Are We Blind Also?

Good morning.

It's really good to be here with you this morning.

You know, I'm so grateful for our church here, our fellowship, and the support that we have, the ability that we have to be able to meet unhindered. Brother Brandon mentioned in his prayer about the church in Iran, and I was thinking about that recently as well, not just Iran but some of the places where I work with through CAM: Yemen, Syria, where Iraq as well, where there are believers that are very alone and without a support system, without a body to meet with and to be encouraged by. And I'm just so blessed by what we have here, and it is a rare privilege that we have. I don't want to take that for granted. And I also want to thank you all for your support for me as I prepared for this.

This is a bit of a new experience for me to do this in the States, and so I really appreciate your prayers and your words to me throughout the week.

So to start off this morning, I'm going to write a phrase up here on the board. I'm not going to be very comfortable in doing it, but I'm going to try to have something legible here. So before I start, this phrase is truth. I'm just going to let you know that, and you'll see that, I'm sure.

As you can see, I'm still learning myself.

So that's truth, you can tell, right? Well, I'll just let you know it is, and I assure you of that.

So last Sunday we talked about hearing, hearing from God, hearing the voice of God, hearing words of God, and learning to recognize truth. And Harvey talked about the prophet that was led astray when a man came to him and said, "I heard from God, and I'm telling you that this is truth."

And we know how that man disobeyed what he had originally heard from God, and it didn't turn out well. He met the wild beasts in the road. Well, before Harvey had that message, I was already thinking about sight or the lack of it, blindness. So I guess we'll be going through the senses. Whoever is taking next Sunday can maybe go on to one of the others.

But I wrote down last Sunday, and I'm not sure if Harvey said these exact words, but there is one true voice in all the noise and chaos around us, and what a privilege to be able to hear that voice.

It takes focus to keep our senses sharp. And it's the same with our sight. You know, we need to focus. We need to take care of our sight to make sure that we can continue seeing. Recently I was reading through John, and I came to the account of Jesus healing the blind man. And at the end of the story, the Pharisees asked Jesus. They said, "Are we blind also?"

The question really jumped out at me, and I realized that it's a question that I need to be asking in my life as well. I don't think that the Pharisees were asking it in a really serious way, not judging from the rest of their reactions and relations with Jesus. I think they were scoffing, probably, and it was said in a condescending way.

They weren't a very responsive or receptive audience. But this morning I would like to ask this question in a serious way: Are we blind also? If you're like me, you probably ask this question to yourself from time to time. Recently I was in Lowe's, and I was looking for something that I needed for at home, and I went to one of the employees and I said, "Where is the thing?" and I tried to describe it to him, and he sent me off to aisle nine. Well, I walked to aisle nine front to back and looked at it high and low, and I couldn't find the thing I was looking for. And I'm pretty sure that at some point I probably muttered to myself, "Well, am I blind?

You know, it's got to be here because he said it was." So I went back and I asked another man, and he took me, and sure enough, I was blind because it was right there in front of me. I don't know if you're like me and mutter to yourself when you're frustrated, but I'm sure we've at least all thought this, if not said it: Are we blind?

This morning I wanted us all to ask ourselves that question and ask it: Are we you know, I think all of us know that we are not physically blind. Well, let's ask: Are we spiritually blind? And check ourselves for blindness. If the answer is yes, then what should we do about it? And that's what we want to look at this morning. And if the answer is no, then I also want to ask the question: Well, what should we be doing about it?

Sometimes physical blindness comes on slowly, and one hardly knows that it's happening. I think it's the same with our spiritual blindness. It can creep up on us, and we need to, like I mentioned earlier, we need to condition ourselves. As we condition ourselves to hear the right voices, we need to maintain our vision as well. So I think I'll title my message this morning: Are we blind also? I'm sure that we've all encountered blind people in our lives. Some of you might have friends or family that are blind and know much more about it than what I do. I've seen them around. We've all seen them around. They're hard to miss with their I think they're usually an orange and white cane, and you know they're walking along tapping the ground, or maybe they have a seeing eye dog.

And I don't know, my heart always goes out to those people. You know, they're so oblivious to what is around them. They're so oblivious to impending danger. You know, they're no more than they never have more than about four or five feet of warning if something's coming up on them. And I'm sure you've seen how people kind of scatter out of the way and sort of trip over the cane as they're going through. It's a really helpless and vulnerable position. I did some research about blindness. There are different kinds of blindness. There are those that are completely blind and can't even see light and shadows. There are those who have a sense of light and movement near their face, near their eyes.

