Sermon | New Eyes | Epiphany | 2.23.25
Steve
DeNeff: Signs series week 7, Opening the Eyes of the Blind.
Bulletpoint Outline
- Introduction: An Unfinished Journey
- DeNeff opens with a confession: “There’s no good way to
end the sermon today… it’s quite unfinished,” mirroring
faith’s messy, ongoing nature. - Focuses on John 9’s question from the Pharisees: “Are we
blind too?”—a challenge to those certain they see
clearly. - Shares a quip from his wife: “There are people who can
look right at something and not see it,” setting up the
theme of spiritual blindness.
- DeNeff opens with a confession: “There’s no good way to
- D. Fletcher: A Glimpse of Unconscious Vision
- Introduces D. Fletcher, poisoned by carbon monoxide in 1988, left
cortically blind yet able to act on what she couldn’t see:
“She reached out… and took the pencil from
him.” - Neuroscientists call it “unconscious
vision”—a metaphor for faith: “Fix your eyes
not on what is seen, but on what is unseen” (2 Corinthians
4:18). - Asks: Could faith let us grasp unseen realities, just as Fletcher
navigated her world?
- Introduces D. Fletcher, poisoned by carbon monoxide in 1988, left
- The Blind Man’s Story (John 9)
- Retells John 9: Jesus heals a blind man with mud, sparking a
miracle, an inquisition, and a conversion—ending with,
“Lord, I believe!” (John 9:38). - Pharisees ask, “Are we blind too?” Jesus
replies, “Your guilt remains” (John
9:41)—their certainty blinds them, while the blind man sees.
- Retells John 9: Jesus heals a blind man with mud, sparking a
- Heaven Alongside Us
- Suggests: “Heaven is not so much up and away; it is
over… alongside your present life,” already here but
unseen (Luke 17:20-21). - Ties to John 9: We’re blind to Heaven’s nearness, needing Jesus to
unveil it.
- Suggests: “Heaven is not so much up and away; it is
- Spiritual Blindness: A Church Warning
- Quotes Isaiah 42:18: “Who is blind but my
servant?”—not the world, but us: “He’s talking
about us.” - Warns: “We hear things and never comprehend… gather in a
church and never comprehend what it is”—blindness festers
in the pews.
- Quotes Isaiah 42:18: “Who is blind but my
- The Spirit Leads the Blind
- Promises: “I will send a servant… he will lead the blind
along paths they have not known” (Isaiah 42:16)—Jesus
fulfills this, opening eyes (Luke 4:18). - The blind man follows; the Pharisees resist—sight comes to those who
let Him lead.
- Promises: “I will send a servant… he will lead the blind
- Mud on the Sabbath
- Jesus heals with mud on the Sabbath: “This happened so
that the works of God might be displayed” (John 9:3)—not
sin, but purpose. - Pharisees’ “minds were cluttered with furniture”—rules block the
miracle; faith acts to see.
- Jesus heals with mud on the Sabbath: “This happened so
- Excommunication and Encounter
- Pharisees boast, “We are disciples of
Moses,” casting out the healed man: “They
throw him out” (John 9:34). - Jesus finds him: “Do you believe in the Son of
Man?” The man pleads, “Tell me who He
is,” then worships—rejection turns to revelation (John
9:35-38).
- Pharisees boast, “We are disciples of
- Sinners Reversed
- Starts with assumption: “The man born blind is believed to have
sinned,” ends with truth: “He has not sinned at
all” (John 9:3, 41). - Pharisees, “sure they have never sinned,”
bear the guilt—pride blinds, humility sees.
- Starts with assumption: “The man born blind is believed to have
- Convictions as Blindfolds
- Asks: “Have our convictions actually blinded
us?” - Confesses: “I believe, but there is so much I don’t
see.” - Urges humility: “Are my convictions keeping me from
seeing where other people are right?” (John 9:41).
- Asks: “Have our convictions actually blinded
- The Moral: You Don’t Get It
- Moral: “You don’t get it, especially because you think you
get it”—certainty’s the trap (John 9:39-41). - Blind man sees; Pharisees don’t—openness trumps assumption.
- Moral: “You don’t get it, especially because you think you
- Heaven Hidden Here
- Wonders: “What if most of the things you call Heaven are
already present… because you are born blind?” (Luke
17:20-21). - Heaven’s “over,” not
“up”—we miss it, needing Jesus to lift the
veil.
- Wonders: “What if most of the things you call Heaven are
- The Path: Humility and Hunger
- Steps to sight: “Humility is the first step. But now
let’s add hunger”—owning blindness, craving light. - Bartimaeus cries, “Son of David, have mercy on
me!” (Mark 10:46-52); disciples seek power (Mark
10:35-37)—hunger wins. - “Jesus walks by when He wants to… when you hear He’s
coming, you act”—timing’s His, action’s ours.
- Steps to sight: “Humility is the first step. But now
- Conclusion: Hope of True Sight
- Closes with hope: “Jesus will lead the blind… turn
darkness into light” (Isaiah 42:16)—even the spiritually
blind can see. - Prays: “Jesus, open our eyes. We want to
see”—a plea for revelation. - Takeaways:
- Blindness haunts the church, not just the world.
- Certainty blocks; humility opens—D. Fletcher acts on the unseen (2
Corinthians 4:18). - Hunger unlocks sight—Bartimaeus pleads while disciples posture.
- Jesus moves on His clock—cry out when He’s near.
- Challenge: “Have we allowed our assumptions… to blind
us?” - Pray: “Lord, I believe—but help my
unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
- Closes with hope: “Jesus will lead the blind… turn
An Unfinished Sermon on Seeing the Unseen
Introduction
Steve DeNeff steps into his message with a disarming confession:
“There’s no good way to end the sermon today… it’s quite
unfinished.”
This isn’t an apology but an intentional framing, a reflection of the
journey of faith itself—messy, ongoing, and resistant to neat
conclusions. He invites us into this unfinished space by anchoring his
message in a provocative question posed by the religious leaders at the
close of John 9:
“Are we blind too?”
It’s a question laced with indignation, dripping with the assumption
that they, the Pharisees—educated, devout, and certain of their
spiritual clarity—could not possibly be the blind ones. DeNeff seizes
this moment from Scripture, found in John 9:40, to unravel the central
theme of his sermon: spiritual blindness and the human struggle to see
the unseen realities of God’s kingdom.
The question itself varies slightly across translations, each nuance
revealing the Pharisees’ defensiveness. The New Living Translation
renders it:
“Are you saying we’re blind?”
while the New Revised Standard Version softens it to:
“Surely we are not blind, are we?”
Regardless of phrasing, the heart of their challenge is the same:
they believe they see clearly, and Jesus’ suggestion otherwise threatens
their identity. DeNeff uses this as a springboard to explore a deeper
truth—faith is not a destination of perfect sight but a process of
continually learning to see. Like the sermon itself, our spiritual lives
remain unfinished, marked by questions that linger and revelations that
unfold over time.
To lighten the weight of this idea, DeNeff shares a playful exchange
with his wife.
“My wife says that there are people who can look right at
something and not see it,” he quips. “I don’t know what she’s talking
about. I tell her that there are some people who can see something
they’re not looking at.”
The humor lands with a point, introducing the paradox that threads
through his message: sight and blindness are not always what they seem.
To drive this home, DeNeff paints a gripping picture—a woman at home,
mid-shower, silently overtaken by carbon monoxide. Unaware and slipping
into unconsciousness, she had no way of spotting the invisible threat
closing in. Yet, in a twist of providence, her husband walked through
the door just in time to pull her from danger. It’s a striking metaphor
for the sermon’s core idea: some of us stare straight at truth and miss
it entirely, while others, perhaps unknowingly, catch glimmers of what
lies beyond the visible.
This opening sets the stage for a scientific illustration DeNeff
later ties in—the story of D. Fletcher, whose experience becomes a lens
for understanding spiritual blindness and unconscious vision. But here,
in these initial moments, DeNeff hooks us with a blend of Scripture,
personal reflection, and relatable storytelling. He’s not promising
answers tied with a bow; he’s inviting us to wrestle with the question
of our own blindness, to consider what we might be missing even as we’re
certain we see. Faith, he suggests, is less about having it all figured
out and more about staying open to the unseen—a theme that will ripple
through the rest of this unfinished sermon.
The
Strange Case of D. Fletcher: A Window into Unseen Sight
To anchor his point, Steve DeNeff draws us into a remarkable true
story—the case of D. Fletcher, a young Italian woman whose life took a
dramatic turn in 1988.
“Take, for instance, the Strange Case of D. Fletcher,” he
begins. “Young, energetic, she jumps into the shower of a newly
renovated apartment just outside of Milan. The fumes—carbon
monoxide—build up quickly while she’s showering. Within moments, she
slumps to the floor, motionless, unconscious. She might have died were
it not for her husband, Carlo, an engineer, who came home at exactly the
right moment, pulled her out of the shower, resuscitated her, and rushed
her to the hospital.”
