is the theme of our winter camp happening up the mountain right now, a Waco's sleeper, a rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. That's why they're calling it awakening right there, because they want souls who are in the darkness, souls who are blind and can't see. They want them to wake up. They want them to open their eyes. And they want to see the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And they want those souls to be saved. That's why they call that awakening.

[00:28:06] That's why young people are professing faith in Jesus Christ up the mountain, because they're saying this is what happened to the story of the man born blind given site by Jesus Christ. That's not the story of one guy in the Bible. That's the story of every Christian person everywhere that we were blind.

[00:28:24] And now we see anybody want to say amen to that? I'm not up here saying that I'm good or right or true. I'm not asking you to be good or right or true either. I don't think we can even do that.

[00:28:36] What I'm saying is we were lost. We were in the dark. We were groping around in the dark. We didn't even know where to go. We were blind in years. If there's anything good or right or true about me or about you. It's because the light shined on us. That's why it's because Jesus opened our eyes and we could see things a lot of times. I'm afraid that Christians think the reason we come here to church and the reason other people don't is we might be a little bit smarter than those people, stupid people out there.

[00:29:07] We might be a little bit more righteous than those people, like maybe we were a little closer to Jesus because we grew up more were more good than other people. See, I'm telling you, every single person in here, every single wretch that God saved by his amazing grace was blind. But now you see, because of what Jesus did to shine his light on you. And that's why we give him the glory. That's why we worship Jesus Christ alone. So when we read this story of this blind man, see, I. I've never been blind. I've been near sighted, but I've never been blind. Right. In fact, I haven't even met too many people in my life that are blind people. But when I hear a story of a blind man, I relate to it because I know what it's like to not know where I'm going. And to be lost in the dark until Jesus shined his light upon me. This is the story of all of us. Point number one, let's get it down like this.

[00:30:03] Let's let's praise Jesus for that, you see. Praise Jesus. You can see if you're here at church and you love Jesus and he has changed your life from the inside out and you love study in the Bible like we do and you get things out of it. And you can see the big picture of the Bible. You can see the light in the darkness. The works of God have been shown to you, revealed to you, made manifest to you. Well, then praise the Lord, because the only reason you've seen any of that is Jesus opened your eyes to see it. And so let's give him the glory. Let's thank him. And really, if we have this good news of a man who was born blind, you can now see which is the story we're saying of every Christian person. Well, if you're that kind of a miracle really takes place, it's gonna be hard not to share that good news with other people. Go to Second Corinthians, Chapter four, if we're gonna preach a sermon on blindness. We gotta go to Second Corinthians, chapter four, verse three. Everybody grab a Bible and turn to Second Corinthians, chapter four, verse three with me. OK.

[00:31:10] Because here's the thing about good news. OK, what do you want to do with good news? Do you want to keep it to yourself? Is that what you do with good news? Have you even tried to keep good news to yourself? It is a challenge to sit on good news. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Maybe. Is there anything good ever happen to you? Right. Think about when you had good news. Your sports team won a game. Something as trivial as that. Your kid did what you asked them to do about something amazing like that. Right? I mean, maybe maybe even like big news. Like you asked somebody to marry you and they said yes. Right.

[00:31:45] Maybe even God blessed you and that someone and children were born to you. You just sat on that and kept it secret. She said, yes, she wants to marry me. And I don't want to tell anybody about it. Is that what engaged people are typically doing? Or do they have like photographers hiding in the bushes, taking pictures and it's all over social media and they wanted to. Here's the ring. They walk into rooms like this. Check it out, everybody. All right. So, you know, sometimes here being the pastor, sometimes a couple will come up to me and they'll be like, hey, we wanted to let you know. Hey. My wife, she's actually pregnant. We're going to have another baby.

[00:32:23] And I'm like. Praise the Lord, what a blessing.

[00:32:27] And they like, don't tell anybody about it, we haven't made it public yet.

[00:32:32] That's brutal. What are you doing to me right now? Like, I see one of my friends. I see somebody else around the church. And immediately I want to say, hey, did you hear about me? Hey, how you doing, man?

[00:32:44] I love being on and on. No, don't get me wrong. Right. But it is literally like I have to remind myself not to share good news with other people because it is natural to share good news. It's hard to stop if you are a blind person who can now see, are you going to let the world know about it? Well, you better believe it. In fact, this blind guy will not shut up. And that's going to lead to a lot of problems in John Chapter nine. You would think a blind man who can now see would be like good news that day in Israel. Like let's all praise it becomes this huge controversy to where even his own parents don't want to act like they know what's going on with this guy.

