Matthew Chapter 20 this morning. Matthew 20 is where we're going to be at. I love the Christmas season. I love singing songs about Christ's birth. Amen.
What a joy this is. Matthew 20, and we're going to read verse 29 down to verse 34 when you find your place there. Matthew 20, verse 29 through 34. The Bible says, And as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed him. And behold, two blind men sitting by the wayside, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, Thou Son of David. And the multitude rebuked them because they should hold their peace, but they cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, Thou Son of David. And Jesus stood still and called them and said, What will you that I shall do unto you? They say in him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened.
So Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes, and immediately their eyes received sight and they followed him. And Father, what a what a blessing to know that we have a God in heaven that is full of compassion and of tender mercies. And truly, the Christmas season reminds us of that as we think about God who sent his son in the form of a child to be born into this world, to be compassionate upon the souls of all that are here today, that you would die in our place. And I pray if anyone doesn't know Christ, that today would be the day of their salvation. Help us to understand these wonderful truths and to see the truths that you have for us today.
We ask it in Jesus' name. And God's people said, Man, you may be seated this morning. It is possible to be both seeing and blind. It is possible to be able to see physically but to be blind about many things in life.
Think about the political season that we have just endured. People can have very strong disagreements, and sometimes you walk away from a situation thinking or even saying, you know what, you are just so blind to what really is. This is much more severe when it comes to spiritual and eternal truths than just political truths. Jesus taught that the value of spiritual sight is so much greater in value than physical sight. It is better to see spiritually than to be able to see physically. And I don't know if there would be a worse thing to lose than your eyesight. To be able to see is one of the great blessings that we often take for granted. But Jesus said, it would be better to remove your eyes and to end up in heaven than to have two healthy eyes and to go to hell, right? And so it is possible to be seeing and blind at the same time. Spiritual blindness was a pandemic in the days of Christ.
The word pandemic has a ring to it, doesn't it? That we are not enjoyable to hear. But Jesus was surrounded by eyes that were physically healthy but spiritually they were blinded. In Matthew 15, 14, He told the people of the day concerning the religious leaders that He said they are blind leaders of the blind.
The people of His day that were the religious leaders who had the Bible, the Old Testament, the Torah. He said they are blind leaders of the blind because they were filled with pride instead of humility and they trusted in their own righteousness. And so they were religious leaders who were spiritually blind and spiritually blind people were following them. You ever talk to a person that's spiritually blind? It's even worse when they've been following a spiritually blind leader.
It's really hard to give spiritual sight to someone who has been deceived by a blind leader. Now this spiritual blindness upon the nation of Israel had been prophesied in Isaiah 6. Do you remember when Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up?
He fell before him. The seraphim were crying out, holy, holy, holy. And then Isaiah said, you know, I'm a man of unclean lips and then God sinned. And the seraphim actually touched his lips with one of the hot coals from the altar.
And then God made this question. He said, who shall go for us and who shall we send? And Isaiah said, here am I Lord, send me. And what's interesting is what God says after that in verse 9. He says, go and tell this people, hear ye indeed but do not understand and see indeed but perceive not or understand it not. He said, make the heart of this people fat and make their ears heavy and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and convert and be healed. And what he's saying is, you're going to preach to them but because of the amount of pride, instead of the truth giving them vision, it's going to make them blind. I told you a couple weeks ago that the truth of God's word will either produce the right thing in you or the wrong thing in you. That's why some of you have said this through the years, you know, my loved one, my cousin, my uncle, my dad, my wife, my sister, my friend, you know, they know the Bible as good as anybody I've ever known and they're as lost as anybody you've ever known.
Anybody know what I'm talking about? The truth of God will either create humility in you because if it doesn't create that which would be the right effect, then it will harden you. The same sun that melts the snow hardens the clay and that is what happens to the heart of a man. In Matthew 13, Jesus began to preach in parables. The disciples were taken back by this and they asked him, why are you speaking to them in parables in Matthew 13 10? And listen to the answer of Christ in verse 11. He answered and said to them, because it's given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. I'm speaking in parables to elucidate, give more truth to spiritual realities for you, the believers, the ones who have faith, but he says, but to them it is not given. He goes on in verse number 12, for whosoever has to him shall be given.
You have faith, you have sight spiritually, you'll be given more and you'll have more abundance, but whoever has not from him shall be taken away even that he has or even that he thinks he has. Verse 13, here's the key there, therefore speak I to them in parables because seeing, see not. They can, sure they can physically see, they hear the story, but they can't understand at all what it means.
It is absolutely hidden from them. Hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which sayeth hearing they shall hear, and he goes on and he quotes Isaiah 6 9. Now Matthew 13 15, he says this people's heart is waxed gross, their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed. They in their pride have willingly shut themselves off from receiving the truth. Just recently I was going through the gospel with somebody and they interrupted me just repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly and they said I just don't believe what you're telling me. And this person is in a very physically bad situation, not doing well at all, very up in years, health is bad, cancer is just not good.
