Nick Ferreiro - Espera y Verás

It's great to see you, and an applause today. Thank you for choosing the 1 o'clock service here at Church by the Pond. The morning services here at Church by the Pond are crazy. So, you two chose the 1 o'clock service, and it actually creates a lot of space in your lives. You've got a great experience here at Church by the Pond. So, we have six of you. So, for choosing the 1 o'clock service, thank you so much for being here. My name is Nick. I'm a pastor here in CBG. I'm always honored to preach the word of God, but I'm not going to be here today. But on this particular weekend, I'm excited to preach, because I think God has given me a word that's going to be helpful to a lot of people today, whether they're here or online. Because my goal is to add clarity to a fact that is often discussed, but is often misunderstood. Is anyone ready to receive the word of God? Awesome. If you have a copy of the scriptures, I would like you to open them up in the account of John, of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It means John 9. And while you're looking in the pages there, or putting your finger in your application of the Bible, your version, what we see in the heart of this text is what I believe is the heart of God. Transformation. Jesus, we step into the scene and radically transform a broken man's life in an instant. Because when Jesus comes, things don't stay the same. When Jesus comes, things have to change. Miracles can start to happen. You can be able to heal. Your trust can be restored. Power has been available. Peace has been attained to you. And your salvation and transformation is always possible in the presence of Jesus. In the presence of Jesus, anything can happen.

Anything can happen in the presence of Jesus. Maybe you're here today and you're looking for this. Maybe you're looking for God to show up in your life in some way. Maybe you're desperate for a touch of heaven. And if we're honest, we're all honest. And if we're honest, we're all honest. It's not true. We're all looking for God to show up in some way. Maybe in marriage, in relationships, in health, in finances. Maybe you're looking for God to show up with an opportunity to bring you growth and progress in your life. Maybe a purpose that brings you fulfillment and meaning in your life. Or a response that gives clarity to your future. In some way, we're all looking for God to show up. So, what we describe as the desire in our heart, I believe that this sermon is for you. It's when God will help you better understand in this conversation, how he has already done it and how he will continue to appear and be present for you. But first, we have to understand that before God shows up for us, we're going to have to wait. And I know I just triggered someone here because we all hate to wait. Don't leave me up here by myself. I don't like to wait. I mean, I'm going to prove it to you. I mean, I'm going to prove it to you. Do you hate to wait a week for your favorite show to get a new episode when you're watching Netflix? Do you hate to wait in line so much that you're willing to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for passes that allow you to leave the line on Amazon, on ChatGPT, information that is already within reach? You know, I'm not saying those are bad things, I'm saying those are bad things. I just want to draw your attention to the fact that all of those things have contributed to us to not like to wait. And it's not just the adults. I think it's something that's in the DNA of human beings, that we have an animal version of waiting. Because, let me tell you, my kids hate to wait. Sometimes my wife Stacey and I are in the middle of a conversation,

and the kids are desperate for our attention. And they say, hey daddy, I'm waiting, I'm talking to your mom, I like your manners, but let me finish the conversation. And when I turn around, hey daddy, relax, I'll be right back, be patient. I promise I'll talk to you again, but let me talk to your mom. What was I saying? Excuse me daddy! What? What do you want? Please daddy, it's an emergency. Okay, what do you need? What's going on? Look at this. Why is it always so unserious? Excuse me, daddy, it's an emergency. Trees are special. This is something real my son said to me yesterday. Let's pray for my kids. We're all looking for God's attention. We all want his attention immediately. Because what we are going through for us is an emergency. But many times God will test our ability to wait before he gives us what we want. And as in today's text, John chapter 9, we are introduced to this man who was born blind. He was born blind. He had never been able to see.

And Jesus sees the scene and miraculously heals this man, heals his blindness, and restores his blindness. We don't know this man's age because the text doesn't say it, but we have some information that tells us he was an adult. Some scholars believe that the time he spent between his birth and his encounter with Jesus was 30 years. He was born blind for 30 years. He could not see for 30 years. Let's talk about waiting. And yet, there was a purpose in the waiting. John chapter 9, starting in verse 1, if you are ready for the word of God, say yes. This is the reading of the word of God. When Jesus passed by, he saw a blind man. Let's stop here for a moment and comment on the fact that this man

did not have the ability to see for himself. And yet, Jesus sees him. Sometimes in your life, there is grace that you cannot detect. That God has orchestrated things in your favor that you will never know about. He has opened doors that you could not walk through. He has protected you from things that you had no idea that he was protecting you from. So we want to shout out for the grace that God has given us and that we do not know about. There is grace that you cannot detect. Jesus, as he passed by, saw a man that he could not see. And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned? This man, his parents, Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned, nor that his parents sinned, but that the works of God could be seen.

