Open your Bibles to Mark chapter
10. The title of my message tonight is,
Salvation's First Sight. I want us to look at one of the
Lord's miracles, and in considering the Lord's miracles, the things
that He did when He was on this earth, you kind of have to stop
and think of Him being God Himself, being endued with all power while
He was here, yet He chose to perform certain miracles. And
if you look at what miracles He did perform, In all of them,
it all speaks to highlighting man's spiritually fallen state,
every one of them. Each one of his miracles points
to this and highlights it, and so what we're going to do tonight
is look at one of those miracles, a story you've heard before,
but look at it in the light of man's experience in salvation
and how it highlights our spiritually dead state. So, if you would,
Mark chapter 10, we'll read this first verse of chapter 46. And they came to Jericho. And
as he went out of Jericho with his disciples, a great number
of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the
highway side begging. Now I spoke just a second ago
when I'm talking about these miracles that the Lord had performed,
how they highlighted man's spiritually dead condition. And there's a
truth in this, and the Lord did this, I believe, to help highlight
the truth of what our state is. And we consider what the truth
is. The truth is never subjective alone. Subjective is my perception,
what I've experienced, what I think about something. The truth is
never subjective alone. But what is subjective is whether
or not I've experienced it. You see, the truth can still
be true whether I've experienced it or not. Truth's objective.
But if I've experienced it, then I've found there is some subjectivity
to it. I have a perception of it. And
so what I want us to look at tonight is how this truth became
subjective to blind Bartimaeus. Truth found him. So right now
we find the Lord passing outside of Jericho, and He's leaving
Jericho, heading towards Jerusalem. He's heading to the cross. Ten
miles away, that's a day's walk. He's really close. Can you imagine
what must have been going on through His mind? All those faces
and souls that He's bore from the foundation of the world on
His heart. The pain and agony that He's going to endure. and
yet the glory that would come from it, his whole purpose in
being here, less than a day's walk. The Lord had much on his
mind, and yet he passes by this way, and we find this one, blind
Bartimaeus. Now, what do we know about blind
Bartimaeus? First, we know he's blind. The
second thing, the other kind of surprising thing is his name's
actually not Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is the same way of
saying Simon Bar-Jonah. His name was Simon, not Bar-Jonah.
So Bartimaeus' name was not Bartimaeus, it's son of Timaeus. So that's
who he was. So we're not actually given his
name, but we know he's the son of a man. And I think it's very
important whenever we see names in the scriptures that we look
up and see what those names mean, because they're there for a reason.
And so if we look up this name Timaeus, his father, the man
that he is seed from, the name Timaeus means unclean. He's unclean
and it means impure. So we see that he was born unclean
and he was born blind. Psalm 58.3 says the wicked are
estranged from the womb. Estranged means loathsome, not
just far off, it's hated. They're hated from the womb and
they go astray as soon as they're born, speaking lies. This speaks
to our condition. Bartimaeus was born unclean. This picture is our condition
and loathsome, lies, unclean, spiritually blind, and it's all
because of who his father was. Who was our father? We all share
the same father in here. Our father was Adam. Adam was
unclean. Adam fell, Adam sinned, and he
produced a whole bunch of people. that were all spiritually dead,
blind, deaf, lame, can produce nothing that God can require
and have no ability to come to him or desire to come to him.
So we find Bartimaeus blind. So you consider his condition.
He couldn't work because he's blind. So he had to beg. Anything he got, the only way
he got it is if somebody else gave it to him. And he, I'm sure,
was reviled by the people. He's doing nothing. He just sits
out here asking for money in the way. He's a nuisance. You just walk around people like
that. You don't want to be near him. And there's nothing that
he could do to change his condition. Does this sound familiar to you
at all? With our spiritually fallen condition? There's nothing
that you or I can do to change our condition. You can't do anything
to call upon God and that he would be pleased with, you're
a sinner. You can't come in his presence.
He won't hear you. He won't hear me. And so I can't
come before him. We're fallen just like unclean,
blind Bartimaeus. Now, what was the one thing that
stirred him up here? He had heard, it says in the
other account of this story, that Jesus was passing by. Something stirred him up here.
Something got his attention. At some point, he had heard that
this man, this Jesus the Nazarene, had given sight to the blind.
Something had stirred him up. Was it true? He didn't know,
experientially, because he was still blind. But he'd heard it,
and he believed it might be, and hoped it to be true. What
was the one thing that you can guarantee Bartimaeus was critically
aware of every moment of every day. He was blind. What's the
first thing that he realized when he woke up in the morning?
