The Gospel of John - Outline Part 24 - The Unreasonableness of Man

TITLE

John 9:1-41 – The Unreasonableness of Man

EXPLANATION

Next Jesus and His disciples encountered a blind man.  The disciples, indoctrinated into an unbiblical cultural belief that misfortune is always the specific result of personal sin, asked Jesus who was at fault; the man or his parents.  This is a mis-understanding that goes at least all the way back to Job’s friends.  Jesus corrected the error of His followers by stating that the man’s blindness had nothing to do with sin.  Rather, his condition existed so that God could display His works through him.

Jesus then proceeded to give the disciples, as well as the man, a graphic illustration of the proof of His words.  He healed the man of his blindness.  This gave the Jews another opportunity to harass the Master, because He had performed this healing on the Sabbath, which was a violation of the Pharisaical oral traditions that were given the same weight as the Law itself.  First, the man’s neighbors interrogated him to find out how he had been healed.  He freely admitted that it was Jesus who had done it, but confessed that he did not know where the Lord had gone.  Not content with this response, they brought the man to the Pharisees whose codes had been broken.  The poor man had to tell his story again to satisfy the rigid dogmatism of his countrymen.

The Jews refused to believe that he had ever been blind in the first place.  So, they brought in his parents to testify.  Unfortunately, the man’s parents were more interested in defending themselves than their son.  They deferred all questions, other than his parentage and his former blindness, to their son out of fear of Synagogue expulsion.  So, the Pharisees brought the man back in and asked how he had been healed for the third time.  Clearly exasperated with their childish refusal to accept the facts, he poked fun at them by asking if they wanted to follow Jesus also.  The Jews responded to his barb by cursing him and calling upon their devotion to Moses.  Because of this devotion, so they claimed, they did not know where Jesus came from.  You have to admire the cheek of the former blind man.  He did not let up his theological attack upon his so-called religious leaders.  And in the process, he demonstrated better theology than they had.  He stated that God only listens to righteous people, which clearly implied that Jesus was righteous.  He had performed an unheard of miracle, which could only have been accomplished by God, yet these religious fools adamantly stopped their ears and wagged their heads at the truth.  So, they cast the man out of the Synagogue, which was the equivalent of an economic and religious exile from society.

Later, Jesus found the man, revealed to him the truth of His status as the Messiah, and invited the man to believe.  In sharp comparison to the last chapter, the man immediately believed and demonstrated it by worshiping Jesus as God.  And so, Jesus concluded His lesson to His disciples by contrasting the man’s former outward blindness with his newfound inward sight, and the continuing outward sight of the Pharisees with their obstinate inward blindness.

APPLICATION

Sinful man is a hopelessly unreasonable creature.  He will stubbornly dig in his heels, refuse to see the truth that is as plain as the nose on his face, and go to his grave under a blue sky while insisting that it had been green all along.  The Pharisees stand in this passage as a clear example of the utter futility of trying to convince mankind of the truth if God has not seen fit to open their eyes.  The blind man, on the other hand, is a wonderful picture of the explosion of faith that occurs when the Lord graciously intervenes and provides light where before was only darkness.

Although this chapter is dealing with salvation and unbelief, I think it hits home even for Christians who have already come to faith in Christ.  The utter ridiculousness of the Pharisees in their refusal to admit the truth should serve as a dire warning for us of the dangers of stubbornly insisting on having things our way.  Our sinful flesh constantly throws up temptations to be self-centered, often in the context of inter personal relationships, and usually based around the actions, speech, or desires of others that conflict with our own.  As those who are supposed to be engaged in fleeing away from sin and toward the Lord Jesus, we ought to be so appalled at the sin on display in this chapter that the thought of having such things displayed in our own lives is horrifying.