A few weeks ago, I preached a message here at Church by the Glaze about the birth of Moses. It was really about his mother, Jochebed, the narrative of his birth of Moses. And I used this narrative to preach a principle of life because suffering produces something. It produces character. It produces hope. It produces perseverance or resistance. It produces wisdom. It produces experience, empathy, compassion. It produces something. But this passage that we are reading this afternoon actually adds further context to nature and the purpose of our suffering is that the works of God may showcase in the light of this suffering that sometimes your suffering is just a way in which God wants to show his goodness, his power, his fidelity,

his glory. Listen to me clearly. I'm not saying that God caused the blindness of this man. No, God did not cause his blindness. That would be attributing to God a characteristic of character that is unnecessary and that is not true. God did not cause this man to be born blind. Then why was this man blind? That was the disciple's question, wasn't it? They were trying to attribute a cause to the nature of their suffering. And for them, it had to be sin. Somebody had to be sin, whether it was his parents or himself, somebody had to be sin, which, by the way, was a theological interpretation for suffering at that time, that suffering in any way had to be some kind of hidden sin in your life. But Jesus eliminates this argument

simply by saying, It was neither that this man sinned, nor that his parents sinned, for he was born blind. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, You can actually trace the root and origin of suffering to the fall of man in Genesis 3, the fall of man, and sin enters the equation in Moana. But before that, the suffering, the disease, the separation of God did not exist. We lived in perfect harmony with God the Father in the Garden of Eden. But in Genesis chapter 3, through deception, sin enters the human equation, and with it comes suffering. And since then, we have been living in a world of sin and fall, desperately longing for what we once had in Eden. By the way, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, it is what we have and expect from Jesus Christ. When he will restore his new kingdom, where there will be no more disease, no more suffering, no more pain, no more hardness, and no more death. Where he will do all the new things, and he will live among his people in a harmonious relationship with God. This is good news for everyone in Church by the Glades today. He is establishing a new kingdom, but until he does, we are still living in this broken and hurting world. So, we can say that suffering began when sin entered the equation. We can say that suffering is universally a result of sin, but we can't always say that suffering is the result of an individual or immediate sin, as was the case with this man. He was not born blind because he or his parents sinned in one way or another. That's unjust. Lord, deliver us from this judgmental mentality.

It's not because of the sin that he is suffering. Sometimes bad things happen simply because we live in a broken and fallen world. So, it was not because of the sin of his parents that he was born blind, and God did not cause him to be born blind. No, but God did allow this man to be born blind and suffer. Why? So that the works of God would be displayed through this man's life. In other words, to say that his suffering was not wasted. His pain was not wasted. His tears were not wasted. His waiting was not wasted. That God had a plan and a purpose through the things that he experienced in his time. To bring a blessing to this man and to bring glory to himself. But this does not remove the fact that he still had to wait 30 years to receive the sight. Hear me, God has a purpose for you. I promise you that's the way it is. But what is this purpose and how are you going to achieve it? And when is it going to happen? That's not going to happen. Sometimes you get to see it right away, and you give thanks to God. Thank you for helping me, God, for this when we had a relationship that didn't work out. And you give thanks right away. But other times it takes you years to decide for why that happened. Sometimes God performs the purpose and you give thanks to God. Sometimes God performs the miracle. Sometimes God heals the body. Sometimes God removes the ailments. And other times he just treats you like he treated Apostle Paul. That he had a nail that stayed in his body, even though he begged God over and over and over again to remove this nail from his flesh.

