Take your Bibles now and turn
with me to Mark chapter 8. I've preached on this story two
or three times in this last month. I think I finally got to the
heart of what these verses are talking about. In the eighth chapter of Mark,
there's a precious story preserved by divine inspiration
through this man, and I have a special identification with
Mark See, Mark, he went with the Apostle
Paul and he quit. He quit. I began what I thought was the
ministry some 30 years ago. And I sat under one of the greatest
preachers of our day, Brother Mahan, And I went down to Pastor Low
Church in Ball, Louisiana, and there arose a controversy, and
I quit. And I sold my books, and I put
up my Bible, and I went to work, and I was gone for nearly 20
years. Now, I don't know what took place
in the life of Mark, but there come a time when Paul said to
bring him, for he was profitable to the ministry. And God inspired him to write
these words, and he preserved. It's a wonder to me how God preserves
these stories, these events, just little pieces of history.
Not the entire history of the world, but just little pieces,
just little events, little things. that He preserves, and it's just
the thing that we need. It's just the thing that convinces
us of the power of Christ to save. And that's what we have
here. We've got a precious story preserved
by the Holy Spirit of God by this man Mark. And this is about a man who all
his life wandered around in darkness, just wandered around in darkness,
groping around from object to object, feeling this thing and
that thing. I don't know if they had canes
back in that day. Perhaps they did, poking around
and looking for things and touching and groping around from place
to place. He was a blind man. I read to
the Sunday school class a portion of Paul's address on Mars Hill. And here's what he told them.
He said, "...God hath made of one blood all nations of men
for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation,
that they should seek the Lord." Now listen, "...if happily they
might feel after Him, and find Him." Natural men feel after God because
they're blind. They're not blind to the things
of this world. They're not blind to mechanics
and mathematics, and they're brilliant when it comes to those
things, but they're totally blind to spiritual things. And when
it comes to things of God, men just grope about in the darkness. They stumble through life and
fall in every pitfall that's before them. They fall into every
hole. life sets before. And just because
somebody puts on a robe, he puts on this fine robe and he stands
up in a cathedral. I saw one in Washington, D.C. the other day. It just left me
spellbound. This big old Catholic church, all granite. I don't
even know how they got up there to build the thing. It was so
tall. You can see it from one end of the city to the other.
And they stand up in those cathedrals, but that don't mean they see. Just because a man goes to seminary
and he studies church history and memorizes doctrine, that
don't mean he can see. I sat under one of the greatest
ministers of our age, and I couldn't see. I couldn't see. And because we
accepted Jesus as our personal Savior and walked down an aisle
and joined the church and was baptized and made a profession
of faith, that doesn't constitute sight. The Pharisees were Bible scholars. They were preachers and teachers,
masters. Our Lord told Nicodemus, He acknowledged,
He said, Thou art a master in Israel. There's not a question
that he could have asked him that he couldn't have answered
concerning Israel. Concerning the beginning of it,
concerning the history of it, concerning the sacrifices and
ceremonies and the priesthood and all those things, Nicodemus
could have fired him an answer back without even thinking. He
was a master of Israel. They were church-going, ceremony-keeping,
tithe-paying, Sabbath-day-keeping, missionary-minded, evangelical,
religionist. But Christ said they were blind
leaders of the blind. That's what He called them. Well, surely they had some sight
blind. And if the blind, he said, leave
the blind, they're both going to fall in the ditch. He'd just
be better off groping around, feeling after God. I've heard
so many times, somebody tell me, some parents tell me that
their children have gone off to college, and I said, did they
find any place to worship? Well, they're going down there
to that, it's an Armenian church, but I'd rather he be going there
than the bars. Not me. I'd rather go to the
bars. I'll tell you what the Lord said
about those cities I was teaching in Sunday school class last week.
