Charles Barkley said it was the worst decision he made of his professional career and his entire professional career. For Bill Romanowski, it was just one of many repulsive things he was known to have done on the football field. Jerry Seinfeld dedicated an entire episode to the fact that Newman and Kramer accused Keith Hernandez of doing it. But more recently, in this last basketball season, a Wisconsin fan did it to an Ohio State player. And just in the last couple of weeks, Tiger Woods apologized for insulting the very game of golf because he did it on a basketball, excuse me, on a course and Dubai. See, it seems that everybody agrees. It's a disgusting thing to do in public. But before you ask yourself, what would Jesus do? Well, the answer just might disgust you. John 9 is where we're going. Page 1664 in your Pew Bible. Why? Why would the king of kings? God in the flesh spit and rub it in somebody's face. Well, let's hear from him. Beginning at verse 1, as he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. Now skip last week's passage down to verse 5. While I am in the world, this is Jesus speaking, I am the light of the world. After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with a saliva and put it on the man's eyes. Go, he told him, wash in the pool of saloam. This word means scent. So the man went and washed and came home seeing. His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg? Some claim that he was. Others said, no, he only looks like him. But he himself and says, I am the man. How then were your eyes open? They asked. He replied, the man they called Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to saloam and wash. So I went and washed and then I could see. Where is this man? They asked him. I don't know. He said, this is God's word. Let's pray. Lord, buy whatever means necessary. Open our eyes this morning. We pray that we might see in your name. All right. Last week we talked about the whole question of suffering, living in light of suffering. This week, we're going to talk about the miracle next week. We'll get into the rest of this chapter and the man's testimony, which is incredible. The miracle.
The story goes that he was a type A driven businessman and being type A being so driven, I mean, it was almost inevitable. He was going to be successful. He was the kind of guy who could buy whatever car he wanted to, but because he was type A and driven and successful, he appreciated a good deal. So when he saw the BMW on sale at a price, he couldn't believe he went and checked it out. He was so excited about the deal he was getting that he bought it on the spot and figured he'd surprise his wife and show off by inviting her to lunch without her knowing about it. So he gets the lunch. He meets her. They're talking in this restaurant. It's packed as the lunch hour and about midway through. He drops the bomb on her. He's so excited about his BMW and he's proud of his describing it. They spend the rest of the lunch time with him describing all the details of it, the engine, the specs, the interior, everything. They're there so long that most of the lunch hour crowd has cleared out. The patrons are gone. There are only a few cars left in the parking lot. So he sends her out with the keys to look at it while he pays the bill after a few minutes pass. She comes back in and she says, you know, I can't find the BMW you're talking about. She said, you said it was green and there's only one BMW out there and it's pink. He said, oh, I forgot. I'm color blind. See, it was a great deal because it was a Mary K BMW and all the pieces suddenly fit. See, if we're going to talk about blindness, I want you to understand that part of being blind is oftentimes not realizing that you are blind and that we value things inappropriately as a result. So those of you like the hat rack, here it is, our condition, God's action, what now? Our condition, God's action, what now? Our condition, our inability, if you're going to get a picture of us, just look at this. Look at what Jesus does here and what the situation is for this guy. This guy is blind and begging and unlike blind bar to mass, he doesn't call out for Jesus. He doesn't ask for Jesus. He doesn't ask to be healed. Jesus comes to him. He had no way of valuing the person who's in front of him, maybe he had a room or maybe people tell them about it, but he had no way of knowing that God in the flesh was now right there in front of him. So he didn't have an appropriate way to value Jesus. It's very much like the story of the guy who grew up in Iowa. He leaves, he goes to college, first in his family to do it. He's a successful businessman who's seen the world. He takes his dad who's been a farmer all of his life and says, Dad, let's go see something. I want to show you the world. It takes him to the Grand Canyon. All his dads ever known is corn fields. They go out there in front of the Grand Canyon, the spreads in front of them. It's incredible. And his dad just looks around, sums up his thoughts by saying, well, ain't much going to grow around here. It means desert climate, stuff doesn't grow. No way of appreciating a different sense of valuing because he didn't have the categories for it. All right. So if Christ comes to us and we have an inability to understand, and get the state for this guy, because not only has he been blind from birth, but he understands certain things about himself as a result. If you look ahead to verse 32, once he's gotten sight, he tells something to the Pharisees which lets you in on his pre-healing condition. He