God: Never too Busy - Life of Christ Part 64

On Wednesday of this past week, Marion Barry took a break in his very hectic schedule as the first week of being the mayor of DC again and went to a funeral, a funeral of a fellow named Andre Bell. You say, wow, you know, Andre Bell, I never heard of this guy, but he must be pretty important if the mayor in the very first week he's mayor, you know, would take a break and go to this guy's funeral.

Who is he? Well, the truth of the matter is Andre Bell was not a political power broker. He was not a contributor to the Barry campaign. He wasn't a lobbyist. He wasn't a man with a lot of connections. Andre Bell was a 12-year-old boy.

Andre Bell was shot to death on December 26th in Anacostia for no known reason. And his claim to fame, if we could use that phrase, is that he was the youngest shooting victim in Washington, DC in 1994. Now, the Washington Post in referring to this boy said he was just a normal boy. He loved the things normal boys loved. And one of the things he really looked forward to every weekend was the possibility of seeing his dad.

Andre Bell's dad is in prison serving a 10-year sentence for armed robbery in the state of Maryland. And occasionally he'd get to see him. But when you looked around at the funeral, his dad was conspicuously absent.

I'm sure there were people who probably went, yeah, great. I mean, God, the dad really loved this kid. Look, he doesn't even come to his own kid's funeral. But the truth is, the Post said, and I quote, Maryland prison officials said that budget restraints forced them to deny any leaves that require guard overtime.

And since it would have necessitated guard overtime for his father to leave the prison and come to the church for the funeral, Maryland prison officials refused to allow this man to go to his son's funeral. Now, how's that hit you? Boy, I tell you, when I read it, it didn't hit me very good.

And the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I thought, just because this man is poor, just because this man is powerless, just because this man is incarcerated, does that mean that his grief is any less over losing a son than a rich man's grief would be? I mean, is the Maryland prison system so busy that they couldn't afford one guard for two hours to go take a man to bury his own son? I mean, what kind of idiot makes this kind of a decision?

And who do I write a letter to to tell them what bureaucratic trash I think this is? You say, we can tell you're a little upset. Well, I am. This is stupid. But I didn't come here just to vent my frustration on you guys. You say, well, then stop.

Okay, I will. As I thought more about it last week, I got to thinking, you know, this is just a small part of a bigger problem, a problem that's endemic to human society. And that is, if I'm not powerful, if I'm not wealthy, if I'm not connected, if I'm just an ordinary person, do I really matter to anybody out there? I mean, is there anybody who really cares about me? Or is everybody just so busy that nobody's willing to stop and take an interest in me?

Does the parade just keep going whether I can keep up with it or not? The passage we have this morning talks about the fact that there is somebody who cares about us enough that they always have time for us no matter what the rest of the world's doing. And that person is Jesus Christ. I want to walk you through this passage and I hope that we'll come out at the end of it saying, wow, I never realized God cared for me like that. And I hope it'll change the way you think about God and change the way you relate to God. That's what the Bible's meant to do.

It's meant to change our lives. So let's walk through the passage together. It's chapter 18 verse 35.

It says, as Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. Now Jesus is heading to Jerusalem for the very last time. Everything he's been doing for 33 years of life is about to culminate on the cross. He's going to be killed and his disciples know that there's a showdown coming. There's this electric excitement.

They're buzzing with this excitement. You could describe the crowd around him as focused, as preoccupied, as fixated, as busy. They were very busy with what was going on with Jesus. And suddenly as they enter Jericho a few miles outside of Jerusalem, here's this blind guy sitting on the side of the road. We know from Mark chapter 10 his name. His name was Bartimaeus. He was begging because he couldn't earn a living. I had a guy that was talking to me not too long ago about my little girl and about her future and what it might or might not be. And this person I think was trying to cheer me up. And they said, well, you know, today is the best time in all of human history to have some kind of disability if you've got to have one.

