Jesus Divides The Pharisees (J37)

Jesus could have healed the man with a thought,
But He made mud of saliva and dust,
To prove to Pharisees that the God they taught
Had sent His Son to earth for them to trust!
They were divided, as Jesus sought,
The man’s parents said, “Yes, this is our son;
He was born blind; as for the man who brought
Him sight, ask our son just how it was done!”
They were afraid the Jews would them expel,
For no member could in Jesus believe;
So Jews asked him, “Who healed you? Will you tell?”
“He’s a Prophet, my blindness to relieve!”
For a once-blind beggar, he showed gristle
And faith, and made the Pharisees bristle!

Scripture Quoted: John 9:13-16 (NIV)
“They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. ‘He put mud on my eyes,’ the man replied, and I washed, and now I see.’ Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.’ But others asked, ‘How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?’ So they were divided.”

Commentary on John 9:12-23 (NIV)
Jesus did not mix saliva with dust because He had to have mud to do the miracle, nor did He do it as an entertaining gesture of mumbo-jumbo to add mystique for His disciples. He was God; He could have healed the man born blind without so much as touching him or even looking at him. But He did it to create a reaction from His principal enemy, the Pharisees, who were self-appointed guardians of keeping the Sabbath Day holy, by not allowing “work” or any kind, not even healing the blind with mudballs on the eyes—especially by Jesus, who they had made Enemy No. 1. This type of rule, conceived by Pharisees as a law to “help God out”, and which combined with other thousands of ticky-tacky man-made dicta, was a burden to Jews that caused them to do more sin than less, was why Jesus targeted them to confront more than any other type of offensive Jew. That is why John the apostle selected this as his sixth of only seven miracles to include in his gospel.

So the healed blind man was braver than his parents. He told the Pharisees emphatically that his healer was the Prophet, even though it would perhaps get him expelled from the synagogue, because the Jews had already made a rule that whoever believed Jesus to be sent from God would be put out. Since the Messiah was also predicted to be the Prophet like Moses (See Deuteronomy 18:18ff.), that was equivalent to believing Jesus was the Christ. They immediately began showering the man with insults, and in the next blog you will see that he was thrown out of the synagogue. Jesus had accomplished His purpose; the Pharisees were quarreling among themselves. He had stirred up enough doubt in the minds of leading Jews that some did believe He was sent by God, but not enough believed it to prevent His rejection and execution. In Zechariah 11:8, you can read a prophecy that says Jesus Christ got rid of three bad shepherds of the Jews; the Pharisees, as a group, was one of the foolish shepherds included in the prophecy.

“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)