The following sermon was preached at Grace Predatorian Church, a mission work of the Orthodox Predatorian Church and Covenant Predatorian Church in Mansfield, Ohio. For more information about Grace Predatorian Church and when we meet for worship and Bible study, log on to graceop.org or email us at graceopchurch at gmail.com. Shall we remain standing as we ask God to bless His word? And for the reading of that word, let's pray. O Lord God, we humble ourselves before you, thanking you again for your mercies to us. We ask that as the word is read, that we would hear not just words, but the voice of our Savior. We would pray that you would give us understanding and application of that word to our lives, that we might honor you in our lives. We ask, O God, that you would enrich our faith, encourage that faith, grant to us all that we need. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Our scripture this afternoon is Mark chapter 10, verses 46-52. We come to the end of this 10th chapter, and as you're turning, this will bring to a close this intermediate section that began in chapter 8 with Jesus foretelling his upcoming suffering and death. There are three of those prophecies in this section and this wraps this up. And then we're going to take a break from Mark, and when I get back at the end of the month, because actually I won't be here until the last Sunday I get back, we're going to be beginning a study from the scriptures on the covenant of grace. And so we'll be opening up that doctrine a bit, spending some time doing that, and then some other time come back to Mark. So this is a place to pause and kind of put Mark on the shelf a little bit, a hiatus. as we draw this section to a close. Mark chapter 10 then verses 46 to 52, And they came to Jericho, and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar of the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said, Call him. And they called the blind man, saying to him, Take heart, get up, he is calling you. And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, What do you want me to do for you? The blind man said to him, Rabbi, let me recover my sight. And Jesus said to him, Go your way, your face. has made you well, and immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way. Here ends reading of God's holy and inspired word. Please be seated. Our theme this morning, or this afternoon as we look at this text, is even what we find in the man's words. We need the mercy of Christ. We need the mercy of Christ to see Christ. This account of the healing of Bartimaeus ends the section which covers, as I said, the prophecy of the suffering Christ. What Jesus had done at the beginning of Mark's Gospel 2, chapter 8, was to reveal himself as the Messiah through his miracles and actions. And then chapter 8 changes and it leads us, because the focal point is in that chapter where we find the great confession of Peter who acknowledges that Jesus is the Christ. From that point, he begins in this section then to define that Messiah, not as the Messiah who comes in power and pomp to reestablish the throne of David and throw the Romans out and make all things right in the world. as many erroneously believed, but to be the suffering servant that was promised in Isaiah 42 and throughout. And it is instructive and interesting to note that this section, where Jesus defines himself as the suffering servant Messiah, begins and ends with a count of the healing of a blind man. It begins in chapter 8 with the healing of a blind man and ends in chapter 10 with the same kind of a healing. Only Jesus can open our eyes. That's what Mark is telling us. Only Jesus can open your eyes and specifically through the work of the Holy Spirit to be able to see Him for who He really is. It is also to be noted that this miracle of healing this blind man is the last healing miracle by Jesus recorded in Mark's Gospel. The healing miracles come to an end at this point. It takes a spiritual miracle for a sinful man to believe in Jesus as the Christ. That's what Mark is showing us. It takes a spiritual miracle. Regeneration is that miracle that's ongoing. It's that greater work than restoring healing to a blind, seeing to a blind man, walking to a lame man, hearing to a deaf man. Regeneration is the greater work and that's the ongoing intervention of God against all that's natural in our day. The ministry of the Word must be powered by divine power to open our eyes of faith. I think that's what Mark is showing us in these events. We need not so much understanding, that's true, but we need the mercy of Christ for Him to have mercy on us. So what I have that is proposed this afternoon is to look really at this idea as we've seen it by way of contrast. By way of contrast in chapter 8 to chapter 10. The contrast, first of all, of the miracles. While there are parallels, there are contrasting elements with these two bookend miracles. It's interesting. The first blind man is unnamed. The second, in chapter 10, is identified as Bartimaeus, which simply means the son of Timaeus. And, interestingly enough, Timaeus, the name itself, means unclean. So, you're thinking about this character who is presented to us. Bar is the son of Bar-Jesus. You see that phraseology. So, Bar-Timaeus is the son of Timaeus. But Timaeus has as its root a word that means unclean. And it speaks to our uncleanliness. We are sinners. Think of Leviticus. The need for sacrifice. The first blind man is brought to Jesus by the people. You may remember, if you don't you can turn to chapter 8 verse 22. The second is rebuked by the people. The first