Well, there's some truth to that, huh? I want to say to you 2,000 years ago in the ancient Near East was not the greatest time in the world if you had a disability. There were no handicapped parking spots. There was no closed caption programming for the hearing impaired. There was no occupational therapy, no speech therapy, no physical therapy, no seeing-eyed dogs, no county services, no goodwill industries. And this guy couldn't farm.

He's blind. He couldn't earn a living. He might have been well educated.

He might have even been a real smart guy, but he was reduced to begging on the street. And suddenly Jesus came by, verse 36. And when he heard the crowd going by, he said, hey, guys, what's happening? And they said, it's Jesus. Jesus is coming by. Oh, now he'd heard of Jesus. And he'd heard Jesus healed blind people. But he never thought he'd ever see Jesus. He never thought he'd ever meet Jesus. And yet all of a sudden, here it is, this little window of opportunity. He's got it for a few seconds.

And man does he take advantage of it. And so he began calling out. The verse means literally to yell or to scream. He began screaming out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.

Except he wasn't just kind of like that. He was kind of like, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. He was screaming. And those who led the way ran over and rebuked him and told him to be quiet. Can't you see Peter and the disciples running over and going shush, shush, shush, shush? What is wrong with you?

Would you shut up? Can't you see we got a big parade going on here? Can't you see Jesus is busy? Well, that's kind of dumb.

Can't you see it? But anyway, take our word for it. Jesus is busy. He doesn't have time for you.

Send us a prayer request along with your tax-deductible gift and we'll get back to you. But shut up. You're disturbing the whole parade. You say, oh, that fixed him, didn't it? That probably shut him up. Oh, no, no, no.

That's like pouring gas on the fire. Look what it says. It says, but even though they were standing over there doing that, he shouted all the more. And if you study the Greek text, you know that the Greek Bible changes the word here. It's not the same word.

It was just used. This word is a word that means to shriek. It was a word that was used in classical Greek for insane people when they would shriek out of their mind. And we could say if we were talking decibels, that Bartimaeus took it to the next level.

You understand what I'm saying? All of a sudden it was like, Jesus! Son of David!

Have mercy on me! I mean, we're up a level. You know what I think of when I think of this? I think of that guy at the Bullets game sitting right behind the visitor's bench. We went to the Bullets game this past week. The Bullets stink. The Bullets are terrible. I mean, I'm sure they're nice people, but as a basketball team, they're terrible.

The price of the ticket to see the Bullets play was not worth it, but it was worth it to see the guy behind the visitor's bench. This guy's an institution. You know who I'm talking about? He holds up the chicken and waves it in front of him. He holds up big old posters. He's got this little megaphone and he screams at him out on the court.

People respond a little differently. Remember Charles Barkley went over the seats and was about ready to kill him before they pulled him off of him? You remember that? In fact, one guy told me after the last service that even in spite of how Barkley at once felt, during the playoffs last year when the Suns were playing the Bulls, Barkley hired the guy, flew him to the game, sat him right behind the Bulls' bench so he could do it to Michael Jordan and the Bulls.

The guy's an institution. We were sitting on the other side of the arena, way up, and I could hear every word the guy was saying on the other side of the arena. He was yelling and screaming so loud. Shawn Kemp fouled and I heard him get out there, Shawn, you're such a baby.

I can't believe you're such a crying baby. We could hear it on the other side. I thought, this guy's awesome.

It was worth paying to come see him. When I think of Bartimaeus screaming, this is the guy I think of. That's what it must have sounded like. Now, that could interrupt a parade, huh? Well, look what the Bible says. Verse 40, it says, and Jesus stopped.

I love that. Jesus stopped. See, the crowd had no time for him. The disciples had no time for him. John, the apostle of love, had no time for him. But Jesus stopped.

Stopped the whole parade. And he said, bring that guy over here to me. I want to talk to him. And when Bartimaeus came near, Jesus said, what do you want me to do?

