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You are about to hear an amazing story about a remarkable man, AND an encounter with Jesus that includes one of the most important and practical biblical principles that you will find anywhere in the pages of the Bible.
Quite a claim, I know. One that I will absolutely prove in this PODCAST.
A principle that I will be presumptuous enough to suggest that you and I need to hear, and of which we need to be reminded, perhaps often.
This is on the surface a story about a man born blind (which would be remarkable enough). But it is also a story about sheep, about a sheepfold, about the door of the sheepfold, about Jesus who identified Himself as the “door of the sheep,” and about life in the desert in which the sheep and shepherds in Israel lived and continue to live.
Before we get to the story itself, I need very briefly to remind you of something. When God appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush, He made a most remarkable statement: “I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
Interesting phrase, “milk and honey.” Honey (a jam made of figs and dates) refers to the land of the farmer, and the bounty of the fruit of the land that is grown by the farmers. Milk refers to the land of the shepherd, and that which is produced by the flocks that are raised and cared for by the shepherds. In Israel, both lands — milk and honey — come together in a breathtaking variety of geography and climate that (NOW GET THIS) puts into its proper perspective EXACTLY the kind of lives that we are living today. More specifically, HOW and WHY we think the way we do today.
We have SO MUCH to learn from this story.
Let’s begin by reading John 9:1-3… then John 9:34… then John 10:7,
Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. 2 And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.
…34 They (the religious leaders) answered and said to him (the healed man), “You were completely born in sins, and are you teaching us?” And they cast him out.
…7 Then Jesus said to them again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.”
Now, as the centuries have progressed in Israel, two distinct sections of the nation have come to be: the “left stage”, consisting of the North and Western regions and the “right stage” consisting of the South and Eastern areas. The left stage is typically the land of farmers (also known as the land of honey) and the right stage is where most of the nation’s herders are (the land of milk).
The mindsets and lifestyles between these two sections are vastly different, even today. For starters, with an overall much more thriving climate and agricultural state, the left stage is much more secure in themselves when it comes to their livelihood.
Conversely, in the arid (even barren) right stage, the herders are absolutely dependent on God for their survival. Most people in the left stage, being farmers, own their own land and homes. These homes of theirs are made of rock and mortar – built to sustain storms, earthquakes, and other forces of nature. On right stage – the land of milk, the land of shepherds – they don’t have a home to own. They are constantly moving with their flocks, looking for food and water, and live in tents.
At the end of the day, the shepherds of the right stage know all too well what “undeserved pain” is all about. They don’t ask “why?” or complain about life’s “fairness”. Undeserved pain is just an accepted part of a very simple life where they just get through each day with their family and flock still alive.
That’s the norm of right stage living.
So, why is it that throughout history, people went, and still go, to the right stage to find God?
The answer is because the sad fact is that, as comfortable and secure as life may be on the left stage, God is virtually unseen and unheard because the people there don’t view Him as essential to their survival.
Consequently, the people of the North and West of Israel have historically found their lives cluttered with distractions because they are not consumed with just trying to survive and dependant on God for their survival.
Another related bit of trivia: 353 cities are named in the Bible. Of those, over 300 of them are in the right stage desert. This doesn’t mean that there were more cities in existence in this region than the other. In fact, archeologists have discovered over 4,000 signs of different ancient cities in Israel’s North. They just don’t factor into the Biblical narrative.
With this in mind, the Bible is primarily a “Right Stage Book”.
By and large, the Bible was written by, to, and about people living in life’s deserts (both literally and metaphorically) – where life is difficult, insecure and the unpredictable inevitably happens. Personal problems are the norm, not the exception and the expectations are that life is tough and God is real.
That’s Right Stage Life.
Maybe this is why today, so many affluent, comfortable, and secure people don’t seem to get anything out of the Bible when they read it.
Consider King David’s words from Psalm 63:
You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.
In His 23rd Psalm David didn’t describe God as today’s Biblical thinkers would today (with theological propositions such as “immutable”, “omniscient”, or “omnipresent”). No, David answered the question, “What is God like?” with these words:
The Lord is my shepherd.
So, especially in America today, we think thoughts and ask questions that the Biblical writers of the Right Stage would have never even considered asking. But, the good news is that you and I do not need to go to life’s desert. The desert will come to us. Just as it did to the man born blind in John 9:
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. 2 “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” (John 9:1-2)
Remember this, eleven of Jesus’ twelve disciples were born and raised in the Left Stage. They had the luxury of worrying about sin nature and heredity, not just a blind man’s daily survival.
3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.
…34 They (the religious leaders) answered and said to him (the healed man), “You were completely born in sins, and are you teaching us?” And they cast him out.
…7 Then Jesus said to them again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.”
Jesus turned the conventional thought of His day on its ear and said, “Despite the fact that the religious leaders won’t let this blind man into their synagogue; I’m letting Him into my eternal house of worship!”
Sadly, the thought process of the religious leaders of 2,000 years ago has also infected so many of us today. At the core of this mindset is that if God is pleased with us, then the fields will grow green, rainfall will come, and the harvest will be plenty. Conversely, if something bad happens to us or someone we love, it’s because God is angry with us or that person and punishing us out of His displeasure.
Classic Left Stage Thinking. Unbiblical thinking.
When bad things happen, it’s not because we deserve to have our worlds rocked to the core, but, as Jesus put it, so “…that the works of God should be revealed in us.”
This is Right Stage Thinking: a terrible thing has happened and a tragedy has utterly destroyed my life out of nowhere and set me and those around me into a freefall… but I’m clinging onto God in the middle of this and His glory is going to shine through it! I don’t know how, when or where, but I am certain God will be seen!
To sum up, this is our theology of pain and suffering: Bad things happen in this world. But, God will always bring His beauty out of our ashes. ALWAYS.
Or, in the words of the prophet Isaiah:
To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
That the Lord has planted for His own glory. (Isaiah 61:3)