What Pain Reveals About God’s Power

Shane Grant · Tidal Church Moncton · August 10, 2025 · What Do the Miracles of Jesus Mean? series

Shane Grant looks at Jesus healing the man born blind in John 9. He teaches that pain is an invitation to lean into God, that faith sometimes means trusting when it doesn't make sense, and that Jesus is the light of the world.

More from Shane Grant · The What Do the Miracles of Jesus Mean? series

Topics: Hope, Faith, Suffering

Transcript

[0:00] I'm honored to be sharing with you in week seven of our series, The Miracles of Jesus and What They Mean. We'll be reading from John chapter 9, verse 1 through 7, from the New Living Translation. In just a minute, let's pray. Dear Lord, please open our eyes to the truth that is in Your word. As we read in Isaiah 55, Your word always returns fruit. Holy Spirit, please open our hearts and ears to hear what You want to speak to us today. Help us to hear Your voice and to leave changed. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So when I was in high school, we went on a vacation to my grandparents' house, a trip that was so long I was basically fossilized.

[0:52] By the time we arrived, the next morning I slept in like any respectable teenager with a scruffy beard, a bedhead, barely conscious. The house is dead silent and my grandparents are out getting groceries. The rest of the family is in a coma. When I hear a knock at the door, I stumbled over in my half-dead state and I opened it to find a sweet lady. She's handing me some religious literature. I mumbled a plate. Thank you, take it, and I'm going to retreat back to the shadows where I can sleep. But wait, she wasn't done. Here she says, she hands me something else that says, "Well, bless your heart."

[1:38] I nodded, thanked her again, closed the door and staggered back to my bed. On the way I glanced down. The first thing that she handed me was some generic "How to Find Peace" literature. The second was entitled "How to Get a Job and Keep It." Apparently I didn't just look tired, I looked unemployable. The lady was handing out literature and also maybe some light career counseling. I chuckled, rolled over and fell asleep next to my unsolicited life coaching book. Have you ever been judged unfairly? I was just trying to sleep after traveling all day and here this lady thinks I'm a deadbeat.

[2:28] Close your eyes for a second and use your imagination. You're one of the crowd. You're walking down a dusty road following Jesus and you are walking, and this happens. Please listen to these verses. As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man who had been blind from birth. "Rabbi," His disciples asked Him, "why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or because of his parents' sins?" Can you imagine being the guy who was born blind from birth, sitting on the side of the road for many years begging for help while you're sitting on the side of the road? People have conversations about you and your hearing is really, really good.

[3:17] You ask for help, but you're ignored. People don't talk to you. They talk about you. Just as I was very minorly judged, as I was handed a book about getting the job, the disciples here are openly discussing whose sin caused this disability while a guy's listening to them judge him and his family's righteousness. Picture this with me. You're at the park, and your young daughter is playing on the swings. Or if you're a parent, remember back to when you were at the park playing, this girl's four years old and she wants to play on the big kids' swings. So you let her give it a try, and she goes off.

[4:04] She's swinging away, swinging away, and then boom, she falls off the swing hard on the ground. Next she starts crying. Who is she crying for? She wants her parents to comfort her. Of course. Now think of it from the parent's perspective. Did, as the parent, cause this pain? Is that something that you desired for your child to experience? Of course not. But as a child warmly embraces the parent, there is a moment of invitation, of comfort and of connection.

[4:54] Pain is an invitation. Pain is an invitation to something deeper with God. Let's continue with our text. As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man who had been blind from birth. "Rabbi," His disciples asked Him, "why was this man born blind? Was it because of his sins or because of his parents' sins?" "It was not because of his sins or his parents' sins," Jesus answered. "This happened so that the power of God could be seen in him. We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work.

[5:40] But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world." A big question that raises for me when I read this passage is, did God make this man blind only so that He could heal him? That doesn't really match with the character of God that I've read elsewhere in the Bible. So as I was studying this verse to get further understanding, I came upon this commentary from F. F. Bruce that offers this explanation. I'll read it to you. Now, this does not mean that God deliberately caused the child to be born blind in order that after many years His glory should be displayed in the removal of the blindness.

[6:25] To think so would be an aspersion on the character of God. It does mean that God overruled the disaster of the child's blindness so that when the child grew to manhood, he might, by the recovering of his sight, see the glory of God in the face of Christ and others. Seeing the work of God might turn to the true light of the world. There is loss and evil in our world because of the fall of man in Eden. When Eve ate the apple and Adam joined her, the earth was corrupted. This introduced sin, death, and darkness into the world. I often long for heaven and for the absence of sin and death, of all things being made right, but this is why Jesus came, to be the light of the world, to push back the darkness.