I hear you over there screaming. What do you want me to do? I like this guy. He goes right to the bottom line. He says, Lord, I want to see. We're not going to beat around the bush here. I don't know how much time I got. So I want to see.

Just that simple. And Jesus said to him, receive your sight. Your faith has healed you. And immediately, he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. And when all the people saw it, they praised God too.

I guess so. Now, would you notice there were two things here that led to this guy getting his prayer answered? The first one is desperation. This was a desperate guy.

I mean, you don't do crazy things like this unless you're desperate. There was a program on television about a month ago on Dateline. I don't know if you saw it. But it was about a diet that Johns Hopkins University Hospital does for seizure control. I know some of you saw it because a lot of people called me up and said, hey, have you seen this for your little girl? Well, actually, my little girl's on that diet.

It's been on it for almost two years. But it talked about the marvelous success they've had with kids who otherwise were resistant to every kind of medication. There were hopeless cases in the success rate of this diet. And when we were at Hopkins, my wife and I were there with my little girl the very next week. We said, what kind of response did you get? And they laughed and said, response?

Are you kidding? We got 3,000 phone calls the next week. And the people who produced this show, the Charlie Foundation, got 12,000 phone calls in a week. And one of the doctors said, we had a guy flying from Ohio who slept in the lobby of the hospital and would not leave until he got to see us. And we kept saying, we don't have time for you. We can't work your child in.

We don't even think your child's a candidate. And he said, well, then I'm sleeping in the lobby until you'll see me. And I said, hey, I understand how that guy feels. He's desperate. He's desperate.

And if I was in Ohio and my daughter wasn't on that diet and I saw that program, I'd be in your lobby and I'd be worse than he is. See, when you're desperate, you do crazy things. This guy was desperate. And it's an eternal law of God that God deals with the desperate.

You say, why? Won't God deal with non-desperate people? Yeah, God will deal with anybody. But the truth is most of us aren't ready to deal with God till we're desperate. See, we all want Band-Aid surgery. We all go and say, God, stick a Band-Aid on this for me and stick a Band-Aid on that for me and stick a Band-Aid up here for me. God doesn't deal in Band-Aids, friends. God deals in radical surgery. And most of us aren't ready for radical surgery till we're desperate. So God will deal with anybody, but most of us won't deal with God on his terms till we're desperate.

This guy was. But you know, that's only half the equation because there's a lot of desperate people in the world who aren't getting their needs met. There's a lot of desperate people jumping off buildings and jumping off bridges and running hoses from their exhaust into their car. Just because you're desperate doesn't mean you get your needs met.

Second of all, you got to know where to take your desperation. And he took it to the right place. Twice he called out and said, Jesus, Son of David. And Son of David was a technical term in ancient Israel for the Messiah. He was recognizing Jesus as the Messiah.

He was acknowledging Jesus as God in the flesh. So it's not just desperation, but it's desperation combined with biblical faith that produces the kind of solution this guy got. Lots of people take their desperation to the wrong places.

You know, they go to things like the New Age movement and therapy and self-help schemes. I watched that woman with the short blonde hair on television. I don't know her name, you know, but she's walking around ranting and raving and carrying on. And I saw a talk show on her this week. You know, and there's lots of desperate people sitting out in the audience hoping this woman's going to be the solution to their problems.

She isn't. Only Jesus Christ can solve the needs of a desperate heart. Bartimaeus was not only desperate. He is smart enough to take his desperation to the right place.

And he got his needs met. If you're here this morning and you've never trusted Jesus Christ in a real and personal way, but you're getting kind of desperate, the answers that the world's giving you aren't working anymore, let me say to you getting desperate is good. It means you're ready to deal with God. But make sure you deal with God. Don't try to let the world solve your problem. They can't solve it. They can create it, but they can't solve it. Take it to the right place, which is Jesus Christ.

Do what Bartimaeus did. And God, there is an alternate way of living. There is another universe, folks.