Not sure how much longer they have it. And I said you ever heard the statement that when the student's ready the teacher will appear? I said you know what that means and I knew she knew what it meant because she had been in a world that would use that statement a lot. And I said, I said you could have Jesus here telling you the truth but you'll never get it if you're not willing to receive it.
And at that point she stopped talking and she started listening. You can say all the right things but it doesn't mean anything if somebody's not willing to listen. Jesus could preach this morning and make it worse for people if they don't accept it with a humble spirit. Because more judgment will be on their head because what you know you're now accountable for.
Right? To whom much is given much is required. So Jesus made it clear if you reject the truth, if you don't want the truth, God will give you what you ask for. You don't want the truth, He'll give you a lie.
He'll let you believe the lie. If you don't want light, He'll give you darkness. If you don't want Christ, then He'll let you go into eternity without Him forever.
If that's what you desire, He will give you over to your own depravity. Listen, to be able to see physical realities you need physical eyes and to be able to see spiritual truth you have to have spiritual eyes and only God makes the blind to see both physically and spiritually. First Corinthians 2 14 says the natural man doesn't receive the things of the Spirit of God because those spiritual truths are spiritually discerned. You have to be born again. You have to have spiritual life to be able to have spiritual eyes.
Only God can do that. Speaking of the Jews, Paul writes, and I want you to see this very clearly, Second Corinthians 3 14, talking of the Jews, who Paul was, he says their minds were blinded, not their eyes, but their minds. For until this day remains the veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament. So he's talking about like, it's like a blanket on their head, their brain, they can't receive the light of the truth because they have this veil that's keeping them from understanding it. And he says that veil is done away in who?
That's where you guys can even, you're even allowed to talk. It's done away in Christ. But even unto this day when Moses has read the veils on their heart, you can read the Bible and it does nothing for the person. Nevertheless, when it better translated, when the person shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. The veil is taken away for the person who turns to Christ. So when I talked to this precious woman, I said, listen to me, I said, if you were wrong, would you want to know?
She said, yes. I said, then come to Christ in his word and say, God, if I'm wrong, show me with a humble heart and begin to read the Gospel of John and see what God can do. If you want the truth, he'll give it to you. But if you don't want it, even Jesus isn't going to be able to talk you into that because he doesn't give such truth to hard hearts.
You have to open your heart up. And if you're here today and you've come here to be a judge of the word, I can tell you, you're playing God. Well, I don't know if I believe that book. I don't know if I believe.
Then you just set yourself up as the standard, right? And you've placed yourself over the word of God. Do you think he's going to give you the truth? You'll walk out worse than you came in. You'll be further away than when you came. But if you come today and you already know what you know, you've been in the driver's seat of your life, right?
We already know how we drive. Why don't you think for a second about the possibility that we could be wrong? That hey, maybe I am wrong about the Bible. What if it is the word of God? There's no book like it in the world. It's not like any other religious book. I know what these other religious books say, and I know how they're written. There's no book in the world like the Bible. The Quran was written by one guy, 119 chapters in it.
One man wrote it in the sixth century, seventh century. And here you have a book written over 1,500 years by over 40 human authors on three different continents in three languages, fits together like a hand in a glove, and it's still the best selling book in America. It has exploded in its sales this year. The Bible is taking off, impacting universities.
It's impacting the entire culture right now in one of the most dynamic works that I've seen in my lifetime. There is a spirit of revival that's beginning to move across America in a very, very interesting way to me. Since the pandemic, there has been an 89% increase in church attendance by millennials.
Is that crazy? 27 to 44-year-olds? Among the baby boomers, the 65 and over, a 0% increase in church attendance. We're not losing the young people. We're losing the older people. Is that sad? I've been shocked by that over the last few years.
I've seen it happening, but the statistics have now come out to support that, and it's been tragic. Maybe we're getting into where those that are getting older have come out of the 60s and 70s, that crazy generation of Woodstockers. Some of you all have those. Some of you dear old, white-haired, sainted ladies, you got that dress down because you got that Woodstock tattoo on your ankle.
Don't you? I know it. Cover it up, ladies.
Yes, ma'am. My wife just said Joshua, and when she says Joshua, I know I've crossed the line there. Somebody asked me the other day, they said, do you go by Josh or Joshua? I said, I go by Josh, but if my mom or my wife says Joshua, I'm in trouble. That's when you stop. You ask the question. I could be wrong.
I may have done something wrong. Now, here in Matthew 20, Jesus is just over a week away from the crucifixion. This is his final journey to Jerusalem, and he has just foretold that he is going to be crucified when he gets there.
