Faith Turns to Sight

Covenant Baptist Church

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remain standing for the reading of God's Word. Our message today is coming from Mark chapter 10, starting in verse 46.

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They came to Jericho, and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd,

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Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the road. When he heard that it was

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Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

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Many warned him to keep quiet, but he was carrying out all the more. Have mercy on me, son of David.

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Jesus stopped and said, call him. So they called the blind man and said to him, have courage, get up, he's calling for you.

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He threw off his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus. Then Jesus answered him, what do you want me to do for you?

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Rabboni, the blind man, said to him, I want to see. Jesus said to him, go, your faith has saved you.

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Immediately he could see and began to follow Jesus on the road. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your word,

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God, and your church, or that we can come and worship you, Lord, in singing and prayer, the hearing of the word, or the gathering of the saints.

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It's all so beautiful that you've established your kingship and your kingdom this way. God, I pray for Pastor Josh this morning as he presents your word.

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Lord, we pray that you would learn that your spirit would move in our hearts, that we would find conviction and encouragement in your word, that,

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Lord, where conviction comes, we would turn from it, Lord, and repent and follow you as king.

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God, we just thank you for this passage, Lord, that we know that only you are the one that can give us sight in our faithlessness.

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Lord, that you hold us up, you sustain us. Lord, you don't lose a single one of yours that you call your own.

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And so, God, we give you praise for that. Lord, bless us now with this sermon. Lord, lift us up, prepare us for the week, make us courageous and bold out in this world to serve you, our great creator king.

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It's in your name we pray, amen. You may be seated. It's gonna be a different kind of sermon because what happens is this text this morning is a bookend between a section and mark that began back in chapter eight.

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And I think the question that we really have to answer and that we have to think about this morning is one that you're gonna say yes to immediately, but I want you to think longer before you do.

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And the question is, do you really want to see? Do you really want to? Because if you really want to, you're gonna start to see some things that you don't see right now.

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You're gonna see pet sins. You're gonna see little things that you've made compromises on that have grabbed a foothold and that they've become a beloved little companion to you.

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Maybe it's little white lies. Maybe it's a little bit of indulgence. Maybe it's softening and compromising on small areas that's not taking everything.

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You might find that you are more self -reliant than you think. You might find that you actually believe you've contributed something to your salvation.

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You might find that you have bitterness that you've comforted yourself with against an enemy and that it's made a place and that you've rationalized and you've driven in deep.

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You might find that you have a pride that is masking all of this stuff, that you present one way to the world, but inside you know that there's something that's not quite right.

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You might realize that you have a heart that's drifted away from your first love, that there might be things that compete with Christ for the throne of your life and that you've gotten complacent.

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You might find that you're just drifting along and you didn't even know it. I'll tell you what I found this week. I started thinking about this thought.

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I have never been in an argument that I did not firmly believe that I was 100 % correct about.

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So one of two things is true. Either I'm right every single time somebody disagrees with me or I'm blind.

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Now, I thought the first one was right even in my mind this week, but I know sensibly that cannot possibly be right and so what

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I know is there is some degree of blindness. We argue with each other. We take our pet sins and we think they're not that big a deal and so what

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I want to do today is to look at really one of these last looks at blindness and one of these repetitions where we're gonna see maybe in the starkest detail and the greatest contrast the story of Bartimaeus and what it takes to really see

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Jesus. What kind of posture is it to really see Jesus? But in order to do that, I have to backtrack and I have to tell you that in the theology nerd level,

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I will tell you there's a lot of barbs thrown at Mark for his writing and when you get into commentaries on the

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Gospels, Mark is thought of as kind of a lesser gospel in scholastic circles. Mark's Greek is not quite so precise as Luke's, right?

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His storytelling not quite so beautiful and circular as John's and of course,

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Matthew, if you want to doubt Matthew's acumen, you can just read all of that discourse and what he does and how he's dazzled theologians for centuries but I want to show you something in Mark here that I think is quite brilliant and I think it's hidden in here and so this sermon is a little bit less of me screaming at you,

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I think, this morning and a little bit more of I want to look at the beauty of this passage here and there's two three -part acts that are together and what they're always focusing on is the center, right?