And then there are those who have low vision, and I think the classification today is they're legally blind, even though they can maybe see a little bit. The true definition of blindness is the state of being sightless, the inability to distinguish darkness from bright light. Now, learn that there's estimated to be about three or four hundred million visually impaired people in the world. Fifty million of those are completely blind. And if I did my math right, I think that's about four and a half to five percent of the world's population that are visually impaired. Well, spiritual blindness, on the other hand, is affecting not only millions of people but billions of people. I think we can safely say that most of the world is spiritually blind.

Spiritual blindness has the majority of the world's population wondering about sightless with dimmed vision or maybe unable to distinguish between light and darkness. And I guess what I mean by spiritually blind, I'm talking about those who maybe never heard the gospel, those who have heard the gospel and rejected it, or maybe a bit closer home, those who believe and follow Jesus but have started exchanging His teachings, His clear direction, for something that fits their own lifestyle. And you know, we could call it disbelief. We could call it many things, but this morning I want to refer to it as blindness.

Like physical blindness, spiritual blindness also has people vulnerable to impending danger. It has their vision dimmed. The Bible has a lot to say about this kind of blindness, and it refers to those who are walking in darkness, those whose eyes are closed, or maybe those who have blinded minds.

In Revelation 3, God told the church at Laodicea that He was going to spit them out. Why? Because He says, "Because you say, 'I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing,' and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked."

This isn't a speech to a yacht owner's club. It's not a speech at a banker's conference. This is a speech this is a message to a church who supposedly was on the right track and supposed to be able to see be seeing clearly, but they had gotten off track, and I'm not sure if they knew it themselves, but God reminded them of their blindness. They had become self-sufficient and self-confident and had pushed God out of the picture. And God called them blind, and other things among that, as we read.

We don't have to look far or listen long in the world today until we see and among Christians, actually, as well, until we see people who are walking in spiritual blindness. People live in denial of obvious truth, and whether it's scientific or moral, whether it's a clear command of God or something we should naturally know, people are walking in blindness to that. So in the chapter I want to look at today, John chapter 9, and you can turn there a while, we have an account of both kinds of blindness. We have the account of spiritual blindness that is ongoing throughout the ministry here, and we also have an account of the blind man who's physically blind.

It's a very interesting story. I've skimmed over it a lot of times and not really thought about the meanings or the deep the things that are in it that help us to compare the two kinds of blindness. But I want to do that this morning. I want to read through it and refresh it in our minds, and hopefully we can capture in a new way what's going on here. And then at the end, I want to look backwards through this story and look at three different segments that we hopefully can apply to our lives in practical ways. And those three areas are, first, a warning, checking ourselves for blindness, and second, our response. I trust that here we have all been healed from blindness.

And what is our response to the healer? What was the blind man's response to the healer, which is Jesus? And then the third one is the commission. We live in a world of blindness, and only those with sight can help in this world of blindness. So before we read, I would like to introduce the characters and the setting a bit more. So the main character, obviously, is the blind man. And as far as I can tell, we don't know his name. We just know him as the blind man. After this account, I don't know if we hear much about him. Maybe he's referred back to at some point.

But we know very little about him. What we do know is that he was a man who sat and begged. He was a fixture in the neighborhood. It seems like the disciples knew about him before they came across him on this day when the story takes place.

He was blind from birth. We know that. He sat and begged, as it says. He was a financial burden on the neighborhood, probably. I don't know how it compares to the Middle East today and many other cultures in the world, where begging is actually an honorable profession to a certain extent for those who can't help themselves otherwise. So people are obligated to give them something to support them.

So I was really curious what it must be like to be blind from birth. So this past week I was listening to some accounts of a man who was, is blind from birth. I don't know a lot about him. I don't know if he still is alive or not, but it was very interesting.

He said, "The worst part about being blind is that you injure yourself all the time. You're constantly running into things. You have no sense of awareness of where things are at, and you know he's constantly bruising himself and cutting himself on things. And he's living a fairly normal life. He's chopping vegetables as well. So you know you can imagine trying to do all these things while being blind." But more than that, he said, "You have no reference point for what things look like. You can't visualize things because, unlike a person who has gone blind, you've never seen things. You can only visualize what you have felt." For example, he could visualize a Coke bottle because he could feel it, but he couldn't visualize a Coke bottle sitting on a table because he couldn't feel that.

