American Loon

We continue from last week’s bible study of John 10 with a reading of the scripture:

19 A division occurred again among the Jews because of these words. 20 Many of them were saying, “He has a demon and is insane. Why do you listen to Him?” 21 Others were saying, “These are not the sayings of one demon-possessed. A demon cannot open the eyes of the blind, can he?”

Jesus Asserts His Deity

22 At that time the Feast of the Dedication took place at Jerusalem; 23 it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon. 24 The Jews then gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me. 26 But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. 27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. 32 Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?” 33 The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), 36 do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; 38 but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.” 39 Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp.

40 And He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and He was staying there. 41 Many came to Him and were saying, “While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true.” 42 Many believed in Him there.

So, what’s going on here? Verses 19 to 21 are still dealing with the ramifications of healing the blind man on the sabbath. The Pharisees had been telling people Jesus had a demon for a while now and we find this in Matthew 12:22-37.

22 Then a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and He healed him, so that the mute man spoke and saw. 23 All the crowds were amazed, and were saying, “This man cannot be the Son of David, can he?” 24 But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.”

Interesting to note that when confronted by Christ, evil spirits gave terrified testimony that Jesus was indeed God’s Son.

“And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God” (Mark 3:11).

“And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that he was Christ” (Luke 4:41). 

If satanic spirits know who the Son of God is, why do the Pharisees not see this too? James would later write of this: “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble” (James 2:19). 

Next up, verses 22 and 23 are talking about Jesus and his disciples walking around the temple of Solomon, it being The Feast of Dedication, which was once also called the Feast of the Maccabees. It was an eight-day winter festival celebrated by the Jews in the month of December or sometimes late November, depending on when it fell in the lunisolar Jewish calendar. Today, this festival is called Hanukkah or the Festival of Lights. I am sure you’ve all heard about Hanukkah but you may be wondering what a Maccabee is? The name Maccabee is often used as a synonym for the entire Hasmonean dynasty which ruled from 167 BC to 37 BC, being a fully independent kingdom from about 110 to 63 BC. They reasserted the Jewish religion, partly by forced conversion, expanded the boundaries of Judea by conquest and reduced the influence of Hellenism. They were also known to be very fierce in battle. 

Alexander the Great brought Greek, its culture and language in around 300 BC and the Maccabeeians endeavored to reverse that. Rome came in around 40 BC when the last Hasmonean kings were defeated and killed in battle. In 37 BC, Herod, a son-in-law of Hyrcanus II, was appointed King of Judea by the Romans and when Herod died, Judah came into direct Roman control.

We are now up to date with where Jesus and His disciples were walking the land around in the front colonnade area of Solomon’s temple and because of the festival, many people were about. Because of John the Baptist and what Jesus had done, the healings, casting out of demons and such, this rabbi was well known to them and when  people saw Him, gathered around and started a bizarre line of questioning to Him. “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” (John 10:24) 

These Jews were not seeking merely for clarity and understanding regarding who Jesus was, but rather wanted Him to declare openly that He was Messiah in order to justify attacking Him. Jesus’ response is that He has told them and that His works confirm the truth of who He is. The problem is that they do not believe because they “are not of My sheep” (v. 26).

So these, who were not His sheep and clearly did not want to be one of His sheep, once again picked up stones to stone him with. Jesus’s response to them was one that should have caused them to pause and reflect. He basically confronts their hypocrisy by saying He has done good works from the Father, which one of those do you stone me for? He was asking them to look into their own hearts and use discernment to see what they were doing. They blew right past that with them telling Christ that they were not buying His argument. His good works were not the problem, it was His claim of being God is what made them put stones in their hands. If they would just stop and think for just a bit, at no time in the past had anyone done what this rabbi had done. Then consult with the scriptures to verify what was true. The trouble was their shepherds knew the truth but were blinded by not seeing what their lying eyes were showing them. This goes back to what Christ had said about being a Good Shepherd at the beginning of the chapter. The religious leaders had led the people down the wrong path and were looking for someone that would throw off the shackles of Rome. Their desire was contrary to what the scriptures had told them. They insisted that Jesus was just a man, but never had just a man done what this man did. In plain sight but hidden from the hearts of men.