[00:33:26] But he is telling the whole world that it's not a doppelganger. It's me. It's the I was the blind guy. I can see now. Hey, Jesus did it.

[00:33:35] He wants to tell everybody, look, it's a great audience. Chapter four, verse three. Look at how it describes the souls of people that you and I know and love. Second Corinthians, chapter four, verse three.

[00:33:47] It says, Even if our gospel is good news of Jesus, even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Who is the image of God? I mean, consider what that is saying for a moment with me. But people in this world, anyone who does not believe in Jesus Christ is blinded. And not only are they blind. Not only is that a way to describe them, but they have been blinded by the lower case G God of this world. Who are we talking about? There not only are people blind to the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. There is an evil force working in this world to blind people to make the darkness so thick they can't see out of it to obscure the truth from them. There are forces of evil trying to make people stay in the dungeons of darkness.

[00:35:04] Now, that is an amazing way to look at the people in the world around us, particularly the people that we would call countrymen here in America. Let's just talk about our fellow Americans for a second here. You just probably have such a high opinion of our nation right now.

[00:35:21] Isn't that probably what you think about it, like we are just the salt of the earth?

[00:35:25] Is that what you think about America these days or too many people like myself sometimes feel like we have hit an all time low here in America.

[00:35:34] Right.

[00:35:35] And if you're not careful what I hear and I even see Christians put stuff like this on social media, I hear it in comments, even hear around the church. Like, look at all these stupid people in America. You ever you find yourself thinking that or somebody samma maybe they don't use that word. Maybe they like all these idiots or these liberals. There's like code words, code words that people used to say. But, you know, these conservatives, they're just starting to narc on somebody. Like, how could anybody be this dumb to vote for this person or to believe that this is OK?

[00:36:06] Or what about just how evil people are that they would do these things, the sexual morality that's taken over the abortion? And I think there's like it's almost sometimes this aura of condescension that I sometimes feel from Christian people looking down on the people of this world.

[00:36:26] And I just wonder if those people if you're going to judge them for stumblin in and out of bars and stumblin in and out of relationships, and when they stumble, all of this profanity comes out of their mouth. Man, would you think differently about them if they were doing all that stumbling because they're a blind person?

[00:36:43] But that changed the way you thought about your fellow Americans.

[00:36:47] Instead of mocking them or looking down on them as they bump into things going down the road. No. What if we could just change our perspective and we could see that on the front of this person? They've got a cane and they've got these thick glasses on and they're trying to figure out where to go because they can't see. Maybe that's why America is doing so much stumblin.

[00:37:06] Maybe the reason we got such a problem with darkness in our country is less people are shining a light than ever before. Maybe it's actually the churches fault, not the nation's fault.

[00:37:17] Maybe we should change our whole perspective about the lost people around us and we should realize we're not any smarter than them or any more righteous them. Now, we were one of them. And the only reason I'm not agreeing with everybody else in America.

[00:37:28] The only reason I'm not jumping on that bandwagon or supporting that cause is I saw the light and I did nothing to see the light. Jesus showed it to me.

[00:37:38] Otherwise, I'd be just like everybody else in America believing that this is the moment for this and this is now. And we should all get on board with this. I would be running right there with them, and I bet you would, too.

[00:37:48] If Jesus had and shown us the light. And do people think that we consider them blind, like we care about them, like we're concerned about them? Or do people just think we condescend to them?

[00:38:00] What is the attitude that our nation would have right now about the church? People like us who are saying we've seen the light. Are they thinking that we're sharing good news with them and they want to come see the light with us? The one thing I do is I like to go on social media. And I know people some people think social media is of the devil and you might be right, but this whole world is of the devil is what we're learning here. And social media is actually a place where you see the hearts of men revealed. And there's this thing called Twitter, if you've ever heard of it. It's where people can leave short messages on the Internet and non people follow them and they read them and they have these hashtags, if you know what this is. And I sometimes check out this. And I think actually, if you go look at what they're trending on Twitter is, you can see exactly what people are thinking about in our nation right now. Just look at what's trending. And this hashtag trended in the Los Angeles area this week. And the hashtag is, I don't want to go to heaven in.

[00:39:01] I mean, you want to talk about blindness.

[00:39:04] I mean, I thought that at least the foundation of our nation would lead people in America to understand that if there is a heaven and a hell and hell is a consequence for sin and heaven is for people who get to be with God like you would want to go to heaven over hell, we would think that that thought would still pervade in our nation. But no, actually, trending this week in our country, right here in the area where we live is a statement about how we don't want to go to.

[00:39:29] And some people are just trying to be funny.

[00:39:31] They're just like, oh, I don't want to go to heaven if the Wi-Fi is not good or I don't want to go to heaven if I can't bring my dog or they're saying kind of kind of lighthearted things. They're trying to just make fun and and say stuff. But then some people have like a clear point that they're trying to make and they're saying things like this, I don't want to go to heaven if the people who tell me I'm going to hell are going to be there.

[00:39:53] I don't want to go to heaven. If the majority of religious people will be there, I don't want to go to heaven. If most Christians are there.

[00:40:06] Like, the reason I don't want to go to heaven isn't necessarily I'm anti God or against this guy. Jesus. But it's all these people who claim to believe in God and follow Jesus that are giving me this condescending attitude. I don't want to be around those people. People like us.

[00:40:23] That's what America has had enough of.

[00:40:25] They've had enough of our judgment and our condescension and us acting like we're better than them because we've seen the light and they haven't.

[00:40:32] And we're losing our sense of compassion for people who can't see what our eyes have been opened to see. Praise the Lord that he showed it to us. And we should feel for those who haven't seen it yet. In fact, I hate to break it to those of you who went to Sunday school at the 9:00 hour, but one of them said, I don't want to go to heaven if it is even remotely like Sunday school.

[00:40:53] Like, forget that you're just telling me I'm a bad person who's going to hell. And what the world is not getting from us as Jesus is people on the planet in America right now. They're not getting the sense that we should feel of their blind.

[00:41:10] I mean, if somebody is blind, you just feel compassion.

[00:41:14] You just feel right away like I wish that that person could see what I see and I wish I could help them or guide them. If you saw a blind person stumbling down the road of life, would not your natural inclination be, oh, I want to help them get where they're going. I want to help them get across the street. I want to help blind people. I want to share with them how I found sight in Jesus Christ, how he opened my eyes based on nothing that I did but his amazing grace. Look what it goes on to say here in verse five of Second Corinthians, chapter four, verse five for what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves, as your servants, for Jesus sake, I'm not here to tell you about what I did, that I'm religious, that I'm a Christian.

[00:41:58] I shouldn't be getting in the way of the good news. It's not about me. It's about Jesus Christ is Lord. I'm just a servant of Jesus. And here's the good news that I have to share a verse six for God who said all the way back in Genesis, let light shine out of darkness. He has shown in the darkness of our hearts to give light to the knowledge of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus.

[00:42:21] Here's what I want to tell. God said, let there be light. And he said it to me. And now I can see the glory that is God's sending his son Jesus to die for my sin and to rise again. And I worship Jesus. I can see him. And I wish that my fellow Americans could see him too.

[00:42:38] And so I have compassion on them. As blind people, my heart goes out to the loss. Now, this is something I've heard people say as they've been coming to our church over this last year and a half of us doing this. And we've made it very clear that our goal goal is not to have a church that faces in word there's there's churches where we'd like to get our Christian people like we'd like to do our Bible studies.

[00:43:00] We'd like to encourage one another to fellowship together endlessly. And at some point, you would have to say that that church is just focused on the other people that go to the church. And it kind of becomes a click. It kind of becomes a circle that's closed off to the outside world. We even have like special code words like air. You go into a Jeff G this we get like little little things that you have to be in the know to even understand what in the world we're saying.

[00:43:25] And it becomes just a very inward focused group. That's Home Fellowship group, by the way. It is where we get it's where we form these clicks sometimes if we're not there and people have said, you know, something that's happened to me since I came to this church is I really got excited about evangelism and I started to think about people differently. Like, I I want to share with them what I know. And I want to be more bold about my faith. And I love hearing that. And I hope that's not some new thing that we want to try or some novelty of. Like while check this church out for a minute. I hope that's becoming the increasing passion of our lives. But hey, we're going to endlessly fellowship and encourage one another in heaven forever. But the reason we're still here right now is we need to be an outward facing church because there's more blind people who need to see Jesus.

[00:44:13] That's why we exist.

