©2004 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

07/04/04

This One Thing I Know Pt. 1

7/4/04 This One Thing I Know...

We’ve just completed a six month series

in which I shared with you my life’s greatest surprises about life with Jesus Christ.

In a few weeks we will very likely return to our long neglected study

of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

But in between where we were

and where we will return to

I want to do some things I’ve had tucked away in the back of my thinking,

some of them for several years.

Today and then again next week

I’m going to take us to the 9^th chapter of the Gospel of John,

and to the account of one man’s discovery of his Savior.

I’m going to do this in part because I love what happens in this chapter,

because there are so many parallels in it

to the way we see God involving Himself in our lives.

And I like it, too,

because this man’s discovery of His God

was very much a process, not a point,

and as such I think it far more accurately reflects

what most of us experience in our own lives.

And I also want to do it

because I believe the example given to us

through the life of one blind beggar

who lived on the streets of Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago

can be of value to some of you

who are, right now, churning through a critical time

in your own interaction with your Creator.

It takes most of us our entire lives

to become even a little bit logical

in our dealings with our God.

And let me see if I can explain why I say that.

I’ll begin first

by making four statements

that are both true and that follow logically from one another.

First, we are created beings,

created by God for fellowship with Him.

That is why we exist.

That is why anything exists.

The fact that we all enter this world

with spirits in rebellion against God and,

because of that rebellion,

spirits that are willfully blind to that truth doesn’t change anything.

Each of us here this morning exist

because God has created us for Himself,

and it is why that ever-present ache and emptiness remains within us

until we find Him.

Second, God has chosen to allow the human race to continue life on this earth up to this point

because it gives Him the opportunity

to reveal Himself to each of us

with the hope that we will then respond to His offer of forgiveness

and of eternal friendship with Him.

That’s what Peter was telling us at the end of his first letter.

He knew, just as we do,

what it is to look around at the corruption in the world

and wonder why God doesn’t end it all instantly.

And he, too, heard the voices of those around him

calling him a fool for believing that the time would come

when God would one day bring this all to an end.

And so he wrote,

2PE 3:3 Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts,

2PE 3:4 and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation."

2PE 3:9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

We are created by God for God,

and God now allows this world to continue on in its corrupted state

because it gives Him the opportunity

to seek to communicate Himself to more and more of His creation

with the hope that we will respond to His grace,

and His kindness,

and His offer of compassion and restoration to Him.

Third,

the central issue of life for everyone of us,

the puzzle piece around which all the others fit

is our personal, individual discovery of God’s love for us

and our response to that love

through trusting His offer of forgiveness and life through Jesus Christ.

That is what we are here for,

that is the central issue of life

through which all other issues find their proper place.

And fourth,

from the day of our birth,

until the day of our death

God is actively seeking to call us to Himself

and to communicate to us the truth we need

in order to find Him.

And those four statements

are not some sort of far out religious system.

They are simple, logical truth.

The fact that our inner spirits’ rebellion against God

causes us to hide from that truth

behind a endless mass of conflicting and illogical alternative points of view changes nothing.

I mention these four statements

simply because it was my acceptance of their logical validity

that has led me to yet another realization.

There is no chance,

no luck involved in those circumstances in our lives

that bring us to the discovery of our God and His love for us.

Though we usually cannot see it

until we look back on it after the fact,

the active hand of God

is involved in every step we take toward Him.

There is no other way for us to get to Him.

And let me make a crucial distinction here.

I’m not talking about every step we take toward religion.

Religion is, quite often, not a step we take toward God,

it is a step we take away from Him

because it provides us with a superb place to hid from Him.

What I’m talking about here

are those steps we take

that truly do lead us closer to Him.

Some of you are here this morning

because, from your point of view,

you just sort of happened to find this church.

Maybe you have a friend who goes here

and they coaxed,

or coerced,

or tricked or bribed you into coming,

and once you got here

you decided it wasn’t too bad.

Or maybe recently you’ve just sort of felt an interest stirring with you

to check out the church thing

for the first time in a very, very long time,

and somewhere you heard

that the group that met in that school building

had a preacher who didn’t beat his people up each week.

But, no matter how you ended up here,

I want you to know something with absolute certainty -

your being here is not chance,

it’s not luck,

it’s not just something that happened,

it is another step in a carefully planed work of God in your life,

a plan He has been unfolding since the day of your birth,

a plan designed by Him to bring you ultimately into the discovery of His love for you.

And that stirring you’ve been feeling within you recently,

that stirring to figure out more about God

isn’t just an age thing you’re going through,

or a curious throw-back from your childhood.

It is the Spirit of God working in your life,

drawing you to Himself

and to your own discovery of the purpose for which you exist.

And please, don’t let that scare you.

And don’t think that if you continue on with this pilgrimage that has begun in your life

it will lead you into some sort of weird religious ordeal.

If you continue on with what God is doing in your life right now

you will find

that the life He leads you into

will fit you as nothing has ever fit you before.

