Well, good morning. So glad to see you all sharing
your original moments. Are there any Forest Frank fans?
I once was down, but now I'm no you all.
Oh, a few of you. OK?
A few of you. I do.
I do enjoy Forest Frank's energy, right?
He does deliver every time and I really appreciate the movement
in that song. I once was down, but now I'm
thank you for that because our our whole theme in the Arise
series is this movement that that we were down, but God has
lifted us up. God is even inviting us up.
He says arise sometimes in the move of faith.
We have to deal with our situation 1st and we have to
come with grips to grips with what our reality is.
That can be difficult at times because when God does show up
and ask us what do we want, we're like, I did not expect you
to ask me what I wanted. Don't you know what I want?
God? But God asked, what do you want
me to do for you? This is a really interesting
move on the part of God. But we see it many times in
Jesus life, and we see it in his experience.
An encounter with a man named Bartimaeus.
Sometimes, as in Luke, Bartimaeus is just the blind
man, and so we're going to read his experience of encountering
Jesus from Luke chapter 18. But first, the Scripture tells
us Jesus took the 12 aside and told them we are going up to
Jerusalem and everything that is written about the prophets or by
the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled.
He will be delivered over to the Gentiles.
They will mock him, insult him, and spit on him.
They will flog him and kill him. On the third day, he will rise
again. The disciples did not understand
any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them
and they did not know what he was talking about.
As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the
roadside begging. When he heard the crowd going
by, he asked what was happening. They told him Jesus of Nazareth
is passing by. He called out Jesus, son of
David, have mercy on me. Those who led the way rebuked
him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, Son
of David, have mercy on me. Son of David, have mercy on me.
Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him.
When he came near, Jesus asked him, What do you want me to do
for you, Lord? I want to see, he replied.
Jesus said to him, Receive your sight.
Your faith has healed you immediately.
He received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God.
When all the people saw it, they also praised God.
His name is Bartimaeus. He's on the Jericho Rd. which
the Jericho Rd. literally does go up to Jerusalem.
When Jesus said we were going up to Jerusalem, he wasn't kidding.
It was just going to be a steady rising walk all the way to
Jerusalem. It was the common route of the
pilgrims who were going to Passover in Jerusalem.
No matter where they lived around Israel, they would go up
to Jerusalem. Jesus is going up by the Jericho
Rd. As you may remember, the Jericho
Rd. is where Jericho, the Old City, had fallen and so the
ruins of that city is what they would have passed by on the
Jericho Rd. On the way they would have come
close to the new Jericho, the new city, the new place of
Jericho where wealthy people lived outside the city of
Jerusalem. Maybe they kept a summer home
there, a second home. The wealthy and affluent
religious leaders and others would have had their place
there. Not a bad place to beg, if you
were a beggar. If you were in that class of
people considered Expendables, then you would want to be close,
to be where you could be noticed.
And so, somehow Bartimaeus had made his way to the road and sat
down. Maybe put a cloth out in front
of him, hoping that someone would give him a few alms or
something to eat. That was his place.
But Bartimaeus is a surprising character because he seems to
know something about Jesus that others don't know.
When he noticed, hey, there's some kind of disturbance coming
up the road, there's some kind of excitement among the pilgrims
here, he asked them, hey, what's going on?
What's going on here? He couldn't see it with his own
eyes. And someone said, oh, Jesus of
Nazareth, that teacher, that prophet, that Jesus from
Nazareth is coming up the road. And so immediately he begins to
cry out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
This is a really interesting phrase for him to use because it
wasn't what the common people would have used if Jesus at that
point, they would have just said, oh, this is Jesus the
teacher or Jesus the miracle worker who's from Nazareth.
But Bartimaeus calls out with a sense of faith.
It's really interesting that he has this insight about Jesus,
the son of David. It's a messianic title that
Bartimaeus couldn't have just known on his own.
It's sort of in that same category as when Jesus asked
Peter and the disciples, who do you say I am?
And Peter said, oh, you are the Son of God, the Messiah.
