In the sermon 'Who Sinned?' by Scott Brown, the focus is on John chapter 9, which recounts the healing of a man blind from birth. This account is used to explore the broader spiritual themes of Jesus being the light of the world and the purpose of suffering. Brown explains that the disciples questioned Jesus about the cause of the man's blindness, reflecting a common misconception that suffering is directly caused by sin. Jesus, however, teaches that the man's blindness serves a greater purpose: to display the works of God. The sermon underscores the idea that physical defects and suffering are opportunities for God's glory to be revealed and challenges common theological misconceptions such as karma and generational curses. Brown emphasizes that Jesus is the light that guides people out of spiritual darkness, and that embracing this light transforms perspectives on life's challenges. The sermon also highlights how God's sovereignty and greater plans often shatter our personal dreams to make way for His glory, likening this transformation to C.S. Lewis's metaphor of God building a palace out of our lives. Ultimately, the message is about finding meaning in suffering and recognizing the role of hardships in revealing God's glory.

Well, okay, so here it is. It's a winter wonderland out there. Isn't it beautiful? This is one of our biggest, this is one of our biggest snows we've had. And so everybody's at home snuggled in.

Somebody called it bedside Baptist today. So anyway, welcome. We're going to engage John chapter 9, so please open your Bibles to John chapter 9, And I'm going to read the first 12 verses, but we're really going to only focus in on the first four verses here this morning. So let's pray before we read. Lord, we're so thankful for enlightenment, for wisdom, for the way your loving kindness reaches into the depths of our thinking and changes the way that we view everything about our lives, our troubles, our defects, Lord, and how you have so kindly told us the truth about how all these things are designed for a wonderful purpose.

Amen. So John chapter 9 verse 1. Now I would like your eyes though to go back to John 8 verse 59 because they're connected. Then they took up stones to throw at him but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. 9.1 Now as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from birth.

And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of him who sent me while It is day. The night is coming when no one can work. As long as I'm in the world, I am the light of the world.

And when he'd said these things, he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva. And he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and he said to him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is translated scent. So he went and washed and came back seeing. Therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was blind said, Is this not he who sat and begged? Some said, This is he.

Others said, He's like him. He said, I am he. Therefore they said to him, How were your eyes opened? He answered and said, A man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes, and said to me, Go to the pool of Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and I received sight.

Then they said to him, Where is he? He said, I do not know." So John chapter 9 is dedicated completely to the healing of this blind beggar. And John is illustrating again, as he's been doing over and over again, that he's the light of the world. Now, John is dedicating two and a half chapters at least to this subject of he being the light of the world. The theme began in chapter 8, where in chapter 8 verse 12, after the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, Jesus speaks to them and he says, I am the light of the world, he who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." And then in chapter 9 verse 5, he says, as long as I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world.

And then in chapter 10, after Jesus declares himself to be the good shepherd, in this whole discussion, others say these are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind? So even chapter 10 is connected to what we find here in chapter 9 in the healing of the blind man. And what's happening here? Jesus is explaining what is the essence of His kingdom and what it means to follow Him and what happens to you when you follow Him.

And here's what happens. When you follow Him, you follow Him out of darkness into His light. And that's the essence of this whole section, that Jesus is the light of the world. And this is why the motto of the Protestant Reformation was, after darkness, light. And so this is what Jesus is proclaiming here.

Now this is the seventh miracle in the Gospel of John. If you compare John with Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there are fewer, much fewer miracles in the Gospel of John. And so this is the seventh of nine. The next miracle will be a man who is dead, Lazarus. And so it's interesting how you see this escalation of the astonishing power of the miracle working power of Jesus.

Because he's dealing with a blind man who is alive, then he deals with a dead man who has everything dead. And we learn the purpose of this man's blindness. And what this should help us to understand is the purpose of everything. For example, why blindness? Or another way to ask it, why disabilities?

Why suffering? And Here Jesus is illustrating himself as the light of the world who shines his light on all these things. But in the midst of these verses is Jesus teaching on the purposes of hardship and the purposes of physical defects. And he's explaining to us what is the purpose when the genetic code goes haywire. And there are disabilities.

And he is very clear about why, or actually not why, but what the purpose is, and the purpose is to display the works of God. And so this should be a great comfort to anyone who's concerned about his genetic makeup. That you can rest in God's purposes for your genetic makeup. Now when I say genetic makeup, or if I say genetic code, what do I mean? So children, here's what you need to know about your genetic code.

Okay when God formed you in your mother's womb You were knit together by what scientists called genes in your mother's womb. And the genes of your father and the genes of your mother came together and they made you who you are. Now, when I say genes, it's not the genes that you wear when you go hiking. It's not the jeans that are pants. They these are well jeans are really like the things in a recipe in a cookbook.

It's what makes you, you know, if you cook something, you have a recipe. And you put all those things together and out pops this delicious meal. Well, that's what God did with your genes. He put together a recipe, and that recipe shows you what you look like. Your eyes, your hair, your height, these things are passed down through the genetic code.

So your genes determine who you are. And this man was blind because something happened in his genes that made him blind. The recipe for his life was blindness. And Jesus is speaking about one of the purposes of physical defects. And there's nothing more difficult to experience than when there are defects in someone's genes.

Like when someone is blind, it's very difficult. Life becomes different. Or if you're deaf, or if you have spina bifida, or autism, or Down syndrome, or anything that's related to the irregularities of your genetic code that makes you very very different. Now the disciples they want to know the cause of the man's blindness, but Jesus doesn't speak to that directly. He speaks to the purpose of this man's blindness.

And everything really here is a commentary on verses 2 through 3 where the disciples asked Jesus, Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents said he was born blind. And then Jesus answers in verse 3. And so this man is a blind beggar. And this man represents all of us.

Jesus is the light. And he heals blind beggars. And now this whole matter of Jesus being light is something that was communicated at the very beginning of the Gospel of John. Now remember when we were in the prologue of the Gospel of John, we said that John introduces the things that he's going to talk about throughout the Gospel. And that's exactly what he's done here in this matter of light.

The fundamental issues that John wants us to understand are communicated there. And so John is illustrating what he wrote in John 1 verses 3 and 4. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it So this is an illustration of how Jesus is the light. Now here's, I want to give you a road map of this chapter.

I'm not going to cover all of this today, but first of all, the disciples are instructed in verses 1 through 4. That's really going to be our focus this morning then the blind man is healed in verses five through seven and then guess what the neighbors notice that something's different he looks different and that's in verses eight through twelve and then the Pharisees swoop in and they interrogate in verses 13 through 34. First of all, they interrogate the healed man in verses 13 to 17. Then they interrogate his parents in verses 18 to 23. And then they go back to the man again who is healed and they interrogate him in verses 24 to 34 And then they throw him out of the synagogue they excommunicate him and then then Jesus finds the man and and the man worships Jesus in verses 35 to 38.

And then the very last scene in this chapter Jesus speaks to the Pharisees in verses 39 to 41. So that's the whole flow of this. All the conversations that spun out of Jesus healing this man. But we, we need to remember always when we're going through this chapter that Jesus, that this man represents us. He's blind and he's a beggar and he sees light for the first time in his life.

We learn when we get to the very end of the chapter that this physical blindness was really a picture of spiritual blindness and having spiritual light in your soul. So let's begin with the text. Jesus was passing by in verse 1, and he came upon a blind man. The same word passed by in 9 1 is the same word in 8 59. Some say that this incident took place right as Jesus was walking out of the temple when they picked up stones to stone him.

Some say no, it might have been a couple months later. I think it was probably happening right after. And he's passing through the crowd and he passes by the blind Pharisees and then he passes by a man who's been blind from birth And now I want us to somehow get our hearts around the moment that's happening here. The moment in the man, the moment Jesus is in some ways, I mean, he's escaping the rocks that have been picked up, but he's not so taken by that threat that he doesn't stop and care for somebody. And care for somebody.

He's a blessing to this blind man, even when he has a threat of getting stoned and he stops and he sees this blind man and he ministers to this man. Now also think about the man. He's been blind from birth. He's never seen any light. He has not seen any colors.

He's not seen any sunsets. You know we woke up this morning with this beautiful blanket of snow all over the land and it was it's so gorgeous today but you know he's never seen his mother's face. You know when you're born you know in normal situations, you stare into your mother's face for hundreds of hours. Hundreds of hours. He never saw that.

Now almost everybody here is listening saw that and there's something that happens when you can see and you can look into other people's eyes and you can see the glory of this world. I mean the Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of God. Everything declared. So think of how much glory he didn't get to experience. And He had no job, he had to beg, he had no esteem in the community, he didn't have any money, he was completely dependent on everybody else, he had no opportunities.

He probably had no opportunities for marriage either. So this man had very little hope for any kind of success the way that we define success. He didn't have anything that we have. And Jesus passes by. Now one of the striking things that you notice when you read through the Gospel of Mark is that Jesus' miracles happen while He's passing by.

I preached through the Gospel of Mark many years ago. It struck me. All the things that happened just while he was passing by. They weren't really intentional. He was, they didn't seem to be intentional.

He was just going from one place to another. His ministry was when he was passing by. And after, after I preached on that, I started telling my family, you know, your ministry is the next person you meet. It happens while you're passing by. You don't wanna miss that.

It's so easy to miss that. But Jesus was passing by, and I love this story. I love, there's so many elements of this story and when we get more deeply into it we'll see there's some sanctified sarcasm, there's humor here, there's some really amazing things that are happening here in this narrative. But Jesus passing by and he sees this blind man from birth, and the man doesn't see Jesus, but Jesus sees the man. And that's how it is with us.

You know, he sees us first. We don't see him first. He sees us first. And I was taken back to Isaiah 65 verse 1 where Isaiah talks about how this happens. And Isaiah says, I was sought by those who didn't ask for me.

He said, I was found by those who didn't seek me. And He said, and the words in Isaiah are, that God is saying, here I am, here I am. I've stretched out my hands all day long to rebellious people. And there's Jesus, and he's doing exactly what Isaiah prophesied. He's saying, here I am, here I am.

And he sees the man, but the man doesn't see him. The man wasn't seeking him. He was seeking the man. And this is the kindness of God in salvation. Jesus makes the first move.

And you don't see him, but he sees you. He sees your hopelessness and he makes the move. And then he says, here I am. Here I am. And now there are a number of things I think that we should consider about blindness.

Because blindness is recorded all over the New and the Old Testament. And it's interesting that the Gospels record more miracles toward the blind than any other category of infirmity. And like if you read in Matthew 21 it says that the blind came to the temple. They came there. But they came to be healed by Jesus at the temple.

And blindness in the Bible is always a picture of people blinded by sin. And everywhere Jesus goes, he gives light. You know, that's why Malachi the prophet, when he was prophesying of the coming of Jesus, he said, the son of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. The sun rises, and then he says that when that happens and he finds you, that you'll be like a stall-fed calf and you'll go running through the pasture like a stall-fed calf. He finds you and then everything changes.

But blindness is an important category in the Bible, which is a parable of our lives, that we're blind, and in this case we're beggars. And in this case, we don't see Jesus, but Jesus sees us. And you just see the mercy of God right here in the very first verse. Well, then the disciples in verse 2, they're looking for answers. And verse 2 reads, And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind?

Now, quick note, enter the disciples. From now on in John's gospel, he spends most of his time with the disciples. Before this, he spent time with the crowds. We're now finding ourselves six months before he'll be crucified, and a shift has occurred where Jesus is teaching his disciples more than before. So now he's with his disciples.

And you know, as we've said many times in speaking of the Word of God, we have to ask, who am I in the story? Well, who are the disciples in the story? The disciples, rather than having compassion, they want a theological discussion. You know, some of God's people, they measure on discussions, but without much compassion. And I think the disciples are right in that category.

They're philosophizing. And they want to categorize this man. They want to put him in their little... They want to point their finger at him, and they want to categorize who he is. And their theology is that if you're sick, then somebody sinned.

And their theology was the kind that put them in kind of a fault-finding mission. And this was their religious DNA, by the way. This is how they thought. This is how Many people thought at that time. And the disciples saw this man as a problem to discuss and a theology to work out rather than a man to shine light on.

And a man to heal. Now, there are lots of examples of this in the Bible. Job's friends were like this. They were constantly on Job. If you would just be honest with us and tell us how you sinned, this would all be taken care of.

And Job couldn't find the answer that way. And when we get to the end of the book of Job, we find out that they were totally wrong about the whole matter. Their theology is bad things don't happen to good people. That's their theology. And the disciples had been affected by the doctrine of the Pharisees.

You know, all of us, all of us are like the disciples. We are manifestations of the philosophies of our day. And the philosophy of that day, and it's very much like it is today, you get what you deserve. Your good and good things happen, your bad and bad things happen. Now there is a truth to that, but it's not the whole truth.

And so Jesus addresses, by the way, he addressed this in Luke 13 as well. Some Galileans had just a terrible experience of suffering at the hands of Pilate. Pilate mingled their blood with his sacrifices, and Jesus was asked if they were worse sinners than the other Galileans who were spared. So you had Galileans who were spared, and you had Galileans who were murdered, and their blood was mixed in pilot sacrifices. So you know, he was asked, were they worse?

Who were the worst sinners? And Jesus says, I tell you, no, they weren't worse sinners. But unless you repent, you will likewise perish. So then Jesus gives another example in Luke 13, it's a time when the Tower of Siloam fell down and killed 18 people. And Jesus said, do you think these 18 people were worse sinners than everybody else in Jerusalem and Jesus answers his own question he says I tell you no but unless you repent you will likewise perish so this was the belief This was a Jewish version of karma.

By the way, karma isn't just an Eastern religion category of belief about suffering. It's a category that many people hold and or it might be related to the whole idea of reincarnation. You know, reincarnation was another idea that was apparently embraced during this time. You know, reincarnation is the idea that you come back as someone based on your previous life. That's what reincarnation is.

And you know Christ one time asked his disciples, who do you say that I am? And remember what the disciples replied with? They said, well some say John the Baptist Others say Elijah and others say Jeremiah That's reincarnation right these people have come back So there are these this Jewish version of karma this This Jewish version of reincarnation was in play here. And reincarnation would tell you, if you're really bad in this life, you might come back as a worm in the next life. You might come back as a worm in the next life.

You might come back as a mosquito and have a really short life and get smashed. What you are in this life is gonna determine what's gonna happen to you when you're born into the next life. Well, that's Eastern religion. This whole idea of heredity was also embedded. The rabbis were convinced that parents' sins were passed down to their children.

And It really came from a misinterpretation of Exodus 20 verse 5 where God says, I'm a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. Now, they were misinterpreting Exodus 20. They were taking it to a place that it was never meant to take. Because It's not your heredity that causes your judgment. It's not what your parents did.

It's what you do. That's really what the Bible is clear. So, you know, also this whole matter of generational curses, you've heard this, that, you know, there are things that happened in the past that now these generational curses are upon you I think these ideas, you know are very common even in the Christian community and they're fraudulent they're not right and and Jesus is dealing with this and So They're dealing with suffering now. I'm just gonna give you a really quick summary This is not comprehensive but I'd like to just try to deliver it as quickly as I can of what the Bible actually teaches. Like the Bible makes it clear that number one, suffering can come from bad choices.

The book of Proverbs makes this clear. The fool experiences really hard providences. You eat way too much sugar, you may become a diabetic. If you drink and get drunk while you drive you might get in a wreck and kill yourself or other people. So bad choices can cause suffering.

Secondly, suffering can result from God's chastisement for sin. And there are actually many examples of this in the Bible. Miriam's leprosy, Uzziah's death, Uzzah touching the ark in 2 Samuel chapter 12, David's son died because of his sin. In Acts chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphira died because of their sin. So God does punish sin directly, but all maladies don't receive that exact same punishment.

You know, you have healthy sinners and you have sick saints. That's what you get in this world. Sometimes the wicked prosper. Proverbs makes that very clear. Ecclesiastes makes it very clear that difficult things happen to everybody, regardless of their righteousness.

Thirdly, a suffering comes from sinful choices that other people make. Joseph is a prime example of this. He was the recipient of what his brothers did to him. And his suffering came from the sins of others. And then fourthly, sin can be completely disconnected from bad choices and from God's chastisement and from the sins of others.

And this man born blind is an example of this. Paul also had what he called his thorn in the flesh. And this is the same category. Job is in the very same category. God was doing something greater than what anybody could conceive of in all of these situations.

And now I think what's obvious is that, finally, all sickness and disability is the result of Adam's sin in the fall. Maladies are realities because of the fall. So all sickness is related to the fall, but all sickness is not as a result of particular sins that you commit. So that's sort of a quick overview. But the disciples want to know the cause, but Jesus wants them to know the purpose.

He wants them to know the purpose. And I think that's one of the most important things here. The disciples are on a finger pointing mission and Jesus is on a healing mission. The disciples want the gory details and Jesus is teaching them about the glory details of what this implies. And you know when Jesus gets a hold of your life, he changes your perspective and everything becomes an opportunity for his glory.

No matter how gory it is, His glory becomes your chief interest. And, you know, Jesus' people don't stop at lamentation. They don't stop with condemnation and judgment. They don't get lost in their disappointments and their flaws. They look for the glory of God.

And I think that's so important for us to recognize it because that's exactly what Jesus is teaching his disciples And all the disciples of Jesus need to be instructed of this from time to time And Jesus Answers that it was God Who made him blind for a purpose verse 3 Jesus answered neither this man Nor his parents sinned but that the works of God should be revealed in him So Jesus just unraveled their whole theological system of karma and reincarnation and the good get the good and the bad get the bad. He's just decimated their theological system because Jesus is light so that the works of God would be revealed in him. And so The purpose of the blindness is the glory of God. This sickness was for the glory of God. Birth defects, cancer, genetic irregularities are Theaters for God's glory.

They are there to show how God works. How does God work in a blind person? How does God work in a person with spina bifida? How does God work in a person who is crippled or lame or deaf? How does God work?

All of these are theaters for how God works and how God works through all the people who are around. And so no matter What has happened to you as a result of the genetic code or what somebody did to you? It's a theater to show how God works through that situation. Now God willed this man to be born blind so that he would be glorified. I heard somebody say, God wrecked this man's life so that he would show God's glory and beauty.

You know, Jesus is saying that these disabilities had meaning, that lameness and blindness and bleeding and cancer and Down syndrome and cerebral palsy and everything has a purpose. It was Victor Frankl who said, despair is suffering without meaning. And here Jesus rescues us from that. He's going to rescue you from your suffering without meaning. He's going to give you meaning to your suffering.

So that you can know how to walk through it. Here's a lesson from this situation. God has a different plan for your life than you do. You know, God shatters your dreams, and He shatters your small dreams to make room for His greater glory. And when God shatters your dreams, He puts you in a position where all you have left is God and His grace.

You know, our dreams are usually about our prosperity and about our success. But it's so clear that God wants more in our lives than such small dreams. He doesn't want us to be limited and pinched and truncated into the box of our dreams. And so he wants to inject his grace into every shattered thing. And so he revolutionizes your life, but he often does it through hardship, through reversals and disappointments and things you never dreamed could happen to you.

And that's why Job, when he lost everything in Job chapter 2 verses 6 through 10, He says, shall we receive good from the Lord and not evil? You remember in Ecclesiastes chapter seven verse 13, he tells us that God makes some things crooked and he makes the day of prosperity And he makes the day of prosperity and he makes the day of disaster. But nothing can straighten what God has made crooked. But he makes things crooked for a purpose. This is the sovereignty of God.

And so God creates some people with what we would call genetic anomalies, but they're not really anomalies at all to God. They're for the sake of his own glory. And I think it's clear they're for the sake of so many other things, you know, hundreds of other ways to demonstrate His glory. It doesn't just show us the need of His grace in our own brokenness, but when you have when you have blind people or lame people or other kinds of disabled people around, They remind us of our own inherent disabilities. And, you know, when we see them with their limitations, we can see ourselves in a new, more honest way.

And This is what Michael Beetz says in his book, Disability and the Gospel. God creates some people with genetic anomalies, not only for the sake of his own glory, but also to show us our own brokenness and our need of his grace. So you think of how many people are affected when there is a blind person or a crippled person. Lots of conversations take place like in this very chapter and this is the way God works. He has a better plan for your life so he wrecks your vision of your designer life to make way for His glory because His design is for His glory.

And as it turns out, His glory is a billion times more glorious than our own vision for our glory. He has something better for us so he shatters what you think is so good. And so Jesus is saying that God Himself made this man blind so that the works of God would be shown. The Bible makes it very clear that God knits children together in their mother's wombs, and He is the governor of every characteristic of every person who's ever born through the genetic code that he embedded in them. He has governed the construction of every human being.

And did he just permit it Or did he ordain it? And did God just sort of discover the blindness and then move around to try to do something about it? No, that's open theism. But God, it was God who made this man blind for a purpose. God permanently disabled Jacob and he put his finger on his hip joint, his hip socket, and then he renamed him Israel.

And God left him wounded for the rest of his life as a testimony of his spiritual brokenness And God's faithfulness to him, you know when God told Moses to go to Egypt and he said I am who sent you Moses subjected he gave him four objections and then and then God says to him who made man's mouth Who makes him mute or deaf or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? It was God who did it. And that's why David in Psalm 139 verse 13, he was praising God and he said, You formed my inward parts. You knit me together in my mother's womb.

I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works." God's design is a good design, Which is why, you know, Paul in Romans 828 says that God works all things together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. So every physical problem is not connected to a spiritual problem. Some are, but they aren't always. And Jesus is speaking of the sovereignty of God and His purposes in the construction of this man's body.

And that these things have been ordained and originated of God. You know, God takes us in directions we never planned or ever wanted to plan. You know, C.S. Lewis, he illustrates this in his book, Mere Christianity. He speaks of the fact that God's building a different kind of house than we have designed.

And he says this, imagine yourself as a living house. So imagine yourself as a house. So you're a house. That's what Lewis is trying to get us to think about. God comes in to rebuild that house.

At first, perhaps, you can understand what He's doing. He's getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on. You knew those jobs needed doing, so you're not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and doesn't seem to make any sense. What on earth is he up to?

The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of. Throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage. But he's building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.

I think that's a good illustration for what God is doing with us. We have these dreams that He shatters for His own glory, because He's doing something greater than our own dreams. Now, You know, we live in a world where everybody wants to be so healthy, and this health revolution is like nothing at least the world has seen since I've been alive now. But there's this idea that, you know, having a healthy life is the ultimate goal. You know, but, you know, is having a healthy life or a healthy body better than having Jesus?

We live in a world where people think that having a healthy body is the greatest good, but health isn't the greatest good. And God doesn't always heal either. So health definitely is not the greatest good, because God doesn't always heal. He's working all things after the counsel of his will. And just like Job said, shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?

Amos says that in time of disaster, If calamity occurs in the city, has it, has not the Lord done it? And so, when we have disabilities or troubles, then what we normally do is feel sorry for ourselves then rather than to look for the glory of God in it. Now this is very real for everybody in our world. We have a world that is so highly focused on appearance and body image and things like that. But what about body image and the sovereignty of God?

You have a certain body type, a certain shape, and you might think, my nose is too long, my hair is too thin or I don't have any hair, what happened to me? My hair is too curly, I'm too black, I'm too blonde, I'm too brown, I'm too big, I'm too tall, I'm too short, you know, I'm chunky, you know, am I... If I'm going to be anything in this world, then I need to look differently, you know, that's sort of how everybody thinks. You have an entire fashion and nutrition industry that's focused on this. And, but, you know, why did God make you the way He made you?

Well, so in this story, the disciples are asking what caused the blindness, but Jesus wants them to know the purpose of the blindness. And so That's Jesus' proposition here. Now, the whole rest of the chapter is about people discussing and debating what happened. And so we'll get to that later. But let's be really clear.

Overvaluing your health can cause you to miss the kingdom of God. And if you say, I'd rather have my eyesight than anything, then you'll miss everything. And Overvaluing your health can cause you to miss the kingdom of God. And if you say, I'd rather have my eyesight than anything, then you'll miss everything. And overvaluing your health can cause you to be blind to the goodness of God.

And you might say, I'd rather have a different body or my health than the presence of God and then you'll miss everything. So God is the one who calls us out of our own perspectives about trouble and suffering. And that's why James says, count it all joy when you encounter various trials for the testing of your faith produces patience and David says I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. So there's just these first just few verses in John chapter 9 but they should lead us to understand the troubles in this world and recognize why they're here. They are here so that the works of God would be demonstrated.

And that means that you're never at a dead end. You're never in a box canyon. You'll always know what to do. It doesn't matter what happens to you. It doesn't matter what you have become or what you're like, your body type, your relationships, you can always glorify God in what he's given to you.

So, let's pray. Lord, Lord, we do pray for the health of our children. We do pray for the prosperity of our people in this church, that you would prosper them mightily. But, oh Lord, that you would keep us from thinking that our portion is in this world. But that you would show us how we would glorify you in everything, whether in adversity or pleasantness, whether in health or wealth, whether in disability or whether in some definition of completeness, but Lord, that you would show us that all things are for your works to be manifested.

And I pray that in this church, In my heart, in my family, and in all of us as we exist in this town, that we would seek to do your works as long as we're alive, as Jesus said, as long as it is called the day. Amen.