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When you get a peanut butter sandwich, that sandwich is not named after the bread, it's named after what's in the middle and so it is with this kind of literary structure, it's what's in the middle that's important.

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It's what the author is trying to focus on and so what I want to do is I want to backtrack and we're going to spend a lot of time backtracking before we get to Bartimaeus this morning and so point number one that I'm going to talk about is what

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I've called the beginning of a cohesive teaching. Now, if you've been here the last few weeks and you've heard

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Mark, you would realize there has been a lot of repetition and I'm going to highlight how much repetition there has been because it is going in circles, much like how

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John writes and there's a cycle to it. So this pericope, which is a fancy way of saying this argument, this whole stage of the story in Mark started in Mark 8, verse 22.

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Now, you may remember this story. I'm going to read it because it's important and I think you're going to see what I'm doing here, okay? And really more importantly, what

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Mark by the direction of the Holy Spirit was doing, okay? As an aside before I read this, should we be amazed more?

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I think we think of these human authors, can human authors write this? The miraculous writing and cohesiveness of the

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Holy Spirit just blows me away every time I study scripture and we have talks at the Rice House often and I'll say, man,

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I think this is my favorite book and it's always the one that I'm reading right now. I really do and Mark is just incredible and it blew me away this week as I studied.

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So I'm going to read this story in Mark 8, 22 through 26. And they came to Bethsaida and they brought a blind man to Jesus and pleaded with him to touch him.

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And taking the blind man by the hand, he brought him out of the village and after spitting on his eyes and laying his hands on him, he was asking him, do you see anything?

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And he looked up and was saying, I see men for I see them like trees walking around. Then again, he laid his hands on his eyes and he looked intently and was restored and began to see everything clearly.

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And he sent him to his home saying, do not even enter this village. And so begins the story of this section that is a microcosm of the whole section.

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So this man is given partial sight and then as Jesus lays his hands on him again, he's given full sight.

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There is one more man in this scripture and it's the story that you just heard Jake read where a man has full sight.

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And in the middle of all of this is the disciples. So who has partial sight at this stage in Mark?

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It is the disciples. And the disciples do not have full sight. And the second laying of hands on the disciples is going to be the resurrected savior that they no longer see with a veil, that they no longer see men walking around like trees, but they see with clarity the work of Jesus Christ.

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A greater revelation is coming. So the man gets partial vision and then he gets complete vision and he's sent home in an ingenious way.

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This small little story tells the whole story that he would spend the next couple of chapters on and a lot of verses, okay?

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So that's the beginning of a cohesive teaching. Now the longer middle, remember the middle is more important and this happens in three stages.

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There's three acts to this middle and it goes from Mark 8, 26 until the passage we're on today, okay?

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So number one, we have the first prophecy of the passion. Remember that? We've talked about it often.

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I believe that's in verse 31 of chapter eight. In the first prophecy of the passion,

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Jesus tells the disciples, I'm going to be taken and I'm going to be killed, right?

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I'm going to be murdered. And Peter rebukes him and Jesus tells Peter, get behind me, Satan. And then

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Jesus launches into this teaching and the teaching is counting the cost of discipleship.

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You are going to have to count the cost if you wanna follow me. And what he means by that, but what the disciples don't understand is that you are going to have to die to follow me because Jesus is saying, you're not gonna go where the master hasn't gone.

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The master is going to die for his slaves and then the slaves are going to drink from that same cup. Remember, we heard that last week.

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So you are gonna have to count the cost. This is not a groupie following around a rock star.

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This is slaves following around the master and if the master is punished, then the slaves will certainly be punished.

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So you have to count the cost. To enter into Christian life is not something you just say. And many people do that.

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Many, many people, okay? They will say they are Christian and then they will flagrantly try to get away from what

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God's word says. And the label that those guys give themselves is not worth the words that come out of their mouth.

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They are not Christians. They have not counted the cost. They are following the synagogue of Satan and they're no good because at best, they have extremely blurry revelation that's, hey, there's a thing called a

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Christian and I think something about Jesus. God is love. You do you. That is the spirit of the age for us but that is not the disciple that Christ calls because Christ calls disciples that obey his commands but more often than that and more importantly than that, that they count the cost of discipleship and it will cost you something to follow

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Jesus. And in the middle of this first prophecy, Jesus gives this high point of the

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New Testament which is the transfiguration and he takes the inner circle up and there is an unveiling that should have led to complete spiritual sight.

