Two Healings, Two Responses (4)

 

 

I want to touch on a similarity between Jesus healing the blind man in John Chapter 9 and His raising Lazarus from the dead in John Chapter 11.

 

“His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (John 9:2 – 3).

 

“The sisters sent word to Him, saying, ‘Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.’ But when Jesus heard this, He said, ‘This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it’” (John 11:3 – 4).

 

Jesus points us to the glory of God as the purpose for the condition of the blind man and the condition of Lazarus. Now for sure, we might ask whether it was necessary for the blind man to have been born blind and to have lived into adulthood in that condition. We might ask whether it was necessary for Martha and Mary to go through the anxiety of Lazarus’s sickness and the sorrow and grief of his death. We could ask what Lazarus thought and felt about the whole experience.

 

It might be easy for some of us to say, “Such questions are not appropriate, if Jesus said it was necessary then that is the end of the matter.” Others might say, “Why? Why was it necessary for the man to be born blind and for Lazarus to die? Were there no alternatives? What other possibilities were there?”

 

Perhaps we can look to the difference between Zacharias and Mary for wisdom. When Zacharias hears Gabriel’s incredible message he responds in unbelief, “How will I know this for certain? For I am an old man and my wife is an old woman” (Luke 1:18).

 

However, when Mary hears Gabriel’s even more incredible message she responds in awesome wonder and belief, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34)

 

“Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

 

Perhaps there is also an element of the father crying to Jesus, “I do believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

 

When we shut our questions down, our perplexities, we deny our humanity and our dependance on Jesus; we are not robots, we have feelings, we have questioning thoughts. It is worse when we try to shut others down, denying them the opportunity to express their struggles, their questions, their search for wisdom and understanding.

 

On the other hand, playing God, critiquing God’s will and actions and words, engaging in endless “what if” speculation, takes the focus off Jesus and places it on us as the arbiters of life.

 

Can we trust Jesus or not? Do we trust Him?

 

Perhaps with the father seeking deliverance for his son we can learn to cry, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!”

 

We can say, “Lord, I don’t understand all of this. I don’t understand the whys and hows and all the other questions. But I believe You, help me to believe You more and more and to trust You.”

 

My sense is that faith and belief in the presence of questions and doubt is more precious than a faith which denies the reality of doubt and questions. Let us not pretend; while I imagine that God can work through our pretensions, I sense that He would rather work through our honesty.

 

I have had friends who have lived and died through much suffering and limitations. I would have been a fool to have said, “This is why this is happening to you. This is why you were born with this disease. This is why this incurable illness has happened to you in the prime of life.”

 

For sure I saw the glory of God in these friends, for certain they have affected my life in Christ and increased my confidence in Jesus and my vision of eternity; but I simply cannot speculate on why such terrible disease and illness entered their lives, either as children or adults. I must trust Jesus Christ, I must trust His Nature, His Character, I must trust our Good Shepherd.

 

Let us recall that, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary and Lazarus” (John 11:5).

 

Jesus loves me, He loves you, He loves us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:29).

 

Our message can always be, “Jesus loves you and wants to be with you through what you are experiencing. He loves you with every beat of His heart. He wants you to see Him in new ways, ways you never imagined. He wants you to feel His arms holding you close.” We can always have confidence in this Message, for we can always have confidence in Jesus and His love.

 

This can be our invitation for those who have yet to meet Jesus to meet Him and belong to Him. It can also be our affirmation of God’s love to those who have already come to know Him. We can always trust Jesus…always.

 

Now for a bit of homework if you please. Between John chapters 9 and 11 is naturally Chapter 10. How might Chapter 10 relate to chapters 9 and 11?

 

We’ll look at this in the next reflection in this series, the Lord willing.

Two Healings, Two Responses (3)

 

 

Continuing our comparison between the healings of John 5 and John 9:

 

In John 9, when Jesus and His disciples see the man born blind, the disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?”

 

Jesus replies, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him."

 

In John 5, when Jesus finds the man whom He had healed, He says to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

 

I point out that the subject of sin is raised in both narratives, not to attempt to answer the questions that can be raised in both instances, but because we are comparing the two men, the two healings of Jesus. The Scriptures were not written to satisfy our curiosity; they were written to reveal Jesus Christ. One of my favorite quotes from Fenelon is along the line of, “I know many people who are perfect…in speculation.”

 

For sure questions can lead us to Jesus, they can cause us to seek, to ask, to knock; and when Jesus is the object of our search and desire that is one thing, however, when our questions do not have Jesus as their object and center of gravity then we often engage in “foolish questions and ignorant speculations” which “produce quarrels” (2 Timothy 2:23).

 

Furthermore, there are many things deep in the counsels of our Father beyond our understanding; it is not necessary that we know everything, it is necessary that we know Jesus and live in intimate relationship with Him.

 

Regarding John 9 and the man born blind, one thing we can be assured of, absolutely assured of, is that Jesus always desires to reveal Himself to us, He always desires to display the works of God in us. After all, God so loves us that He gave His only begotten Son for us – of course He wants to reveal Himself to us and draw us ever-closer to Himself.

 

I often tell folks who in are difficult situations, “I don’t pretend to know why this is happening, why you are going through this, but I do know this, our dear Lord Jesus wants to reveal Himself to you through this and draw you closer to Him.”

