A Man Called Jesus Made Clay

Introduction

Good morning. If you’re visiting with us, you are gl we are so glad that you are here. You are our guests of honor, and we’re glad that you have chosen to be here with us. If you are our members, we welcome you back to another study of what saith the Lord. We are so glad that you are here, everyone who has made the decision to be here this morning. The scriptures say that there was a time that Jesus was leaving the temple.

And he scurries away through those leaders, but while he’s still in that area round about the temple, while he’s still in Jerusalem, he passes by a man who is blind. And the scriptures say this.

And then he says in John chapter 9 and verse 5, As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. And Jesus spat on, this is in Jerusalem, the ground with his saliva and made clay. And with the clay he anointed the eyes of the blind man. And he said unto him, Go and wash in the pool of Siloam, which when translated means sent. So he went and washed and came back seeing. Now when he went and washed and came back seeing, therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was blind, said, Is this not he who begged and was blind? How is it that he comes back here seeing? And some of them said, This is he, this is the one that was blind, while others said, No, it’s someone like him.

And he responded back to them, It is I, I am he.

How is it then that you see? And he said, A man called Jesus made clay. A man called Jesus made clay. When we look at the miracles of the Bible, and we recognize that some things are miraculous and some things are beyond our imagination. This is one of those passages of scripture from John chapter 9 where we see it’s a miracle and then he double proves it’s a miracle. Most of us here know that with aging and with growth and development through the years, you’ll end up wearing glasses at some point. And when you go to the optometrist, they’ll tell you about the cornea, which is that layer of film that’s the outer level of your eye. And if anybody knows anything about Jerusalem limestone clay, if you were to pick up that limestone dirt, that uh that uh fragments of clay that were there in Jerusalem, and if you were to rub that with saliva and put it on someone’s eye, most likely they would get a cornea abrasion.

They would most likely have dirt particles that would scrape the top of the eye to that clear front surface of their eye, and each time the person would blink, it would cause them pain. It would cause them to make their vision worse. According to the advanced eye care center, I look that up to see if that was right. And if you want to do a deep dive sometime, take a look at some of my other notes that I studied this week, this past week in regards to the sermon, and there’s a lot of information about this. The region of Jerusalem was limestone and dolometic rock. The region around the pool of Siloam for miles is made of the same type of rock. And it wouldn’t have made his eyes any better, logically, unless it was a miracle.

Jesus, the miracle man made a miracle for this man to see. Someone might say, Well, what about that other time in the book of Revelation where Jesus says to the church of Laodicea, I counsel you to buy from me uh gold refined in the fire. And then also he says in verse 18 of Revelation 3, and anoint your eyes with I salve that you may see. Because if you look at the Old Testament times and the New Testament times, they had things that would make salves for the eyes. The people in the first century were people that knew about medicine, and Laodicea was a town known for medicinal types of things. But even the Laodiceans did not have the rocks needed to make the eye salve that were there.

The main two ingredients that they would put in the eye salve were a type of hot liquid wine and oil. That was the main base of the salve that was there. It was a liquid salve. But they would add a little piece of a rock formation to that to help the abrasions from bleeding, to keep from the bleeding and keep from the uh the swollen tissues that sometimes happened if someone’s eyes got punctured. They would add a rock called hematite to it. And the hematite foundation rocks were found in the regions about Egypt and in the regions far, far away. The financing of the type of stuff that was done there was generally done in the city that was round about Greece, the countries of Greece and Ephesus and those areas.

And then the actual making of the product was found in Laodicea. And so in Laodicea, he tells them, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in fire that you may be rich, and white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see. He’s saying spiritually, they thought they had the eye salve that would help people. They thought in Laodicea they’d have some sort of eye salve that would help the hurting of the eyes. He says, You need to spiritually see. You need to be the people that are spiritually seeing, because right now you’re spiritually blind. But even if Jesus had used Laodicean ISA that had the uh hematite ground in it and had the uh Phrygian compound, as is called, put in there, that wouldn’t have made a blind man see.

