Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 943
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, July 31, 1870
“I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night comes, when no man can work.” John 9:4.
IF this ninth chapter of John is intended to be a continuation of the history contained in the eighth, as we think it is, it brings before us a very extraordinary fact. You will observe in the eighth chapter that our Lord was about to be stoned by the Jews. He therefore withdrew Himself from the circle of His infuriated foes, and passed through the crowd, not, I think, in a hurried manner, but in a calm and dignified way—as one not at all disconcerted, but wholly self-possessed. His disciples, who had seen His danger, gathered round Him while He quietly retreated. The group wended their way with firm footsteps till they reached the outside of the Temple.
When the Jews took up stones to stone Him, He did not needlessly expose His life, but after He had withdrawn a very little space from the immediate danger He was struck by the sight of human misery and stood still awhile in all calmness of heart to do a deed or mercy. Oh, the Divine majesty of benevolence! How brave it makes a man! How it leads him to forget himself and despise danger, and become so calm that He can coolly perform the work which is given him to do!
I think I see our Savior thus considerate for others, and unmindful of Himself. May I add that there is a lesson here to us not only for imitation but for consolation! If He, while flying from His enemies, still stops to bless the blind, how much more will He bless us who seek His face now that He is exalted on High? Now that He is clothed with Divine power and Glory at the right hand of the Father? There is nothing to hurry Him now, He is exposed to no danger now. Send up your prayers, breathe out your desires, and He will reply, “According to your faith, so be it unto you.”
Reading this cure of the blind man, one is struck, again, with the difference between the disciples and the Master. The disciples looked at this man, blind from his birth, as a great enigma, a strange phenomenon. And they began, like philosophers, to suggest theories as to how it was consistent with Divine Justice that a man should be born blind. They saw that there must be a connection between sin and suffering—but they could not trace the connection here. So they were all speculating upon the wonderful problem before them, which they knew not how to solve.
This suggestively reminds us of theorists upon another difficulty which never has been explained yet, namely, the origin of evil. They wanted to sail upon the boundless deep, and were anxious that their Master should pilot them. He had other and better work to do. Our Lord gave them an answer, but it was a short and curt one. He Himself was not looking at the blind man from their point of view. He was not considering how the man came to be blind, but how his eyes could be opened. He was not so much meditating upon the various metaphysical and moral difficulties which might arise out of the case, but upon what would be the best method to remove from the man his suffering, and deliver him from his piteous plight.
A lesson to us, that instead of enquiring how sin came into the world, we should ask how can we get it out of the world. And instead of worrying our minds about how this Providence is consistent with Justice, and how that event can tally with benevolence, we should see how both can be turned to practical account. The Judge of all the earth can take care of Himself. He is not in any such difficulties that He needs any advice of ours. Only presumptuous unbelief ever dares suppose the Lord to be perplexed. It will be much better for us to do the work of Him that sent us than to be judging Di-
vine Providence, or our fellow men. It is ours not to speculate but to perform acts of mercy and love according to the tenor of the Gospel. Let us, then, be less inquisitive and more practical—less for cracking doctrinal nuts—and more for bringing forth the Bread of Life to the starving multitudes.
Once again, as a prefatory remark, our Lord tells us the right way of looking at sorrow and at sin. It was a dreadful thing to see a man shut out from the light of the sun from his very birth. But our Savior took a very encouraging view of it—His view of it was nothing at all desponding, nothing that could suggest complaining. It was most encouraging and stimulating. He explained the man’s blindness thus—“Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”
The man’s calamity was God’s opportunity. His distress was an occasion for displaying Divine goodness, wisdom, and power. I see sin everywhere—in myself, in others, in this great city, in the nations of the earth—and very conspicuously sin and suffering in this thrice accursed war. But what shall I say of it? Sit down and wring my hands in utter despair? If so, I shall be incapable of service. No, if I would do good, as Jesus did, I must take His bravely hopeful view of things, and so keep my heart whole, and my loins girt ready for work.