Jesus answered them, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’”? (v. 34) What does this mean?

From commentaires of the MacArthur Study Bible: Quoted from Psalm 82:6 where God calls some unjust judges “gods”, and pronounces calamity against them. Jesus’s argument is that this psalm proves that the word “god” can be legitimately used to refer to others than God himself. His reasoning is that there are others whom God can address as “god” or sons of the Most High, why then should the Jews object to Jesus’ statement that he is the son of God? (v. 36)

Verse 35: Christ told them “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.”  He is still trying to get them to think, but as we well know, and from our current culture, you cannot tell anybody anything whose mind is made up. What we are seeing right now is everybody has their own truth and there is no absolute truth. Christ was dealing with the same thing. He had claim to the ultimate truth and they denied it, claiming their own.

Jesus did not expect to be believed merely on his own assertions. Since he did the same things as his Father does, his enemies should consider this in their evaluation of him. The implication is, however, that they were so ignorant of God that they could not recognize the works of the father or the one whom the father has sent. (v. 38)

Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp. (v.39) He went away, going to the place where John the Baptist first started baptizing, and Jesus stayed there. (v. 40) This would be a place called “Bethany beyond the Jordan”, located anywhere from 3 to 7 miles North of the Dead Sea. 

The scripture states that many came to Him, saying “While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true.” Many believed in Him there. (vv. 41,42)

I encourage you to read through this part of John 10 again on your own. There is a lot of information and history going on here, so if you missed something, it would be good to review it again.

We start this week’s study of John 10 with Christ and His disciples still in Jerusalem at the Festival of Booths, still dealing with the Pharisees over the issue of a blind beggar being healed on the sabbath. These Jews had created rules for many things, and they had also set themselves up as enforcers of those rules. These rules were beyond what Moses had collated from God’s mouth to his ears and given to the people in the books of the Pentateuch. The first time the sabbath is mentioned in the bible is Genesis 2:3
“Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” Interesting to note this passage of scripture: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1:1-5) When you study the scriptures, you’ll find all of it points to Christ. Our salvation points to Christ. From Christ’s own word “No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6) As the hippies used to say, “It’s circular, man.”

God made the world and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Then God blessed the 7th day and sanctified it. This would be what the Jews called sabbath. Since the preincarnate Christ was the author of all that is, it was by his doing and authority that sabbath exists. Many millennia later, these Pharisees decide to add to the word. They had no authority to do so and are told not to do so in Deuteronomy 4:2 “You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.” These Pharisees consider their new rules for the sabbath to be a protective fence around God’s Law. “Is the LORD’s arm too short?” (Numbers 11:23) Is God not able to manage His affairs that He needs the help of man to keep His laws?

These Jews were furious with this Rabbi who violated their rules. Rules instituted by them to fence in He who sanctified that day. Jesus as the Word, and the Light, has dominion over what these Pharisees are claiming. And they refuse to listen to anything but themselves. This is clear in the scripture where the once blind man and now healed is confronted by these Jews, and tells them ‘If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?”’ (John 9:33) These Jews then turned from this man to Christ and asked “Are we blind too?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

Christ continues trying to teach them, with a parable. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.” (John 10:1-5)

The scripture tells us “This figure of speech Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which He had been saying to them.” (v. 6) What Jesus had told them probably stems from Ezekiel 34: “Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to those shepherds, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock? You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock. Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with force and with severity you have dominated them. They were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and they became food for every beast of the field and were scattered. My flock wandered through all the mountains and on every high hill; My flock was scattered over all the surface of the earth, and there was no one to search or seek for them.”’”

As religious authorities, they had failed their flock, and enriched themselves. They were judging Christ by the same standard that they had judged the man Jesus had healed. “You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?”

