Believing is Seeing

Believing is Seeing

Believing is Seeing - Audio/Visual 

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 worshiped him. (John 9:35-38)

The old guy on the corner hadn’t seen him, and the woman selling figs, seated catty-corner from the old guy hadn’t seen him either. Jesus had even described him to the scribes at the gate, and to the kids in the courtyard. “He’s about this tall. Kind of a scraggly beard. Clothes a little threadbare.” No one had the foggiest idea about who Jesus was talking about.

For the better part of the day, Jesus had been searching up and down the streets of Jerusalem for the guy. He hadn’t stopped for lunch; he didn’t even pause to take a break. The only time Jesus’ feet weren’t moving was when he was asking, “Pardon me, but have you seen that fellow who used to beg at the corner of Blind and Faith streets?” Finally, a young boy gave him a lead and, with that, Jesus took a back street toward the temple and spotted the man sitting on a stump between two donkeys. Jesus approached him from behind and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you.” The fellow turned and, for the first time, saw the one who’d made him see.

John introduces us to the man with these words: “As he (Jesus) went along, he saw a man blind from birth.” (John 9:1) In other words, this man had never seen a sunrise; he couldn’t tell black from white; he’d never even seen his mom or dad. Not surprisingly, the disciples blamed the family tree. “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (vs. 2) “Neither,” Jesus replies. You could, instead, trace the man’s condition back to heaven because the reason the man was born sightless was so that “the works of God might be displayed in him.” (vs. 3) Selected to suffer. Talk about a thankless role. Some sing to God’s glory. Others speak of God’s glory. But who wants to be blind for God’s glory? And what’s tougher – the condition itself, or the discovery that it was God’s idea in the first place?

And the cure? Well, it proved to be as eye-opening as the cause. “[Jesus] spit on the ground, made some mud with saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.” (vs. 6) There are probably a million different pictures of Jesus: in the arms of Mary; in the Garden of Gethsemane; in the upper room; on the cross; in the darkened tomb. Jesus touching. Jesus weeping. Jesus laughing, teaching and loving. But I’ve never seen a picture of Jesus spitting. Have you? So, picture it. Christ licking his lips a time or two, gathering a mouth full of spit, working up a blob of drool and letting it fall to the dirt. Then he squats, stirs up a muddy puddle of … well … I don’t know. What would you call it? Holy putty? A saliva solution? Whatever the name, he placed a finger-full in the palm of his hand and then, as calmly as a painter spackles a hole in the wall, Jesus streaked the mud-miracle onto the blind man’s eyes. “Go … wash in the pool of Siloam,” Jesus says. (vs. 7) So, the beggar feels his way to the fountain, splashes water on his mud-streaked face and rubs away the clay. The result is the first chapter of Genesis, just for him. Light where there was darkness. Virgin eyes begin to focus, and once fuzzy or unseen figures become human beings.

Describing these events, John gets the Biblical Understatement of the Year award when he writes: “He came home seeing.” (John 9:7). Come on. Really? Running a little short on verbs, John? How about “He raced back seeing”? Or “He danced back seeing”? Maybe even, “He roared back whooping and hollering and kissing-every-baby-he-could-get-his-hands-on-for-the-first-time seeing”? The guy had to have been thrilled beyond words, and we would love to leave him that way, but we can’t. If this man’s life were like a ride at Disneyland, he’d just stepped out of the line for Thunder Mountain to saunter over to the horse-drawn streetcar on Main Street. Don’t believe me? Just look at the reaction of the neighbors. “‘Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?’ Some claimed that he was. Others said, ‘No, he only looks like him.’ But he himself insisted, ‘I am the man.’” (vs. 9)

In other words, these folks didn’t celebrate the man’s good fortune; they debated it. They’ve watched him grope and trip since he was a child. (vs. 23) So, you’d think they’d be happy for him. But noooooo; they’re not. Anything but that. Rather than rejoicing in the man’s miracle, they march him down to the church building to have him kosher-tested. And when the Pharisees ask for an explanation, the once-blind beggar says, “’He put mud on my eyes … I washed, and now I see.’” (vs. 15)

Again, we pause for the applause, but all you hear are crickets, instead. No recognition. No celebration. And making matters worse, Jesus had apparently forgotten to consult the healing handbook before performing his miracle. “Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath …. Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” (vs. 14, 16)  Sigh.

