Did you know that you were born into this world with the eyes of your soul-glued shut? You were born spiritually blind. You couldn’t see who Jesus Christ was. And when you can’t see Jesus, you can’t really see who God is. And when you can’t see God, lots of things don’t make sense in this world. Why am I here, on this planet? What is my purpose for existing? What am I doing here? And where am I going? And what will happen to me fifty or a hundred years from now, when I’m not here? When you can’t see Jesus Christ, you can’t see the answers to these questions. Maybe for some of you, you can remember how that felt, to be wandering through life with the eyes of your soul-glued shut – trying the best you can to find your way, but without any success. We see that Jesus is the light of the world and opens our eyes spiritually.
In the last post we looked at attitudes that will blind us, and then the first step to find our way out of the dark. Here are the last two:
- Follow Jesus Instructions
6 Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and smoothed the mud over the blind man’s eyes. 7 He told him, “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing!
As I thought about this passage, I began to wonder why the man obeyed Jesus. There is no record in the text that Jesus promised the man that if he allowed Jesus to put mud on his eyes and go wash, that he would receive his sight. Now I’m assuming that the man didn’t go to the Pool of Siloam by himself because he was blind. But if he did, the journey to the pool would mean great risk. Jesus and this man were probably near the temple inside the walls of Jerusalem. The Pool of Siloam is outside the walls. It would have been a relatively long journey for the man. The man was usually very careful and slow in his journeys, but his excitement about the possibility of seeing would have caused him to move a little faster than was safe for him. He did not know what he might face along the journey. At times there were bandits outside the wall. People would see him along the way and laugh at him. “Ha, ha! Look at the blind man. Somebody is making fun of him by putting mud on his eyes! What a joke!” But he didn’t let them stop him. He got a lot of bumps and bruises along the way, but he made it to the pool of Siloam.
Now the pool of Siloam was built by King Hezekiah 700 years earlier. It had the purest and best tasting water in the whole city of Jerusalem. But that’s not why Jesus sent him there. He sent him there because he wanted to know “Will this man obey my exact instructions? Is he teachable? Is he open to the leading of the Spirit of God in His life? Will he do what I tell him to do even if it sounds far fetched?”
The first step toward having a better life starts with a willingness to obey Christ in all the little details of life. This man was willing. And so he washed and he could see again
He was willing to do whatever Jesus told him to do. In our darkness we want healing from the hurt, and we want it now. We’ve endured the dark long enough. But Jesus comes to us and says, “I’m sorry. I can’t give you more light yet. I can’t take away the blindness yet. You haven’t done what I told you to do yet. Your faith isn’t strong enough to cause you to obey me.” For instance Jesus says “the greatest is the servant” (Matt. 23:11) yet we won’t serve in the church body for Christ ministry today, we let others do that. He says, “give, and it will be given to you pressed down and overflowing” (Luke 6:38) Yet only a small percentage in churches across the US give financially that the ministry of Christ can continue. Just two examples that many Christians ignore. I see it all the time. People think they can ignore things like that everyone else pick up the slack. But they are tests of the amount of faith that we have in Jesus Christ. We have faith that He can bring light to our darkness, that’s great. But do we have enough faith to do what He asks us to do? “But I don’t want to do anything! I just want to sit here and let God heal me!” It doesn’t work that way. We will not get out of the dark by being selfish and disobedient.
- Tell Others What Jesus has Done for Me
When you start to obey Christ, and when he starts doing powerful things in your life, people are going to start asking questions. Like, “What’s going on with this person? What do they seem so different? Why do they seem all of a sudden so alive? So animated? So happy?”
The man said, 25 “I don’t know whether he is a sinner,” the man replied. “But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!” In other words, “I don’t know much about Jesus. I don’t know much about theology. I don’t know much about religious rules. But the one thing I do know is that this man changed my life! I am better off today than I was yesterday because this man gave me my life back! He did something for me that I thought could never happen to me in a million years!”
Everyone who has Christ in their life has a story to share with the world. Just because you don’t know the Bible as well as you wish you did doesn’t mean that God can’t use you to give a powerful testimony. We can all look back on our lives and say, “I’m better off today than I was four years ago because I asked Jesus to be my Savior. I’m better off today than I was before because I started reading my Bible. I started praying. I started coming to church. Anyone who has a personal encounter or relationship with Christ can do the same thing this formerly blind man is doing!
Now I want to imagine something with me. Here is this man, born blind (now put on a blindfold). Jesus comes along and heals him, removes the darkness from his life. (Remove blindfold)
Within one day of Jesus touching his life with the power of God, he comes in contact with four groups of people all wearing their own blindfold.
Imagine with me that each time this man came in contact with these people he believed what they said about himself, the about the miracle, about Jesus etc. and began to wear the blindfold of each group.
1. So he hears the disciples prejudice about his life and agrees and puts of their blindfold.
2. Then gives in to the skepticism of the neighbors and – puts of their blindfold
3. The words of Pharisees become too strong and so he surrenders to religion and puts on their blindfold
4. And finally he doesn’t want to see his parents hurt and expelled and wants to keep them happy so he puts on their blindfold.
After putting on four layers of different colored blindfolds you cannot see through it.
The end result, now he is blind again.
This is the story of many of us today. God has saved us and changed our lives. Even since then we have seen his power at work in and through us. Yet we still struggle to live in the light because we allowed ourselves to pick up the blindfolds of other people, and limit what God has done and can do in our through us. We need to stand up like the man in this story as the pressure was being applied to put on a blindfold and say – There are a lot of things I don’t know about yet but I know this: I was blind and now I can see!
Darrell
Upwards Church 