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Let me catch you up to speed. So we've been in this book of John since we started the ministry year back in really September-ish. And John kind of has this overarching theme that's you could sum it up in one word, and that word is believe. Okay, he even says in the book that he's written these things so that you might believe in Jesus, that in him you might have eternal life. And so everything that we've been studying through the book of John kind of centers around that whole purpose of belief. Last Sunday, again, we took a break from that to talk about what is the church. But now we're jumping back in. And we're going to be in John 9 today. We're actually going to cover a whole chapter. And we are going to read the whole chapter, so bear with me. But we're in the middle of kind of a mini-series in the book of John called I Am. And the I Am series is really focusing on these statements that Jesus has said. Things like, I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world. And so really that's where we are right now. He said, I am the bread of life about three or four times in this one chapter. We talked about that a few weeks ago. He's already said, I am the light of the world once. He's going to say it again in our passage today. And then we'll move on over the next few weeks and talk about some of the other I am statements. So, like I said, if you have your Bible, go ahead and open it up to John chapter 9, and uh we're going to read through this whole chapter all the way through, all right? As he, talking about Jesus, was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples questioned him, Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Neither this man nor his parents sinned, Jesus answered. This came about so that God's works might be displayed in him. We must do 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. After he said these things, he spit on the ground, made some mud from the saliva, and spread the mud on his eyes. Go, he told him, wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent. So he left, washed, and came back seeing. His neighbors and those who formerly had seen him as a beggar said, Isn't this the man who sat begging? Some said, He's the one. No, others were saying, but he looks like him. He kept saying, I'm the one. Therefore they asked him, Then how were your eyes opened? He answered, The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and told me, Go to Siloam and wash. So when I went and washed, I received my sight. Where is he? They asked. I don't know, he said. They brought the man who used to be blind to the Pharisees. The day that Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes was a Sabbath. So again the Pharisees asked him, How he received his sight. He put mud on my eyes, he told them, I washed, and I can see. Therefore some of the Pharisees said, This man is not from God, for he doesn't keep the Sabbath. But others were saying, How can a sinful man perform such signs? And there was a division among them. Again they asked the blind man, What do you say about him, since he opened your eyes? He's a prophet, he said. The Jews did not believe this about him, that he was blind and received sight, until they summoned the parents of the one who had received his sight. They asked them, Is this your son, the one you say was born blind? How then does he now see? We know this is our son, and that he was born blind, his parents answered, but we don't know how he now sees, and we don't know who opened his eyes. Ask him, he's of age, he can speak for himself. His parents said these things because they were afraid of the Jews, since the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed him as Messiah, he would be banned from the synagogue. This is why his parents said, He's of age, ask him. So a second time they summoned the man who had been blind and told him, Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner. He answered, Whether or not he's a sinner, I don't know. One thing I do know, I was blind, and now I can see. Then they asked him, What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? I already told you, he said, and you didn't listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don't want to become his disciples too, do you? They ridiculed him. You're that man's disciple, but we're Moses' disciples. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but this man, we don't know where he's from. This is an amazing thing, the man told them. You don't know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God doesn't listen to sinners, but if anyone is God fearing and does his will, he listens to him. Throughout history, no one has ever heard of someone opening the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he wouldn't be able to do anything. You were born entirely in sin, they replied. And are you trying to teach us? Then they threw him out. When Jesus heard that they had thrown the man out, he found him and asked, Do you believe in the Son of Man? Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him? He asked. Jesus answered, You have seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you. I believe, Lord, he said, and he worshipped him. Jesus said, I came into this world for judgment in order that those who do not see will see, and those who do see will become blind. Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things and asked him, We aren't blind too, are we? If you were blind, Jesus told them, you wouldn't have sin. But now that you say we see, your sin remains. So to kind of set this up a little bit, throughout the book of John, there's kind of been this interplay between Jesus doing a lot of teaching and oftentimes really challenging teaching and saying things that, you know, like, um, I'm the bread of life. And in the last chapter, he kind of calls these people out. Like, if you believe me, you know the truth, the truth will set you free. And so he's been kind of doing this stuff, but then you have mixed into it, you get these stories, kind of these more narrative type moments where you see Jesus doing something, but not necessarily saying or teaching as much. So obviously you can see here this is an entire chapter devoted to this one man and his story. This comes right off the heels of Jesus being kind of chased out of the temple complex by these same leaders who were prepared to, they were trying to kill him. Okay. So if you go back real quick, chapter 8, verse 59, it says, at that, when Jesus says this really, really bold thing, comparing himself, telling them he's God, uh, it says they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus was hidden and went out of the temple complex. Okay? So imagine you had just nearly been challenged with your life. Someone's gonna throw stones to kill you, and now you're walking along the road and you see a blind man. Probably a little bit out of breath, you've probably been maybe running a little bit, and yet Jesus takes this moment, we get this entire chapter in the Bible dedicated to what happens to this guy. And like I said at the beginning here, this chapter in the book of John is written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that believing in him, you may have eternal life. The same way the rest of it is, but this whole chapter, the same thing, okay? So let's take a look at it. The first five verses, which I'm not going to go back and reread everything again to you, but the first five verses, we see a couple of things. We see the disciples ask this question Hey, Jesus, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind? It was a common belief in that day that if you had any kind of physical malady, that it was a result of your own sin or your parents' sin, generational sin was a common belief in that day. So if you were a leper or you were a beggar or you were, you know, you had a deformity or anything like that, that was your fault or your parents' fault or your grandparents' fault. And so we still have some wrong views about sickness and things today, don't we? And there are even those in the church who would still kind of adhere to that belief and say, well, you have that because you don't have enough faith. We don't believe that. I'll just go ahead and say that. Like we believe what Jesus is about to say here, that those things might happen so that the works of God could be displayed in your life. So he dispels this myth, tells the disciples, hey, it has nothing to do with the man, it has nothing to do with his parents, it has everything to do with my father who is God. Okay. Sometimes sin is the cause. Don't get me wrong. Like we may have issues because we've walked ourselves into that world. I mean, if you smoke your whole life and get lung cancer, you're probably not going to go, oh, well, God, you've gifted me with lung cancer because of these poor decisions I've made. All right? That is a result of a bad decision that you've made. But there are also times when things happen and we can't really explain it with an answer like that. And we can trust and know that God is working in the midst of that. The cause is not the issue here, though. Okay? The cause of this man's blindness is not the main point. It's the purpose of the blindness that we need to focus on. The key point is that suffering is one of the most purpose-filled components of the Christian life, and we don't really talk about it very much. It doesn't get taught really in churches a whole lot, but yet it's written all throughout the New Testament. Suffering is a key theme, okay? So your first fill in the blank is this the chief purpose of your suffering is so that the works of God might be displayed in you. Now, as a teacher and an educator, I'm a firm believer in participation, so I may ask a question and it's okay for you to answer it out loud. You can shout it out. I'm not going to be offended by that. Okay, so tell me what you typically do with your own suffering. Just raise your hand or just say it. Oh, come on. Pray, okay, pray. All right, that's good. Complain? Whine? Blame others? And you might woe is me, right? That's typically our response. I mean, I love if I wish prayer was my response, and so so oftentimes it isn't, and yet that's that's a good response and it should be. So our suffering, though, typically