 This video is part of a study series titled Biblical Salvation Settled Wonsome for All. Please see the playlist link in the video description. Hello again and welcome back to the study. So in this video we're going to be looking at John chapter 9. So this will probably be shorter than some other videos on John that I've done and others that I will intend to do because there aren't as many themes to pick up here. There are still some really interesting things that we need to pick out from this chapter that we've not really picked up before in John. So the overall themes are there's the man born blind who was healed and then we will need to distinguish between his physical healing and the moment he actually believed on Christ. And we'll be looking at the Pharisees rather persistent questioning. I mean they ask him, they question him twice because they weren't satisfied the first time and they question his parents as well. And so we sort of see the blindness of the Pharisees there so I say that to some degree of irony because towards the end of the chapter Jesus actually says you're not blind and so you're in more sin in a way. So there's some really interesting things going on there. So starting John chapter 9 verse 1 to 5. And as Jesus passed by he saw a man which was blind from his birth and his disciples asked him saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, neither has this man sinned nor his parents but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me. While it is day, the night comes when no man can work. As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world. So introducing this chapter then Jesus' disciples assume that this man was born blind on account of a sin that either he or his parents did. And this is not an unreasonable view back in John chapter 5. The lame man at the pool of Bethesda was told to sin no more unless a worse thing could come upon him. So although it's not entirely clear this could imply that some sin was possibly the underlying cause of him becoming lame. We also have Old Testament legal principles that reveal that the Lord may bring about sickness and infirmities amongst his own people because of their sins and disobedience. And a good go-to example would be Deuteronomy 28 verses 58 to 61 but there are plenty more examples than that. Their question is slightly flawed though because they ask who did sin, did this man sin, did he sin himself? But why would that then cause him to be born blind? That would only be causing him to become blind. So the question is a little bit flawed showing that the disciples didn't really fully understand exactly how that works. So Jesus negates this assumption instead declaring that this man's healing was foreknown that God's works should be made known or made manifest rather. Jesus came to do the works of God to show that he is the light of the world. So although this particular section isn't dealing with salvation specifically we have seen Jesus being described or describing himself as the light in regards to salvation in other passages previously in John's Gospel multiple times. From this chapter we will be able to see that healing is a picture of our salvation and Jesus performing all of these miracles is to show us that he is the Christ so that we can tell him apart from false messiahs. But we won't delve too deeply into that for this video because I think there are other passages in John 10 and John 11 where that would come out a lot better from those chapters where Jesus works to demonstrate who he is. So I'm going to park that for now and I'm going to revisit that later in the series. So between verses 6 to 12 that's why Jesus heals the man that was born blind. I haven't put those verses on the screen because it's just narrating the story. There's no doctrine that we need to fish out of that bit. So from verses 13 to 16 they brought to the Pharisees him that was after time blind and it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. Then again the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. He said on to them, he put clay upon my eyes and I washed and do see. Therefore said some of the Pharisees, this man is not of God because he keeps not the Sabbath day. Others said how can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them. So the goings on here, they're not new to John's gospel. We've seen a repeat of this sort of behavior before. Back in John chapter 5 Jesus did a miracle on the Sabbath day much to the annoyance of some Jews. That was the lame man at the pool of Bethesda and he was also questioned about who did the healing at the time when he was asked he did not initially know who it was that did it. In the latter half of John 7 there was division among the Jews concerning whether Jesus is the Christ and the Pharisees were trying to catch him. And multiple times such as in John 6 and John 8 the Jews did not believe concerning him and we will see this happen again in just a few verses as with John 8 we can see their spiritual blindness just continuing to manifest in this chapter. So there's really nothing new here. It's a lot of the same thing that's already been going on in Jesus' exchanges with the Jews and Pharisees in previous chapters of John. Now back in the John 5 study we dealt with the issue of why Jesus did these miracles on the Sabbath day even though he was supposed to fulfill Old Testament law. So I'm only going to summarize it here. We're not going to delve too deeply into this but it does require a more holistic understanding of the whole Bible to explain it