And Jesus says to Peter, well, you couldn't have come up with
this on your own. This has been revealed to you by
my Father in heaven. And so we must assume as well
that somehow Bartimaeus had heard the stories of Jesus, and
he'd put 1 + 1 + 2 + 3, plus the prophecies, plus the promise
given to David that he would have someone on the throne who
was from his lineage. And it would be an eternal
throne, not just a throne in Jerusalem, but it would be in
the Kingdom of God. And so this messianic promise,
somehow Bartimaeus who can't see, has insight.
He has an insight from God about Jesus.
He has the eyes of faith. This is the terminology that
Paul used to speak of people and to even pray for the church.
He says, I keep asking that God, the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom
and revelation so that you may know Him better.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in
order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, that
the eyes of your heart might be opened.
Thomas would later say, unless I see, I cannot believe.
And Jesus said, blessed are all those who never see but still
believe. And so there must be some aspect
and element of knowing that comes via faith.
Faith is a way of knowing, and it's a spiritual transaction
that's been enacted by God. We are a people of faith,
therefore we are a people of seeing with our heart, with the
mind's eye. And Bartimaeus seems to have had
a little bit of this. In that moment.
He might not have known everything about Jesus yet.
He might not have known everything about his life yet,
but he knew something about Jesus.
And so he says have mercy on me, that the son of David would hold
a position of authority and could have mercy on him.
So he says have mercy on me. That is his cry, and it came
from a place of a little bit of faith in his life.
Now, as we go through the story, it's really interesting to note
the characters at play and Luke sort of abbreviates here with
the the leaders of the pack, the people who are out in front, the
people who are walking ahead of Jesus.
And they were really proud to be in front of Jesus of Nazareth on
the way. Have you ever been with those
who walk fast? We like to be upfront.
We like to walk fast. I think Jesus was a little more
leisurely, sometimes purposeful, but leisurely, always taking
notice. But the leaders of the pack are
resisting the cries of faith. Those who led the way rebuked
the blind man and told him to be quiet.
In other words, they said shush. They shushed him hush, but he
shouted all the more. Have you ever tried to tell an
excited and delighted child not to squeal?
Where'd she go, by the way? You, you can't manage it.
And somehow there was activated in the heart of Bartimaeus.
I shall not be shushed. I will call out.
Why do the leaders of the pack resist faith?
Why do we resist the cry of faith?
Why of those of us who know Jesus and have been hanging out
with him, who are walking on ahead, so glad to be a part of
his life and his journey? Why do we resist the cry of
faith? Why is it reflexive in us to
sort of hush the enthusiasm of others for God, for faith?
Is it that we're embarrassed and a little judge mental?
You're breaking the rules here. Shush.
Maybe we're like Eli, who was watching a woman named Hannah
pray and just weep and cry and call out to God.
She seemed to be breaking all the rules of propriety.
And he accuses her and says, oh, you must be drunk.
And she says, oh, I'm not drunk, but I'm desperate in front of
God that he would give me a son. It was reflexive for Eli to
shush her. Maybe sometimes it's just it's
inconvenient and we're a little self important.
You're an inconvenience like you.
Don't you know that Jesus has greater things to do than deal
with you? And sometimes our own sense of
elevated self importance causes us to miss the small quiet
person, the person who seems expendable when they all of a
sudden get excited. It was inconvenient to them.
Do you know the disciples had fallen for this before?
There were a group of parents who brought to their children
and said, we want to bring our children to be blessed by Jesus.
And the disciples were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Jesus doesn't have time for children.
You know, he's about serious things.
And Jesus rebuked them and said, let the children come to me.
The children were insignificant in the mind of the disciples at
that point. They were sort of puffed up.
This is the danger of leading the pack is that we get taken up
with a bit of hubris in our life and we're moving fast and
missing the people that Jesus wants to touch.
Now, fortunately, Bartimaeus kept calling out.
What was he saying? Son of David, have mercy on me.
He just kept shouting loud and finally Jesus noticed.
Jesus engages. Jesus stopped and ordered the
man to be brought to him, and when he came near, Jesus asked
him, What do you want me to do for you?
