Our help is in the Name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.
Beloved, grace and peace be to you from God our Father, and the Lord
Jesus Christ, through the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit. Amen
Psalm of praise: 31:2, 4, 12
Prayer
Psalm 4:2
Scripture reading: John 9
Scripture text: John 9: 35;
Catechism Sunday 13
35Jesus heard that they had thrown him out,
and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"
The Lord Jesus stopped an outcast in the street.
- This man was blind before, but when the Lord Jesus spoke to him,
he could see.
- Maybe he was struggling within himself at the time, because he
did not see the Man who cured him.
- This is what happened:
- Jesus put mud on his eyes and told him to go and rinse his eyes
in the water of Siloam.
- When he could see, he told the people that he did not know
where Jesus was (v. 12).
Because he confessed that only Jesus could have cured him because He
was God, The Pharisees banned him from the synagogue. That is why we
now find him walking down the street.
- From a human perspective – and the especially of that time –
there was no future for him regarding his faith and spiritual values.
- At the time, having been banned from the synagogue meant that he
was officially banned from God.
From this incident it is clear that having been banned by the Pharisees
was in fact a blessing. In this case, as in many others, the Lord had
used sin to serve his glory:
- He used the Pharisees’ devilish haughtiness with which they
wanted to humiliate this man to drive him into the arms of Jesus.
- When the man without a future walked down the street, Jesus asked
him, “Do you believe in the Son of God?”
The Lord always looks for and finds his children when they are being
cast out for the sake of his Name.
- Our God loves each of us personally.
- That is why Jesus went to this lonely outcast and asked him, “Do
you believe?”
- Extremely personal: “I want to know whether you believe,
because I have a personal relationship with you.”
The fruit of this man’s inner self is being tested.
- Does he know the Son of God who has been revealed to him?
- Does he understand what the Lord wanted to sy when He cured him?
The fact that he was cured is symbolical of us being forgiven through
Jesus for our imperfection caused by sin. The eyes of our soul/spirit
are cured so that we can see the Son of God as the Saviour who
reconciled us with God.
What do we believe about the Lord Jesus Christ? Firstly, He is the Son
of God. This is also what Jesus asked the man who was blind: Do you
believe in the Son of God? That is asking a lot, because if we believe
in the Son of God, we must:
- believe that – in a way no man has ever been able to explain, or
how it could have happened – Jesus is truly the Son of God;
- confess that Jesus is truly the Son of God. We must believe that
Jesus is the only naturally born Son of God; and
- Believe and confess that Jesus is also God.
Can we ever comprehend this or really believe it?
- God revealed it to us.
- There was a man in the street who attested: If He was not God, He
wouldn’t have been able to do anything! (v. 33)
The Son of God lives for our salvation. It is demonstrated by the power
of conviction of the Holy Spirit who opens our spiritual eyes so that:
- we can see Him on the cross;
- our eyes see Him rise from the dead and break the power of satan
with Godly omnipotence;
- but also see Him at the right hand of God where He prays for us.
But then we should also see the fear in the eyes of Satan.
- He perished in his own evil.
- His last hope faded away when Christ rose from the dead.
- All he wishes to do now is to cause as much damage as possible
before Jesus returns.
Because we are the people who experience all this pain, the Lord
reveals to us how the Son of God call on people and enquire about their
faith. A very special question: Do you believe in the Son of God?
- The Lord has the right to ask us about our faith and confession
regarding the Son of God, because our confession is based on faith that
is based on God’s own promises and the fulfilment thereof.
- The Son of God has been promised since creation.
- He lived during history.
- He Himself stopped the man in the street and enquired about his
faith.
This should already be sufficient, but considering the prophecies and
their fulfilment the facts ???:
- God Himself made the promise to Eve.
- Then came the prophets and their prophecies about Jesus becoming
a human being and his Sonship of God.
- The Jesus Himself came – born in Bethlehem.
- That night, in the country of Ephrathah, the angels proclaimed
that He is the Son of God.
- Lastly, Satan himself confessed that Jesus is the Son of God.
And the satan forthright confessed that Jesus had come to save the
world, and that he, satan, and his angels would eventually be tortured.
The demon-possessed man from the region of the Gerasenes called out:
"What
have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you
by God, do not torment me."
This faith and confession that Jesus is the Seun of God is our comfort,
because this confession is a firm trust that the Son of God cares for
us.
- He wll destroy Satan– as the devil himself confesses.
- We must believe unconditionally like the man who was born blind,
else we have no true comfort.
The predestination fits in exactly here.
- All people deserve to be rejected.
- The blindness and disability of the man symbolises it.
- Therefore all people were indeed rotten after the Fall.
- From a human point of view all people are already in the hell.
- No-one can ever escape from it on his own.
- Then came Jesus Christ and He died for everyone the Father had
given Him.
- Those who confess that He lived on earth and that Christ is the
Son of God.
Just think of the magnitude of God’s grace.
- God does not need any one of us to be God.
- He also doesn’t even need the angels to be God.
- Because He was God as He is now, before the angels and human
beings were created.
- Even so He chose us to be his children.
- He did it for the sake of the work of the Son of God, and to
glorify Him.
The Lord commands us to treat one another in the same way that God
treats us.
- We must love one another as He loves us.
- The preferences and disapproval we have towards other people
should disappear.
- People who are in hell cannot show preference or disapproval of
one another, because they are all in an equally bad way.
- Likewise, the elect cannot show preference or disapproval of
one another, because Christ elected us and neither the degree of
goodness nor efficiency was a determining factor.
The grace lies in the fact that we, as children of God, also share in
the rights that a father exercises over his children.
- One of the rights is discipline.
- We are disciplined to be obedient.
- Therefore we must, in our daily lives, mend our ways and not do
things that upset our heavenly Father.
Let us now look at what it means that we believe that Jesus is the Son
of God, and that we are, through Him, also children of God.
- The result is that we know that we are completely saved: We must
have religious conviction.
- This is something gold and silver cannot give us – knowing that
you have an address on the new earth. When you die here, your place
with God is guaranteed.
- It means that you do not have to live with a fear of the devil
continually, because he has already been conquered. At the moment he is
in a very critical position, because every day brings him closer to
hell and horror.
- You have already been freed from the violence of Satan. And
therefore you can face the day of your death peacefully.
Confess that
Christ is the Son of God, and know that God loves you in Him, and also
cares for you in Him.
33. Q. Why is He called God's
only begotten Son, since we also are children of God?
A. Because Christ alone is the
eternal, natural Son of God.[1] We, however, are children of God by
adoption, through grace, for Christ's sake.[2]
[1] John 1:1-3, 14, 18; 3:16; Rom. 8:32; Heb. 1; I John 4:9. [2] John
1:12; Rom. 8:14-17; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 1:5, 6.
34. Q. Why do you call Him our
Lord?
A. Because He has ransomed us,
body and soul,[1] from all our sins, not with silver or gold but with
His precious blood,[2] and has freed us from all the power of the devil
to make us His own possession.[3]
[1] I Cor. 6:20; I Tim. 2:5, 6. [2] I Peter 1:18, 19. [3] Col. 1:13,
14; Heb. 2:14, 15.
Amen.
Closing prayer
Closing hymn: Psalm 130: 2, 3
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Amen.
Dr MJ du Plessis
Gereformeerde Kerk Bellville
Datum: 21 September 2003