Just to understand, this is less than two weeks away from the cross for him. As he travels to Jerusalem, there is a massive caravan because in that season everybody's going to Jerusalem because of its Passover season. In verse 29 it says they're departed from Jericho, a great multitude that followed him. Verse 29 tells us he's leaving Jericho. Jericho is a beautiful city in that part of the world in that day.
It was seven miles from the Jordan River, about 15 miles as the bird flies to Jerusalem, about 20 miles by road. Verse 29 says he is leaving Jericho. The city of Jericho, again, we'll talk about this, there was an old Jericho and a new Jericho because in one of the stories in the accounts, like in Matthew and Mark, it talks about him leaving Jericho, but in Luke it says that he was going to Jericho. What happened was there was an old Jericho that Joshua had defeated, if you remember back in the book of Joshua, I believe it's chapter number six and seven, and the new Jericho was where King Herod had built a winter palace, a beautiful place. They called it the Eden of the Old World, and the fragrance that would come about from the flowers would even go all the way down to the sea. It was just a beautiful place, and that's what Jericho means, like perfumed is maybe where it even got its name from.
But he knows what awaits him there. He spent three years preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He gave them God's truth, and by and large Jesus had been rejected. He had done really about every miracle imaginable, and yet John writes in John 12, 37, though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him. Now his first miracle, if you remember, was changing water into wine at the wedding at Cana. This is his last public miracle. The last public miracle Jesus does is right here, and I just have to ask the question, why this miracle?
Why end it with this? Was it just by chance that blindness was that last public miracle? This healing of two blind men on the road from Jericho provides one of the most incredible rebukes to the nation of the people of that day. You just heard me read as we opened the service up today how many times it was prophesied in the Old Testament as well as fulfilled in the New Testament that they were blind to the truth. They were blind to the truth.
They were blind to the truth, and what's fascinating is these blind men believed while being blind. They could see by faith what others could not see by sight, and isn't that what Hebrews 11 one is? Faith is a substance, the realization of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It's the factual evidence of what you cannot see. Faith is not seeing to believe. Faith is believing so you can see. Their eyes were opened before their eyes were opened, you could say. They believed while having not seen the miracles but only hearing about them. You know, Thomas needed empirical evidence, didn't he? He said, unless I put my hand in his side and my finger into his hand, I will not believe.
I have to see it. And Jesus said, you have to see to believe. Blessed are they who have not seen and believe. And that's all blind people could do, right? I mean, they could not see it. They would have to only hear it and believe it.
Hey, that person who was lame was able to walk. Well, they can't see that. How do they know that's true? Everything had to be by faith.
Well, I can hear about it all day long, but I haven't seen anything. For them, it's a massive faith issue. And so what does God need to do, I would ask you today, to prove himself to you? To the crowds, Jesus did all the miracles and yet they didn't believe, but these blind people do believe. Do you see physically, but are you blind spiritually?
Which blindness do you think is worse? The healing of these blind men present truths that transcend the physical story. And I pray today that you and I would be able to see that. There's more that meets the eye than what you read on the surface of this story.
And so let's look into it today. The blind beggars poor condition in verse 29. As they departed from Jericho, a great multitude follow him and behold two blind men sitting by the wayside. This is a well-known story. This is listed in all the synoptic gospels here in Matthew.
It's in Mark chapter 10, Luke chapter 18. And again, when you read the three accounts, you have two of them talking about where he's leaving Jericho and one talking about where he's coming into Jericho. And that's because there were two Jericho's in that day.
Jericho was known as a city of palms. It means place of fragrance. And it was such a beautiful place that Edersheim, who was one of the chief Jewish historians writes, it was the Eden of Palestine, the fairy land of the old world. But that beautiful place was disrupted by the scene of two beggars on the side of the road in a pitiful condition. The great beauty of the city is not something that they had ever beheld. They would have been able to smell the fragrance, they would have been able to hear about the beauty, but they had never seen it. They lived in a dark world. And blindness today is a tragedy for sure, but it was even worse in that time. You know, I would think that out of all things you would lose, eyesight would be one of the worst.
It would have to be one of the worst, if not the worst. Blindness was a real issue in that day. People would be born blind due to different infectious diseases that would sometimes be transmitted during birth from their mother.
Blowing sand could happen in those times. They would have accidents, fights that would cause blindness. You know, many of us would be severely impaired if we lived in that day because they didn't have, obviously they didn't have corrective lenses back then. Who would be blind without the corrective lenses? I mean, we would be in bad shape, right?
Don't give that guy a gun to shoot anything, you know. But blind people in first century Palestine would be reduced to becoming beggars because they could not work. They would have to beg people to provide for them. This blind beggar had a friend, but his only friend was another blind man. It would have been nice to have a friend that could see, but he's joined up with another beggar. Matthew speaks of two blind men sitting and begging.
