Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Man Born Blind

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

The healing of the man born blind is one of Jesus’ miracles that’s called a sign, meaning it symbolizes something about who Jesus was and what he came to do. This is a story about a man who’s born blind, and it takes up an entire chapter. The man is healed in the very first few verses, then there’s quite a bit of interrogation with the Pharisees, and then the man comes back, has an encounter with Jesus, and comes to faith.  Looking at the three groups of people in this passage—the disciples, the Pharisees, and the man who is healed—we learn 1) something about pain and suffering, 2) something about spiritual blindness, and 3) something about what heals it all. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 23, 2014. Series: Seeing Jesus. Scripture: John 9:1-7, 35-38. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to the Gospel and Life podcast. Many of us often focus on the big moments in Jesus' life, his birth, death, and resurrection. But how would your understanding of Jesus change if you took a closer look at what he did and said throughout his life on earth? Today, Tim Keller explores why Jesus' everyday experiences are essential for understanding who he is and how they invite us to have a deeper trust in him.

The scripture this morning is from the gospel of John chapter 9 verses 1 through 7 and verses 35 through 38 as he Jesus went along

he saw a man blind from birth his disciples asked him rabbi who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind neither this man nor his parents sinned said Jesus but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him as long as it is day we must do the works of him who sent me night is coming when no one can

work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, put it on the man's eyes. Go, he told him. Wash in the pool of Seloam. This word means scent. So the man went and washed and came home, seeing. Jesus heard that they had thrown him out and when he found him he said Do you believe in the son of man? Who is he, sir? The man asked

Tell me So that I may believe in him Jesus said You have now seen him In fact He is the one speaking with you then the man said Lord

I believe and he worshipped him the word of the Lord In the months of January and February we've been looking at these accounts in the book of John of these miraculous signs

John says at the end of the book that what he has done is he's chosen the particular miracles that Jesus did among many, many, many others. He's chosen the ones that he did because they not only happened and they not only were displays of power, but each of them, John thought, symbolized something about what Jesus Christ came to do and told us something about who he was and what he came to do. And so each week we're looking at one of these signs. This is the healing of the man born blind, the sixth of the seventh miracles and signs. And, and the

And it takes up the entire chapter. We gave you the beginning and mostly the end of it. It's a story about a man who is born blind. He is healed in the very first few verses. Then there's quite a bit of interrogation that goes on between the Pharisees and the man. We didn't read any of that because it's 41 verses and it was too long to read or have printed, but we'll refer to it. And at the very end, the man comes back to Jesus.

have that encounter that you just heard read and comes to faith now what we learn i think is by looking from this passage is looking at the three groups of people that we see we have the disciples and they have a set of questions in the very beginning about the man born blind then there's the Pharisees and how they respond and then there's the man himself and what we're going to learn from the disciples is something about pain and suffering what we're going to learn from the Pharisees is something about spiritual blindness. But we're going to learn from the man is what heals at all. So first of all, let's look at see what the disciples teach us about suffering.

It's not the main point of the passage. The main point is spiritual blindness. And yet we have this very interesting, we learned something quite interesting from the very beginning where they're going by a man who's born blind. And his disciples ask him a question, a theological question. Rabbi, look at this man suffering. Who sinned? Why was this man, is this man blind?

Who sinned? His parents or him? Now, the why question is always attached to suffering. Why me? Why them? Why God? Why God? And so whenever you have suffering,

you have this why question, why? But if you look at this particular set kind of why question, you'll see that it's sneaky. The counsel is leading the witness. that is the questioners are assuming the answer do you see what the answer is they say who sinned his parents or him now it's interesting the question is did his parents sin so that a blind child was their punishment or did he sin now how you could be born blind as a result of your own sin is a little weird to contemplate but probably probably he was he uh the disciples were

trying out some theories on Jesus. One of the theories was that many of the rabbis actually taught that you could sin in the womb. You could sin in the womb. Don't think about that too much. Secondly, there were other theories that the Jews did not hold to like reincarnation or the pre-existence of a soul that you might be sinning because you live wrongly,