We continue: “So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (vv. 7-10)

This part gave me some trouble and from what I have discerned, many other people too. Verse 1 is easy to understand. Christ is the door, as in the Word, the Light and the Living Water of Life. (John 1:1, 5, John 4:13-15) Verse 2 had me wondering. I immediately thought of Abraham, Moses and the prophets. They were men of God and not thieves, so what did this mean? When I get stuck, I go old school. I find the writings of men of the past that had greater wisdom in the scriptures than I do. We turn to Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers, written around 1878. I have used him in the past, he can be a bit wordy at times, but they all were as I’ve found. This is what he wrote on John 10:8:

What, then, do the words mean? Their force seems to be all-inclusive; and yet they cannot contradict Christ’s own words, which have excluded Abraham, Moses, the prophets, John the Baptist, from any possibility of such thoughts. (See John 4:22; John 5:33; John 5:39; John 5:45; John 7:19.) They cannot, on the other hand, be limited to false Christs, who did not come before but after our Lord. (Note on John 5:43.) Here, as often, the true meaning seems for the most part to have been overlooked because men have sought it elsewhere than in the words themselves, and in their place among other words. The thought which precedes and which follows is that Jesus is Himself “the door.” “All that ever came before Me” is in immediate contrast to this thought, and the sense is, “all professing to be themselves the door, to be the means by which men enter the fold, to be the Mediator between man and God.” The Old Testament teachers cannot be meant, because they witnessed to the true door. But there had been growing up since the return from the Captivity, and the close of the Old Testament canon, a priestly caste in the place of the prophetic schools, and these men had been in practice, if not in word, claiming for themselves the position of door to the kingdom of God.

I don’t know about you but that cleared it up for me. This priestly class, claiming to be the door. Abraham, Moses and others all looked to Christ as the door and that is clear scripture. Pride in themselves had corrupted them. Also this was prophesied to happen. (Isaiah 53:3, Luke 22:37) I go back again to John 1. The word was with God and the word was God. All knowing, all powerful, El Shaddai. The creator of all, then as in now. Put your whole trust in Him. Your concerns go to the cross. Know that your daily bread and any other good thing comes from above. Pray to Him daily, hourly is better even still. Repent your sins, live in obedience, and reap the blessings from our loving God.

I leave with little something from William Tyndale, who was a priest, scholar and translator and lived in the early 1500’s. William was, at this time of his life, a tutor to the small children of Sir John and Lady Anne Walsh. The story goes as follows:
Tyndale was engaged in a conversation with a fellow priest concerning the need for the Scriptures to be in the English language. At that time, because of the Oxford Constitutions enacted in the previous century, it was not permissible to own a copy of the Bible in the English language. Tyndale’s companion was not convinced of the need for the Scriptures in English. He is reported to have said that as long as people had the Bishop of Rome’s laws, the Scriptures were not needed.

To this Tyndale replied, “I defy the Pope and all his laws, if God spare my life, I will make a boy that driveth the plough know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”

What’s known as Tyndale’s Ploughboy is this.
Also you see the two things are required to be a Christian man. The first is a steadfast faith and trust in the almighty God, to obtain all Mercy that he hath promised us, through the deserving and merits of Christ’s blood only, without all respect to our own works. And the other is, that we forsake evil and turn to God, to keep his laws and to fight against ourselves and our corrupt nature perpetually, that we may do the will of God every day better and better.

William Tyndale was strangled and burnt at the stake in October 1536 for the heresy of translating the Lord’s words into English so that all might know what God wanted us to know.

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May His face shine upon you and give you peace.