properly. Considering the whole Bible holistically then we rest on the Sabbath day while Jesus did the most important work at the cross and at the time when he was on the cross the Jews were resting at Passover. So Jesus does the work for our salvation while we rest. Hence why salvation is by grace through faith not of works. So it does therefore make sense why Jesus could do the work of God the Father on the Sabbath day whereas we could know. And as with the accusations in John 5 in a more appropriate sense of the word Jesus hasn't even done any significant work in this regard. He wasn't toiling away at the field. He wasn't scrubbing the blindness. He rubbed mud on the blind man's eyes but what actual work or toil did he really do? So notwithstanding that Jesus could work on the Sabbath day because his father works these are baseless accusations anyway. We're accusing him of working on the Sabbath day but what work did he actually do over and above what people already have to do on the Sabbath day anyway. So looking at where the Pharisees questioned him and then they reasoned among themselves we saw back in John 8 that Jesus was very scathing towards the Pharisees seemingly as if they were beyond any hope of being saved and Jesus even called them the children of the devil. So is it possible that some are a bit skeptical actually about Jesus being a sinner and that maybe he could do miracles? Well the Pharisees are a group of people so whenever you see that Jesus spoke with the Pharisees it's not necessarily the same ones every single time that are present in every encounter. You just have to be mindful of that that Jesus is talking to a group of people. Crucially notice among their disputing that they're not really technically speaking arguing about whether Jesus is the Son of God. Rather they are arguing about whether Jesus could have done such a miracle because they considered him a sinner and they seem quite sure about the fact that they think Jesus is a sinner so then they can't really understand how he could do these miracles. We will see as we progress in this chapter that the Pharisees are very confused about the happenings here. They are generally quite sure among themselves that Jesus is a sinner but they're also unable to refute the miracles that are taking place so their questioning process becomes very frustrating throughout this chapter. It's frustrating for the people being questioned. It's frustrating for us to have to read them questioning them and it really will only further confirm what Jesus already said about them in John chapter 8 anyway. Moving further into the chapter then between verses 18 and 23 but the Jews did not believe concerning him that he had been blind and received his sight until they called the parents of him that had received his sight and they asked him saying is this your son who you say was born blind how then does he now see his parents answered them and said we know that this is our son and that he was born blind but by what means he now sees we know not or who has opened his eyes we know not he is of age ask him he shall speak for himself these words spoke his parents because they feared the Jews for the Jews had agreed already that if any man did confess that he was Christ he should be put out of the synagogue therefore said his parents he is of age ask him so they're already not satisfied with the healed man's answer because they're so sure among themselves that Jesus is a sinner and couldn't possibly have done these miracles and yet this healing was indisputable and then when they question his parents they more or less get the same answer he was blind and now he sees we don't really know how but that's what happened we will look at the Pharisees persistent questioning in a little while but I want to focus on the parents first so the passage does not clearly indicate whether his parents did or not believe on Christ we don't really know enough about them we won't get enough narration about them during or after this event the threat of being put out of the synagogue was a count of anyone who confesses Christ and they feared the Jews so it's possible that either and again we don't know all of this from the story anyway but they did not believe on Christ and were more concerned about not being cast out of the synagogue than whether he really did heal their son being too afraid to have faith in Christ all they knew that the healing was genuine and were inclined to believe it but were too afraid to confess it and avoided the responsibility of directly answering for their son we don't really know enough about here and we don't find out about them later after this story either so we'll pick up on this theme though about about fear here now in the western world or in the Anglo sphere we're not really that accompanied to the danger of being too afraid to believe in or confess Christ maybe some people could be a bit embarrassed about it but living in fear about it though were not fully accustomed to that really but to some people in some parts of history and in some parts of the world today this has been a genuine concern and so we'll look at whether fear can be an obstacle to believing on Christ we'll spend some time exploring this so in some parts of the world and indeed some parts of history professing Christianity is or was extremely dangerous and because of that it may be one of these scenarios so I came up with I couldn't really think of three overarching scenarios maybe you could think of more but the three scenarios that I thought of well a out of