The Blind Man Who Could See

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Date: 22nd Sunday of Pentecost Text: Mark 10:46-52 www.kongsvingerchurch.org

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern
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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.
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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.
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Mark, the 10th chapter. They came to Jericho, and as Jesus was leaving
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Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside.
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And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
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And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, son of David, have mercy on me.
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And Jesus stopped and said, call him. And they called, the blind man saying to him, take heart, get up, he's calling you.
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And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, what do you want me to do for you?
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And the blind man said to him, rabbi, let me recover my sight. And Jesus said to him, go your way, your faith has made you well.
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And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way. This is the gospel of the
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Lord. In the name of Jesus, amen. All right, so what are we gonna do with this text?
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Another healing of a blind person? How many blind people does Jesus need to heal?
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I mean, come on, we get the idea already, Jesus. What's going on here, you know? It's like, it's easy for us as we read a story like this to just sit there and go, well,
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I mean, you know, it's not that big a deal. It's just another one of those yawn healings that Jesus gives to poor blind people.
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I would argue there's a lot more going on than that. You know, when you take a look ahead in the gospel of Mark, next stop for Jesus is
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Jerusalem, Palm Sunday. You know, so Jericho is like the last stop before we get there.
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So something's going on in that matter. But what I'd like to do is have you wander around the
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Bible with me a little bit. And see if we can make sense of this, yet another healing of this blind man.
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And see if we can figure out what the significance of it is. Now, if you remember back in the gospel of John chapter nine, we're going to pick up a few historical contextual clues here.
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Remember there was that fellow who was born blind, right? Remember that guy?
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And so what happens is that the disciples asked Jesus, Jesus, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
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Oftentimes the consequences of sin really can't be tied to a particular sin. We can just call it the consequences of sin in general.
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And Jesus basically says, well, no one, no one sinned. He was born this way so the glory of God might be displayed in his life.
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And they're like, what? What? And always you have to ask the question, where did they get this idea that, you know, it's kind of a tit for tat thing, you know, you're suffering because you did that particular thing.
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Now, that does happen, by the way, but that sounds more like, you know, karma or something like that. But where do they get it from?
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Oh, well, as chapter nine develops and then goes on to chapter ten, we know exactly where they got it from.
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They got it from the Pharisees. Now, a little bit of a note here. We Lutherans are obnoxious. We don't know how to count.
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All right, let me explain. You ask a Lutheran, how many religions are there? Two. And you sit there and go, come on, what is wrong with you people?
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Let's see if we can work this out. Christianity, right, yeah. Buddhism, uh -huh.
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Islam, you betcha. How about Hinduism? Yeah. Jainism, that's an exotic one that not a lot of people know anything about.
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Jainism, there you go. How many is that, Lutheran? Two. Because here's the thing, you could take all the religions in the world and you kind of sort them out into two categories.
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Works -based religions. The deity is unhappy with you. To say that he is unhappy is to say it politely.
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And so you've got to placate his wrath by your intentional efforts to get onto his good side.
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It's like trying to please your mother when you haven't done your chores. Good luck pleasing her now that she's watching over you like a hawk to make sure you vacuum the floor, right?
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Well, you missed a spot, right? This is not a good thing here. And every single religion, with the exception of one, teaches that this is how this is done.
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You gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta. They're all religions of the law. Now, they come up with different versions.
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So one group says, well, you have to pray towards Mecca. You've got to do your alms and things like this.
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And that's one version of it. And the other version, you've got to offer incenses and food offerings to these little deities.
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And then apostate forms of Christianity. There's a lot of those out there, too.
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There's a form of legalism that we can all recognize maybe within the Roman Catholic Church, but let's talk about something a little bit more closer to home, shall we, than the charismatic churches, when those televangelists get up and they say, the
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Lord wants to heal you, but you need to send me $1 ,000, right?
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And the Lord, well, you just gotta sow a seed offering into my private jet fund, so make your check payable to Pastor Chris Rose, bro.