What could have been the end was only the beginning of an
extraordinary journey.
At the hospital, D. Fletcher stirred back to life.
“She regained consciousness, could hear and respond,” DeNeff
explains, “but she could not see—not anything.”
For most victims of carbon monoxide poisoning, losing faculties like
sight is rare, but D. Fletcher was an exception. Her world went dark,
and yet, over the next few days, something peculiar emerged.
“She gradually regained some of her vision,” DeNeff recounts.
“She was able to discern between colors—not just between red and blue
but between different shades of red or blue. She could see the white and
the blue in the sky, even her husband’s blue sweater, enough to say,
‘You wore that yesterday.’ When her mother handed her a cup of hot
coffee, she could see the hairs on the back of her mother’s hand—but she
was not able to see the hand.”
It was a fractured kind of sight—vivid in detail yet blind to form,
like catching glimpses of a puzzle without the whole picture.
This oddity led her to Melvin Goodale, a
neuroscientist in Scotland, who saw in her a chance to explore the
mysteries of the human brain.
“He put her through a series of experiments,” DeNeff says.
“One of the first ones he did was to take a number two pencil and hold
it up in front of her and ask if she could see it. All she could see was
the yellow—she could not see the pencil. But before he pulled it away,
something extraordinary happened. D. said, ‘Wait a minute. Give me that
pencil,’ and she reached out with her fingers and, in exact proportion
to the width of the pencil, closed her fingers around it and took it
from him.”
She couldn’t see the shape, yet her hand knew where to go. Goodale
tested her further.
“They gave her a 3×5 card and asked her to stick it through a
slot,” DeNeff continues. “She did it flawlessly, though she never saw
the card and she never saw the slot.”
The experiments didn’t stop there. DeNeff paints another scene:
“One day, her husband, Carlo, was discouraged because she
failed every test. He suggested they go out to the woods for a picnic,
thinking maybe it would change her mood. So they packed a picnic basket
and headed to a flat landing in the Italian Alps, a path winding through
the woods. The scientist walked behind D., and even though she could see
nothing, she ducked at the right moment when a branch hung low. She
stepped over a stump or a log. And when they unpacked the basket, she
reached for the fork or the knife—even though she never saw the tree,
saw the stump, saw the knife, or the fork.”
It was as if her body knew what her eyes couldn’t grasp.
Neuroscientists dubbed this phenomenon unconscious vision.
“If conscious vision is the ability to look at something and
see it because you can see it,” DeNeff explains, “unconscious vision is
the ability to act on something you cannot see because you’re familiar
with it.”
Goodale and his team were so captivated they documented her case in a
book, Sight Unseen.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” DeNeff teases. “You can
read the story in a book called Sight
Unseen by Melvin Goodale, the scientist who
conducted the experiments.”
This wasn’t fiction—it was a bridge between science and faith, a
real-life mystery that mirrored a spiritual truth.
DeNeff draws the connection with a question:
“I wonder if this is what Paul meant when he said: ‘Fix your
eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is
temporary, and what is unseen is eternal’” (2 Corinthians
4:18).
Just as D. Fletcher navigated her world through an unseen
familiarity—grabbing pencils, slotting cards, ducking branches—faith
calls us to act on realities we cannot fully perceive. Scripture is rich
with echoes of this. Hagar, lost in the wilderness, suddenly sees a well
(Genesis 21:19). Elisha’s servant lifts his eyes to an army of angels
encircling them (2 Kings 6:17). Hebrews speaks of a “great cloud
of witnesses” surrounding us (Hebrews 12:1), and Peter promises
an inheritance “kept in heaven” (1 Peter 1:4). These
are glimpses of the unseen, moments when faith grants vision beyond the
tangible.
D. Fletcher’s story becomes DeNeff’s lens for a profound challenge:
Could faith be our unconscious vision? Like her, we may not see the full
shape of God’s kingdom, but we’re called to reach for it anyway,
trusting what we’ve come to know. The Pharisees in John 9 thought they
saw everything—religious experts certain of their clarity—yet they
missed Jesus standing before them. Meanwhile, the blind man obeyed
without understanding, stepping toward a truth he couldn’t yet see.
“Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about
what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1), and in D. Fletcher’s
strange sight, DeNeff finds a mirror for that trust. Are we willing to
act on the unseen, to duck the branch and grab the fork, even when the
shapes elude us? That, he suggests, is where true vision begins.
The Blind
Man’s Journey: Sight Beyond Seeing (John 9)
Steve DeNeff turns the spotlight to a familiar yet striking story
from John 9—the healing of a man born blind—and unpacks it with a lens
that sharpens its edges. He walks us through the narrative in vivid
stages, each moment a brushstroke in a portrait of transformation,
blindness, and the clash of faith with pride.
It begins with a miracle (John 9:1-7). Jesus spots a man blind from
birth, a beggar on the margins, unseen by most. Without fanfare, Jesus
spits on the ground, mixes mud, smears it on the man’s eyes, and sends
him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. The man doesn’t hesitate—he goes,
washes, and returns with sight he’s never known. It’s a quiet upheaval,
a life rewritten in a single obedient act. Yet this marvel sparks not
celebration but suspicion.
The religious leaders launch an inquisition (John 9:8-34), circling
like hounds. They grill the man: How did this happen? Who
did it? They drag in his parents, who shrink under the
scrutiny. Unconvinced and unbending, the Pharisees refuse to see the
miracle for what it is. When the healed man won’t renounce Jesus, they
cast him out—excommunication as their final word.
But the story doesn’t end there. Jesus seeks him out again (John
9:35-38), finding him in his rejection.
“Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asks.
The man, eyes now open in more ways than one, replies,
“Lord, I believe!” and falls in worship. It’s
a conversion deeper than sight—his physical healing has birthed a
spiritual awakening. Then comes the punchline (John 9:39-41), sharp and
unsettling. Jesus declares, “For judgment I have come into
this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become
blind.” The Pharisees, overhearing, bristle.
“Are we blind too?” they demand, their tone
thick with offense. Jesus’ response cuts deeper: “If you
were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you
can see, your guilt remains.” Their assumed clarity has
become their condemnation.
DeNeff lingers here, contrasting two journeys. The blind man stumbles
from darkness into light—first physical, then spiritual—his faith
unfolding as he sees Jesus for who He is. The Pharisees, meanwhile,
march the opposite path. Certain they grasp God’s ways, they stand blind
to the Messiah in their midst, their pride a veil thicker than any mud.
It’s a stark mirror to DeNeff’s theme: sight isn’t always what we think
it is. He wonders aloud, weaving in echoes from elsewhere in
Scripture:
“I wonder if this is how Hagar saw the well in the desert
that a moment ago was invisible to her. Is this how the servant of the
prophet Elisha saw the armies of the Lord in the mountains when a moment
ago he looked and saw nothing?”
That story of Elisha (2 Kings 6:15-17) hums in the background.
Picture it: the prophet’s servant wakes to an enemy army ringing their
city, horses and chariots glinting in the dawn. Panic seizes him.
“Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” he cries. Elisha,
unruffled, replies, “Don’t be afraid. Those who are with us are
more than those who are with them.” Then he prays,
“Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” The Lord
answers, and suddenly the servant beholds a breathtaking sight—hills
ablaze with horses and chariots of fire, God’s unseen army encircling
them. What was always there, hidden in plain sight, bursts into view.
Elisha saw it all along; the servant needed divine help to catch up.
DeNeff ties these threads together with a quiet intensity. Just as
Elisha’s servant needed his eyes pried open to grasp the unseen, the
blind man in John 9 needed Jesus to lift both his physical and spiritual
blindness. Hagar, too, saw the well only when God unveiled it. Yet the
Pharisees, like the servant before his awakening, stared at reality and
missed it entirely. They had the law, the temple, the
credentials—everything to “see”—but couldn’t perceive
the kingdom breaking in through Jesus. DeNeff’s question lingers: Are we
any different? Are we blind to the spiritual realities swirling around
us, too certain of our own vision to notice what we’ve missed?
This ties straight into Paul’s words from 2 Corinthians 4:18:
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is
unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is
eternal.” The angelic army was real before the servant saw
it; the blind man’s healing was true before the Pharisees accepted it.
Faith, DeNeff suggests, is the courage to see beyond the visible—to
trust the eternal when the temporary blinds us. The blind man embodies
this, moving from ignorance to worship, while the Pharisees cling to
their sight and tumble into darkness. Jesus came to flip the script: the
blind see, the seeing go blind. And DeNeff leaves us wondering—whose
path are we on?
Heaven Hiding Over Us
Steve DeNeff upends our usual maps of the afterlife with a quiet
jolt:
“Heaven is not so much up and away; it is over”
—a dimension alongside our present life, humming just beyond our
sight. Then he presses deeper:
“What if most of the things you call Heaven are already present in
this world, invisible because you are born blind?”