fear somebody could believe on Christ but never have the boldness to confess it publicly that that's a possible one there another possible one is that out of fear someone may not be willing to hear the gospel or search for the path to eternal life that he might be saved and so he will never believe on to eternal life whereas if that fear wasn't there maybe that person could have been low hanging fruit for getting saved perhaps and the third scenario is that out of fear someone may never let go of their false gospel or their false belief even if they are unable to actually refute the truth and maybe that their conscience is pricked somehow but they won't let go of what they currently believe and I've had this when I evangelize that you show people stuff from the Bible and they're unable to refute it they can't even say that you're wrong but they just come out with well I'll stick to what I was brought up with but maybe that might not be fear that might be something else but very similar things there people are unable to let go of what they currently believe for some reason now we can't be sure which category applies to the healed man's parents probably not the third one maybe the first scenario or the second one but let's explore fear as an obstacle to salvation we're going to digress from John 9 a little bit to try and explore this point so firstly while it might seem obvious we must understand that fear is not a substitute for the gospel in getting saved no one's going to be able to use fear as a substitute on judgment day ok a really good qualifier for this the first verse that came to my mind was Revelation 21 8 and it starts off saying but the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and hormones and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death and it's interesting that it puts fearful first there now if you're not very well learned in the bible and you read this verse for the first time this may seem like it's been very unfair we typically see fear as an involuntary emotion concerning a situation which is really outside of our own control and not necessarily our fault like fear of being killed fear of being tortured fear of losing something or someone we don't really see those as a sin because it seems like there's something that's done to us it's not necessarily our fault and actually interestingly in the bible there are some verses that command us to fear imposing fear on us so like fear your father and mother in Leviticus 19 3 in Leviticus 19 14 and actually there's hundreds there's loads of verses in the bible that talk about fearing the lord fear the judgments of the mosaic law such as Deuteronomy 13 11 17 13 19 20 and fear in relation to your or somebody else's salvation like Romans 11 20 1st Corinthians 2 3 2nd Corinthians 11 3 Philippians 2 12 1 Peter 3 15 Jude 1 23 and on and on it goes really but although there are plenty of verses where God's people are told not to fear this or not fear that or not fear the other it's not described as a sin in the conventional sense such as drunkenness or adultery so consider the consider the order that this list starts in Revelation 21 8 1st it says the fearful 2nd it says the unbelieving and then following that all the abominable list of sins there the abominable murderers, hormone crescent and so on and so forth now there are other verses about unbelief which also tie it with condemnation such as John 3 18 1 John 5 10 but typically we associate the sins of the flesh as the actual reason for the condemnation of hell for example because of passages such as these like in 1 Corinthians 6 9 to 10 it lists these lists of sins and it says the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God Matthew 5 29 Jesus said if your right hand defends pluck it out and cast it from you for it's more profitable that one of your members perish and not that your whole body should be cast into hell in Galatians 5 19 to 21 it's very much parallel with the Corinthians reading that the works of the flesh are manifest and then he lists all of these sins and you'll notice that these verses they don't really address unbelief or fear so it's not a conventional sin in that same regard it's not listed with all of the sins of the flesh so fundamentally we understand from the Bible that it is the sins themselves that warrant our condemnation because we failed the the righteous Lord of God and there is no Old Testament law that says you should never fear anything or you know this punishment applies to you or something like that in theory one could not believe on Christ but still have life if one never sinned this would obviously apply to stillborn so unbelief may not be the technical reason why somebody's condemned but because God sent his son to savers if we believe not the son we are essentially declining God's offer to savers and we make him a liar so then we see why the unbelieving will have their parts in the second death because they will die in their sins so the unbelieving it's not the unbelief itself that is the condemnation in terms of the reason why someone's condemned is that you've declined the offer to be saved and so it then makes perfect sense why that would be listed there and then if our reason for unbelief is because of fear then we can then see why the fearful will have their parts in the second death that fear comes from a lack of faith if people have no faith or confidence in what Christ accomplished or what Christ said he would fulfill or you know if they do not believe Christ to fulfill what he said he would fulfill of