draws us inward and makes us think more about ourselves than it should, right? It doesn't typically push us to God unless it gets bad enough. Usually when it we hit like this really rough spot, then we're like, well, I got no other option. So, okay, God, now it's your turn. And I'm not saying that's the way it is for everybody, but so oftentimes we treat it that way. I think that we have, we don't have a high enough view of suffering as the church. And I'll give you some examples in scripture just to kind of help maybe reshape your perspective on suffering. Philippians 1, 29 and 30. Um, it's going to be on the screen back here, and this is a slightly different version than what we usually teach from, but it says this for to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, which we love to talk about belief, but also to suffer for his sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me and now here to be in me. Did you catch the word that he uses? He says, For to you it has been granted. You could replace that word with the word gifted. God has seen it fit for you to experience suffering, A, B, C, or D, or and all of those things for this reason. That you would believe in him and suffer for him because this is a way that we relate and get to know Jesus better. Jesus knows all about suffering. And so when we're experiencing suffering, the purpose is that we could know him more, that we could be drawn closer to him. Paul says this in Colossians 1 24, you don't have to turn there, but he just says, I rejoice in my sufferings. That's kind of a crazy idea to say, thank you, Lord, for this, thank you for this, thank you for this. We don't typically take that approach. And then in Romans 5, verses 3 and 4, it says this, and not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions. Because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. Affliction leads all the way to what? Hope. Right? If we trust that God's word is true and that it's meant to take us from these places, we can gain a lot from suffering. And so I would challenge you this morning that if you're in the room and you're dealing with something that's especially challenging, I don't want to make light of that. I don't want to be uncompassionate about that, because life is hard, okay? But I do want to encourage you that in the midst of your suffering, there's a greater purpose here, and it's to build proven character, endurance, and hope. So maybe that may be something that you need to kind of consider between you and the Lord today of how you're handling that. And I would encourage you later on, maybe in the response time, to do some business with him if you need to, okay? I had a buddy in college uh whose mom had breast cancer, and she was just kind of a stalwart of faith. She was a great lady, always had a smile on her face, going through chemo. I mean, we we know that cancer is one of the most just terrible things that a person can experience. You either have experienced it yourself or you know someone who has who's very close to you. And so I always appreciated my my friend, he told me this story one time that his mother was in the grocery store and and uh you know she'd just been through uh uh some rounds of chemo and it had been about a month or so, and she'd gone back for a checkup, and a friend of hers saw her and said, Hi, Mrs. Brunson, how are you doing today? She said, Jesus is is on the throne, I'm doing great, you know. And and sometimes you may meet people who you hear say things like that, like, oh, I'm blessed, I'm blessed. And you kind of wonder, like, do they really mean that? Like, this is a lady who meant it. Like, no matter what, wherever she was, she was constantly pointing people to who Jesus is. And they said, So what's the what's the update? How are things going? You know, how's how's the cancer? And she said, Well, it's in remission. And they were they said, Praise God that it's in remission. And with just this deadpan smile and loving face, she said, and praise God when it's not. And she was able to, in the midst of this very challenging disease, give glory to God, no matter what it was doing. Because what we need to take away is this our circumstances don't dictate if we praise God or not. They shouldn't. We let them, but God's still the same God. He's still on the throne, he's still doing what he's gonna do, and it's really our job to align ourselves with him. And so if you have a wrong view of suffering this morning, again, I challenge you, encourage you to seek him in that and ask him to change your heart because he will. Like, oh yeah, this is our son. He was born blind. Yep. Well, how did his eyes get to open? Oh, we can't answer that. You ask him, he's old enough to tell you. Right? They don't want any part of it, and and John tells us why. Because they don't want to be kicked out of the club. Right? We we don't want to be kicked out of the synagogue, so we're not gonna go, we're not gonna give you anything one way or the other about Jesus. That's that's on you. Ask him, he'll give you an answer. So, what do they do? They ask him again, give glory to God, young man. Go ahead, quit telling us a