unvirtuously in some former life. Or even the idea, perhaps they're thinking, Maybe God looked into the future and saw his man was going to be a selfish, sinful man and decided to punish him with blindness at birth. So they're trying out these theories. But you see, the reason why they'd go so far as to say, was it somehow this man's sin that caused him to be born blind was how strongly they believed and how strongly rooted in our belief,

actually the beliefs of the centuries, is that if you are having a hard life, you must have done something to deserve it. If you're having a tough life, if something bad's happened to you, you must have done something bad to deserve it. See, it goes like this. We reap what we sow.

God is a judge. If you have bad circumstances, it must have been bad behavior on your part. This is really deep in us. You know that goopy song in the middle of the sound of music where Captain Fondrapp has met Maria and Maria.

They realize they love each other. they're going to have each other, they're going to be happy. And so they sing a song, and the song is, somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good. Remember that? She says, somewhere I must have done something good, or I wouldn't be having this wonderful life. And of course, the implication is if you're having a bad life,

somewhere in your youth or childhood, you must have done something bad. And now, there's three huge problems with this assumption, this assumed answer, that the relationship between suffering and sin is a tight one, and that is that if you're having a hard life, you must have done something to deserve it. Three huge problems.

One is it creates tremendous pride and self-righteousness on the part of the people who are having a good life. We take credit for it, right? You look at, you know, there have been psychological studies that show that people want to believe that it's the sufferer's fault.

That we all have a psychological bias when we see someone in trouble to saying, well, they probably weren't careful, they probably should have done this, they didn't do diligence or something like that. We want to believe to some degree it's the sufferer's fault. Why? It assures us that that couldn't happen to us because we're not like that. So it creates self-righteousness. Secondly, it's not true to the facts. It's simply not true. The fact there are plenty of good people that live miserable lives and there are plenty of tyrannical people who prosper and die happily in old age in their sleep. I mean, the point is that

that it's not true to the facts and it's incredibly cruel to the suffering person now jesus rejects the premise jesus rejects the idea he says what neither neither this man's sin nor his parent sin this blindness is not the result of somebody having done something wrong but if you're going to understand what he's saying here what jesus's view of sin is you i mean his suffering is you have to put this right alongside of a a parallel spot in the book of Luke. There's another place where Jesus was asked a very similar question. There was some discussion going on in Luke 13 about a couple of terrible incidents.

In Luke 13, Jesus and his disciples were talking about the fact that there was a group of people who were killed at some public event. I'm not quite sure what happened there. There was also a group of people who were killed when a tower suddenly fell on them. They were next to a tower. and the tower fell down, which shows that you did need more, you needed a department of buildings back then,

but they didn't have it. Anyway, down comes the building, and everybody's killed. And the question to Jesus is, were they were sinners because that happened to them? There it is again. Were they worse sinners? That's the assumption.

And that's the assumption of Job's friends, by the way, in the book of Job. They come and they say, Job, you're having a bad life, you must be doing something wrong, repent, get it right with God, examine your life, there must be something you're doing, wrong. So they say, look, they're having a bad life where they were sinners. And Jesus says, no,

this is Luke 13. He says, no, but then he adds, but repent, lest ye likewise perish. And see, if you put the two together, here's Jesus incredibly nuanced and rich understanding of suffering. First of all, what he's saying, he's drawing on what the Bible says about in Genesis chapter 3 and in Luke and in Romans 8. the Bible says that God did not originally create the world with suffering in it. God did not, he created a paradise. He did not create originally a world filled with death and suffering and disease. He didn't create the world.