He can't see. He has to reach around and find
where he's at. What's the one thing that he
found out? Every time he wanted to be with somebody that he loved,
somebody had to take him there. He couldn't come himself. He
had to be brought. If he wanted to eat, somebody had to bring
him the food. If he wanted money to get something, somebody had
to bring it to him. He was blind. He couldn't see. He couldn't
read. Every moment of every day, this
man was blind. And you think that all that goes
along with that, that we take for granted every day, I was,
as I was studying my notes this morning, I was sitting in my
office looking out my window, and the sun was coming up, and
I realized that, you know, if I'm blind, I would never have
known a sunrise. And watching the sun shine out
on my yard, and the birds would come where the sun was, and it
wasn't where they weren't, and watching just this little moment
in time that so many things that we take for granted that we can
see. But yet, Blind Bartimaeus doesn't know any of these things.
He may have heard of them, but he doesn't know it. What would
you say Blind Bartimaeus' desire level is at this point, hearing
that this one, Jesus of Nazareth, is passing by? His desire level
is pretty high, isn't it? He knew of him. He knew what
sounded like the Messiah. He even said, Jesus, thou son
of David. He called him the son of David.
So if we look in verse 47, he says that, and when he heard
that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say,
Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy upon me. He called him
the son of David. Now every Jewish boy at this
time had heard and been instructed in growing up that there was
a Messiah and he was coming. And the Messiah would come through
the line of David. And it just happened to be he
had heard some things about this one, this Jesus of Nazareth,
that he sounded like the Messiah to him. And remember, all of
Israel at this time was looking for the Messiah. All the signs
and wonders about the Messiah's coming had been prophesied and
many had taken place. And so they were looking for
the Messiah at this time. But they were looking for a ruling
king. They were looking for the benefits that would come with
that king. We don't really have much evidence to say that Bartimaeus
was really any different. We don't know what he was looking
for. But something stirred him up. He was stirred up because
he believed that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, passing by, could
give him sight. This was his only hope, and this
was the one chance that he might never get again. He had to be
heard. He couldn't go to him because
he couldn't see him. All he could do was cry out,
hoping to be heard. Now, we have this same father. Vaim Bartimaeus had, son of Timaeus,
unclean and impure. We have the same father in Adam.
When Adam sinned, he died. And we all died in Adam. And
so therefore we have no spiritual life in us. We can't see God. We can't seek Him. We can't believe.
We don't even desire God. Anything that's in our imagination
about Him is wrong. Because we can't even have him
revealed to us. Only if he would reveal himself to us. We're beings
who could only elicit God's anger. That's all we can do. Now, if you don't know that you're
a sinner, and understanding who God is and revealing himself,
it's only in light of that that we see ourselves to be sinners.
But if we don't realize that we're sinners, we don't really
know how bad it is, do we? Those of you who've had your
eyes opened, who have had grace revealed to you, you have some
idea of what you are. You know what you've done, but
you have some idea of what you are, a sinner. You had that revealed
to you, but if you didn't have that revealed to you, you wouldn't
know really how bad it was. Any more than the blind man would
know how blind he was unless someone who wasn't like him told
him, man, you're blind. You can't see. If everybody was
blind, how would you know that anybody could see? You wouldn't.
You have to have somebody different say, man, don't you see that?
There's things that he couldn't see. It had to be shown to him.
Now, if the blind man didn't believe the person who was seeing,
would that make him any less blind? It wouldn't, would it? The scriptures testify that we're
sinners and we're estranged from God. That's what they testify. They're not like us. These are
holy. This is God's holy word. And so even if I don't believe
it, doesn't make me any less of a sinner. So the word testifies
against us. Turn with me over to John chapter
nine, if you would. And this is the Lord after, I
read this passage this morning where the man who was born blind
from his birth and the Lord had opened his eyes and the Pharisees
were angry because he had done it on the Sabbath day and they
didn't understand who he was and, you know, because they couldn't
do these things and didn't see that they were sinners. And so
in verse 39 the Lord says, and Jesus said, for judgment I am
come into this world that they which see not might see. And they which see might be made
blind. And some of the Pharisees which
were with him heard these words and said unto him, Are we blind
also? And Jesus said unto them, If
you were blind, you should have no sin. But now you say, We see. Therefore your sin remaineth.
So what this is testifying against them is they don't see themselves
as blind. If you're blind, you need someone
to show you the way. But this is the picture of the
sinner. But if you're someone who's not
a sinner, you don't need anything. They say, we see, we don't need
you for anything. He's saying, your sin remaineth. So this is
what the scripture's testifying against us. The scriptures say
that Jesus Christ came in this world to save sinners. If that's
not you, then you won't be saved. He has nothing for you. He only
has salvation to those who are sinners. A sinner is someone
who sins all the time. Everything they do, the best
thing you ever did, that's sin. That's what it is to be a sinner.