guy, they bring him to Jesus that he might touch him. And you hear this fellow crying out. Be quiet, be quiet, go away. We don't want to pay attention to him. The first blind man is quiet and passive. He doesn't say anything. The second one cries out repeatedly, and all the more so. The first blind man is accepted by Jesus. The second is called by Jesus. The first blind man is healed by the touch of Jesus. You may remember he put his fingers on him. The second is healed simply by the word. He speaks to him and says, your faith has made you well. The first blind man is healed gradually. What do you see? Well, I see men like trees, walking. And then Jesus does something else, does something again, and then he sees. And the second one is healed immediately. In fact, that word is used in Mark's gospel. Immediately, his sight was recovered. The first blind man is told to tell no one about what had happened, and not even to go back to the village. The second one joins the crowd. who are traveling with Jesus as He's joined this crowd of Jewish travelers and pilgrims to the feast of Passover on their way to Jerusalem. And they're going to be the crowd that holler and sing Hosanna as He enters Jerusalem, the triumphal entry. In the first case, Jesus isn't named. It's just Him. He. He was walking. He did this. He did that. He's not named. In the second case, Jesus is called repeatedly, the Son of David. The Son of David. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Now, what do we learn from these contrasts? We have these interesting, kind of contrasting things about this miracle, which is one of You know, one of the same, basically. He heals someone from a problem of having no sight. Well, certainly, Jesus works differently in each of our lives. Anyone can come to Jesus, but that's the point. We must apply ourselves to Him. We must ask Him. We must come to Him. If we're to have the benefit. Jesus is the only one who opens our eyes of faith to see Him. No one else does it. Each person was beyond the help of human aid. And yet it was only Jesus who could do it. Jesus is hardly known in the first instance. In the second, he is given the messianic title. And I think that pictures somewhat of a growing understanding that Mark is laying out for us in the view of the disciples. And there's this idea that we must come to know Jesus and grow in that knowledge. accept him as the Messiah. We must not just stay baby Christians and know just the rudiments. We must grow in understanding. We must follow him. Both, whatever their needs were and whatever their circumstances were, depend upon that grace and mercy of Christ. You may ponder those contrasts. But I find it interesting that there are those, the overall parallel and yet the distinct contrast between those two miracle events. They are there for us to consider and to think again how Christ works. He doesn't work the same in everyone's life. But He works. And it's His work. And it's His person that's the focus. not so much the need of the people. So the contrasts are there for us. Secondly, there is this contrast of place. In the first instance, they were in Bethsaida. on the road to Capernaum. They crossed the Sea of Galilee and ended up at Bethsaida and now they're there and about to go to Capernaum. And Jesus has come from the Gentiles. He was in Tyre and Sidon and had crossed around the north east part of the Sea of Galilee and spent some time with the mixed peoples and then he crossed the lake and gone to Bethsaida and he was with the Gentiles. and he was going away from the people on the way to Capernaum and Caesarea Philippi and up. He was taking his disciples actually for the purpose of eliciting that confession of Peter of who Jesus was. That was the first instance. In this instance that we find in chapter 10 Jesus is in Jericho. Now what's significant about Jericho? Well, in history You remember it was the first city that was taken by Joshua when they crossed over the Jordan River. It was, as it were, the down payment. It was the first fruits of the conquest. And you remember there was a ban put on it that the people weren't to take any of the spoil and there was this conflict about that. It was devoted to God in his totality because it was the first fruits of that land. So he's in Jericho, but where's he going? He's on the road to Jerusalem. It's interesting that what is before him is the cross. The people, he's going to the center of religious worship in this case. And he's come not from the Gentiles now, but he's now come from Galilee. And he's on the road with all these Jewish pilgrims on the way to celebrate the Passover. Those were big family times. The people of Israel were to appear for the certain feast days in Jerusalem. And this is one of them. And they would gather the family, and it was this big trip, and you would start walking down the road, and your cousins would come down from the other side of the road, and your aunts and uncles from the other side of the road, and as you'd march along, other people would join, and you had this big throng, and you were having parties, and you were camping out at night, and the crowd kept getting bigger as you kept getting closer to Jerusalem. And so he was with all these people from Galilee, heading on the way to Jerusalem. He wasn't going away from the people, but now was with them. And in this throng of people who were in a celebratory mood because of the great feast that was before them and all that it reminded them of God saving them from their enslavement to Egypt and God being their God and all those things. And he's going to