“The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’ His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.’ (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’ So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, ‘Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.’ He answered, ‘Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’ And they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’ The man answered, ‘Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’ They answered him, ‘You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?’ And they cast him out.”

The Truth and lies can’t occupy the same space. They are polar opposites, and can’t endure one another. It’s day and night, nourishment verses starvation, and fertile crops against barren desert. Jesus, in His perfect righteousness, stands as the embodiment of the Truth, while Satan, called the enemy and the adversary, is the father of lies, and a liar and murderer by his very nature. Interestingly, and tragically, humanity, in our sin nature, loves lies. It truly is as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:19,

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”

I would argue that lies are the foundation that all sin stands upon. Because no one who has a spiritual understanding of sin rejoices in it, but we lie to ourselves, and to others that our sin is not what it is. Romans 1:21–23 says of the unrighteous,

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”

Notice that they don’t claim to be fools. They don’t try to cast down God, and lift up their own creations saying, “we’re making a mistake right now. This is the wrong thing, but we’re doing it anyway.” When we take idols, scientific discovery, gnostic ideology, and worldly pursuits, and place them above God, we lie. We say, by word and deed that either God is not real, or that He is not who He says He is. We take His Law and teaching, and we mangle it through the lie that it’s not true in its entirety, and it’s okay to be parsed out. This is saying the quiet part out loud though, because the lie works best when it’s uncontested. If the lie can exist, undisturbed and constant, it takes on the illusion of being true. In the culture of the world, the lie is always going to win out, as this is the culture of the enemy. But in the eternal struggle, Truth will always win, because the darkness cannot endure the Light. What we see repeated again and again, as Jesus confronts and corrects the religious rulers of His day, is that there is no place for the Truth in many of them. They have twisted God’s Law into their lie, and the Truth is unrecognizable and repellant to them. We saw this again in last week’s passage, as a number of the Pharisees rejected Jesus being from God for again healing on the Sabbath, while some among them took note that His works are not those of a sinner, and division arose among them. In the case of the man to whom Jesus gave sight, we saw an example of developing Truth. The man doesn’t have all the particulars, but when it comes to choosing one side or the other in the Pharisees’ dispute, he makes a definitive choice when asked. He states before them that Jesus is a prophet, clarifying if nothing else that He is from God. As we read on into this week’s section, we see the man’s faith and understanding move forward by leaps and bounds. The change that Jesus has made in the once blind beggar continues to develop, and the dividing line between truth and lies grows bolder in his position.

The Dividing Line of Truth

When we last left off in John 9:33, Jesus had healed a man born blind. Spitting in the dirt, and anointing the man’s eyes with mud, Jesus told him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam, the man obeyed and received his sight. In the aftermath there was a degree of confusion among the man’s neighbors and those who recognized him as a formerly blind beggar, which ultimately led to them bringing him to the Pharisees. I mentioned last week that I could see two motivations to do this, one being to report the work of a miracle, the other being to discern whether some kind of fraud was at play. Picking up this week, it seems that at least some of the Pharisees (as we know there was division among them concerning Jesus), suspected fraud.

“The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’ His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.’ (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’”

1.      Lies Try to Suppress the Truth

Despite the man’s testimony, the Pharisees don’t believe him, and call his parents to validate his story. This is suspect in part, simply because if the man used to beg outside the temple, it stand to reason that at least some of the Pharisees would have recognized him for themselves. But whether they did or not, we know that their motive was often outright opposition to whatever Jesus was doing. In John 7 and again in John 8, He is accused of being demon possessed because He speaks the truth. In Matthew 12:24, after Jesus has healed a man who was oppressed by a demon, rather than acknowledge that He does the work of God, the Pharisees accuse Him of casting out demons through demonic power. When Jesus heals on the Sabbath, the Pharisees persecute Him. After healing a man with a withered hand, Matthew 12:14 says,

“But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.”

