17th Mar 2011

John 9:13-34 – The Pharisees investigate the Healing

• “humanity before hedges”
• I’m in danger of repeating myself but what happens in this passage is very typical of Jesus’ ministry.
• The Jews had created hedges around sin. Adding additional commands to act as buffers so that the Jews did not get even close to breaking a commandment. In doing so they veered on the side of caution when determining what work was. So God had commanded that the Sabbath was holy and Jesus had appeared to have broken their additional commands and hedges in three ways;
1. Kneading – he had kneaded the mud when healing the blind man.
2. Building – clay was a building material – building was one of the 39 types of work prohibited in the mishna.
3. Healing as an action.
• Jesus does something that is very rare -0 healed a man born blind – some said that only the messiah would do this.
• The Pharisees had a problem. The man people were believing might be the Messiah was breaking their rules. They considered themselves the guru’s of right and wrong interpretation and were given huge kudos in their Jewish world for doing this.
• If the Messiah did not do things the way they said He would then of course their whole status would be completely undermined.
• I am sure that most Pharisees started off as godly men who wanted to serve God’s people but eventually their status and pride had deceived many of them.
• Now even when facing the facts they struggled to believe they could be wrong.
• In doing so they threatened the blind man’s family with excommunication.
• There were three types of excommunication all uncommon in Judaism today;
1. n’zifah – light – lasted 7 days and could be invoked by one person.
2. niddui – rejection – lasted 30 days and people had to stay 6 ft away.
3. cherem – the most severe – lasted indefinitely and people considered dead.
• For a family as poor as the blind man’s being cast out of the synagogue and therefore society and many of its social safety nets – it would be disastrous.
• But the leaders were obsessed with being right and so…

• They put their hedges before humanity
• They put their status before sense.
• They put their pride before His purposes.

• I must not!