[7:26] I've known deep loss in my life. It might not look that old, but I have a deep pain that won't be healed. This side of heaven, like Gandalf speaks about Frodo's wound in Lord of the Rings, that wound will never fully heal. He will carry it the rest of his life. Natalie and I were married in August 2011, and not long after, we learned we were expecting a honeymoon baby. It caught us by surprise, but we were filled with joy at the thought of starting our family. So soon. The first months were full of hope and excitement. Each appointment brought good news and the ultrasound showed a healthy, growing baby boy. We dreamed about the days ahead as parents.

[8:14] Then at 16 weeks, we learned that we lost our first baby, Michael, on February 20th, 2012. Miscarriage is always heartbreaking, but our first baby, with all the dreams and hopes and plans wrapped up in the beginning of the family, I can't convey all the emotions from those moments. You can hear some of them right now. The grief, the anger, the despair, the rage. Questions filled my mind. Why me? I've committed to spend my life serving You, God, and this is how You treat me.

[9:02] Why? Why would my child die? We lost our second baby, Mackenzie, on February 20th, 2019, the same day, seven years after the first. More questions, more whys, more struggle. Our third miscarriage, Malia, was on October 29th, 2024. Less than a year ago. Here I am sacrificing for You, God, and this is how You repay me. I imagine the parents of the blind man had very similar questions of God and if He really was good.

[9:48] I don't have all the answers to why or how, but I do know this: in my darkest place, I whispered out to God, I trust You. Overwhelming peace quenched my rage. I trust You even when I think this is unfair. I trust You. The simplest prayer that handed over my right to be mad at God. I trust You even when the news isn't what I wanted. I trust You.

[10:36] The childlike phrase a son would say to a father: I trust You. When you're brought to circumstances like this, do you turn to God or away from God? Is your first instinct to blame or to hide, or is it to embrace, like the child that fell off the swing? Pain is an invitation. Jesus doesn't waste our pain. He meets us in it. The key here is found in the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5, verse 4. God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. It doesn't say, "Blessed are those who have it easier."

[11:24] For those who didn't struggle, it says, mourn. There is a prerequisite to God's heavenly comfort. There is a light in healing that comes from Jesus. Sometimes healing happens on this side of heaven, but only as a preview to what heaven will be like. Faith requires the uncommon. We'll pick it up in verse 6 here. Then He spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva and spread the mud over the blind man's eyes. He told him, "Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam." Siloam means sent. So the man went and washed and came back seeing. If I told you to go take a drink of the chocolate river in Moncton, you would be very confused.

[12:20] But if I told you to go take a drink of the chocolate river in Hershey, Pennsylvania, you would be very excited. Much like the chocolate river means different things depending on the location, the context happening in the disciples' minds in this passage brings additional meaning. So this is a photo of the pool of Siloam. The pool of Siloam came through Hezekiah's Tunnel, a remarkable engineering feat built in the Old Testament times. The pool was the only permanent water source for the city of Jerusalem in the first century. It was called Siloam, which, as it said, means sent, because the water in it had been sent through that conduit into the city. If you continue that thought, Jesus had also been sent into the city of Jerusalem as the Messiah, much like the water, and His power had been sent into the man born blind for his miraculous healing.

[13:17] Hezekiah, who channeled the water into Jerusalem, was one of Judah's most godly kings and brought the people back from idolatry to worship God. The prophecy of Isaiah 35:5 would've been at the top of mind as they're waiting for the Messiah, and it says, "When He comes, He will open the eyes of the blind and unplug the ears of the deaf." All these ideas are adding up in the disciples' minds, these details, and they would've studied and known all this context. Jesus is revealing Himself through this miracle as the one sent to restore humanity. The deeper Scripture is studied, the more layers of understanding appear.

[14:03] Jesus healed a man's physical blindness, but the mission He was sent on was to heal spiritual blindness. This is just a preview of what is going to happen in the spiritual realm. Healing a man from blindness changes, seeing physical darkness to physical light, much as Jesus takes us from spiritual darkness to spiritual light. The blind man didn't just receive physical sight. He encountered the Light of the World. Instead of just healing the man instantly like Jesus could have, He sent the man on a mission: go wash in the pool. Often what God has in mind for us doesn't exactly line up with what we had in mind for ourselves.

[14:50] How many times in your life did you have it all planned out just in time for God to show you the other way that He wanted you to go? As you see in verse 6, Jesus spit on the ground, a fair amount of spit, so He could make enough mud with the saliva and dust to cover the man's eyes. This is a reference the disciples would've recognized to the creation story in Genesis, where Adam was formed by the dust of the earth, by God. Man wasn't expecting spit mud to be put on his eyes when he woke up that morning, but he also was not expecting the miracle of sight. Can you imagine? What if the blind man said, "What is this dude doing? Get this mud off my eyes," and didn't go wash in the pool.