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You know, you get the idea here. Okay, what is that? It's a form of legalism. And then what happens for people who are suffering, legitimately suffering, you think of those people who have long -term diseases, maladies in their
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Bible, in their body. They have issues with their body because they've been in an accident. You know, just name the thing.
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And then what happens is that they ask said person, why am I suffering?
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Well, let's check your tithing record to see if you've actually been tithing because maybe God has sent the destroyer to wreck your health because you're not tithing off the gross.
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Or they'll say something like, you don't have enough faith. This is all legalism. This is in that other category.
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Then there's this one religion, biblical Christianity. Basically says, yeah,
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I hate to say it, it's way worse than you think. When we look at the law, the law, if your diagnosis of yourself is that, you know, the law is telling me that things are bad, but they're not that bad, all right?
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I like made the analogy in the Bible studies this past couple weeks talking about, remember the movie
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Dunkirk? That's based on a historical thing. There's the British army. They're on the shores of Dunkirk. And the
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Nazis are not that far away. And the situation is dire. So what happens is that, you know,
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Churchill says, if you own a private boat, get to Dunkirk, pick up our boys, bring them back.
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The situation was dire, but it wasn't hopeless. And so they rescued the majority of the army, right? But your situation under sin is way worse than that.
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It's not dire. It is utterly hopeless. You are way sicker than you can possibly imagine.
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More evil than you have even considered. And what you have earned by your rebellion against God and his word, whoa, eternity's not looking good for you.
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You sit there and go, well, that doesn't make me feel good about myself. You shouldn't. That's the purpose of the law is to condemn you, not give you a list of boxes to tick off that if you check off that box and that box and that box, then we're in, right?
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No, no, no, no. The law is given to condemn you. And then in the one religion, we hear the good news that Christ has fulfilled the law for us, for you.
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And he has bled and died on the cross, taking your sin upon himself, bearing your guilt and iniquity, suffering the wrath of God in your place so that you can receive from God a full pardon, forgiveness of your sins, reconciliation with God, and eternity in a new earth gratis, 100 % free.
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Not a thing you can do to earn it. And now you can kind of see it. Yeah, there's only two religions, right?
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So when the Pharisees come along, which religion do you think they're a part of, right? You'll note that they didn't really get along with Jesus.
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And we learn from the Gospel of John chapter nine that after Jesus gave sight back to that fellow who had been born blind, he was immediately hauled into court.
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I mean, what kind of churches have a court? Okay, so they hauled him into court and basically just raked him and his family, his mother and father, over the coals.
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His parents buckled under the pressure and he was left basically confessing Christ on his own.
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Oh, and that's also where we learn this. Are you ready? Anybody, according to the Pharisees, by this time in the
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Gospel of John, anybody who says that Jesus is the Messiah, you're out.
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No church for you. You're excommunicated from the synagogue. What kind of synagogue excommunicates people who believe that Jesus is the
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Messiah? I would say the synagogue of Satan, right? That seems to make sense.
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So you get the idea here. And then in that chapter nine, we also learn this. We also learn this.
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That Jesus has this thing that he does. He uses physical blindness and the ability to see to kind of talk about a different kind of blindness.
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How does it say it in the Old Testament prophet? You have eyes but you do not see, ears but you do not hear.
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It's a recurring theme in Jesus' teaching. So after healing this guy and then finding him and comforting him and the guy believes in Jesus and worships
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Jesus, Jesus says these words. It is for judgment that I came into the world so that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind.
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Well, the Pharisees were johnning on the spot and they took offense at what he said. And so they said, are we blind also?
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And Jesus said, listen, if you were blind, you'd have no guilt. Just basically takes their false theology and shoves it right up their nose.
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And then he says, but now that you say we see, your guilt remains. So the healing of that blind man in John chapter nine,
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I mean, you're gonna note, he starts off blind in two respects. He starts off physically blind and spiritually blind.
