Jump Start # 2220

John 9:31 “We know that God does not hear sinners; but if any one is God fearing, and does His will, He hears him.”

Our verse today comes from one of the longest investigative chapters of the Bible. Jesus healed a blind man. He healed him on the Sabbath. That put these Jews into orbit. They were certain that Jesus was not a man of God. So the investigation began. They questioned the blind man. Unhappy with his answers, they questioned the blind man’s parents. Still not getting the answers that they wanted, they grilled the blind man a second time. Frustrated, angry and not finding concrete evidence against Jesus, they removed the blind man from their presence. They had enough of him.

Our verse arises out of this interrogation. It was said by the Jews to the blind man, but the subject, the sinner, that they have in mind is Jesus. Interestingly, no prayers are actually said in this chapter. Jesus restored the blind man’s sight by spitting in the dirt and putting that on his eyes and commanding him to go wash in a specific place. The Jews considered what Jesus did to be work. He made mud and he applied it to the man’s eyes. That alone was enough to declare in their minds that Jesus was a sinner. Our verse begins with the expression, “We know.” They know that God does not hear sinners. How did they know that? A few Psalms reveal that. What they didn’t know was Jesus.

Before us is one of the great circumstances of what we know and what we see clashing. What the mind knows and what their eyes were seeing just didn’t match. They knew that God is never wrong, so, it had to be that Jesus was in the wrong.

They assumed that Jesus on His own could not have restored sight. They assumed He had to pray for this to be done. Yet, by violating the Sabbath, in their minds, Jesus proved that He was not following the will of God. Therefore, God could not hear Jesus. The man could not have been healed by God. Nice. Neat. Logical. Except one problem, a blind man was now seeing. If Jesus didn’t use the powers of God, then what powers? Their only conclusion was to assume that the man wasn’t blind to begin with, or it’s a different man or there was some mix up somewhere.

From this passage, and supported by what the Psalms teach, we have built walls around prayers and made it exclusively for Christians only and have even gotten upset when someone who is a “sinner” prays. God doesn’t hear sinners, we proudly boast.

Let’s walk down that path for a moment. Immediately comes to our minds are some exceptions to that rule. God heard Cornelius. Saul of Tarsus was praying to God. It was Jesus who invited those who were seeking, to knock, and to ask. The Lord said, “For every one who asks receives; and he who seeks find; and to him who knocks it shall be opened.” I don’t think Jesus had in mind, seeking our car keys in the morning. He is referring to a person finding salvation in Jesus Christ. That person seeks, knocks and asks. The asking part is prayer.

We also know that John wrote that if we confess our sins, God is faithful to forgive us. He further added, if we say that we have no sins, we are deceiving ourselves. So we have sins. We confess those sins in prayer. God hears us and forgives us.

Suddenly, the black and white statement, God doesn’t hear sinners, must be qualified and explained. What do we mean by sinners? We all sin is what Romans teaches us. When Simon the sorcerer, having been baptized, tried to buy the gift of imparting the Holy Spirit from the apostles, Peter rebuked him and told him that he was in the bond of iniquity and pleaded with him to pray and perhaps God would forgive him. Sinful Simon was told to pray. Would God hear him?

Here are some things in the midst of all this ought to help us:

First, the Pharisees didn’t fully understand the passage that they were quoting. Yes, for a person who does not regard God and follow God, prayer is not a guaranteed parachute to pull out in times of trouble. Prayer is our way of communicating with God. We are always to pray. All relationships are built around trust and communication, including our relationship with God. To ignore God, never consider God, and definitely never worship God, but to reach out and pray because a loved one has cancer or I’m about to lose my job, with the sole purpose of simply getting me out of this trouble that I am in, knowing full well, that after this, I will continue to ignore God, no, He probably won’t answer that prayer. However, they missed it by declaring that Jesus was a sinner. What Jesus did was not a violation of the Sabbath law. It bent and broke their traditions but not the law of God. Jesus was without sin.

Second, God hears all things, but it is His prerogative to decide which prayers will be answered. Just because someone is baptized does not granted positively that his prayers will be answered. Peter told husbands that if they do not treat their wives correctly, their prayers would be hindered. The Lord said, if we do not forgive others, then God will not forgive us. Those are prayers that we may ask but may not be answered favorably because of the way we are living.

