Sunday April 22: Glory at 6081 ft.

Sit down fellowshipping

The long and the short of it, and yes he is standing up

Folks glad to see each other at church

Stand up fellowshipping

Like all Sundays, we dedicate ourselves to the joy of worship, prayer, teaching and fellowship. That's just what we do!
Praising God in song:
Our God Reigns  p. 229
Ten Thousand Angels
Great Is Thy Faithfulness  p. 43
Redeemed p. 521
Praising God with the public reading of Scripture:
Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. The heavens praise your wonders, LORD, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the holy ones. Ps. 36:5-6; 89:5
Praising God with teaching:
Sunday School: Dueling Denominations
Churches of Christ
Independent movements that occurred through the leadership of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, and Barton W. Stone
Declared their independence from various denominations, seeking to restore the New Testament church
These churches about 5 million members, over 40,000 individual congregations worldwide, approx 13,000 congregations in US
Today’s Sermon
Trampolining through John
Section 4 of John, chapters 9-12
Beginning with John 9 – Healing of the Blind Man
As Jesus walked through Jerusalem He encountered a man with congenital blindness
Blindness was a malady with spiritual and theological significance for Jews:
• Is. 42:7 was one of 4 Servant-Songs in the book of Isaiah and mentions the opening of blind eyes as a Kingdom promise
• Is. 29:18 was quoted by Jesus as confirming His ministry to John the Baptist (Matt. 11:5), mentioned blind seeing and deaf hearing
• Is. 35:5 noted the eyes of the blind opened which referenced spiritual blindness of the nation to whom Isaiah was prophesying
The “disciples” mentioned here were probably not the 12, for they were not mentioned at all in chapters 7 and 8. This group was probably a group of nominal followers. They would have been trained in their synagogue education to think that physical maladies were a result of sin as a direct cause-effect relationship.
• The Rabbi’s did not emphasize universal, original sin as causing suffering in the world but that specific sins of an individual caused specific suffering. One Rabbi (Ammi) wrote, “There is no death without sin, and there is no suffering without iniquity.”
• Some Rabbis even held that a baby could sin in the womb, using Jacob and Esau as their proof.
• Some held to the belief that sins were generational, that a parent’s sins could doom their children. This was a variation on “karma” and God did note in the OT that “the sins of the fathers could be visited to the 3rd or 4th generation,” (generational sins) but that had a national application for Israel’s general unbelief, not a tribal or familial application. It had been misapplied by many Jewish theologians.
Since this man had been blind from birth this created a theological problem: how could this have caused his suffering, did he sin in the womb? Or was the man carrying the penalty of his parent’s sins?
Jesus answered, “Neither!” “It was neither this man nor his parents.” The man’s problem was not caused by specific sins by any party, but that “the works of God might be displayed in him.” The man would be an illustration of the spiritual blindness of the nation, a blindness that had lasted for generations, and that the Messiah would open their eyes if they would but believe.