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      "The Gospel Made Plain"
      John 9:13-34
      Theme: The Gospel boils down to the message of what Christ Jesus has accomplished for a sinner.

        1. The Perplexity Over the Gospel – 9:13-23

          1. The Focus on Externals Causes Callousness – vv. 13-16

            1. In the previous verses, Jesus clarifies for the disciples that there is tremendous opportunity to bring glory to God through tragedy, trials, and sickness.
            2. After the man was healed, the religious Jews didn’t know what to do with experience – so "they brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind."
            3. John introduces us to what would be the major issue with the religious establishment – "Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes."
            4. Discovering the miracle and the Pharisees immediately begin to attempt to filter it through the grid of their religious system – "Then the Pharisees also were asking him again how he received his sight."
            5. The formerly blind man’s answer proved to be a "curve ball" to those completely consumed with defining a righteous deed on the basis of conformity to a faulty standard of human self-righteousness – "And he said to them, ‘He applied clay to my eyes, and I washed, and I see’."
            6. Their snap judgment (to which they clung throughout this dialogue) was that regardless of the virtue of his ministry to the blind man, Jesus could not be of God because He had broken their sabbatical laws – "Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying, ‘This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath’."
            7. Some of the more spiritually sensitive Pharisees (perhaps led by Nicodemus) disagreed with this snap judgment – "But others were saying, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’"
            8. Because of these people’s belief that the only way to gain the favor of God was through a strict adherence to a strict and legalistic code of conduct that they themselves devised, Jesus demonstration of God’s initiative and love was a complete puzzle to them.

          2. The Fallacies of Experience Causes Confusion – vv. 17-18

            1. Their devotion to their own standards is so staunch, that they continued to badger the man who was healed to give them some inconsistency or point of condemnation of Jesus.
            2. The reapproached the blind man and "said to the blind man again, ‘What do you say about Him, since He opened you eyes?’"
            3. The blind man is called upon over and over again to give an account of what happened, his impressions on who Jesus is, how He did what He did, etc…
            4. The more the man is called upon to recount what happened to Him, the higher his impression of Jesus grew – now he asserts that "He is a prophet."
            5. The Pharisees devotion to legalism and their consequential rejection of Jesus, they began to even deny the reality of what happened to the man – "The Jews then did not believe it of him that he had been blind and had received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight."
            6. They appealed to every possibility in the effort to discredit what was clearly demonstrated – that Jesus was indeed sent by God and empowered by God to work such marvels and signs such as the healing of the blind man.
            7. This was not supposed to happen – not according to their system – consequently, they were greatly confused.

          3. The Fear of Exclusion Causes Calculation – vv. 19-23

            1. In pressing the parents of the man, the Pharisees demonstrate their prejudice – if they confessed Jesus as Messiah, they would be punished.
            2. By means of the pressure of the threat of excommunication, they attempted to gain the parents dismissal of Christ as some kind of fraud.
            3. However, "his parents answered them and said, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind’."
            4. They refused to play into the hands of the Pharisees, but they also cowered in fear because of the potential consequences – "but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself."
            5. Some people are pressured by peers to avoid a straightforward confession of Jesus as the Christ the Son of God – through the threat of consequences if they did "come out" for Christ Jesus.

        2. The Power of the Gospel - 9:24-30

          1. It Has the Power to Convert – vv. 24-25

            1. Regardless of the incredible way by which the spiritually confused and hard-hearted Pharisees worked to discredit Jesus and reject His legitimacy, the great beauty of this text is the impact of the mercy of God on the sinner who was healed.
            2. As we have seen, the more this man was forced to face what God had done for him, the greater his confidence in and appreciation for Jesus became.
            3. Apparently, the Pharisees had isolated the man from his parents when they testified; they bring him back in and challenged him to NOT give this Jesus any credibility – "So a second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, ‘Give glory to God;’ we know that this man is a sinner’."
            4. The man who was healed dismissed their assertion – based upon their faulty presuppositions and faithlessness – and declares that he grants it no credibility – "He then answered, ‘Whether He is a sinner, I do not know’;"
            5. In other words, he says that Jesus is not a "sinner" merely because you claim that He is – that as far as the formerly blind man is concerned, He is the One who had made him whole – "… One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see."
            6. These are words that every born-again person can apply to himself – there are many things that the young believer has little knowledge of; there are many points in theology and prophecy of which he has no light or knowledge.
            7. However, "one thing" he does know – he knows that the eyes of his understanding have been opened – and that Jesus is the refuge that provides deliverance from the problem of sin and death.

          2. It Has the Power to Confront – vv. 26-30

            1. The rebellious and faithless Pharisees decide to rehash the matter again – knowing that they cannot argue with the testimony of the man – "So they said to him, ‘What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes’?"
            2. In this they wanted to get back to the issue of how Jesus had broken their Sabbath laws.
            3. The man who was healed becomes completely frustrated with the Pharisees fixation on their own codes of conduct and legalistic definition of what true righteousness is.
            4. He replies to them "I told you already and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again? You did not want to become His disciples too, do you’?"
            5. They are trying to make the issue a complex violation of sophisticated religious rules and the man simply wants to rejoice in what God had done for him.
            6. He sarcastically pokes fun at them by asking whether they wanted to convert to following Him – their intense interest in repeatedly hearing every detail was beyond his ability to tolerate.
            7. In response to him, the Pharisees "reviled him and said, ‘You are His disciple, but we are the disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from’."
            8. They were orthodox but without a zeal according to knowledge – their "knowledge was purely intellectual, something which they venerated as a religious tradition handed down by their forebears; but it neither moved their hearts nor affected their lives."
            9. Essentially, they show their biased rejection of Jesus by contradicting themselves from earlier when they said that not know where the Messiah came from would certify his authenticity – cp. John 7:27.
            10. The man immediately picks up on their inconsistency and uses blatant sarcasm to communicate his disgust of their insincerity and duplicity – "Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes."
            11. When an individual understands the simple and basic realities of the Gospel, he is able to be used of God to confront the simple and basic needs of the lost – the need to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

        3. The Point of the Gospel – 9:31-34

          1. The Accomplishment of Christ – vv. 31-33

            1. This man, in whose heart God’s Spirit was doing a wonderful work of grace, brings the focus to where it needed to be – Who is Jesus?
            2. He begins by calling attention to a general principle of God’s treatment of men and gaining some point of agreement with the Pharisees - "We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him."
            3. He moves to another point of agreement and declares that the power to heal blindness has unquestionably been the work of God – "Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind."
            4. He then gives his conclusion that reveals that his awareness of who Jesus truly is has come to bear fruit – "If this man were not from God, He could do nothing."

          2. The Accountability of Men – v. 34

            1. However, the hard-heartedness of the Pharisees caused them great distress over such a clear and natural understanding of what had happened.
            2. They immediately react to this man’s conclusion with hostility – "They answered and said to him, ‘You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us’?"
            3. To them, for such a base fellow as a beggar to take it upon himself to teach such worthies as themselves is disgusting to them – the crudeness of the arrogance and pride comes roaring to the surface.
            4. Their retaliation for his "arrogance" and blasphemy [in essence calling Jesus the Christ] was to excommunicate him – "So they put him out."
            5. How do you react to the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of men?

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