When you read Mark and Luke's account, it only talks about one. Mark's gospel names one of the blind beggars and gives him the name Bartimaeus. This is blind Bartimaeus and his friend. The Aramaic word for Bartimaeus, bar means son of, and Timaeus is his dad's name. So it's son of Timaeus is what it means. Bartimaeus is like, that's the son of Timaeus.
In our English, we don't think about this, but we put son on the end of names like John's son, Adam's son, Jeffer's son, where they always put son on the front of a name. Now, another tragedy about blindness was that people in those days felt like if you were blind or struck with some kind of disease like this health condition, that that was a judgment of God upon you. If you remember in John 9, when the man who was blind from birth, even his disciples said, who sinned?
This man or his parents. So you were not always shown the level of compassion that one might think. In that society, they saw blind people as being very low on the social ladder. They saw them below the normal sinners.
They were only, beggars were only above publicans and tax collectors. Though the Old Testament law made provision to care for those in need in people's day, they seldom had anything to do with them because they felt if I got around blind people, they would defile me. That's what that arrogant, self-righteous system created in that day, a very, very uncompassionate system.
And so they were really considered as outcasts in their culture. And what is interesting with this is that on Jesus' journey to Jerusalem, he brings sight and salvation to these two outcast blind men. And when you couple this with Luke's story, immediately after this, that's where he meets Zacchaeus, who also becomes a believer, right after that story in Luke 19.
Now this was an absolute assault on the self-righteous pride of the religious elite in that society. God was being loving. He was being merciful to outcasts, to sinners, to the people on the lowest of the totem pole, blind beggars.
And then here's Zacchaeus, you're doing this for. And so this shows us that the blind were the ones who were actually able to see. The inverted principle was in full display that Jesus taught that the last will be first and the first will be last as blind people and Zacchaeus come into the kingdom before the righteous, self-righteous people of that day. And so we see the blind beggars condition their poor situation and then we see the blind beggars incredible opportunity, as verse 30 tells us, when they heard Jesus pass by. Now they had no sight but their hearing was good. And it would probably be amplified because if you don't have vision, your hearing has to carry the load of both. So these men would have been in a pitiful state of begging, their ears hear a crowd coming. I can tell you they probably heard better than most people because of that.
They would listen for people coming by and they would begin to beg at that point. And you know, there were thousands of people journeying with Jesus. There are some historians who said when he got close to Jerusalem there could have been upwards of 200,000 people coming along with him. Massive crowds of people. We're talking massive crowds of people. Jerusalem would swell dozens of times over. Jerusalem just got filled up with people during the Passover. Huge, huge gathering. So he's going along crowds, these massive crowds around him. And I imagine they're thinking, man, this is payday. We've never heard a crowd like this forever, like coming around here.
This is a wonderful time. And according to Luke's account, the beggars asked what was meant by the large assembly in Luke 18, 36. It says in hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant and they told him that Jesus of Nazareth passes by. Now no doubt these beggars had heard about Jesus.
Because just a few miles down the road is the city of Beth, outside of Jerusalem, just a couple miles is Bethsaida, where the town of Bethany, where Mary and Martha and Lazarus, and it was just about a week before this that Jesus actually raised Lazarus from the dead. So this would have permeated the area. They no doubt would have heard stories about this. Surely such miracles would have reached their ears and they would have heard about his compassion in doing certain things. I wonder how often they thought, boy, if Jesus could just pass by us. Do you think they perhaps, I don't know if it would be reading between the lines to say that I would almost bet these guys had prayed that God would send Jesus their way. God, could you just send Jesus this way, the prophet?
Could you send this one who could do such miracles our way? Surely they longed for that. And I don't think that's too far-fetched because of how they respond when he does come by. Don't you think Jesus knew these men longed to hear him and to see him? Jesus came to Zacchaeus' house because that wee little man climbed up in a tree, right? And I think Zacchaeus perhaps had more of a heart to see Jesus there than many others, and that's maybe why Jesus came to his house. Friend, I would ask you, how much have you sought after Jesus and do you realize that he wants to come by your way?
He wants to stop by your path. Psalm 34 says this poor man cried and Yahweh or the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The Lord says in Jeremiah 33, call unto me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which hell no it's not. Psalm 121, the psalmist says in my distress I cried unto the Lord and he heard me.
The blind beggars poor condition was a sad situation. They were in a hopeless cause, daily seeking survival, and then they had an incredible opportunity as Jesus comes by and how did they respond? And that's what we see here in verse 30 and 31. It says when they heard that Jesus passed by, they crodzowed. It's a Greek word, it just means they shouted. They began to holler, in the Kentucky language. They hollered. These beggars interest in the crowds went from being interested in having themselves financially supported to now only wanting Jesus to come to them.
