Responding to Jesus

Preacher:
Jeff J****** (Ministry Intern, and my husband)

Passage:
John 9:1-41

Message:
Jeff spoke of three responses to Jesus which are exhibited in the record of the healing of the man blind from birth and subsequent events.
(1) Preconceived ideas of who God is and how He acts blinded the Pharisees to the evidence of Jesus' actions. They focussed on the areas of scripture that they were comfortable with and rejected or ignored those that didn't fit with their culture, which Jesus quoted against them. No miracle or argument was going to change their minds.
(2) The second group was willing to let the facts speak for themselves and draw conclusions based on their knowledge of God from the Scriptures. They accepted that Jesus was from God because only God could perform miracles such as this. However, these people still allowed themselves to be persuaded to remain silent. They held convictions but not the courage to stand up for them, which counted for nothing in the end.
(3) The man who was healed at first saw Jesus as just a man who could do something for him, and called him by his first name, "Jesus". After He healed Him, Jesus revealed that He is the Son of Man (the figure of God coming to judge the world in the book of Daniel). The ex-blind man worshipped Jesus - which means that he acknowledged Jesus was God, because worship is only fitting for God. Jesus didn't rebuke the man for idolatry, either: Jesus accepted the man's worship as fitting.
Jeff asked whether we trust Scripture, or whether we find ourselves thinking things like "that doesn't seem right to me" when we read it. If we do, this is a sign that we are worshipping an idol (a made-up god), rather than the true God. We live in a society that says many untrue things about God, and often we accept these along with the rest of our culture. Instead, we need to look to the Bible, God's special revelation, to understand who God is, rather than allowing other sinful people to form our understanding for us. We have to continually look to the Bible to see what God is like and what He has done.

Comment: