Seeing Beyond Limitations: The Blind Beggar's Transformation

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"Now, there are so many different things in life where we end up having the same kind of information, but a very different experience of that information. The same sports team can win and bring delight to some people and dread to other people. The same headline can lift some people and crush other people. The same politician can be celebrated and vilified. It's true for so much of life around us. One funny example of this is this famous picture. Have you ever seen this before? It's a picture that some people look at it, and they see like a young woman turning to the side. Other people look at it, and they see an older woman, and the first thing you see, like it's really hard to see it the other way." [00:03:38] (45 seconds)


"The disciples, they have two competing worldviews in this moment, the one they grew up with and the one that Jesus is actively infusing in them over the course of the three years that they walked together. The worldview of ancient Judaism had been twisted to include teaching that is nowhere in the Hebrew scriptures. They are debating whether or not this man is blind from birth because of his sin or his parents' sin because of one of those distortions. Obviously, the idea of generational sin or suffering happening from one generation to another wasn't brand new, but what could they mean by someone that deserved this type of thing in their life even though they were born with it?" [00:08:03] (43 seconds)


"People who mean to help can sometimes do harm when they bring an overly reductionistic view of healing, suffering, faith, hope to people in pain. For years, I actually worked with a worship leader who at one time was a dynamic and gifted worship leader. He lit up every room he walked into. His future seemed as bright as you could hope for. And one day, he was getting on the highway and the metered on-ramp was on, even though there was no traffic. And so he obeyed the lights and stopped, but a city truck came up behind him at full speed and didn't stop, hitting him. And the result was that he would spend the rest of his life as a quadriplegic." [00:13:10] (46 seconds)


"And I think that the tension that we live with in pursuit of God with Jesus is that God can remove suffering, but the faith in following Jesus is that even if he doesn't remove suffering yet, we trust that he eventually will. So every prayer is fully and finally satisfied in the new heavens, in the new earth, in eternity with God, that whatever God does in the immediate is just a foreshadow of what he will do in the ultimate. This man, he had probably given up all hope on ever seeing again. He had probably spent his life savings multiple times to try to get these random promises and people to bring healing to his life. But his hope for sight was gone." [00:14:39] (46 seconds)


"The neighbors had a vision of who this man was and what he had done and how they could experience him, and they couldn't reconcile it with what they were now experiencing. And so they said, is this not the man who used to sit and beg? Some said, it is he. Others said, no, but he is like him. And all the while he kept saying, I am the man. So they said to him, then how were your eyes opened? He answered, the man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and received my sight. They said to him, where is he? He said, I do not know." [00:16:45] (39 seconds)


"The neighbors, they delivered the man who had been healed to the Pharisees for examination. This is actually like a formal process in Jewish law. And after hearing the quick story of what happened, the Pharisees, these religious leaders say, the man is not from God for he does not keep the Sabbath. But others said, how can a man who is a sinner do such signs? And there was a division among them. So they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him since he has opened your eyes? He said, he is a prophet." [00:19:31] (34 seconds)


"The Pharisees later on in this passage who called Jesus a sinner, they're doing it because of some of these man-made rules, specifically rules around something called the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the day of rest for the Jewish people. And it was a really big deal. It was designed to help people restore their weekly rhythms and pace with God. But over time, the rules to help people keep the Sabbath got stricter and stricter. And they weren't like they were originally understood to prevent you from breaking the law. And then they began to be understood as the law." [00:20:35] (34 seconds)

"Now, I want to be very careful about how we look at these parents. They don't show up well, but they had to have been devastated with their son who had been on the streets likely for decades, blind from birth, and they had probably spent all they had before he left home trying to get healing for him, trying to make it sustainable. We don't know if they had other kids, what they did for a living, what extent they had gone to to get healing and help for their son. We are introduced to them when they have given up so much and they are in a place where they end up giving up their son." [00:22:23] (36 seconds)


"This beaming beggar whose parents are still rejecting him, still has no job prospects, still has no home address. He has this deep appreciation for Jesus that is only growing for the grace that he's received. In just a few verses, actually, Jesus will come looking for him when he's cast out and he will become a disciple of Jesus, trusting Jesus as his Lord, even with all these things still undone in his life. And so after this amazing and logical explanation for why the religious leaders on their own terms should consider Jesus as at least a prophet, they respond with a chief." [00:26:39] (40 seconds)


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