Do You Believe in the Son of Man?

Pastor Russell Lackey March 02, 2008

John 9:1-41

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" 36"Who is he, sir?" the man asked. "Tell me so that I may believe in him." 37Jesus said, "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you." 38Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him. 39Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind." 40Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, "What? Are we blind too?" 41Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”(9:35). It is just like Jesus to come out and ask the one question that matters the most. Most people examining this passage overlook this question. They are too busy focusing on secondary matters in the text. They focus on the judgmental attitudes of the disciples towards the man born blind. Their message: do not judge. Others see the Pharisees as an example of why organized religion is bad. They say the religious leaders were a bunch of hypocrites. What’s new? Religious leaders are hypocrites. But that is not the point of the passage. Others still look at these verses and say this man’s blindness is cause by God so that good would occur. The only problem is the Greek does not say this. Verse 3 literally says, “It is not that this man sinned nor his parents; let the works of God be displayed in him.” Nowhere does it say that this man was born blind so that the works of God could be displayed in him. Thus, this passage is not about morality, organized religion, or the source of suffering. Rather, it is about one simple question: Do you believe in the Son of Man? This is the question being asked of the man born blind, his parents, neighbors, the Pharisees, the world, and you and me.

Before we answer the question it is important to see how the man born blind answered. Most of us would think that after being healed he would easily say Jesus is the Son of Man. He doesn’t. When asked how he was healed, the man born blind said, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes” (9:11). Notice, he did not say the Lord healed me. Rather, the man Jesus healed me. At this point, Jesus is simply a man in the eyes of the man born blind.

After being questioned by the Pharisees, the man born blind said was a “prophet” (9:17). This of course did not sit well with the Pharisees and they questioned him again. This time the man said, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (9:30-32). I would love to have seen the Pharisees faces after that comment. Obviously they did not like it because they kicked the man out of the synagogue (9:33). It is at this point that Jesus finds the man and asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” To which the man replies, “Lord, I believe” (9:38).

How did the man go from seeing Jesus as a mere man to confessing him as the Son of Man? His faith matured through trials, not his healing.

Martin Luther knew that trails matured faith. Luther explains, “Trials teach you not only to know and understand but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God’s word is. Therefore the devil himself becomes the unwitting teacher of God’s word. The devil will afflict you and will make a real doctor of theology of you, and will teach you by his temptations to seek and to love God’s Word. For I myself, owe my papists many thanks for so beating, pressing, and frightening me through the devil’s raging that they have turned me into a fairly good theologian, driving me to a goal I should never have reach” (What Luther Says, Vol. 3, CPH, 1959, p. 1360).

Over against the man born blind are his neighbors, parents, and the Pharisees who doubted Jesus. Like the man, they have been privy to all that has happened. However, instead of being illumined by the light, they were blinded by the truth. Instead of believing in Jesus, they rejected him. What is pathetic, are the reasons given for doubting Jesus.

• The neighbor’s excuse was that the man who could see was not the same man “but one who looked liked him” (9:9). I guess he had a twin no one knew about.

• The Pharisees said Jesus had to be a sinner because “he healed on the Sabbath” (9:15-16). God forbid actual healing on the Sabbath.

• His parents feared the Jews and said, “We do not know how he was healed” (9:20-22). Yeah right!

• The Pharisees final argument, “We are disciples of Moses, but we do not know where he came from” (9:28-29). The law can never understand grace.

These are pathetic arguments. This should not surprise you. If you have ever been around people who deny Jesus, then you would know most of their theories are empty. Listen to a few of the theories used to deny the resurrection. I must warn you, educated people have come up with these theories.

1. The swoon theory suggests that Christ never actually died on the cross. Instead, He only passed out but was mistaken for dead. Christ then, according to this view, revived in the tomb. The problem with this view, Jesus was pierced in the side by a Roman soldier trained to kill. Even more, crucifixion was the cruelest form of execution ever imagined. People did not swoon from crucifixion.

2. Other skeptics have proposed the wrong tomb theory. This view holds that everyone went to the wrong tomb and thus proclaimed Christ as risen. I guess the disciples needed MapQuest.

3. A third proposal is the hallucination theory. This theory states that the apostles did not really see the resurrected Christ; instead, they only hallucinated and thought they saw the risen Lord. When was the last time 500 people had the same hallucination? Maybe at a political rally!

4. A final attempt to explain away the resurrection is the hypnotic theory. This highly speculative view suggests that the witnesses of Christ's post-resurrection appearances were all hypnotized. They did not actually see the risen Lord. Today, modern hypnotists deny this possibility. It would be nice to be able to pull off that trick. Look at my shiny watch and give me ten weeks of vacation.

These theories make you think twice about education. The point, of course, is that even the brightest people come up with pathetic theories so that they do not have to deal with God.

In his book, The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis illustrates this point by telling how the land Narnia was created by Aslan (a lion who is meant to represent Christ). Aslan sings it into being. But there is one, Uncle Andrew, who refuses to hear it, and the consequences are staggering. Lewis writes:

When the great moment came and the Beast spoke, he missed the whole point for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel.

Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion ("only a lion," as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make himself believe that it wasn't singing and never had been singing—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. "Of course it can't really have been singing," he thought, "I must have imagined it. I've been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?" And the longer and more beautifully the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan's song. Soon he couldn't have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, "Narnia awake," he didn't hear any words: he heard only a snarl (C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, Collier Books, pp 125-26).

Do you believe in the Son of Man? The man’s parents, neighbors, and the Pharisees did not. That is why Jesus says in 9:39, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."

This brings the question to you. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of Man? Do you believe that Jesus is the link between heaven and earth? Do you believe that Jesus came down from heaven to reveal the Father to us? If you do, give glory to God because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but the Holy Spirit.

If you do not believe, then I must ask, why not? What excuse do you have? Maybe it is because you are too much of a sinner and do not believe God can forgive you. You are wrong. God loves sinners and has forgiven you (Romans 5:8). Maybe you have been hurt by others. The man born blind knew what this was like. He was kicked out of the synagogue. But the Bible says, “Jesus found him” (9:35). Jesus, the Good Shepherd, found him. Jesus was looking for him. Jesus is looking for you. Call out to him, he will find you.

Maybe, you do not believe because you have experienced pain and wonder why God has allowed it to happen. I wish I could tell you why you have experienced pain, but I cannot. However, I can tell you that God loves you and is with you in the midst of your suffering. In addition, I can tell you about the day when you will be with God and there will be no more suffering.

But maybe, you still cannot believe. Maybe your heart is still too hard. At that I simply bid you to stand at the foot of the cross and see Jesus lifted up from earth, suspended between heaven and earth, dying to link us with the Father. “But when I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32).

Jesus is the Son of Man!

In Jesus Name,
Amen