But when the human race turned away from God, everything in the world stopped working properly. Everything is wrong. The world doesn't work properly. Death comes in, suffering comes in, all these bad things come in. The world doesn't work. And therefore, there is a problem. a sense in which the human race is getting the world it deserves. We turn from God and we have a world that doesn't work right. And there's a sense, therefore, in which sin in general from the human

race causes suffering in general, right? And that's why Jesus could say, repent, because we all deserve to have towers fall on us. So don't say, oh, what are those bad people that had a tower falling? Yeah, he says, right, repent because you could have a tower fall on you. It'd be perfectly okay. because what he meant was in general the human race deserves to have a tower fall in it that's the that's the world that we've got but even though jesus agrees that sin in general causes suffering in general he denies the idea that individual suffering is necessarily caused by individual sin that your individual suffering necessarily comes from individual sin just like God rejects it at the end of the book of Job, Jesus rejects it right here.

See, to say sin in general causes suffering in general, but sin in particular does not necessarily, is not necessarily the cause of suffering in particular, is amazingly different than any other view I know. And I've studied a lot of them recently. And it's rich and it's nuanced. Why? Because here's what it's saying. On the one hand, if you believe this, if you believe Jesus' view, the biblical view, it gets rid of self-pity and anger. Bad things happen and you don't. You don't. say this you don't get angry at life you don't get you don't get angry at god you know that we're in the world we deserve but on the other hand when bad things happen to you you don't start to beat yourself up and say i must be living in a bad way something must be wrong it's all my fault you don't just

beat yourself up and what does jesus say then okay why is the man blind and jesus says this is the right answer it's mysterious god has his purposes but the point is God has work to do. Neither this man or his parents sin, but this happens so that the works of God might be displayed at him. We'll get back to that in a second. But you see that? All things work together for good to those who love God.

What it's saying is, you may never see it, you may never understand it, but God is not, it's mysterious why you might be suffering. You may never see it. It's not necessarily the result of something you've done wrong. But even though you may not know what their purposes are, God is at work. God is working in this.

And if you have that view, I tell you, that is, that's about the only way I know to get through it. Because you can, on the one hand, just get filled with anger and upset, you know. So in other words, you either can go through life when suffering happens saying, I hate thee, or you can go in, you know, through life saying, I hate me, but neither are right. So that's what we learned from the disciples. The main point, though, of the passage, though, we'll see it's related. is spiritual blindness. And we particularly understand this when we learn at the end of the book,

at the end of the chapter, excuse me, Jesus Christ charges the Pharisees, and I'll read this in a second, with spiritual blindness. They come, they don't like the man born blind. They say, wait a minute, this guy, Jesus did this. Are you sure you were really, really born blind? They go and talk to his parents. Yes, he was born blind.

Well, how could this be? and they show that they're very hostile to Jesus. They're very upset that Jesus has done this miracle. They're very hostile, and at the very end, Jesus says that they're blind, they're spiritually blind. And what that means is, just as the feeding of the 5,000 symbolized Jesus' ability to deal with our spiritual hunger,

the healing of the man born blind symbolizes Jesus' ability to deal with our spiritual blindness. Now, what is spiritual blindness? Well, first of all, let's talk about it. At one level, without even getting too spiritual, I think we understand that there's such a thing as sight that's not literal. So, for example, when an 18-year, I'll give you two examples, when an 18-year-old starting to apply to colleges,

realize, begins to realize, man, the college I get into and how well I do in college is going to be to a great degree setting the course of my life. Suddenly the 18 year old realizes back three years ago when he's 14, 15 or something like that, and you didn't see the point of all the studying. He didn't see the point of studying this stuff. So I didn't see the point of grades and all that. Now he realizes he was an idiot. And his whole grade point is lower than it should be. And so the 18 year old says, what a fool I was, what an idiot I was. Now I've got this record that's not as good, and I really don't know if I can get into this school,

and oh my goodness, okay, what was he talking about? And I'm not talking about a lack of physical sight. He's saying, I didn't see, a lack of wisdom. More than that. Years ago, I had my brother-in-law, one of my brother-in-laws, who picked me up at an airport, and we got into the car, and he buckled his seatbelt.