course they will fear and so then it's no accident or mistake that Revelation 21 8 puts in unbelief and fear in reverse order because fear leads to unbelief and unbelief leads to these unresolved sins for which the wages of death must be paid and secondly what kinds of situations would make people fearful about confessing to Christ well we already saw in the example in John chapter 9 that the Jews would cast them out of the synagogue and we see other verses in the Bible like John 7 13 talk about how no man would speak openly of Christ for fear of the Jews and so at the time of the Gospels and at the time of Acts it was predominantly fear of the Jews stoning them to death or casting them out of the synagogue that was the main fear that those early Christians would have faced and then elsewhere in the Bible we have passages like John 15 18 to 20 where Jesus said you will be hated of this world for my namesake you will be persecuted and in Revelation 2 9 to 11 Jesus recognized the tribulation that the Church of Smyrna had been going through we don't necessarily know all of that but he does then again mention the Jews there and so there may have been some persecution going on there now again as I've mentioned it was the fear of the Jews at the time of Christ and the time of the apostles but later on as history progressed throughout history certain places and times have been very dangerous for Christians and just three obvious examples in European history when most political powers were subject to the Roman Catholic Church we have repressive socialist countries such as North Korea so I meant to say socialist there and we have repressive conservative Islamic countries particularly during wartime or if controlled by ISIS so let's explore our scenarios then of different examples of people fearing that might be a hindrance to the gospel well let's just say scenario one someone might believe the gospel but may never confess it publicly due to fear now typically when we read the Bible we see confession as being intertwined with our belief that they're not typically separable so we have things like Romans 10 9 10 if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead you shall be saved for with the heart man believes onto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made onto salvation other verses like Matthew 10 32 to 33 Jesus tells his disciples when he sends them out whosoever shall confess me before men him will I confess before my father which is in heaven whosoever shall deny me before men him will I deny and then you have Luke 6 45 a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good an evil man evil treasure and out you know the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks so what we speak is reflective of what we believe so belief without confession is problematic in most cases because it does raise questions about the genuineness of somebody's belief if they won't confess it but confession for salvation is more directed towards men whereas the belief is more directed towards God so if there is no reason to publicly not confess Christ like somebody here in comfortable England I might naturally assume then that if somebody won't confess Christ that they probably don't believe him but it is easy to make these judgments when we don't live in a situation where we could be killed or tortured or thrown in a labour camp for publicly confessing Christ and moreover you know throughout John's Gospel that we studied up to now in this series we have seen that belief is emphasised frequently as the prerequisite for eternal life whereas confession doesn't really come up a lot all of the time and moreover as well later in John's Gospel we will actually have tangible examples of people who believed on Christ but were too afraid to publicly confess it so John 12 42 to 43 is a good example that among the chief rulers also many believed on him but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him unless they should be put out of the synagogue for they love the praise of men more than the praise of God another example is John 13 37 to 38 where Jesus is talking to Peter and Peter wonders why can I not follow you now I lay down my life for your sake but then Jesus knew that Peter wouldn't really ever fulfil that he would deny Christ three times so in the John 12 case it is difficult to tell exactly whether they did actually believe on him genuinely or whether it was a false vain belief it wasn't even necessarily apparent that they were in danger of being killed for the cause of Christ just that they'd be put out of the synagogue which to me doesn't seem like that big of a deal really perhaps it was to them and so verse 43 does seem to as well which says they love the praise of men that that does make their faith look fake but notwithstanding though typically when the narrator is speaking so in this case John the narrator is writing we generally assume that the narrator uses appropriate language so John didn't write many could not refute his words but dot dot dot or many knew he spoke the truth but dot dot dot he said they believed on him dot dot dot so we might then assume that their belief was genuine because of John's specific choice of words there and in Peter's case we know that he did genuinely believe on Christ but he was too afraid to confess Christ leading up to the crucifixion and when we looked at that verse in the previous slide about denial it's important just to point out that Peter only denied knowing him he didn't actually say he didn't actually deny that Jesus is