says, no one has ever done anything like this. This is without precedent. A man born blind getting his sight back. What that tells you is he knew before he was ever healed. He knew this never happens. He wanted it to happen. He had looked into it. He was interested in stories about it, but he knew nobody born blind. Nobody in my condition has any hope of getting out of this. There was a resignation to despair in his life. He lived that way, but more than that, more than that. Where is he? If reading the end of chapter 8, it certainly seems like Jesus's fresh off an argument with the Pharisees, he's coming out of the temple grounds and here at the temple gate is where he meets this guy begging. Now why is the blind man begging outside the temple? Remember the Jews understood very clearly from God's commands and the Old Testament that certain things were acceptable to God and other things were not. He was a blind man. Whether you call it a birth defect or not, they saw it as a defective human being who wasn't allowed in as far as more correct human beings were. He was an outsider. He was pushed aside as sort of the refuse of society and he wasn't allowed in in the same depth. Maybe just think about it. He knew things from God's word about the animal sacrifices that went on in the temple in order to be in God's presence. There had to be these sacrifices. And what did God say about him over and over and over again? Well, throughout the Old Testament, the sacrifice has to be perfect. Don't bring me a blind animal. Listen to what Malachi one says. When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you offer, when you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, I mean, hear the category you're in. Is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor. Would he be pleased with you? Listen to this. Would he accept you? Says the Lord Almighty? Now plead with God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you? Says the Lord Almighty. It's not a big jump. God likes the scene animals and not the blind animals. How does he feel about the human beings he made? This guy has a sense that somehow he's not as acceptable to God. He's not acceptable in God's presence. Now, the way that our world does things, some people are more acceptable than others. You know if you've been here much, we talk about this a lot because I think it's one of the central problems with how we see God, in particular what Jesus says. The message of Scripture is, we're all destitute. We're all unacceptable. We're all blind and unable. It's what Romans 3 says over and over. But here's this guy who knows, I am blind and unable. Before I just tell you, you're blind and you got to go away and believe it. Let's just think about it a little bit. All right. What kind of category are we talking about here? All right. Unrelated. Rake Ortiz tells a story of a deaf girl and the way that she would get her parents gall. If she was angry at her parents and she wanted to get them, she would just shut her eyes tight. Just close them off because they knew it cut off communication. And it's not like they could pry her eyes open to make her listen. I mean, the only way they had to communicate was sign. So she literally blinded herself to shut them out. There's a sense in which God is saying when we live by just closing our eyes to the reality of who he is and blindness and shutting him out. Well, that's one picture. All right. Let me give you another. Some of you may know who Michael Chimino is. Most the rest of you probably have never heard of him. It's like a trivial trivial pursuit question. A.F.I. American Film Institute, top 100 films, his masterpieces in the top 100, the deer hunter, came out in the 70s, rave reviews, won Oscars for it, considered an incredible filmmaker, great guy in his time. His very next film was called Heaven's Gate. Nobody knows about it. He was so arrogant and cocky on the set of it. He had arrived. He was now a great director. So what did he do? He demanded over 50 takes sometimes for one scene. They're out filming this western and he waits for a cloud to roll into the shot before he takes the scene. I mean, very quickly they got behind schedule. They started running up the bill. United artists had footed the bill form and now it was four times their budget. When it finally came to the screen, it had cost them $33 million, which is a ton of money today, but back in the 70s was gargantuan. It went to the box office and only made $4 million. Bankrupt United artists. Why? Because success blinds us. We think I did this. I accomplished. I can be in control. I can shut these people out or telling me no. There are different forms of blindness and a big part of it is not seeing even that you're blind. So how do we deal with this? If Christ comes and says you are blind, that includes the most important thing there is in life to know. The most important question that can be asked of us. Remember in Matthew 16, some of you remember when Jesus asked the disciples, you don't have a little personal teaching time. He says, all right, fellas, who do the people say that I am? They all jump in. Well, some people say you're a prophet. Some people say you're a teacher. Some people say, you know, you're Elijah. All right, critical class teaching time. All right, Peter, head of the class. Who do you say that I am? You're the Christ, the son of the living God. Right answer. But just to make sure Peter doesn't think it's all about him perceiving the right answer. Two things happen a little bit later on. Right after that Jesus explains what's going to have to happen to him. Peter says, oh, no, no, no, no, no. He got the right answer on the fill in the blank and miss the essay portion of the test. He's like, oh, it can't be that way. And Jesus says to him, get behind me, Satan. All right, this isn't about you perceiveness. And Jesus says right there in Matthew 16, flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you. But my father who's in heaven. All right, in other words, your eyes didn't see me and figure this thing out. It wasn't by your own effort. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Or as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, unless you have the spirit of God, you can't see the things of God. All right. Now this is people who people you get this, this is offensive. All right, let's think about this for a minute. This is one of the central offenses of the Christian faith. What we're saying is unless God puts his spirit in you, you won't understand these things. You are unable to simply arrive at them. All right, the South. One of the old things we always used to say is, you know, that guy used to be a drunk. He used to be, you know, run around doing all these crazy things. But then he got religion. He got religion and he changed. A lot of people think of it that way. If you go and kind of say, I'm going to adopt a religion. You know, I'm thinking, I'm going to clean myself up. I got to get the right ethical system. I've got to, you know, do a self-improvement class and take this particular grid and work it in my own favor, clean myself up. Be a better person. That's what I'm going to go do. I'm going to go improve myself. The difference between Christianity and every other religion is this. You adopt other religions. See this blind man. He doesn't adopt Jesus. Jesus adopts him. All right. It's in Christianity. It is not what you go out and do. It is what God does. Before we get there, think with me about this. All right. It is not about your effort in trying harder. Alan Nixon, Montana State trooper, gets a phone call middle of the night. He's on duty. There's been a huge snow storm. He sent out. There's a call. There's been a crash. He goes out to this crash. This guy has slammed into a snow embankment. His car is completely wedged in the snow embankment. He walks up, taps on the window with a smashed car. And the driver inside also happens to be smashed. He's drunk. And he says the guy, all right, license and registration. Well, being drunk and not seen so clearly, he decides he's going to outrun this policeman. So he stomps on the gas. And the speedometer, like, you know, he hears it rev. The wheels are just spinning and it starts 20 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour. And the guy believes he's getting away. So Alan Nixon decides in the moment, I'll play along. He starts running in place beside the window. The guy's watching his 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour. He's like, pull over. Okay, you know he stops, puts his foot on the brakes. And the guys, the guys said, all right, here we go. This is us. If you think religion is about trying harder, you don't understand your condition. You don't understand your situation. And you think the person who is shown up to save you is there to ruin you. God comes to save you from yourself. It's not about how hard we try until we see that. All right, it's the it's the first step in AA and just about any 12 step program is the paradox of realizing I think I'm in control, but I'm actually completely out of control. And the only way that I begin to get in control is by admitting that I'm out of control. It's ironic. It's paradoxic. But this is us. Christianity begins with your surrender. I can't help myself. I need something else. And I got to see that Tim Keller tells a story of going to see one of his buddies who was a missionary in Europe. And he said over and over again, he would go to see this guy. And he would he would always pick him up at the airport. And he was never wearing a seat belt. He'd be like, hey, you know, you want to wear a seat belt? No, they'd argue about it back and forth. No, I don't. Whatever. I don't need a seat belt. One day, Keller goes to the airport. He's meeting the guy in Europe, like picks him up. And he's wearing a seat belt. Hey, seat belt. You know, they start the conversation. Why are you going to see what? Why are you going to see belt on now? He says, well, you know, one of my friends, he got in the car wreck and he went to the windshield. And I went to see him in the hospital, 120 stitches on his face. So now, seat belt. So they start reflecting on it. And Tim says, so, so you didn't know. And the guy says, well, I knew, but I didn't know. This is what we're talking about. Some of you this morning have seen Christianity. Do you see Jesus? All right, it alters you when you do. You recognize I've got nothing else. There is no other hope. I need that. And nothing that I do is going to get me there. All right, that's our condition. So what does God do in light of it? Look at this with me. The God who comes and initiates. This is beautiful to me. Just look at it. Just think who is this God that we worship. Jesus comes. He acts first. He sees somebody that nobody else sees. These are the marginal people that the rest of society pushes aside. Jesus is always going to the people in the outskirts. The blind people. I mean, the most frequent miracle of Jesus is opening the eyes of the blind. Everybody else pushing them aside. He's going to the chronically ill, the suffering, his eyes. Jesus