And you can have it if you're willing to take your desperation to the right place. I hope if you're here and you've never trusted Christ, you'll think about that. Well, that's the end of our passage, but it leaves us with a really important question. And you know what the important question is, don't you?

What is it? So what? Ah, I feel better already. That's great. Good for you. So what?

What difference does this make? Okay, Lon, so Bartimaeus got healed. Okay, so he could see again. Big whoop. I'm not blind. So what? Well, let's answer that question. Do you remember when you were a kid, all the stupid things adults said? Remember that?

Here's some of them. Man, I haven't seen you since you were knee high to a grasshopper. Excuse me. I mean, is that a stupid thing to say or what? By the way, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City says that if you are knee high to a grasshopper, you are somewhere between one millimeter and one inch tall. That's just for the sake of the record.

Is that a stupid thing to say? Here's another one. Man, I wouldn't do that for all the tea.

Where? Well, what's tea in China got to do with anything? I used to think as a kid. Tea in China?

By the way, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization says there are 400,000 tons of tea in China every year, just so you know. I used to always have people say to me, come on, will you? Come on. A snail moves faster than you do. A snail moves faster than I do? Okay. That makes sense. Uh-huh.

Snails move at 19 one-thousandths of a mile per hour for the sake of the record. Or how about this one? You're worth your weight in what? Yeah, sure. I'm 185 pounds, and at the price of gold today, I'm worth $1.1 million. You guys ought to trade me in. I want to tell you that.

You be ahead of the game, pay off your building, and hey, here's another one. I used to have my parents used to always say, that's it? That's the straw that what? And I'd look around and say, I don't even see a camel.

I'm just a little kid. I'm looking for a camel. And by the way, do you know what the record is? A camel? The record for what a camel can carry is 1,904 pounds. So I guess I put on the 1,905th, and I always got spanked right after they said that.

I never could figure that out. I don't even see the camel, and I get spanked. All right, well, here's the one I'm really trying to get to, and you say, well, thank God for that.

Okay, but the one I'm trying to get to is this one. Children should be what? Seen and not hurt. Seen and not hurt. So they said that to you too, huh? They said that to me all the time, which being interpreted means we grownups are too busy to mess with the issues you got as a little kid, so do us a big favor and stay out of the way and keep your mouth shut. That's a pretty clear message. I figured it out.

Didn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. And I remember vividly as a child feeling, now, wait a minute. Just because I'm a kid doesn't mean I'm not important. Just because I'm a kid doesn't mean that I'm not dealing with some real issues. How come I can't find any adult who's willing to take the time?

They're all too busy with their own stuff. I'm still a person. I don't think you have to be a kid to feel that way, to feel that people are treating you like that. See, that's exactly how they treated old Bartimaeus. The disciples treated him as an interruption, an inconvenience, an annoyance, a nuisance. They said, we don't have time to deal with you. I mean, from their point of view, blind beggars ought to be what?

Seen and not heard. But that's not the way Jesus treated him at all, was it? Jesus stopped. Jesus had time for him. Jesus took an interest in him. Jesus valued him as an individual. Jesus cared about his needs. And that same Jesus said, he who has seen me has seen the Father. In other words, see Jesus' heart, see God's heart.

And that being true, I got another question for you. And my question is, what does Jesus' response here to Bartimaeus tell us about the heart of God for you and me? Well, what it tells us is that God cares about us as individuals. What it tells us is that God values us even if other people don't.

What it tells us is that no matter how many crises may be going on in the universe, God is never too busy to stop and take an interest in your life. He'll stop the whole parade just for you. Last night, I was putting my son, who's nine years old, Jonathan, to bed. I was leaving the room. I had zillions of things to do, including this message to finish. I was getting ready to leave the room and he said, hey, dad, before you leave, would you lay down with me a few minutes? You know, he's always wanting me to do that. And I said, gosh, I got so much to do. But then I thought, well, you know, like he won't always want me to do this.

