“Anatomy of an Illness”
John 9:1-38

In 1979 Norman Cousins wrote a groundbreaking book entitled, Anatomy of an Illness. He wrote that book because he was suffering from a connective-tissue disease which had crippled him and he had to try and make sense of it. We may not be at the mercy of such a disease, but sickness is so common that we must make sense of it. The Bible can enable us to do that.

I John devotes an entire chapter to the healing of a blind man so that we can see an illness in all its d________________.

A. You and I cannot afford to see the healing miracles of Jesus in a shallow and superficial way because sickness is a terrible _____________ to everyone.

B. Two decades ago the U.S. ranked eleventh in terms of life expectancy, but we have now fallen to __________-_____________ in the world.

C. There is another statistic we cannot ignore: the mortality rate, and the mortality rate still stands at ___________ percent.

II What do we learn about sickness in this chapter?

A. First, sickness gets our __________________ (9:1).

1. The disciples noticed the blind man, but what John emphasizes in verse one is that Jesus noticed ___________.

2. Why would Jesus go to the trouble of noticing another sick person? Because that was his God-given _______________.

3. According to Isaiah, the work of Jesus in saving us from sin, and his work as healer, are somehow ____________ _________________.

4. That means that just as Jesus could not help but notice s____________, so also he could not help but notice the s___________.

B. Second, sickness makes us ________________________ (9:2).

1. The disciples needed an explanation for the man’s blindness that could keep them from seeing him as a _____________.

2. We are so threatened by the idea that terrible imperfection can exist in our world that we try to find someone to ____________.

3. We feel that something is wrong with a world in which people are born blind and children die of cancer, and the Bible says we are _________.