It was surprised me because generally over the years, I used to goad him of the fact that he never used to buckle his seatbelt. And he buckled his seatbelt. I said, hey, I see you're into safety now. And he says, yes, well, I had an experience. I said, what? I said, well, I went to see a friend of mine in the hospital who had gone through a windshield

and had like 120 stitches in his face. And somehow for whatever reason, ever since I've been buckling my seatbelt. And we talked a little bit. about this and I said that's that's kind of interesting did you learn something new there I mean was it something you learned that you didn't have before was there any new information that you got was there more statistics that you got about the no he says it just came home I realized I was being dumb I realized I should do it now look at that word realize what does realize mean it means it got real to me I knew it abstractly I knew it but I didn't see it I thought about it but

didn't see it. What that means is it wasn't real to me. And therefore, we could talk about sight as being literally seeing things, but we can also talk about sight as the perception of reality. Now, what is spiritual blindness in the Bible and what is spiritual sight? This gets us into the very subject of eternal life. Jesus says, I can give you eternal life. You know what that means? It means we're dead. In some way, we're spiritually dead. We're spiritually dead. We're We're physically alive and we're physically seeing, but we're spiritually dead until he gives us his life and we're spiritually blind. Why?

Because they go together. To have life means to be able to sense your environment. Any form of life has the ability to sense some of the environment. So a plant, which we might call a lower form of life, I guess, than animals or humans, plants can sense the environment, can't they? They have sensors. Not too many. Okay?

They don't actually have sight. they don't have, you know, hearing. But they can sense light and darkness, obviously. They can sense heat and cold. So they can sense their environment to some degree. But animals are a higher form of life, which means because they have more senses, you know, they can see things coming.

The plants can't see things coming. So, by the way, if you approach your plant with a pruning shears and the plant goes, it's not from this planet. just remember that because on this planet plants can only sense their environment to some degree

animals can however can sense more of their environment human beings can sense even more you say what do you mean well we would all believe I think most all of us believe that human beings have senses beyond the five senses so for example do you think there is such a thing as a justice and injustice tragedy right and wrong

do you believe that do you think those things are there because we have a moral sense, see, because we have other senses that the animals don't have. They can't sense the difference between justice and injustice. Jesus was the most influential man to ever walk the earth, and his story has been told through books, movies, and articles in hundreds of different ways. Can anything more be said about him? In his book, Jesus the King, Tim Keller journeys through the Gospel of Mark to reveal how the life of Jesus helps us make sense of our lives. Dr. Keller shows us how the story of Jesus is at once cosmic, historical, and personal,

calling each of us to take a fresh look at our relationship with God. During the month of March, we'll send you a copy of Jesus the King as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. And so what we would say is every higher form of life, you might say, is able to sense more of the environment, is to see more of reality, right? So what does it mean to get your spiritual sight? What does it mean that you're spiritually blind and by the Holy Spirit you get spiritual sight?

Until the Holy Spirit opens your eyes spiritually, you can't see other things out there in the environment that you, you know, and the two things that you can't see. are the reality of sin and the reality of grace. The reality of sin and the reality of grace. I mean, here's a perfect example of it in the Pharisees. This is the second interrogation. This is in chapter 9. We just didn't have it read. They come, they summons the man who's born blind after going to his parents,

and his parents assure them he really was born blind. It's not a farce. So they come back and they are talking to the man born blind, who's not blind anymore, about Jesus. and they say, we know that this man, Jesus, is a sinner. Well, the man previously blind replied, whether he's a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know, I once was blind, but now I see.

And they asked him, how did he open your eyes? He said, I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too? So they hurled insults at him. You are this fellow's disciple, maybe. we are disciples of Moses. We know that God spoke to Moses.