He said it's better off for Sodom and Gomorrah than it was for
them. Is that what He said? And that's what I'm seeing all
around me in every state I pass through, in every town I visit,
down every road I travel, just blindness, blindness, blindness
everywhere, blindness. I listen to their sermons and
their advertisements. I listen to their converts and
their students, and I listen to their testimonies and their
songs, and I listen to their radio stations. And I know beyond
all doubt that they don't know God from a billy goat. And that's
just the truth. You see, spiritual blindness
is what keeps men from Christ. Christ was in Bethsaida. He passed
right through. He was in Corazon. He was in
Capernaum. He was in these towns and cities. And God did many mighty things
by His hand to show him, to sanction him as the minister of God and
as the Messiah of God. But this man didn't come to Christ.
This blind man didn't come. He didn't come. Why don't you think about it?
This is not like Bartimaeus. He wasn't sitting there having
heard some things. He heard some things and still didn't come. And there's a Bible in every
motel room, every hospital room, and nearly every living room
in this country. It's translated into nearly every
language. I was given a computer program
this last week, and Larry set it on a little laptop for me,
and I punched that thing up, and with a touch of the button,
you can have the Bible in whatever language you want. Just hit a
button, and it just goes on and on and on. There are literally thousands
of books on the market, commentaries and dictionaries and books of
theology and doctrine and gospel sermons available over hundreds
of years to anybody who wants them. And the gospel is accessible
on the Internet to anybody that has a computer anywhere in the
world. I'm just amazed. We get those little monthly reports
about the messages that go out, and there are countries on there
I never heard of. Downloading the gospel. Hearing the gospel. What then keeps men from Christ?
Blindness. Spiritual blindness. You see, this blind man was brought
to Christ. And he was brought to Christ
because Christ came where he was. Where was he? in the city of the damned." That's
where he found him. A place cursed of God for their
unbelief. A place of spiritual ignorance
and indifference. They didn't need a Messiah, they
already had one. They didn't need wisdom, they
were already wise. They didn't need a sacrifice,
they already had one. They didn't need a mediator between
them and God because they made lies their refuge. That's what
the prophets said about it. And they hid themselves in falsehood.
They didn't need a teacher. They already knew what they believed.
That woman at the well, poor, ignorant, blind woman, sat there
talking to the Lord of glory. and tried to preach to him. She
said, when Messiah comes, he'll tell us everything we need to
know. He said, I'm he. She said, we worship in the mountains
and you all worship down in Jerusalem. He said, you worship you know
not what. I told the class this morning,
try to talk with somebody who in their entire life has four
hours total time in the Bible, and they'll tell you exactly
what they believe. They'll tell you what their church
believes. Our church doesn't serve wine
at the Lord's table. We serve grape juice. It's more
conducive to worship. We don't baptize by immersion.
We sprinkle. We sprinkle. It's not so embarrassing. Blind. See, we don't believe in a single
man leading the church, just one man as a pastor. We've got
a group of elders. Blind. Blind leaders of the blind. This
world is a cursed place. It's a place of deceit and lust
and lies and religious prostitutes. That's what they are. They lure
men in their chambers for a price. Read it in Proverbs. They sell
themselves for a price. They appeal by what they know
the flesh lusts and desires after. And whatever it is your depraved
heart can imagine, whatever it is your deceitful heart can conjure
up, there is a religion in this world to give it to you. In Revelation 17, John saw in
the wilderness, the Spirit of God carried him out into the
wilderness. And he said, I looked and I saw
a woman sitting upon a scarlet beast full of names of blasphemy,
arrayed in purple and scarlet. decked with gold and precious
stones, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations
and filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name
written, Mystery Babylon the Great, the mother of all harlots
and abominations of the earth." You know who he is talking about?