It’s a reframing that pulls Heaven from the clouds and dares us to
squint at the here and now.
This isn’t whimsy—it’s scriptural thread. In Luke 17:20-21, Jesus
tells the Pharisees, “The kingdom of God is in your
midst”—not a future spectacle, but a presence now.
Revelation 21:1-3 sees Heaven descending, God dwelling among us, while
Colossians 3:1-2 urges focus on things above—not a skyward stare, but a
deeper gaze. Paul doubles down in 2 Corinthians 4:18: “We
fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen,”
and Jesus prays in Matthew 6:10, “On earth as it is in
heaven”—a kingdom breaking in, if we’d only see.
This hooks into John 9’s heartbeat—the blind man sees Jesus after mud
and water, while the Pharisees, eyes wide, miss the Messiah in their
midst. Spiritual blindness isn’t a glitch—it’s our default, veiling
Heaven’s pulse. Elisha’s servant gaped at an army until chariots of fire
blazed into view (2 Kings 6:17); D. Fletcher grabbed pencils she
couldn’t see. Heaven’s nearness brushes us too—a layer woven into the
now, unseen by eyes trained on the tangible.
DeNeff flips our instincts: Heaven’s not a finish line after
death—it’s here, hiding in plain sight, closer than our next breath. Can
we live awake to it, or are we too busy mapping a distant afterlife to
notice its shimmer—love, grace, God’s presence—leaking into the
everyday? Faith, he hints, is tuning our hearts to this dimension over
us, trusting what’s veiled until Jesus cracks our blindness wide
open.
Heaven Over, Not Up: A
Dimension Next Door
DeNeff pivots to a thought that upends our usual maps of the
afterlife:
“Heaven is not so much up and away; it is over. Heaven is not
the life after; heaven is another dimension alongside the present
life.”
It’s a quiet jolt—a reframing that pulls Heaven from the distant
clouds and plants it closer than we’ve dared to imagine. Forget the
image of a far-off sky; DeNeff invites us to see Heaven as a layer woven
into the here and now, a reality humming just beyond the curtain of our
everyday sight.
This isn’t a whimsical notion—it’s a thread running through
Scripture, tugging at our assumptions. Jesus, in Luke 17:20-21, is
cornered by Pharisees demanding a timeline for God’s kingdom. He brushes
off their checklist:
“The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that
can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’
because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”
Not a future event to pin on a calendar, but a presence already among
us—elusive, yes, but near. Revelation 21:1-3 unfolds:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And I heard a
loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now
among the people, and He will dwell with them.’”
Heaven doesn’t whisk us away—it descends, merging with the earth we
know, a reunion of realms rather than an escape.
Paul chimes in, urging in Colossians 3:1-2: “Set your
minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
He’s not pointing to a compass direction or a starry sky; he’s
nudging us toward a deeper focus—an unseen layer of reality that brushes
against our own. DeNeff’s riff on “over, not up” echoes
this: Heaven isn’t a distant zip code but a dimension overlapping our
lives, waiting to be noticed. It’s less about geography and more about
perception—a shift in how we see.
This ties seamlessly into the heartbeat of DeNeff’s sermon—the dance
between blindness and sight, the seen and unseen. The Pharisees in John
9 squinted at Jesus and saw only a threat, blind to the kingdom breaking
in. Elisha’s servant in 2 Kings 6 gaped at an enemy army, missing the
fiery chariots encircling him until God parted the veil. D. Fletcher
grabbed pencils and ducked branches she couldn’t name, guided by an
unseen knowing. Heaven, DeNeff suggests, is like that—closer than our
next breath, yet veiled to eyes trained on the tangible. Just as the
servant needed a prayer to see the angels, we need faith to sense the
kingdom’s nearness.
Heaven
Hiding in Plain Sight: Blind to the Nearness
DeNeff drops a question that tilts the room:
“What if most of the things you call Heaven are already
present in this world because they are invisible to you—because you are
born blind?”
It’s a spark that flickers, daring us to rethink what’s right under
our noses. Then he doubles down:
“Heaven is not so much up and away; it is over. It is another
dimension, existing alongside your present life.”
His words crack open the old picture of pearly gates in the sky,
nudging us to squint at the here and now with fresh eyes.
DeNeff’s challenge lands here: Can we live awake to this? Can we,
like D. Fletcher reaching for what she couldn’t see, trust the nearness
of Heaven even when it hides in plain sight? Faith, he hints, is tuning
our hearts to that dimension—over, not up—where God dwells among us,
closer than we’ve dared to believe. The takeaway lands soft but
sharp:
“What if most of the things you call Heaven are already
present…?”
DeNeff’s not selling a fantasy—he’s flipping our gaze. The Pharisees
missed Jesus because they wouldn’t blink; the blind man saw because he
let Jesus lead. Heaven’s here, he hints—in the kindness we overlook, the
peace we rush past—hidden by our blur. Are we too busy mapping the
afterlife to notice it’s already leaking in? DeNeff leaves us peering,
wondering what we’d see if we just let our blindness break.
Blindness in
the Light: A Challenge to the Certain
Steve DeNeff leans into a tension that hums beneath the surface of
faith: the ones most sure of their vision might be the blindest of all.
He circles back to John 9, where the Pharisees—keepers of the law,
guardians of truth—hear Jesus’ unsettling words and snap back,
“What? Are we blind too?” Their voices drip
with disbelief, maybe a flicker of scorn. Jesus doesn’t flinch.
“If you were blind, you would not be guilty of
sin,” He replies, “but now that you claim you
can see, your guilt remains” (John 9:39-41). It’s a
stinging reversal—the elite rule-followers, so proud of their clarity,
stand exposed as the ones fumbling in the dark.
This isn’t a new warning. DeNeff pulls a thread from centuries
earlier, echoing Isaiah 42:18-20: “Who is blind but my
servant, and deaf like the messenger I send?” God’s own
people, chosen and trained, stare at the world and miss its
meaning—seeing without perceiving, hearing without understanding. The
irony cuts deep: those closest to the divine, the spiritually
“elite,” stumble over the very truth they claim to
uphold. DeNeff turns this mirror toward us, his voice pressing: Could
our own certainty be our blindfold? Have we, like the Pharisees,
polished our convictions so brightly that they block the light?
Then he tosses out a question that lingers like a dare:
“Is it possible—I’m asking—for someone in this world to
see realities in the other one?”
It’s not rhetorical; it’s personal. The blind man in John 9 answers
with his life. Born sightless, he obeys Jesus’ muddy command, washes in
Siloam, and returns seeing—not just the shapes of the world, but the
shape of the Son of God. When Jesus finds him later and asks,
“Do you believe?” the man’s reply is a
worshipful yes. His eyes, once empty, now brim with both sight and
faith. The Pharisees, though, see the same Jesus and scoff, their
knowledge a cage. “Are you calling us blind?”
they demand, as if the question answers itself. DeNeff nods to their
words: “What—we’re not blind, are we?” Oh, but
maybe they are.
Scripture hums with this paradox. Elisha’s servant, trembling before
an enemy army, sees only doom until Elisha prays, “Open his
eyes, Lord.” Suddenly, the hills blaze with chariots of
fire—God’s unseen host, always there, now revealed (2 Kings 6:17). Paul
picks up the tune in 2 Corinthians 4:18:
“We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is
unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is
eternal.”
Faith, Hebrews 11:1 chimes in, is “confidence in what we
hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Each
story whispers the same truth: there’s another world, a deeper reality,
brushing against ours—and seeing it demands more than sharp eyes. It
takes humility, trust, a willingness to admit we might be blind.
DeNeff’s warning lands here, sharp and urgent. Spiritual blindness
isn’t just for the skeptic—it stalks the religious, the certain, the
ones who’ve memorized the rules but missed the Ruler. The Pharisees
thought their sight was perfect, yet they couldn’t spot the Messiah
standing before them. The blind man, unburdened by pride, saw what they
couldn’t. DeNeff’s question—
“Can we see realities in the other one?”
—pairs with a challenge: Are we too educated into our own darkness,
too smug in our clarity to notice what we’ve missed? Jesus flips the
script in John 9: the blind see, the seeing go blind. And Isaiah’s
rebuke rings true—God’s own servants can be the deafest, the blindest,
unless we let faith crack open our eyes to the unseen humming all around
us.
Baptism,
Belief, and a Blind Man’s Journey: DeNeff’s Doubts
Steve DeNeff steps into the muddy waters of John 9 with a squint,
eyeing both Catholic and Protestant takes on the blind man’s story—and
finding neither quite holds up. The scene unfolds simply enough: Jesus
smears mud on the blind man’s eyes in verse 6, tells him,
“Go wash in the pool called Sent,” and the man
does it. By verse 7, he’s back, blinking at a world he’s never seen. For
Catholics, this is baptism in action.
“See, there it is!” DeNeff mimics their enthusiasm. “He
washed in the pool—the man is baptized, and now he can see! He’s
converted!”