As for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from. And the man answered, kind of brilliant rhetoric. He says, well, now that is remarkable. You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. God doesn't listen to sinners. Nobody's ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. To this way, replied,

you are steeped in sin at birth. And how dare you lecture us? and they threw him out. Now what you've got there is you've got spiritual pride, you're a sinner, we're not sinners, we're disciples of Moses,

how dare you lecture us, what do you know? Let me talk to you about sin and pride. When the Holy Spirit opens your eyes, it's not like you didn't know that you were, something was wrong with you. In fact, there's plenty of people

who raised in the church and they heard that they were sinners, And they agreed. There's plenty of people without spiritual side, sight, raised in the church. And they tacitly agreed, yes, I'm a sinner. I'm flawed. There's bad things. But it's only when the Holy Spirit opens your eyes that you realize you're a sinner. That you realize you're a sinner. It becomes real to you. You begin to see, for example, the depth of the corruption of your motives. You always gave yourself credit for doing a lot of good things until you began to

see your motives. The Holy Spirit enables you to see your motives aren't what they should be. There's all this pride and self-righteousness, the desire to control other people, desire to feel better about yourself, a desire to try to get God to bless you. And you begin to realize even the motive for the good things I've done, they're terrible. You also begin to realize you're not in control of your life. When you spiritually start to see, you realize I thought I was in control of my life. I am driven by fears. I'm driven by lust and I don't necessarily mean sexual lust. I'm needy. If this doesn't happen, if that doesn't happen, I just, I mean, it just drives me crazy. I realize that I'm out of control in many ways. I thought I could run my

life and I'd no way I could run my life without side help. This is called conviction of sin. And this means you may have agreed that, you know, you were a sinner in some kind of general way, but now it comes home. You begin to see it. It becomes real to you. And along with that always goes, the beauty of grace. Oh, you may have thought in your head. Yeah, I know that Jesus Christ died on the cross from me. You may even believe that. I mean, you can grow up in the church without spiritual sight.

People do that all the time. But when sin becomes real to you, grace becomes real. It becomes brilliant, become beautiful. We'll get to that in just a second. It becomes not just an abstraction. But when you see it, suddenly it changes you. Remember, my brother-in-law said, well I saw it but I didn't see it. I knew it but I didn't know it. Now I do. Now this is absolutely

critical to understand. Have you had your spiritual sight given to you? Almost anybody who has spiritual sight knows they are to some degree still and knows they have been in the past deeply blind. And that's the reason why at the very, very end, Jesus says, two little things about spiritual blindness that are extremely important to understand before going on to what do you do about it. At the very end of the passage, Jesus makes a strange statement, and it's overheard, and then he makes it a strong statement. Jesus said, this is verse 39, 40, and 41 of chapter 9. Jesus says, for judgment, I have come into this world so that the blind will see, and those who see will become blind. Some Pharisees overheard him saying this, and they said, what?

Are you saying we're blind too? And Jesus said, if you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin, but since you claim you can see, your guilt remains. Now, Jesus is saying two extremely interesting things about spiritual blindness. The first is a kind of reversal. He says, I came into the world that those who see would be blind and those who are blind would see. And what he means is, I think, something pretty powerful. He doesn't mean literally that people who've got spiritual sight would lose it. But here's what he's saying.

There are brilliant people out there. Brilliant people. In fact, a lot of them live in New York City. You write great books, lecture, your experts. You're very savvy in many, many ways. Jesus says the people who are the most brilliant or the people who are the most successful or the people who the world most advantages

when it comes to the gospel are at a great disadvantage and the people who are the most disadvantaged by the world when it comes to the gospel are the most advantage. What? Yeah. Because the gospel is that you are a sinner saved by grace. See, that's what your spiritual sight opens your eyes to. That you're a sinner and that you can never save yourself

and that you need to be rescued by the sheer grace. of God and because of what he did through Jesus Christ. That's the gospel. And if that's the case, think. That means the people who are saved are not necessarily the good people, but the ones who admit that they're not good and that they need a savior. And the people who are lost are not necessarily the bad people, but the proud people. And therefore, the more brilliant you are and the more successful you are, the greater disadvantage you're at. Because when you hear the gospel,

and the gospel comes along and says, you know, it doesn't matter how brilliant or how stupid you are in IQ. It doesn't matter how successful or what a failure you are. It doesn't matter. You're all sinners. You're all saved by grace.