[00:44:15] Not for one another. We ultimately exist. This church ultimately exists for people born blind.

[00:44:23] So that God can glorify himself by showing them who he is. People that aren't even here yet. That's ultimately why we exist, is for the people outside. Are you a part of that?

[00:44:34] I mean, could you say today that your fervor to pray for people who are blind is increasing, that your passion to see lost people gets saved is growing? Could you say today that you are more on fire to see people come to know this salvation, stepping into the light and beholding the glory of God? You're more excited about that now than you've ever been. Point number two. We need to think like this. We need to pray for the eyes of others to be opened. And I don't just mean like, hey, we're having this event or, hey, we're doing this evangelism thing. So let's just pray this one time. I'm saying this is a constant pursuit of our hearts. This is the passion of our souls that we want to see people who cannot see Jesus have their eyes opened by Jesus and come to know him as we know him. That's what we want to share. And so we're praying this all the time and we are going out all the time. We've got people who go out from this church every Tuesday night. They take that ice cream truck down to the farmer's market and they tell people about Jesus. Every Saturday morning we go around in the neighborhoods around here and we invite people to come and see Jesus. This isn't something we're just doing because we're a new church. This is something we do because we are the church of Jesus Christ and we are an eye doctor for blind people to come and see the light. That's what the church is here to be. So, man, how would our attitude change from condescension in our hearts to people who don't get Jesus to compassion in our hearts for people who can't see Jesus? If we were to think about unbelievers in this kind of a way that they're being blinded, I think that would change a lot of how we talk about them, how we pray for them and how we approach them with the words that come out of our mouth. And I got a question. Why are blind people always hanging around with Jesus? Have you noticed this? Like everywhere Jesus is walking, there's like blind people by the side of the road. Is anybody else picked up on this? Like, how do they know to be there?

[00:46:34] Like, is this just all like a big coincidence where they're way more blind people back then in that day, like, I thought there were more people on the planet now. But yes, I don't even see as many blind people as I read about it in the in the scripture. Like, how come the blind people can somehow see that near Jesus is where they want to be like go to Matthew Chapter nine and let's look at other examples of Jesus interacting with blind people. And if you did grow up, go into church and you had the blessing of being in kids ministry from day one, you might even have songs about blind people that, you know, like the blind man stood by the road and cry the blind man's do. But come on, I'm not the only person who knows this song. A blind man stood by the road and he cried. He cried, Oh, you guys know.

[00:47:24] Show me, though. So you know what, I'm talking about anybody who heard this before, but we know songs like this, why are all these blind people coming around to Jesus?

[00:47:36] Very once you start thinking about it's a very curious phenomenon that was taking place in ancient Palestine. How is this happening? Matthew, chapter nine, verse twenty seven. Look at what happens here. Fascinating study if you start to just study all the interactions of Jesus and blind people. And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him crying aloud. Have mercy on us, son of David. And when he entered the house. So here's Jesus walking along. Blind men following him, shouting after him. He enters the house and the blind man came to him. These are like stocker blind men at this point. OK. These guys have a better perception than most people who can see here. And the blind man came to him and Jesus said to them, Do you believe I'm able to do this? He gets right to the point. And they said to him, Yes, Lord. Then he touched their eyes, saying, according to your faith, be it done to you. And their eyes were opened. Now, I'm guessing by the persistence of these people, these two men, to follow Jesus straight to the house where he is going, that perhaps these weren't the first blind people Jesus it interacted with, and they had this confidence, this expectation that Jesus give sight to the blind and they believed it. That's why they followed him. And that's why he even gave them sight, because he said, according to your faith. But look at what they're saying. Go back to verse 27. Look at what these blunt two blind men are saying as they follow Jesus. Have mercy on us. Son of. Who do they say he's the son of. Son of you, David. Now, that's not just. Hey, we can't see. Give us sight. That's not what they're crying out for. Now they're asking for something much more significant than just their eyeballs to start working as big of a deal as I'm sure that was. What are they calling out to? What does it mean, son of David?

[00:49:39] I mean, see, this is referring to Old Testament prophecy.

[00:49:42] This is referring to the Davidic covenant that God promised David that in his kingly line, there would be one who would sit on the throne, who would reign forever. When you call Jesus the son of David, you're calling him the Messiah. You're saying he's the one you're referring to him as the servant, as God.

[00:49:59] These men know who Jesus is. And what do they ask for? Do they ask for sight? What do they ask to have? They say, have what on us have.