We love to sit on the throne with God and rule for Him. We love to decide who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell. We love to declare who is in fellowship with God and who is not in fellowship with God. We love to determine which prayers God will answer. We do well to get out of that throne seat and allow the Lord to be the Lord. The Pharisees thought they had everything nicely figured out. They were wrong.

Third, when these discussions come up, as in this account in John, rarely do we look at ourselves. We want to know about a cousin who is not a Christian giving thanks at Thanksgiving. That bothers us. That concerns us. We want to know whether that prayer got past the dinner room ceiling. Yet, in all of this, do we consider our walk with the Lord. Do we consider our hearts? The Pharisees never looked at themselves. Their radar gun was pointed directly at Jesus. They assumed that their prayers were heard by God, an assumption that one cannot assume.

Fourth, hearing our prayers and answering them to the way we like are not the same thing. God hears all. If God only heard the words of the righteous, then God would never hear blasphemy, falsehoods or lies. Everything we say is heard by God. The Lord answers prayers according to His will. No, is an answer. Parents use that every day. A child will ask something and if the parent doesn’t feel that it is good, they will say no. The child may say, “Why don’t you answer me.” The parent has. It just wasn’t in the favorable direction the child wanted.

Finally, prayer is a privilege, obligation and blessing to those who walk with the Lord. We are God’s children, His family. God wants to hear from us. God wants us to be close to Him. God wants us to be honest with Him. Prayer is not to be abused. Prayer is not a divine wish list. Prayer is inviting God’s will into my life. It is much more than asking, it is thanking, praising and honoring God. The very concept of prayer shows that we are not running this world and that we need God. We need Him for everyday physical things, like our daily bread. We need Him for the deep spiritual things such as forgiveness.

When I hear someone loudly repeating what the Pharisees proclaimed, “God doesn’t hear sinners,” I’m sitting there thinking, I hope He hears me. The sinful publican, in Jesus’ parable proclaimed, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Did God hear that one? Jesus told that story. Jesus said that man went to his home justified. He was heard. He was forgiven. God heard the prayer of a sinner.

Lifting verses without understanding the context, the language used and the intent of the passage is nearly as dangerous as never using the Bible. We do this with verses like Hebrews 10:25 and apply that to Wednesday Bible classes. Here is a guy who comes on Sunday, but not Wednesday. We guilt him by saying that he is forsaking the assembling of the saints. Standing with the Pharisees, we miss what that passage truly says. Satan did the same thing in the temptations of Jesus. He quoted Scriptures and told Jesus to jump. The word of God promises that you’ll be not be hurt. Misused. Misapplied.

Beyond seeing the power of Jesus healing this blind man in John 9, maybe this long encounter with the Pharisees is an opportunity for us to see how we handle the word of God. Timothy was told to handle it accurately. More than just good advice, essential if we want to follow God.

One other thought that is often overlooked in this passage. The Pharisees put the blind man out of their midst. They were finished with him. Jesus went looking and found him. Jesus had yet another conversation with this man.

Jesus went looking… He’s looking for you!

Roger

Jump Start # 1733

John 9:31 “We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him.”

  A friend asked me to share some thoughts in Jump Start about this passage. This passage is layered with thoughts and is a great way to show the value of looking at the context. Here’s the background. Jesus and His disciples passed a man who was blind from birth. The disciples, with the common Jewish thinking of the day, assumed the man had been punished for some sin. They asked Jesus, who sinned? Was it the man or was it his parents? Interestingly, they never thought to ask Jesus if He could or would make the man better. Just a curious thought that involved no action on their part. Jesus, in a remarkable miracle, spit in the dirt, made mud, rubbed it on the man’s eyes and told him to go wash in the pool Siloam. Jesus didn’t have to do that. He could have cured the man by just saying the words. The man returned seeing. The miracle covers about three verses. The entirety of the rest of the chapter is an intense interrogation by the Jews concerning this miracle. The Jews continually refer to Jesus as a “sinner.” They question the blind man. Then they question his parents. Then they again question the man. The man is getting irritated with the Jewish questions. He asks the Jews if they want to become a disciple of Jesus? That sets them over the edge. In response, where our verse is found, the blind man states, “You do not know where He is from…and yet He opened my eyes. We know that God does not hear sinners…” His conclusion was that Jesus could not be a sinner, otherwise God would not have heard him.

That’s the story. Now comes the question that we struggle with from this verse: Does God hear sinners? We must think this out before we shoot out a quick answer. I’ve heard folks quote this proudly in a Bible class without thinking this out.