You need to come in and just be like, you're all beggars needing grace. You've got nothing to recommend yourself. It's sheer grace. And that is not nearly as difficult, humanly speaking. for a person who has failed to admit or has fallen to admit.

But it's the Pharisee, it's a successful person, it's the brilliant person, it's so much harder for a brilliant person to admit, I am blind. It's so much harder for a successful person to admit, I am spiritually bankrupt. Jesus says, interesting, this blind man, because he's blind,

because he's suffering, that's how God's going to do his work. why is this man suffering why is this man suffering that the work of god might be done in him that's what jesus answer and generally speaking unless troubles come into your life generally speaking it's pretty pretty tough to come to grips with the gospel to even give it a second look so jesus says and i think this is perfectly right and fair isn't it isn't it fair the gospel is such that the people who advantage by the worlds are at a disadvantage the people who are disadvantaged by the world are in advantage. And the second thing he says, though, is he said, are you saying that we're blind?

He says, because you say you're not blind, yes, you are. And what that means is something pretty simple. It's pretty easy to see. You know, if you're having trouble with your sight and you won't go to a doctor, that's the only thing that will destroy your sight. The doctor might be able to, you know, either retard it or, you know, or might even do something to arrest the change. But the point is, if you've got a problem with your sight and you won't admit you got a problem with your sight, that you don't need glasses or that you don't need a doctor, you don't need anything, that's the only kind of problem with your sight that has no remedy. And therefore, Jesus is saying,

the deepest blindness is blindness to your own blindness. There is no greater blindness than to be blind to your own blindness, which means I can actually test you right now. If you do not know what I'm talking about at all, if you say, I am not spiritually, but I don't know what you're talking about, I've never, I can't look back at a time in which I was spiritual, spiritually blinded. Now I see, I don't know what you're talking about. The only really, really, really, really, the only blindness without a remedy is a blindness you're blind to. It's the deepest kind of spiritual

blindness. Now lastly, how do you deal with it? I mean, you know, how is it healed? And by that we can look to the man. This man has been physically blind and now he's physically seeing. But if, you know, how is it healed? But if, you know, the whole sign, the whole miracle is about the fact that Jesus can also cure the spiritual blindness, then it only makes sense that this man would not only have his physical blindness cured, but his spiritual blindness. So it's not a surprise when Jesus says, you have now seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking to you. I'm, you know, I'm the son of man. And then the man said, Lord, I believe. That makes sense. He's getting faith. But then it says, and I'm so glad it does, and he worshipped him.

Now, I think if he didn't, if they hadn't add the word worshipped, I don't think we would have really gotten to the heart of the issue of spiritual blindness and spiritual sight. First of all, it's astounding that a Jewish man would worship another standing human being. I doubt very much that this man, you know,

understood why he was doing it. Certainly he didn't have a well-developed theology. I doubt very much that he would, I mean, I doubt very much. I know he would never have said, I'm kneeling before the second person of the Trinity. I'm sure he wouldn't have said that. But he knew he sensed the deity,

and he worshipped him. It's astounding. But you see, this is the ultimate healing of spiritual sight. You know why? Because worshiping the wrong thing is the ultimate cause of your blindness. And therefore, worshiping the right thing. God himself, Jesus,

is the only way to cure the spiritual blindness and it will only be cured in time as you get to be a better and better worshipper. This is a little quote that I've been using when I talk about the relationship of faith to work. So some of you may have heard me use it, but it's particularly helpful when it comes to the relationship

between worship and sight. This is a man who is an author and a writer, and this was actually taken out of the New York Times last year, I think. And he was talking about how difficult it was when his whole life was revolving around his writing. He needed to be a good writer, he wanted to be a good writer, it was the main thing he lived for. It was his God. And he talks about the fact that because of that, he really, it distorted his sight. So he says this, when good writing was my only goal, I made the quality of my work, the