The first move of the liar is outright denial or suppression of the Truth. This goes back to the beginning when the Serpent speaks to Eve in Genesis 3:1-4,

“… ‘Did God actually say, “You shall not eat of any tree in the garden”?’ And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”’ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.”

That may be the most direct lie in history. God says to follow His commands, and the world replies, “yeah, but you don’t really have to.” Jesus’s works speak to His authority and position, His teachings validate His mission from God – but they don’t validate the puffed-up positions of the Pharisees, or their twisted teachings. We can see that, as they question the parents of the man who was healed, the Pharisees have asserted their power to great effect in suppressing the proclamation of the truth about Jesus among the people. While the man’s parents don’t deny Him as the Christ, they also do nothing to affirm this. I have some measure of sympathy for them, as to be put out of the synagogue would prevent them from attending worship, and likely make them social pariahs within the Jewish community. But while I can appreciate the difficulty of their position, it’s also easy to identify that it’s the wrong one. The text suggests that they believed their son, in that Jesus was responsible for his healing, but wouldn’t openly profess this for fear of the repercussions. In Joshua 24:14–15, Joshua says to the people of Israel,

“Now therefore fear the LORD and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

This direction pushes the people to the Truth of God instead of false idols. It is a reminder that our devotion is to the Lord, not the culture, or the authority of men, or even the Law if it is taken separate from God. To stand before lies in neutrality, neither confirming, nor denying them is not the right position for devoted servants of God to take. In Acts 5, Peter and the other Apostles are brought before the Sanhedrin, facing not just social ridicule but death, and are charged to no longer teach in the name of Jesus. Their response in verse 29,

“But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’”

Jesus says to the church in Laodicea in Revelation 3:15–16,

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

The pressure that the Pharisees apply in trying to suppress the truth is largely successful with the parents of the formerly blind man. While they do not deny Jesus, their silence plays into the hand of the religious authorities – things do not go as smoothly however with their son.

2.      Lies Try to Impersonate the Truth

“So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, ‘Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.’ He answered, ‘Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’”

If a lie cannot smother and destroy the truth, the next best thing is to make itself look similar enough to impersonate the truth. This again goes back to the beginning and the fall. After Satan has told Eve the blatant lie, “you will surely not die,” he follows up with the impersonation in Genesis 3:5,

“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

This is not entirely untrue, but it’s a bit like telling someone that they can breathe underwater. You’ll exhale carbon dioxide, breathe in a big lungful of water, and cough and choke until you drown, breathing in the wrong thing until it kills you. And so the Pharisees call the formerly blind man back before them, “Give glory to God” they say. That’s a strong start, that’s good advice for anyone, anywhere, anytime. “We know that this man is a sinner,” is their follow up. And just like that they’ve attempted to weld a lie to the Truth. If he agrees, he calls Jesus a sinner, if he denies, he refuses to give glory to God – their trap is laid, and it’s not a bad one. But this man has been touched, literally, but more importantly, spiritually by the Christ, and he’s not falling for it. His response, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see,” could sound like he’s trying to take a passive, middle of the road approach like his parents did, but it’s actually notably different. This man has already professed that Jesus is a prophet, taking a public side on His authority. To be a prophet didn’t mean you were automatically sin free – Jesus being the only person to ever live sinlessly. This means that the formerly blind man doesn’t contradict his previous statement, that Jesus is of God. In some sense, he’s doubling down on it, saying that while he doesn’t personally know if Jesus is sin-free or not, he knows without doubt what He did. His answer perfectly sidesteps the trap laid by the Pharisees, in that he neither denies giving glory to God, nor denies that Jesus is doing the work of God. When their attempt falls flat, they deploy a tactic that once again mirrors Satan in the garden, asking him for information that he’s already provided. When Satan did this, he took what Eve said and used it as an opportunity to rework the information, but if this was the plan of the Pharisees it never came to fruition. Going back to Genesis 3, we see Satan pose his question to Eve in verse 1,

“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

This was misleading from the start, as that’s not what God told Adam and Eve. This causes Eve to repeat the correct instructions that they were given in verse 2,

“… We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

What Satan tells her next, which we went over previously, that they surely will not die and that the fruit will open their eyes, making them like God, causes Eve to take another, considering look at the tree. We see this occur in verse 6,

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

It seems that prior to Satan’s temptation, the tree was entirely off of their radar. God said not to eat of it, not even to touch it, and they ignored it. But in stopping to look at it and consider it, they were tempted. This provides caution as to how we should handle all sin and temptation, not keeping it at arm’s length to think over and contemplate, but following the instructions in James 4:7,

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

The truth is more than capable of handling questions, but the aim of lies isn’t to understand the truth, but to discredit it. The Pharisees have been given testimony to what Jesus did by the formerly blind man, they have heard from some of his witnessing neighbors, and have heard from his parents, attesting to the fact that he was truly born blind. Their circling back to him now bears similarities to the tactics of the Sanhedrin when they held their sham trial for Jesus. We see this in Matthew 26:59–66,

“Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death, but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward and said, ‘This man said, “I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’” And the high priest stood up and said, ‘Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?’ But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, ‘I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.’ Then the high priest tore his robes and said, ‘He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?’ They answered, ‘He deserves death.’”

The goal of the liar isn’t to learn the full truth, but to catch one piece of the truth that they can twist to their benefit. When they hurled false accusations at Jesus, He remained silent. When He spoke the truth to them, they called it lies and used that as their charge against Him. As we see the Pharisees badger the formerly blind man in John 9, asking him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” it stands to reason that they’re fishing, trying to get him to misspeak, contradict himself, or say something they can use to aid them in their goal of condemning Jesus – but he doesn’t play along with their game.

“He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’ And they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’”

When I was a kid, I asked my mom for something. I don’t remember what it was, it could’ve been a piece of candy, or to watch a certain movie, or to go to a friend’s house – what I do remember is that she said “no.” A little while later, I asked my dad, I think he said “yes,” and a short time after that, I was in trouble. I only did that one time, but the point is that I wasn’t interested in being told “no,” I was interested in getting the answer that I wanted. When the Pharisees claim proudly that they’re disciples of Moses, and state, “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from,” they tell on themselves. They are no more disciples of Moses than they are sons of Abraham. They know of Jesus’s earthly origins, and if they were seeking the Truth of God, they would see His divine ones as well. But they consistently ignore the truth, twisting and manipulating to make room for their lies, to try to force their own aims into the space occupied by the Truth.

3.      Lies Cannot Stand Before the Truth

“The man answered, ‘Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’”

Something that I didn’t realize in preparing last weeks outline, which I learned during church, was that the physically infirmed (the blind, deaf, crippled, etc.), were not allowed inside the temple. I had read before where we see infirmed beggars outside of the temple, like the man that Peter and John heal in Acts 3, but I had never pieced together that they were hanging around outside the temple because they weren’t allowed in. Jesus says during the sermon on the mount in Matthew 6:2,

“Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”

Bearing in mind the habits of the religious hypocrites, I figured that placing yourself outside of the temple was an opportune spot to receive some showy goodwill. But the practice of excluding the infirmed seems to be a twisted and exaggerated application from the old testament, as were many of the practices by the religious rulers. Leviticus 21:16–24 says,

“And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron, saying, None of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, a man blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand, or a hunchback or a dwarf or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles. No man of the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the LORD’s food offerings; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God. He may eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy things, but he shall not go through the veil or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may not profane my sanctuaries, for I am the LORD who sanctifies them.’ So Moses spoke to Aaron and to his sons and to all the people of Israel.”