Jerusalem, as I said, to the center of Jewish religion and power. And the expectation of the disciples was that he was going to be received by the people, he was going to be hailed as king, the Messiah. There was a sense of goodwill and optimism of what was happening. Everybody knew Jesus, the miracle worker. And he's going to triumphantly enter Jerusalem as the servant of the Lord. What did we learn? Well, we might see in this a building, a note, that as Jesus was explaining things to his disciples, there was this building to a climax of the revelation of Jesus' true messianic character. That he wasn't all that the table thought, but he was the Messiah in all that that meant. But he was the Messiah that was to suffer. He, as the Messiah, had to go to Jerusalem. He couldn't remain obscure. He couldn't remain amongst the Gentiles and way up north in Galilee. He had to come to Jerusalem. He had to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy. There was a purpose in his coming. A distinct place to be. He had to make himself known as the Messiah to the people and to the world. But Jesus has come to find us in all those places. Whether the remote places in the hinterlands, if you want to put it that way, or with the thronging people in the center of religious observance, or on the quiet, dusty trails heading outside of town. And it doesn't matter where you are, what matters is, are you with Jesus or not? And are you seeking Jesus or not? There is this contrast of place, because it's almost like the psalmist says, if I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there. If I make my bed in the highest heavens, thou art there. It doesn't matter where we are, God is everywhere, and Christ has come to find us wherever we are. And even in the midst of the contrasts, whether your life is low or high, joyful or sad, Whatever may be going on, Christ is there and can be found because He has come. It reminds me of the story of my father who was a firefighter by occupation. He used to tell me about how, and Hattie did it for me once when I was in first grade. I had show and tell. I brought my father the firefighter because everybody likes firemen. And one of the things that they would do is they would stand there in their uniform and they would put that mask on, that breathing apparatus that the firemen had to wear, because they would do that to the kids and show them what it looked like. Because there is nothing more terrifying to a child than to be hiding under their bed because the house is burning. And they're scared and they're trying to get away from the smoke and the flames and they're maybe in a closet or they're hiding under their bed. And so the fireman has to go in and find them. And he lifts up the thing of the bed. He lifts up the bed and all you see is this funny mask, this scary face, you know, and he reaches out to grab him, you know, it's like terrifying. So they would try to say, this is what the fireman's going to look like. If you're in trouble, this is what he looks like. He's just there to help you and listen to what he has to say. So I brought my father along. My point was that Jesus comes and seeks us and sometimes we're scared. We're scared of what we're going through. We're scared of our sin. We're scared of the consequences. Adam and Eve were scared in the garden. And God's face may look scary to us in one sense, but the Savior has come to save us. He's come to redeem us. It doesn't matter where we are, but He's come. And then there's the contrast of the message. We've seen the contrast of the miracles. Same miracle, but different context. We've seen the contrast of place, where He's going and where He is. Now there's a difference in message. In the first instance, there was this messianic secret. I've alluded to this. Jesus told the blind man and his disciples to tell no one about him in chapter 8, verses 26 and verse 30. Don't tell anybody. He needed to prepare his disciples for this redemptive work. They didn't understand that he had to die, that he had to suffer, that he had to be rejected. and he needed to be raised again from the dead. He needed time to tell them, even though it would take a while for it to sink in and he wouldn't get it until after the fact. But then he would remember. And why would they remember? Well, he told them. But remember, he also told them on that night of the Passover that he would send the Holy Spirit and he would bring to remembrance all the things I've taught you. There is a need for the work of the Spirit to open our hearts and our minds to remember the things of God. Because the world comes crashing in on us and our sinful self is rebelling. It doesn't want spiritual things. It wants temporal things and temporal pleasures and temporal comforts and assurances. And the Spirit comes to overpower that, and to bring to mind those precious promises of God's Word, and to remind us of what we've been taught. And you might have noticed that sometimes in your life, where it seemed like everything was just crashing in and pressing upon you, and then you'd recall the Scripture verse. You'd recall something you were taught. It would come out. It would be clear. Pray for those things. But my point is that Jesus had to prepare his disciples. They needed time to get them to understand he wasn't the Messiah they thought he should be. The world thinks that Jesus should be like X. He should just be a good prophet, a good moral teacher, someone to help us when we're in trouble. Jesus says, no, I'm the Messiah that came to die for you, to satisfy God's just wrath, which is against you for