It will not be something you’ll have to cram yourself into,

pushing and shoving,

trying to make the thing fit.

You will find that it is something that fills you,

and satisfies you,

and flows out of you,

and clothes you as nothing else has ever clothed you in your life.

But I want you to know

that with most of us

the discovery of our Lord and of life with Him is far more of a process than we sometimes realize,

a process begun by Him long before we were even aware of what He was doing.

And I want to illustrate that process through the help of the 9^th chapter of the Gospel of John,

and hopefully through this illustration

give you both the freedom and the encouragement you need

to stay with this process in your own life

until you, too, find the One who has been seeking you since before the foundation of the world.

OK, this event recorded for us in John chapter 9

takes place in Jerusalem

probably just a year before Jesus’ final trip back to Jerusalem

for His crucifixion.

By this time in His ministry

the tension between Jesus and the Jewish leadership was intense.

Those who held positions of power in the Jewish community

knew this Man was dangerous as no one had ever been dangerous before.

His popularity threatened their very existence

and His refusal to play by their rules infuriated them.

Those who held power

had made it clear that anyone aligning themselves with this Jesus

was not to be permitted entrance into the weekly meetings at the Synagogue.

Now, Jesus is in Jerusalem.

His disciples are with Him,

and John writes...

JOH 9:1 As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth.

And the first thing I want to point out here

is that Jesus is the one who came to this man,

who found him and reached out to him.

And keep in mind who this man is.

He’s a beggar.

We are not told how old he is,

but we know with certainty that he is at least in his 20's,

and very likely in his 30's or even 40's.

And we know, too, that he lives in a tiny world at the very bottom of the social order.

When he woke up that day

he assumed that this day,

like every other day he’d ever known,

would consist of his sitting by the side of the street,

calling out to those who passed by,

with his hands held out

hoping someone would drop a coin into his fingers

so that he could have enough to buy food for one more day.

And of all the beggars lining the streets,

a blind beggar would most certainly be the easiest to walk by

because he could never make eye contact with those who came his way.

Of all the people for Jesus to seek out

and then single out for His work

this man would be the last one we would have expected.

But that’s the way our God works.

He values each of us

not on the basis of our position in society,

but rather on the basis of our position in His heart.

John goes on...

JOH 9:2 And His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?"

His disciples recognize immediately, of course,

that this man’s condition is pathetic.

And they ask Jesus the same question we so often ask

when we discover that some sort of corruption or evil has intruded into our lives -

WHY?

To His followers

it seemed obvious that this kind of suffering

must be punishment for sin.

That is the arrangement we always go to first

in our dealings with our Creator.

He blesses good people

and curses bad people.

But they were having difficulty working out who’s sin it must have been that caused this man’s misery.

He was born blind,

so it was a little hard for them to see how it could have been his own sins,

so surely it must have been because of his parents’ sins.

And every one of us have got at least one thing in our own lives

that causes us to ask the same question.

Why did this happen to me?

Why have I been afflicted with this?

Maybe we’ve even spent a lot of time and energy

sifting through our past,

trying to understand why we ended up where we are.

Or maybe we think we know why.

Maybe we can trace back to that point in our life

where, for whatever reasons,

we chose wrong.

We chose rebellion,

or we chose disobedience,

or we chose what felt good at the expense of what we knew was right,

or we chose what at the time we thought was freedom

and discovered too late

that it was really the doorway into the worst possible slavery.

But no matter what conclusions we reach,

that why question is often the first one we ask.

Now, I want you to listen carefully to Jesus’ response to that question.

JOH 9:3 Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents...”

The first thing He says is that asking why will never get us where we need to be.

Human suffering is not the wrath of God poured out on the world

in response to our rebellion against Him.

Human suffering is the unavoidable result

of life on this planet at this time in human history.

Certainly it is true

that there are times when our own willful rebellion

will make things harder for us.

But even then what we suffer

is not the active judgment of God for our actions,

it is the natural consequences of making choices

that are contrary to the way our God has designed us and designed our world.

There will come a time in history

when the human race will wilfully stand up in rebellion before Christ,

knowing full well who He is and what they are doing,

and, bolstered by all the power of Satan and his legions,

they will refuse to submit to His Lordship over them.

And that ultimate rebellion will bring about the wrath of God

being poured out on this world as never before.

But right now

there is a very different work of God taking place on this earth.

The truth is,

every one of us who comes to God now

bring with us some measure of suffering in our lives,

suffering that exists either because of our own sins

or because of the sins of our parents,

or our grandparents,

or because of the sins of countless others who have come before us.

It is a given,

an unavoidable certainty of life on this planet.

And the first thing our Lord wants us to know

is that asking why will never take us to where we need to be.

And then our Lord goes on.

And before I read this

I need to let you know that, as much as I do love the New American Standard translation,

I believe the way the translators handled this next section

did not accurately communicate what Jesus was really saying.

The two words “it was” found in the NASB

do not exist in the original text,

nor does the period that we find at the end of the verse.