But the Lord didn't remove it. He just replied to him saying, My power is sufficient for you because my power is perfected in your weakness. Translation, I'm not going to take it away from you, but I'm going to give you my grace because it will sustain you to get through what you're going through. It's not up to us to determine what and when is our responsibility. It's not up to us to just wait patiently for the glory of the Lord to be revealed through what we're going through. And with this in mind, as a result of all of these things, we should develop a very healthy theological perspective of waiting. Because the issue, the truth is that if God eventually glorifies us, this gives us the hope of waiting. Because waiting in itself is a deeply spiritual thing, but as Christians, so many of us tend to fall into the lie that the transformation in Christ is to go from circumstance to circumstance, to go from unemployed to employed, to go from poor to rich, to go from single to heterosexual, to go from unknown to influential, to go from top to top. Because if God wants to transform your life, but we fail to realize that before God makes the transformation, first he must root within us, that's why we stop this thing of passing time while we wait. Many of us operate with the perspective that our wait is just to pass time until we get there. We have to wait, or we have to stop passing time, and start investing time in our wait. Because God wants to transform you from the inside out, many times before he does something outside of you, he wants to start with the inside of you. That's why many times the wait is educational. It's the season to learn who God is, who he is for you, and who you are in him. It's the season to learn how to be happy and secure in the only call that God has given you. It's the season to develop a rooted foundation in depending on the Lord. Because these seasons of your life of waiting, of learning things that will take you and sustain you in the other seasons of your life, this man waited for 30 years for his miracle, but in verses 6 and 7, we finally see that the miracle happens. Jesus, in verse 6, says, Having said these things, he spitted on the floor and made mud with his saliva. Then he smeared the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, Go, wash yourself in the pool of Siloam, which means sent. So he went and came back seeing.

I think it's necessary to point out that this encounter with Jesus was not a divine healing. That this encounter with Jesus was a directives. That in the presence of Jesus, this man did not receive a result. In the presence of Jesus, this man received an order to obey. Go, the Lord says, and wash yourself in the pool of Siloam, which means sent. So he went and the implications here are that this man immediately obeyed, without questioning, without doubting, and without reasoning. Now, this is not to say that you can't ask God for things, or seek to understand after a particular instruction that you receive from the Lord. I don't think that's biblical. We see that in other parts of 2nd Kings 5, where Naman, a powerful officer, sought healing for his body, and he received instructions from the prophet of God, and he asks questions about the instructions he received, and God still heals him of his leprosy. So theologically, then, we have to understand that God is not opposed to, or offended by your questions. That's not biblical. The Lord never calls us to a blind faith. What he calls us to do is to love him with our heart, with our mind. But the questions are not bad. You have to ask God questions, but be careful not to let asking God questions become the reason for not doing what he asks us to do. Sometimes the only way to get an answer is to do exactly what you're asking about, and allow God to reveal the answer after your obedient faith. Because let's be realistic. This instruction was probably a little weird to this man. Like spitting mud on my eyes, and then having to wash my face. What am I healing out of that? I'm blind, Jesus. I need healing, not a bath. But he was sent, and he went. He was sent, and he went. This man waited 30 years.

Asked to pray every day. Asked to pray every day. Asked to pray every day. He asked God to remove his blindness, to help him see, to reveal to him the nature of the suffering he had been going through for 30 years. But when the time came for his encounter with Jesus, he immediately obeyed. He was sent, so he went and washed himself in the pool of Siloé, and because he washed himself in the pool of Siloé, he was clean, and he came back to see. Let's see it. He was sent, he was washed, and he came back to see. He was sent, he was washed, and he came back to see. One more time, he was sent, he was washed, and he came back to see. Could it be possible that the reason why you are still blind in an area of your life is because you still have to wash yourself, because when you were sent, you were not? Sometimes we never see the miracle unfolding, because we are so overspent, and we don't spiritualize this as much, like really, Jesus, like this man, you're going to spit on the floor, and then you're going to take the mud that's on my face, and you're going to put it on my face, this could even be a hate crime. And then to finish, you're going to ask me to do cardio, to go look for, I'm blind, I can't see, I've never seen, I don't know where this pond is, where am I going? It's crazy for Jesus to ask this man to go look for a pool, he probably didn't even have anyone to help him, and then to go wash the mud and saliva off his face. And a lot of times what I've learned is that when the Lord chooses to heal us in things that don't align with our preferred healing method, we don't doubt in obeying, but if this man had chosen to offend and not obey Christ's commandments, and wait for an alternative healing method, he would still be blind.

But how often do we do this movement before God? When we're interested in a particular commandment that he's given us, and we never apply it, but we still wonder, right? We have never received the sight in an area of our lives. Hey God, I would love to be healed, but forgiveness is not an option for me. You don't know what they did to me, you don't know how much it hurt me. Hey God, I would love life-giving relationships, but I still want the option of not sleeping with that person before I get married. You don't do that anymore in the 21st century. Hey God, I would love financial freedom, but God, I mean, come on, let's travel a little bit more. I know I'm broken and I can't afford it, but I just want to love life-giving relationships. Hey God, I would love life-giving relationships, but God, I know I'm broken and I can't afford it, but this is my life. So if we receive a word from God that we don't like, we tend to dismiss it and wait for a word from God that still responds to our issues in the way that we expect. How much can we say that waiting for God for us is waiting for our preferences? We ask for a better path for our agendas, but as one of the pastors here says, Waiting for a Word that you prefer is not waiting for God. It is disobedience. If the Lord tells you to go and wash in the sink of Siloé, it doesn't matter how long you have tried other times. That sink is the way for your vision. So it doesn't matter that you are in a dark area of your life because you don't want to act in the light that has already been given to you. If God has given you a word, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about you.

