Iron Girls ~ John 9 Notes

  

Verses 5 – 7, 39 - 41

“As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

When he had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay.”

• He who participated in the creation of man (Let Us create man in Our image…), forming man from the dust of the ground and breathing life into him,
• took earthy substance and mixed it with His own DNA.

•  He smeared the clay mixture on the blind man’s eyes, he himself as we, a jar of clay (2 Cor. 4:7),

•  and told him to go and wash in a pool whose name is translated “Sent.”

“So he went and washed, and came back seeing.”

My take away:

• I am made in God’s image yet I am made from dust.
• Anything good in me is of God. The knowledge of God through Christ Jesus is the treasure contained in my jar of clay.

I first learned the scripture in 2 Cor. 4:7 in the NIV translation which reads, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”  

I never hear this scripture or the phrase, “jars of clay” without thinking of the day my husband and I rode the grounds of Serenity Gardens in a golf cart with a representative of the cemetery. I never imagined we would have the heart wrenching task of choosing a piece of ground in which to place one of our children. I heard myself say over and again as tears streamed down my face, “Our bodies are just jars of clay, just jars of clay…just jars of clay.”

Interestingly, verse 6 of 2 Corinthians 4 ties into John 9:5. It reads, “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

• My “jar of clay” is cracked—weak and fragile. Just when I think that I am making some progress and reach around to “pat my own self on the back,” I am made aware of my blind spots!

Thank God that He cares for me and shows me that without Him, I am blind. Without His perspective, I really cannot see very far in front of my own nose. It’s when I choose my shortsightedness over His Eternal and perfect perspective that I begin to analyze things and make judgments based on my own limited and clouded vision.

Verses 39 – 41

“And Jesus said, ‘For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.’”

 “Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, ‘Are we blind also?’”

Talk about a rhetorical question!

• Pride blinds us to truth.
• I must be on guard to put down pride in my own life.

“Let not the foot of pride come against me…” (Psalm 36:11) for “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

I need the Word of God to bathe my eyes in the salve of Truth, to be washed over by the Word. It is to the extent that I keep Truth before my eyes, in my heart and on my tongue that I am Sent.

“For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure” (John 3:34).

As believers whose spiritual eyes have been opened, we also are sent of God, speak His words and contain the Spirit in jars of clay.