Neither had there ever been anywhere in any point of history wherein someone who was blind from birth was able to have some sort of cream rubbed in their eye, and then they’d see. That salve was used for those that had had puncture wounds around their eyes so that they might have restorative health if there was still something lingering there, or for other particular uses as their eyes got stuff in it. But here’s the point.

And as you read in John chapter 9, Jesus said, This whole miracle was to show it’s a miracle. And I said it’s kind of like a double miracle, because there’s a lot of passages in scripture where it says Jesus healed somebody. Someone touched the hem of his garment, and power came out from him, and they were healed of their flow of blood. But in this particular case, someone he reaches down and he puts something in their eye that naturally would cause their eye to get worse, and he makes it better. To me, it’s so reminiscent of the Old Testament prophet Elijah when he’s up there at the Mount Carmel altar and all the altar callers of Baal are there, and he takes his altar and says, Well, if you can call fire down from heaven to consume the altar, then we’ll know your God is real.

He says, I’ll do the same thing for my God. And then when it comes time for the Jehovah God to be called upon, he takes an altar and starts pouring water all over it, right? As if water is going to make it better to make something more combustible. We all know you need dry wood to make it combustible, right? But he’s making the case that the miracle is going to be real. A man called Jesus made clay. And he’s saying when he says this, when the author John writes this for us in John 9, he’s making it emphatic that he is proving he is God by doing something outside the scope of the natural realm. He is doing something powerful, he is showing he is from heaven, and that his words are important, but he does something else.

1. Jesus Was Selective; Jesus Is Particular

He turns to his apostles and he tells them a lesson that says, the parents didn’t sin to cause this one to be blind. And yes, this man probably sinned, but those sins he had, that’s not what caused him to be blind. The reason he was blind is because throughout God’s power and his knowledge of all the things he could know, he knows all the span of time from beginning to end, and he said, This particular man was here because I know his faith, I know his heart, I knows know what is in him, and this purpose for this miracle is so that the power of God may be revealed in him. John 9. I want to show God’s power in him. I want him to be able to say he has faith.

I want him to stand up for Jesus. I want him to stand up for God. I want him to have faith in knowing I’m a prophet. And as we study the lesson this morning, I want you to know that Jesus was selective. Jesus was selective with him. Jesus very carefully teaches us. Brethren, Jesus picks you and I, friend. Jesus is particular.

But he knows you better than you know you. Every day there’s a faith case study. And Jesus was particular that day. How particular are you about telling people about Jesus? How particular are you about living in such a way that he would be glorified? He says in the passage of Scripture in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 9 through 14, he says, as it is written, and notice how this correlates to the blind man, I has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him. You love God, you’re important. Don’t let anybody tell you you’re not important because of your station or your place in life. It says God has revealed them to us through his spirit, for the Spirit searches all things.

Yes, the deep things for God of God. For what man knows the things of man except the spirit of man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, combining spiritual things with spiritual words. He’s basically saying that we have the scriptures that teach us how we convey the message of God to others. Some people in the world minimize that, diminish that, pay no attention to that, don’t care about that.

But you believe in the scriptures, and as you’re here this morning, and as you teach others, it says that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they’re spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual accomplishes or judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him, but we have, hear that part, we have the mind of Christ. We are the type of people that hopefully will recognize God selects us, not in some sort of, well, they’re saved, they’re lost way, but he selects those who are willing to stand up for him. A man called Jesus made clay, a man called Jesus made clay.

2. Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

And he picked a man that he knew would show his appreciation. It’s an interesting day, though, that this happens. It was a Sabbath day, a worship day. A day for the Jews that was a day of high esteem, but a day in which they had a law in which work was not supposed to be done. We could give a whole long sermon, very long, about the differences between, well, they had just done a lot of spiritual work and had gotten ready to do a lot of effort to gather a lot of rocks to throw at Jesus, and that would cause harm and effort and pain and sweat and toil, and then he goes and heals somebody. And you could compare the two and say, well, how is one work and how is the other not healing?

One is making a case for Jesus’ work being more assisting somebody and helpful versus their type of work that was more degrading and painful. You could make a whole sermon there if you wanted, but here we recognize that it was Sabbath day when this happened. It was a Saturday, a day of worship for the Jews when this happened. For it says in the scriptures, looking at the scripture, verse 14, it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened the man’s eyes.

