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In our text in the Gospel of John, we read a part of the somewhat humorous and entertaining story of the blind man that was healed. It is humorous and engaging because of the scrambling efforts of the Jewish religious leaders in trying to explain away a noted miracle in their midst. Not wanting to admit that the miracle validated Jesus for who He claimed to be, they interviewed the man several times and even went to his parents trying to discredit the supernatural work that had been done. How sad, the effort and false faith that some people put into trying not to believe that Jesus Christ really is and can do all that He claims!

The story is entertaining in that it is the story of the underdog gaining the upper hand. The Jewish religious leaders had widely taught the lie that if a person was born with a handicap such as blindness, that it was a result of sin on the parent's part and that the person could never enter the temple or learn of the things of God but was doomed to be an outsider and an outcast. Such crazy beliefs were, of course, not true in every possible way, but such was the spiritual climate of Israel at the coming of Christ. And so Jesus upset the spiritual leaders of the temple's apple cart, so to speak, by healing people with such handicaps and thus suddenly giving them a glimpse and an encounter of the supernatural that far went beyond the religious leaders of the day. It is hard to discredit the testimony of a blind man now healed, especially if you are that blind man!

And so we find through the power of Jesus, there is a reversal of roles in the temple, with the once blind man who only knew of the scriptures what he had inquired and been told by the religious leaders, now is in the place of authority about Jesus and the workings of God and is being inquired of by the religious leaders of what happened to him. He has no religious trainings and probably very miniscule knowledge of scriptures, but he has his testimony and so for a few moments, the former blind man makes great use of the opportunity and preaches to the so called "Bible experts!" At least until they threw him out!

Isn't this a great portrait of what God does in our life? He takes people who were just sinners, blinded by their sin and lifestyle and heals them of their spiritual blindness and then uses the now healed people to preach to the experts of truth and the power of God! Thank God that He reaches to even the lowest pit of sin and still heals spiritual and physical eyes today!

It is the second time that the religious leaders come to the formerly blind man that the guy really gets wound up and begins to preach to them. He first tells them:

The man then continued on with a little doctrine in his sermon:

We must realize that although this story is recorded in the Word of God, that it is a human being talking and that we must judge the truth of what he is saying versus the rest of scriptures. The Bible is often a book of stories and to yank one verse out of it and apply to all situations is a mistake often made. For example the book of Isaiah records this verse:

Take that verse out of the context of the verses surrounding it and let it stand alone, and you could say that you have Biblical proof that God forsakes His people. But we must remember that it is written what Zion or Israel said and believed, but the next verses God answers their charge with "not so, I have not forsaken thee" and then comes the scripture about the plans for Jerusalem being permanently engraved upon His hands. This verse is the words of sinful humanity speaking and it is recorded because it is true that they said it, but what they said is not true at all!

And so, getting back to our text, we must evaluate this former blind man's statements versus other scripture, and for his first sermon and especially without any in depth scriptural training, he does well. Notice:

In verse 32, the man claims that never in the history of the world has it been recorded or heard that someone opened the eyes of a man born blind. This is true in the sense of the Old Testament -- I checked it out -- and nobody, Moses or any of the prophets, ever healed the blinded eyes of someone who had been born blind. It was not true, though, in the sense that this was the third year of Jesus' ministry and chances are that of the thousands of other blind men that had already been healed by Jesus some of them were born blind. It was true and not true what he said.

In verse 33, the man says "if this man were not from God, he could do nothing." That is true in that if Jesus Christ were not the Messiah, God would not have validated His ministry with signs and wonders in that day. There had been plenty of people who had claimed to be the Promised One of Israel but none of them had done miracles and such. So in the sense of the identity of the Messiah, the man's statement was true.

It was not true, though, in that not everybody that performs miracles today is "from God." Jesus, Himself, taught that in the day of judgment:

Furthermore, the Bible clearly foretells in the Book of Revelation that when the Antichrist -- the enemy of the things of God -- rises to power in the last days that he will be accompanied by a false prophet who will work miracles to deceive the people. Not all that glitters is gold and not all that does miracles is holy! So the man's statement of the "if this man were not from God, he could do nothing" is true and not true. True for the circumstances into which it was uttered and yet not true in many other applications that people try to apply it.

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And so we come to verse 31, which is where the man says:

Certainly we can have no issue with the last part of this verse: "if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him." In virtually every sense of the words that statement is resoundingly scriptural and accurate. But what of the first part? What of, "we know that God does not listen to sinners?" Like most of this man's statements, these words are both true and not true, depending upon the context of the words. It would be profitable for us today to examine the rest of scripture to see in what sense these words are true, and then in what sense they are not true!