It’s a tidy arc: the water washes away his spiritual darkness, just
as it does in the sacrament.
But DeNeff isn’t sold.
“The problem, of course, is that if that’s true—and it might
be—the man was baptized by himself,” he points out, a hint of mischief
in his tone. “Not even the Catholic tradition would accept that. And
he’s baptized in verse 7 before he actually believes, which is in verse
38.”
The timeline nags at him. It’s not until later, when Jesus tracks him
down and asks, “Do you believe in the Son of
Man?” that the man replies, “Lord, I
believe!” and worships (John 9:38). So how does baptism
convert him in verse 7 when his faith doesn’t flare until verse 38?
“I mean, it’s possible,” DeNeff concedes, “but there’s at
least room for doubt.”
Enter the evangelicals, eager to tidy up the mess.
“Thankfully, the Protestants are here to save the
day!”
He quips, leaning into their angle. They sidestep baptism and zero in
on obedience.
“It’s not because he went in the pool,” DeNeff explains their
view, “it’s because he went to the pool in obedience. And that obedience
is what changed his life.”
Then, when the Pharisees and skeptics haul him in, demanding answers,
the man testifies—sharing his faith, as evangelicals might say—before a
crowd that doesn’t buy it. It’s a classic Protestant tale: obey,
receive, witness.
DeNeff’s not biting.
“You can tell I’m not buying this,”
he says, his skepticism plain.
“The problem, of course, is that if the evangelicals are
right, then the man is cured without even asking for it. And he
testifies to a faith he doesn’t even have until verse 38.”
Think about it: Jesus doesn’t ask permission—he just heals him. The
man doesn’t plead for sight; he’s handed it, mud and all. And when he
faces the interrogation, he’s not preaching a creed—he’s just saying
what happened: “I was blind, now I see.” Yet
faith, real faith, doesn’t bloom until that final encounter with
Jesus.
“So you have the man testifying to something that isn’t yet
in him,” DeNeff presses. “And the faith that he has in the end is not
cognitive—it isn’t an intellectual belief that Jesus is the properly
stated Son of God. Belief in this story is acting. It’s seeing. It’s
doing something.”
Here’s where DeNeff digs in. Faith, in this tale, isn’t a checklist
of doctrines or a switch flipped by water or willpower. It’s a journey,
a slow unfurling. The man acts—walking to the pool, washing off the
mud—before he knows what it means. He sees—first the world, then the One
who healed him—before he grasps who Jesus is.
“So I’m having problems with both the Catholics and the
evangelicals,”
DeNeff admits, tossing their neat boxes aside. Scripture backs him up
in subtle ways. Jesus tells Thomas, “Because you have seen
me, you have believed” (John 20:29)—sight precedes the
leap. James insists faith without action is dead (James 2:17)—it’s the
doing that proves it alive. Even in Mark 8, another blind man’s healing
comes in stages—fuzzy trees first, clear sight later—a process, not a
snap.
DeNeff’s hunch cuts through the debate: this blind man’s faith isn’t
about reciting the right answers or nailing the ritual. It’s raw, messy,
alive—a stumble toward transformation before the pieces click. The
Catholics pin it on baptism, the Protestants on obedience, but both miss
the pulse: he’s healed without asking, speaks without knowing, and
believes only after seeing Jesus face-to-face. Faith here is less a
thought and more a movement—acting, seeing, stepping into a reality he
doesn’t yet name. DeNeff leaves us with that tension: not a formula, but
a story—one that neither tradition fully tames.
Deconstructing
Faith: Chasing Ignorance Over Answers
Steve DeNeff picks up the story of John 9 like it’s an old map he’s
determined to redraw.
“Whenever I pick a story like this up—one that I know—the
first thing I try to do is to move from certainty to uncertainty as fast
as I can,” he says, his words crackling with intent. “Because in
uncertainty, beautiful things can happen.”
It’s a counterintuitive twist, a nudge to loosen our grip on the tidy
answers we clutch. Faith, he’s hinting, isn’t a fortress of facts—it’s a
trail that winds through shadows, daring us to explore what we don’t yet
see.
He doubles down with a line that flips the script:
“It isn’t so much the pursuit of knowledge, it’s the pursuit
of ignorance that will make you better.”
Ignorance? It’s not a jab at learning—it’s a call to humility. DeNeff
borrows from the lab coats to make his point:
“Scientists speak about their knowledge, but the really good
scientists speak about their ignorance—it’s what they don’t know yet and
want to know.”
The best minds don’t strut their discoveries; they chase the gaps,
the questions, the uncharted edges. Faith, he’s saying, should do the
same—shed the smugness of certainty and lean into the wonder of what’s
still hidden.
This isn’t just a hunch—it’s biblical marrow. Paul warns in 1
Corinthians 8:2, “Those who think they know something do not
yet know as they ought to know.” Knowledge can puff up,
blind us with its shine. Proverbs 3:5-6 urges, “Trust in the
Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding”—a plea to rest in God’s mystery over our
own grasp. And Isaiah 55:8-9 thunders, “My thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways… As the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” If
we think we’ve got God figured out, we’re the ones missing the bigger
picture.
DeNeff ties this to John 9 like a thread through a needle. The
Pharisees stand there, chests puffed with doctrine, certain they see it
all—God’s law, God’s will, God’s limits. Yet Jesus walks right past
their certainty, healing a blind man they’d written off, and they can’t
see Him for who He is. Their knowledge is a cage, locking them in
darkness while they swear it’s light. The blind man, though? He’s a
different story. He starts with nothing—no sight, no answers, no agenda.
Mud on his eyes, a strange command, a dip in the pool—he acts without
knowing, and step by step, he stumbles into revelation. By verse 38,
he’s worshiping Jesus, not because he’s mastered theology, but because
he’s seen enough to trust.
That’s the heartbeat of DeNeff’s push: deconstruction isn’t
destruction—it’s dismantling the walls we’ve built around faith so God
can show us more. The Pharisees’ certainty blinded them; the blind man’s
openness led him to sight—physical and spiritual.
“If we approach faith as a pursuit of knowledge alone,”
DeNeff seems to warn, “we risk becoming rigid.”
But chasing ignorance—admitting we don’t have it all—keeps us
pliable, ready for the beautiful things uncertainty can unveil. The
Pharisees couldn’t handle that; the blind man lived it.
So here’s the dare: what if we let go? What if, like a scientist
peering into the unknown, we traded our need to know for a hunger to
discover? Certainty can be a thief, stealing our vision just when we
think it’s sharpest. The blind man didn’t need a textbook—he needed an
encounter. And DeNeff leaves us wondering: Are we brave enough to pursue
our ignorance, to deconstruct our tidy faith, and let God fill the gaps
with something truer than we ever guessed?
The Blind
See, the Seeing Stumble: A Paradox Unraveled
Steve DeNeff lands on a twist in John 9 that feels like a riddle
wrapped in truth.
“If you thought you were blind, you could see,” he says, his
words cutting through the noise. “But because you think you can see, you
are actually blind.”
It’s a head-scratcher that flips everything we assume about
knowing—and not knowing—on its head. Then he traces the story’s arc with
a keen eye:
“Oddly enough, at the beginning of the story, the man born
blind is believed to have sinned, and at the end of the story, we learn
he has not sinned at all. And at the beginning of the story, the
religious leaders—who see everything and are sure they have never
sinned—at the end of the story are the ones whose sins
remain.”
It’s a reversal that stings, a spotlight on the irony of sight.
Jesus Himself sets the stage in John 9:39-41, his voice steady:
“For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind
will see and those who see will become blind.” The
Pharisees catch the jab and bristle. “What? Are we blind
too?” they demand, indignation crackling. Jesus doesn’t
blink: “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin;
but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”
The paradox lands hard—admit your blindness, and sight awaits; cling to
your clarity, and darkness creeps in. DeNeff sees it play out in real
time: the blind man, starting with nothing but mud and a command, ends
up worshiping at Jesus’ feet. The Pharisees, brimming with law and
certainty, end up lost in their own light.
Scripture hums with this upside-down wisdom. Jesus blesses the
“poor in spirit” in Matthew 5:3, promising them the
kingdom—those who know they’re empty find the treasure. Paul grins at
the thought in 1 Corinthians 1:27: “God chose the foolish
things of the world to shame the wise”—the know-it-alls
falter while the humble rise. Proverbs 3:7 warns, “Do not be
wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun
evil”—self-made wisdom is a trap, a blindfold we tie
ourselves. Over and over, the message rings: thinking you see it all can
leave you groping; owning your ignorance opens your eyes.
DeNeff ties this to the sermon’s pulse—spiritual vision isn’t about
having the map memorized; it’s about admitting you’re still lost. The
blind man stumbles into this truth. He doesn’t strut up to Jesus with a
plan—he’s got no sight, no status, no script. Mud hits his eyes, water
washes it away, and he sees—not just the world, but eventually the One
who made it. His journey isn’t a straight line of logic; it’s a dance of
discovery, each step peeling back the dark. The Pharisees, though?