He couldn't visualize a house. He could visualize a door because he could feel it through his fingers or visualize it through his touch, but he couldn't visualize a whole house.

He has no concept of color. Imagine trying to explain a sunset to a man who's been blind from his birth. You could say, "Well, it's like an orange." Well, he's never seen an orange. And you know you just run out of words because there's he has no concept of color, and you could try to tell him that it's the sun sinking into the horizon. Well, how do you explain the horizon to a blind man who's never seen you know a line across the edge of the ocean?

You know it's a very helpless position. So that's what we know about this blind man. He's living a very helpless, probably, and lonely life. He's begging. He kind of has a reputation in the neighborhood. Second, we have the Pharisees and the Jews who are fierce opposers to the truth. They're the perfect example of the spiritually blind people. The truth was right in front of them, but they didn't believe it. In fact, they rejected. And they heard Jesus say things like this. And back in chapter 8 John chapter 8, verse 12, Jesus said, "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, 'I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.'" So Jesus told them He's the light of life. "If there's darkness, I'm the answer to that."

Verse 31 and 32, "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, 'If you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'" He's the truth. He's reminded them of that.

Verse 51, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my sayings, he shall never see death." A great promise of believing on Him. And then verse 58, "Verily, verily, I say unto you," Jesus said unto them, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am." And this might have been a little bit harder for them to understand, but again, it was truth. Jesus was living and teaching and walking truth right in front of them. But what was their response to it? We see in John chapter 8, they said, "Are we not right that you're a Samaritan and have a devil?" And then later on in the chapter, they picked up stones to throw at Him and drove Him out of the temple.

They were blind to truth. I don't know what all it was, but ignorance, rebellion. They had been brainwashed, maybe. Envy, like we've been talking about in Sunday school. And I think the Sunday school lesson really ties into this really well, how Jesus or, in that case, Paul was talking to a group of people who were blinded to the truth. They had their own construct of maybe of gods, but they were blind to the truth. Also, I think these Pharisees were protective of their selfish way of life and also their power.

And then the third characters we have here in the story is Jesus and His disciples. And it's a little difficult to tell exactly the timeline of this story, but it seems like they might have still been on the escape route from the temple. If you look at the last chapter in John chapter 8 or the last verse in John chapter 8, it says, "They took up stones to cast at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them and so passed by." This is in the King James, and maybe other translations have it different. And then right away in the first verse of chapter 9, it says, "And as Jesus passed by," it will lead us to believe that maybe He was still on that escape route trying to get away or getting away from the people that were about to stone Him there in the temple.

So that's Jesus. So I'm going to go ahead and read the story, and as I go through it, I'll read a few verses and then make a few comments and then go on to the next set of verses. I want you to really pay attention to how the stage is set here with two different kinds of blind people and how Jesus is going to use this as an example to show them their blindness. I want you to try to place yourselves on the outskirts of the conversations that are going on and observe.

So John chapter 9, I'm going to read the first three verses. "And as Jesus passed by, He saw a man which was blind from his birth, and His disciples asked Him, saying, 'Master, who did this sin? This man or his parents that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.'" So as we were talking about, if Jesus literally is on the escape route from the temple, if I would have been Him, I think I would have been looking over my shoulder looking for those stone throwers and you know who's following me.

It's an uncomfortable situation to be in when you think that somebody might be following you. We had a little incident in Turkey when we were over there where we thought a man might be interested in following us, and so we were trying to make our way back to our car and casting looks over our shoulders to make sure that he wasn't. But it's you know Jesus was maybe in that situation, but He still noticed the blind man. And I don't know about you, but I think my first response when I see a blind man is probably compassion, and I hope it always is. You know I feel for Him. He is missing out on something that the rest of us are enjoying, and you know that He's never going to get it back, aside from a miracle.

But the disciples here use this encounter to bring up a question that the Jews had in those days, and that was a question about the belief that all suffering resulted from sin. "Did this man sin before birth?" That was the question that I think the disciples were getting to with Jesus. But Jesus, on the other hand, recognized the situation for what it was. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time going into how this applies to us as I read through it, but I want to come back and talk more about these different areas. And then we'll go on to verse 4 and 5. Jesus says, "I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day.