Verse 15.

Verse 16 is not from God because he doesn’t keep the Sabbath.

Others said, Well, how could a sinner do such sign? And there was a division among them. And they said to the blind man, Well, what do you say about him? What do you say about the man who opened your eyes? And he says, Well, he’s a prophet. He’s one that is a prophet. Before I talk about the fact that Jesus was a prophet, and he was. And he was the par excellent prophet of prophets, if you will. I want to talk a little bit about the Sabbath. The Sabbath was the day of worship for the Jew. And we had a good scripture reading. Where’s Ben Balantine? I just saw him. Where’s Ben? Raise your hand, Ben. He’s somewhere here. I know I saw him. Well, Ben Balantine had a good scripture reading.

And he read from that passage of scripture in the letters to Timothy, where he’s told, Jesus Christ, keep the commandments I tell you, Timothy. Pay close attention to them. But Jesus Christ is the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings. And then you have that tough word, the potentate. We don’t use that word much. What does that mean? He’s the sovereign God, the powerful God, the princes of princes, the kings of kings. He is the Lord. And a lot of times people they want a relationship with Jesus, want Jesus to help them, and Jesus to be their comforter, and Jesus to be their guide, and Jesus to be their loving one who cares about them, but they fail to realize he’s their Lord. They fail to realize that he is the king of doctrine.

He is the king of power, and his rulings on things are paramount and not just important or vital to facts, but imperative or must points of reference. Jesus is Lord of Lords. He is the potentate. He is the King of Kings. So if they are here as Pharisees trying to manage and trying to supervise the Sabbath, he is saying to them, I’m God of the Sabbath. I’m Lord of the Sabbath. I’m in charge of the Sabbath. I make clay on the Sabbath and do a miracle. And I’m allowed to because I’m God, is what he’s basically saying to them. He is Lord of the Sabbath. He’s in charge of it. He made it. He said in Genesis 1, let us make man in our image, connecting the point that Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God were all interwoven in the creation account at the beginning of the Bible.

3. Jesus Is a Prophet

Jesus was above the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made by him. And so he’s making this clay and he’s healing him. We recognize very clearly that Jesus was above the Sabbath. Let’s make that third point now. A man called Jesus made clay. A man called Jesus made clay. In the book of Isaiah in chapter 42, verse 7, if you’ll turn there for a moment, Isaiah 42 7, we’re just going to look at just that verse for just a second. Isaiah 42 7. It says that he came to open blind eyes to bring prisoners from the prison to those who sit in darkness. Verse 8: I am the Lord that is my name, and my glory I will not give to another. He came to open blind eyes.

Kind of curious if you asked yourself the question: were there ever any prophets ever in the Old Testament that ever opened blind eyes? And I have an emphatic answer for you. You can correct me if I’m wrong, and if I’m wrong, feel free to bring it to my attention and I’ll recant. But I say no. I say, Never have I found in the reading of anywhere in the Old Testament any prophet anywhere on any page that saw someone who was blind from birth and made them see. There were two occasions in which blindness was particularly interesting. One of those was when one of the prophets made people blind. Not made them see, but made them blind. We recall that from our Sunday school classes. And then there’s the another account in the sixth chapter of a book.

I believe it’s 2 Kings, but it might be yes, I’ll look at my notes. Always have your notes, that’s important. 2 Kings 6. And in 2 Kings 6, there’s the prophet who has his eyes opened to see that all around him is a spiritual realm in which he doesn’t see. And he’s privy to see chariots of fire all around him, to show him things that he didn’t know he could see spiritually. Physically he could already see, but that’s the closest two passages I have anywhere that I know of that talk in those types of way. Elisha opened supernatural sight, so that an invisible fiery army could be there to be seen that would protect him, but no prophet in the old testament healed physical blindness. So when they ask him, who did this to you?