 

I believe this with all of my soul, with all that I am. I believe it because this is the character and Nature of Jesus Christ. There is deep and widespread suffering in this world, few of us escape it, it has many forms, some easily seen, some we never know about. Jesus walks with us through suffering, He carries us, He invites us to share His sufferings, He invites us to bless others through our sufferings – there are many dimensions to suffering and comfort and our transformation into His image.

 

And so we learn to look for Jesus in life’s pain and suffering, we look for how Jesus is coming to us and those around us, we seek to see the works of God within suffering, tribulation, uncertainty, within our struggles. O dear friends, this life will soon be over and the reality of eternity will be upon us and we will be within it. Each one of us will have a “last day”, each one of us will have a coming of the Lord, each one of us will leave this temporal life and move (actually we’ll “be moved”) into a life glorious beyond measure. Are we preparing for this? Are we allowing Christ to prepare us? Can we smell it? Taste it? Sense it? Touch it? See it, in some measure?

 

Let us always look for Jesus to reveal Himself.

 

Then we have what Jesus said to the man in Chapter 5, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

 

This may remind us of what Jesus says to the woman of John 8:11, “Go and sin no more.” I point this similarity out without further comment.

 

Regarding the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years in Chapter 5, physical incapacity does not mean that our capacity for sin is lessened (Matthew 5:21 – 30; 12:33 – 37; 15:10 – 20). We do not know how the man lived prior to his prolonged illness, nor do we know how he lived during his illness; we do know that Jesus warned him to stop sinning so that “nothing worse happens to you.”

 

It appears that this man did not take Jesus’ counsel to heart, for unless he was completely naïve, he must have known the result of telling the religious leaders that it was Jesus who healed him on the Sabbath. The man of John 9 aligned himself with Jesus, the man of John 5 gave his allegiance to those who sought to destroy Jesus.

 

Later in John Chapter 5 Jesus asks, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?” This is the way of the religious world as much as it is the way of the world. It is often the way of those “searching Scriptures (John 5:39). Thankfully, we also have Bereans in our midst (Acts 17:11)!

 

Have I ever betrayed Jesus to the world or to the Pharisees? Have I received the blessings of Jesus, only to align myself with systems bent on His destruction? When others have asked me the equivalent of, “Why are you carrying your pallet on the Sabbath?” have I blamed Jesus and betrayed Him, rather than, like the man of John Chapter 9, steadfastly testified of Him and worshipped Him, have I been willing to be “put out” (9:34)? (See also Hebrews 13:13).

 

There is no peer pressure quite like religious peer pressure.

 

I will keep my answers to myself, for they are not pretty answers; my answers shock me, they shame me, they make me tremble.

 

What about you?

Two Healings, Two Responses (2)

 

Continuing our reflections on the healings of John chapters 5 and 9:

 

In both instances, the Pharisees challenged the men healed. In Chapter 5 they wanted to know why the man was carrying his pallet on the Sabbath. In Chapter 9 the Pharisees challenged the man by saying that the man who healed him, Jesus, was not of God and was a sinner (9:19, 24, 31). This is along the line of what we see earlier in Jesus’s ministry, when the scribes from Jerusalem were saying of Him, “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons” (Mark 3:22). That is, the religious leaders were attributing the works of God to Satan and saying that Jesus had an “unclean spirit,” a perilous practice indeed (Mark 3:28 – 30)

 

Put more bluntly, in John Chapter 9 the Pharisees were telling the man whom Jesus healed, “An ungodly man healed you. God did not heal you. You have been touched by a demon.”

 

Now then, if you were the blind man, how would you have liked to hear that?

 

In Chapter 5, when asked by the Pharisees, the man did not know who healed him (5:13). In Chapter 9 the man knew who Jesus was, “The man who is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes…”

 

There seems to have never been any doubt about Jesus by the man healed of blindness; his understanding of Jesus blossoms in the narrative. He goes from considering Jesus a prophet (9:17) to believing in Jesus as the promised “Son of Man” and worshipping Him (9:35 – 38; Daniel 7:13 – 14; Luke 22:66 – 71).

 

On the other hand, the man healed in John Chapter 5 shows no thankfulness toward Jesus. Unlike the man born blind, instead of giving Jesus glory he reports Jesus to the religious leaders. After later encountering Jesus in the temple, “The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath” (5:14 – 16).

 

[Note: When John uses the term “Jews” in his Gospel, he is typically referring to the religious and civic leaders of the Jews. John himself was a Jew, as were all the apostles, as were most of the people of Jerusalem.]

 

Perhaps, in comparing the two men whom Jesus healed in John, there is an element of the ten lepers of Luke 17:11 – 19. “One of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him.”

 

In response, Jesus asks, “Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine – where are they?”

 

Perhaps there is an element of the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:3 – 9, 18 – 23)? The man of John 5 is an example of the “seed beside the road” which “the evil one snatches away.” The man born blind is a picture of the good seed bearing much fruit.

 

Are we thankful for the work of Jesus in our lives? When He answers prayer do we fall on our faces, worshipping Him?

 

Do we, as the man born blind, testify to Jesus no matter the opposition? Or do we align ourselves – actively or passively – with those determined to destroy Jesus?

 

What else do you see when you compare these two men?

 

We’ll pick this back up, the Lord willing.