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Jesus gives him both physical and spiritual sight. And that's kind of the point.
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Now that plays into this. So kind of take this little bit of information, let's put it off to the side now for a second.
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Let me ask you a question. Why do we suffer so much as a result of sin?
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It's not karma, okay? I would like to throw in a little more information into the mix.
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Maybe should we consider Psalm 107, Psalm 107. And in Psalm 107, the psalmist says these words to begin with, oh, give thanks to Yahweh for he is good.
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His steadfast love endures forever. So we're here invited to ponder and to think through and to meditate on the steadfast love of God.
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But it's going to include both a hot and cold tap, if you would, and there's a reason for the cold tap.
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Listen to what he says. So let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east, from the west, from the north, and from the south.
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And now what comes is a series, kind of a litany of like really terrifying results and consequences here on planet
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Earth as a result of, well, our collective sin. And this is what it says.
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Some have wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in, hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them.
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And then they cried to Yahweh in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
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He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man, for he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
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I think a good way to think of it is that the consequences that we experience because of our sin, and this will include desert wastes.
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You think of people who, I just recently read a story about a family who was on a hike in Southern California, and they up and disappeared.
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They found their bodies five days later, couldn't figure out how they died. It turns out they died of dehydration, right?
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Terrible thing. And so every night when we watch the news, does the news always tell us good things?
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No, it always tells us all the things that are going wrong in the world. Food shortages, lockdowns, vaccine rebellion, all this kind of stuff.
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The whole world's gone nuts, right? Well, note this, that this is the consequence of our sin, and sometimes
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God just basically says, all right, I'm gonna let this play out, okay? You don't want me, you don't want good?
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Well, I'm just gonna give you what you want then, because if you don't want God and his good graces and his gifts and his mercy, his love, his care, there's nothing else to give you that.
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So we're just gonna take our hands off and see what happens. And that's when things, well, they go to seed.
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And in the midst of that, then desert wastes are formed, and you'll see the idea here.
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And so people having to wander through these things, they get themselves in trouble, and they long for the good things that God gives, you know, like daily bread and food and water and shelter and things like this.
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And so in their trouble, in their distress, what do they do? They cry out to the Lord. Ah, ah, there's a method to the madness here.
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Then it goes on in verse 10, it says, well, some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons, for they had rebelled against the words of God, and they spurned the counsel of the
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Most High. So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor, and they fell with none to help.
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Then they cried to Yahweh in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death.
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He burst their bonds apart. Let them thank Yahweh for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man, for he shatters the door of bronze and cuts into the bars of iron.
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Are you starting to see the pattern here? Well, the nice thing about Scripture is that when it teaches us a pattern, it goes ahead, gives us more examples of the pattern.
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Some were fools through their sinful ways, the psalmist writes, and because of their iniquities, they suffered affliction.
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They loathed any kind of food. They drew near to the gates of death, but then they cried out to Yahweh in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
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He said out his word, and he healed them, and he delivered them from their destruction, and let them thank
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Yahweh for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. Let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and tell of his deeds in songs of joy.
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Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters.
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They saw the deeds of Yahweh, his wondrous works in the deep, for he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea.
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They mounted up to heaven. They went down to the depths. Their courage melted away in their evil plight.
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They reeled, and they staggered like drunken men and were at their wit's end, and then they cried out to Yahweh in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
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He made the storm be still. The waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them out to their desired haven.
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Let them thank Yahweh for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. Let them extol him in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
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He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into a thirsty ground.
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Note the pattern here. A fruitful land he turns into a salty waste because of the evil of its inhabitants.
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But then he turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land in the springs of water, and there he lets the hungry dwell, and they establish a city to live in.
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They sow fields and plant vineyards and get a fruitful yield, and by his blessing they multiply greatly, and he does not let their livestock diminish.