He says a man called Jesus, mate clay. Who do you say he is? Well, he said his name was Jesus, so he’s not Moses. He said his name was Jesus, so he’s not Elijah. He said his name was Jesus, so he’s not Isaiah. He said his name was Jesus, so he’s not Elisha, but he is a prophet, because I am convinced that he is just like the prophets of old, that he forthold a message and foretold a message. He did powerful things to show he had the power of God. He did miracles, which many of the prophets did through the power of God, such as Elisha himself, who did numerous miracles by the power of God, but he also gave a message. He also talked, he also spoke.

And if you look particularly in the passage of scripture back in verse 4, he already heard this. And maybe you didn’t catch this because I read it slowly at the beginning, and maybe just not in your memory. But right at the beginning, before he spat on the ground and made saliva and clay with the saliva and then anointed the blind man’s eyes. Right before that, the verse before that says, Jesus said, While I’m in the world, I must work the works of him who sent me, which means as a prophet, I must preach. As a prophet, I must teach. As a prophet, I must say things. And he says, the night is coming in which no man can work. The blind man heard that. The blind man heard that there was coming a time for judgment.

The blind man heard that there was a time coming where no wood could work and that the world would not be. And he said he recognized also that Jesus came into the world to be the light of the world. While Jesus was there, he was giving the light unto the world spiritually. And so this man, the blind man, who in this message had been selected because the power of God was to be shown in him, goes and tells the whole wide world, Jesus is a prophet, because he told me a message before he ever healed, before he ever touched my eyes and did the miraculous, he told me the message of God. The judgment is coming and salvation is coming, Jesus is coming, and in that message they say, well, that’s strange to us.

4. Jesus’s Works Produced Bold Followers

Continue on in the reading. As we continue reading, looking on at verse 18, the scriptures say this. Jews didn’t believe him.

And that he had received his sight. So they called his parents of him who had received his sight. And they asked the parents, saying, Is this your son who was born blind? How then does he now see? All the years they had dealt with the tumultuous challenges, the situations, the pain, the turmoil, the stress, the endeavoring to be able to feed him, walk him, clothe him, get him to where he needed to go. They didn’t dare say, that’s my son that wasn’t blind. They helped him all the way through up into his adulthood. They knew he was blind, and so they admitted it. Yes, he was born blind. But with fear and trepidation, they feared the very people that had planned on stoning Jesus by throwing rocks at him, and they didn’t want to get kicked out of the synagogue.

They didn’t want rocks thrown at them, they didn’t want to be dismissed from their religious people that they so much lingered to just accommodate and however. And so they said unto the Pharisees and the leaders, as to who healed him, and to who he is, we don’t know. That’s a lie. They knew. We don’t know. He’s of age, ask him. There comes a point in all of our faith where we must recognize our faith must be our faith. And our endeavors in life must be our endeavors. As the parents said, by what means we do not know this man was healed, that could not have been the case. That he is of age, that was truly true, and that he would speak for himself, he did, but that they were fearful of the Jews, we could not deny.

The Jews had agreed already, verse 22, that if anyone had confessed in Jesus, that they would be kicked out of the synagogue. Therefore, that is the reason the parents had asked them to go ask him and see what he says. So they again called the man, and they said unto him, give God the glory. Tell us what’s going on here. What’s the situation? We know that Jesus Christ is a sinner. That’s what their conclusion was. He answered and said unto them this. Whether he’s a sinner or not, I don’t know, but I was blind and now I can see.

We know where Moses is from. As for this fellow, we don’t know where he’s from. He says, Well, that outrageous.

But here’s someone who opens the eyes of the blind. Never in the history of mankind has anybody known anybody who opened the eyes of the blind, and you’re saying, We don’t know where this guy’s from. Outrageous. Look at John 9 30 through 33 and let’s read it together. Why, this is a marvelous thing, that you do not know where he’s from, and yet he’s opened my eyes. And therefore, in the scriptures, I like this explanation point because it’s just logical. Now we know that God doesn’t hear sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, he hears him. Since the world began, it’s been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

That whole context is the blind man preaching, the blind man being bold, the blind man telling them they were wrong, and the man they despised was right. A man called Jesus made clay, and in that making of clay, he made it known someone who was one of his bold followers. Are you a bold follower? Do you boldly follow the Lord? Do you make a case for Jesus where Jesus is not being elevated or highly esteemed in the workplace, on the job site, in the schoolroom, at academics, at Paul’s in life, at the laws of life, at the highlights of life in all areas? Are you making a bold claim for Jesus? Here is a man who eventually will get kicked out of the synagogue for his boldness.