Actually, there is no punctuation at all in the original manuscripts.

And if we read these next two verses

the way I believe they were intended to be read,

this is what Jesus says.

JOH 9:3-4 “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents. But so that the works of God might be displayed in him, we must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day...”

You see, what Jesus is doing

is offering his followers a whole new question.

What He’s saying is this.

“Whenever we encounter human suffering,

or pain,

or evil in others or in ourselves,

the question we need to ask ourselves is not, “Why did this happen?”,

the question we need to ask is, “How can God display Himself through this?

How can He display His redemption,

and His compassion,

and His power to heal,

and the depth of His love through this?”

For many years now

I have had a little phrase that I frequently repeat to myself

simply because it helps me to keep my own personal point of focus correct.

I say to myself,

“the real question in life

is not, ‘What would my life have looked like

had I not been touched by evil?’,

the real question in life

is, ‘What would my life have looked like

had I not been touched by my God?’”

That is what I see Jesus saying to His disciples here in John chapter 9.

He’s saying, “Ask the right questions.

Ask the questions that will lead you to the truth you need to know.

Understanding why this man was born blind will lead you nowhere.

Understanding what God can do with this blindness

will lead you to truth about your God

that will have the power to transform your life.”

And then, from there,

John goes on to record for us

just exactly what God was able to do.

JOH 9:6 When He had said this, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes,

JOH 9:7 and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which is translated, Sent). So he went away and washed, and came back seeing.

Now, why did Jesus do that?

Why did He go through all that mess and fuss with the spitting

and the mixing of the mud,

and the smearing of it on this man’s eyes?

Why didn’t He heal this man’s blindness

the same way He healed the other blind men we know about in the gospels,

by simply reaching out,

touching their eyes,

and having them instantly healed?

I don’t know,

any more than I know why He doesn’t work in your life

in exactly the same way as He works in mine.

But I can guess.

I think He did it

because it was necessary for this man to have to trust Jesus enough

to have to follow the one simple request Jesus made of him.

It wasn’t all that hard,

but neither was it all that easy.

He had to find some sighted friend

who would take Him by the hand

and lead him to that pool.

He had to risk the possibility

of looking like a complete fool in front of that friend.

“Hey, my blind friend, did you know that you have mud all over your face?

Here, let me help you wash it off.”

“NO!!! Don’t touch that mud.

I can’t wash it off here.

I can only wash it off in the Pool of Siloam.”

“Oh. Why’s that?”

“Well, if I wash it off there,

I’m going to be able to see.”

“What? Why do you say that?

Can you see anything right now?

Has the mud brought about any healing yet?”

“Nope. Can’t see a thing. Just the same endless blackness I’ve been staring at for the past 35 years.

But this Jesus said if I’d only wash it off in that pool

I’d be able to see.”

And one thing I know for certain -

Jesus did it the way He did it for this man

because it was an essential part of his own personal pilgrimage.”

So he went away and washed, and came back seeing.

Now, we’re not going to finish this passage today,

but before I close for the morning

let me tell you what I’ve been trying to say so far.

This blind beggar began this day

assuming it was going to be just like every other day he’d ever lived.

But then this Person entered his life

and set in motion events

that changed his life forever.

And keep in mind that up to this point

this man has no idea who Jesus is.

He has lived his entire life outside of the mainstream of society.

He wasn’t on the internet.

I know he wasn’t reading the daily papers.

In fact, when we continue with this passage

it will be obvious that he had no idea at all who Jesus was.

And I believe there are some of you here this morning

who are at a very similar point in your own life.

A few months ago you would have looked at your life

and seen an unbroken pattern

stretching backward

and forward as far as you could see.

Your life was just an endless stream of choices,

some good, some bad,

and a whole lot of other forces

over which you’ve had no control.

But, like this blind man

there was nothing in your life

that gave you any hope

that anything was ever really going to change.

But recently there has been something going on inside you,

something you honestly don’t understand.

Something has touched your spirit

and given you eyes to see things you’ve never seen before,

and given you the ability to feel things you haven’t felt for a very long time.

You certainly don’t know what it all means,

or even if it means anything,

but right now there is within you a kind of hope you’ve never known before.

I want you to know that what’s taking place within you

is taking place because the God who created you

is calling you to Himself.

I end this morning

by repeating what I said at the beginning.

There is no such thing as chance,

or luck,

or coincidence in our dealings with our God.

He has been seeking you since before the world began,

and if you find you are now finally beginning to hear His voice,

don’t turn away,

don’t run away,

don’t retreat behind those hiding places you’ve used so often in the past

to keep Him out of your life,

and don’t be afraid.

He is what you’ve been hungering for your whole life,

and He alone can and will fill that aching void within you.

And if what I’ve just said fits with what you’ve been feeling inside,

let me leave you with a prayer that will help.

“My Lord, please give me eyes to see You as You really are,

and a heart to trust You with my life. Amen.”

We’ll finish this next week.