The night cometh when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Jesus didn't spend a lot of time in discussion. He didn't really even answer the disciples' questions, even though it was a heavy question of the day. Jesus saw a man that needed help. He saw a man, and it brought Him to compassion. His response was compassion. I know it doesn't say that in this book. It talks about Him seeing it as an opportunity to make the works of God known. But in the other gospels, it almost always mentions that Jesus had compassion whenever He came into a situation like this. And I'm sure that Jesus had compassion here as well.

And also, He realized that time was short. Jesus knew that what He had was this man's hope, His only hope and His only shot at a normal life. And I want to come back to that idea. Verse 6 and 7, "When He had thus spoken, He spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with clay, and He said unto him, 'Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is by interpretation scent.' He went His way, therefore, and washed and came seeing."

So Jesus' choice of a cure is very interesting here, and some of us might be shuddering a little bit at the thought of muddy spittle being put on our eyes or anywhere on us, for that matter. Spittle is repulsive in any sense. But actually, in these days, spittle, it was thought I don't know if you would call it folk healing or whatever, but spittle was thought to have healing qualities, and especially the spittle of somebody who was important or well-known. So it's very interesting that Jesus chooses a method here that got through to the blind man. You know He don't see healing. He don't see doctors. But I'm sure He hears about this, you know that spittle is a cure in their blindness.

But Jesus chose a method that was common to the day and gained His patients' trust.

And then also, as we'll notice later, this was the Sabbath day, and Jesus used this, His method and the timing to cast another stumbling block for the Pharisees whom He is about to challenge. The Pharisees' laws basically didn't allow them to lift a finger or much less to get dirty to heal somebody or to help somebody on the Sabbath day. Actually, as I was studying for this, I read that the law did not allow you to set a broken bone on the Sabbath day. You had to wait. If it wasn't imminently life-threatening, you had to wait until the next day before you would help somebody who is in a situation.

So then Jesus asked this man to do his part and go and wash. It seems like maybe Jesus was testing His obedience and His faith, and He sent him to the pool called Scent. And just a little bit about the pool called Scent, there is also historical disagreement on all the details of this. But in Jerusalem today, it's not in the actual walls of Jerusalem as it stands today, but in what they call the City of David, it's a historical section off to the side. You can still go to the pool of Siloam.

And the pool of Siloam was a pool at the end of a long tunnel called Hezekiah's Tunnel, and it thought that Hezekiah built this tunnel ahead of the Syrian invasion, as he heard about that, to bring water from outside the walls from the Spring of Gihon in through into the pool of Siloam. And it's called Scent because the water was sent into Jerusalem, as I understand. And it was salvation to the people of Jerusalem because it was a source of water when they were under siege and couldn't go out of the city to get water from the outside unless they would be killed.

So it's very interesting. I've had the privilege of walking through the Hezekiah's Tunnel, and a lot of work that went into it. Today, you can walk through it. In some places, it's about head height. In other places, it's about a good bit higher, and there's water running through it today.

So if you ever get a chance to walk through it, or if you're in Jerusalem, don't miss the opportunity to walk through it. But all that aside, the important part was that it was healing for this man to go to the water, to follow Jesus' words.

He went, and he was healed. In verse 8 to 12, "The neighbors, therefore, and they which before had seen Him that He was blind said, 'Is not this He that sat and begged?' Some said, 'This is He.' Others said, 'He is like Him.' But He said, 'I am He.' Therefore said they unto Him, 'How are thine eyes opened?' He answered and said, 'A man that is called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said unto me, 'Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.' And I went and washed, and I received sight.'

Then said they unto Him, 'Where is He?' He said, 'I know not.'" So the people here are incredulous, and for good reason. This was a man that was always on the street corner. This was a man that was always asking for their money and needing their help and helpless. And I don't know how old he is.

I didn't turn that up, but you know it's possible that he was there for quite a long time. And here they are. They're arguing about it. They're saying, "Well, you know this can't be Him because He's blind." And others are saying, "Well, you know it sure looks like Him." And I find it really interesting that the blind man himself had to say, "Look, I am He.