In fact, that could have been the question, that they were
afraid of What this blind man wants to ask, we're not sure if
Jesus will do. But Jesus was willing to stop
and hear him out. I think sometimes in the church
we get anxious about prayers for healing.
We get anxious for the person who says I've heard about Jesus
and I want to ask you to pray for me.
You know Jesus, don't you? So why won't you pray for my
healing? And we get anxious.
Why? Because sometimes we've walked
with Jesus for quite a while and we've not seen a healing yet.
Sometimes we've walked with Jesus quite a while and and we
have a long list of prayers that we've asked that don't seem
answered yet. And so we're afraid of over
promising and under delivering. We'd rather under promise and
hope that somehow Jesus would over deliver, but that
opportunity is not available to us unless we will stop and bring
them to Jesus and let them express their faith.
What do you want me to do for you?
The prayer team may ask, What do you want me to pray for you?
Which is your invitation in that engagement to discern what is it
from faith that I'm asking God to do?
Pete Gregg says that many times in the life of 24/7 prayer they
have asked God for miracles and they've happened.
But they also, each of them have a long list of moments and very
deep and serious prayers in their own life when they've
asked God for miracles. And it's like, no or wait.
And so, yes, as the church, we must exercise care and faith.
And we must give opportunity for someone else's faith in God to
rise up, to be expressed, to be said.
And maybe we'll find our own sense of desperation, like, oh
God, I hope you hear this prayer and heal.
I've had moments like that even in this congregation where we've
prayed for healing. And in my own heart, I'm
wondering, I don't know if God will do that.
And then they come back and say God did it.
And we've had the experience of praying for healing and having
someone come back and say God didn't do it.
But I have immense peace and courage for my life.
He's given me something else. But as the leaders of the pack,
as the people who are walking on a head with Jesus to Jerusalem,
we must take care and note of those who come and say, Do you
think God would care for me? Do you think God would heal me?
Do you think God would help me? That's in the moment where we
join them with our own cry of faith.
Incredibly, Jesus heals the man. Jesus said to him, receive your
sight. Such an interesting phrase.
Receive your sight. It's still required on the part
of the man, an openness to receive it.
And then Jesus affirms the man as an agent of his own healing.
This feels really hard and dangerous for us as a church.
If it hadn't happened, would Jesus blame him and say, well,
you don't have enough faith? But Jesus honored every little
bit of faith this man had, and he heals him.
Faith is a big deal. Faith is that move in our lives
that says, I will trust you. Faith is that move that says I
will call out to you. Faith says I don't have anything
else in life to be a embarrassed about.
I'm just a blind man wandering along on the side of the road in
the ditch, hoping that someone would extend their hand to me.
And now I've taken a little bit of action to get myself in front
of God. Jesus, the son of David, Helen
Keller says this, or she said this.
She was both blind and deaf, and she said the only thing worse
than being blind is having sight but no vision.
The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no
vision. This was said in the context of
having no dream for your life, no ambition for your life, no
movement for your life. But here I want to apply it and
say the only thing worse than being blind is having no vision
of God in your life, of having no vision of Jesus in the truth
and majesty and beauty of who he is.
That's worse than being blind physically.
Spiritual blindness is an everlasting and eternal
devastating ailment, and we seem to have a lot of spiritual
blindness around us. It is the common ailment of our
time. It's the common ailment of our
generation, seeing but not believing.
In fact, it was the problem even for the disciples.
The disciples are wandering around with Jesus on their way
to Jerusalem with a level of blindness about them.
The writers of the Gospel accounts include these
statements from Jesus where periodically along the way he
would tell them, hey, I'm going to Jerusalem and things are not
going to go well in Jerusalem. In fact, the religious leaders
and authorities are going to take the Son of Man and do with
them as they will. They will embarrass him.
They will seek to take him down, and they will kill him, but he
will rise again. And so they're on their way to
Jerusalem. They're only now a couple weeks
from this event, and the disciples don't get it.
In fact, Luke says the disciples did not understand any of this.
