Luke 18:35-43

Let's uh let's stand together.

Albert, you want to come and read read for us uh God's word.

We're gonna be in Luke, Luke 18, 18, 35 through 43.

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.

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?

I want to see.

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.

Yes, sir.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Lord, we um we do ask that you'd re uh bless the reading of your word.

We ask that you would um teach us through this text.

As we um look into your word that's compared to a mirror, we pray that you would speak to us by your Holy Spirit.

And we give you permission to do that.

Thank you.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Again, Luke chapter 18.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

We're finishing up Luke 18, and one of the great things is that we are coming to the close of a significant section in the book of Luke.

We are winding down our study in Luke.

Jesus is on his way up to Jerusalem.

He has been doing ministry for three years, and he has twelve disciples that will be called apostles, who he is training to carry on the mission after he ascends to heaven.

He has been telling them now for a while that he is going to Jerusalem to suffer.

And what we closed with last week is that as much as he warned them that he was going to suffer at the hands of the government, and that he was going to be crucified, that he would be raised from the dead on the third day, it still was going over the disciples' heads.

They were not picking up on what Jesus was trying to tell them.

But it's a part of this story that leads us to Jerusalem.

And once we get into chapter 19, verse 28, we're going to see that Jesus arrives in Jerusalem.

And the content of Luke, the story shifts to really focus in on these last days of Jesus' life.

Now, we know that Luke wrote the book of Luke.

He also wrote the book of Acts.

And as we get into this season of the crucifixion in Jesus' life, everything kind of slows down.

It goes into slow mo, you could say, and Luke spends a number of chapters just detailing these final weeks of Jesus' ministry.

Before we get there, though, we're going to conclude with a couple of key lessons and a couple of key stories that took place on the way up to Jerusalem.

This one takes place outside of Jericho.

Now, those of you that grew up in Sunday school, you remember the famous song, right?

Barry?

What do we got?

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho.

Did you get that one?

Come on, you got that one growing up, right?

Yeah.

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, right?

And I'm Joshua.

So that's what everybody sang to me when I was in Sunday school.

My grandpa just like pounded that one into my head.

So this is Jericho.

Now you recall that what God said about Jericho was that the man who tries to rebuild.

Well, what happened to Jericho?

It was, it was, it fell down, right?

It laid um undeveloped for years.

And the curse that God put on the city of Jericho was that the man who rebuilds Jericho, uh, God will kill his firstborn son.

And in fact, that's what happened.

We see, I can't remember historically where it is in the Old Testament, but the man who rebuilds Jericho, uh, he does it literally in the process, his firstborn son, and I believe his youngest son both are killed.

Um Jericho is rebuilt at a huge cost.

And Jesus, here it says he's drawing near.

This story is also found in Matthew 20 and in Mark, I think it's 16.

Um, and there's these beggars that are outside.

In Matthew, we're told that there's two beggars.

That's kind of the addition that we get if we read this story in Matthew.

If we read it over in Mark, we learn that this particular blind man was named uh what was his name?

Bartimaeus.

That's right.

Is that in your is that in your like um heading?

Okay, it's in my heading.

It says um blind Bartimaeus, who's not named here in Luke, but he's named over in Mark.

So if you get they get a chance, go over the detail in Mark is fascinating when you read this story.

So I it's a very simple narrative, right?

A guy's begging.

Uh he hears a crowd going by as a blind man.

He asks, Who is this?

The crowd goes by and uh he starts yelling out, Jesus, son of David, heal me.

And uh the crowd around him, the multitude rebukes him or warns him, Bartimias, shut up, you know, stop.

And he he yells out even more.

Um Jesus calls him over, he asks him, What do you want me to do for you?

Uh he says, I want to see.

Jesus says, you know, receive your sight, your faith has made you whole.

And he praises God as he's given his eyesight, and then the crowd praises God.

Really simple.

Here's what I want to do with this text.

I want to take this text and lay it over our life as a template, right?