This gives us limitations specifically for priests who have physical imperfections from taking part in certain offerings, and from going behind the veil, into the most scared parts of the tabernacle. The other passage that seems to have influenced the practice of barring the infirmed from the temple is 2 Samuel 5:6–8, which says,

“And the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, ‘You will not come in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you off’—thinking, ‘David cannot come in here.’ Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the city of David. And David said on that day, ‘Whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack “the lame and the blind,” who are hated by David’s soul.’ Therefore it is said, ‘The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.’”

To give some background, at this point Saul, the first king of Israel had died, and David had been formally established as king. For the first six and a half years he reigned from Hebron, as Jerusalem was still held by the Jebusites. For their part, the Jebusites were so confident in the city’s fortifications that they mocked David, that they were so well protected that their blind and crippled could hold him off. Bearing in mind that God went with him, David of course achieved victory and claimed Jerusalem, afterward banning any Jebusites (the “lame and blind”), from his court. Somehow, between Leviticus and 2 Samuel, we have a practice that the infirmed are simply not allowed in the temple at all. This is important to note, because as the formerly blind man makes his case against the Pharisees, we see that he has something in common with John the Baptist, the Apostles, and Jesus. He was born blind, he’s never been permitted inside the temple, he should have no formal religious teaching, and yet he shows a clear grasp of the lesson and nature of the scriptures. “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him,” this perfectly summarizes what God says to Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7:17–20,

“And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to rule Israel.’ But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.”

His assertion that, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind,” points to the fact that in the miracles and works of the Old Testament, there is no recording of someone blind from birth being given sight. In doing something so unprecedented, Jesus affirms that He is doing the work of God.

“They answered him, ‘You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?’ And they cast him out.”

I don’t watch a tremendous amount of these, but the other day I found myself engrossed in a series of YouTube shorts of a man debating students on a college campus. Many of the students tried to call him out or attack him over holding conservative views. They peppered him with questions about religion, abortion, immigration, communism, and education. Some seemed to actually want answers, while most seemed to just want to scream at him. I don’t watch those types of videos often, because I feel my blood pressure rise, and the “gotcha” tactics that can sometimes be seen from both sides always seem to lack sincerity, and I often find I don’t learn anything from watching. But what I saw in this particular batch of videos was that when most of the students were given sound rebuttals to their questions or accusations, they defaulted to hurling profanity and insults. They didn’t have anything else to go on, but there was no way they were compromising their feelings for the truth. This is in no way a new thing. When Jesus called out the religious rulers, boxed them in and refuted their lies, they said He was demon possessed, they called Him a Samaritan, they claimed that it was only by demons that He could cast out demons. When the formerly blind man stands against the Pharisees in the Spirit of the Truth, their lies burn out and die. They have no other move but to fling insults at him (“born in utter sin”), reassure themselves in their own superior position (“and you would teach us?”), and send him away. Lies cannot win out against truth.

A final thing to consider in the victory that is afforded us by the truth is illustrated in the contrast between the man, and his parents. James 1:17–18 says,

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”

It’s crucial that we understand our position, standing and aligning ourselves with the Truth which the world opposes. It’s vital that we understand that any and all true blessings are from God. We saw in John 7:13 that even discussions about Jesus were subdued for fear of the religious rulers,

“Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.”

Likewise, the man’s parents are reserved and withholding when they speak to the Pharisees in today’s passage. There are such significant cultural and religious repercussions in finding yourself opposed to the religious elite, that the people are afraid to contradict them in their lies. The formerly blind man on the other hand shows no such fear. He has spent his life without sight, without being able to enter into the temple, limited to seeking alms from those around him. He now has his sight, and has an understanding of the Word through what Jesus has done for him. Commentaries typically treat the end of verse 34, “And they cast him out,” that the man was physically removed from the temple, but wasn’t excommunicated, but I don’t know that it makes a tremendous difference. He has a clear perspective of the Truth because of what Jesus has done for him, and in this, he is delivered from the lies of the world – in this he is free.

Pastor Chris’s sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR7HeeyGdF8