sees whether people don't see. All right, but his action itself is a parable. Remember John calls these miracles signs. This is the sixth of seven signs in John. And not just a miracle to sign. It points to something. We're told at the end of John that in John 2030, the purpose of John is that you would believe that's his goal in writing this. And he says he excluded a whole lot of stuff. I mean, there's only roughly 21, maybe 23 days of stuff about Jesus in his three year ministry. John is selective in what he includes. A sign points to a greater reality. Brian, hey, big. Some of you know, was are you have gone Mississippi. He said, one day he and his wife were walking into Walmart. And there on the floor was the sign that said, wet floor. And it had the guy, you know, that guy that's flowing out like that falling down on the sign. He said, he looked at the sign and he looked over at his wife and at that moment, she was in that position. The sign pointed to a greater reality. All right, there's a situation or condition. This sign is telling us something greater. A homeless man walks around saying he's the light of the world. He's crazy. A homeless man walks around saying he's the light of the world and starts healing blind people. See, verses six and seven. Are just an illustration of what Jesus has been claiming for several chapters. And he claims it in verse five. I'm the light of the world. He's demonstrating it. And just like the baptisms this morning, it's not the outward sign that makes it so it just shows you what's the inward reality. This is what God is up to. But this is a pretty weird thing. What is he up to here? Jesus spits. So help me understand how that reveals the father. How does that show us God? All right. The question here is how offensive do we need to be? I'll track with this and just think about it. I know a lot of things that I learned in school, but there are certain moments that I remember with greater clarity because I saw it. One of those is when a professor came in and he was teaching us on baptism. And instead of just teaching us the end of the class, he had brought in a serving sized bowl, like salad bowl that you serve out of from the cafeteria full of water. And he walked around with a brush, flicking us saying, remember your baptism. Remember your, and we're all writing feverishly. Now there's water all over our notebooks. Remember your baptism. And then he squats in the middle of the floor. The classroom with carpet didn't matter. He takes this bowl. Remember your baptism. And he dumps it on himself. I will never forget it. What is the image you need to be washed? Jesus is saying you need the light of the world and you are blind. He is communicating something that is offensive, but we need to see about our situation and what he's up to. He spits on the ground. And then what does he do? Well, unless you think he's got monkey arms, he squats. He gets down. And he rubs in the nasty. What? I want you to think about this. What is our God up to? This man we're told in verse 8 would sit and beg and God comes and gets where he is. He gets down where he is in his space. Now, we know from Christmas, he accommodates us by entering our flesh. I mean, he becomes human. It's the incarnation. It's incredible. But here's Jesus God in the flesh. And instead of saying, I'm God in the flesh. And I don't do that. He gets down where this guy is on his level more than that. I mean, Calvin calls it the doctrine of accommodation. Unless you think that God speaks King Jimmy English or maybe even you think he speaks Hebrew or Greek. I mean, God's language is certainly transcendent to ours. He just uses speech that we can understand. Be like you trying to explain quantum mechanics to a three year old. But even that's on the same plane. We're talking about different categories. God uses language. He speaks in a way that we can understand. You understand what a gift the Bible is? That we can understand who God is and Christ comes all the way in enters all the way into this guy's existence squats down where he is. He accommodates to meet him at his point of need. But not just that. He starts moving his finger in the dust. Now, people debate, what does this mean exactly? But I think there's one image of folks. God putting his finger in the dust is a genesis to reference the God's creative activity. Well, what happened? We talked about it last week. Suffering is complex. There's many different reasons for it. But the fall is why we have suffering. And God says, I created you undid my creation. Now watch me undo what you undid. Re-do re-create Jesus brings life out of nothing just like God did in the beginning. He created ex-Nilo out of nothing. He brings life out of dust and gives this guy's eyes back sight. To re-create. I mean, we use that term more passively as recreation. What are you doing when you recreate? You're going out and having fun. You're playing. You are getting re-energized. You're getting new life out of doing something you enjoy. Think about this. This is a picture of our God recreating at play. What does Jesus do when he plays? What does he consider fun bringing life out of death? That's exciting to me that he gets down in our business and our nasty and brings life out of death. There's a level of complexity that's hard for me to broach. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. But there's several problems with him healing this guy's eyes because it's not just that his eyes suddenly are fixed in the movie The Matrix. Some of you may know, some of you don't. This guy's been in a dream state his whole life. All he's known as a dream. Finally, in the key scene, when he wakes up for the first time, he opens his eyes and he says, why do my eyes hurt? And they say, you've never used them before. This guy is using his eyes for the first time. And it's not simply that they would have hurt because he's using them for the first time. There is a problem in his brain behind this. It's called Molly News Problem. A guy in the 17th century is a philosopher had a blind wife and he said, what would happen if she suddenly got psyched? Would she be able to connect the things she's felt all her life and is known physically with the things she sees? And he hypothesized, no, she wouldn't. And it's only happened in a couple of rare cases, but people who have regained their sight in the last couple of centuries, studies have been done that they can't, they don't, they disassociate. They can't put the two together. When a guy back in the 60s, when he saw people walking away from him, he thought they were literally shrinking because there was a disassociation between what he had known with his hands and what he saw. Your brain was designed to grow according to the information that comes into it, which means that there's a section of your brain that if you couldn't see functionally atrophies. So Jesus doesn't just heal this guy's eyes at the surface level, it goes deeper than that. It's back in his brain. I want you to see that and think about the depth of Jesus healing spiritually for us. The root issues, but he gets down, he muddles in the dirt and then he does something that, that should be a little bit offensive. He takes this nasty and he puts it on the guy's face. He touches him. I don't know about you, but there's only about six people that can touch my face at any given time. Hayes can honk my nose, but if at the back door today you come to honk my nose, we're going to have to talk. There's a personal bubble here about who can touch me. Even for this guy who is blind, think about how insulting it is for somebody to come in and touch. If you think about it, if you're a homeless beggar in the streets or if you know one, touching them is something of an awkward thing. But Jesus comes up and he touches him right on his weak place. He goes right to the broken spot as if he says, hey, hey, let me brush aside your hair and look at that scar. He starts touching right at the hurt place. You see your God who comes and stoops and enters into you, you're suffering your hurt and goes right to where you're suffering, to fix it. I don't want you to understand how does Jesus do this? He tells this guy to go and wash in the pool of saloon. The word literally means scent and John makes a point of telling us that which I've already told you. He doesn't just throw odds and ends in. There's a purpose here. Why does it matter that saloon means scent? All right, come with me for a moment on a little history lesson. The pool of saloon, which was recently discovered in 2004, you can check that out online. When it was a place where the water gathered inside the city back 800, 700 years before Christ, an Assyrian king Sinacryl was going to come and lay siege to Jerusalem. Hezekiah saw it coming. He made plans. They dug a tunnel. You can still go walk the tunnel today if you're in Jerusalem. Hezekiah's tunnel. It's an incredible feat in the ancient world. It's 500 meters long going down underneath the temple mount, through from the guy on the spring over to this pool where the water spills out, so they would have water inside the city in case of a siege. The water pool was named saloon, scent for a reason, way before Jesus. The water came from underneath the temple mount, underneath where the altar of sacrifice happened, that made the people right with God, and it came out into this pool. And they named it the scent pool, the pool of the scent one, because who were they hoping would be scent? The Messiah. And Jesus sends this guy to go washing this pool. Now remember, he didn't have to do it this way. He could heal people from a distance just by thinking. He didn't have to do it this way, but he sends him there. He spits on the ground. Does this thing to imagine this guy just with nasty all over his eyes, walking, people maybe even making fun of him? He gets there, he washes, and sees for the first time. I mean the news is going to spread. What's the reason Jesus was always saying things like don't tell anybody, because he knew when he did miracles like this. It was just hitting the acceleration for him toward the cross. You can't do something like this and not get attention. But he was declaring, I am the scent one. How did he give this guy a sight? How did he bring light into his world? We talked about it in chapter 8. Jesus makes the trade. The cross is about God trading, His blindness, our blindness, for His sight. That He enters the darkness and gives us the light. It's what happens at the cross. Three hours of darkness. Repeatedly, Jesus describes one of the descriptions for hell is going out in the darkness, outside where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. How can the light of the world go out into the darkness? He trades with us. I mean the best image I can give to you is, you've heard of donating kidneys. What about donating eyes? I think about the implications of that. He trades his life, the life we were supposed to live, the death we were supposed to get because we didn't. He takes and gives us his life and his light. It's what happened yesterday in Rain, Louisiana when that young mother, who