"We know that God does not listen to sinners. . . " is the statement; let us thus begin:

By "empty prayers," I mean methods of prayer patterned after the sinful prayers of the heathen. Jesus taught elsewhere:

People often sin by not praying at all, because Jesus did not say "if you pray," but rather "when you pray!" But people who pray also sometimes sin in praying the wrong way! How you pray does matter! The book of James says that:

If that is true, then the opposite must be true: "the ineffective, non-fervent prayer of a sinner does little!" This scripture corresponds perfectly with Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6. We pray effectively by praying in the manner of how we are commanded in scripture. We pray ineffectively by modeling our prayers after other religions of the Gentiles and heathens. Jesus said that the Gentile religions taught that prayers are answered by saying learned prayers over and over and over again. There are some denominations that adopted such practices from the heathens long ago and some people think that prayer is repeating a phrase or a printed stanza over and over and over again. Such are "empty prayers" and such prayers are a sin before God because they go against the commandment of scripture not to do such things! Length in prayer is no substitute for lack of content. Vain repetition is no substitute for lack of heart.

Lack of heart is what is meant by "fervent." Prayer that is just words formed by the mind and the lips are not heard by God. But prayer that engages the soul and that flows from the very depths of a person; prayer that is the heart's cry of an individual. Prayer that is not performed for those listening around them and that cares less what other humans think of it; prayer that is fervently and sincerely reaching for the throne room of heaven, are the ones that make it there! And so the statement of "we know that God does not listen to sinners" is true in that He does not respond to those who do not obey His Word and pray effective and fervent prayers!

Furthermore:

Listen to this verse, our other text today:

An "abomination" is a detestable thing -- something that God really hates. Those who have heard the Word of God, understood it, and yet do not listen or obey it, have their prayers become an abomination to God. To those who willingly turn their ears from obeying His Word, He turns His ears from their prayers and their cries! A lack of obedience to God's Word is the most frequent cause of unanswered prayers today; listen to what God says:

We must take great care to obey fully the Word of God delivered to us, or our prayers become in jeopardy of being powerless and pointless! If you feel like your prayers are "hitting the ceiling" then the first thing that you should check is to honestly answer, "am I obeying all of God's Word that I know that I should do?"

Moving on, we find an even more sobering way that it is true that "God does not hear the prayer of sinners:"

Again, we turn to the teachings of Jesus:

I read somewhere this week where a noted Bible scholar said that to study the teachings of Jesus Christ is to admit that to Jesus, unforgiveness was the most heinous of all sins! Jesus taught that there was no sin so great that you should not forget. He taught that there was no limit to how many times that you should forgive others of the same, repeated offense. And, more seriously, He taught that if we would harbor unforgiveness in our heart that God would not forgive us of our sins! He also taught that you are to forgive "when you pray." Unforgiveness is always a prayer failure in the lives of Christians.

I have not time today to do this justice, but suffice to say that the scripture teaches four cursed results that come from unforgiveness in a person's life:

1. It is the only sin that brings your past sins out from under the forgiving and pardoning blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus told the story of a man forgiven of a great debt and when the king heard that he had gone and refused to likewise forgive another man of a smaller debt, the king came and brought the forgiven debt back upon the man. When you make the decision to not forgive others and hold a grudge, you bring every past sin that was washed away in the waters of baptism out from forgiveness and as long as you hold unforgiveness in your heart, God holds you accountable for everything that you have ever done!

2. It keeps open wounds and prevents healing, actually causing situations to grow worse. If I have a great wound in my skin and as it tries to heal, I day after day tear it open again, then the wound will grow worse and worse and, if gangrene sets in, will end up killing me. Such is the effect of unforgiveness in the heart of a person: it keeps the rift from healing, and makes the situation even more painful and worse than it would have been had the person followed the example of Christ!

3. It causes suspicion and thinking evil of others. We read the story of Joab being suspicious of Abner and bringing a false accusation against him in 2 Samuel 2:22-25. The real story is in 2 Samuel 2:30 where we find that Joab had never forgiven Abner of an earlier action. His unforgiveness caused him to suspect everybody else of being insincere and up to no good. Such is the result of unforgiveness today. Show me someone who always thinks the worst of a situation and is always suspicious of the motives and sincerity of others, and you should know that you are looking at someone who has let the cancer of unforgiveness eat away at their soul!

4. It hinders your prayers to God. As we've already read, if you do not forgive others, God does not regard your prayers. Feel as if your prayers are unheeded and going nowhere lately? Check for that spiritual cancer of unforgiveness, and at all costs, get it out!

And finally, we find the statement of the blind man, "we know that God hears not the prayers of sinners" true in a most surprising place:

This certainly applies to physical abuse, but it very much implies "authority abuse" and "verbal abuse." The woman is created to need the man to be complete and -- usually -- is the weaker vessel in physical strength. But woe unto the man that takes advantage of either of these facts to mistreat and demean and put down on his wife! Men, be sure you treat your spouse with loving respect and adoration, or your prayers will be hindered in their path to the throne of God!

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The blind man said, "we know that God hears not the prayer of sinners." True, but also not true. Let us now turn our attention into looking at how this statement is false:

All of us have gone astray at one time or another. "There is none good, no not one." "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." If someone were to try to rip this verse out of its context and try to make it mean that God only hears the non-sinful then only the prayers of Jesus Christ would have been to any avail! The rest of us have all not measured up to His perfect standard of holiness and yet God has heard many the prayer of a human throughout the eons! Thank God that He is willing to listen to the petition of a pitiful wretch called man! You and I who have been born again of the water and of the Spirit are still sinners, but now "sinners saved by grace!" We are still imperfect, but striving for the goal of being as He is! Thank goodness that God hears prayers of such people!

