John 9:1-6
ICE BREAKER
Imagine a portrait of yourself that reveals the effects of every one of your daily sins.
The result would be that you can no longer be even slightly blind about your sin.
Imagining a portrait like this addresses our tendency to look good on the outside while on the inside something bad is going on.
We can be blind.
We can fool ourselves into thinking it’s not a problem.
Share an example from your life when you caught yourself too focused on your outer appearance rather than your innermost being.
Share what motivates you to do that.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- We need to be very suspicious of ourselves.
Our flesh is sneaky and stubborn. We all drift into blindness.
Satan’s goal is to get us to sin but his higher goal is for us to become blind to our sin.
We simply must have awareness of our tendencies to be blind.
How do we know if we are growing in awareness?
We can begin by asking good questions like these:
…when was the last time you prayed for the Spirit to examine your life?
…felt deep regret for ongoing behavior?
…apologized?
…confessed to someone?
…asked for honest feedback without responding?
…got unasked for feedback and took it in?Share one of your answers with the group and share with the group where the Spirit is nudging you to take a step toward “seeing” your own blindness.
It takes work and willingness to challenge our blindness!
- Remember, Christ is not out to get you or to give you feedback just to give you a hard time. Your heart is at stake here and He knows it. He must do surgery or the disease will kill you. He hates your sin because it does harm to you and to your relationship with Him. With this in mind, share with the group your resistance to seeing your sin. What might your resistance be telling you that you are afraid of? What might you be trying to gain through your resistance(avoiding shame, maintaining independence or pride, keeping your grip on performing well to gain significance etc)? Simply sharing your answers to these questions within your safe community reduces your blindness. We humble ourselves together and receive His grace. Group leaders: consider praying together for one another and have each person invite Jesus into this resistance to soften it.
- Ask God to show you where you are blind to your sin. Use the Word, some quiet time to think about it. Ask someone around you for feedback.
- Is Jesus “Sir” or Lord to you?
We know He is Lord to us by our worship.
To discern whether He is sir or Lord we reflect on how we think about Sunday worship and how we live the rest of the week?
NOTES AND QUOTES
Sin is a prison, it is lineage, and sin is blindness.
The passage today flows as follows:
a question, a miracle, a dispute and then two lessons.
Here’s the question the Pharisees asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?”.
Whenever there is a miracle we need to ask who the miracle was for.
Today’s miracle was for the Pharisees. Christ, in His compassion, wanted to reveal to them their blindness.
This miracle is also for us for the same reason.
After the miracle the dispute broke out.
They argued over whether this man who could see was the blind man or not.
This dispute led to another dispute about Jesus.
Is Jesus a sinner who just broke the Sabbath traditions or is He from God?
The Pharisees said anyone that agrees with Jesus is cast out of the community of the synagogue.
Since the man’s parents were afraid of this they deflected answering the question and told them to ask their son.
So, Pharisees go to the healed man a second time.
They tell him that they know Jesus is a sinner.
The healed man says to them that they are the ones who know all about God yet they do not know where Jesus comes from.
He is challenging them. He is not giving in to fear as his parents did.
The man says to them, “If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.”.
So, they cast this man out.
Jesus, knowing the man was cast out of fellowship within the synagogue, found the man and asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
The man addresses Jesus as sir but then later as Lord.
Is Jesus sir or Lord to you?
We know He is Lord to us by our worship.
What do we think about Sunday worship and how do we live the rest of the week?
Jesus’ final point is: if you were blind you would have no guilt; but now that you say, “We see”, your guilt remains.
Jesus is talking about their awareness of their blindness.
Jesus is saying that they don’t even know that they are blind so He says He can’t reach you.
How aware are we of our sin?
Satan wants us to sin. His higher goal is for us to become blind to our sin.
One of Satan’s greatest goals is to lure us into self-deceit, thereby throwing a blinding
cloak over patterns of sin that dominate our life. Instead of awareness, contrition,
and repentance we embody blindness, judgmentalness, and false moral confidence.
Our moral scrutiny constantly judges others while our inner life of sin goes unexamined
and grows unrecognized.
Once in this state a life of selfishness and hurting people around us opens up like a
clear highway to our own ambitions.
What we see as the road to heaven is in reality the road to destruction.
Even our good acts, though publicly lauded, only add to our blindness.
The road to Jesus begins and remains only with personal examination by the word,
Spirit, and people of God.
Only in constantly owning our own blindness can He begin to remove it, then sight is given, the prison is open, and we are life-giving members of the family of God.