They’re too busy polishing their lenses to notice they’re blind.
“We see everything,” they’d say—God’s rules, God’s
ways—yet Jesus stands there, and they miss Him entirely.
That’s the warning DeNeff presses home: certainty can be a thief,
stealing our sight just when we think it’s sharpest.
“If we think we already see clearly,” he’s saying, “we’re in
danger of missing the point.”
The Pharisees’ pride glued their eyes shut; the blind man’s humility
cracked his wide open. It’s a principle for us too—faith thrives in the
humble, the seekers, the ones who don’t pretend to have it all figured
out.
“If you think you’re blind—ignorant—then you can see,” DeNeff
echoes.
But assume you’ve got the view, and you’re likely staring at shadows.
The blind man found light because he didn’t fake it; the Pharisees
stayed dark because they did. Where does that leave us—squinting in
pride, or reaching in wonder?
Whose Sin Was It?
Jesus Rewrites the Question
Steve DeNeff slows down at the opening of John 9, painting the scene
with a storyteller’s eye.
“Jesus is walking along one day and he sees a blind man who
does not ask to be cured,” he begins. “And when he sees the blind man,
the disciples draw attention to him and say, ‘Who was it that sinned?
Was it him, or was it his parents?’”
The question hangs heavy, a reflex born from their world—a world
where every ailment had a culprit, every shadow a sin.
“They always figure if something’s wrong, he did something to
deserve this.”
DeNeff notes a trace of wryness in his tone. It’s a tidy equation:
bad things mean bad deeds, someone’s got to pay.
But Jesus doesn’t play by their math. DeNeff captures His pivot:
“Jesus, knowing that sometimes bad things can happen and we
don’t deserve it—go figure—says, ‘Neither of these things. This was done
so that the work of God might be manifest in this person’s
life.’”
It’s a quiet thunderclap, a rewrite of the script. John 9:1-3 spells
it out: the disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or
his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answers,
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened
so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” No
finger-pointing, no blame—just purpose, shimmering where punishment once
loomed.
This wasn’t how they saw it then—or how we often see it now. Back
then, suffering was a ledger entry: sin on one side, affliction on the
other, straight from Deuteronomy’s blessings-and-curses playbook.
Blindness? Someone messed up. Today, we might dodge the sin label but
still grope for reasons—bad luck, bad genes, bad choices. Jesus cuts
through it all. “Neither,” He says, brushing
aside the cause-and-effect trap. This man’s darkness isn’t a
penalty—it’s a canvas, a stage for God’s light to break through. DeNeff
lingers here, letting the shift sink in: suffering doesn’t always have a
villain. Sometimes, it’s a vessel.
Scripture backs this up, echoing across the pages. Job’s friends
pestered him with the same logic—you must’ve sinned, Job—but
God called him blameless, his pain a proving ground for glory (Job
1:8-12). In Luke 13:1-5, Jesus shrugs off the crowd’s whispers about
slaughtered Galileans: “Do you think they were worse
sinners? I tell you, no!” Suffering isn’t a scorecard. And
Paul chimes in from Romans 8:28: “In all things God works
for the good of those who love him”—even the messy,
unexplained things. Jesus’ words to the disciples aren’t a
one-off—they’re a thread, unraveling our need to pin every hurt on a
culprit.
DeNeff ties this to the sermon’s heartbeat: sight isn’t just about
eyes—it’s about how we frame the world. The disciples, like the
Pharisees later, squint through a lens of spiritual blindness, assuming
suffering equals guilt. “Why’d this happen?”
they ask, fishing for a reason to file away. Jesus flips it:
“So God’s work can shine.” The blind man’s
story isn’t about what went wrong—it’s about what goes right when God
steps in. His healing isn’t just a fix for his eyes; it’s a window for
everyone watching, a glimpse of divine power breaking through the
ordinary.
That’s the nudge DeNeff leaves us with: ditch the tidy answers. We’re
quick to echo the disciples—whose fault is this?—as if
suffering needs a rap sheet. But Jesus points higher. This man was born
blind not because of sin, but so God’s glory could unfold through
him—mud, water, sight, and all. It’s a call to see past the blame, to
spot purpose where we’d rather find fault. Bad things happen, sure—go
figure. Yet in Jesus’ hands, even the dark becomes a place where light
can dawn.
Blind in the Pews: A
Church’s Quiet Crisis
Steve DeNeff’s voice takes on a piercing edge as he lifts a line from
Isaiah and turns it on us. “Who is blind like my servant?
Blind like the one committed to me? Blind like the servant of the
Lord?” he asks, letting the words hang there, heavy and
pointed. Then he unpacks the sting:
“He says my people are always hearing and never
comprehending. They see something, but they never perceive—they don’t
get the thing they’re seeing. Their hearts are calloused, their ears are
dull, and their eyes are closed.”
It’s a gut punch, but DeNeff doesn’t stop.
“This is a remarkable thing to say because he is not talking
about people in the world. He’s not talking about sinners who need to
come to Jesus… He’s talking about us.”
Isaiah 42:18-20 isn’t a jab at outsiders—it’s a mirror for God’s own
crew. “Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and
see!” the prophet pleads. “Who is blind but my
servant, and deaf like the messenger I send?” These aren’t
pagans or skeptics—they’re the covenant people, the ones who show up,
who sing the songs, who nod along. And yet, they hear without catching
the tune, see without grasping the view. DeNeff catches this echo in the
church today: we gather, we listen, we fill the seats—but do we get
it?
“We hear things and never comprehend,” he’s saying. “We pick
things up and never know what it is. Gather in a church and never
comprehend what it is.”
It’s not the world’s blindness he’s worried about—it’s ours.
This isn’t new. Jesus saw it in the Pharisees, those polished keepers
of the faith in John 9. They heard His words, watched His moves, but
missed the Messiah standing right there—too certain, too calloused to
catch the revelation. He warned the crowds in Matthew 13:13-15:
“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not
hear or understand,” quoting Isaiah’s same rebuke. Their
hearts had hardened, their ears dulled—religious through and through,
yet blind as stone. Revelation 3:17 nails it to the church in Laodicea:
“You say, ‘I am rich… and do not need a thing.’ But you do
not realize that you are… blind.” They thought they were
thriving; Jesus called them clueless. James 1:22-24 piles on:
“Do not merely listen to the word… Anyone who listens but
does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a
mirror and… forgets what he looks like.” We’re surrounded
by truth, but do we see it?
DeNeff’s point slices deep into the sermon’s core: spiritual
blindness isn’t just out there—it’s in here, in the pews, in the
prayers. The Pharisees didn’t lack religion—they drowned in it, yet
couldn’t spot Jesus. Isaiah’s servants weren’t godless—they were God’s,
yet deaf to His voice.
“Hearing sermons and attending church isn’t enough,” DeNeff
warns.
We can sit through a hundred Sundays, soak in the words, and still
miss the weight of what’s happening—a community meant to pulse with
God’s life, not just mark time. True faith isn’t passive; it’s a
wrestle, a reaching past the noise to grasp what’s real.
That’s the challenge he leaves crackling in the air: we’re not off
the hook just because we show up.
“He’s talking about us,”
DeNeff repeats, and it stings because it’s true. Spiritual blindness
festers where we least expect it—among the committed, the servants, the
ones who think they’ve got their eyes wide open. Are we hearing without
comprehending? Gathering without knowing why? DeNeff’s not pointing
fingers—he’s holding up a mirror. Do we dare look? Because the real
danger isn’t missing a sermon—it’s missing the God we claim to seek,
right in the middle of our hallelujahs.
A Guide for the Blind:
The Spirit’s Light
Steve DeNeff’s voice lifts with a promise as he weaves together
ancient words and a fresh hope.
“I will send a servant of the Lord,” he declares, “and when
he comes, he will lead the blind along paths they have not known, along
unfamiliar ways he will guide them. He will turn the darkness into light
before them, and he will make the rough places smooth.”
Then he layers on a second echo:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, said the prophet, and he
has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor—to Open the Eyes of the
Blind, to release from the darkness those who cannot see.”
It’s a vision that feels both old and alive—a pledge that God doesn’t
leave the lost to fumble alone.
DeNeff is pulling from Isaiah’s deep well—chapter 42:16 sings it out:
“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along
unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light
before them and make the rough places smooth.” It’s God
Himself stepping in, a hand outstretched to those who can’t see the next
step. Then there’s Isaiah 61:1, where the Spirit anoints a servant to
“proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness
for the prisoners”—words Jesus grabs in Luke 4:18-19 and
claims as His own: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me… to
proclaim recovery of sight for the blind.” This isn’t just
poetry—it’s a mission, fulfilled when Jesus smears mud on a blind man’s
eyes in John 9 and leads him from shadow to sight.
Unpack it, and the picture sharpens. The blind man doesn’t start with
a map—he’s got no clue who Jesus is when the mud hits. But he follows
the voice: Go wash. He stumbles to Siloam, and suddenly the
world blinks into view. Later, Jesus finds him again, and that physical
sight ripens into something deeper: “Lord, I
believe.” It’s a path he didn’t know, lit by a guide he
didn’t expect. The Pharisees, though? They’re the foil—eyes wide open,
yet blind as night. They scoff at Jesus, too sure of their own torch to
follow His. DeNeff’s point hums here: God sends His Spirit to lead the
blind, not the know-it-alls.
Scripture keeps the thread alive. Jesus promises in John 16:13,
“When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into
all the truth”—a compass for those groping in the dark.
Paul adds in 2 Corinthians 3:16-18, “Whenever anyone turns
to the Lord, the veil is taken away… where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is freedom.” It’s a peeling back, a clearing of the
haze—spiritual sight breaking through. The blind man lived it: mud,
water, then worship. The Spirit didn’t just open his eyes; it led him
down a road from ignorance to awe.
This hooks right into DeNeff’s sermon spine—sight isn’t something we
muster up; it’s something God gives when we let Him lead. The Pharisees
clung to their own light and missed the Messiah. The blind man, empty of
answers, let Jesus guide him, step by muddy step.
“God takes an active role.”
DeNeff’s saying—Isaiah’s promise, Jesus’ mission, the Spirit’s
nudge—all pointing the blind to paths they’d never find alone. Darkness
turns to light, rough spots smooth out, not because we’re clever, but
because we’re led.
So here’s the takeaway, glowing quiet and clear: God’s Spirit is on
the move, sent to shepherd the blind—us, if we’ll admit it.
“I will lead them,” Isaiah says, and Jesus
proves it, cracking open eyes in John 9 and beyond. The Pharisees
rejected the guide and stayed lost; the blind man followed and saw.
DeNeff’s unpacking it plain: acknowledge you’re blind, and the Spirit
steps in—lighting the way, smoothing the path, turning the unknown into
a road home. Who’s leading us—our own squinting pride, or the One who
knows the way?
Mud, a Mission, and
Minds Full of Furniture
Steve DeNeff steps into John 9 with a gleam, spotlighting a moment
that’s both gritty and glorious. “Neither this man nor his
parents sinned,” he quotes Jesus, “but this
happened so that the works of God might be displayed in
him.” Then comes the twist:
“Jesus does this strange thing: He spits on the ground, makes
some mud, rubs it in the man’s eyes, and tells him to go and wash in the
pool called ‘Sent’—and when he does, he comes back seeing.” DeNeff
pauses, letting it sink in, then adds a kicker: “And this was done on
the Sabbath.”
The air shifts—he’s not just telling a story; he’s setting a scene
that rattles cages.
“The Pharisees’ minds were cluttered with
furniture,”
he says, and you can almost hear the wry smile in his voice.
John 9:1-7 sketches it clear: Jesus spots a man blind from birth, the
disciples fishing for a sinner to blame. “Who
sinned?” they press. Jesus brushes it
off—“Neither”—and gets to work. He spits,
mixes mud, smears it on the man’s eyes, and sends him to the Pool of
Siloam, “Sent” in Hebrew. The man goes, washes, and
returns with sight. It’s raw, earthy, deliberate—not a pristine
snap-of-the-fingers fix. Why mud? It’s a nod back to Genesis 2:7, God
shaping man from dust—a new creation sparked in the smear. Why Siloam?
“Sent” isn’t just a name; it’s a mission. The man’s
sent to wash, sent back seeing, a living echo of Jesus, the One Sent to
open eyes. And why the Sabbath? That’s where the sparks fly.
DeNeff doesn’t dodge the clash. The Pharisees don’t marvel at the
miracle—they fume over the timing. Healing on the Sabbath? That’s work,
a rule snapped in half. Their minds, as DeNeff puts it, are
“cluttered with furniture”—stuffed with regulations,
traditions, every shelf and corner packed tight. There’s no room for a
muddy Messiah, no space for God to move. Jesus could’ve healed with a
word, but He picks mud and a trek, flipping their Sabbath script.
“It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath,” He’d
say elsewhere (Matthew 12:12)—compassion trumps legalism, every time.
The Pharisees miss it, straining at gnats while swallowing camels
(Matthew 23:24), their focus on the “how” blinding them
to the “who.”
This ties straight into DeNeff’s sermon pulse: sight isn’t just about
eyes—it’s about clearing the clutter. The blind man’s healing isn’t
random; “this happened so that the works of God might be
displayed,” Jesus says—displayed not just in him, but
through him, for all to see. He doesn’t sit passive—he acts, trudging to
Siloam, washing off the mud. Faith moves, responds, steps into the
unknown. The Pharisees, though? Their cluttered minds block the
view.
“They’re so full of furniture.”
DeNeff’s hinting,
“they can’t see the miracle for the mess.”
Rules choke out revelation; certainty smothers awe. Jesus challenges
that—mud on the Sabbath isn’t a glitch, it’s a jolt, shaking loose
what’s rigid.
Scripture backs the play. Mark 2:27 sighs, “The Sabbath
was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”—a gift twisted
into a shackle by the Pharisees’ clutter. Isaiah 42:6-7 foreshadows
Jesus: “I will make you… a light for the Gentiles, to open
eyes that are blind.” He’s fulfilling it here, smearing
mud to crack open sight—physical, yes, but spiritual too. The Pharisees
can’t handle it; their furniture—laws, pride, control—leaves no space
for a God who heals on His terms.
DeNeff’s takeaway lands sharp and personal: Jesus says,
“This happens so you will see,” and means
it—for the blind man, for the crowd, for us. The mud, the Sabbath, the
sending—it’s all a call to ditch the clutter and step into faith. The
Pharisees stayed blind, trapped in their overstuffed heads. The blind
man saw because he moved, trusted, washed. What about us? Are our minds
too crowded with furniture—rules, routines, assumptions—to spot God’s
work? DeNeff’s not just unpacking a healing—he’s asking if we’ll make
room for the One who’s Sent.
Outcast Faith:
From Moses’ Shadow to Jesus’ Light
Steve DeNeff digs into the clash of John 9 with a storyteller’s
spark, spotlighting a showdown that’s as tense as it is tender.
“The religious leaders, frustrated with the man’s testimony,
say to him, ‘We are disciples of Moses, but you, you are a disciple of
this man, Jesus,’” he recounts, his tone tracing their
sneer. “And with that, they throw him out of the
synagogue.” The scene shifts, quiet but seismic:
“Jesus hears that the man has been excommunicated, so He
goes and finds him and says, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ And the
man, not quite sure who that is, says, ‘Tell me who He is, so that I may
believe in Him.’” It’s a pivot from rejection to
revelation, and DeNeff lets it breathe.
John 9:28-38 unfolds the drama. The Pharisees, bristling at the
healed man’s defiance, hurl their credential: “We are
disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this
fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” They lean
hard on Moses—lawgiver, God’s mouthpiece, their gold standard—casting
Jesus as some rogue outsider. The irony’s thick: Moses himself promised
a prophet like him (Deuteronomy 18:15), and here He stands, mud still
fresh from the miracle. But the man won’t bend. “How dare
you lecture us?” they snap, clinging to their old blame:
“You were steeped in sin at birth!” Out he
goes—excommunicated, cut off from synagogue, community, everything. In
their world, it’s a death knell—social, spiritual, total.
Then Jesus steps in, flipping the script.
“He finds him,”
DeNeff emphasizes, and it’s no small detail. The man’s alone,
ejected, when Jesus tracks him down and asks, “Do you
believe in the Son of Man?” It’s a loaded title—Daniel
7:13-14’s divine ruler, God’s anointed—and the man doesn’t dodge.
“Who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in
him,” he pleads, raw and ready. Jesus meets him there:
“You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with
you.” The response is instant, electric:
“Lord, I believe,” and he worships. From mud
to miracle to exile, this blind man lands at Jesus’ feet—not just
seeing, but adoring.
DeNeff’s unpacking the layers: the Pharisees stake their claim on
Moses, but miss the One he pointed to. “We
know,” they boast, yet their knowledge blinds them—ironic
disciples of a law they don’t fully grasp (John 1:10-12). The blind man,
though? He’s got no pedigree, no synagogue pass—just a story he won’t
drop and a heart wide open. Excommunication costs him everything, but
Jesus seeks him out, a shepherd after a lost sheep (Luke 19:10). That
question—“Do you believe?”—isn’t a test; it’s
an invitation. The man’s reply isn’t rote; it’s a hunger for truth, met
with a face-to-face reveal. Worship spills out—not a nod, but a
kneel.
This hooks deep into DeNeff’s sermon thread: sight’s not about what
you know, but who you trust. The Pharisees’ pride in Moses locks them in
darkness; the blind man’s humility cracks it wide open.