And furthermore:

There is plenty of scripture for this, as in the cry that was sent to heaven on the road to Damascus and the answer came and God gave him direction before he was even in the slightest bit converted. But I know this not only from scripture but from personal experience. How many of us, though we were still far from truth and still far from having made all the steps of obedience that we needed, yet cried out to God and had Him answer a prayer!? Before you ever heard of water baptism in the name of Jesus; before some of you even knew that the promise of the Holy Spirit was for you, and even while you were still bound by the trappings of man's traditions, you cried out to God and He heard your cry and began orchestrating a rendezvous between you and truth! The blind man may have firmly believed that "God does not hear the prayer of sinners" but he was not taking in account God's great mercy! It may be that God should not hear the prayers of sinners, but His mercy and love toward us is often much greater than that! Thank God that He did not turn a deaf ear to us when we cried out although we were far from where we should have been!

It is a sobering thought, but one that I must insert and include here that:

Remember when the children of Israel murmured against the blessings of God and against the manna sent from heaven and cried "give us flesh to eat!" God answered that prayer although it was based upon sinful desires and longings for Egypt and the Bible says that quail came enough for every person, but:

He answered their prayers and gave them their sinful desires so that He could pour out judgment upon their sinful actions! We find something similar in the case of Pharaoh when after a plague was upon Egypt, would cry out to Moses to have the Lord remove the plague, and God would grant his request but only to "harden his heart" because God was determined to destroy his army and his rule of the people of Israel because of his great idolatry.

We must be extremely careful that we do not stay the enemy and opposite of God after we pray to Him. We must beware lest we cry out to Him and then yet harden our heart against Him after our crisis is over and stay away from Him because it could be that the next prayer request would be granted to bring destruction upon us! And we must also take care that we pray requests borne out of a heart that desires to please God and do His will and not from fleshly desires or our will being done! Because it just might be that God decides to answer our prayer and that we would get what we want and then suddenly realize that we do not want what we got!

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And so we have seen that the preaching of our former blind man is in some ways true, and in some ways not true. But we end with one more great area where it is absolutely not true that "God hears not sinners." And here it is:

The scripture says this in the repentant prayer of King David:

When a sinner comes to God with a repentant heart and a contrite and humble spirit and desires to surrender everything to Him and to enlist His forgiveness and His help and His Word in their lives, then that sinner will not find himself without God's mercy and grace! The book of James proclaims:

And despite such great scriptures -- and there are many more that I could have read -- proclaiming forgiveness available, there is always those poor, misguided souls who believe the lie "well, that's true for sinners that aren't so bad sinners, but I have crossed lines and I have done things that have caused me to go beyond the ability to receive such things." I close this message today by repeating to such people the story of king Manasseh in the Bible.

Really that should be "evil king Manasseh" because there was never a king that did as evilly as this one. Let me read you the summary of his life sins:

We could keep going. In verse 11 of this chapter, we find that God proclaims that Manasseh had led Israel to live so sinful that it was even worse than the heathen people who had been in the Promised Land before the Jews! Verse 12 states that God would bring such a harsh judgment because of his great sins that it would cause " the ears to tingle." The Bible also says this:

After killing the prophets and disregarding the messengers and leading people into sin that they would spend generations reaping the effect of, you would think that if anybody was beyond mercy and hope it was evil King Manasseh.

In fact, God allowed the Assyrians to come and take him captive and he was hauled off to a foreign land. Jewish history sort of fills in the blanks here and it records that the enemy king placed Manasseh in a sort of iron donkey and gradually lit a fire underneath. And inside this glorified barbecue pit, as the pain set in, evil king Manasseh for the first time in his life began to repent and call on the name of the one true God of Israel. After 55 years of ignoring the Word of God and the men of God in his life and doing the exact opposite of what God had wanted, if I were God I would have probably said, "you've got to be kidding, turn the fire up higher!" But the Bible records these remarkable verses:

God granted mercy to such an evil man as this king! Manasseh returned home and spent the last few years of his life trying to undo the decades of decadence that he had led. He tore down the idol altars and kicked out the witches and fortune tellers. He commanded that only the Jehovah God of Israel was to be worshipped. The judgment of God on Israel would still come, but this evil king found mercy and salvation at the very end of his life!

If there was hope for Manasseh and if there was hope for the thief on the cross, then there is still hope for you today! If you will humble yourself greatly before God and cry out to Him and repent to Him, you will find mercy in time of need. The blind man may have firmly believed that "God hears not the prayers of sinners," and in some cases that may be true, but thank God equally that it is also not true in some cases! And in the case of even the worst sinner that humbles themselves and humbly and repentantly seeks God even after years of doing the greatest evil, the blind man's logic is definitely NOT TRUE! We serve a great and merciful God -- seek Him while He may be found!