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Should it not? Do you understand? We just read the passage out of 1 John in the call to worship. What is

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John's promise? That we are not like him yet. We are not like him yet but we will be made like him and how will we be made like him?

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Because we will see him as he is, right? Do you understand? One of the most powerful drivers of how our sinful estate will be taken away in glory is that we will see the living

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God as he is. Do you think you'll be sinning when you see God the way he is and you're in his presence?

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Oh, I think not. I think not. And that is an important piece of theology but get what happens here.

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Not yet because Peter, James and John see the revealed, unveiled son of God on the mountain and they have partial sight because the time has not come.

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And then we have this story. They have the transfiguration, partial sight, mirroring that first story that I read about the blind man.

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And we have a man who comes with a possessed son and Jesus says, oh, unbelieving generation, how long shall

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I put up with you? Because people want him to heal but they don't know who he is and then the man professes, you remember very famously.

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He says, Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief, partial sight.

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But this man, unlike the disciples, does believe and his son is healed.

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And that is the beginning of the first part of three in the middle section. The second part is broken off in chapter nine, verse 31, which is the second prophecy of the passion.

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The second of three in Mark. And this is, the disciples leave this one and they don't rebuke

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Jesus but they start having an internal discussion about, well, which one of us is the greatest? Jesus, I will die.

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I will be delivered over and I will rise again. And the disciples say, well, who's gonna be the greatest? And Jesus doesn't go into a rage like I would, all right, and say, you stupid idiots.

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What are you talking about? No, he knows that they're partially blinded. You know why he knows they're partially blinded?

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He partially blinded them, okay? Jesus has partially blinded them for his purposes.

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And so what he does is he patiently teaches them. And the way he teaches them in this section is he says that the one who receives children is the one who will be the greatest of the disciples, right?

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The one who takes in those who have nothing to offer. That's the one who's the disciple.

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And the kingdom is united and helps those who love Jesus. Remember that they're arguing.

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Some people are going out and they're casting out demons but they're not following us. And Jesus says, well, if it's in my name, then we're united.

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A house divided against itself cannot stand. And once again, once again, he talks about how the kingdom requires us to count the cost over and over.

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In the first one, count the cost of discipleship. In the second one, you count the cost by cutting off anything that causes stumbling.

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And then he brings in this strange teaching on divorce in the middle of this one. You remember that? I think

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Joel summed it up as saying something like, don't get divorced, all right? Don't get divorced. But he was doing more with that.

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And what he was doing was he was saying, yeah, in your hard heartedness, you've been given this ability to be divorced.

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But what's going on right now in the bigger picture that Mark is weaving is Jesus is saying, I'm divorcing you.

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I'm divorcing you religious leaders because what are they gonna do? They're gonna do in life and in death, aren't they?

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And they're gonna kill the Lord, thus ending the covenant. Do you understand? That's what

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Jesus is talking about. And so what he's doing is he's talking about a division that's coming. There's gonna be united kingdom of Christ with people who take in children.

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And there's gonna be divided cast off thing that was stoning and killing the prophets. And that's what's coming.

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And then he goes further in his teaching. He says, the kingdom has no room for hard heartedness, none at all.

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He keeps saying, you have to be soft hearted. You cannot be a hard hearted, stubborn, stiff neck generation.

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And then the climax and the end of this second part, this prophecy is the rich young ruler.

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And what does the rich young ruler do? He thinks he sees, he thinks he believes, but he cannot overcome his unbelief, unlike the man who was desperate for the healing of his son.

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See the rich young ruler, he knows the law because Jesus quotes him. He goes, oh yeah, I've done all that since I was a youth.

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And Jesus says, well, one thing remains, sell everything you have. And the man is grieved, why? Because he loves his money more than he loves

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God. He thinks he sees, but he sees nothing. He is blind and he cannot overcome his unbelief.

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Now that actually starts this other act that's working at the same time. So we'll come back to the rich young ruler because it's a, in some ways, it's a chiasma inside of one, right?

