But the one thing that concerns us now in this great ninth chapter is the faith that was so warmly wooed up out of nothing to a thing of courageous action and personal devotion to Jesus.  It is fairly fascinating to watch the man move from birth-blind hopelessness through clay-anointed surprise and wonder and Siloam-walking expectancy on to water-washing eyesight.

It is yet more fascinating to see his spirit move up in the language he uses, from “the man called Jesus,” and the cautious but blunt “I don’t know about His being a sinner, but I know I can see,” on to the bolder “clearly not a sinner but a man in reverent touch with God Himself.”

Then the yet bolder, “a man from God,” brings the break with the dreaded authorities which branded him before all as an outcast and as a damned soul.  And then the earnest reverent cry “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe?” reveals the yearning purpose of his own heart.  And then the great climax comes in the heart cry, “Lord, I believe, I believe Thee to be the very Son of God.”

And the outcast of the rulers casts in his lot with Jesus and begins at once living the eternal quality of life which goes on endlessly.  What a day for him from hopeless blindness of body and heart to eyesight that can see Jesus’ face and know Him as his Saviour and Lord!  Growth of faith clearly is not limited to the counting of hours.  It waits only on one’s walking out fully into all the light that comes, no matter where it may lead your steps.

The Bethany Height of Faith.

The Bethany story is one of the tenderest of all.  It touches the heights.  It’s a hilltop story, both in its setting amidst the Bethany blue hills where it grew up, and in the height of faith it records.  It has personal friendship and love of Jesus and implicit trust in Him as its starting point.  And from this it reaches up to levels unknown before.  Faith touches high water here.  It rises to flood, a flood that sweeps mightily through the valleys of doubt and questionings all around about.

At the beginning there is faith in Jesus of the tender, personal sort.  At the close there’s faith that He will actually meet the need of your life and circumstance without limit.  The highest faith is this:  connecting Jesus’ power and love with the actual need of your life.  Abraham believed God with full sincerity that covenant-making night under the dark sky.  But he didn’t connect his faith in God with his need and danger among the Philistines.[69] Peter believed in Jesus fully but his faith and his action failed to connect when the sore test came that Gethsemane night.

The Bethany pitch of faith makes connections.  It ties our God and our need and our action into one knot.  This is the pith of this whole story.  Jesus’ one effort in His tactful patient wooing is to get Martha up to the point of ordering that stone aside.  He got her faith into touch with the gravestone of her sore need.  Her faith and her action connected.  That told her expectancy.  Creeds are best understood when they’re acted.  Moving the stone was her confession of faith. Not that Jesus was the Son of God.  That was settled long before.