Like when he turns 20, he probably won't ask me to do this, you know. So I thought, well, gee, okay, maybe I ought to go ahead and do it. I said, all right, I'll do it. So I climbed up in his bunk bed and lay down and we're laying there. And he says, dad, can I ask you a question?

Why should tonight be different from any other night? Sure, go ahead. And he said, well, with all the problems in the world, how do you adults ever make it? I said, well, John, what troubles particularly were you thinking of? He said, well, you know taxes and all those bills you get in the mail that you're always talking about. And I said, yeah, that pretty well sums up all the trouble in the world there, John, taxes and the bills in the mail. I think you covered it right there, son. He said, well, don't you guys ever get afraid? Aren't you guys ever scared as grown up people?

How do you guys do it? I thought this is a pretty good question, you know. I said, John, that's why you need Jesus Christ in your life. This is why we're trying to teach you to put Jesus in your life now because when you get to be a big person, yeah, there's some scary stuff out there. But when you got Jesus Christ in your life, you can take it to him. You can pray about it.

You can lay it at his feet. You can commit it to him and he'll hold your hand and walk you through it. That's why you got Jesus. And so we went on to talk a little bit about praying and a little bit about bringing these things to God. And then John said to me, he said, you know, dad, what really amazes me is how God can listen to hundreds and hundreds of people, talk to him at the very same time and hear them all. And yet he still has time to listen to me. I said, yeah, that is pretty amazing, isn't it? He said, you know, dad, he said, you're not nearly as busy as God and a lot of times you don't have time to listen to me. He said, but I'm glad God's always got time. I said, John, I think it's time for you to go to bed, son. Good night.

I'll see you in the morning. And I climbed down the ladder and I was feeling pretty good when I went up the ladder. Man, I was feeling pretty rugged when I came down the ladder. And I just thought, whoa, man. And do you realize that little nine-year-old, even though he didn't realize it, in about 60 seconds preached my whole sermon this morning? Huh?

Sixty seconds. He summed up the whole point is that no matter what else God has going on, people may be too busy, but God is never too busy. Do you know the name Gilbert Belzecian?

Say, no. Was he shot in Washington too? No, he wasn't. Actually Gilbert Belzecian is a theologian, a very famous theologian. He taught at Wheaton College for many, many years. He was a part of establishing Willow Creek Community Church and he's retired now, but he's got more doctorates than you and I could shake a stick at. He's got doctorates from here and there and everywhere, you know, all kinds of educational kudos.

I mean, he's a smart guy. And one time I was reading this in an article this week, he was asked by an interviewer, Dr. Belzecian, with all of your great knowledge and all of the great study of the Bible you've done and all your great theological investigation, what is the greatest theological truth that you have ever discovered? You know what his answer was? He said to the interviewer, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. He said, that's the greatest theological truth I ever discovered, that Jesus loves me. You say, man, I know that, Lon, and I don't even have a doctorate.

Well, good. God didn't want you to have to have a doctorate to understand He loves you. And 1 Peter 5 says we should cast all of our cares on Him because He cares for us. That's the greatest theological truth in the universe, that Almighty God with all everything else that's going on cares for you. He cares for me. He'll stop the whole parade just to take an interest in your life.

And if you're here this morning and there's all kinds of tough stuff going on in your life, and I'll bet you there's plenty of us here that have got some tough things we're facing, hey, maybe you feel like you've been reduced to a blind beggar on the roadway of life like old Bartimaeus, I got some good news for you. Jesus may be in the process of running the universe. He may be coordinating His plan for the ages. He may be keeping atoms from blowing apart and working on job descriptions for all the angels and all that kind of good stuff. But let me tell you something, if you want Him to, He'll put the whole rest of the parade on hold and He'll stop just like He did for Bartimaeus and He'll come and take a personal interest in your life. He's never too busy for you, for me, for anybody.

All you have to do is ask Him. Over the holidays we took by our family to see Fiddler on the Roof over at Lazy Susan dinner theater. It was marvelous production. You ought to go, except it's over now. You say, why didn't you tell us? Well, I didn't go to the very last week. I'm sorry. You say, well, okay, we forgive you.