First, if God doesn’t hear sinners, how does he hear anyone? Romans tells us that all have sinned. John tells us in this first letter, that if we say that we have no sin, present tense, the truth is not in us. That’s a problem. Does God hear any of us?

Second, although this is in the Bible, this statement isn’t from God. Jesus didn’t say this. Neither did one of the apostles. This comes from the blind man in a heated exchange with the Jewish establishment. He doesn’t quote any specific passage. This is how he sees things. This tells us that the Bible contains conversations of uninspired men. The words of Pharaoh, Herod, Nebuchadnezzar, Pilate, soldiers, servants and others are found in the Bible. These words are part of the conversation and the story. This man’s perspective may not be correct.

Third, we know that God has heard the prayers of sinners. In Acts 9, when Saul of Tarsus, saw Jesus in a vision and became blind, God sent Ananias to him. God told Ananias  that Saul “is praying.” How did God know that if He doesn’t hear the prayer of sinners? The next chapter, Acts 10, we find Cornelius, a God-fearing man, but not a Christian. An angel appeared to Cornelius and reported, “Your prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God.” God heard the prayer of a man that wasn’t saved. In Jesus’ great sermon, He said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”  The person who has does not ask, seek or knock. It’s the person who doesn’t have that will do these things. To say categorically, God does not hear the prayers of sinners, is not Biblically correct.

Fourth, Psalms 66 states, “If I regard wickedness in my heart, God will not hear.”  This is probably where the blind man in John 9 came up with his idea that “God does not hear sinners.” The intention of the heart is what is important here. Cornelius was not saved, but he was God-fearing. Saul was not saved, but he was questioning and seeking. That is so different than a man who never worships, never follows the Lord, never cares about the spiritual side of things and then one day troubles come and then, and only then, he prays so that the trouble will end. Once the troubles are over, he’s back to his selfish, one dimensional, materialistic pursuits in life. He needed prayer to get him out of trouble. Once the trouble ended, he was finished with prayer and with God. His only motive for praying was selfish. He has no intention of pursuing the will of God.  He has no faith. He has no understanding of God’s word. He couldn’t name the four gospels if his life depended upon it. As soon as trouble leaves, he quickly is done with the spiritual stuff until the next time trouble comes. The fact that he prayed never changed him, moved him nor affected him. He’s not even sure who He is talking to when he offered his emergency prayer in the moment of crisis. He’s not even concerned about knowing who he is talking to. For such a person, his prayer is not heard. He is not interested in God. He is not interested in doing what God says. He simply wants a nice, smooth life with little trouble. That’s the only reason he prays. The only time he ever hears the Bible read is at a wedding or a funeral.

We pray not to just get us out of trouble. Sometimes trouble teaches us things that we need to learn. We pray to thank God. We pray to praise God. We pray to talk to God. We pray because we know, like and love God. We pray because we want to be with God. We pray because God is our Father.

Our verse today, shows us that statements found in the Bible must be understood. Who is speaking? What is the background? What’s going on? Those thoughts help us to get an understanding on the meaning of a verse. The statement, God doesn’t hear sinners, was used by the blind man to justify Jesus. How could Jesus be a sinner, like the Jews were saying, if God had heard and answered His prayer. The proof was in the eyes of the man who once was blind. He now had sight.

In a hard to understand statement, the Bible is from God, but not every word is a quotation of God. This does not mean that man has added his own words into the Bible. The Bible is a product of inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but even the devil is quoted in the Bible. God included man’s words to build the historical story behind the Bible events. Study helps us to understand this concept. This also helps us to see that just flinging out a statement of the Bible can be dangerous. If misused, if taken out of context, the conclusion may not be God’s conclusion. We could build a whole system of faith around, “God doesn’t hear the prayer of sinners.” From that, we could easily build the bridge to, “God doesn’t hear the praise of sinners.” Just a step or two more, and we get to “God doesn’t even like sinners.” None of that is true. That’s the danger of taking a statement out of it’s background and context.

I hope this has been helpful. It makes us think about that statement, “handling accurately” the word of truth. That’s our responsibility. Don’t cut corners. Don’t be sloppy in your study. Don’t assume. Be diligent. Do your homework. Dig deep. Look carefully. Lower the nets. Think things out. See the big picture.

I’d expect most of us were praying to God before we obeyed Him and were saved. I’d also expect that most of us didn’t think that was a bad thing to do. The more folks prayed to God, the better our world would be.

Roger