Rabbi Schneider - God's Purpose in Everything
"As He passed by, He saw a man blind for birth. And His disciples asked Him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?'" Now, I want you to think about this for a second. When they saw the man that was blind, the disciples immediately assumed that this man was born blind because somebody sinned. So listen again. "Rabbi," they said, "who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind"? So that was the concept of the ancient world and the concept of sickness. When someone was sick, it's because they sinned, they did something wrong, they were being punished. Remember Job and the struggling that he was having and his friends that, you know, came to him about, you know, repenting of his evil and the sickness came upon him because of his unrighteousness. Yet the Bible said that Job was blameless before the Lord.
So sickness is not always the result of sin. It can be. It can be. For example, in the book of Revelation, Yeshua delivers a word and He said that He's going to cast Jezebel and those that practice immorality with her upon a bed of sickness. Jesus said, "I spoke to them, they wouldn't listen, now I'm going to cast them on a bed of sickness". God was taking responsibility for that. He was causing the sickness. What about when Miriam and Aaron were blaspheming Moses? And what did God do? He struck them both with leprosy, right? He healed them, but he's the one that struck them. What about when the Israelites sinned and God sent serpents to bite them? Or what about during the time of David? Because of his sin, a plague came on the people. Sickness. And so we can't put God sometimes in just one box because God is a big God. And we need to be humble and we need to not try to make everything fit in our own little finite theologies.
You know, some people, for example, because they're faith healers and because they believe in faith healing, they can't open up to the reality that sometimes we read in God's Word that God's actually the one that sent the sickness. Now, God is not a God that, you know, delights in making people sick. But sometimes He uses evil to accomplish a higher good. The Lord's in the book of Isaiah, "I am God and there is no other. I form light and I create darkness. I create well-being and I create calamity or cause evil," as the King James puts it. God's a big God. In Judaism, we call Him Adon Olam, which is translated as Master of the World. A lot of Christian people they want to just... they don't want their theology to be disrupted, so they have to throw out the entire Old Testament to make their theology fit. Because in the Old Testament, once again, we see God cause natural disasters. What about when he opened the earth up to swallow Korah and the rebels, right?
So, you know, we need to humble ourselves. Part of the understanding, back to our text of the ancient world, was that when somebody was sick, it was because they sinned. But Jesus is saying, no, that's not what's going on right here. So let's listen again. They see the blind man, he was blind from birth, they said to Him, "Who sinned, this man or his parents"? Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him". So God had a purpose. It sounds like what Jesus was saying here that it was actually part of God's eternal plan that this man would be born into the world without physical sight, so that when Jesus appeared in the flesh, when the Son of God manifested Himself clothed in humanity, Jesus would cross this blind man's path, listen now, and heal him. And that as a result of Jesus healing this man that was blind from birth, because of this miracle, God would be glorified and many people would turn to Him.
So that's what Jesus seems to be saying here. He says, "It was neither this man that sinned nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him". In other words, the purpose was so that God could heal him. Isn't that amazing? We need to open up our minds, beloved, and we need to really be humble Yeshua answered, "We must work the works of Him who sent me as long as it is day; night is coming when no man can work. While I'm in the world, I am the light of the world". So Jesus is saying, come on, we're going to keep on healing people, we're going to keep on doing good works, because it's light out now and God wants me to keep on walking in His light. He continued on, the text continues on.
"When He had said this," John says, "when He had said this, He spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, the mud, and applied the clay to his eyes, to the blind man's eyes, and said to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is translated, Sent). So he went away and washed and came back seeing. Therefore the neighbors and those who had previously saw him as a beggar, were saying, 'Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?'" They couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe it. They knew this guy from birth was blind and now this guy's walking around seeing. Again, the neighbors and those who previously saw him as a beggar were saying, "Is this the one who used to sit and beg? Others were saying, 'This is he,' but still others were saying, 'No,' but he's like him". In other words, he looks like him, but he's really not him. "But he kept saying, 'The man that was healed. I am the one.'"
It reminds me some of you might have seen this. This is the most incredible miracle that I've ever witnessed in my life. And if you've not seen it, I want to encourage you to go online, go on YouTube and search under my name, and search under the title, Lira Uganda, Blind Woman Healed. Lira, L-I-R-A, Lira Uganda Blind Woman Healed. I had been praying for quite a while, my beloved friends, that God would show me a miracle that'd be undeniable. Because a lot of times when I speak healing over people, people say they're healed, but I'm not 100% sure sometimes because I'm not sure if they're just in the anointing and they feel well, because they're in the anointing, the atmosphere where faith is real high and all God's people are coming together worshiping, and maybe in that anointing the symptoms have disappeared. I don't want to be a doubter, but I'm just telling you that sometimes it's like people claim, for example, oh, I had a stomach ache for 10 days, and I came here tonight and you released healing over everybody, and they said when you released healing, when you said, "Be healed," all of a sudden my stomach ache went away.
And I thought, "Well, that's fantastic". But I said, "Lord, how do I know for sure, you know, it wouldn't have gone away anyways"? I mean, people do get stomach aches and they go away, you know, on their own sometimes just because of the healing capacity that you placed in the human body. So I said, "Lord, show me a miracle that I'm absolutely 1,000 convinced is a miracle from you". So I'm in Lira, Uganda. It's my last night there. We began Thursday. I preached our Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night. And every night we do what Jesus did. We preach the gospel, we speak healing over the sick and we cast out demons. So I'm on my last night there. It's dark outside. The stars are out. I mean, 30,000 people probably are on the ground. They've been there for hours. They're so hungry for the Word of God. And all of a sudden I said, "Blind, be healed. Blind eyes, be healed".