Won’t anyone celebrate with this guy? The neighbors didn’t. The preachers didn’t. Oh, but wait. Here come the parents; surely, they’ll be happy for their sight-given son. But the reaction of the parents is even worse because now they’re under subpoena from the church police who proceed to interrogate them – Klieg lights and all. Questioning the parents they demand, “Is this your son?” “Is this the one you say was born blind?” “How is it that now he can see?” Cowering from the rough treatment, the parents admit, “’We know he is our son … and we know he was born blind,’” but then go into their plausible deniability mode – “… who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.’” And their rationale for throwing their son under the bus? “His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who had already decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.” (vs. 19-22). How could the parents do that? Granted, being kicked out of church was serious business, but refusing to help their own son? Tragic.

The truth is no one “saw” him. And you have to ask yourself, “So, who was really blind that day?” (vs. 39) The neighbors didn’t see the man; they saw a novelty. The church leaders didn’t see the man; they saw a technicality. The parents didn’t see their son, they saw a social difficulty. In the end, no one saw him. So, “they threw him out.” (vs. 34) And now he’s back on the streets of Jerusalem. The poor guy probably left church that day both crushed and bewildered. Born blind only to be healed. Healed only to be kicked out of church. Kicked out of church only to be left alone. The poor guy’s gone from the peak of Mt. Whitney to the depths of Death Valley – all in one Sabbath. And to make matters worse, he can’t even beg anymore because he’s no longer blind and has no job skills. How would that feel?

Maybe you know someone like that – a couple who’s buried a daughter; a single mom raising an autistic son; a neighbor with cancer whose medical records are as thick as a phone book. Do you know anyone who seems to have been dealt more than their fair share of bad hands in life? Maybe you’re the one whose been dealt a 2 and 7 off-suit hand in the game of “Heaven hold ‘em,” where there are no good options for you. You don’t have a straight draw or a flush draw, and even if you wind up with a pair of 7’s or a pair of 2’s, you still have a bad hand. If this describes you, or someone you know, Jesus knows, too. He knows how they feel, and he’s keenly aware of their circumstances. And he knows how you feel, and he knows your circumstances too because “Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and … he found him ….” (John 9:35)

Maybe the virgin birth we just celebrated isn’t proof enough. Or maybe three decades of earth walking and miracle working aren’t sufficient, either. But if there’s any doubt regarding God’s complete and utter devotion to his creation, he does this kind of stuff. He tracks down a “nobody,” and the once-blind beggar lifts his eyes to look into the face of the one who started it all. And you have to wonder, after all he’s been through, if the guy’s going to yell at Jesus, or at least voice a complaint. You couldn’t blame him if he did, I suppose. After all, he didn’t volunteer for the disease or the deliverance. But he does neither. “He worshiped him,” instead. (vs. 38)

Have you seen Him? No, not the blind guy. Have you seen Jesus? The God-man. (John 1:1; 14) Because when you do, when you really see Him, you’ll do what the once-blind beggar did. Just as Jesus came for the blind man, he’s coming for you, too. The hand that touched the blind man’s shoulder that day has touched your own, and the face that changed the once blind man’s life can change yours as well. Take it from the man once born blind – believing is seeing. He believed the word of a man whom he had never seen and, when he did, saw the man who changed his life – forever.

Grace,

Randy

 

Follow the Science

 

Follow the Science

Follow the Science - Audio/Visual (@21:30) 

For unto us a child is born; a son is given. And the government shall rest upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

“Follow the science.” It’s a phrase with which we’re all familiar. Post-pandemic, we’ve discovered that some do, some don’t, and some do until the results don’t fit their narrative and then they don’t. But making sense of the phrase, “follow the science,” first requires an understanding of what science is. Webster defines science as a process for learning about the world – not merely an established body of knowledge to be consulted. Some areas of science, like Newtonian physics, might give the impression of finality, but that’s a little misleading. Even classical physics is still an approximation; over time we’ve been able to figure out tasks for which that approximation is adequate, like landing a rover on Mars – and those for which it isn’t, like GPS which might take you through a lake to get to Grandma’s house.