lie, just admit it. Tell us that you actually weren't blind, like give us something, discredit Jesus, recant your statement, so we can all move on with this deal. We know he's a sinner. Because he did this on the Sabbath. Gotcha. There it is. And I love what the man says. I don't know if he's a sinner or not. So I'm gonna go back and tell you, he doesn't know if Jesus is a sinner or not. That tells you he doesn't know Jesus yet, right? He knows that he's experienced this miracle from him, but he does not, he doesn't fully believe in Jesus yet either. And that's a key point here, and that's kind of the the next fill in the blank for you. And we're gonna talk about this a lot this morning, okay? So you write this down. Experiencing the miracles of God does not equate to experiencing the salvation of God. You have a personal story, and if you're a believer in Jesus, that's awesome, and you need to share it with people because it's powerful. It doesn't require a theology degree. You notice his answer is the same every time. I was blind, he put mud on my eyes, I washed, I can see. Like, he doesn't give them some bridge illustration of who Jesus is. Not that that's bad. He doesn't go through the four points of the gospel, like he doesn't even know the gospel at this point. Jesus hasn't died on the cross yet, but even that's beside the point. He tells his personal story of this is what I was, this is who I am. He says it again in right after what we were just talking about. Verse 25. He answered, whether or not he's a sinner, I don't know. One thing I do know I was blind, now I can see. No one can take your personal testimony away from you. Okay? But uh, I would encourage you that you don't just leave it there. It's not just about what God did for you, it's about what God did for humanity through Jesus when he died on the cross and was raised again on the third day. So, what about to make of this whole miracle thing? Like, well, what do you mean? He's he's got a miracle, he's been given his sight. Well, of course, God has shown favor to him, but even God showing favor through a miracle is not the same thing as God showing you salvation through Jesus and you accepting that. They aren't the same. You cannot put your faith and trust in a miracle that happened in your life. That's not enough. I speak to people, I hear people tell stories, they'll acknowledge God's power, that he exists, that he has intervened even personally in their life, but they don't trust in who he is, they don't worship him. God doesn't just want us to accept his miracles, he wants us to accept him. He wants us to accept the salvation that his son purchased for us. And I don't want to step on your toes in the wrong way here. I'm okay if I do that in a little bit, if it pushes you to think about some things, but I don't want to, I don't want to be offensive to you if you have a personal story that God has rescued you from something crazy, because that's awesome. All right. I'm gonna I'm gonna talk a little bit uh about a friend of mine here in the church who um I'll just do it now. It goes with what I'm trying to say, so I'll just do it now. If you guys don't know Jack Alden, uh Jack is uh was in our life group, and then like Carly said, multiplied, and I think he'll probably be in one of the other groups that that uh went out. But Jack has got a really cool story in that he was involved in a car accident several years ago that should have taken his life. Okay? I'll leave that at that. I'm not gonna go into all the details. You can talk to him sometime about it. Um, but he should have died. It's a miracle that he lived. God used that to draw Jack to himself. He used that moment in his life to say, you gotta wake up, you gotta question who I am, and you gotta figure out what I'm about. I've given you this opportunity. But here's the thing Jack's story will still end in death, and even more importantly, eternal death, if that event doesn't push him to belief. You can be rescued from the car wreck a hundred times. If you never believe in Jesus, you got a hundred extra shots at it. And that's it. And so again, I don't want to step on your personal story if that's you in the room, but I have to caution you if you've been rescued from something physically, but you've not been rescued spiritually, then you're still gonna end up the same way as if none of that stuff had ever happened. Don't put your faith in a miracle, put your faith in the one and only miracle that matters, a resurrected Jesus. I can't say that enough. So many people walk through life. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for God. Well, what are you doing with him now? Well, nothing. That's not okay. We can't live that way. God doesn't want us to live that way. The purpose of his doing a miracle in our life is exactly what we mentioned before. It's so that his works might be displayed, but it's also so what John wrote in his book, so that you might believe in Jesus and that in believing in him you could have eternal life, not eternal death, eternal life. I'll give you an example of what I think kind of moves us from just a mental acknowledgement of Jesus. What drives us to say, how do we really know if we believe in him or not? I want to give you another picture. So, have you any of you ever heard of Charles Blonden? Any weird history nuts in the room like me? Okay, that's okay if you don't. You're gonna know about him now. So, Charles Blonden was a French tightrope walker from the 1800s. You're like, man, I came to church to hear about Jesus, not a tightrope walker. All right, and he was well known for doing crazy stuff on a tightrope. I mean, to me, it would be enough to just walk across a typerope over Niagara Falls, which he did several times. But he did things like carry a little stove with him and set it up on the tightrope and cook an omelet, and there was a boat below in the falls, and he cooked the omelet, he flipped it down to people on the boat. I mean, he did all kinds of yeah, crazy stuff like that. The dude could tightrope, walk anything, never didn't die because of it. He he made lots of money and was a kind of a world-class act. I'm surprised none of you had ever heard of him. That's okay, though. A little spoiler, I hadn't heard of him until this, but um, but I've been told this story and I just didn't know that's who it was. So one of his feats was that he uh they stretched out the cable across Niagara Falls and he walked across with a wheelbarrow full of uh a sack of potatoes. And he walked all the way down and he turned around and he walked all the way back. And he said, and he before them he'd asked, How many of you think I can do this? And they're like, Oh, you can do it, man. You're the best, you're the greatest tightrope walker that's ever lived. Like, we know you're gonna do it. We believe in you, man. You got it. So he goes and he does it. He comes back and he takes the sack of potatoes out and he sits down, he says, I need a volunteer. Who will come and get in the wheelbarrow? And not a single person would do it. And we laugh at that story, but yet, like, that's that's what the difference between a mental acknowledgement of something is and actually believing in it. Is are we going to get in the wheelbarrow? Because when you get in the wheelbarrow, you're saying, My life is in your hands, and I got no control here. That's what it's like to submit to Jesus. It's to literally give up everything to gain everything. I think Jim Elliott said it like this he's no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. That's what Jesus calls us to. And so maybe we need to wrestle a little bit with what are we doing with him? Are we just acknowledging that he's there, that he can do great things? Do we just want his miracles, or do we really want him? Because at the end of the day, that's what matters. We're gonna sing a song in a minute as our closing song. It's called Only Jesus. And some of the lines in it are, you know, who opens up our eyes? Only Jesus. Who brings the dead to life? Only Jesus. At the end of the day, there's no miracle, there's no personal story, there's no anything that rescues you or anybody else. There's only Jesus who can do that. So let's see what happens with our guy. We've already read it, but let's see again how he crosses into this line of belief. He crosses over the line, he gets in the wheelbarrow. Take a look at verse 35. Or I'll go back in 34. He challenges their thought processes. He tells them the story again. He pushes back. Do you want to be his disciples? They push back really hard. No, we're not going there. How dare you try to teach us? You're a sinner. You were born in sin entirely. I mean, just ridicule, right? They're just pushing back at his character. They kick him out. Verse 35, when Jesus heard that they had thrown the man out, he found him. Isn't that cool? Jesus pursues us. Right? This guy didn't even know the lordship of Jesus. He knew his name, but he gets kicked out of the synagogue. He gets kicked out of their group. And Jesus found him and asked, Do you believe in the Son of Man? Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him? He asked. And Jesus answered, You have seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you. I believe, Lord, he said, and he worshiped him. That's it. And you can even see it in the way he addresses him. Who is he, sir? This guy, this is the first time he's actually seen Jesus. Do you realize that here? Like he'd only heard him before, as a blind man on the side of the road. Jesus puts the mud on his eyes, sends him away, he washes, he comes back seeing, but he doesn't know who Jesus is, even physically, what he looks like. But Jesus finds him. Because the truth is that Jesus sees us before we see him. He saw us first. And he finds him and he says, Hey, I have a question for you. Do you believe in the Son of Man? Anybody ever just walked up randomly to you on the street and asked you that? Do you believe in the Son of Man? And here's this guy who's been through this whole journey says, Who is he, sir, that I could believe? And Jesus' response, You've seen him. In fact, I'm him, the one who is speaking to you. It's me. And what is the man's response? Read it. Go ahead. Verse 38. I believe. Lord. He doesn't call him a prophet. He doesn't call him a sinner. He doesn't