GraceCreates

By Jon Walker

The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. John 9:18 (NIV)

When Jesus healed the man born blind, the leaders of the ‘Salvation-by-List’ crowd initiated an investigation to determine exactly what happened. Yet, it appears the List-Leaders had already determined the outcome – so, when they found facts that didn’t support their predetermined conclusions — they just kept searching until they could find something that did.

Years later, John bar Zebedee, a witness the investigators ignored, shows us snapshots that reveal the flesh-weapons used by the List-Leaders:

• Closed mind and closed eyes – In this story about blindness, we learn that seeing is not always believing. (John 9:13-16) The List-Leaders could see the truth running counter to their pre-judgments, so they simply rejected the truth.
• Discredit – The Salvation-by-List crowd asked the man, formally known as blind, who’d healed him (John 9:17), and when he said it was Jesus, the leaders attempted to undermine the credibility of God’s anointed, perhaps the oldest flesh-weapon we use: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1, NIV) Did God really mean _____?
• Demand – The list-mongers returned to the question: “What did he do?” (John 9:26). They demanded an explanation because their focus was on the HOW instead of the WOW. Standing in front of them was a man who’d been born blind, but now he could see – WOW, God! Instead, they insist on knowing exactly what happened and HOW it happened, walking by sight and not by faith (opposite of 2 Corinthians 5:7).

If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.