I would suggest to you that this morning that the God of the Bible is the God who reveals himself as the one who solves our problems.

This is what we call the doctrine of imminence, right?

I'm going to give you some a theological term this morning to chew on.

It's imminent.

It's the fact that God is in our midst.

You'll notice when we started our service, I was quoting from Matthew chapter 5 and 6, where God reveals himself and says that he knows the hairs of our head.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

He knows the things we have need of before we even ask.

What that means is that God, the God of the Bible, is in our midst and he is aware of our needs.

It's the doctrine of imminence.

Now, the opposite of uh his imminence is transcendence, which means he's fully other.

He's completely different than we are.

He's so outside of us and so different from us at the very same time.

So you'll have language in the Psalms that he's higher than the heavens, um, that he spans the universe, right?

That's the doctrine of transcendence.

But the God of the Bible is the God who solves our problems.

There's a part, there's no part of your life, your personality, your capacity, your relationships, your health, your finances, your career, where God cannot work or he doesn't care.

When you came to church this morning, you came to a Christian church, hopefully you knew that, a church that looks and studies the Bible.

And what the Bible that we study reveals is that God is deeply aware of your story.

I've been saying this since we were in the Compassion.

You know, when we used to do church service in the Compassion Center, which is our relief center right two blocks away from here, you walk in the door and there's this hideous chime, you know, these like little metal things that just tinkle, right?

It's it's this terrible noise, but it lets us know somebody walked in the door.

And I always think when I hear that, is is a new story walked through that door.

And God is intimately aware of that story.

He knows when that person was conceived, he knit that person together in his mother's womb, when that when that baby was born, he oversaw the development of that child.

He he God is aware of every step of the life that that person has taken.

And when we look at a story like this of blind Bartimaeus, and we see him getting healed, we should internally long for God to work in our life and to bring about healing or deliverance or rescue in our own stories.

And so I want to invite you to just for a second consider what is that?

What is that story?

What is that issue that you, if you were blind Bartimaeus there on the side of the road, and you saw Jesus walking by, right?

Or you heard that he was walking by, and you realize this was your opportunity to ask for help, what is it that you need God's help with?

What is the issue that you would offer up to him?

And keep that at the forefront of your mind as we're going through this text.

I want to lay this story as a template over our life.

And we cannot do that.

We can't participate in this story without three things.

You do not, if you do not know, first of all, your desperate condition, you cannot participate in this story.

Second of all, you cannot participate in this story if you do not know who is the source of your healing.

And the second, and the third thing here is that you cannot participate in this story if you don't ask for God's healing touch.

Let's consider this first point.

Know your own desperate condition.

Some people, many people, let me use the word many people, are unaware of the root cause of their problem.

You'll notice as we first encounter Bartimaeus, he is begging for money.

He's not on the side of the road asking to be healed of his blindness.

He's on the side of the road asking for money, which makes sense because his blindness affected his whole life.

It caused him to be in a state of poverty and of great need.

He couldn't get a normal job, right?

He couldn't do what many normal people, quote unquote, could do in their life.

And so he is begging.

And yet he encounters Jesus, and Jesus asks him, What do you want me to do for you?

And he doesn't ask for more money.

He asks for the root cause to be addressed.

He is out there begging, he's poor, but when he gets the chance to talk to the problem fixer, he doesn't ask for more money.

He asks for the root cause to be addressed.

The reason that he is poor is because he is physically blind.

This blindness was that root issue.

Oftentimes, though, in our world, in our story, people do not know the root cause of the issue.

They know the symptoms, they know their suffering, but they do not know the root cause of the pain in their life.

If you serve in the medical field, we call this a misdiagnosis.

A misdiagnosis.

Maybe if you're a mechanic, again, we would use that same term.

Like you can't fix the car without knowing what the problem is.

Christianity is an invitation for you and I to engage truth as a penetrating light that reveals the root causes in our life.

As we encounter God, God comes into our life as light that opens up our eyes to see what is the root cause.