They answered and said to him in verse 34, You’re completely born in sins. You’re teaching us? They cast him out.

Jesus heard they cast him out when he came unto him. He said, Do you believe in the Son of God? He answered to him and said, Well, who is he, Lord, that I may believe? He said unto him, you have both seen him, and it is he who is talking to you. Then he said, I love these words. Then he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. Beautiful passage of scripture. Powerful passage of scripture. But it begs the question: how bold are you? How bold are you willing to be? Are you willing to go against whatever family tradition may be family tradition, if it’s denominationalism and tied up in some sort of organized church religion that you know is not teaching what’s right, like original sin in this particular passage, which is not the case and it’s not right.

You don’t inherit the sin of your parents. Not born in sin in that way. But in another way, there may be some other doctrinal teaching that’s peculiar to some group that you’ve been associated with. I think particularly about the Lord’s Supper. We had a beautiful talk this morning on the Lord’s Supper. There are some places they take it quarterly, four times a year. That’s all they take the Lord’s Supper. In Acts 27, it says, on the first day of the week, the disciples gathered together to break bread. Now they broke bread all the time in a physical way. That breaking of bread was a spiritual breaking of bread. It was every first day of the week. Upon the first day of the week, they gathered together to take the Lord’s Supper, to take bread and fruit of the vine and remember the commemorative meal of memorial that Jesus had established.

And so you need to be bold in your faith to teach those things. And there may be other doctrines that you know are true, and you know Jesus teaches that are true, and you need to be bold in your proclamation of their truth to others so that they might know what’s right and not what’s wrong and not be beguiled by false teaching. Are you willing to be bold? This particular man was, and it cost him the exit of the synagogue. He was no longer allowed to be in the temple proper. He was no longer allowed to be with those people there. And it caused a division between his parents and he. For evidently, if we’re just going to follow the logical conclusion, his parents stayed on in this religion under the Jews that was not right, wherein he continued on in what was right following Jesus.

Jesus’s works produced bold followers. And we need to be bold. For there will come a time, Jesus said, when I do not come only to bring peace on earth but a sword, for I will set father against son, mother against daughter, mother in law against daughter in law, and those that are of one’s own household will be at odds with one another. He says, Christianity is what makes the straight cut between those who are willing to follow bold doctrine and obey it versus those that are going to be beguiled and led astray by every wind and wave and craftiness of doctrine that is the earthly.

He says people command the abstaining from the eating of meats and forbidding of marrying and giving in marriage and all that kind of stuff. He mentions that in 1 Timothy and Titus. He says there’s all sorts of strange doctrines people have, but here in this context, a man called Jesus made play. He made a miracle out of someone to someone who already was expressing in their mind doctrines they knew. Because he picked that guy, we could say he worked on his eyes, but he could also say he went to the pool of Siloam and he worked on his eyes. He said, Wash, and I wash. His malady was washed out with Jesus, not apart from him. He obeyed and he followed. So, to sum it up in four letters that all start with the same letter.

Conclusion

Jesus is the great particular, he selects. Jesus is the great potentate. He’s Lord of the Sabbath and Lord of all religion. Jesus is the great prophet. He is the one who came into this world to teach us that heaven is coming, but so is hell. Judgment is coming, but so is salvation. And Jesus is the great producer, the one who selects people like you and I to help us be the ones to spread the message boldly and courageously to others. Let me ask, how particular are you? Are you following his royal decrees? Do you respect what his future is all about? And have you developed the courage, tenacity, and doctrinal fiber of the blind man? Here in believe, Romans 10.17, John 3.16. Repent and confess, Acts 2.37 and Romans 10.10.

Baptism, it’s for the forgiveness of your sins, Acts 2.38. The washing of the baptismal waters removes your spiritual blindness. And you spiritually were once were lost, now can see. If we can help you become a Christian or come back to the Lord, please come forward while we stand and sing.