measure of my worth. I wasn't just out for good, to write well. This is who I was. It was my identity. It was my hope. It was my salvation. It was how I knew I was going to be a worthwhile person. It says, when good writing was my only goal, I made the quality of my work, the measure

of my worth. For this reason, I wasn't able to read my own writing well. I couldn't tell whether something I had just written was good or bad, because I needed it to be good in order to feel sane. so I lost the ability to cheerfully interrogate how much I liked what I had written to see what was actually on the page rather than what I wanted to see or what I feared to see. You see that? When the most important thing in my life, he says, was my writing, I couldn't see it.

I was too scared to admit if it was bad. I was too scared to not admit that it wasn't good. When I saw other people who were writing better, I couldn't admit how well they were writing. in other words because writing was the most important thing to him it completely put him into what denial deception he was blind and i want you to know that if you say well i'm going to clean up my life and be a good person and then i'm going to go to church and i'm going to live like jesus and then god will bless me and take me to heaven guess what you're not going to be honest about yourself you won't be able to see your flaws you won't be able to see your sins you'll be getting

more spiritually blind if somebody criticizes you you'll go go to pieces, you'll say no, no, no, you'll shift the blame. If you live for your moral goodness, you'll be blind about yourself. If you live for your children, you'll be blind about them. If you live for anything, it puts you into the darkness, spiritual darkness. You can't see things clearly. You can't see yourself clearly. You can't see them clearly.

You can't see the world clearly. And therefore, it's only when you begin to worship in such a way that God becomes a supreme beauty and joy of your life. He becomes the most important thing. His love for you is the measure of your worth. He is the thing that most satisfies you. That's the only way to clear it up. And the degree to which you worship and the depth to which you give God your heart to that degree, you will find your sight clearing. You'll see yourself, you'll see reality, you'll see things. Now you say, how can that happen? That's the cure, but how does that happen?

It only happens when you see something that happened on the cross. You can't just tell yourself, okay, I got to worship. I have to sing louder, I go to more services. No, no, no, no, no. It's your heart has to be engaged. You say, well, how can I engage my heart? Well, you can't just work on your heart. You have to see something.

And here's what I want you to see. When Jesus Christ was on the cross, darkness came down. Remember that? An eclipse. it wasn't just a physical darkness. He also said, my God, my God, what hast thou forsaken me? He was being plunged into spiritual darkness. He was losing the light of the father's love and face that when he was on earth, he'd always had. Jesus had perfect spiritual sight.

He could see into people's hearts. He sensed the reality of God, the father all the time, but not on the cross. He was being cut off. He was being plunged into spiritual darkness. Why? Lucy Shaw, Christian poet, some of your years ago wrote a little poem called Mary's song. And it's ostensibly about Mary, pregnant Mary, thinking about the baby she was carrying, Jesus, and reflecting. And the last lines of the poem go like this. Blind in my womb to know my darkness ended. Brought to this birth for me to be reborn. And for him to see me mended, I must see him torn. He. He has to be torn if we're going to be mended, and he has to be plunged into darkness, blind to

see our darkness ended. He did that for you. He did that for you. And if you see him doing that for you, and you even begin to say, thank you, Lord, you've begun to worship and your sight's begun to clear. Let it happen. Let us pray. Our father, we ask that you would help us to recognize that our sight isn't what it

should be that only through faith in Jesus Christ as our sight begin to clear up and only through worship does our sight completely clarify we want to see more and more of spiritual reality we want to understand the world that is really out there and we know that's not going to happen unless we worship you so we pray Lord that even here at the end even as we stand and sing you'd begin to move us into a deeper level of worship for the rest of our our lives so that we can also say, once I was blind, but now I see. Jesus' name we pray it. Amen.

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership connects people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelandlife.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 2014.

The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.