Well, thanks. But anyway, it was a great production. The guy who played Tevye, you know, the father, I don't think he was Jewish, but he was unbelievably good.

He was fabulous in this show. And you know the way the story goes, you know, he's always talking to God, telling God he wishes things were a little different, you know, and tells him, you know, he wishes he were a rich man. You all know that song, don't you?

I'm not going to really do it for you because, well, maybe I will. If I was a rich man, you know the song I'm talking about? Okay, you got it now. Well, anyway, the rest of the plot goes on, you know, he's marrying off all these girls. And the first daughter, you remember, he made a deal with the butcher in town and then she doesn't love the butcher. So he's got to cook up this dream that never really happened to convince his wife she could marry this poor tailor named Matal.

And then she marries Matal and their poor church mice. And then a very touching part of the play comes when he's talking to God one day about Matal and his daughter. And he says, God, he says, I know you're very busy.

I know you've got wars and floods and you've got catastrophes and you've got people showing up that you didn't expect all the time, you know. He said, God, I hope I'm not bothering you too much. But he said, God, if you could find it in your schedule while you're dealing with all the wars and all the floods, just to take a little bit of time to get a sewing machine for my son-in-law Matal there so he could make better money and take care of my daughter and, you know, if you could just that much time, God, to get him a sewing machine, I really would appreciate it.

I hope that's not asking too much. And then, of course, you know how the play goes, Matal gets his sewing machine. And as I sat there, I said, you know, this is not just good drama. This is good theology. This is good theology. Because I think there's lots of us as Christians who don't think God's interested in the sewing machines in our life. We think, oh, if I get cancer, well, now God will be interested in that. Or if I'm in a terrible car accident and somebody's hanging between life and death, well, I could bother God with that. But the little sewing machines of life, nah, God's too busy.

He's got too much. You know, I'm not gonna bother him with that. Could I say to you that's a lie?

That's a bold-faced lie. God cares about every sewing machine in your life. God cares about everything that's important to you. In the scope of the universe, it may not be very big, but if it's big to you, it's big to God. He cares about it. And we miss so much blessing as Christians because we don't take the sewing machines to God. We say, I'll handle this.

I'll work it out myself. No, that's the wrong way to go. Take him to God. You're not bothering him.

He's never too busy that he won't stop the parade to talk to you about your sewing machine. That's what Jesus is trying to communicate this morning to us. And if he stopped for Bartimaeus, he'll stop for you. Some of us grew up in homes where nobody would stop for us.

Some of us live in a world system, most of us do, where we feel like nobody's going to stop for us. But I'm so glad the Bible says Almighty God of the universe will stop for us anytime we need him. And I hope that you'll change the way you see God and change the way you relate to God as a result of our passage this morning. Let's pray. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I'd like to give you just a few moments of silence. And if you've got some sewing machines in your life that you need to talk to God about, listen, he's not too busy.

He's anxious to listen this morning. Why don't you take this quiet time? And if there's some things you need to lay at God's feet, let's do it. Dear Heavenly Father, in a world that's going at a frenzied pace, especially here in Washington, it's real easy to feel like nobody's going to stop the parade long enough if we can't keep up.

Lord, there are times when we're hurting and we can't keep up. I thank you that there is a place we can turn, and that's to you. I thank you that you're never too busy, you're never too preoccupied.

You've always got time for us. And what's even better is you don't just listen, but you act to help us with our problems, just like he did for Bartimaeus. And so, Father, for those of us who live in this kind of world and maybe who came from these kinds of homes growing up, I pray that you would convince us of your love this morning and use it as a healing force in our lives. Change the way we think about you. Change the way we relate to you based on the truth you've taught us today. Help us believe it because it's true. Thank you, Lord, that you love us. We're not quite sure why, but we sure are glad you do. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.