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Ah, you see the idea here? You despise the word of the Lord. You hate him and what he's given you, and God says, fine,
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I don't have to give you my good things, and so we instead return, he returns, well, we return his good with evil, so he allows evil to run its course, and then we go, what were we thinking?
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What were we thinking, right? And we cry out to Yahweh, and he hears us, and you'll note then the idea is that the suffering and the difficulties that we go through, there is some meaning behind them.
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Have you noticed that each of these patterns here, it's as if these difficult circumstances bring people to their senses, and then they cry out to God, and they cry out to God hungry and thirsty for the good things that he provides, and you'll note the world that we live in, oh, it's wearing out like a garment.
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Things are going pretty bad here right now. Doesn't look good for me either. I keep getting uglier by the week.
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It's the strangest thing. It's like clockwork, all right? But if I were to stand before Jesus and ask him for something, anything temporal,
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I wouldn't ask him to make me skinny again because I'd squander that. I'd be fat in a week. So, you know,
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I'd need something a little bit that had a little greater impact on it, and this is where I would note that we all suffer in many different ways, and I've talked about it in the past, but I'll reiterate it.
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I struggle with depression, and people who don't understand depression, they always are so annoying when they try to help you, when they don't understand a thing about depression.
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Well, Pastor Rose, bro, why don't you just be happy? Because it's not about me not being happy, all right?
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If you don't know what depression's about, it's kind of really an anxiety disorder.
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Life's anxieties come up, and mentally you trigger, and then what happens is that your brain gets stuck in a loop, best way
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I can put it. So what happens is, like, the economy has gone bad and you're afraid you're gonna lose your job, and so if you have depression, what happens is you start running the scenario.
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What's gonna happen next? And every time you run the scenario, everything goes to its worst possible outcome, and then when you get to the end, everybody's dead, all right?
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Your family is dead, all right? You're dead. You've died horrific deaths.
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You've starved and frozen to death at the same time. You lost your house, all your clothes.
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Everyone was naked, and everybody hated you. The end, it's terrible, and then when you're done, you know what you do?
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You run the scenario again in all of its gory detail and it still ends up as everybody's dead.
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That's what depression's like, okay? It's loads of fun.
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If you have never tried it, you should try it once or twice, but then be done with it, but the idea here is is that if I were to ask
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Christ for anything, I would ask for, like, complete relief from that. I'd like to never have that again, right?
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But the thing is, I will say this, is that I've learned through my depression to really count the blessings that God does give me because despite all of my fear and anxiety, my family didn't die naked or frozen, all right?
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Despite the difficult circumstances that we had to go through, God was gracious, and you'll note that in our bad circumstances, they created in us a yearning for something to give.
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We yearn for a different place, a new earth, if you would, where Christ has made all things new, and that's really the point.
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To consider the steadfast love of the Lord is to not merely consider the good things that he's given us, but also to consider all the different ways in which we suffer, which then create in us a longing for something different, for the good things of God, for God himself.
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And so you'll note, the psalmist continues, he turns rivers into a desert, springs of water to a thirsty ground, a fruitful land into a salty waste because of the evil of its inhabitants.
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He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water, and there he lets the hungry dwell.
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They establish a city to live in. They sow fields and plant vineyards and get a fruitful yield.
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By his blessing, they multiply greatly, and he does not let their livestock diminish. When they are diminished and brought low through oppression, evil, and sorrow, he pours contempt on princes and makes them wander in trackless wastes, but he raises up the needy out of affliction.
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That's you and I, that's I. We are the needy. We are brought up out of affliction. God makes their families like flocks.
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The upright see it and they're glad, and all wickedness shuts its mouth. So whoever is wise, let him attend to these things, let him consider them the steadfast love of the
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Lord. All right, so there's the steadfast love of the Lord. Now how does this help us out?
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Well, this helps us a little bit here to understand what it is that Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, has gone through.
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And how is it that we know not only his name, but his dad's name, all right?
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Because Bartimaeus is not a popular name in Christ's time. There's not a lot of guys with Bartimaeus.