the Christ so hopefully when I get to John 30 maybe we can explore Peter's denial in a bit in a bit more detail and so I would say that generally you know we would associate confession with salvation so if you ask somebody whether they believe the gospel and they tell you no well by default you're probably going to assume that they're not safe but it is important to understand that there are real scenarios in the world where people may genuinely believe Christ but being able to make a public confession is very dangerous for them we cannot necessarily dismiss their salvation on account of their lack of confession we can only really assume but we don't know and it's important to understand that confessing something publicly before men is not necessarily the same thing as denying Christ before and Peter was a good example of that he didn't say that Jesus wasn't the Christ he just said I don't know him so it's important that we understand that so you know examples like Christians living in North Korea, Christians living in dangerous Muslim countries or even former Muslim converts because some Muslim countries is actually not necessarily that dangerous to be a Christian it's dangerous for Muslims to convert to Christianity in some cases and you know you've got Christians in history who lived in Catholic or Protestant dominated countries where the church and the state were closely tied together so that's kind of scenario 1 address there scenario 2, someone won't hear the gospel or explore the truth out of fear of some kind of reprisal so this is a much more serious scenario than the first and argue perhaps one of the most plausible reasons as to why the fearful will have their part in the second death so for example when out doing door knocking evangelism Solwyn and you may encounter people who are very nervous about answering the door particularly during Covid and things in some cases you know they may be physically or mentally vulnerable and uneasy about door visitors and you can understand that in some cases some people are just naturally suspicious of any religious activity particularly because they're so used to the Jovas false witnesses and the Mormons I mean the Mormons taking place at their doorstep so then naturally on edge about door knocking evangelism anyway and sometimes people don't necessarily want to talk but you can maybe convince them to at least take a tract this just been my experience and sometimes the person may actually there may be a person who wants to talk and wants to hear but there might be a more dominant member of the family who may take over the situation and then close the door and you're preventing that person from then being able to hear and that person may actually want to have listened it's just that they don't necessarily have the boldness to stand up for themselves in that kind of scenario now again we've already had the aforementioned examples of people living in dangerous countries where it's not safe to profess Christ and yes it's possible that some people believe and don't publicly confess but it's possible that many people won't even be willing to hear the gospel or even search for it on the internet in some cases that might be dangerous for people to search it on the internet perhaps so the too fearful to even speak with Christians or associate with Christians or it may even be that the too fearful to leave their religion and be too fearful to seek out stuff online so again even in England or where I live it could be that you're dealing with a Muslim woman who's actually being subjected to a Muslim husband who isn't letting her listen to Christians or find out about it on the internet we don't know but they're examples of situations that could really be happening that stopping people from hearing the gospel and even finding out about it for themselves and in Matthew 10 Jesus warned his disciples that the gospel would set them at variance with the people around us and warned in essence not to trade eternal life or carnal life so I'm not going to read this in entire passage just because it's quite long but you know he says he that loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me and the were genuine concerns where Jews could have been afraid to confess Christ or believe on Christ or even find out about Christ because they were fearful of their relationships with other Jews and Jesus said he that finds his life shall lose it and he that loses life for my sake shall find it and so unfortunately in scenario too fear isn't a sufficient substitute to then not hear the gospel and find out about it and let's explore the third and final scenario someone may never let go of their false gospel declining the free gift so out of fear of accepting the free gift some people won't let go of work salvation or conditional security or maybe they believe in their religious organization such as the sole dispenser of salvation so people might say things like well it's better to have works and not need them for salvation than to not have works and need them for salvation or maybe some people might say there is no salvation outside of the catholic church or the Jehovah's Witnesses or whatever group it might be and so much like the second scenario these mentalities stem from fear and it's an obstacle to people believing the gospel people are too fearful to believe that salvation really is a free gift that's by faith without works that Jesus will hold on to the hand of those that are His they are too afraid to relinquish control and responsibility of their salvation onto