They weren't crying out for alms, they were crying out for Jesus. And notice how they address him. It says that the two blind men sitting by the wayside when they heard that Jesus passed by cried out saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David. The word Lord there, the familiar kurios, it can be used as a proper title for like a teacher, like in an honorable way, like master, it's sometimes translated as. But primarily the word kurios carries the idea that this one is God. It's a title for God, for the Messiah. It is saying in effect you are my master and kurios also carries the idea that I am owned by you.
I belong to you. And he also calls him the son of David. Now why the title son of David?
That's not something that we ever really say, is it? We call him Jesus, but you know, you can call him the son of David. But that was more of a Jewish focused reality. I've been doing a study through the book of Chronicles and 40% of Chronicles deals with Solomon and David. And every king they go through, they match them up next to King David. He did right like his father David, or he did not walk in the ways of David.
Everything was matched up next to David. In the New Testament we don't get matched up to the old David, we get matched up to the new David, right? The greater David. Now this title was a title that was assigned to the Messiah. It was a messianic title. And when I say messianic title, that may sound somewhat strange to some young Christians or such, but Messiah is from the Hebrew word Messiah. Messiah, Messiah. It means just translated as the anointed of God.
The anointed one. The Greek term for that is Christos, and it's where we get the word Christ from. So when you say Jesus Christ, these are titles of his. His last name is not Christ. You're saying Jesus, the anointed one of God.
Does that make sense? So Jesus, the Savior, Yeshua means salvation. Jesus, the anointed, the Christ of God, the anointed Messiah of God, and Lord, who is God. So when you say Jesus Christ the Lord, Savior, anointed of God, the Messiah the Deliverer, who is God himself.
Does that make sense? It's why we call him Jesus Christ the Lord. You can call him Jesus, you can call him Christ, you can call him Lord, but those are titles that the Bible gives to him. Now God promised David that his throne would be established forever through his descendants. In 2 Samuel 7 16 it says, and thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee, thy throne shall be established forever.
So the Davidic throne would continue forever. And listen to how the angel Gabriel describes baby Jesus to Mary. In Luke 1 32, he shall be great, shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David.
And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom there shall be no end. John the Baptist, father Zacharias, when he got his speech back after the birth of little John, little baby John. In Luke 1 it says, and he hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David. That's why when the census came, Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David in Luke 2 4. When Matthew's gospel opens up, listen to how Matthew started the whole thing in Matthew 1 1.
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of who? To Gentiles like us, that's not like a big thing we ever think about. To the Jews, they're like, oh, the Messiah, the Deliverer, like that's where they would go. Like we think about Savior, they think about Son of David.
That's a similar reality. In Matthew 21 9, in the multitude that went before that followed Christ saying, Hosanna to the Son of David. This is when he enters into Jerusalem. And then in Revelation 5, do you remember when no one was found worthy to open the scroll which is the title deed to the world? And in Revelation 5, 5 it says, one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not, behold, the line of the tribe of Judah, the root of David hath prevailed. And then listen to how Jesus concludes the book of Revelation. Listen to how Jesus concludes the Bible.
I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and offspring of David. So in effect to call Jesus the Son of David is equivalent to the Messiah, the Christ, the Deliverer, the Savior, God's anointed. You don't hear a bunch of people around Jesus calling him the Son of David. And there is a chance the reason that they were rebuking them, like don't say that, they felt like that could have been blasphemous. That could have been one of the reasons why the crowd was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't assign him as that title.
Like that's too far. Now in those days, many were interested in Jesus and who were interested in Jesus, but the crowds were not declaring that. But the blind, these blind men, they could see what many people who had eyes could not see.
I love what Charles Spurgeon says. He said, Our Lord here is called by his royal name, thou Son of David. Even the blind could see that he was a king's son. Their faith didn't need empirical evidence, did it? They believed it. That's why the Bible says in Hebrews 11, one again, it's evidence of things not seen. That's what faith is. Better to be physically blind than spiritually blind.
Better to be impaired physically than to be impaired spiritually. And not only did they have the right faith, but they had the right spirit. Notice what they based their request upon in verse 30. They cried out saying, Have mercy. Have mercy on us. This shows a humble spirit of worship.
It's an interesting statement. Why not say, Jesus, heal my eyes. I'm blind. Restore my sight. I didn't do anything to deserve blindness.
If you're loving, if you're a good God, if you're gracious and kind, I feel like I'm a pretty good person. I don't deserve to be a beggar. I don't deserve to be in this situation.
Can you just heal my blindness? They don't say any of that. Instead of lifting up their worth, they lift up their unworthiness. When you ask for mercy, you're saying in effect, I am unworthy.
Does that make sense? I was talking to somebody this last week and I was going through the Gospel with them and I said, If you stood before God and he said, Why should I let you in heaven? What would you say? And they said, I feel like I'm good enough. I feel like I'm good enough. People tell me that often.
I feel like I'm good enough. And until they realize they're not good enough, they'll never make it because they see. And Jesus said for judgment it might come into the world that those who see may be made blind and those who are blind which shall be able to see. So as long as you can see, you're going to be blind forever. As long as you think you are the answer, as long as you think you are who you put your faith in, you think you see but you are blind. It's only people who recognize God, I am blind. The blind are the ones who call out to him, right? And if you're saved today, you at some point recognize you were blind and you needed sight and he gave you sight. And I want you to know this, if you're saved today, he did a greater miracle in you than he did in these guys by their physical sight. You understand?
That's a blessing. And so they were asking for mercy. To ask for mercy is to say this, Lord, help me based on your goodness, not on my goodness. This is how the godly man Daniel prayed after 70 years in Babylon.
You want to be humbled? Read Daniel 9. Daniel 9 is it. Daniel 9 will put you on your knees. Daniel was like the one guy in the Bible. It's like you're thankful that not everybody was like Daniel in the Bible.
Because the Bible never says anything bad about him. It's like this guy just like, you know, he would rather be thrown into a lion's den than miss a prayer meeting. It's like, man, if everybody in the Bible is like that, man, you know, I need a good Peter in there every once in a while, you know?
Give me one of those guys who says something awful, you know, just messes up and does something they shouldn't. And then it's like, man, you know. Thankfully, the Bible tells its people as they are. But Daniel, I say that because of how he prays. After 70 years in Babylon in Daniel 9, he says, oh, my God, incline thine ear and hear. Open thine eyes and behold our desolations and the city which is called by thy name, for we do not present our supplication before thee for our righteousness, but for thy great mercies. I think sometimes people go through some difficulties in life. They spend one, two, three, four years in some physical health situation and they think how could God allow this to happen to me?
Seventy years. Lord, I am unworthy for you to answer me. Only do it based on your mercies.
That's a man who sees. Salvation is not attained through something we've done or what we do. It's only because God is gracious. Titus 3, 5, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.
It's all mercy. How did God save people in the Old Testament? You think they worked themselves into favor with God? Well, didn't they keep the law? No.
No. What did Noah say? The Bible says, and Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Abraham, by faith Abraham became a child of God, the Bible teaches us. That's what Romans 4 is all about.
That's what Genesis chapter number 12 through 15, we see his faith. And so, if you want to activate the great work of God in your life, you must come humbly. You must come as one who recognizes they are undeserving. These blind men cry out passionately and publicly for Jesus the Messiah to come and have mercy. And so often people won't do that today.
And you know why? You know why people won't call out to God? Because either they trust in themselves that they, well I haven't sinned that much. I don't feel like I'm bad enough to go to hell. Well, the Bible says in Revelation 21, 8 that even all liars would have their place in the lake of fire.
Have you ever told a lie? You can think you'll be okay, but I'm telling you the Bible says you're not. We've sinned more than we realize. The Bible says in James 2, 10 if we keep all the law of God and offend in one point, we're guilty of all.
That's a big, big reality. Now, the other reason people do not call out to God is not just self-sufficiency, but because of fear of what people think. Isn't it sad that we care more what other people think than what God thinks? You know, if God stirs in your heart to ever come and pray at an altar, don't worry about what other people think. Man, they might think I have something wrong.
No, they might actually think you have something right. They may think that you have a burden for your lost friends who need to be saved. They may think that you just want to come and worship God for the great mercy He's had in your life. Maybe something wrong if you never do go to the altar.
I'm not talking you have to go to an altar to be right with God, but I'm saying in your life, whether it's your bedside, in your life, there should be some altar moments in your life, right? There should be some humbling of ourself before God. Don't let fear of what other people think silence us.
And notice, you know, these guys don't care what the people think. They're crying out. And notice how the crowd responds in verse 31, and the multitude rebuke them because they should hold their peace. Rebuke there means that they charge them strictly.
It's the same Greek word that was used when Jesus rebuked the winds and the seas and they became calm. The crowd was strictly forbidding them. It was be silent. Like, stop it.
Stop saying that. Like, they were really putting it on them. And it wasn't just one guy in the crowd saying it to the beggars. It's like the crowd was saying it. Pressure was on them. Matthew 20, 31, it goes on, but they cried the more. They cried the more saying, have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David. They got more annoying to the crowd.
What I love is this. They did not let the crowds determine their call. They let Jesus determine their passion.
It wasn't defined by the world. And I think so oftentimes we can allow crowds to silence our faith. Far from being silent, they just get louder.
The amp was turned up. I think it's sad to consider how many have missed the great work the Lord could have done, what he could have done, if we would have just called out to him. John 7, 13, but so many were afraid of what the world had to say. John says this, how be it, no man spoke openly of him for fear of the Jews. John 12, 42, nevertheless, among the chief rulers also many believed on him, but because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him openly, lest they should be put out of the synagogue.