This is me." And then he told them in one sentence how it had all taken place. And then they asked him where Jesus is. And you know that seems like a bit of a ridiculous question for a man who had just been blind until just now. You know how is he supposed to know where Jesus is, where this man is that came by and touched Him and disappeared, I believe?

And so these people were just mind-blown, as we would say. But I think Jesus was here again using this event to shake them up. He said back in the early part that He's going to this is a place where He's going to make the power of God manifest, and I think that's what He's doing. He's starting that process. Then we'll read verses 13 to 23. "They brought to the Pharisees Him that at four times was blind, and it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened His eyes. Then again, the Pharisees also asked Him how He had received His sight. He said unto them, 'He put clay on mine eyes. I washed, and I do see.'

Therefore said some of the Pharisees, 'This man is not of God because he keepeth not the Sabbath day.' Others said, 'How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?' And there was a division among them. And they say unto the blind man again, 'What sayest thou of him that he hath opened thine eyes?' He said, 'He is a prophet.' But the Jews did not believe concerning him that he had been blind and received his sight until they called the parents of him that had received his sight. And they asked them, saying, 'Is this your son who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?' His parents answered them and said, 'We know that this is our son, and we know that he was born blind.

By what means he now seeth, we know not. Or who hath opened his eyes, we know not. He is of age. Ask him, and he shall speak for himself.' These words spake his parents because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had agreed already that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. Therefore said his parents, 'He is of age. Ask him.'" So here again, we have the scene repeating itself, and this time it's not with the neighbors, but it's with the Pharisees.

He's telling the story again, and you can see the Pharisees' reaction after he gave his little explanation there. They said, "This man is not from God because he did not keep the Sabbath day." Jesus didn't fall into their religious construct, and so they had no time for it. They were blind. Again, they were blind to Jesus. They were blind to a better way and just wallowing on in that. Then we see an interesting thing happening. It says some people wondered, "Well, how could this man be a sinner if he's doing these things?" And others, you know of course, were rejecting, and so they ended up bringing his parents on board.

But through the healing of the blind man, the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees is now being revealed as well.

It seems like the blind man had no qualms about sharing his belief, even when it was at his own risk, and I want to touch on that as well. So let's go on to read verses 24 through 34 now. "Then again called they the man that was blind and said unto him, 'Give God the praise. We know that this man is a sinner.' He answered and said, 'Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.'

Then said they to him again, 'What did he do to thee? How opened he thine eyes?' He answered them, 'I have told you already, and ye did not hear. Wherefore would ye hear again? Will ye also be his disciples?' Then they reviled him and said, 'Thou art his disciple, but we are Moses' disciple. We know that God spake unto Moses, as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.' The man answered and said unto them, 'Why herein is a marvelous thing that ye know not from whence he is?

Why herein is a marvelous thing that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes? Now we know that God heareth not sinners, but if any man be a worshipper of God and doeth his will, him he heareth.

Since the world began, was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one who was born blind? If this man were not of God, he could do nothing."

So we go on to a third round of the story. Well, it would have been, but it kind of got cut short in the middle by the blind man. They told him, basically, "Testify in the name of God that this man is a sinner." And so here we see this man's position in society is on the line because he's leaning toward Jesus. He's testifying to what happened to him. The Pharisees here had the power to throw him out of communing with the religious of that day, basically. They could excommunicate him. They could cause him to be basically a social outcast among the people there. But we see the blind man's response. He says, "I'm not a judge of this man, but I certainly know what he did for me.

He healed my blindness." And it seems like the man who was formerly blind starts to get a little bit irritated at this interrogation. To him, the situation was very clear. He was blind, and now he's healed. He was blind. Jesus came and healed him. You know it's not too hard to grasp. The Pharisees, meanwhile, were still groping along in blindness, and in essence, it seems like they were trying to maintain their blindness as well.

And then we see the blind man ask him or the formerly blind man ask him if they also want to be his disciples, and that was about the last straw.

Of course, we see how they said, "We don't even know where this man comes from." I think they did. I mean, obviously, they had a pretty good idea. They were the scholars of the day, but you know we're denying, maybe denying it. And then we have the one who's healed from his blindness, and I think it's very interesting that at this point yet, he still doesn't have a personal relationship with Jesus.