[00:50:08] That's a loaded word right there.

[00:50:11] That's not just asking for my eyeballs to work so I can see that mercy means. I don't want to get the judgment I deserve. That's what mercy is when God doesn't treat you the way that you should be treated in your sin. When he withholds judgment. We call that mercy. What are these guys asking for? They're asking for salvation. Who are they asking it from? From God as they follow Jesus.

[00:50:38] These men who are blind have the eyes of faith. And they want Jesus not only to heal them. They want Jesus to save them. They believe that Jesus is the place that every blind person should go because he is the one who gives sight, who shows the glory of God.

[00:50:56] That's what these blind men believe. Now, I want you to see you. This is not the only time that even Matthew describes two blind men coming after Jesus turn over to Matthew, Chapter 20. Now, we're not go into another gospel. We're not going to read the same story now in Mark or Luke and just their account of it. This is Matthew, Matthew, Chapter nine and Matthew, Chapter 20. Now we're going to look at verse twenty nine here and you'll notice the heading Jesus heels. Two blind men.

[00:51:30] Very curious. Is this are we just repeating this? Is this just the same story over again? Let's read. And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him.

[00:51:41] And behold, check it out. Look what's over there. There were two blind men sitting by the roadside. I don't know if they were singing songs for kids or not, but when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out. Look what they say. Lord, have mercy on us, son of David.

[00:52:06] Very interesting that they would use the exact same words.

[00:52:11] What a curious coincidence. And stopping. Jesus called them and said, What do you want me to do for you? And they said to him, Lord, let our eyes be opened. And Jesus in keyword pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.

[00:52:29] Now, where did these two blind men sitting by the road where Jesus just happened to pass by? Where do you think possibly they got the idea to call on him for mercy as the son of David? Anybody want to take a wild and crazy guess here at church this morning?

[00:52:45] Go back to Matthew, Chapter nine.

[00:52:47] See, there's a key part that we did not read of the story that reveals all things after these men get their sight. Their eyes are open because that's what Jesus does. He shines the light into the dungeons of darkness and he gives sight to the blind in their eyes were opened and liquid. This is very interesting. Verse 30 of Matthew, Chapter nine and Jesus sternly warned them. See that no one knows about it.

[00:53:14] Hey, guys, I hear you. I know you followed me to the house. I know you have faith. I'm going to give you guys side, but let's just. Hey, I know you're you know, I know your wife's gonna be pregnant, but, hey, we haven't made it public. Don't tell anybody yet. That's basically what he does right here. Hey, guys, I'm going to give you guys sight, but let's just keep that between the three of us. What are the odds of that happening?

[00:53:36] Jesus just gave you sight. Saved you from your sin. And you're going to keep it a secret, even after Jesus says clear statement, see that no one knows about it.

[00:53:46] Not one person. Keep it secret. Keep it safe. Verse 31. But they went away and spread his fame through all that district.

[00:53:55] These disobedient believers right here just telling everybody about how Jesus gave them. So you think the news happened to pass on down to Jericho? You think other blind people started saying, hey, man, you I want to go around right TEUs and I want to start shouting out, have mercy on us. Son of David Braly, a blind guy is doing this out of every city in Israel because the word was spreading that if you're blind, Jesus is your friend.

[00:54:24] Do people know that when they start to see that they are blind, we are their friend in the name of Jesus.

[00:54:30] The people know that if they come to us, they will not find judgment, but they will find what Jesus said.

[00:54:36] How Jesus saw blind people, how Jesus saw all people in their lost and helpless state. It says here in Matthew nine, you can look at it in verse 36 when he saw the crowds, he had. What does it say?

[00:54:52] That compassion for them. And it says in Matthew 20, the way it's translated, same word is pity.

[00:55:00] And it's this idea that he felt their pain in his bowels. That's the idea behind the Greek word. Like that pain when you feel when something's going wrong and all of a sudden it hits you and you feel that paying like you forgot something important or something bad. All of a sudden that you remember that inner pain that just hits you.

[00:55:18] That's how Jesus felt when he saw people who were lost, like he felt their pain in his body. He had compassion for them. He could feel for them.

[00:55:29] Yet pity now we can't even use the word pity anymore. The word pity has been completely hijacked these days because now people don't want pity, because now when we even use the word pity, what it sounds like is it sounds like we condescend down to you, you poor person who needs pity because we're up here and you're down here. And so people don't even like the word pity in America right now.

