Mark 10:46-52

And they came to Jericho and as he Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus was sitting by the roadside 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. And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent, but he cried out all the more son of David have mercy on me. Jesus stopped and said, call him. And they called the blind man saying to him, take heart. Get up.

He is calling to you 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? 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 underlying that your faith has made you well and immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, followed Jesus on the way, again, just with our limited time this morning, I asked the Lord to just drill me down on what is the one thing, what is the one thing that you want to speak first of all to me, what is the one thing that you want central church to hear this morning? And here it is. What struck me is Jesus recognizes faith in this man.

Notice he says, your faith and Jesus, recognizing that faith responds to that man's faith. Your faith has made you well or your faith has saved you is literally what it says. Bartimaeus, here's the scene. Bartimaeus, this blind beggar calls out to Jesus and really that's the essence of prayer, is it not? When we are praying, we are calling out to Jesus, crying out to Jesus.

He calls out to Jesus and in that call in that cried Jesus recognizes his faith and responds to that prayer and what was it about how Bartimaeus called out to Jesus that Jesus recognized as faith and responded to? Here it is. I think that prayer of faith that Bart , Ms Mess Bartimaeus prayed was a prayer for mercy. Again, look at the prayer. Jesus, son of David have mercy on me. Now, this stood out to me first of all, because mercy is not a word that's regularly in my vocabulary.

It's kind of one of those churchy words that we hear it a lot, but at least I'm not familiar enough with it to use it in my normal vocabulary and so I had to wrestle with as is . I think some of you will this morning. First of all, what do we mean when we cry out to God for mercy? Let me tell you this. You read through the Bible, you see this prayer through out scripture calling out to God for mercy.

Let me just give you one brief glimpse from one book the song, Psalm nine the psalmist praise have mercy upon me. O Lord, save me from my enemies. Psalm 25 turn yourself to me. O Lord, have mercy on me for I am lonely and afflicted. Have you been in a place where you are lonely, where you are feeling alienated? Maybe where you are feeling under some kind of affliction? Have you cried out to him for mercy?

So I'm 27 hear me as I pray, oh Lord, have mercy on me and answer me as as you pour out a prayer over and over again to God you do you pray that asking for His mercy. Psalm 31 have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble. And when you are in a situation in your life where you feel you are in distress , you cry out like the psalmist did, asking God for mercy. Psalm 41 oh Lord, have mercy on me. Heal me for I have sinned against you.

When you stumble in your Christian life and you sin and you go to God for , for the forgiveness that he freely gives in Christ, you cry out for mercy. That's, that's biblical. Psalm 86 have mercy on me, O Lord, for I call out to you all day long. This is a scriptural prayer and yet I bet it is something for most of us at least that is not a regular pair prep part of our prayer life. It's now as a result of this text becoming a part of my regular prayer life. And here's why. What is mercy?

First of all, I think that one of the reasons that we may not use the word much in our prayers and our conversation is we frequently confuse mercy with grace. And there is some overlap in the terms and yet they are distinctly different. So let's talk about grace first. Wayne Grudem, a great theologian, former professor, seminary professor of mine, defines God's grace in this way. Grace is God's goodness towards us when we deserve only punishment, okay?

Grace is what you and I need because we are guilty of sinning against God because we try to live life our own way without God and because we're guilty and deserving of punishment and condemnation, we, we, we need his grace. The only time in my life I have ever been drunk.

I was a naive college freshman and I was pledging a fraternity and I was at a fraternity event that turned into a hazing event and some of my older , uh, fraternity brothers determined that they were going to get this young man and a number of us and me in this particular case who had never been drunk before drunk. And I willingly took the first drink and I claim responsibility for that.

I , I'm not putting this all on them but they took over from there and plied me with more and more alcohol too . I lost all track of everything and became significantly intoxicated. I had enough of the presence of mind to know I was in real trouble at that point. And even though I had come with somebody else to that, to that fraternity event, I knew I had to get out of there. And so I literally walked out the door of, of this place that , that this event was taking place.