He had had an encounter with Jesus that changed his life, but he still you know we'll see later on that he meets Jesus, and that's when he learns that Jesus is the Son of God. But here he is. He's calling out the blindness of the Pharisees, and he's incredulous that the religious men wouldn't know about this good man. And in my own words, he said, "Do the math. God doesn't hear from sinners.

He hears from those who worship Him, and He heard from this man. Therefore, He must be from God. When did you ever hear of a man like me being healed?" And I just like the picture of simple belief that we get here in this formerly blind man. The Pharisees were settled in their way. They were done listening, and as we'll see in the next verses, they were oh, sorry. I think I stopped a verse short of where I was going to read. Verse 34 says, "They answered and they said unto him, 'Thou wast altogether born in thy sins, and dust thou teach us?' And they cast him out." So the Pharisees decided they were not about to be changed.

They were not about to be shaken. They were blind, and they said, "You know we're done listening to you." And they cast him out, and it seems like they maybe excommunicated him here after shaming him. And shaming is a just a little detail. Shaming is a big deal in this culture, in the Middle Eastern culture, even today. It's almost worse than death, and that's why you hear of honor killings. And so we see here that the Pharisees leveled the first shame on him, and then they cast him out, which also is shame, ultimately.

So now I want to read the last couple of verses here, verses 35 to 41. "Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and when He had found him, He said unto him, 'Dust thou believe on the Son of God?'" And here we see where He's going to meet Jesus. "And He answered and said, 'Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him?' And Jesus said unto him, 'Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee.' And He said, 'Lord, I believe.' And He worshiped Him. And Jesus said, 'For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see, and they which see might be made blind.'

And some of the Pharisees which were with Him heard these words and said unto Him, 'Are we blind also?' And Jesus said unto them, 'If ye were blind, ye should have no sin. But now ye say, 'We see.' Therefore your sin remaineth.'" So here Jesus enters the picture, and you know we don't know where He was during this time or even how much time transpired, but it could have happened over a course of days, or it could have happened in a matter of a few hours. But Jesus came back. He saw that this man was in maybe in dire straits, and He came back to check on him. It seems like news got around quickly what was going on here.

I'm sure this was if you see the city of David today, Jerusalem today is very large, but if you go and see the city of David, it's a fairly small area. And I don't think it took long for word of this blind man and the goings-on to get around town, so I think word came to Jesus pretty quickly, probably. But we see here that Jesus comes, and there's Pharisees in the company when He's talking to the blind man. And He makes a statement that was meant to touch the Pharisees here and to challenge them.

So we see in the last few verses, we see that Jesus was in the company of the Pharisees, as I mentioned, and it says that I'm just going to read the statement here again. "For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see, and they which see might be made blind." So again, a Middle Eastern culture and sorry, I keep bringing that up, but when I read the Bible, I read it from a Middle Eastern mindset because you know I've spent a good bit of time there. But it's very it's not acceptable necessarily, even in a Christian setting in the Middle East, to say something in a very straightforward way.

And so see here, Jesus made a pretty general statement. He said, "I'm come that those who don't see might see, and that those who see might be made blind."

And the Pharisees picked up on this. They saw that He must have been referring He must be referring to them. "So Jesus came into the world to judge and make things right, to give sight to those who were blind and helpless, and to bring conviction to those who thought they knew all things but were actually blind."

Judging from the rest of the Pharisees' response, again, I think their question was in a condescending way. You know they were the religious authority of the day, and how scandalous to think that they might be blind and for Jesus to mention that. But as we think about it today, I want us to as going forward from here, I want us to be asking the same question to ourselves in a serious way.

So we could go many different directions with this account, but I would like to go back through it now and look at three different areas that I mentioned before and see how this account can affect us in practical ways as we live as healed blind men, I hope. I trust that we all are that.

So first of all, I want to look at the warning, and the warning being you know to check ourselves for blindness. And Jesus here at the end was basically you know He was saying it for the benefit of the healed blind man, I believe, and also the Pharisees to you know think about this. Think about whether or not you're blind and consider that carefully. And so that's the question I want to ask for us to ask this morning as well. Are we seeing clearly, or is there blindness developing in our lives as well? So here Jesus was talking to people who thought that they were living basically in the highest religious realm, and indeed, they were following the law, but it had become you know to them, it had become corrupted and very self-centered.