[15:36] His healing wouldn't have happened, and he had to respond to what Jesus offered him in obedience. It was his faith and obedience to do what God told him to do. That led to his healing. What has God asked you to do that was uncommon? Was it to have uncommon courage to talk to someone about God, to invite them to church service, to invite them to your table? Was it uncommon prompting in your spirit to pray for someone? What other uncommon ways has God asked you to go? The distance going. The distance isn't just a catchy phrase.

[16:22] It encompasses who we are as believers. Be open to what God has for you. Even if it looks differently than you had planned, will you respond in obedience to what God is asking of you? Our hope is in Jesus. Let's read verse 7. He told him, "Go wash in the pool of Siloam." Siloam means sent. So the man went and washed and came back seeing. What an exciting day for the man who was born blind. Can you imagine the adrenaline, the nerves, the hope that he had as he hurried to wash his eyes in the pool, stumbling down the road, bumping into people, the amazement as he could see for the first time, the shock as he felt light for the first time on his eyes, the gratefulness he would've had to Jesus for his sight.

[17:19] Later on in chapter 9, you can read about how the Jewish leaders threw this man out of the synagogue because of his testimony of Jesus. This was a big deal. He wasn't just losing church membership. It meant being cut off from religious, social, and economic life. That didn't stop him, and I'm sure he told everyone that he talked to about Jesus because it had changed his life so drastically from blind beggar to preaching the good news. It's amazing what hope and Jesus can do. When I think back to the miscarriages in my life, I can't forget the blessing that God has given me for amazing children. This photo is from a camping trip that we took in July.

[18:04] I don't deserve any of this. Everything in my life is a blessing. We never forget our losses. They're part of our story, but we also see the goodness of God in what He's restored. What a wild ride life and parenting is when you think back to the child that fell off the swing. While those circumstances are not what is wanted, they do build moments of connection and trust. God didn't waste our pain. He meets us in it, and I know He can do the same. For you to hope in something is to place your trust in it. Do you remember the phrase that I whispered out to God in one of my darkest moments?

[18:52] I trust You. That is hope for things to come for heaven and for Jesus to show us more as we see in the story. God wants all of you, even the deeply broken parts. Isn't this such an amazing theme of the Bible and the Christian life as a whole? Like Joseph said in Genesis 50:20, you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. The pain, the suffering, the struggles we have, God takes it and flips it for good. That's a judo move. Jesus flips the assumptions, flips the suffering, flips the situation, and immediately this man's pain becomes his platform, and that's what God does.

[19:42] He doesn't remove the hard stuff. He transforms it. There's a new song by Forrest Frank that puts it like this. Life gave me some lemons, but my Jesus, He'd be making lemonade. I love that visual. We all get handed lemons, pain, rejection, sickness, but in the hands of Jesus, all those lemons get repurposed. He turns the bitter into the sweet. He turns the blindness into a story of healing. So I typed this into ChatGPT and this funny but powerful image was returned. Can you imagine the joy? I picture this man, he's never seen anything before, and now he's splashing in the pool of Siloam, soaking wet, totally healed, holding a tall glass of lemonade and laughing like it's the best day of his life because it is. Maybe he cannonballs into the water a second time in celebratory joy.

[20:41] That's what happens when Jesus gets involved. The old is made new, the darkness has turned into the light, and the lemons get made into lemonade. Amen. So what does pain reveal about God's power? It reveals that the darkness will be overcome by the light every time, and that God has the power to take what was meant for evil and bring good out of it. The blind man found healing in obeying Jesus and so can we. Bringing our pain to Him and trusting He will use it for good. There are three things that I would like you to take away this morning.

[21:28] Pain is an invitation. Lean into God, not away from Him. Faith requires the uncommon trust even when it doesn't make sense. Our hope is in Jesus. Amen. The light of the world who heals, restores, and walks with us. How will you respond to what God is asking you? What pain do you need to bring to God today? Where has God sent you? Did you go?

[22:15] As you process this message, would you take some time this week to pray and ask God to help turn your pain into an opportunity to embrace Him, to have courage, to do the uncommon, to trust Him deeper? Journal your prayer time and press into what God is telling you. What are the painful things that you need to bring to God in prayer today? Is it a relationship or reconciliation is unlikely? Is it a situation that you're in as a prayer team comes down?

[23:01] I'd encourage you, don't leave this service until you have prayed through these struggles with someone. There's a song called "Bless God" that has been really meaningful for me. We sang it earlier and we're gonna sing it again in a minute. There's a part of the song that really resonated with me, and I'd like to leave these lyrics with you. Bless God when my hands are empty, bless God with a praise that costs me, bless God when nobody's watching. Every chance I get, oh, bless Your name. Let's pray.

[23:52] Thank You, Lord, for Your Word, for the story of the blind man that shows how much You care for us. Thank You for the meaning in this miracle of Your embrace, Your hope, and Your power. Help us to turn for You in the darkness, to look for Your light. In Jesus' name. Amen. It was not because of his sins or his parents' sins. Jesus answered, "But this happened so the power of God could be seen in him."