Jesus they don't trust him to fulfill what he said he would fulfill people are too fearful to leave the catholic church or the Mormon church or the Jehovah's Witnesses because they've been so convinced that they must have their salvation dispensed by these organizations and so they cannot trust Christ to save them outside of that framework and in my honest opinion with this scenario the problem is that most Christians that the problem they have is the gospel is too good to be true the idea that Jesus' blood really does cover all sins and that our own obedience cannot contribute to our salvation it's too good for them to believe it the idea that Jesus will hold on to us for eternal life and never be plucked out it is too good for them to believe they out of fear they just won't trust Christ to fulfill what he said he would fulfill so with those scenarios in mind what shall we say then that we should not allow fear to obstruct our reception to the gospel we will not be able to use fear as an excuse for rejecting Christ rejecting the truth now obviously we can understand situations that render it too difficult for Christians to be public about their faith but that doesn't mean that they don't believe though but that being said fear and the affairs of this life cannot be used as an excuse for rejecting believing in Christ for salvation as we saw from Matthew 10 there are other similar passages and sayings that we should not allow the cares of this life to be obstacles to our eternal life and to me I think that's a more legitimate meaning of the phrase take up your cross and follow me just as Jesus was willing to go to the cross with his eyes set on the eternal purpose of what he was doing we should be dead to this life in a manner of speaking with our eyes set on eternal life and hopefully I can cover what that actually means to take up your cross because people always make that about them and their works but it's not really it's about the cares of eternal life not not putting your cares in this life so going back to the John 9 passage then verses 24 to 34 then again called they the man that was blind and said on to him give God the praise we know that man is a sinner he answered and said whether he be a sinner or no I know not one thing I know that whereas I was blind now I see then they said to him again what did he do to you how did he open your eyes he answered them I have told you already and you did not hear why would you hear it again will you also be his disciples then they reviled him and said you are his disciple but we are Moses's disciples we know that God spoke unto Moses as for this fellow we don't know from where he is the man answered and said on to them why hearing is a marvellous thing that you know not from where he is and yet he has opened my eyes now we know that God hears not sinners but if any man be a worshipper of God and does his will him he hears since the world began it was not heard that opens the eyes of one that was born blind if this man were not of God he could do nothing they answered and said on to him you were all together born in sins and do you teach us and they cast him out and so we see here the Pharisees questioned the man again having already questioned him once before and his parents also and he's wondering you didn't hear it the first time why do you ask again and so I just ask you hypothetically have you ever encountered the following types of conversations when disagreeing with somebody about Biblical doctrine you have an argument about doctrine with a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness and you point out something that's irrefutable to them but they persist on arguing about it or they start using what about or what about this and what about that to try and steer the argument away into something else but continue the argument nevertheless or maybe you've said something you want to cut out and just leave it there and say alright we're done here but then someone insists on laboring the argument it will be brief on this point but it's just something that I want to point out the Bible does not advise endless laboring and striving in debate as this behavior is typically associated with reprobates and heretics and so forth so like Romans 1 29 says that those who have a reprobate mind are full of debate Galatians 5 20 says that strife is at the work of the flesh and Isaiah 58 4 says in a negative context you strive you fast for striving debate and to smite with a fist of wickedness and the New Testament advises us like Titus 3 9 10 avoid foolish questions and contentions and unprofitable strivings because it's just it's vain and unprofitable if a man is a heretic after the first and second admonition just rejects it that's simple don't keep laboring the point 1 Timothy 6 20 Paul advises Timothy to avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called I think Christians who constantly go on these debates with atheists tend to just skip over that verse Revelation 22 11 says he that isn't just letting be unjust still he that is filthy letting be filthy still just letting be and let them leave it it's not worth constantly striving and debating because there's a certain point where you're never going to change their mind so we see from the narrative in John 9 that the Pharisees will continue to question because in truth they will never be satisfied with the answer of course we should absolutely give the Gospel to every creature but there is a certain cut off point where you have to end that argument because you start to realise that