Now, the world will give you all kinds of diagnosis on what is the root cause.

Should we play Family Feud for a second?

We're small enough for you to shout out the world's diagnosis.

What are some of them?

What are some of the things that the world says are the root cause of the problem?

Low self-esteem?

Okay.

What else?

Okay, mental disorder?

Poverty, yep.

Self-absorption, okay, yeah.

Yep.

Family structure, lack of education, racism, gender bias, deregulation, or somebody's like regulation.

And then the last one I put down here is Trump, you know?

That's the diagnosis, right?

Yeah.

That's the diagnosis.

We've got all kinds of things that people throw out there and say this is the root cause of the problem.

This is why we have all the problems in this world.

But again, when we go to the Bible, the Bible is this light that shines on our life.

In fact, in Hebrews, it says that the Spirit of God, that God comes into our life, then the Word of God encounters our life, and it deals with like dividing between bone and marrow, right?

It gets to the motives and the intents of our hearts.

That is what, this is what God wants to do in us, in our life.

From the very beginning, the Bible, in the Bible, we see an explanation about the world, its origins, and the introduction of pain, suffering, and death.

Our Bible tells us that the world we live in is not perfect because at its conception there was a rebellion against God.

In Romans 5.12, Romans 5.12, we see this.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people because all sinned.

The Bible teaches that very at the very beginning of time, God created the world better than it is right now, in a perfect functional state.

And yet mankind rebelled against God, and that was a root cause for what we call the F's.

I think it's three Fs or four F's.

Finitude, right?

Which is that your life is now finite.

You've got frailty, human frailty, things break.

We've got fallenness, right?

That's just the fact that there's sin.

I can't remember what the other F is there.

You can figure it out after church.

Come next week and remind me.

Adam and Eve, you know the story of Adam and Eve, right?

They rebelled against God's instructions about what fruit they could eat in the garden.

That was this initial rebellion against God.

And from that point, Adam and Eve served as this, Adam served as the federal head.

With him, he brought in destruction over all of humanity, this brokenness.

So that's what we would cause, well, that's what we would call a root cause of suffering in the world.

There's another thing that the Bible speaks of, and that's Satan.

The Bible tells us that a third of God's angels, which are created spirit beings, followed the rebellion of a high angel, who we call Satan, and these third of the angels were cast out of heaven to earth, and now these fallen angels are called demons, and they oppose the work of God on earth.

In 1 Peter 5 8, it says that the enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Right?

So the Bible gives us really clear instructions.

You look at the world around you and the issues, that issue that's forefront in your mind, part, one of the realities is that that issue may be there because of sin.

Maybe it's your sin, but maybe it's, and oftentimes it's the sin of other people around you, right?

Or just the brokenness of the world you live in.

That's a possibility.

Another possibility is that Satan is just opposed to you, and this is some just kind of satanic opposition in your life.

Here's what you need to understand: you're not stuck in those things.

The God who of the Bible, who reveals himself in Scripture, is the God who heals, he provides, he gives victory, he overcomes death, he gives wisdom where you need wisdom.

The God of the Bible can rescue you in the midst of the sinful world you live in and in the midst of Satan's onslaught.

Okay, so it's important, it is crucial, it is critical for us if we're going to experience Bartimaeus' story.

If we are going to be healed in our issue, we need to first be able to diagnose, properly diagnose the root cause.

Second, you've got to know, we've got to know who can heal us.

You've got to know who can heal you.

Um again, the example of the mechanic.

If you have a car that is making a funny noise or won't turn on, the first step is to understand what is wrong with it.

To figure out what is going on with my vehicle.

But just knowing what's going on with it, that's not going to fix it, right?

The other day, I can't this happened to me with my vehicle.

I was having some issue with it, and I wanted so desperately to fix it.

I think it was my air conditioning back when it was the summer.

And I kept thinking, like, if I could just figure out what it was, I this was the faulty thinking.

I kept thinking, if I could just figure out what this was, I could fix it.