It was a couple miles back to my dormitory room and I just started walking. I knew the general direction, but I just started walking and I was stumbling. I was very obviously intoxicated and in that city, Fort Collins, Colorado, there is a law against public intoxication. And so I'm stumbling my way down the sidewalk and a police car pulls up police car policemen asked me to get in the back of the patrol car. Now he had every right because I had broken the law, I was publicly intoxicated.

He had every right to throw me, to take me to jail, to put me in jail, to put me before court, to have me prosecuted for this crime of public intoxication. And yet, even though that's what I deserved because I had broken the law and I had sinned in that way, he took me back to my dorm room. He asked me where my dormitory was. He took me back to my dormitory and he made sure I got safely into my dorm room. That's grace. I deserve to be punished.

I had broken the law and yet out of his goodness, out of his compassion, out of maybe some wisdom and experience, he knew the best thing, the most loving thing was just to make sure I got safely back home. That's grace and we all need grace because we're all guilty before God. We're all deserving of punishment. We have all lived as if we want to live life our own way. Without God. Mercy is related to grace, but it has some difference. It has some distinction from grace.

Buswell says this, mercy is the goodness or love of God shown to those who are in misery shown to those who are in distress, whether they, whether they deserved it or not.

I walk a lot for for exercise and I was walking back in April on a particular Saturday and it was one of those Saturdays where it looked like it was going to rain but maybe not and I thought there was this gap in the weather and I thought I, I can make my, I usually walk about five miles, I can make this walk before the next rain storm comes. So I started out and I got, I got several miles out from my apartment and it began to downpour and it was a little bit cold still the end of April.

And I tried to walk through it and soon I became soaked and I became shivering and I found just this little tree along the road and I'm huddled under this tree and a particular member of this congregation, I won't embarrass her by saying who she is. She was driving the other way and must've seen me, must've seen how pathetic I looked shivering there under this tree and did a u turn and came back and rescued me. That's mercy.

That is seeing somebody in misery, seeing somebody in distress and reaching out to them out of goodness and compassion mercies . What we see in Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan, what happened to the man who's lying in the ditch? He's passed over by the priest and the Levi site , but along comes a Samaritan, doesn't know him. Uh , the the , he owes him nothing and yet out of the goodness and compassion of his heart shows him mercy ministers to him in his misery and his distress.

Millard Erickson says, if grace is what we need because we are sinful and guilty before God, mercy is what we need because we are often miserable and needy and here maybe is a way for you to keep these straight. This is not mine. I can't remember where I got this, but it helps it stick it in my mind. Graces for the guilty. Mercy is for the miserable. There is overlap and yet they are distinct. AWP Pink says mercy denotes God's ready inclination to relieve the mercy of his fallen creatures.

Richard Strauss says that mercy is God's tender compassion towards us in our distress that causes him to act on our behalf and relieve our suffering at the time and in the manner which he knows will be best. Now again, these two overlap. We particularly see that in , in , in what leads to our need to be saved. There. There are many things that we do that incur God's guilt that also leave us miserable. Leave us in distress.

When we sin in anger, anger itself, that feeling is not sinful, but when we explode in anger, as we do that continually and we commit that sin of sinning and anger, what happens? It damages relationships and we damage enough relationships and what happens? We become alienated. We become lonely. We begin to experience the misery and the distress that is a result that is fruit of our sin.

We need both God's grace addressing the sin of anger and we need his mercy relieving our misery and our distress, and that's why we find both God's grace and God's mercy involved in providing even our salvation. I love Ephesians two Ephesians two four and five. You see both of these terms. Paul writes, even though in our guilt of our sin, we were deserving of God's wrath. Here's what he says, because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ.