If you're not that, there's nothing for this book for you at all.
So apart from God revealing that to you, ask God to reveal that
to you that you are a sinner, because that's who the promise
is of this book to. If we're not a sinner, then you have grounds
to approach unto God. Would that be through our works,
your good, your righteous works? That just proves what the law
testifies against us. If you're trying to show that
you're not a sinner through trying to keep the law, it just shows
that you are a sinner because you can't keep one law one time.
What about changing our way? Somebody says, you know, I got
saved, so therefore it's gonna change my behavior, not for five
minutes. Your heart condemns you. Your
heart speaks out against you and proves that your heart's
sinful and wicked and deceitful. Let's put it this way. If you've
sinned one time, even in your past, you've got a problem. You're
guilty before God and you have to have forgiveness for that.
That's enough to send you to hell for eternity. So that is
everybody in this room at this point. So we all can't escape
this being a sinner. God demands perfection. And it
doesn't matter what you or I think what we're like today or not.
God says we're sinners. He's our judge. A sinner has
the same hope, and I say all that to get to this, a sinner
has the same hope as this blind man. He can't change his condition
any more than you can change the fact that you're a sinner.
This blind man is in need of healing, an impossible condition.
Nobody can be made to see that's blind, and nobody can be made
to be righteous. That's a sinner. Somebody has
to do that for me. And it's only if we're brought
here to see this, that will cry out like Bartimaeus. I'm asking
you at this point, do you want to know this man? To hope that
he might cleanse you, to hope that he might forgive your sins,
to hope that he might make it so that you don't have to be
ashamed of what you are and what you've done to make you perfect. Well, he's here right now. in
this place with us at this moment. The scriptures say where two
or three are gathered in my name, I'll be in their midst. I believe
there's two or three gathered in his name here tonight. The
Lord is in our midst at this very moment. What is your reaction
to this? The Lord is passing by, even
here, even now. Look at Bartimaeus. He said,
Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy upon me. He cried out. It's all he could do. If I can
be made to see, there's gonna be no more begging, no more rejection,
no more being an outcast. This is my only chance. I have
to cry out and be heard. Is there anyone here who's in
need of that same healing? Is there anyone here who needs
to be cleansed of your sins? Who needs to be healed? Because
you can't do anything to please God. To have your corruption
taken away, your shame, to have the fear of punishment removed,
to be accepted by God. The Savior's here with us right
now. He's promised that in His word.
Does this make your heart cry out? It does mine. That's the
reason I come here. I come here because I know he'll
be here. I come here because I need him
to hear me. I come here because I want to
be with him. I want to be near his presence.
And so this is gonna be the cry of every believer, of everyone
who's seen his face. Jesus, thou son of David, have
mercy upon me. Pick up back in our text in verse
48, Mark chapter 10. And what is this world's reaction
to the one that needs this Jesus? Not the doormat named Jesus that
will do something for you if you do something for him. What
is the world's reaction to this in verse 48? And many charged
him that he should hold his peace. This world says, we don't want
to hear any of that. You can imagine him screaming,
crying for help at this point. The Lord passing by with his
great number of people, and all this bunch that was with him,
they were all just trying to vie for his attention, no doubt,
asking him a bunch of stupid questions, probably that didn't
have anything to do with anything, to try to look at the great question
that I asked. They didn't want this guy crying
in the background, taking away from their attention. They wanted
to present themselves as the religious pious of this day and
be one with the Lord where he was going. And here we have this
one crying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy upon me. He
won't stop, because he has to be heard. He's got to be heard.
It says he cried the more, a great deal. He needed something. If
God ever reveals to you what you are, you'll cry out just
the same. And you will have to be heard.
You won't care what stands in your way, you must get to him. In verse 49, and Jesus stood
still and commanded him to be called. And they called the blind
man, saying unto him, be of good comfort, rise, he calleth thee. Jesus stood still. Now you consider
at this time what I opened with in saying, the Lord was on the
way to the cross. The whole reason for this world
was the cross. The whole reason for his glory
is bound up in the cross. The reason he was the land slain
from the foundation of the world was the cross. All the people
that he bore as their substitute before the foundation of the
world in an eternal election in his body was all culminated
in the cross. Less than a day's walk, all this
would take place, he was on his way somewhere. He had something
on his mind. But yet, this was the father's
will for him to do all this, and yet he stopped. Something
stopped him. Something got his attention that
said, I'm gonna stop. Now, it was a cry from one of
his children that he heard. Now I can tell you, at least
in my own house, When one of those children cries out, and
you can tell when it's a cry of real need, the world stops. Everything that I'm going on
and busy with, or that Megan's going on and is busy with, it
all stops, and you come running to them because they're in need.