False preachers. That's right. False preachers. In the beginning of Matthew 11,
John's disciples were out there and he said, you go tell them
what you saw and what you heard. And blessed is he that is not
offended in me. He tells them in Acts chapter
2 the same thing. Christ was, God approved Him
right in your midst, right before your eyes by the things that
He did and the things that He said. They are blind to His person,
and they are blind to the glory. They are blind to the message,
and they are blind to the evidence that God puts on that message. He came to Bethsaida. He came
to where the curse was, and He came despite the blindness. That's
what I want you to say. He came despite the complacence. He came despite the indifference. Well, there's no other reason,
no other reason for him to come than this one thing, to give
this blind man his sight. Give him his sight. Listen to
what the Savior says over in John chapter 9. This is another
blind man. This man, it says, was born blind
over in John chapter 9. The Lord healed him. It was on
the Sabbath day, and the Jews took offense to that. What they
really took offense to was him. They didn't like him. He was
contrary to everything they believed. He was contrary to their ideas
and concepts of God. He was just contrary. Totally
opposite. And I don't care. You can go
in any church up and down this road. Paul said, after the way
they call heresy, so worship I, the living God. Now you can
just write it down, whatever that man says, I believe the
opposite. If you go in there and sit down and listen to him,
you'd write down the opposite of everything he says, you'll
have the gospel. And listen to this, in John chapter
9, they went back and forth and back and forth, and finally that
blind man said, he said, this is a marvelous thing to me. He
said, here I am, I'm a blind man. I'm a blind man. I was born blind. I've never seen anything." And
he said, I know what you don't know. I know who this man is. Never has it been heard since
the beginning of the world that anybody opened the eyes of the
blind. And we know that God heareth
not sinners, yet this man opened my eyes, and you don't know who
he is." He said, that's a marvelous thing. It is. It is. But listen to what he
says down here in verse 39, John 9, 39. And these Pharisees came to him
and questioned him about what he said. And the Lord said to
them, for judgment I am come into this world, that they which
see not might see." Uh-oh, this thing had a spiritual application.
"...and that they which see might be made blind." And some of the Pharisees said,
are we blind? Is that what you're saying? You're
saying we're blind? You're suggesting that we're
blind, teachers and theologians and elders, priests and scribes? Preacher, you suggesting that
there's churches up and down this road and over here in the
big city of Detroit, you suggesting that they're blind? No, I'm telling
you flat out. Plain as I know how to make it.
Blind. Blind. Now listen. Jesus said
unto them, Oh, that you were. If you were blind, you didn't
have any sin. But now you say, you say, we
see. Therefore, your sin remains.
And then watch this. The Savior came to Bethsaida.
He came to that city of the cursed, and then secondly, they bring
a blind man unto it. Now let me tell you something.
And I love your pastor and I know this is what he teaches you without
even asking. The business of the church is
to bring men to Christ. There is no other business. Back in the days of religion,
I used to love the Wednesday night business meetings. You
want to be entertained, go to one sometime. They drag out everything. I mean
everything under the sun. They drag up in those business
meetings and argue and fuss and fight about it. And if there's
nothing to discuss, they'll build a straw man and beat it to death.
They love those business meetings. Brother Barnard said it was the
abomination of desolation standing in a place where it ought not.
The Wednesday night business meeting. The business of the
church is to bring men to Christ. Now listen. Who did they bring
to Christ? He said, you go tell John what
you saw. The blind see, the deaf hear,
lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised. The business of the church is
to bring men to Christ, blind, filthy, wretched men, sick folks,
harlots and beggars, lepers. Those four days in the tomb,
bring them to me. Bring them to me. And I'll tell
you why you're going to bring them, because that's where the
Lord found you. That's where he found me. Filthy. Rebel. No faith. Wretched. You're going to bring them to
Christ because that's where the Lord found you. Somebody brought
you. Show me a person who shies away
from somebody in disgust. I'll show you a person." If he knew who she was that was
touching him, he said, I know. I know. That's why he was in
Bethsaida. He knew. He knew. The well need not a position,
he said. I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And the business of the church,
the whole business, is to bring men to Christ. And I know this. Now listen to me. This is one
of the first things I seen when the Lord began to show me some
light. I know this. The business of
the Father is to bring you to Christ. Do you ever think about
that? When that prodigal son ran to
Christ, who was watching for him? Who was expecting him? Who ran out and threw his arms
around him and smothered him with kisses? Who was that? It
was the Father. No man, Christ said, can come
unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him. and I'll raise him up at the
last day. It's written in the prophets,
and they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that
hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me." It's
the Father's business to bring you to Christ. The book of Hebrews
begins with this declaration, God spoke. Boy, I wish I could get a hold
of that. God spoke. He spoke, David said, and it
was done. He don't speak and something
gets started and then the wind blows on it and the water washes
over it and somewhere in time it evolves out of the ocean and
becomes a man. He spoke and it was done. He
commanded and it stood fast. That's who I want to hear speak.