call him Sir. He calls him Lord. For the first time. He gets in the wheelbarrow. I believe, Lord. And then what does that produce? Worship. So your last fill in the blank is this belief produces worship. And I almost said to, I was going to put it in there, true belief produces true worship. But this is true both sides of the coin. Wrong belief produces wrong worship. The question is, what's the center of our lives? Because that's what we're going to worship. If our kids are what we think are going to satisfy us and give us this ultimate, like if I can just raise good kids, then that's going to be it. I'll be, I'll, that'll be a good life for me, then we're going to worship our kids, even though we wouldn't say it that way. If our career is what we believe is going to do it for us, whether it's a noble cause or not, I'm not going to, you know, whether it's some great like selfless enterprise where you serve others all day, or you're, you know, you're self-employed and you do it, you know, whatever, it doesn't matter what it is. If that's what you believe is going to be the ultimate satisfaction for you, that's what you're going to worship. Your stuff is the same way, your spouse is the same way. And even, I'll just go ahead and say this like, I'm an educator and I believe in education. I do. I think it's it's a great, like I love what I do. But even that, spiritually, is not enough. I can get people educated, turn their lives around, but even they are going to experience the same end if they never meet Jesus and believe in him. He is the only one who we can believe in and worship that can actually do something about the life's the life uh condition that we're in. He's the answer to what we've been looking for. And the question today is really: have we seen him? Do we believe in the Son of Man? It's the same question today that it was then. We had the same opportunity. What are we going to do with it? The last thing I want to read really quickly is in the book of Hebrews, and this is a caution for us as we kind of wrap up our time today. I would argue that not only the book of John is written so that we may believe, but the entire Bible is written so that we might believe in who Jesus is. But there's some really stern words out there for those of us who've heard this message and yet haven't done anything with it. Okay? So in the book of Hebrews, chapter 3, and you can turn there if you want to. It'll be on the screen, I think, too, behind me. Um, starting in verse 12, it says this Watch out, brothers, so that there won't be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that departs from the living God, but encourage each other daily while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin's deception. For we have become companions of the Messiah, if we hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start. As it is said, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. He goes on to repeat that phrase, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts several other times. And so, if you're in the room this morning and you've been wrestling with who Jesus is, this whole Christianity thing, what has God done, and you're resisting him, my call to you is to not harden your heart. Don't walk out of here this morning with a hard heart that says, no, I'm really okay. I'm fine. No, I'm really. Don't say that man wasn't really blind. Like, don't discredit Jesus. If you're a believer in the room, my question to you really is this is what are you putting your faith in day in and day out, practically speaking? Is your belief centered and focused on Jesus and therefore you're worshiping him? Or has it become misguided and you're you're channeling that somewhere else? Either way, the question remains the same. Do we believe in the Son of Man? And what are we going to do with that? How are we going to answer that? Let's pray. Lord, your word is true. We thank you that you've given it to us, and that the purpose of it is so that we could believe in your son Jesus, and that in believing in him we could have life. Lord, the truth is we were all blind, all desperately lost, and that if Jesus hadn't shown up, we would still be there for many of us in the room. But we thank you that Christ saw us first, and in our weakness and in our frailty, he chose to offer salvation to us. For those in the room who have put their faith in him, God, we we rejoice together and say thank you. Thank you for sending your son to do what we could not do. To die on the cross for our sins, to be resurrected on the third day, to conquer death and sin so that we could have eternal life. God, that is the gospel and that is the hope that we have today. God, for those in the room who are not there, we trust that you move and you work by the power of your Holy Spirit to bring about change. And so I pray that we would take heed of the call to not harden our hearts today, but to look to you, to believe, to worship, and to submit to you fully. Again, thank you for the opportunity this morning to share your word. I pray that we would respond accordingly and appropriately in this time. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.