It doesn't matter if people think you are crazy because you have mud with saliva and you are going to wash in the sink of Siloé. It doesn't matter what people think. If God gave you a word, obey that word. And for you to know, we have a word of God in the Bible, in the scriptures. If you want to be obedient to the word of God, you have to be obedient to the word of God. This is important. It's not to hear the word. It's not to read the word. It's not to understand the word. It's not to hear the word. It's not to understand the word. It's the word that brings power, freedom, victory, and sight to your life. And now I'm not talking about physical sight anymore. I'm talking about spiritual sight. I think this miracle of John chapter 9 goes far beyond the physical blindness of this man. Because we are introduced to other blind people in the chapter

who were the Pharisees. They were not physically blind, but they were spiritually blind. They could not recognize the divinity standing before them in the person of Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ did not come in the way they preferred or thought that the person of the Messiah would come. So they thought the Messiah would come in power, in humility. They thought the Messiah would come to sustain their traditions, not to tear them down. And since Jesus did not come in the way they preferred, they ended up killing the man they should have preserved. And they were upset at the miracle. Because the Bible tells us that this miracle happened on the Sabbath. And in their view, Jesus violated

the Sabbath law. Not because he violated the Sabbath regulations as they were recorded in the scriptures. No, but Jesus violated the extra-biblical commandments that were recorded by the rabbis and Pharisees. In other words, Jesus did not violate the scriptures. He violated what they had added to the word of God. And since he violated their rules and regulations, they labeled him a sinner. Let's jump a little bit and go to verse number 24 and read there. So for the second time, we're going to look for if what Jesus had done really deserved a punishment. How was this man doing all these things without being punished? And we know that this man, Jesus, is a sinner. But the blind man said to them,

listen to this, if Jesus is a sinner, I do not know. But one thing I do know, and that is that God has spoken to Moses through the commandments, the Torah, but we don't know where this man is coming from. And the blind man said to them, you don't know where Jesus is coming from. And he opened his eyes to me. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if someone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. And from the beginning of the world, it had been heard that someone opened the eyes of a blind man. If this man was not of God, he could not do anything. The Pharisees could not see him, but this blind man saw him perfectly clear. How God opened

the physical eyes so that he could see not only physically, but spiritually. Sometimes we lose God in our waiting, simply because we cannot recognize his imprint in everything that surrounds us. As people of God, we must develop the ability to recognize the miracle. We have to stop praying and stop asking things like, God give us success, influence, wealth, give us more power, God give us growth, God give us more things, God give us blessings, and start praying, God give us sight, help us to see, give us eyes to see the miracles that you are preparing for us, help us to see the miracles that are around us. The Pharisees were blind, they could not see the miracle that was standing before them, and this man who was blind, now he could see because it happened in such a way

that he was in conflict with his system. So they denied the divinity of Jesus, and labeled him as a sinner, and declared that if something good had happened to the blind, there was no way that it would have happened to Jesus. It is always the work of the enemy to take what the Lord has given us and distort it. and pervert it, and reject that it comes from God. But the Bible says that all good and perfect gift comes from the Father in heaven, in whom there is no shade of variation. Translation, all the good that you have, all the good that you have experienced, all the good that is in your life comes from God. So we must operate in such a way that we follow the commandments and the limits of God for the good things that he has given us. It's the way to experience life that is here in the creation that God has established. All the good comes from God. So if you want the good, you must look around and see all the things that God has done for you, all the miracles, because the last time I checked, you got up this morning, and that's a miracle. You got air in your lungs, and that's a miracle. You got a roof over your head, that's a miracle.