your sins, and to stand in your place and to redeem you. I've come to be the sin that you are and that you might be righteous in me. I haven't come to be your buddy, to be your personal coach in life. to help you out. I've come to die for you and to raise you from the dead. I've come to empower you from on high and to change you and to make you alive that was once dead, now alive to God and to help you to die to self and to die to the world. I'm not who the world thinks I am. Jesus needed to correct their view of this Messiah that was promised, and so even the blind man had to wait until Jesus was ready. But now, as the Messiah revealed, Bartimaeus cries out, Son of David! Son of David! That's the Messianic title. He identifies Jesus as the one who has come of the line of David. He sees with an eye that is beyond the physical eye. This one is the one of promise who has claimed to the throne of David. Jesus could not be hid. Remember when he enters into Jerusalem and the Pharisees and scribes become jealous and angered by all the hosannas and hallelujahs being renounced. And they say, tell the people to be quiet. And he says, even if they're quiet, the stones will cry out. Because God's creation cries out and magnifies his name. There was no way you could hide Jesus. His glory, though veiled and hidden, could not be hid forever. And when he entered Jerusalem as that one who fulfilled all those promises, the angels sang in heaven and all the promises of God were like gleaming gold shining in the brightness of the sun. There was nothing he could do to hide the glory that was Jesus'. He had to be revealed. He could not be hid. And so, isn't it interesting? That as this crowd of people are walking with Jesus to Jerusalem on the road, on this pilgrim festival, and they're having this great time, and the Passover is before them, and Jesus is amongst them, not one of them sees it but a blind man. A blind man is the one who cries out, Son of David. And he cries out, Son of David, Have mercy on me. Now he wanted temporal healing. Yet Jesus encourages his faith. Isn't that what we need is the mercy of Christ? We need that mercy. We don't deserve it. We can't claim it. We need the mercy of Christ. We cannot see. We cannot understand Jesus on our own. We're as blind as the crowd, as blind as the disciples were at the time. But our understanding has to be corrected, and it's corrected by the work of the Spirit in applying the Word to our lives. We cannot come to Jesus on our own. We can't just decide, today is the day. Jesus comes for us. We need Mercy. All we can do is realize our condition. We need a Savior. Realize our sinfulness. That we are unrighteous before a righteous God. Realize our need of redemption and cry out like the blind man, have mercy on me. Lord, have mercy on me. We can't demand that God come rescuing us. I'll make an appointment tomorrow. I'll show up in your office tomorrow. We can talk." Nope. That's not how it works. He comes to us, but he does awaken us to the need that we would cry out for mercy. Jesus came to redeem and would do all that's necessary to accomplish that redemption. That's what Mark is showing us. He's come. He will fulfill it. He's on the road. He's going to go to the cross. He's going to do it all. You can't do it. You need Him and you need His mercy. And the message is that our faith in Jesus, not our works, is what makes us well. Note how he ends this section. As it closes, go your way. Your faith has made you well. The man's faith made him well, and I suspect there was more to those words than perhaps even the man understood at the moment. And it was more than just physical sight, but it was what he began to understand, what he knew that no one else yet could say, that Jesus was the Son of David, the one who was promised. And immediately he recovered his sight. He saw. and he followed him. When Jesus comes, and you cry out for mercy, you're able to follow him. You're able to walk with him, and to walk the road that he walks. What the promise is here, and I think what Mark wants us to see, is that is the mercy of Christ that restores us, that enlightens us, gives us understanding, gives us life and hope. There are these contrasts But in the end, Jesus is master of all. He alone is Savior. Is He your Savior? Are you trusting in Christ? Do you see Him for who He is? How He reveals Himself in Scripture? He's not just a good teacher. He's not just a moral leader. He's not just a worldly Messiah that takes up the cause of the oppressed and the downtrodden. He is the Son of God, the Son of David, the Messiah who has come to free you from the bondage of sin and the penalty of hell and to make you alive again in a newness of life that enables you then to live in this world but with hope in the next and even though this world may be full of suffering and sorrow to know that what lies ahead is glory and honor and riches and wealth and blessing all in Christ as we die to self, let's pray. O Lord God, as we think of these things, we pray that we would cry out for mercy, that we would lay aside every pretense of trusting in self, our own works, our own goodness, our own intents. O Lord God, we would pray that you would have mercy upon us who are blind by nature, that While we often see, like the world, that we would no longer see as the world, but rather that we would see spiritual things, spiritual truths, that we would see Christ as He really is. Lord, we would pray that You would grant to us new sight, new healing, that we would be alive in Him forever and ever. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.