Statistics is the science of developing, or studying methods for collecting, analyzing, interpreting or presenting empirical data. During one of my stats classes in college, a fire started in one of the wastebaskets in the classroom. Fortunately, we had an aspiring physicist, chemist and a budding statistician in the class. Spotting the fire, the physicist immediately began calculating how much energy would have to be removed from the fire to stop its combustion. The fire burned as he calculated. The chemist, using a different scientific method, ran her computations on how much retardant would have to be applied to the fire to prevent oxidation and, thus, its spread. The fire grew. Fortunately, the statistician, with an entirely different scientific approach, began setting fire to all of the other trashcans in the classroom. “What are you doing?” the physicist and chemist shouted, to which the statistician calmly responded, “Well, to solve this problem, you obviously need to have a larger sample size.” Statistics. They say that figures lie, and liars figure, but what do I know; I was just trying to pass the class.

Statistical probability, or odds, however, can be useful, if not sometimes interesting. For instance, did you know that 2% of American voters thought Mitt Romney’s name was actually Mitten? Or, that 69% of children ages 2-5 can use a computer mouse, but 89% of these same kids can’t tie their own shoes? Less interesting, but perhaps more useful, is the fact that your odds of being struck by lightning are one in 7 x 10 to the 5^th power, or 1 in 700,000. Fortunately, the odds of you actually being killed by that same bolt of lightning are much smaller, i.e., 2 x 10 to the 6^th power, or 1 in 2,000,000. Of course, there’s the age-old question about the likelihood of your house being hit by a meteorite. I’m happy to report that the odds of that happening are 1.8 x 10 to the 14^th power, or 1 in 1,800,000,000,000,000, as in quadrillion.

So, what if you were to follow the science as it relates to the statistical probability, or odds, that Jesus uniquely fulfilled the more than three hundred Biblical prophecies foretelling his birth, life, death and resurrection? Jesus said in John 5:39, “You study the Scriptures in detail because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me.” Apparently, Jesus was a statistician, and the Bible is full of prophecies about events that have either happened or will happen in the future. In Science Speaks, the late Dr. Peter Stoner looked at the statistical/mathematical probability that one man, Jesus Christ, could have fulfilled just 8 of the more than 300 prophecies about him in the Bible. In layman’s terms, Dr. Stoner concluded that the chances of Jesus fulfilling just 8 of the messianic prophecies equates to the probability of one in 10 – followed by 17 zeros, i.e., 1 x 10¹⁷, or 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros, but you can call it a quintillion.

Given this pretty staggering number, and the time span between the writings of the Old Testament and the fulfillment by Christ in the New Testament, the prophecies were either given to the prophets by God, or the prophets simply wrote down what they dreamed up. But what are the odds that the prophets penned their predictions on a whim? Pretty slim, but here’s an example.

Let’s say you marked one of ten tickets and placed all ten tickets in a hat, thoroughly mixed them up and then asked a blindfolded person to draw one of the tickets out of the hat. His or her chances of getting the right ticket would be one in ten. Simple enough. But what if you took 1 x 10¹⁷, or a quintillion silver dollars and spread them out across the great state of Texas? Putting aside the fact that you’d be the next Bernard Arnault, or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, or that you’d be arrested for littering, or more likely mugged, that many silver dollars would cover the entire state of Texas two feet deep. Now, mark one of them, spread the entire mass of silver dollars across the state and blindfold a man or woman with instructions that they can travel as far as they wish, in any direction, but they must pick the silver dollar that you marked. What chance would they have of finding it? The same chance that the prophets would have had of writing just eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one person, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote those prophecies using their own wisdom.

Suppose, however, that we add eight more prophecies to the list. The chance that one man would fulfill all sixteen is now, for you math scholars, 1 x 10 to the 28^th power multiplied by 10 to the 17^th power, or 1 in 10 to the 45^th power. In other words, 10 with 45 zeros, i.e., a Quattuor-decillion. So, using our silver dollar example, but now melting them into a solid, silver ball, you would have a mass whose center would be earth and whose circumference would extend in all directions more than 30 times farther from the earth to the sun. Now, just to give you an idea of the kind of distance we’re talking about, pretend you were on a train that left the station on its journey to the sun at the same time the Declaration of Independence was signed. Traveling steadily at the rate of sixty miles per hour, day and night, you would have almost reached your destination by now. But remember that our ball of silver dollars extends thirty times the distance from the earth to the sun, and in all directions. So, imagine marking one of those silver dollars, thoroughly stirring it into this great big ball, blindfolding a man or woman and then telling them to pick the one silver dollar you had marked. What are the chances of that happening? Still skeptical?