Have you ever been to a lecture and the professor is speaking
and you're like, I don't understand any of this?
In fact, that's the moment the disciples were having as Jesus
took them aside and told them something privately.
He's teaching them. And they're like, I don't
understand a word you just said. Jesus.
This makes no sense to me. It didn't make any sense to them
to imagine that the Messiah would suffer a terrible and
apparent defeat. It didn't make sense to them
that the the Messiah, the Son of David, would go to Jerusalem to
take his throne and he would be taking outside the city and put
on a cross. It didn't make sense to them.
It didn't make sense that the man that they so loved and had
given their life to and had learned so much from and who
kept pointing to them to the realities of God all around them
in the Kingdom of God. It didn't make sense to them
that others would turn their backs on him and kill him, that
Jesus would be treated as all the prophets had been.
It did not make sense. They had no category for it, so
they did not understand. In fact, its meaning, Luke says,
was hidden from them. They did not know what he was
talking about. They were blind to the reality
of the Holy Week and the Passion of Jesus.
They were blind to what the suffering of Jesus was going to
mean for them. They were blind to it.
They couldn't get it. Yet this is a common situation
for us. Maybe you have even walked with
Jesus for quite some time and as we enter in the next few weeks,
you'll be like this whole issue of a cross and death and dying
of going down before coming up. Makes no sense to me.
I want my life to only be up and to the right, bigger and better.
This makes no sense to me. One, that had happened to Jesus
and that two, that it could happen to me that the great
movements of our life or sometimes down before we're up.
The reality and the person of Jesus is who much of our world
seems to be blind to. It's such a gift that Bartimaeus
believed. He believed twice.
He believed when he called out Jesus, son of David, have mercy
on me. He believed again when he
answered the question. Lord, I want to see.
Did you notice that he bowed the knee in front of Jesus with his
words? Lord, I want to see.
The apostle Paul noted that when he was bringing the gospel to
the people of Corinth and to that whole region, he noticed a
reality, and he wrote about it this way.
The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers
previous to this, he said. It's almost as if the gospel,
the beauty and majesty of Jesus, is veiled to them.
They can't yet see it. It's behind a veil.
The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that
they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory
of Christ who is the image of God.
For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as
Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus sake.
For God who said let light shine out of darkness, made His light
shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of
God's glory displayed in the face of Christ.
What a moment for Bartimaeus when Jesus said your faith has
healed you and his eyes were seeing and the first thing
Bartimaeus saw would have been the face of Jesus in front of
him to see the face of God. This is our faith that Jesus is
God, and those who looked upon his face saw him and lived.
So how shall we live in front of Christ?
I'm going to invite the worship team to come on down and I'm
going to invite all of you to stand.
And we're going to recall that prayer once again given on the
wall of a 5th century monk cell in the deserts of Egypt.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a Sinner.
This is the cry of Bartimaeus. It is a cry of faith.
How many of you would say, I know I need healing of my
spiritual blindness? Maybe you would even be like
Augustine who was following Jesus.
And yet Augustine, when trying to share his life and writings
with others, said, let the reader travel with me when she
shares fully in my convictions. Let her search with me when she
shares my doubts. Let him return to me when he
recognizes that he is in error. Let Him call me back to the
right path when he sees that I am in error.
In this way. Let us advance along the road of
charity towards Him of whom it is written.
You know, sometimes you may feel like I don't know enough yet
about Jesus to talk a lot about Him.
I'm the blind leading the blind. I just go from one ditch to the
other, back and forth, hoping I'll make it down the road and
someone won't run over me. But in our life together, Paul
says, it's the church we pray, O God, send your Spirit, that the
eyes of our heart and mind might be enlightened so that we can
see the hope to which we have been called.
And so I know I have blind spots.
Even now I have blind spots in my life where I still need Jesus
to lift the veil and help me see, to help me understand, to
help me walk with him into a greater healing and greater
purpose for my life. So let's hold out our hands and
pray this prayer, this ancient prayer again as a congregation.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a Sinner.