For a great understanding into the sabbath laws and do they have any impact on us today:
https://www.gty.org/library/questions/QA135/are-the-sabbath-laws-binding-on-christians-today

Last week, we left Jesus and His disciples with a man born blind. The disciples had asked Jesus if it was sin of the father or of the son that had caused this man’s blindness. A valid question for it was taught in the Pentateuch, specifically Exodus 20 verses 4 and 5, that the sins of the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me. You’ll note that Exodus 20 is where we derive what is called the 10 Commandments. Basically what came down the mountain with Moses after Yəhōwā had used His finger to write His law onto a stone tablet. So, by asking their Rabbi this question, you can discern that these boys had not really gotten to the point of understanding the lessons that Jesus had been teaching them. Remember, they had been with Christ for about 2 and a half years now. Being a Jew, they had a lot of cultural baggage to drag around and hinder their understanding. Jesus told them, “No, it was neither, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.“ (John 9:3)

And then because Christ was always teaching, He said “We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” (vv. 4, 5) He may have said what He did because it is possible that it was late afternoon when they had encountered this man and Christ seemed to always use the real world as a practical example, to illustrate a larger truth. It would be curious to know the blindman’s thoughts as he sat there listening to this dialog going on about him. Pharisees that would have walked passed him would more than likely have spoken out loud about how this man was a sinner because he was blind, and that was that.

Not so with Christ, He sees the afflicted, the downtrodden, the harlots and tax assessors as those needing redemption and healing. Jesus leaned down, spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes. (v. 6) Then he told the man to go, wash in the pool of Siloam, which the man did and he came back seeing. (v.7)

Now the scripture tells us that this man’s neighbors see this man walking around and seeing, questioning “Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?” (v. 8) But others, not willing to believe their lying eyes, said “No, but he is like him.” The man, now seeing and was also not deaf, kept saying “I am the one.” (v. 9) Now starts the trouble, his neighbors say fine, if now you can see, “How then were your eyes opened?” (v. 10) He answered, “The man who is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash’; so I went away and washed, and I received sight.” They said to him, “Where is He?” He said, “I do not know.” (vv. 11, 12) I think what might be going on here is, to this guy’s neighbors, he was always a beggar and more than likely a sinner to boot. Now he is walking around and no longer a beggar and they sound like they are a little affronted by him being their equal now. By whose authority were you allowed to change your social status. And if you are telling us it was this Jesus guy, whom I am sure they had at least heard about, where is He now? I don’t think I like his neighbors much. They had never treated this guy well when he was a blind beggar and now they are giving him the third degree about how he came to see.

These neighbors then get the Pharisees involved. (v. 14) They can’t have people just up and starting to see when they never had before. And now we find out it is the Sabbath and is probably the whole reason for the conflict. You are not allowed to do many things on the Sabbath. Healing is on the can’t do list and Jesus healed this guy on the Sabbath. The Pharisees were asking him again how he received his sight. And he said to them, “He applied clay to my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” (v. 15)

Some of the Pharisees were saying, “This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.” But others were saying, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And there was a division among them. Note that in their division, they were united in their being against Jesus healing people on the Sabbath. Their precious Sabbath which they had written rules and rules and more rules of what you can and can’t do.Their hearts could not abide people being healed on the Sabbath. You would think they would rejoice at this man’s sight being given to him. Instead, they continued to question the man. They said to the blind man again, “What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes?” And he said, “He is a prophet.” (v. 17)

The Jews then did not believe it of him, that he had been blind and had received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight, and questioned them, saying, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?” (vv. 19, 20) The Jews mentioned here are the Pharisees. Demanding answers to their nonsensical questions. We see this today, where truth is presented and rejected by those who rule us. Truly nothing is new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself.” (v. 21) The parents are terrified of the power of these Pharisees. This is referred to in the next verse: His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. (v. 22) If you were put out of the synagog you were in for hard times. You would not be permitted to buy in the market or sell. It would be similar to you not being permitted to shop at Walmart or any other of the supermarkets or businesses. Everybody would know you are banned and if they let you shop, they would then be kicked out of the temple too. Similar to what is going on today with our Caesars telling us you need to be vaccinated to fly anywhere, you have to wear a mask to shop and 6 feet of social distance is safe but 5.5 feet is not. Pharisees then, Pharisees now.