“They throw him out,” DeNeff notes, but Jesus
pulls him in—proof God’s heart beats for the outcast. The religious
elite cling to their system, blind to the Messiah it promised. The man,
tossed aside, finds the Son of Man and bows. Faith here isn’t a
title—it’s a turning, a seeing that ends in awe.
DeNeff’s nudge hits home: the Pharisees’ claim rings hollow—they’re
Moses’ disciples in name, not spirit. The blind man, branded Jesus’
follower, pays a price and gains a Savior. “Tell me so I can
believe,” he says, and Jesus does—leading him from exile
to worship. It’s a question for us too: Are we stuck in Moses’ shadow,
puffed up with what we know? Or are we ready to be found, to trade our
certainties for a glimpse of the One who seeks us?
Sinners in
Reverse: The Blind Man’s Redemption
Steve DeNeff leans into John 9 with a quiet grin, unveiling a twist
that flips the story upside down.
“Oddly enough, at the beginning of the story, the man born
blind is believed to have sinned,” he says, his tone teasing the irony.
“And at the end of the story, we learn he has not sinned at all.” Then
he swings the lens: “At the beginning of the story, the religious
leaders—the ones who see everything and are sure they have never
sinned—by the end of the story, they are the ones whose sins
remain.”
It’s a slow burn, a reversal that sneaks up and lands hard, peeling
back layers of assumption to expose the real culprits.
The tale starts in John 9:1-3 with the disciples squinting at a blind
man, fishing for blame. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his
parents, that he was born blind?” they ask, their question
steeped in the old logic—suffering means sin, someone’s guilty
(Deuteronomy 28). Jesus shuts it down: “Neither this man nor
his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be
displayed in him.” No fault, just purpose—a stage set for
glory, not judgment. Fast forward to John 9:39-41, and the plot
thickens. Jesus declares, “For judgment I have come into
this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become
blind.” The Pharisees bristle: “What? Are we
blind too?” His answer cuts: “If you were
blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can
see, your guilt remains.” The blind man’s cleared; the
“seers” are sunk.
DeNeff’s spotlight catches the flip. At the start, everyone—the
disciples, the Pharisees—pegs the blind man as a sinner, his darkness a
mark of shame. By the end, he’s washed clean—mud off his eyes, sin off
his slate—standing in light, worshiping Jesus. The Pharisees, though?
They strut in with spotless robes and sharp eyes, certain they’re
sin-free. Yet Jesus pins the guilt on them—not for what they’ve done,
but for what they won’t see. Their pride’s the real crime, their claim
to clarity the chain that binds them. “Woe to those who are
wise in their own eyes,” Isaiah 5:21 warns, and here they
are, blind in their brilliance.
Scripture hums with echoes. Jesus calls the Pharisees
“whitewashed tombs” in Matthew 23:27—pretty
outside, rotten within—their outward righteousness a mask for inner
decay. Isaiah 29:18 promises, “Out of gloom and darkness the
eyes of the blind will see,” a nod to the blind man’s arc
from shadow to truth. Revelation 3:17 scolds Laodicea: “You
say, ‘I am rich… and do not need a thing,’” but they’re
“blind and naked”—self-assured, yet lost. Over
and over, the pattern holds: the humble see, the proud stumble.
This hooks deep into DeNeff’s sermon thread: sight isn’t about what
you spot—it’s about what you’re willing to admit. The blind man starts
low—no sight, no status, just a question mark everyone else answers with
blame. Jesus lifts him up, proving his suffering’s not a curse but a
canvas. The Pharisees, high on their own holiness, crash hard—their
“vision” a mirage, their sin clinging because they
won’t let go.
“The ones who saw were the sinners,”
DeNeff says, and it’s a jolt: spiritual blindness isn’t
ignorance—it’s arrogance.
The takeaway cuts close: assumptions can blind us too. We’re quick to
tag suffering as sin, like the disciples did—someone’s at
fault. Jesus says no—sometimes it’s a setup for God’s work. The
blind man’s humility opens his eyes; the Pharisees’ pride shuts theirs
tight. DeNeff’s leaving us with a mirror: Are we the ones pointing
fingers, sure we see it all? Or are we ready to shed our certainties and
let Jesus show us who’s really clean?
Convictions as
Blindfolds: A Call to Humble Faith
Steve DeNeff tosses out a question that lands like a pebble in still
water, rippling outward:
“Have our convictions actually blinded us?”
It’s not a casual musing—it’s a probe, sharp and personal. Then he
softens, almost whispering,
“I believe, but there is so much I don’t see.”
The confession hangs there, raw and real, before he nudges us
further:
“We probably should start with humility. Are my convictions
keeping me from seeing where other people are right?”
It’s DeNeff at his core—poking at our certainties, urging us to peel
back the layers and look again.
John 9:39-41 sets the stage. Jesus lays it bare: “For
judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and
those who see will become blind.” The Pharisees catch the
sting and snap, “What? Are we blind too?”
Jesus doesn’t flinch: “If you were blind, you would not be
guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt
remains.” Their convictions—ironclad, polished,
proud—aren’t their strength; they’re their shackles. They’re so sure
they’ve got God pegged, they miss Him standing right there. DeNeff’s
riff picks up that thread: what if our own beliefs, clung to like
lifelines, are the very things clouding our view?
Scripture’s littered with warnings about this trap. Paul shrugs in 1
Corinthians 8:2, “Those who think they know something do not
yet know as they ought to know”—a jab at the smugness that
blinds. Proverbs 3:5-7 pleads, “Trust in the Lord with all
your heart and lean not on your own understanding… Do not be wise in
your own eyes”—certainty can be a crutch that crutches us.
James 4:6 doubles down: “God opposes the proud but shows
favor to the humble.” The pattern’s clear: lock your faith
in a box of your own making, and you’ll miss the vistas God’s still
painting.
DeNeff’s weaving this into the sermon’s heartbeat—sight isn’t about
nailing every answer; it’s about staying open when you don’t. The
Pharisees strutted their convictions like badges: We know the law,
we know God’s ways. Jesus upends it, and they’re left groping. The
blind man, though? He’s got no dogma to defend—just mud, a walk, and a
willingness to see what’s next. DeNeff mirrors that:
“I believe, but there’s so much I don’t see.” It’s not
doubt—it’s room, space for God to move, for others to speak. “Are my
convictions keeping me from seeing where other people are
right?”
he asks, and it’s a dare to check our own blind spots.
This isn’t about tossing faith out—it’s about holding it lightly,
humbly. The Pharisees’ certainty was a wall; the blind man’s openness
was a window. DeNeff’s nudging us to the same: convictions can blind
when they harden into idols, but humility keeps the light streaming in.
What if we’re wrong? What if someone else—someone we’ve dismissed—has a
piece we’ve missed? It’s not weakness to wonder—it’s faith, alive and
breathing, ready to grow.
The takeaway cuts close and clear:
“Have our convictions actually blinded us?”
DeNeff’s not preaching surrender—he’s preaching softness, a faith
that bends without breaking. Start with humility, he says, because the
Pharisees didn’t—and they lost the plot.
“I believe,” he admits, “but there’s so much
I don’t see.”
That’s the invite: trade the blindfold of certainty for eyes that
seek, ears that hear, a heart that wonders where the truth might still
surprise us.
The Moral of the
Mess: Missing It by Knowing It
Steve DeNeff wraps John 9 with a zinger that sticks.
“The moral of the story? You don’t get it, especially because
you think you get it,”
he says, his words a playful jab that lands with weight. Then he
traces the arc:
“At the beginning of the story, the blind man is the one they
assume is blind. But by the end, he is the one who truly sees. And the
ones who thought they could see—turns out, they were the blind ones all
along.”
It’s a twist that sneaks up, a sly unraveling of who’s really lost in
the dark.
John 9:39-41 lays it bare. Jesus drops the line: “For
judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and
those who see will become blind.” The Pharisees, ears
pricked, fire back, “What? Are we
blind too?“—their tone half scoff, half dare. Jesus doesn’t
blink: ”If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin;
but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”
It’s a gut punch of irony—the blind man, pegged as a nobody, ends up
seeing Jesus clear as day; the Pharisees, swaggering with insight,
stumble over Him. DeNeff’s moral spins off that: the surest way to miss
the truth is to swear you’ve already got it locked down.
This isn’t just a one-off—it’s a thread stitched through Scripture.
Paul smirks in 1 Corinthians 1:27, “God chose the foolish
things of the world to shame the wise”—the Pharisees’
polished wisdom crumbles while a blind beggar gets the reveal. Jesus
prays in Matthew 11:25, “You have hidden these things from
the wise and learned, and revealed them to little
children”—truth sidesteps the smug for the simple.
Proverbs 26:12 warns, “Do you see a person wise in their own
eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for
them”—certainty’s a trap when it blinds you to what’s
real. Over and over, the message hums: thinking you’ve got it all
figured out can leave you groping in shadows.