Why? Because they love the praise of men more than the praise of God. That was an intellectual faith these guys had. It wasn't a true saving faith. You can believe on Jesus and not be saved.
Many will call him Lord and not end up in heaven. Are you public about your faith in Jesus Christ? Well, you know, I just don't want to be offensive. I don't want to be pushy. I don't want to upset anyone. Listen, I'm not talking about being obnoxious. You ever been around an obnoxious Christian? That's not what I'm talking about. But I believe that our life should be a light in this world.
We should be salt and light in the world. People should know that, hey, when your name gets brought up at work, like, oh, yeah, they're a Christian. If your name gets brought up and it's like, oh, I don't know.
Well, I just don't think I should ever, you know, I just don't want to, like, talk about that stuff at, well, I can tell, I remember working at the Springfield Gazette when I lived in Springfield, Missouri, and I was a college student, worked around quite a few people, and the worst-mouthed girl was another college student, and every day just talking nasty stuff, and it just was so annoying, and I remember there was a break time and I was talking to one of the people about the Lord. We were just talking about Jesus back and forth, and that girl piped in and she shoved herself into the conversation. She said, you know, you can't talk about that blanket stuff. You'll get in trouble for that blanket.
You know, she's blankety blanket. I said, listen. I said, I have to listen to your filthy talk, and I said, your filthy talk every day of the week, and if I want to talk about Jesus, I will talk about Jesus Christ.
I was like, where is it? I won't keep talking about Jesus Christ. But could that offend her? Yes!
Yes! But anything would offend her except her filthy mouth, and, you know, I try to be kind and gracious, but I can tell you this. If, you know, Romans 3.23 is offensive. John 14.6 is offensive, and you don't want to be obnoxious about it.
You don't want to be like, just, you can be, don't be an obnoxious Christian, but be somebody who is loving, who is firm, who is gracious, but who is strong, and doesn't let the world define them. You let Christ define your faith. You can talk about Jesus in your public school, students. When you go to school, you can talk to your friends about Jesus.
If you're in college in the university, you can bring up Jesus Christ, and you can be public about that. You can carry your Bibles. You can read your Bible in school.
You can read your Bible in the universities. You can do that. Yes, you can. You can go to work and put your Bible on your desk, and you can leave it there. You can have it crossed. You can have verses up. Yes, you can.
Yes, you can. For some reason, some in Christianity think you can't do some of those things. That's not true. The ACLU would like you to think that, but we live in America where there's men and women in this room who have sacrificed portions of their life and time to give us those, protect those freedoms that we have, and the government doesn't give us our freedoms. God gives us our freedoms.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and we have freedom of speech to stand up for what we believe in, right? Don't sit in silence. We can live out our faith.
Get something at the store. Merry Christmas. God bless you. Have a wonderful day. And by the way, here's a card I would love to invite you to our church and give them a card, right?
Don't be afraid. This silly, happy holiday stuff that happened years ago, isn't that annoying? The culture's changing, isn't it?
Culture's changing, friends. And I believe the Lord's looking to show himself strongly on behalf of those whose heart is right with him. This man was going to cry out to Jesus. He did not care who it offended.
He didn't care. And now let's bring to the conclusion of this, the Lord's merciful response. Look at verse 32. And Jesus stood still. His faith caused Jesus to stop in his tracks. His faith caused Jesus to take notice. We're not talking about like Jesus in the 12.
We're talking about like Jesus in 100,000 people. What happens when he stops? You know what happens? Everybody else stops. And then everybody on the other side's like, why are we stopping? It's like the kid who wakes up, you know, your mother's got a, you know, we got a long drive here.
We got to stop it. They're like, what's going on? And the word would, oh, there's a couple blind beggars. What are you doing? Jesus is wanting to talk to them. He's wanting to talk to those outcasts. He's wanting to get near. He's wanting them to be brought now to him. What kind of guy is this? He makes himself accessible to the lowest. He's disrupting his journey to the chief city, the city of the great king to talk to beggars. Is that who this is?
Is that who this is? Are we getting what Jesus said back in verse 27? Whoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. Do we see the son man did not come to be ministered unto but to minister? Do we see that we're to be like this, that no service to people is below us? Well, you know, that ministry is a little below me, is it?
It wasn't for him. The king kneels to such people in helping them. He comes to their level with such grace, overwhelming grace. You know, the Bible says as they were calling out to him, you know, I think about James 4, draw nigh to God and he will what?
Yeah. Don't be such a Calvinistic thinker that you think that God does all the drawing. Listen, you are to draw near to him. Sure, he initiates in your heart, but it is also reciprocated that you must draw nigh to God. The Lord's question, I love this. He says, what shall you, what will you have me to do?