So are we also blind is a question that we should be asking ourselves periodically, not just this morning, but as we go on. Jesus has given us clear teachings, but it's pretty easy for us to go and cherry-pick through the Bible and custom-build a religion or a way of life that suits us. It's pretty easy for us humans to pick our own path to follow Jesus and think that it will work.

I know people who hold love and justice as the highest rule, but are willing to pick up a gun and kill somebody. They're willing to step into God's place as a judge of a person and decide when they need to die.

That I think is one blindness that we see among Christians today, the blindness to the whole gospel. And then there are churches who will preach salvation and the love of God and completely overlook accountability and personal holiness. That's a confusing world where we live in today, and there's a lot of confusing Christianity that's being practiced as well. And how are we doing? As I mentioned, blindness comes subtly, and we need to be on guard. So I'd like to look at a few verses here, and the first one is a verse that I already mentioned in Revelation 3:17. I don't think I'll turn to it, but here the church was described as blind, among other things.

They had allowed their comfortable lives and their wealth to sideline God. And if we read on in that account, it says that God was standing at the door knocking to see if there would be any answer. So wealth and ease is one thing that can cause blindness, and I know that we try to focus on how we can disperse our wealth and how we can bless people. But the fact of the matter is we do live in a very, very wealthy society, and a lot of us are able to have a lot of wealth at our fingertips. And so this is something I really want us to think about. You know, is my pursuit of wealth, is my pursuit of making something of myself sidelining God and blinding me to the full gospel and to His way?

And then the second one I want to look at is 1 John 2:9 through 11, and you can turn there.

1 John chapter 2, verse 9. "He that saith, 'He is in the light,' and hateth his brother, is in darkness, even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because the darkness has blinded his eyes." So here we see another thing that blinds us, and that is a lack of love. Here it uses the word hate.

But I think any lack of love among us, any fallout, any bitterness, anything that is driving a wedge is also causing blindness to being able to truly see God and truly see the way that He wants us to walk. So I challenge us to be on the lookout for that as well, any division and any hate or any lack of love.

Isaiah 59:9 and 10. This is talking about Israel.

And it's talking a lot about their sins. And then we come down to 9 and 10, and it says, "Therefore is judgment far from us. Neither doth justice overtake us. We wait for the light, but behold obscurity. For brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes. We stumble at noonday as in the night. We are in desolate places as dead men." This is a really desperate picture for a people that were supposed to be God's people, but that says they're waiting for light, but all they get is obscurity. They're waiting for brightness, but it's like the night. And it says they're groping for the wall, and you can just you know picture a blind man who's you know trying to find his way along, and he just needs something, but he's not getting his bearings.

And here, if we would read more of this chapter, I believe it's unconfessed sin and hypocrisy that's causing this blindness here. And that's another thing that you know we deal with as well. We're called to repentance, but you know often our pride gets in the way of repentance, or you know it's pretty easy for us humans to easily you know start putting on a separate face and living in hypocrisy as well. But again, these are things that cause blindness, and let's keep asking ourselves, are we blind? You know, do we have any of these things in our lives that are keeping us from clear sight? And then also we have the pride. Pride brings blindness as well, and we see that really clearly in the account that we read today.

The Pharisees had a lot of pride. They couldn't bear the thought of being wrong or standing corrected, and were very convinced of that. So there, again, their unwillingness to change, their unwillingness to maybe back up and look bad or be humbled was keeping them from was keeping them in their blindness. And that's, again, something that I want us to look for in our lives is their pride.

And the list could go on: anger, bitterness, dishonesty. All these things are bringing spiritual blindness to our lives.

The truth is right in front of us, but maybe something is keeping us from seeing it, like in this count, in this account. So as I've told you, the words here on the board are truth.

Even though I told you that, you're probably still blind to it unless you can read Arabic.

You know, a little research with Google Translate would reveal it to you, but for now, you're blind to it even though it's right here in front of you.

So my point is, is there anything you know, what's keeping us from clearly seeing the truth of God? What's keeping us in blindness? Is there anything? I hope there's nothing, but just to search our lives again and think about that. And I will say, if somebody was writing Spanish up here on the board or Bengali or whatever, I wouldn't understand it either, so I would be blind to that.

So my challenge is to you know do some research on our lives. Just like it would take some research to figure out what the truth is here, let's do some research on our own lives. We would go to great measures to save our physical sight. Are we willing to go to that great measures to save our spiritual sight as well?