I'm gonna get to them, I'm gonna make sure I take care of them
because they're in need. Is the Lord any different from
us? Is he any different with his own children? We're his children,
and he hears our cries, and he's not hard on that. He responds
to our cries. Aren't you thankful we have a
merciful God that hears us when we cry? He knows our frame. He remembers that we're dust.
He remembers that, you know, He was made a man. He knows the
challenges that we face in these bodies with what we are. He knows
that, and so He's tender to our cry. He's not hard to it. Said
Jesus commanded him to be called. This is not sheepishly asked,
Bartimaeus, would you please come up here? I'd really like
if you'd come up here, I'd do something for you. It says he
commanded him to be called. Who commanded? He commanded him. This is not the Jesus this world
preaches. The Jesus this world preaches
is somebody you have to do something to make what he can do for you
work. That's not in here. All these scriptures are given
to show who he is. It said Jesus commanded him to
be called. This Jesus is the Savior. This Jesus saves you. There's nothing that he could
do. Bartimaeus hadn't done anything. He just cried out for help. And
in crying for help, he found there was a Savior. Electing
love brought the Lord this way. One of his lost sheep was here,
and that was part of the will that his father gave him, that
not one of them would be lost. He passed that way because that
might have been the only opportunity this man would have ever had
to hear what the gospel was and who it was that saved him. Aren't
you thankful the Lord crossed your path? Brought us all from
different directions, different roads, different experiences,
but yet the Lord brought us all, at some point, revealed himself
to our face. Maybe for somebody even tonight.
Wouldn't that be a blessing? But the Lord brought us all down
a different road, down a different path, all for the purpose. Everything
in this world is purposed around the Lord gathering all his elect.
There's not one going to be lost. And that's why he was going through,
out of Jericho, at this time, where this man was on that day
to find his loved one. And in verse 50, Be of good comfort,
he calleth thee." And he, Bartimaeus, casting away his garment, he
rose and came to Jesus. Now, in the story of salvation,
we find the Lord's called this man. What was the first thing
that he did? He threw away his garment. He
threw away his garment. And in coming to him, there's
something that you're going to have to get rid of too. It's
going to weigh you down. It's called your righteousness.
This garment is representative of our self-righteousness. Anything
that I can do or say or think or feel that would somehow recommend
me to God or have God do something for me and say, that was good,
I want to do that for you because you did that, that has to be
all thrown away. Anything that I can look to and point to and
say, I did that and that was good, it's all thrown away. That
has to be thrown away. Now, can you imagine at this
point how filthy that garment must have been that Bartimaeus
was wearing? He was a bum. He sat out on the roadsides,
you know, dirty. He couldn't tell he was dirty.
He didn't probably have a place to go to to get clean. He was
outside a lot. This garment probably stunk.
It was filthy. It had holes in it. It was faded.
It was nasty. You know, I've walked through
parking lots, and I'm sure you have too, and you see some old
shirt next to a dumpster, dirty, stinking. You wouldn't pick that
up and say, man, that's a good shirt. I'm going to take that
with me. You wouldn't say that, would you? No, you'd leave it
right there. You'd say, that's trash. My friends,
that's how our righteousness appears before God. We can't
come before him in anything. If I'm wearing that garment,
I'm filthy. He can't have anything to do with me. He can't look
at me and say, you're beautiful. I'm spotted. It's torn. It's dirty. It's no good. I can't
bring it in his sight. Bartimaeus cast it off. And you
know what it didn't say? That he was looking back to it.
So he threw it down, he cast it off. Now if he had taken it
off carefully, folded it over, carefully laid it on the ground,
you would have known something. You would have known he was coming
back for it. There's no coming back for this
garment. Paul said, all the things that I had done in my life that
was recommended me as far as in the Jewish religion that was
acceptable, it's dung, it's worthless. That's what this garment is.
And that's what it represented with Barnabas cast it off. And
in verse 51, and Jesus answered and said unto him, what wilt
thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him,
Lord, that I might receive my sight. The one thing that he
wanted more than anything, the one thing that he was critically
aware of every day and that he could do nothing about, that
I might receive my sight. And to all those who are called,
the Lord says the same to you. What wilt thou that I should
do unto thee? That I might be made clean? and I might be cleansed of my
sins, then I might be made perfect, holy, righteous, unblameable,
unreprovable in His sight. Doesn't matter what I think about
it, I want to be made clean in His sight. That's what I want.
