Skepty McSkeptertons

John 9 Skepty McSkeptertons.
Jesus is often at war with scribes and Pharisees. Jesus sets up situations with them that will spark moral, ethical and didactic wars. We see this here. The war Jesus is fighting here is legalism. The battlefield is the Sabbath.
Legalists like to add their own rules to God’s word. They say, or at least imply that God’s word isn’t sufficient as it is. It doesn’t tell us enough, it isn’t complete, it needs help. For them, rules are everything; to the point that they say, “Even if my heart is cold and lifeless I’m good because I’ve kept the rules.” The thing is their rules aren’t just for them. They think everyone has to follow their rules too, or they are sinning. Legalists say, “Obey me, not God”.
Legalists take good and beautiful spiritual things and make them burdensome and deadly. The issue here is Sabbath. Simple, God said take a day off from work. It’s just simple and good, like fudgerounds. You don’t need rules to enjoy them. Saying “eat a fudgeround” is plenty. But the Jews came along and added rules to eating fudgerounds and in doing so they made the fudgerounds not enjoyable. So let’s look at the encounter.

Vs 8-12 The change in this guy was so great that his neighbors questioned if this was the same man. I know this is easier to understand thinking about a lame dude walking for the first time, or a blind man seeing for the first time, but the question remains; is there anything so different about your life that people around you would notice? Is the difference Jesus makes in your life enough to make you seem like a different person?
The progression here is amazing: Are you the same person? What happened to you? Well, where is this Jesus, I want meet him too. I’m all for Christians being normal in one sense. I hate the cheesy bubble we’ve created to exist in. But the fact remains, if people never notice anything different about us something is wrong.

Vs 13-16 They bring the man to the Pharisees. Some suggest this was good intentions, trying to show the religious scholars that this man Jesus truly is a prophet from God. It clearly doesn’t work. The Pharisees don’t see this healing as a good thing because it happened on the Sabbath. Jesus seems to do things from time to time just for the sake of annoying the religious leaders.
He often healed on the Sabbath. When doing so, He often incorporated some odd thing in the healing which He knew would get to them. When He healed the lame man He didn’t just heal him, He said “carry you mat.” In this case He heals the man by making mud or clay. Working clay was prohibited by the 39 categories of work in Rabbinic Judaism. Why would Jesus do this? Most likely to show owner ship of the day. The Pharisees had basically claimed authority and taken ownership of all things religious; Sabbath was an obvious one Jesus could make a point of. Jesus would not yield ownership of the things of God to anyone, especially those who love traditions more than they love God.
We see here how petty we can be about things we see as religious. They should have been in wonder and amazement and congratulated the man. Instead they harp on things that are so meaningless. Things haven’t changed much. “You have to use KJV! You have to dress like this! Old time religion! Worship has to look like this!” I’ve even heard a preacher preach on the wickedness of men having long hair. Do these things really matter?
Some of them wanted to believe, but it’s so hard to get past traditions and expectation. So, they were divided.

Vs 24-34 They ask the parents to explain what happened. They tell the Pharisees to ask their son since he is old enough to respond for himself. So they call him back a second time. They try to pressure him into saying Jesus is bad by starting their question with “Give glory to God.” In other words, “We are the pro’s here. We know this Jesus guy is wrong. It would please God for you to agree with us. You want to please God….right?”
The man’s answer is amazing. He basically says, “Look, I’m new. I don’t know all the doctrines. I don’t know much about this Jesus guy. But here is what Jesus did for me.” We could take such a lesson from this. I’ve heard so many people say they want to share Jesus with their friends and people around them only to fall back on the cop-out “But I don’t know that much about the Bible. What if they ask me something I don’t know?” You don’t have to have all the answers. You never will have all the answers. It’s good to want to learn them, but if you wait until you have them you will never talk about Jesus with anyone.
After they tell him to recount the event again he gets smart with them. This sets them off and they start throwing insults at the guy. They claim superiority by the fact that they follow Moses (which in fact they didn’t, they followed their own laws which they added to Moses). So far they’ve tried everything to intimidate this guy into saying Jesus is a sinner. They’ve tried appealing to their traditions, they’ve tried intimidating his family, they’ve tried fear of being against God, and now they insult him. When none of this works they call him names and throw him out. “I’m very professional. You’re fired.”

Vs 35-41 Jesus didn’t correct the man for worshiping Him. This is a passive claim to deity. Any Jewish dude who did think he was God would have screamed “BLASPHEMY!” and stopped the false worship immediately. The fact that Jesus allows the man to worship Him shows Jesus thought Himself to be of the same essence as God.