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We have a vertex that is this teaching on the passion, right, with sight, passion, blindness, sight at the end.

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But then inside of that, we have rich young ruler, James and John, Bartimaeus, and they make a disciple saying which also, okay?

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I'll explain what I mean. Third part of the passion. I know this is a deep one. Here we go. Third prophecy of the passion.

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What happened? We were more recent now, so you probably remember. Jesus goes into more detail. I'm going to be delivered over into the hands of the

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Gentiles by your chief priests, and they're going to kill me, and I'm going to rise again.

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And what are the disciples do? Which one of us is the greatest? They've learned nothing, and James and John's mother come to Jesus, and they, and she says, well, which, can my son sit at your right and left?

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And Jesus doesn't go, no, stupid. You don't get, that's not what he says. What does Jesus do? He asks them a question, which is what great teachers do, right?

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Great teachers direct this, and they ask a question, and the question Jesus asks is, are you going to be able to drink the cup and be baptized with the baptism that I'm baptized with?

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And the boys say, yeah. And Jesus doesn't say, wrong answer, idiot.

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No, he doesn't say that. What Jesus says is very surprising in it. He says, you will drink the cup, and you will be baptized by the baptism.

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So what's happening? They're still blind, but he teaches us even more. He says the greatest of all, because that's the question the disciples are pondering, isn't it?

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Who will be the greatest? And Jesus says very distinctly and very specifically, the greatest is a slave of all in the service of the king's decree.

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We have to love those who provide no status over and over again. So do

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James and John leave with full vision or partial? Partial, right?

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Partial blindness, like the man who sees walking around his trees, all right? So let's look at that.

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The three prophecies of the passion, and here's the takeaways. First takeaway, and this should hit us, right?

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How many of you have partial sight? The answer is all of us, okay? So here's the deal. If you don't think you have partial sight, if you think that you see clearly, you're more blind than the person who knows that they have partial sight.

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So repent, okay? Here's the deal. Partial sight makes even the disciples, any of you as good as them, anybody want to make that claim?

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You want to stand toe to toe with John the apostle and lay up your command, your following of Christ's commandments?

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No, I don't think so, right? But it makes even the disciples ask foolish questions and think foolish thoughts.

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Are we immune? I think not. Do Christians today ask foolish questions and think foolish thoughts?

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Yeah. Do you see that partial sight is responded to by the Lord with more teaching, with more repetition, and eventually, eventually with revelation that shows glory comes not from our study, but from God's work in us.

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Does that mean it's bad to study? We're reformed. No, we want to study, okay? But your sanctification does not come from studying.

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Your sanctification comes from the Holy Spirit's work in your life. He is the one who is completing the work that he started in you.

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He uses means to do that, for sure. But the means is not your study, okay?

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The means is his work through study, through hearing the preaching, through prayer. We see this over and over again with the man, and that's the one that sticks out to me, the man whose son was possessed.

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The desperation that calls on the name of the Lord is what salvation looks like. It's not the rich young ruler who says, let me paraphrase him.

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God, I have everything. Jesus, I have everything. Can you give me eternal life? It'd be a nice add -on to my collection here.

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I would love to stay rich in the afterlife just like I am here, if there even is an afterlife.

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But I've heard there is, like you've been going around talking about that, and I want some of that too. And he responds, grieved, because Jesus tells him, if you want that afterlife, you have to put away the gods that you have right now.

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There's only one God. But over and over again, we see the man who cries out to Jesus, save me, protect me, heal me.

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That is the man, and it's gonna be in such vivid color with Bartimaeus, right? That's the man who has salvation.

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See, self -righteousness that tries to test the Lord, like divorce, right? Or believes in the ability to please

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God through works, which is the rich young ruler, that leaves one far from the kingdom. The person who comes and sits in the church, sings praises to God, but who thinks to themselves, man,

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God is pretty lucky to have me on there. You would never say it out loud because we would all rebuke you, right? But you think, in the dark watches of the night in your heart, you think,

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I'm pretty holy. I'm pretty holy. I hadn't sinned in a while. I'm probably the best member of this church.

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I mean, really, if everyone in the church could be a member like I am, everything would be running like a sewing machine.

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Beware, beware. That's the heart of the rich young ruler. That's the heart of people that are far from God, and we've seen it over and over again.