this person is simply not going to get saved it's just not going to happen so someone could for example someone could watch this entire series where we've gone through huge amounts of scripture we've resolved all of these conflicting passages they're still going to believe in work salvation they're still going to believe in conditional security and honestly I have no desire to continue arguing or debating with them they just they're never going to be satisfied with the answer there are Christians out there who have done these debate programs with the same atheists like the same person arguing with Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins again and frankly it's a waste of time there are plenty of better fish in the sea rather than bombarding the least likely people to be saved quite frankly those atheists are only there because they want to puff up their intellectual superiority in front of other atheists that's the only reason why they're there and so the Christians that do those debates well if you want to argue about creation and arguing about this that and the other you'd be much better off just doing like what I'm doing now just do a video in your own presentation let somebody hear it and then they can just hear or reject it without wasting your time arguing with a bunch of reprobates who aren't going to be saved quite frankly back to the passage then between verses 27 to 29 I briefly mentioned this earlier in the study that Jesus demonstrated his legitimacy through his works and miracles so these Pharisees claim to follow the acknowledge and acknowledge the teachings of Moses but they reject Christ so as Jesus himself claimed back in John 5 if you had believed Moses you would have believed me so likewise today just because people claim to be a disciple of Jesus that that doesn't necessarily make it true in verse 30 we see the healed man pointing out that what happened to him was a marvelous thing there's no reason for the Pharisees to be so enraged by this and it seems baffling to us really that there were many Jews and Pharisees who actually saw Jesus' miracles and couldn't even deny those works yet they hated and rejected Christ anyway so like the scribes in Mark 3 recognize that Jesus cast out devils but they accused him of doing it by the power of the devil rather than the power of the Holy Spirit and that's what it meant by blasphemy of the Holy Spirit there we will see in the next chapter John chapter 10 that Jews will want to stone him despite acknowledging the works that he did so it's not the works that they want stoning for they want to stone him for claiming to be the Christ essentially but when Moses did those miracles they acknowledge Moses as a man of God but they won't acknowledge Jesus when he's using those miracles to demonstrate and we'll pick up on that sometime later in the series and then between verses 31 to 33 where the man says we know that God doesn't hear sinners and so on sometimes people make a doctrinal issue out of that verse about how God will not hear sinners and then they make that a thing about salvation rather than say prayer in other words if you have sin in your life you're not safe because God won't hear you but this is not really a doctrinal statement by the narrator it's not something that like Paul wrote in an epistle for instance it's just a statement made by somebody who actually when we get further into the passage we'll see that this man doesn't actually know who Christ is yet and this is just something in response to the Pharisees that were trying to accuse Jesus of being a sinner despite the fact that he was able to do all these miracles so this here doesn't really have anything to do with whether a Christian is saved or not on account of having sin in their life that's just not really the purpose of what he's saying there and then to conclude this dialogue here in verse 34 we see the pride of the Pharisees here that they call the Christ who can do all these miracles a sinner but they themselves are above being taught by this healed man because they consider him to be born in sin and one particular reason why this is so prideful is that David himself said he was born in sin but presumably they will acknowledge David's authority in the Psalms so let's have a look at that Psalm and so Psalm 51 is a good cross reference here David will point out that he was born in sin as well so everybody is and we can also see here as well referring back to the issue of God here's not sin as well we can see the difference between David though being born in sin and does sin versus an unsaved sinner so because it's a long Psalm I'm not going to read it all out for the sake of time but we can see in Psalm 51 David prays for God's mercy towards his own sins he acknowledges that he was born in sin there in verse 6 he prays to be cleansed there in verse 7 not according to the fact that he turned from his sins and promised not to do it anymore but rather he appeals to God's loving kindness in verse 1 he was according to your loving kindness not according to me turning from all of my sins and yet at the end of this bit here in verse 13 he prays following his forgiveness that he will teach transgressors and convert sinners so he doesn't strictly speaking refer to himself as a sinner he doesn't say I am a sinner he just acknowledges that he has sinned and he needs cleaning from that sin but he wants sinners to be converted on to the Lord as according to the joy of his salvation being restored there so this is quite crucial though the issue with God here