This was the reason that the parents of the blind man told the Pharisees to ask their son to answer their questions. (v. 23) They were scared to be put out of the temple. I wonder at their behavior. Their son had done nothing wrong, yet they were not sticking up for him. He was a recipient of Grace, not the instigator. However anyone associated with this event was to be judged guilty by these Jews.

So a second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, “Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner.” (v. 24) He then answered, “Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (v. 25) It is refreshing to see someone that up till now did not know the Grace of our Lord, having truly seen it (pun lovers, rejoice!) now defends it. The Pharisees continue with being stupid, “What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?” He answered them, “I told you already and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again? You do not want to become His disciples too, do you?” (vv. 26, 27)

Have you ever been so mad, you couldn’t see straight? This is where these Jews are now.
They reviled him and said, “You are His disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from.” (vv. 28, 29) They claim to be disciples of Moses, yet they did not live as Moses did. Moses gave them their law, and they turned around and added rules to this law that God did not command or condone. You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, so that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I am commanding you. Deuteronomy 4:2 They were lost in the forest of God’s laws, because they kept running into the tree of self proclaimed righteousness.

The Holy Spirit now lends the man his closing argument and he answered them. “Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes. We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him. Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.” (vv. 30-34) It was more than the Pharisees could bear. They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?” So they put him out. (v. 35)

I do believe that this convert to Christ is the first to be kicked out of the temple. Contrast this with another Sabbath healing. The one at Bethesda with a man who was lying by the pool for a very long time. This is in John 5 and when the man gets healed and is walking around with his pallet, some random Pharisee accosts him and tells him “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.” (John 5:10) When he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk’?” But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. (John 5:11-13) Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. (John 5:14-16) The implication here is, Jesus finds him, knows his heart and then warns him to be careful and sin no more, lest something worse happens to him. This healed man takes this information, that it was Jesus that healed him and tells the Pharisees who it is. Here is a sermon by John MacArthur that gives a great overview of this whole event. https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/43-25/the-damning-power-of-false-religion

So the man at the Bethesda pool went back to the Pharisees to tell them what they wanted to know. He did not get kicked out of the temple and stayed within the cold and unloving embrace of his Jewish religion. Safe from persecution, and healed. Back to John 9, this once blind man stood up for this Rabbi that had healed him and infuriated the Pharisees with his answers.

Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” (vv. 35-37) Another occasion when our Lord declares who He is.

And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” (vv. 38, 39) This statement was not just for the now healed man, it was also for the disciples that were around him and for the people walking by.

Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains. (vv. 40-41) Their sin was glaringly obvious to Christ but they were convinced of their righteousness.

So what of our obvious sins? We have the same log in our own eye, just a different context. First off, do you think of yourself as a good person? The Pharisees did, certainly. Christ said it plainly in Mark 10:17, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone”. Our culture relentlessly promotes the idea of being good. The scripture refutes this in Romans 3:10-18 , Psalms 14:1-3 and Psalms 53:1-3. You need to put that notion away and seek your Redeemer. Pharisees were big into works beget righteousness. You do things, good things and they are credited to your being good with God account.

What about us? I think that quite a few people go to church, because that is what good people do. What happens when you are called to account, like this man who was once blind? Will you stand up to those persecuting you? He did, he was just a beggar and when the time came, the words of the Holy Spirit entered his mouth and he spoke truth to those that would not hear it. Like it or not, we live in the same world today. We have rulers that condone evil and persecute good. We also have the same Holy Spirit that this man did and when God is on your side, you can not lose. Sure, he got kicked out of the temple, but he gained eternal life. Where do you think the Pharisees that kicked him out of the temple are right now? In darkness and torment, is where they are, for eternity. It has been told to us that if we believe in Christ, that He died on the cross and was raised up again, that we obey and follow His commands, we who believe will have eternal life. Repent, Believe, Obey and Continue. It’s as easy as that. Go forth and do so.