DeNeff hooks this to the sermon’s core—sight isn’t about stacking up
facts; it’s about shedding what blocks the view. The Pharisees strut in,
convinced they’ve mastered God’s playbook—law, tradition, the works.
They’re blind not because they lack info, but because they’re too full
of it to bend. The blind man, though? He starts empty—no sight, no
claims, just mud and a nudge. By the end, he’s worshiping, eyes wide to
a truth the “seers” can’t touch. “You don’t get
it,” DeNeff’s saying, “especially because you think you
get it”—it’s the certainty that chokes, the assumption that
dims.
The kicker’s personal: this isn’t just their story—it’s ours. The
Pharisees didn’t see because they wouldn’t—too dug in, too sure. The
blind man saw because he didn’t pretend otherwise—open, ready,
teachable. DeNeff’s moral doubles as a mirror: Are we so locked into
what we know that we miss what’s right there? Spiritual blindness isn’t
about empty heads—it’s about stuffed ones, too crammed with “I
get it” to let the light sneak in. Faith, he hints, thrives
where we admit we might not have the full picture.
So here’s the takeaway, sharp and sly:
“You don’t get it, especially because you think you get
it.”
DeNeff’s not scolding—he’s coaxing us to loosen our grip. The blind
man found truth by starting blank; the Pharisees lost it by starting
full. Where do we land? Clinging to our maps, or cracking them open to
see what we’ve missed? It’s a quiet dare to trade the smug for the
seeking—and maybe, just maybe, catch a glimpse we’d never have grabbed
otherwise.
The Road to Seeing:
Humility, Hunger, and Hope
Steve DeNeff sketches a path to sight that feels less like a straight
line and more like a dare.
“Humility is the first step,”
he says, his voice steady with conviction.
“But now let’s add hunger.”
It’s a one-two punch—knowing you’re blind, then craving the light. He
points us to Mark 10:46-52, where Bartimaeus, a blind beggar by the
roadside, hears Jesus passing and won’t let the moment slip.
“Jesus is not walking by when you want,” DeNeff warns. “He
walks by when He wants to. And when you hear He is coming, you
act.”
Bartimaeus does just that, hollering, “Son of David, have
mercy on me!” despite the crowd’s shushing. Jesus stops,
asks, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Bartimaeus doesn’t hesitate: “Rabbi, I want to
see.” And just like that, sight floods in—his faith, raw
and desperate, cracking open the dark.
DeNeff contrasts this with a sharper edge.
“Now think of James and John,” he says. “When Jesus asked
them, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ they said, ‘Let one of us sit
at your right and the other at your left in your glory.’”
It’s Mark 10:35-45—two disciples angling for power while Bartimaeus
begs for vision.
“Their response was about power,” DeNeff notes. “Bartimaeus’
response was about vision.”
The irony stings: Bartimaeus, blind as a stone, sees his need clear
as day; James and John, eyes wide open, miss the point entirely. Jesus
flips it, teaching, “Whoever wants to be great among you
must be your servant”—but it’s Bartimaeus who nails it,
acting when he hears the footsteps, his hunger trumping the disciples’
strut.
This isn’t just storytelling—it’s a blueprint.
“Humility is the first step,”
DeNeff doubles down, nodding to scientists who chatter more about
what they don’t know than what they do. Discovery, he’s saying, thrives
on curiosity, on owning your ignorance. Hunger’s the fuel—Bartimaeus
didn’t wait for an engraved invite; he heard Jesus was near and
pounced.
“When you hear He’s coming, you act,”
DeNeff urges, echoing that roadside cry. It’s not about timing Jesus
to our clock—He moves when He moves. Faith is the leap, the shout, the
plea when the chance brushes by.
Then DeNeff softens, leaving us with a glow.
“You are closer than you think,” he says, a balm for the
fumbling. “Stay with it. You are more ignorant than you realize, but you
are not helpless. There’s hope.”
He leans on Isaiah 42:16: “He will make the rough places
smooth, and give you light when you need it.” God’s
promise rings—leading the blind down paths they don’t know, turning
darkness to dawn, smoothing the jagged edges. “Think of
Bartimaeus,” DeNeff might add—he didn’t see Jesus coming, but
when he heard, he acted, and the rough road went smooth, the night went
bright.
Scripture stitches it tight. Mark 10:46-52 shows Bartimaeus’ hunger
paying off—his cry stops Jesus in His tracks. Mark 10:35-45 flips it,
James and John blinded by ambition while the beggar sees true. Isaiah
42:16 seals the hope: “I will lead the blind… I will not
forsake them.” Paul chimes in from 1 Corinthians 13:12,
“Now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall
see face to face”—we’re half-blind now, but not abandoned.
Jesus Himself prays in John 16:13, “The Spirit of truth…
will guide you”—a nudge that keeps us going.
This locks into DeNeff’s sermon spine—sight starts with admitting you
don’t see, then chasing it with everything you’ve got. The Pharisees in
John 9 thought they had it all mapped; Bartimaeus knew he didn’t and
yelled anyway.
“You are more ignorant than you think,” DeNeff’s saying, “but
you’re closer than you feel.”
Humility cracks the door; hunger flings it wide; hope holds the line.
Jesus walks by when He wills—our job’s to listen, to leap, to trust
He’ll light the way.
The takeaway hums with grit and grace: Start humble—own what you
don’t know. Get hungry—cry out when He’s near. Hang on—He’ll smooth the
rough, spark the dark. Bartimaeus didn’t wait for a cue; he acted and
saw. James and John grabbed for glory and missed it. DeNeff’s leaving us
with a whisper and a shove:
“You’re not helpless. Stay with it.”
Where’s our cry—power or sight? The rough places wait to go
smooth—hope says they will.
The Hope of Seeing
Clear: A Closing Call
Steve DeNeff winds down with a whisper that carries weight, a promise
laced with light.
“There is hope,”
he says, his voice a steady hand reaching out. He leans on Isaiah
42:16 like a lantern: “Jesus will lead the blind in ways
they have not known. He will turn darkness into light and make the rough
places smooth.” It’s not just poetry—it’s a vow, a
lifeline for the lost.
“Even those who have been spiritually blind since birth can
receive sight,”
he adds, and the words glow with possibility. Then he seals it with a
prayer that cuts to the core:
“Jesus, open our eyes. We want to see.”
It’s raw, simple, desperate—a cry that ties the whole sermon
together.
This isn’t a tidy bow—it’s a torch passed. DeNeff’s been unraveling
blindness all along, and here he flips the mirror:
“Spiritual blindness is not just the world’s problem—it is
often the church’s problem.”
We’re the ones in the pews, nodding along, yet missing the shimmer of
Heaven brushing our days. The Pharisees thought they saw it all, their
certainty a wall; the blind man in John 9 owned his dark and found the
dawn.
“Certainty can be a barrier to true sight,” DeNeff
warns
—stepping from that into humility cracks the door for God to slip in
with something new.
He’s not done prodding.
“Faith involves acting on unseen realities,”
he says, nodding to D. Fletcher—grabbing pencils she couldn’t see,
ducking branches she didn’t spot. It’s a wild parallel: believers
navigating God’s kingdom, trusting what’s veiled. Then there’s
Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52, shouting, “Son of David, have
mercy on me!” while the disciples in Mark 10:35-45 angle
for thrones.
“True sight comes to those who hunger for it,”
DeNeff contrasts—Bartimaeus begged to see; James and John grabbed for
status. One got light; the others got a lesson.
“Jesus is always walking by at His time, not
ours,”
he reminds us. The moment’s not ours to clock—when He’s near, you cry
out, or you miss it.
Isaiah’s echo lingers: “I will lead the blind… I will not
forsake them.” It’s hope with teeth—darkness lifting,
rough edges softening, sight breaking through for those born blind in
spirit. DeNeff’s prayer—“Jesus, open our eyes”—is the
heartbeat, a plea straight from Bartimaeus, from the blind man, from us
if we dare. But he leaves us with a sting, a final challenge that won’t
let us coast:
“Have we allowed our assumptions, education, or structured
thinking to blind us to new revelation from God?”
It’s a gut-check—our tidy faith, our smart answers, our systems—could
they be the fog?
“If so,” he presses, “the prayer of the
blind man must become our own: ‘Lord, I believe—but help my
unbelief.’”
This is DeNeff’s send-off: hope, yes, but with a shove. We’re closer
than we think, blinder than we know, but never helpless. Jesus walks by,
mud in hand, Spirit in tow—ready to lead, to light, to smooth. The
takeaways burn bright: blindness haunts the church, not just the
streets; certainty can cage us; faith leaps at the unseen; hunger
unlocks sight; His timing rules. Will we pray it—open our
eyes—and mean it? DeNeff’s not wrapping up—he’s winding us up,
daring us to see what’s been there all along.
Download: InfoGraphic