And when I said that, there's about three different videos online, but one of you will be able to see it, a lightning bolt struck. Exactly when I said, "Blind eyes, be healed," a bolt of lightning came down from the heavens. So after we get done ministering healing to people from the platform, we take testimonies. So all of a sudden we're taking testimonies and the ushers are bringing up this woman. And this woman comes, this woman claims she was blind and God gave her sight. And she said, "Rabbi, when you said, blind eyes be opened, and you blew that shofar, I was healed". And we did a test on her. You know, I put my fingers up, went away. The nurse was there that took care of her. We had people coming up testifying of the reality of this situation. We have it on video film. The daughter, the daughter of this woman is telling us, yes, she was blind.
She started slowly going blind. She went completely blind and there was nothing the doctors could do for her. The man that managed the hotel where they used to bring this woman every day to sit and beg, and when they put money in her hand, she didn't even know how much money it was, she couldn't see, he came, he testified. We've got it all on film. She's the woman that used to sit at my hotel, was completely blind, this woman is completely healed. You see her now, because we went back a year later. We went back a year later to see how she was doing. She looks like a different person. Her eyes are glowing. When she saw me, she wanted to grab me and come back to America with me. I mean, this kind of stuff is for real, beloved ones. It happened in Yeshua's day. It's still happening today. And may happen for some of you.
I don't know what you're dealing with, but Father, we just look to you right now as Yahweh ofecha, the Lord our healer. And I speak healing, Father God, over every child of Yours that's watching right now, that Father God, that maybe they need a healing in their eyes. I speak healing to your eyes right now. I say, blind eyes be healed, glaucoma be healed, in Yeshua's name. I speak to periodontist disease, gum disease right now. I say, periodontist disease, be out. Be cleansed. I speak to those gums. Be healed in Yeshua's name.
By His stripes, beloved ones, we are healed. So anyway, this man is healed, right? And some are perplexed. Like, "Is this the one that we knew, this blind person that's healed"? Some are saying, "Well, no, it's not him. It looks like him, but it's not him". Others are saying, "No, it's him. This is the one". And now listen again. "Therefore, the neighbors and those who previously saw him as a beggar were saying, 'Is not this the one who used to sit and beg"? It's like, it's hard to believe it. "Others were saying, 'This is he.' Still others were saying, 'No, but he's like him. He looks like him, but he's not the one.' But the man kept saying, 'I am the one. I am the one.' So they were saying to him, how then were your eyes opened? He answered, 'The man who is called Yeshua (Jesus) made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. So I went away and washed, and I received sight.' They said to him, 'Where is He?' He said, 'I do not know.' Then they brought him to the Pharisees. They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind. Now it was Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also were asking him again how he received his sight. And he said to them, 'He applied clay to my eyes and I washed, and I see.' Therefore, some of the Pharisees were saying, 'This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.' But others were saying, 'How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?' And there was a division among them".
Isn't that interesting? Still to this day, right? Division between those that are following Jesus and those who are not, it will never change. "So they said to the blind man again, 'What do you say about Him since He opened your eyes?'" These are the Pharisees, the religious leaders now. "And he said, 'He's a prophet. The Jews then did not believe it of him, that he had been blind and received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight". So they wouldn't believe the blind man that Jesus healed him. So they called his parents and they questioned them. "They questioned the parents saying, 'Is this your son who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?' His parents answered them and said, 'We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees,' the parents said, 'we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him,' the parents said, 'he's of age, he'll speak for himself.' His parents said this," John tells us, "that his parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews".
Again, the religious Jewish leadership. "For the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be the Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue". That same phenomenon is happening to this very day. You believe in Jesus, you're put out of the synagogue. I remember when my brother's daughter got bat mitzvah'd, the family came from all over the country. We were all sitting there in the synagogue in the sanctuary. The Rabbi is calling one family member, another family member, another family member to the bimah, which is what we would call the pulpit, to give a blessing or to read a little portion from the Bible. And all of a sudden, the Rabbi's calling distant relatives, even atheists. And all of a sudden, Cynthia and I realized, they're not going to call us. We were not allowed to participate in the bat mitzvah service for one reason, one reason only, because I believe in Jesus. It's amazing.
The same phenomenon that we read about in John, in the Gospel of John here, still happening today. You believe in Jesus, you're put out of the synagogue. So for this reason, because his parents didn't want to be put out of the synagogue, they wouldn't answer the Pharisees who healed him, they said, "Ask him. Ask our son. He's of age, ask him for yourself". "On a second time, they called the man who had been blind and said to him, 'Give glory to God; We know this man's a sinner.' He then answered, 'Whether he's a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that I was blind, and now I see.'" How do you argue with that, right? How do you argue with someone's testimony? It's a good lesson.
We'll pick up next time right here, but it's an interesting phenomenon. They tried to get into a debate with him, you know, whether Jesus was a sinner, whether he healed on the Sabbath, etc., etc., the man just said one thing, "I don't know the answer to any of those things. All I know is this: I was blind, but now I see". When you share your faith with people, you don't have to know every verse in the Bible. All you have to do, beloved one, is tell people what Jesus has done for you, how He took away your anxiety, how He took away your fear, how He brought you comfort, how He brought you a need that you had. Not that everything's perfect right now, we're still in a battle. All you have to do is do what that blind man did-Tell people what Jesus did for you. Because you know what? No one can argue with your testimony. God bless you today, beloved. Until next time, this is Rabbi Schneider, shalom.