Well, in an effort to extend this beyond all bounds of human comprehension, and if you’re still with me, what is the likelihood that Jesus fulfilled just 48 of the more than 300 prophecies concerning his birth, life, death and resurrection? It’s 1 in 10 to the 157^th power. That’s a really large number, for which there is no name, and it represents an extremely small chance unless, of course, these prophecies were God-inspired. Unfortunately, we can’t use our silver dollar example anymore because a silver dollar, even when melted, is too big for the illustration; we need a much smaller object, and the smallest object of which we know is the electron. An electron is so small that it would take 2.5 x 10 to the 15^th power electrons, or 2.5 quadrillion that if laid side by side, would make a line of electrons one inch long. So, if we were going to count the electrons in this line one inch long, and counted 250 electrons each minute, and counted day and night, it would take us 19,000,000 years to count just that one inch of a line of electrons.

So, let’s suppose that we are taking this number of electrons, marking one, thoroughly mixing it into the whole mass, then blindfolding a man or woman and letting them try to find the right electron. What chance is there that they could find it? And what kind of a pile would this number of electrons make? It would be an inconceivably large pile. For instance, the distance from our system of stars, or galaxy, to the next nearest galaxy is nearly 1,500,000 light-years away which is the distance that light travels in a million and a half years going 186,000 miles per second, or 671 million miles per hour.

That distance is so great that if every man, woman and child in the United States, all 332,403,650 of us (as of January 1, 2022), each had a library of 65,000 books, and you collected every book in all of these libraries and then started on this journey of 1,500,000 light-years, and decided to place one letter from one of the books on each mile, (i.e., if "the" was the first word in the first book, you would put "t" on the first mile, "h" on the second mile, and "e" on the third mile; then leave a mile blank without a letter and start the next word in the same manner, etc.), before you completed your journey you would use up every letter in every book in every one of the libraries and have to call the librarian for more.

Space, by some accounts, is supposed to extend in all directions to a distance, not of 1,500,000 light-years, but more than 4,000 times that far, or 6,000,000,000 light-years. So, going back to our electron example, extend them in all directions from the earth to a distance of six billion light-years. Have we used up our 10 to the 157^th power of electrons? No. We would have made such a small dent in the mass that we wouldn’t even notice it. We could make this solid ball of electrons, extending in all directions, to the distance of six billion light-years 6 x 10 to the 28^th power times. Exhausting, I know, but the fact is there aren’t that many electrons in the known universe. And that number is just for 48 of the more than 300 known Messianic prophecies that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled. That’s not merely evidence, it’s proof of the Bible’s inspiration by God – proof so definite that the universe isn’t big enough to hold all the evidence.

No man could author the book we call the Bible without help. The Bible was written by Kings, Generals, shepherds and priests, over a period of 1,600 years in 3 languages, on 3 continents, comprising a total of 66 books. It was written mostly by authors who had never met, and who wrote about controversial subjects, yet all 66 books agree. In other words, you can stake your life on the Bible’s authenticity, authority and trustworthiness. And you can and should stake your eternal destiny on these prophecies as well because, sadly, the odds of you and me dying are 1 in 1 – statistically speaking.

Hey, but if you prefer, go small; set your odds at 1 in 4. Say that one man in four has been born in Bethlehem; that one in four of their children were taken to Egypt, to avoid slaughter; that one in four of these came back and made their home in Nazareth; that one in four of them was a carpenter; that one in four of those was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver; that one in four of these was crucified on a cross; that one in four of them were then buried in a rich man’s tomb; yes, even that one in four of those rose from the dead on the third day; and so on for all 300+ prophecies. But if you did, an even larger number would be obtained than 1 in 10 to the 157^th power. The truth is that anyone who rejects Jesus Christ as the Son of Gold is rejecting a fact proven perhaps more absolutely than any other fact in the world.

So, maybe we should “follow the science” as we celebrate Jesus’ birth because some of the saddest words on earth are, “We don’t have room for you.” Jesus knew the sound of those words. He was still in Mary’s womb when the innkeeper said, “We don’t have room for you.” And when he hung on the cross, wasn’t that the message? “We don’t have room for you in this world.” Even today Jesus is given the same treatment, but he still goes from heart to heart asking if he can enter in. And every so often he’s welcomed; someone throws open the door of his or her mangy heart and invites him to stay. And to that person Jesus gives this promise: “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” (John 14:2) So if prophecy is prologue, then Jesus has promised to make room for us in his house when we make room for him in our hearts.

Merry Christmas,

Randy