I want to hear him speak." Well, he said he spoke. How did he
speak? Through the prophets. And then when he got done speaking
in the prophets, he spoke in his son. That's what Hebrews
is all about. The business of the Father is
to bring men to Christ, and the business of the Holy Spirit is
to bring men to Christ. In John chapter 16, In verse
13 it says, Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come,
he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak of himself,
but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will
show you things to come. He is going to glorify me, for
he shall receive of mine. and show it unto you. The work
of the Holy Spirit is not to cause you to stand up and shake
like a dead man and start speaking in tongues. He won't speak of
Himself. I'm so sick of it. I hear them
on the radio talking about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Spirit. I guarantee you they don't know
the Holy Spirit. For when He comes, He's not going
to say one word about Himself. He's not going to call one eye
out of attention to Himself. He's going to take of the things
of mine and show them to you. It's the business of the Holy
Spirit to bring you to Christ. Everything, listen to me, in
the counsel and character of God is engaged in that work to
bring you to Christ. What do you reckon Christ was
doing in Bethsaida to start with? Providence of God. Providence of God. Why do you
reckon that blind man was born blind? For the glory of Christ.
For the glory of God. Everything in the ministry of
the church of the living God is engaged in the work. Everything
in the witness of creation and conscience reads Romans chapter
1. engaged in this business, bringing you to faith in Christ. Even the law, in all of its severity,
in all of its ceremonies, shuts our mouths, and like a schoolmaster,
brings us to Christ to be justified by faith. I'm telling you, everything
between these two covers is written to bring you to Christ. I look over my life, I see a
gnarled, twisted web of events, complex beyond your imagination. How many places that I've lived
and moved and jobs I've had and lost and people I've known and
got separated from and relatives and friends and churches and
religion. You can't see through it. It's
so complex. And yet he did it all to bring
me to Christ. You see what I'm telling you?
Everything. Everything. And then here's the
fourth thing. They brought this man to Christ
out of the city of the damned. I mean, this was a mess. Even
this blind man, I'd be willing to wager, was just full of religion,
full of false concepts of God when they brought him. And the
Lord took him by the hand and led him out of town. Clear out
of town. Wouldn't do anything there. Went out there until there was
nobody around except him and the blind man. And then he spit
on him. We're going to come down. Way
down. I don't know what this man was
expecting. I know he wasn't expecting that. But the Lord spit on him. He spit on his nature. The voice said, cry. The prophet
said, What am I going to say? All flesh is grass. All of it? All of it. All my righteousnesses, Paul
said, are just filthy rags. He spit on his nature, he spit
on his righteousness, he spit on his religious ideas and concepts,
he spit on his old experiences and professions, he spit on his
understanding, and he spit on his God. And I'll tell you this, he spit
on his blindness. That's the first work of grace
in the heart. It's to bring you down. You know
what? You're going to get on God's
side in this thing of condemnation. You're going to agree with Him.
God, you ought to send me to hell. That's where He's going
to bring you. You're going to justify God against
yourself. And Barnard, in one of the great
messages he preached back 50 years ago, he said, in that day,
there's going to be sons and daughters. There's going to be
grandchildren. There's going to be people you
knew. And when God sends them into that pit, you're going to
say, Amen. True and righteous is the judgment
of God. Now, I'm telling you the truth.
When God brings you down, when He gets you off by yourself,
you're going to get on His side. You're going to get on His side. It's not just something you did,
it's what you are. Oh, wretched man, Paul said,
that I am. Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? There's none good, none righteous,
none that seeketh after God, none that understandeth. Blind,
spiritually blind. God has to lay His hands on you.
Turn your face in His direction and reveal to you what you are. And there's no shame like the
shame you feel when God lets you see what you are. I wandered into Grace Baptist
Church over in Danville. I got out of my car like a boy's
first day at school, They're not going to let me come
in there. They're not going to want me
back. They're not going to want anything
to do with me. And Judy Estes, bless her heart,
she's dead now. She came running down off the
top steps and across that parking lot. and threw her arms around me.