But then I realized, no, you can't, Josh.

You're not a mechanic.

You have no clue what you're doing.

If you can properly diagnose this, you're no better off.

Like, yeah, maybe, maybe your curiosity would be satisfied, but your your air conditioning is still broken, right?

It's not good enough just to know what the root cause is.

You've got to know who can fix it.

And do you see how in in this story, Bartimaeus didn't just know that Jesus was a miracle worker.

Do you notice this?

If you go back, look in your text there.

Look in the text.

It says twice, Jesus Bartimaeus cries out and he says, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

Son of David there, this is just a real quick quote from Bible dictionary.

This title, Son of David, is another way of presenting Jesus in his regal authority.

Because God gave a promise to David that his kingdom would last forever.

And David anticipated a future kingdom that was more glorious than his own.

And we called David and Solomon's kingdom the golden era, the golden era of Israel, right?

There was no higher peak, there was no greater time in Israel's history than the reign of David and Solomon.

There was no more land that was owned, there was no more wealth at any other point other than that reign right there between David and Solomon.

And yet God had promised to David a greater time, a greater season.

And so Israel's been waiting for thousands of years for a for that promise to David to be fulfilled.

And so when Barnamaeus cries out, Jesus, son of David, he's acknowledging the kingly line that would come through Jesus.

And here's the other thing.

For us as Luke, Bible students, this is a big deal for Luke.

Luke here is keying in on this idea that Luke is keying in on the um the royal lineage of Jesus.

Back in Luke chapter 1, verse 32, right as Jesus is being uh being born or being for foretold of his coming, it says, He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

Luke 1:32

The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.

Um Then just a few verses later, about 30 verses later, verse 69, same chapter.

He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.

It was key.

You see, it is vital to understand that Jesus was not just some dude, right?

Jesus was born of the lineage of David.

That means that he had a rightful claim to the throne.

He had this authoritative position in the nation of Israel.

He checked the box when it came to having the royal lineage.

Barnamaeus understood that Jesus had fulfilled God's promise to David to establish a glorious kingdom.

And you know, if you've been with us for a few weeks, we've been talking about this kingdom, how Jesus came to inaugurate a new kingdom.

But isn't it amazing, bringing this kind of into our 21st century?

Isn't it amazing how some people look to Jesus as a good example to follow or a nice teacher that they can learn some cute lessons from, but yet not turn to him for healing the root issue.

We learn from Scripture that Jesus isn't just a good moral teacher who we can emulate or somehow make the world.

By emulating, we can make the world a better place to live.

No, what the Bible teaches is that Jesus is the King of kings.

Jesus is the Lord of Lords.

Jesus is the creator of all things.

He is the one who fulfills the great plan of God.

Jesus is the embodiment of God's love and God's power.

Jesus is the beloved son who is sent in the world to rescue humanity from the fundamental cause of all brokenness, all pain, and all suffering.

He is the one who casts out demons.

He is the one who raises the dead widow's son.

Amen?

Amen.

That is the God of the Bible, right?

It's easy to take and isolate Jesus into some cute lesson where he's got, you know, the lamb still on his shoulders, and it's like, let's just follow Jesus.

But that's not the intent of Scripture.

Jesus invites people to follow him as his disciples, as apprentices of the way, to be 100% in and to experience a radical new kingdom that in a subversive way erupts through your life.

Right?

It comes, he literally doesn't just in, you don't just encounter him, but he gives you his very spirit.

The Spirit of God comes into you and gives you new life, abundant life.

And so the question that the text asks of us this morning is who is Jesus to you?

Who is Jesus to you?

As you look at and feel overwhelmed maybe by that issue, are you coming to that true source, Jesus Christ, who can heal you from this issue?

So the third thing here, the third thing is this asking.

It's not good enough to just know your problem, to know who can fix it, but you've got to reach out.

You've got to go to the Lord for his healing touch.

You cannot experience this story unless you reach out in faith for him to work.

Now, that seems obvious, right?

But man, sometimes it's not.

Bartimaeus knows his blindness is the root cause of the issue in his life.

He knows Jesus can heal him, but he raises hell to get Jesus' help.

Can I say that in church?

He raises hell to get Jesus' help.

He cries out.

He is socially awkward.

He makes the people around him feel uncomfortable because he cries out for Jesus' help.

The people around him tell him to be quiet.

But do you see, look in your text, look there, look in verse 39.

It says, He cried out all the more.

Repeat that after me.

He cried out all that more.

He cried out all that more.

Do you see it there in the text?

The crowd was telling Bartimaeus, be quiet.

Stop.

Stop making a scene.

You're making us uncomfortable.

Right?

We're so cool because we're in the club with Jesus.

And here you're kind of, you're, you're, you're, you're messing up the groove by yelling out from the back.

And yet it says in the text there, I love that phrase.

He cried out all the more.

And here you are, Sunday morning.

Other people have slept in.

You're in the basement of an old Catholic church, and people may not understand what you're doing.

Let me tell you, you are weird.

I'm weird.

You're weird for being here.

This is countercultural to be here.

Yeah, I don't know.

You see the size of this group.

Have you noticed the size of churches?

Just look at the size of this church, right?

This church went out of business, right?

St.

Michael's, which is up on Lombard Street, it's got eight properties.

It owned an entire block and it went out of business.

Do you know that since I moved here two years ago, three separate churches have been bought and turned into condos?

Let me tell you, what you're doing by being here this Sunday morning is weird.

It's countercultural.

But you're with Bartimaeus when he cried out all the more.

As you stubbornly come to church, as you seek Jesus in your quiet times and you read the Bible in the mornings, you are a weird person, but you are doing the right thing.

You may have people who tell you, don't go to church.

What are you doing?

There's nothing there for you.

When people might readily share with you their bad church stories, they do with me.

I grieve with people on their bad church stories and bad pastor stories.

And I, you know what?

Hey, I'm there with them.

I've had my own bad church stories as well.

But that's not why we go to church, right?

We go to church, we seek the Lord because he's the one.

He is the one that can heal us.

He's the one that can fix our problems.

In Isaiah 55, 6.

Let me just encourage you with this.

This is what it says.

In Isaiah 55, 6, it says, seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call on him while he is near.

And for Bartimaeus, he's sitting there.

This is his chance, right?

He can't go seek out Jesus.

He is crippled by his blindness, and yet Jesus passes by him, and it says that he cried out all the more.

And some of you, some of you are paralyzed by your situation.

You're hindered by this issue in your life, and you are calling everyone except for the one who needs to help you.

The one who can truly help you.

You've called the Social Security Office, you've called Medicare, Medical, you called the VA, you called Uncle Jimmy, you called the Lotto office because you surely thought they got the wrong numbers, and you called your pastor.

Let me tell you something.

You need to first cry out with Bartimaeus to Jesus, saying, Son of David, have mercy on me.

Do you know what mercy is?

Mercy is you not getting what you've got coming.

You got that?

Mercy is you not getting what you've got coming.

You deserve punishment.

I deserve punishment.

You deserve consequences for your actions.

You have messed around and then gone and messed over other people's lives, and now you're waiting for maybe karma to catch up with you.

But the mercy of God is knowing that you deserve to reap the whirlwind, but instead God turns the tide and holds back those consequences.

That's the mercy of God.

In Ephesians chapter 2, verse 4, it says this God, but because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, and then it continues on.

Ephesians 2:4

I don't want to continue on though.

I just want you to see that the God of the Bible is the one who is rich in mercy.

He's rich in mercy.

In James chapter 2, verse 13, it says that mercy, look at the bottom there, mercy triumphs over judgment.

James 2:13

God, it says in Jeremiah that God delights to show mercy.

I don't know if you've ever met any of these humbug Christians who look around them and go, man, this world's so sinful.

You know, it's just gonna get like burnt up.