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That's the repetition. See, as I've hopefully shown you, and then I'm gonna really slam it shut, this section is focused on the disciples, right?

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And the disciples has partial blindness. Everything in this section from Mark 8, 22 until today with Bartimaeus, everything goes back to them.

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They saw the transfiguration. They heard the three prophecies. And in this last section, we get the second chiasm.

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And chiasm basically means the middle is the important part. So here's what happens. We have the rich young ruler who is blind.

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Agree? He's blind. Then we have James and John who are partially blind, and the disciples who are partially blind, who are arguing over who's the greatest.

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And then we have the inverse, or as the kids would say, the bizarro rich young ruler in Bartimaeus who is the opposite of him in every way.

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Notice that the rich young ruler, he's not willing to give everything that he gives up when Jesus commands him to.

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Bartimaeus is crying out to Jesus to heal him. And through people,

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Jesus says, well, tell him to come to me. What does Bartimaeus do when he hears that the master said come? He throws off everything he had.

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Do you understand that his cloak, that was his bed, right? That was his most valuable possession. That was the only possession he had that was worth anything.

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And this blind beggar is laying in the street in a moth -eaten, musty cloak with everybody sneering at him every single day.

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And the master says, come, and Bartimaeus throws off everything he owns without being told the law, without understanding the law, and he comes to Christ.

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Do you see how that's the opposite of the rich young ruler? And in the middle, what's gonna happen to the disciples?

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Are they gonna be more like Bartimaeus or are they gonna be more like the rich young ruler? And glory to God, because God is sovereign over this, they are like Bartimaeus.

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But see, they thought they knew so much. They've been hearing the teaching of Jesus every day for years.

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They're walking with the Lord, but they're still partially blind. And this should be encouragement for you.

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Who takes off the blindness? God does. Does Jesus want you to be blind? No, that's rhetorical.

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No, he does not. He tells us in John 15 that he will give us everything that we ask if we ask according to his name.

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According to his name, does he want his people to be blind? No, he does not. So pray that your blindness would be taken off.

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But we have to pray like Bartimaeus prays. So the middle is the emphasis.

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Even the story about Bartimaeus is about the disciples, right? And you have to understand this, right? We as human beings learn lessons better when we get kicked in the teeth over and over again.

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So I learned at a young age to never get on horses anymore. The way I learned this lesson was by getting knocked off a horse many times, the horse dragging me, the horse understanding that I was afraid of him, which makes the cycle even worse, right?

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He's going to continually do it. And the lesson I learned is I'm not a horse rider, okay?

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That's what I learned. Maybe that's a good lesson, maybe it's a bad lesson, but it was a hard -fought lesson.

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And here's the thing, if we want spiritual truths to drive in deep, we learn through failures more than we learn through success.

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We learn more when someone points the finger at us like Nathan pointed at David and say, you are the man and you sinned this way.

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And it hurts us, does it not? I hope it hurts us because when we're very blind, what we do is go, no, you're wrong.

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What are you even doing telling me that? You don't know me, you don't know my life. But when the spirit starts to soften our hearts, remember, remember, what's a follower of Christ like?

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Soft heart, not hard heart. And when a brother comes and accuses you of sin, then what we should do is we should say,

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God, forgive me, God, forgive me and go make it right. And it drills the lesson in further.

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What is the best medicine for besetting sins? Let me tell you, getting caught and getting rebuked and having things fall apart.

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I've heard the stories. I've heard the stories of men who have had their lives destroyed by pornography.

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Destroyed. But do you know what pulls them out of it? It's not somebody coming along and saying, hey, brother, we all struggle with that.

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Let's talk about our struggle. No, that doesn't help at all. What helps is when everything is falling apart and there's desperation and they say,

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God, this can't keep going. I'm gonna lose everything. And then a man comes alongside him and says, yeah, you are gonna lose everything if you don't cut it out.

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You're being a pervert, right? That's all you have to do. You have to cut it off and we can give it no quarter.

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And those are the lessons that drive in deep. I don't do this often about tell a story.

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I have, many in this room have known me for a long time. Being an extremely humble man about my intellect is not a thing that would characterize me for much of my life.