So I've been praying for you for 20 years. There's no shame like the shame
you feel when God shows you what you are. It spits on your blindness. He puts His hands on that sinner
and turns His face right into His own. That's where the glory
is at. That's where the mercy is at.
That's where the grace is in His face. In His face. And then over in John 16, again,
I'll just quote it for you. You don't have to turn back there.
He was talking about the Holy Spirit of God and when He comes.
And part of that work is this. It says in our King James Version
that He will reprove the world of righteousness and of sin and
of judgment. He's going to reprove. But that
word in the original is not reprove. That word is convince. What I'm
doing this morning is reproving. I'm talking about your sins.
I'm telling you what the Word of God has to say about your
sins. And there's a difference between
reprove and convince. Reprove is the practice of philosophers. They'll stand up and reprove.
It's the object of poets. It's the office of moralists.
Reprove is the ministry of religious satires. Don't do this. Do this. And it's the business of preachers.
We're told to reprove, to take the Word of God and reprove.
Parents reprove their children. Masters reprove their servants.
The powers that be reprove those under that power. But only the
Holy Spirit of God can convince. He's going to take my reproof
that I'm giving to you and convince you. I can't do that. You see, that's Christ. That's in the touch. The work
of the Holy Spirit is in the touch. Christ reached out and
touched that blind man and moved his face up into His. Now, He
said, you can open them eyes and see. You can see. How does He convince? Of sin,
He said, because they believe not on Me. I'm talking to believers
now. You look back in your past. It's
hard for you now, who have faith in Christ, to imagine, why couldn't
I see that back then? It's on every page. The Lord first revealed these
things to me. I was going through the book,
and these folks at the little church where I was going were
telling me, that's not what that says. Now, why does it say it
here? Well, that's there in that spot. He said it probably has
something to do with interpretation. Yeah, but why does it say it
here? Why does it say it here? Why does it say it? It says it
everywhere. The sovereignty of God, the election
of God, the predestination of God, it's on every page. Why
couldn't I see that back then? Because I was blind. I was blind. There's a touch, I'm telling
you. The gospel goes out. That's all I can do. And I can't
do that apart from God laying it on my heart. But when He does
and the gospel goes out, I've got no power to convince, but
He does. And I tell you, He loves His
gospel. He'll accompany His gospel. I don't fear preaching His gospel.
I preach anywhere God will let me preach. I wish he'd give me
an audience in that big church up in Washington, D.C. I'd love
to tell them who God is. To be convinced by the Holy Spirit
of God is to look into the face of Him in whom life abides. Whew! I think about old Bartimaeus,
and I'll close with this. He sat out there all them years
on that blanket. on that road. And he was just
kind of in the crossroads of life there. Everything that went
anywhere passed by Bartimaeus. And he just sat there and he
listened to them. And they come by and they started
talking about, oh, I just come back from the sea. You should
have been down there. You should have saw. The water
was emerald green. It was just, you could look out
there in those white caps the way the wind was blowing and
the breeze and those majestic mountains in the background with
the snow-capped peaks and all those things. He said it was
the most beautiful scene I'd ever seen and old Bartimaeus
just sat there and thought about it. And then somebody come and said,
you know, we just come through the meadows and there's a little
brook that runs through there and you can You can just see
the water running over those rocks, and those rocks look like
they were painted. It looks like they were varnished. You can see the little granite
specks in it, and you can see the fish, and it was so quiet
and pristine, and the grass so green. We passed by this sod
farm, but that's the greenest grass I've ever seen in my life. And they start talking about
these things, and old Bartimaeus just sat over there and wondered
about them. One day God opened his eyes. You know, it meant one thing
when he heard it. But when that light began to filter through,
and he began to see color, and he began to see detail, and he
began to see all these things. What glory must have flooded
his soul? And he was looking right straight
in the face of Christ. And I hope I've whet your whistle
a little bit, because that's what I want to talk to you about
tonight. How the Master describes conversion. And he said, if I,
with the finger of God, cast out devils, with the finger of God. Our Father, we pray this morning that You take these words and
accompany them with Your Spirit and bless the hearts of Your
people and warn those that are here in unbelief. Lord, stir
their hearts for Christ's sake. Amen.