You're still married today, that's a miracle. You got a family to love, that's a miracle. You got your peace still, that's a miracle. You're walking on your two legs, that's a miracle. Not everything's good in your life, I get it. Things are not perfect, I agree. You can best believe that God is still good in those circumstances, but it's better to believe that God is still good in those circumstances, and that he's taking what you're experiencing and you can use it to display his glory, his loyalty, his favor, not just for your own good, but also for his glory, and I don't know, but that sounds like a miracle to me. This man was once blind. And now he can see, and he called it a miracle. Simply because miracles are still going on, simply because miracles are still going on. Some of us are still blind because we're still going on about miracles that we can't see. Revise your life, look around you, look for the miracle. Because if you look for God, I promise you that you'll find that he has been looking for you all the time, that he's been going on trying to get your attention to the things that are going on around you. And I guess there's nowhere better exemplified than this, this man, because this man experienced a miracle, because this man experienced a miracle. He experienced a miracle, but I don't think

that was the major miracle of the text. His physical eyes were open, but the major miracle is that God gave him spiritual eyes to see the purpose and the source of his miracle, which was Jesus Christ. So Jesus opened the eyes of this man, which is why we've got a little bit of a recognition of his miracle, because sometimes the miracle that's around us isn't even the whole picture. Sometimes the miracle is just the avenue inside of you through which God wants to capture your attention to do a bigger job on you. He shows us, he's an example of this, because when he defended the miracle, he doesn't just talk about the miracle that Jesus did, he doesn't just talk about the act of the miracle, he talks about the person who's behind the miracle. He doesn't necessarily express the divinity of Jesus, he doesn't yet, he does it later in verse 38, he declares Jesus as Lord, and he recognizes him as the Son of God and the Messiah. But in what's happening now, if we go back and read verse 33, he says, we're starting to realize that this man was sufficiently aware to recognize the true miracle and that Jesus was from God, because without God nothing could be done. So what we can think about this is that the people who should have caught him, the experts in the law, because they knew

the scriptures, they knew the prophecies, they should have seen the signs everywhere about Jesus, and they missed them. But the man who was supposed to understand him less was the one who understood him and spoke about him. That shows me that you don't need a degree in theology to have a robust faith, you don't need a seminary training to hold a conversation about Christ, you don't need to be an apologist to defend the faith, this man shows us an example of the reality that we preachers show when we are questioned through Jesus Christ. This man doesn't go to the Pharisees, he doesn't go and point to the Old Testament to show them how Jesus filled all the prophecies. No, what does he do? He says, I was once blind and now I can see. This man must be from God, In other words, he shares his story with the power and goodness of God, because you can debate the logical positions of God, but you cannot speak person to person. because if he were from God, Revelation 12, verse number 10 says this, Now has come the salvation, and power, and kingdom of God, and authority of his Messiah, Jesus Christ, for the accuser of our brothers, the devil, the enemy, who accuses them day and night before God, he has been defeated, and they have defeated him, and they have triumphed over him by the blood of the lamb, and by the word of his testimony. Now, we feel the enemy, no, by a theological discourse, that's all right, but we do not overcome him by the word of his testimony, we overcome him by the word of our testimony, by attributing the miraculous to the only one who can achieve the miraculous, which is Jesus, because the truth is that it is Jesus who saved me, Jesus is the one who set me free, Jesus is the one who broke my chains, he is the one who saved me. He's the one who prevented me from taking my life, he's the one who healed my mind, who restored my peace, he is the one who maintains my marriage, he is the one who has raised me in my most terrible moment, he is the one who he restored me, who forgave me, and who redeemed me, and who accepted me, and who adopted me, and who made me, who I am, it is Jesus who saved me. Because what can wash my sin but the blood of Jesus? Is there anyone in Church by the Glaze grateful for this? I'm done, if you could stand to your feet, I promise I'm closing, but I just wanted to say this. I might have to say this, we might not have physical blindness today, but every one of us has a spiritual blindness to attend to. We all were born with a spiritual blindness, and in the passage, there was mud that opened his eyes here, but what is going to open our eyes is not mud, it is blood. Jesus Christ shed his blood on the cross, so that you could replace your faith in the complete work of Jesus Christ, and that you might be saved from the penalty of your sin, so that you could clearly see the way to true freedom, and you could experience abundant and eternal life.

The miracle of today is the miracle of salvation, if you give today your life to Jesus, and you apply your life, his blood to your life, so that you can be set free, while the rest of us, God is ready to show himself to you, I don't know when, I don't know how, but he is ready to show himself to you. If you keep your circle, if you keep obeying his word, if you keep discerning all the things he has done around you, and you testify for the goodness and the power of the one who does this miracle. Father, thank you for the blood that cleansed us, that took our sins as far as the east is from the west, and in your name we have been completely forgiven. Help us to understand that you are still ready to show up for us, and help us to show up with obedience, and show up as we do, as we proclaim your name, we love you Lord, and it is in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen.