You Are NOT Enough!

John 9:1-5 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? 3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. 4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

How many of you are parents? Grandparents? Do you remember the day your first child was born? The doctor delivered the baby, and that child began to cry. As you stood over your new baby, you counted their fingers and toes. You touched their hair. You looked into their eyes, and prayed that everything was fine.

A baby boy was born. His parents took the child, and counted its fingers and toes. The child looked normal. But in time, it became apparent something was wrong. The baby was blind. Now, this is not today with our medical technology, our advanced society. There were no hospitals to speak of in the ancient world. Many doctors believed if a person was sick, to let a little bad blood out, and it would make them better. Some believed that taking too many baths could lead to sickness, that dirt was what we came from, and dirt is how we ought to smell.

This baby was born blind.

Be Careful With Your Judgments

When the parents realized their baby, their precious boy was totally blind, the first thought was “How can a loving God allow this?” In the ancient world a person born blind could do little more than beg for food. If God is loving, then this baby was born blind because of sin. There must have been something that caused this child’s disease. If God is good, then the child must have been born bad. People made judgments about the child and its parents. Like the disciples asked Jesus,

vs 2 “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?”

God is GOOD, and can certainly do not wrong. The Prophet wrote:

Habakkuk 1:13 … ESV {God is} of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong

Sin and faithlessness is foreign to God. The Scripture says:

James 1:13 ESV … Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

God cannot sin. God makes no mistakes. So WHY was this man born blind?

Perhaps God in His omnipotence foresaw
this man would be a great sinner.

The Prophet Job (23:10) said, “God knows the way I will take”. The great King David wrote in Psalm 139:4, “Before a word is on my tongue, You, O Lord, know it completely”. He also wrote, “You, LORD, are all I have, and you give me all I need; my future is in your hands” (GNT). Perhaps God looked into this man’s future and realized that, if he had grown up with good eyesight, he would be a great murderer, or a sexual predator, or some other monster in society. God was doing us all a favor by making him blind from birth.

Or maybe it had nothing to do with the man. Maybe it was “HIS PARENTS”. Perhaps they did something sinful, something evil, and the child suffered because of it. When King David took another man’s wife in adultery, then murdered the man, Bathsheba carried his baby. David thought he had gotten away with murder and adultery. Bathsheba delivered David’s son to him. But then God had the Prophet Nathan confront David. David repented. We read:

2 Samuel 12:13-14 (ESV) David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.”

Perhaps Bathsheba was forced into the relationship – the scripture does not say. But David’s action was evil, and punishable. David would not have an heir to his throne out of adultery and murder. That child had to die. The sin of David, the child’s parent, brought death on an innocent.

Sin always hurts the innocent.

The child whose mother was alcoholic is born craving drink. The child whose mother was drug addicted is born with addiction, and defection because of the drugs. The child whose mother is murderous is killed in the womb. The innocent suffer because of sin.

So the disciples ask, “Master, who DID SIN”? Someone MUST have sinned if this child was born without sight. Someone MUST be responsible if that little boy or girl in Saint Judes Hospital is born without legs, or with cancers, or twisted in the spine. Someone must be responsible for this. We cannot put it on God, for God is GOOD ALL THE TIME. So someone MUST have sinned.

This is the problem with MAKING JUDGMENTS. Jesus warned us all, “Take heed that the LIGHT which is in you NOT BE DARKNESS” (Luke 11:35). God deliberately chose to make this man blind.

This man has spent his entire adult life begging on the side of the road. He cannot see Jesus coming. There are no crowds shouting Jesus’ name. As a matter of fact, this man never says ONE WORD to Jesus – at least, not out loud. The man is miserable. The man is hurting. His whole life people have BLAMED either him, or his parents, for his condition.

Now the disciples come along and add another brick to the load.

Take heed that the LIGHT in you BE NOT DARKNESS. You might think you’re a Bible scholar, like the Pharisees, and you may be. But you do not know nor understand the mind of God. God says, “My thoughts are NOT your thoughts, nor are YOUR ways My ways” (Isaiah 55:8). Why was this man born blind? Who sinned? No one sinned. Jesus tells them,

John 9:3 Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

America, We Are Not Enough

Illustrate: People wear t-shirts with messages on them. I saw one that I think I’m going to buy for myself. The message on the shirt is:

Pastor
Warning!
Anything You
Say Or Do
Could Be Used
In A Sermon!

I thought that was cute! I saw a t-shirt the other day that had these words on it:

You Are Enough

This is what the false religion of “Humanism” tells us. “You Are Enough”. That’s not true. We’ve never been enough. We are born broken because of Adam’s sin. When God came to this earth, the Bible says that “The earth was WITHOUT FORM and VOID” (Genesis 1:1-2). It was not enough. It needed God. God filled up the emptiness, and established the light. Though Adam and Eve were put in a perfect environment, and were in perfect bodies, still “You Are Enough” was not true. Adam and Eve still needed God daily. Adam forgot that, and thought that he himself could be god. He could, but only as a little “g” god subordinate to a serpent.

This is the problem with America today. Moses warned Israel, and warns us today:

Deuteronomy 6:10-13 (AP) When the Lord your God gives you great and good cities that you did not build, houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant. When our faithful God causes us to eat and be full, take care that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of slavery. It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by His name you shall swear.

God told the Church at Ephesus,

Ephesians 2:4 NKJV … I have this against you, that you have left your first love …

You are NOT enough. I am NOT enough. We need the Lord. We needed the Lord BEFORE we were saved because we are not enough. We need the Lord NOW that we are saved because we are not enough. This blind man is a living parable to our need. He is an illustration that we all need Jesus. ALL THE TIME.

This man was made the way he is on purpose so that God could show us what Jesus can do. We need Jesus.

John 9:3 the works of God should be made manifest in him. (in Jesus)

This man did not call out to Jesus with his lips – but in his heart he probably cried out to God every day. He was empty and knew it. In her article, Nancy Guthrie wrote:

“God uniquely works in the emptiness of our lives to teach and train us to trust him. When our lives are full—full of health, full of comfort, full of everything we deem good and satisfying—it can lead to forgetting our dependence on him. It can lull us into thinking we must have these other things to be happy, rather than living as if Christ is the only thing we must have in this life.”

We desperately need God. We are all born broken – but Jesus completes us.

Jesus MUST Work The Works

John 9:4-5 I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

It is Jesus Who gives us LIGHT. It is Jesus Who helps us to SEE. He opens our eyes to the things of God. It is Jesus Who makes us whole. This man can hear Jesus speak, but he does not know Who Jesus is. Jesus said,

I must work the works of Him that sent Me

The Father sent Jesus to this earth to work HIS works. This man is born broken. Jesus will heal him. Here is a key point.

Those who came near to Jesus were healed of Jesus. If you come to Jesus, He WILL change you. The murderer will cherish life. The rapist will respect women. The thief will stop stealing and start working. Jesus does not HALF heal or HALF save. But you must REPENT and come to Him. When you do, He will fix your brokenness. If you are gender confused, Jesus will fix this. If you are sexually perverted, Jesus will fix this. But if you thing “I Am Enough”, Jesus cannot fix this. This is arrogance, and foolishness, and confusion.

John 9:6-7 When He had thus spoken, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, 7 And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.

Jesus Saved In Different Ways

Jesus could have healed this man where he stood. In Luke 4:40 we read, “all those who were sick were brought to Jesus, and He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them”. Jesus didn’t use spit and mud, nor tell them to go somewhere and wash themselves. He just cured them. When a blind man Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus cried out,

Mark 10:47 … Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!

Jesus called for him, and asked “What do you want Me to do?”. Bartimaeus said, “I want to see again”. Jesus healed him immediately (see Mark 10:46-52). In another account, two blind men cry out to Jesus for healing. Again, Jesus asks,

Matthew 20:33 … Lord, let our eyes be opened

Jesus touched their eyes, and they were immediately healed. Jesus told the paralyzed man to take up his bed and walk (Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26), and the man immediately walked.

So why did Jesus have this man blind from birth go wash in the Pool of Siloam? I believe it was to show us that Jesus is not only SAVIOR, but He is our LORD. He saves us, but we are to obey Him.

It was right that this man be born blind. His blind birth was ordained and orchestrated of God. None of us DESERVE what we have. Everything we have, we have of God’s Grace. The Father sent Jesus to this earth to “work the works of God”, to teach us that we are NOT enough. We need God every moment of every day. Jesus spit and made mud, and putting this in the man’s eyes said:

Go, wash in the pool of Siloam

There’s no debate here. There’s no, “Let’s vote on it” in what Jesus said. Go to Siloam, wash yourself there. But Lord, there are other pools I can go to. I can go to …

Bethesda (John 5:2)
Gibeon (2 Samuel 2:13)
Hebron (2 Samuel 4:12)
Upper (2 Kings 18:17; 20:20)
Siloah (Nehemiah 3:15)
King’s (Nehemiah 2:14)
Heshbon (Song of Solomon 7:4)
Lower (Isaiah 22:9, 11)

They are all pools, and some have cleaner water than Siloam. Why can’t I go there? Because Jesus said so. Because God knows best. It was right for that boy to be born blind, and right for this man to go wash in Siloam. I truly believe some people are not saved until they are Baptized in obedience to Christ’s command. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe that water Baptism regenerates you. This is what the Holy Spirit does. But God knows your heart. If you are saved, Jesus is not just your Savior, He is ALSO your LORD. The Apostle Peter said of water baptism:

1 Peter 3:21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

I believe you are saved by faith, not by works, “lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). But you cannot be saved in rebellion. If you will not obey Jesus, if you reject Him as Lord, then you cannot be saved. If that man – anointed of Jesus – had went where he chose to be washed – he would have died in his blindness. Jesus said go to Siloam. He needed to go to Siloam. Period.