is not sinners yes but that's not talking about someone who saved and then does sin that person needs to be cleansed absolutely as we see in Psalm 51 but David is praying that so that other sinners people who aren't him shall be converted on to the Lord but it's all according to God's loving kindness not because of David's own obedience and turning and cleaning up his life so this is the folly of the Pharisees in John 9 that they think they are without sin and above reproof and more over the healed man is not even accusing them of sin but you can see that their conscience is provoked perhaps there and this folly continues today with works based gospels just simply won't trust in Christ alone to save them they think they are saved because they turned from their sins and they walk up rightly because grace through faith in Christ without works it is too good for them to believe it and more over it may even frustrate them and anger them that somebody like myself would even dare to claim it it's all that same mentality well you were born in sin and yet you teach us and so we're getting towards the end of the chapter then so verses 35 to 41 Jesus heard that they had cast him out and when he had found him he said on to him do you believe on the Son of God he answered and said who is he Lord that I might believe on him and Jesus said on to him you have both seen him and it is he that talks with you and he said Lord I believe and he worshipped him and Jesus said for judgment I am come into this world that they which see not might see and that they which seem might be made blind and some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words and said on to him are we blind also Jesus said on to them if you were blind you should have no sin but now you say we see therefore your sin remains so this chapter is coming to a fascinating end though the Pharisees had just cast him out of their kangaroo court some were still present to hear this conversation now as far as I'm aware looking at this bit where he actually believes on Christ between 35 to 38 as far as I know most Pentecostals don't proclaim what I'm about to mention but there are these fringe groups and individuals with Pentecostal sort of leanings if you like that tie in physical healing with salvation so they'll say that illness is a sign of a lack of faith and that casts doubt over a person's salvation that they might not even be saved if they still have sickness in their life moreover a lot of Christians may assume that whenever a healing took place in the Bible a salvation moment occurred at the same time but what reread in John chapter 9 well earlier Jesus said it's not this man's sin or his parents sin it's that the works of God should be made manifest and it's not until later in the chapter where the man actually knows that he's Christ and believes him so his healing didn't actually take place at the same time where he recognizes and believes on the Christ so yes physical healing is a picture of salvation but it's not explicit proof in of itself that a person was saved then and there they could have been saved before they could have been saved after that time they could have even not been saved at all technically speaking so just because a healing took place it doesn't prove that salvation happened at that exact same moment now this last bit here 30 to 30 to 41 this is important when you're dealing with other passages in the Bible because sometimes there's a passage that talks about blindness in a non literal manner and some people automatically assume that it's a salvation issue so I'll show you an example of a passage that people use for this so 2nd Peter chapter 1 I'm not going to read it all but you can see it on the screen there that this is a passage that people use with this issue of being blind so Peter introduces his second epistle with a list of virtues to add to one's faith so add to your faith this add then that and add virtue and glory and so on and so on and so forth and then in verse 9 he says that a person that lacks these things is blind and cannot see far off and has forgotten that he was perched from his old sins so I've heard somebody interpret this passage where they say that blind means unsaved that person's essentially either lost his salvation or is not saved because the fact that he's blind that that's what Peter means by blind in verse 9 but then what do we see here? he actually says that the Pharisees' sin remains specifically because they are not spiritually blind and in fact they would be better off if they were blind so I know I said at the beginning of this video that we'd be looking at the blindness of the Pharisees and you can understand in an aspect where they're seeing the miracles and they still think Jesus and they're asking questions again and again and again because they're not satisfied with the answer there is an aspect of blindness but then Jesus here is pointing out that they're not blind, they know full well what they're doing. They reject the Messiah it's that simple and they know full well that they're not under any excuse that they didn't know that this man really was the Christ. So then that's the end of our John 9 study I hope that that's helped you and at the time of publishing I'm working on the material for John chapter 10 which is a great chapter I love it so much it's got so many interesting themes to pick up and I'm excited to release a John 10 study soon so hopefully that'll be coming out very soon in a week or two maybe a couple of weeks but yeah thank you very much for your time