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And I can tell you that in my first couple of years of teaching, I thought I was the greatest. I really did.

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And my principal, no help to me. My principal told me one time, famously said, Josh, if everybody in this building was a teacher like you, like we would just not have any problems.

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He actually said that to me. And the problem is I believed it, okay? The problem is

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I believed it. And then we had this test. You have to do it to get your license back in the day.

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And you had to get observed by an administrator, right? And this administrator was from Rogers. And I thought, hey,

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I'm the best teacher in this building. I got nothing to worry about. And that administrator came in and I failed.

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And they told me like, that was a mess and you failed. And I'm going to tell you, it was like getting kicked in the teeth.

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I called my dad crying, okay? And I'm going to tell you this.

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There was a lesson learned. And the lesson learned was this. You don't get to be a professional by just winging it and not planning.

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And dad's advice to me was stay the course. Get serious. Figure it out.

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Get some help. And I did. But what has always been drilled in deep from that failure is

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I'm not as good as I think I am. And when I start thinking I'm good, it's ripe.

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It's ripe for some humiliation. Here it comes, okay? It's an important lesson. And it was drilled in in a painful way.

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So let's talk about the epic conclusion of this story. I'm going to read it again in its entirety. It's very important.

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This story, man, it cuts my heart. Then they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving

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Jericho with his disciples in a large crowd, the blind beggar named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road.

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And when he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

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And many were sternly telling him to be quiet. But he kept crying out all the more.

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Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said, call him here.

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So they called the blind man saying to him, take courage, get up, he is calling for you.

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And throwing off his outer garment, he jumped up and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered him and said, what do you want me to do for you?

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And the blind man said to him, Rabboni, I want to regain my sight. And Jesus said to him, go, your faith has saved you.

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Immediately, he regained his sight and began following him on the road. This is the end.

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At this point in Jericho, Jesus has crossed the Jordan and he's less than 20 miles from Jerusalem.

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And Jesus knows what's coming, right? And we're getting there very quickly in the narrative. And so we see the consistency of the ministry.

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There are crowds following him everywhere. He's crossed over. He's going to his passion that he's prophesied.

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And we see here, this is the final healing in Mark. This is the final miracle in Mark, other than the cursing of the fig tree.

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Okay, so this is an important thing. And so we left the last section with Jesus giving a nod to the chief priest, handing him to the

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Gentiles. And in this section, Bartimaeus uses a phrase Mark only uses here, because it is a particularly

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Jewish phrase. And that phrase is, son of David, which literally means the king, right?

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The king. See, Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, which, did you know that's what Bartimaeus means?

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Bartimaeus means son of Timaeus. So son of Timaeus, son of Timaeus is how that would read in English.

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That he is begging before the king. And the king is walking through and the crowd is sternly rebuking him.

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You know what that sounds like, right? It's not like, hey man, I think you should be quiet. They're like, shut up, blind man. Who do you think you are?

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Be quiet. We have an important teacher coming through here. Get out of the way. You're embarrassing us.

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That's what was going on. You little beggar in the dirt. What are you drawing attention to yourself for?

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You should hope that he doesn't see you, right? And Bartimaeus, it's very interesting. It's when he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was coming.

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Jesus of Nazareth, the title meaning really Jesus of the backwoods, okay? That's the title.

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Jesus of the backwoods coming to the town. And here comes the beggar who's disgusting, right?

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He would have been dirty. He would have been an outcast. And he's laying down in the dirt. And he starts embarrassingly screaming out, son of David.

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But he will not be stopped, will he? And this should remind you of another story. And here is the story.

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Luke 18, 2 -3 -8. In a certain city, there was a certain judge who did not fear God and did not respect man.

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Now, there was a widow in that city. And she kept coming to him saying, give me justice for my opponent.

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And for a while, he was unwilling. But afterward, he said to himself, even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow is bothering me,

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I will give her justice. Lest by continually coming, she wears me out. And the

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Lord said, hear what the unjust judge said. Now, will God not bring about justice for his elect who cry to him day and night?

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And will he delay long over them? I tell you that he will bring about justice for them quickly.

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However, when the son of man comes, will he find that faith on the earth?

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He found it in Bartimaeus. And as an aside, let me ask, are the elect crying to him day and night?

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Does that describe you? Crying to him day and night. When the son of man comes, will he find that faith on earth?

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What is that faith? That faith is the faith of Bartimaeus. That faith is the one that would continually seek justice from a wicked man because the justice is so important.

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But we don't have a wicked man as our judge. We have the Lord of glory who will deliver all justice.

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And notice what he says. He will not delay long over them. And we look at the church in decay today, and we can think about all kinds of things.

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Is it social pressure? Is it the culture? Friends, I don't think so. I don't think so.

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Has the son of man found that kind of faith on the earth in our church? Are we a people that cry out to him day and night?

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I don't know. But I'll tell you this. If that's what we do, he will not delay over long.

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And I think that we will almost beg him to stop the success.

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We will get tired of winning because the work will be so hard from the winning if his people cry out to him day and night.

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He will give us justice. Do we want lost people to come in and be saved? Cry out day and night.

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Do you know three in your life? Do you know three lost people? Are we crying out or do we forget after two or three days?

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I know what I do. I forget after two or three days. Will the son of man find that kind of faith on earth?

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You see, Bartimaeus, the kind of faith that Bartimaeus has is the kind of singular dependent faith that there's only one way out.

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There's only one way that he's going to be healed. And that is if Jesus of Nazareth, the son of David, who he correctly identifies as the king, will condescend to heal him.

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That's the only hope he has. The only way out of that dirtbag outer garment that he has is the son of man.

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See, Jesus hears that cry much like God who brings justice about for his elect.

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He hears that cry and Bartimaeus cast off the outer garment and the pallet and he jumps up and he comes to Jesus.

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The things of this world are nothing to him. And spiritually, it should recall this passage, Ephesians 4, 20 through 24.

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But you did not learn Christ in this way. If indeed you heard him and were taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus, to lay aside in reference to your former conduct, the old man, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new man, which is the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

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Do you understand this? Bartimaeus throws off his old way of life. It's gone.

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He's no longer a beggar laying in the streets with his outer garment. He's put all of his dependency on Christ and he is going to now be a disciple of Christ who's not blind, but who sees.

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Such it is with you. You were blind, following in the passions of your former self, enslaved to the power of the prince of darkness.

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And God gave you sight. God gave you faith by his grace.

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And because of the faith that you now have, we no longer walk as the way that we did before. We don't drape ourselves in the outer garment where we were laying in the dirt with all the mites and all the insects and all the parasites.

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We're not sitting out at the edge of the city like beggars. What we did, we threw that off and we took on the robes of righteousness that Jesus gave us.

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Do you understand? Bartimaeus is a lesser miracle than the one that you have experienced in your salvation.

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It's an incredible thing that he has regenerated you. Ho hum. Yeah, I got saved when

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I was seven. I was looking for God. No, you were not. No one was looking for God.

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No one sought him. But God saved you. See, Bartimaeus treated his outer garment the exact same way that we should treat those encroachments and impediments that so slow us down and weary us.

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He threw it off like it was the trash that it was. And your worldly comfort and your sins and all of those things are trash to be thrown off.

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Paul said that he counts it all as rubbish in the sight of God. See, true sight is understanding what's valuable and what's not.

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Okay. Bartimaeus' request is simple. This is how you know.

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Man, it's so brilliant, right? What Mark does is Jesus asked Bartimaeus the exact same question that he asked

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James and John. What do you want me to do for you? So what did the brothers want?

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They wanted greatness. They wanted positions of greatness. What does Bartimaeus want? He wants to see.

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He wants to see. But we get a little bit different insight, right? Why does Bartimaeus see? It's because he believes that Jesus is the king, that he's the healer, and that Jesus can and will heal him.

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If you ask in doubt, God will not answer your prayers because you are double -minded, unstable in all your ways.

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But the one who asks with no doubt as with faith, God will grant wisdom.

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He will grant what you ask. Bartimaeus wants to see. And he's the opposite of the rich young ruler who wanted to continue not seeing.

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Do you understand that? The rich young ruler, he walked away grieved because he was determined to still be blind.

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What good is it if you gain the whole world but lose your soul? Remember, that's in this section.

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Is it not? To the rich young ruler, he says, what good is my soul if I have to lose the whole world?

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That is stupid. What does Bartimaeus say? Everything I have is completely worthless if I get to follow you.

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That's what it is to be a Christian. Go, your faith has saved you. See, it's funny that he used this word.

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Mark, the one with the imprecise Greek, right? He used this word to double meaning. Your translation might say, your faith has healed you.

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It can mean either one. The word he chooses could be, go, your faith has healed you or go, your faith has saved you.

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And so it did both, didn't it? His faith healed him from his blindness, but it saved him from his lost and destitute estate.

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Salvation comes through faith and faith comes through the grace of God. And the right response, the response to gain sight is always to follow

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Jesus, always. There's one thing you have to get right in your life, one thing, and that is to follow

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Jesus. Now, to be true, if you follow Jesus truly, it creates a whole bunch of other things that you're doing.

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But if you get that one wrong, you're dead and you have no hope. There is only one hope and that is to follow

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Jesus. And so as we tie it back, I have to ask, what is blinding us today?

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I think we have to know that we've been blinded, right? At least partially. So let me ask these questions and let's look at the story of Bartimaeus and go from there.

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First of all, are we asking desperately? Are you asking for sight as though your life depends on it, which it does?

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Are you asking desperately? Are you asking persistently? He would not stop crying out, son of David, son of David, son of David, shut up, son of David.

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Do you understand the courage that he had? And they told him, take courage, right? He's asked for you. Take courage.

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What is he going to take courage for? Why does Bartimaeus need courage to go to the master? I'll tell you why. Because the master is

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God. Does it take courage to come before God? Yeah, I think so.

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It's plain stupid if you don't think so. It takes courage. So are we asking persistently? Are we proverbially wearing

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God out with our petitions? I think not. I'll just throw that. I think we're not. I think we're not.

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I think we need to ask 10 times more than we are. And let's focus it. Focus it on that lost person that you know and you love.

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Focus it on your own blindness and be ready for the answer that comes. Thirdly, first is, are we asking desperately?

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Second is, are we asking persistently? Third is, are we asking with faith? Do we believe or do we doubt?

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Do we believe God will give it to us or do we doubt? I'm not talking about getting a million. I'm talking about sight.

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I'm talking about walking the Christian walk and having courage. And then fourth, are we asking in order to follow better?

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Is the ambition for ourself or is the ambition to be a better servant of our king?

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To better show his likeness, to better be an ambassador making our appeal.

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Because when we fall away, our appeal is not so good. But when we are changed, we are a stench in the nostril of those who are dying because we represent death ourselves.

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Death to the natural man. Because the cross of Christ is an offense and it's foolishness to those who are perishing.

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But to those who are saved, it is the wisdom and the power of God. It is the glory of God. So seek it with diligence.

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Seek it with persistence. Seek it desperately and ask without doubt.

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Don't be tossed about. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this story. We thank you for the majesty of your scripture.

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Lord, how you give us obvious meanings. But also Lord, through the literature, you wind in even more meanings as we see that you had eyes that were focused on teaching your disciples.

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And Lord, they're greater men than us. And we ask that we would be able to see. Lord, your people have partial blindness.

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It's why the church flails in our country today. Lord, it's because we don't ask. It's because we don't pray.

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And the reason why, Lord, is we are proud. We have set ourselves up against you, even as your people.

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And Lord, we hold bitterness and we hold our pet sins and we hold our own pride.

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And we don't ask as the widow did. Lord, I pray at this church that you would give us a fire and a conviction and repentance.

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And Lord, that the repentance would look like this. That we would confess our independence and that we would walk in persistently praying.

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That you would give us sight. That you would give us faith. Lord, that you would give results. As we know, the fields are white for harvest.

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There are lost people everywhere. And your soul is not glorified. It's not happy when the lost perish.

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But instead, Lord, you desire that all men would hear your gospel. Lord, that it would be saved and come into your kingdom.

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Lord, the laborers are few. And I pray that you would raise up some here. I pray that we would pray with belief, knowing that you will bring salvation to houses.

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Lord, that we would see it in our day. Help us as we do that, Lord. Help us to remember.

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Help us to not take these things for granted and not be fickle. But instead, to be steadfast. Help us to see,