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Usually when you know their father's name, it's for disambiguation purposes. How do we know this guy's name?
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Hmm, well, kind of put that one off to the side too. I'm creating more questions than answers in this sermon.
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Well, there's Bartimaeus. He's blind. That's his daily existence, darkness.
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In order to get where he needs to go, he needs help. And this is long before the days where they had crosswalks that talk to you, right?
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So, I mean, getting around is difficult. And by the way, finding good jobs as a blind person, that's tough too, okay?
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You'll note he wasn't a pilot. He wasn't a race car driver. He was a beggar, all right?
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That's about the best job that you can do. So he spends his day, and we learn from the other gospels that there were other blind men with him.
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He spends his day asking for people to be merciful, to show some kindness, to be generous, and help out a poor blind man.
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That's just insanely humbling. That's not a good existence. And I'm sure, you know, he has a lot of time to talk.
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And of course, we know this, that at the time of Jesus, everybody's talking about Jesus.
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This is the days before the internet, all right? And everybody's buzzing about Jesus. And we know from this text that he knows something about Jesus.
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But what he believes about Jesus is not what the Pharisees allow.
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You see, he thinks that Jesus is the Messiah. How so?
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Well, he calls him the son of David. That's a messianic title. Where did he get that idea from?
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He didn't get it from the Pharisees. Because remember, the Pharisees said, if you say he's the
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Messiah, you're out. No church for you. Maybe he heard it from the prophet Isaiah.
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Nah, I'm speculating here. But here's a good text that talks about certain things. The prophet
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Isaiah, chapter 35, he writes, the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad.
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Oh, there's that theme again. Wilderness, dry land being made glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus.
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It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it.
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The majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of Yahweh and the majesty of our
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God. So strengthen the weak hands. Make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not.
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Nah, that's me, the anxious heart, the depression guy, right? Be strong, fear not. Behold, your
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God will come with vengeance. With the recompense of God, he will come and he will save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped.
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Then shall the lame man leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy. For water's great.
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Hang on a second here. It's a sign.
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Yeah, let me back up a little bit here. Verse five.
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The eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
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Then shall the lame man leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy. The waters break forth in the wilderness, streams in the desert.
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You know, it's not a stretch to think of blind Bartimaeus sitting outside the gates of Jericho begging for alms, talking with the other blind guys that are there.
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You know, the people who've been kind of pushed outside of society. And for them to say, hey, did you hear what
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Jesus did not that long ago? There was that guy who was born blind. He gave him his sight.
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How did he do that? How did he do that? Well, they cast him out of the synagogue. They excommunicated the guy.
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But he says that Jesus is the Messiah. What do you think? What do you think? You can hear the buzz because that's, isn't that how this all goes?
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Right? That's how this all goes. Everybody's got their opinions about Jesus. When Jesus took his disciples outside of Judea, took them up north, took them to where the gates of Hades are in a grotto dedicated to Pan.
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He asked them, who do people say that I am? And they shared the buzz. Well, some say one of the prophets, come back from the dead.
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Some say John the Baptist, right? Who do you say that I am? Whew. What does
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Peter say? You're the Christ, the son of the living God. Peter confesses that Jesus is the
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Messiah. And Jesus warned them not to say anything. Warned them not to tell anybody that that was the case.
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And assured them that that was revealed to them by God the Father. And so you'll note that in the midst of all of this, our gospel text teaches us something very important.
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That each and every one of us, we right now, we're a lot like blind Bartimaeus.
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And here's what I mean. We all struggle. We're all dying. I'm looking terrible and worse by the day and my anxiety levels.
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Well, at the moment, they're being managed. But you get the idea. But here's the thing. The one thing we have in common with blind
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Bartimaeus is that we can see. And have you ever stopped to think that kind of the significance of this account is that Bartimaeus is already spiritually unblind.
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He can see exactly who Jesus is. And that's the point.
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He's not spiritually dead, blind, and physically blind. He's only physically blind.
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So in that context, hear this text. So they came to Jericho. And as Jesus was leaving
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Jericho, oh, and by the way, we know from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus spent the night there in Jericho.
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Remember the story of Zacchaeus? Zacchaeus was a wee little man. A wee little man was he. Climbed up the Sycamore. We talked about him a few weeks ago, right?
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Jesus spent the night in Jericho. So all of Jericho's buzzing. They're buzzing.
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And Bartimaeus, he's heard the scuttlebutt himself. But of course, Jesus, he spent the night with a sinner.
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Oh my goodness, and he ate with a sinner. Can you believe that? Again, if Jesus didn't eat with sinners, he would eat by himself.
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So it says there was a crowd, and now Jesus is heading out of Jericho. Where's he going?
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Jerusalem, next stop. Next order of business, once he arrives in Jericho, it's
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Palm Sunday. Jesus has less than a week before he's hanging on a cross, bleeding and dying for your sins and mine, and for Bartimaeus's.
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And so there's a big crowd. This is probably the crowd that accompanied Christ on that Palm Sunday and laid the palm branches before him.
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Bartimaeus heard the scuttlebutt, heard the commotion, and he was the son of Timaeus.
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He was sitting by the roadside when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth. He began to cry out.
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And listen to what he says. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
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That's some really good theology right there. There's some, and by the way, when
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I teach catechism and we talk about the different portions of the liturgy, the
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Kyrie, Lord have mercy, you know which text we use to say this is where this comes from?
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It's this one right here, all right? Now, it doesn't have the word Lord, it's son of David, but have you ever heard the word eleison?
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There was a band in the 80s called Mr. Mister, and they had a song, Kyrie, and they would sing,
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Kyrie eleison is the road that I must travel, right? All right,
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Lord have mercy. And the Greek here is wonderful. It's eleison me, mercy me,
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Lord, mercy me. Ooh, that's a good prayer too. But you know, we pray that every
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Sunday. How many of you in your affliction pray it every day? Lord have mercy on me.
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And so you'll note here, what is he doing? He's confessing that he believes that Jesus is the
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Messiah. This is gonna get you excommunicated, and so what happens is is that many people rebuked him.
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And I never understood why they were rebuking him. Is it because he's a blind man and he dares to address
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Jesus? I think it has to do with the content of what he was saying. You can all see them, as soon as he says it, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me, you can see them all go, ooh, there's
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Pharisees here, shh, quiet, don't say that. You're gonna get us all in trouble.
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Whoo, those guys get upset when you say stuff like this. So they tell him, be quiet. But he cried out a little more.
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Son of David, have mercy on me. Ah, I know this prayer, you know this prayer.
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And what does Jesus do? Shh, no, what does he do?
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He stops, call him, and by Jesus stopping and saying call him, he's affirming
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Bartimaeus' confession, that his confession is true. Bartimaeus is the blind man who can already see.
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So they called the blind man. Take heart, get up, he's calling you. Throwing off his cloak.
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He leaves his cloak behind. The cloak was probably sitting on his lap and there were coins in it, right? He's not gonna need this anymore.
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He knows it, he throws off his coat and he immediately comes to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, what do you want me to do for you?
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And I want you to consider this for a second here because Bartimaeus is the blind man who can see.
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He can't see the face of Jesus yet. But have any of you seen
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Christ's face yet? I haven't, you haven't.
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Are we not all this blind beggar? We're just like him. We've been made to suffer the consequences of our sin.
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We long for something different in the world, for love in our life, for the good things of God.
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And still we suffer. And every day when we cry out to God, God have mercy on us.
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We let our petitions be made known to God, the God whom we have not yet seen with our eyes and neither has
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Bartimaeus. He has not seen Jesus with his eyes yet. And yet he prays. And yet we pray.
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What would you like me to do for you? And you'll note, we make our petitions known to Christ daily.
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So the blind man said to him, Rabbi, let me recover my sight.
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And here's where the Greek helps. And Jesus said to him, go your way, your faith has saved you.
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I love the wordplay here, sozo. It could mean heal, but I just think that misses the whole point.
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But the thing is is that Jesus, by saying that your faith has saved you, he's affirming something much bigger than the fact that he recovered his sight.
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And always and again, faith has an object to which it's looking. Faith is like eyesight.
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What's your faith looking at? Is it looking at your money, your bank account? Not much there, so no point in looking to that.
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Is it looking to your health, to your job, to your family? What's your faith looking at?
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Can what you're trusting save you? No. If your faith isn't in Christ, it can't save you.
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Your faith is misplaced. But Jesus affirms your faith. And you can watch how this works.
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Since Bartimaeus' faith is in Christ, you can change the word faith to the object of that faith, and it still holds the same meaning.
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It doesn't change the meaning of the text at all. Watch this. Go your way, Bartimaeus, your
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Jesus has saved you. It works, right?
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And that's the point. So immediately he recovered his sight, and listen to these words.
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He followed him on the way. He followed him on the way. I think this is the reason why we know
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Bartimaeus' name. I mean, he didn't have a job to show up to. It's not like he needed to call in and say, you know, listen, boss,
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I'm not gonna be there. I need a couple of days off. He's got nothing but time.
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He's got nowhere to go. He's got nothing to lose. So what does he do? He follows Jesus.
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Where? To Jerusalem. And there's really good scholarship over the past few decades that really make the claim that when we see names of people who have been healed by Christ in the
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Gospels, there's a really good chance that the reason why their names are recorded is because that they were prominent members of the early
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Christian church. Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, he follows
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Jesus on the way. One has to wonder, was he one of the ones laying the palm branches before Christ as he rode in to Jerusalem?
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Was he sitting at the feet of Jesus when Jesus taught in the temple all that week? Was he there when the report came that Christ had been arrested and sentenced to death?
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Was he with the disciples when Jesus appeared?
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Was he one of the eyewitnesses of the resurrection? It doesn't say, but it kind of strongly hints that he might have been.
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And the reality is this. You and I will someday all be eyewitnesses of the resurrection. We will see Jesus with our own eyes.
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And Christ has already given us sight. Sight to see that in him there is forgiveness and mercy.
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As it says in our epistle text that Jesus is our great high priest who is not like any other high priest of the ancient world.
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See, all the high priests of the ancient world, they were prevented by death from continuing their office.
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But Jesus, he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever.
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Death couldn't hold him. After he died for your sins and mine on the cross, his body lay lifeless in the tomb, but on the third day he rose victoriously from the grave and death no longer has any power over him.
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And therefore he continues forever. And as a result of that, consequently, the writer of Hebrews says,
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Jesus is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God. I love it.
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It just doesn't say he's able to save. It says to the uttermost. That includes you.
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Yeah, but you don't know what I've done. No, I do. There's nothing special about your sin. Christ can save us to the uttermost and he does.
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Draw near to him. Cry out to the son of David to have mercy on you. And you know what? He does.
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Cry out to him in the day of trouble and in your consequences. Ask him for help. He will give it.
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He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives and he is presently making intercession for you and for me.
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And unlike the high priests of the ancient world, Jesus didn't need to offer sacrifices daily for his own sins because Jesus is the spotless lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world, your sin and mine.
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Instead, he offered up himself as a once -for -all sacrifice so that you, me, and even
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Bartimaeus could be healed, forgiven, pardoned, reconciled, and have hope.
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So brothers and sisters, this isn't just another healing of a blind man.
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When you consider how the scriptures would teach us to look at this account, we can see that we are all a lot like this blind
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Bartimaeus. And by God's grace, we can see. And so I thank God for the miracle that Jesus Christ gave sight to a man who already could see.
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In the name of Jesus, amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th
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Avenue Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. And again, that address is
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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th
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Avenue Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. We thank you for your support.
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