Love that. Imagine with me you're foreclosing on your house. You have no money. Your children are starving. You're impoverished. Your vehicles are taken. Elon Musk shows up at your house.
They just said this last week, he is now worth $350 billion. And he comes to you and he says, is there anything I can do for you? Why, yes.
Yes, there is. As a matter of fact, you just happened to come by at the right time. He's like, how much you need? You're taken care of. And you understand that what he would have to offer you would be a very temporary thing that would cause such joy. But what Jesus has to offer you this morning is so far beyond that. So far beyond that.
I hope you can see that. The Bible says, what does it profit if a man gains the whole world but he loses his own soul? Wouldn't it be great if Elon Musk came to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior?
I like so many things about him. I would love to see him come to Christ. I love Psalm 21 four. I pray this would come into anyone's heart today who doesn't know Christ. It says he asked life of thee and thou gavest it him even length of days forever and ever. You want eternal life?
Come to him and ask him. He's asking you, what would you want me to do for you? But I'm worried what other people think.
Are you going to miss it? One thing I would like to point out as well is Jesus could have walked by, healed these guys and made no scene about it. Rather, he stopped so everyone can take notice that he is a God who is full of compassion and great mercy.
And he loves the lowest of these. The men said, Lord, that our eyes may be opened. That our eyes may be opened. Verse 34, so Jesus had compassion on them as he does all through the gospel records. He touched their eyes and immediately they received their sight.
You know, that's something you never see like Benny Hendo. Blind people don't get healed by guys like that. Nobody gets healed by guys like that. But you don't see them healing people born blind or having blindness, right? It's always like something you can't see.
Oh, my back's better. And what I love about this, after their eyesight is healed, by the way, no one in the Bible heals blind people but Jesus. When you study the Old Testament, that was a messianic prophecy about him. And notice when their eyes are opened, they followed him. They followed him.
With eyes open, the two men followed him. When you see clearly, you will follow Jesus. It is indeed clarity of sight that gives you clarity of direction.
Right vision always results in a right path. They could have said, wow, look how beautiful Jericho is. We always smelled it, but now we can see it. This is like the Eden of Palestine. We would love to stay.
No, no, it wasn't that. They said, Jesus, where are you going? We want to be with you. You're the most beautiful thing. When he touched their eyes, the first thing they saw was Jesus. Can you imagine?
Do you think there was anything more beautiful that the world had to offer than that face? What a glory that when our loved ones pass from this life, they open their eyes in the presence of the King. We're down here crying and they're like, listen, if you knew, wipe away tears from your eyes, friends, because it's glory in front.
It's glory ahead of us. You know, I'm reading between the lines just a little bit here, but that's okay. In the upper room in Acts 2, because this is only like a week and a half from Jesus's crucifixion. In the upper room, it says the 12 were there, but there was 120 in the upper room and we don't know the identity of these other people. I would almost guarantee Blind Bartimaeus and his friend were part of that 120. I would have to ask, where else would they be?
Right? I mean, they came to Jerusalem and it's a 20-mile trek. It's not an easy road.
Like it's windy, it's hot, it's difficult, it's rugged. They left the beautiful part to go up to a 1500-foot elevation to get up to Jerusalem from where they were. This was a hard thing to do. And it's probably very likely the reason that Mark used the name Bartimaeus because everybody's like, oh, we know Bartimaeus. That's where he got saved at. He was a beggar. You mean Bartimaeus was, he was a beggar, him and his friend? Very likely he became very central at some level that church would have known him.
That's why they used his name. I close today with the words of Jesus in John 9. Jesus said, for judgment I am coming to the world that they which see not might see and that they which see might be made blind. You know, the humble will be given true spiritual sight and salvation and the self-righteous, the proud, those who trust in themselves will be left in the dark. The Bible is clear that without Christ we are like these blind men. And it's only through Christ that we have life's vision. The blind men took full advantage of this incredible opportunity. They called out to Jesus.
They did not let the crowds define their call. They let Christ define it. And I don't know what your need is today, friend, but just know this. The Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, was buried and he rose again. And it's only through him that you can be saved today.
Have you fully committed your life to Jesus Christ? You say these men followed Jesus because he healed them. Jesus has done more for us spiritually than physical eyesight. And by the way, if we compare that story to Luke 18 verse 42 and 43, Jesus says your faith hath saved you.
Sodzo is the Greek word. They were made not only physically whole, but these two men became spiritually whole as well. He brought salvation to them. Is he your savior today? If he's not, why don't you come call out to him? And he's asking, what would you want me to do? What would you want me to do? What would you ask of him? How often do we receive not because we ask not? What would you have me to do? Isn't that an amazing thing from the king to ask his servants, his creation? And today he offers that to you today. Let's all stand this morning.