God's gonna just smoke it like Sodom and Gomorrah, right?

But here's the thing in the prophets, it reveals that God loves.

What's normal for God is for him to show mercy.

Do you understand that?

The God of the Bible is the God who normally shows mercy.

He loves to show mercy.

So if your perception is that you're just walking around and you're just waiting for that lightning bolt to strike you for the last thing you did, you have, you're, you're, you're not understanding who the God of the Bible is.

He delights in showing mercy.

David says that his mercy extends to the heavens.

It's higher than the mountains.

God loves to show mercy.

And what does he do here for Bartimaeus?

He heals him.

He heals him.

And he and you note there that he says, Your faith hath made you well.

Which is a fascinating thing for him to note, to make note of, because um he's allowing, he's allowing for Barmaeus to take credit in his healing process, some of the credit.

Obviously, right after this, they're praising God.

So they know that God did the healing, but it's this participation.

It's fascinating.

This is not the only time where Jesus says, Your faith hath made you well.

He's said this in other places, but Jesus here is acknowledging and he's really affirming the importance in our life of expressing faith.

That's in line with what we've looked at for the last three or four weeks in Luke 18.

He's Jesus has been encouraging his disciples to press in in prayer, to persevere in prayer, to be a humble people.

Let me tell you, we started off this morning, um, started off this service by saying we know only don't only gather for ourselves.

And man, we are, I am this morning.

I'm like, Lord, have mercy on me.

I remember, I don't know how many times I said it this morning, but I remember one specific time, just going into the basement, knowing I couldn't, my wife couldn't be here with me, knowing a few other of our core people who normally help us set up aren't here.

And I'm just saying, God, have mercy upon us.

How are we gonna do church, you know, without half our team isn't here?

Have mercy on us, Lord.

And he was, you know, the sound system works, right?

We've got a we've got food on the table.

Thank you guys for those of you that have been here, right?

God's faithful to to allow the church to keep going, even when some of our team can't be here.

But not only did we gather and say, God, I need mercy, but but as a church, we we view ourselves as a people that stand in the gap.

Not because we're something great.

We are we're messed up, we're fools.

But we see ourselves as a as a people that are strategically placed in Fell's Point right now at 1110, 11.09 in the morning, God has placed us right here in a neighborhood where three other guys have tried to plant churches and and those churches just for one reason or another didn't take off, where the churches died out, where there's more bars per square foot than in anywhere else in Baltimore, where many people that are not even going to think about church this morning.

God has placed us here as a people where we want to say, God, we want to ask you to have mercy upon these people here.

Have mercy upon our neighbors, have mercy upon the people that are visiting Fells Point.

Have mercy upon Upper Fells Point.

We pray that.

I think every Wednesday morning for in our prayer time at the Compassion Center.

We're just gathering.

We say, Lord, we need you.

We need you to just have mercy upon us, whatever that looks like, whatever it looks like for each person.

So may that be our prayer this morning.

Let's um let's stand together.

Ask Nick to come and lead us in one more song.

And let's uh let's close out.

Uh, well, I'll close with a word of prayer, and then I'll let Nick um give us one, like pray us out at the end of this last song.

Lord, we um we look at this text, and Lord, um a part of your mission to this neighborhood is um you taking our desperate situation and rescuing us.

That you heal us like you did with Bartimaeus, and you make yourself known through that miracle.

And some of the stories in this room I know, some of them I don't know.

And I pray that the the glory of God would be put on display in all of our lives in this issue.

Lord, we in a selfish way, in a self-interest way, we we want our issue to be dealt with and taken care of.

But Lord, we also we want your glory, Lord, in the earth.

We want you to just magnify yourself, make yourself known in the earth by working in the context of our life.

And your word has encouraged us this morning.

You've you've you've told us to go back to you, to cry out to you, like Bartimaeus.

And we ask that, God, you would work in our in our midst.

Lord, don't delay.

Don't delay, come quickly, work quickly, Lord, in our lives.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.