The Hopelessness of the Stubbornly Blind Podcast by Pastor John MacArthur for Grace to You
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Open your Bible to the ninth chapter of John.
And for those who haven’t been with us in our previous studies of the ninth chapter, apologies, because you’re going to miss the opening two sessions of this great ninth chapter. So let me see if I can’t condense it for you just very briefly.
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Jesus is in Jerusalem. He’s going through one of the temple entrances, temple gates. And He comes across a blind man who has been born blind. He’s never seen. He has some kind of congenital blindness. He is reduced to being a beggar. So, he sits there with the rest of the beggars at the temple entrance because that’s where most people come and go who are concerned about honoring God, and who may be more sensitive to doing what they should do, doing right, and giving alms to beggars. And so, those entrances and exits were occupied by beggars. Jesus comes across this man who is blind, who obviously can’t see Him. Jesus walks up to him, gives him eyes, gives him new eyes, creates new eyes. Because as John tells us, nothing was made except what He made. Everything that was made, He created, and He is still the creator, and He creates eyes for this blind man.
He is immediately able to see, and then some encounters begin. First of all, his neighbors are trying to figure out how this happened, how this man they know who is blind can now see. So, he goes through an interrogation with his neighbors, and he can’t really answer who did this because he never saw Him, doesn’t know just exactly how this happened. But, he is convinced that whoever did this is from God. He then is brought to the Pharisees, who are supposed to render some kind of explanation, some kind of spiritual explanation or religious explanation, or some kind of divine explanation as to how this could happen. Because, as the blind man says, it’s never been heard in the history of the world that anyone blind was made able to see. And so, there’s an interrogation by the Pharisees.