[00:55:51] Because all that compassion has turned into even in many churches is con descension. Are we here to look down on the people of this world? Are we here to love the people of this world? Are we here to relate to them and say, hey, you know what?

[00:56:05] I was once blind to just like you. And there is no difference between me and you. The only difference is Jesus opened my eyes to see the only difference between me and you. I don't want to look down on the people that we have all around us, our family members are coworkers, our neighbors, the people we read about or see on the news. And I don't want to look down on them. I want to have compassion for them. I wish that CompassHB Bible Church should be compass could be short for compassion and that people would know if they came here that people would care in this room. Does it matter what kind of scene they're in? Doesn't matter how lost they might feel. Know there are people here who love the blind. And we know how to find sight. We know where it is. Oh, son of David. Have mercy on us. Blind people like us see your glory. Pray with me.

[00:56:58] God, we thank you so much for your word and how one miracle that happened to a man who was born blind is really the story for all of us that all of us need our eyes open to. Behold you in all of your glory, the glory of the gospel that you would send Jesus to come down and to save sinners like us got to see ourselves in our sin and to see you and Your Holiness in heaven and to realize the only way we could get there to be with you.

[00:57:26] The only way of salvation is this good news. It's this story of Jesus coming that he's the only one who can give sight to blind people like us. God, I pray that that would be our message, that that would be our song, that we would never be people who think that somehow we're saved because it had something to do with us being smarter and knowing the Bible or being righteous and doing good God, that we would be people that would say it's amazing grace. That saved a wretch like me. I don't deserve to be saved. I don't deserve to see you in your glory and to worship Jesus. Now, I'd be running into sin in the dungeons of darkness, just like all my fellow Americans, if it wasn't for Jesus opening my eyes. And so, God, we worship Jesus. We thank you so much that he did open our eyes and we pray that you would humble us and you would give us a real heart that wants to worship Jesus and a real passion that wants to share with others this glorious good news that even if they don't see it now, even if they're blind to it, that Jesus can open their eyes.

[00:58:38] That we can relate to people that we were blind, but now we see Gavins, something good happens in our lives, were so free to share it with others.

[00:58:47] God help us to take this Amazing Grace, this good news that we were blind and now we see and let us share it with many other people so that they might see your glory and they might worship you. God, we ask that you would shine the light and that you would open the eyes of many. But blind people got even if there's someone in this room right now and they're convicted in their heart and they know that they can't really even see Jesus that they've never really gone from from being blind to sight, that when they read the Bible or they hear about the gospel, it's just it's just not something they can really see God. Even today, we pray that you would open eyes that they people would admit their blindness and that you would give them sight. Even here among us this morning, we pray that Your Grace would be put on display, that you would show that you would manifest your glory and your work by opening the eyes of the blind. We pray this in Jesus name a man.

[00:59:47] Hey, man, please stand. Let's sing of God's Amazing Grace. They see Greg Haas. He said that see red.

[01:00:09] Let me swat the burn and. Was blah.

[01:00:23] But now I see.

[01:00:30] Swersky stats sa ma to feed.

[01:00:38] And Grace, my fiance, Harry.

[01:00:47] How? Stay that way, sir. P. V.

[01:00:59] V.

[01:01:05] Has this city.

[01:01:12] He is by.

[01:01:22] She.

[01:01:30] As in.

[01:01:36] When we send.

[01:02:01] We is an amazing, brave.

[01:02:08] Hazing, Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

[01:02:25] So this is now.

[01:02:30] Found. Was blind, but now I see.

[01:02:38] He was.

[01:02:45] Cindy. Hey, miss.

[01:02:52] Well, praise God for his amazing grace to let blind people like us see Jesus say, man. Now, I don't want to ruin your Sunday. I know it's some you guys are thinking. Point number three. All right. And it's a good way for us to walk out. Be kind to the blind. That's point number three. I bet you can remember that one without even writing it down. So hopefully there's somebody that you know who needs to know that you can show them compassion and love this week. And I just got to say right now, if you know that you are blind and you can't really see the glory of God and Jesus Christ, and there's people who care about you right here, right now, come talk to me. Go to the compass connect table afterwards. Don't need to leave this place without talking to somebody about it. Hopefully year you won't receive judgment, but you will receive love in the name of Jesus. So thank you so much for being here. We got to.