was trying to protect her daughter, took the hit of that tree so that her daughter would live. This is the gospel that our God comes and stoops and squats. And so enters our existence to trade with us and give us light and life. And then, now that we know we can't do it, that it's not us, then He sends us. He sends this blind guy. He thinks he was under any delusion that he's the one that accomplished it. He sends this guy and he receives his sight. He gets to participate in Jesus' work. Let me give you this image for us to leave with. Matt Stevens, Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a couple of years ago. High school student, he was born blind. Growing up, he hated being treated like a blind kid. His older brothers, a couple of years older than him, had a heart form, kind of brought him along. The thing he loved to do with his older brother was shoot basketball. How does a blind guy shoot basketball shots? What his brother would take his cane and tap it on the rim so he could shoot shots. So he practiced free throws all the time growing up. He got pretty decent at free throws. You know, about 50% of the time he made it. That's more than some NBA guys can hit. Pretty incredible. All right. But growing up, he gets to high school and his parents are, you know, a concern for his education and what's best for him. They send him to a school for the blind and the deaf and he hates it. I just want to be treated like a normal kid. I just want to go to a normal high school with my brother. He begs his parents. Don't finally. They let him transfer. He starts going to a normal school. Find his way wrestling through it. He joins the basketball team. He begs his brother, please let me be on the team. Begs the coach. They let him come out to practice. He practices right with him. The thing that he does, he practices just as hard as them. He gets out there and they shoot free throws. His brother taps with the cane. But of course, he's never made it into a game. Well, his brother's senior season. He says, Coach, I want Matt to get in the game. I want him in. And they come up with the idea of him shooting free throws for his brother. So they're going to this tournament. And they go in the coach. And they go and ask the other team, hey, one of our guys, younger brothers on the team, he never gets in. Can he shoot for you? Oh, by the way, he's blind. Can he shoot in this place? Look at the teams. Like, so you're saying you got a perfectly healthy player who can see. And you want the blind guy to shoot free throws in this place. I think we're okay with that. You know, they're like, let's go with that. So he gets in. It's a small, like mid-season tournament. The first game, he gets out there. He goes for for eight. It's pretty impressive. You know, they win by a landslide. It's no big deal. But they make their way to the championship. He shoots all game for his brother. O for six. Having a horrible game. They're down 10. Four minutes left. The team goes on a furious rally. Furious rally. They get down one. They got it back within one with 10 seconds left. Brother gets fouled. And everybody in the place knows. You know, it was a cute little thing you did with the blind kid coming in before. But there's no way with the game on the line. You're putting that guy at the free throw mark. There's no way. But he goes over. You're in. Matt comes in to shoot the free throws. The crowd is going nuts. Matt said it was the greatest moment in his life. Because people were no longer cheering for the blind kid. They were cheering against him. They were treating him just like any other kid. It was hard for him to hear the tapping of the cane over the screams. First shot goes up. It is way off. Bounces off the backboard and goes in. Place goes nuts. He gets up the line for the next shot. It's even louder than before. People going crazy. Tapping of the cane. He puts it up. He nails it. Perfect. The other team is panicking. They don't wait. Nobody did wait for Matt to go back out in substitute. No, they don't wait. They pass the ball in. They go down the court. It's only four on five. They shoot a hurried shot. They miss. They won the game. They're putting Matt up on their shoulders. Celebrating. The article. The guy was written. Si rider. Dan Riley said. You know. After the game. Everybody now in the team calls him shooter. I said even the girls are beginning to pay attention to Matt. He asked one of them to prom. And he ended the article by saying. I hope she says yes. It'll be the best blind date she ever gets. But that story is incredibly popular. Why? Because we love it. We love it. When broken people get their dignity restored. Do you see what our God is up to? He takes blind people like you and me. Broken people. And puts us in the game. Not because of what we've done. But because of what he did. You've got an older brother. Who will lose it all. So that you can have in. And he says go and share. Do you see that? Do you see it? Are you ready? For Jesus to spit in your eye. Let's pray. Lord we need. We need to be changed. Things that we don't see. We need you to come crouched. To stop and see what no one else does. To get down. Make the mess that will clean us up. Touch us in our broken places. Send us out with your joy. I pray that you would use us broken people. Not to say how great we are but to evidence brokenness healed. In Brookhaven, in Mississippi throughout this world. That no one would look at us and think we're great. But they would say how in the world did people like you get healed? Use us Lord in your name.