Save me from my sins, wash me in the blood of the Lamb. And
in verse 52, Jesus said unto him, Go thy way, thy faith hath
made thee whole. He said, Bartimaeus, you're free
to go do whatever you want. Your faith has made you whole.
He said, immediately you received his sight. Go and do whatever
it is you want to do, Bartimaeus. Your faith hath made you whole.
Now this is something important. You're not saved without faith.
You have to have faith. But you're not saved in the conjuring
of your faith. If we're saved in the conjuring
of our faith, that's a work. If we're looking to say, well,
I had faith in that, therefore I'm saved, even that one thing,
that's a work. That's salvation by works. It's
something that you did. The scriptures say that faith
is a gift of God. We're saved by the faith of Christ
because our faith is in Christ. So faith is not something that
we can make a work of. But yet the Lord says to him,
Bartimaeus, your faith hath made you whole. So what did he mean
by this? Faith has an object. On Friday, when I flew here from
Seattle, I had to make a choice to get on a plane. And I had
to have faith that those airplane wings were going to stay on that
plane all the way from Seattle. There's a lot of turbulence,
a lot of storms in between there that day. I had to have faith
they would stay on there. Now, Does my faith or lack thereof
change the strength of those wings on that airplane? Doesn't
at all, does it? Whether I trust them in a lot,
have no worries, and I fall asleep, which is most of the time, I
don't even think about it. Or I'm worried the whole time saying,
man, they might come off. That doesn't change how strong
they are. That doesn't change it a bit. But no faith would
mean I never even got on the plane because I didn't trust
it. Bartimaeus, your faith hath made you whole. Bartimaeus' faith
was in someone. See, salvation is a person. Bartimaeus
had faith. His faith's object was the Lord
Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ said to
a bunch of other blind men that came to him that wanted to have
their eyes open. He said, believe ye that I'm able to do this.
This is faith, and this is the same thing that he says to you.
Believe ye that I'm able to do even this, to save your soul,
without anything from you, without you doing anything, just trusting
in me and what I've done. Is that even enough for you,
believing that I'm able to do this? Faith is believing that
he is able. That's what faith is. And what
happened? Barimaeus said he immediately
received his sight. Immediate. These are the effects
of the Holy Ghost when it comes upon a man. It's an immediate
thing. It's regeneration. This picture
is regeneration. He's been given sight. He can
see something he couldn't see before. Before he wasn't able
to see, but now he can. These are the pictures of the
effect of the new man, Christ in you, that's born in you of
the Holy Spirit. It's effects are immediate. It
didn't say that his sight progressively started to come back, it was
dim, and then he saw. It's immediate. The lights are
turned on. This is the difference between
death and life. So this is why there can only
be two men inside of me. It's not that I'm sinful, and
then the Holy Spirit works upon me, and I start doing some good
things, and I'm able to believe, and I'm kind of in this seesaw
in between the two. No. He couldn't see before, and
now the lights were turned on. He could see the light. He saw
the person who is the light. And so he was given life from
the dead. This is what this picture The
effects of regeneration are instantaneous. The lights were turned on. And
you consider this. What was the first sight that
Bartimaeus had? His first sight was of the Savior. Of all the
things that we've seen in all our life, all the things that
you say is an amazing thing to see, this man saw the Savior,
the first sight. And you know what? I guarantee
you, all his life, he never forgot his face. first face he ever
saw. And there will be a day when
all those who are the Lord's people, when we cross to the
other side of the river, we're on the other side of the bank,
on the other side of death, we'll see his face too. It'll be the
first face that we awake and see on the other side. What a
sight that'll be. He got what he wanted. Bartimaeus,
go your way. Verse 52, go your way, your faith
had made your whole. Where did his way lead him? He
followed Jesus in the way. What he found was the Lord's
way became Bartimaeus' way. See, he'd given him everything,
everything that he desired, everything that he wanted, everything that
he needed. Has the Lord done that with you?
You who have seen his face, you who have had him revealed to
you, has he given that to you? Then your way is his way. When we're given life from the
dead and we have some understanding of what was required to give
me that life, God had to sacrifice his son for me, for you, for
all those for whom he died for. God had to give the life of his
son. Can we then not follow him? Can his way not be my way? It
must be my way when I know what it costs to pay for the ransom
for me. Now, the man I've told you about
today can take away blindness, but he can also take away your
sins. He can also give you life from the dead. And it may just
be that he's passing by this way. Will you cry out to, like
blind Bartimaeus, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy upon
me? Well, if you do, our cry is evidence
that we have faith in him and that he is able.