By grace we have been saved. You see both mercy and grace. In fact, it's mercy in God. It's the mercy of God which leads him to extend us grace. Mercy motivates God to save you mercy, motivates God to extend grace to you and to me. So this is what Bartimaeus cries out to Jesus for in verses 47 and 48 Lord Jesus, son of David have mercy on me and I don't have time this morning to go into all of the origin of, of why he uses that phrase, son of David, that title.

That's the only time and mark that it is used, but Bartimaeus, the blind beggar of all people, he's the one that addresses Jesus, the son of David. By doing so, what he does say, what I can say in the short amount of time is he acknowledges Jesus. I'm turning you not just because I've heard you do miracles. I'm not coming to you. Just as a faith healer, as a miracle worker, I believe you are the Messiah, the Christ son of David.

That is a messianic title and even though it doesn't fully encompass all that Jesus is and being the Christ, it shows that Bartimaeus was looking at him in a way, maybe a lot of the crowd was not. He cries out to Jesus acknowledging that he is the Messiah and I think the application to us is that praying Lord have mercy. It's not a magic formula. It's not just if you get those words down, God is going to respond to your prayer.

The faith that that prayer powerful is the faith that believes that Jesus really is the Christ, that he really is God the son, that he really came to be savior and Lord. That's the faith and underlies that cry for mercy. Well, mark tells us in verse 48 that Bartlemay assists faith here was severely tested. You see it there . Many rebuked him. Shut up. Part of [inaudible] be quiet. Bartimaeus, there was probably a large crowd because at this point it was just about Passover in Jerusalem.

Jesus is going up to Jerusalem. A large crowd probably is going to celebrate Passover. They don't want Jesus to be delayed. But I think there's more, I think this man who they had seen day in and day out begging sitting on the curb, this blind beggar was embarrassing to them. And I think this man is , he continued to be loud and to shout out there . They were embarrassed about that, that the Jesus would see, see this about their city jerk Jericho.

Isn't it true that cries for mercy, people in distress, people who are miserable, who are calling out in their mercy in distress, that tends to make us uncomfortable. You know, there was a woman at the street corner, I'm sure you've seen the scene a number of times living in Memphis. There was a , a woman at the street corner where I was driving on Friday and uh , it was, it was up at the long line of cars and the lights where the light was stopped.

So traffic was stopped and she was standing by the side of the road holding up a sign and the details of the sign aren't important, but what they did communicate, whether it was genuine or not, I don't know. This woman was in distress. This woman was in situations in life that made her miserable and she was calling out even until she didn't use the word for mercy. And what I could see is I could look up the line of cars in front of me is driver after a driver was averting their gaze from her.

Why? Because the miserable, those in misery, those in distress make us uncomfortable, make us a little embarrassed. We don't want to look at them. We don't want to think about them. We don't want to focus upon them. But Bartimaeus wasn't deterred. Bartimaeus cried out. All of them are . In fact, the verb form here indicates that it wasn't just twice he was calling this out. Lord have mercy over and over again and Jesus likely recognized faith in Bartimaeus is refusal to be deterred.

Let me ask you, does the fear of the crowd, you know there was the crowd around going to Jerusalem, but is the fear of the crowd discourage you from seeking God's mercy when you are in distress, when you are miserable, when you are maybe in distress for somebody that you love, who is miserable? What holds you back from, from seeking the Lord's mercy? Is it , is it what people think? Let me give you just a particular central application. I don't say this in any condemning way.

I've seen it at church after church. We have, we have people who are available at the front after the service to pray with anybody confidentially about anything about any need. We have people in the back. We have a more private prayer area and the back and yet Sunday after Sunday, so few people take advantage of that. Now. Here's what I know proportionally from the number of people, the very few people who take advantage of that and the size of this congregation.

I know there's a lot more misery and distress out there in various forms than is reflected in the number of people who come forward. Why? Because I know my own life and I know that even though I seek to walk with Jesus and their moments of joy and their moments of, of his blessing, to me, there are also moments of stumbling and misery and distress when I need the Lord's mercy.

So why is it that we , we would not take advantage of a confidential opportunity with a brother or sister in Christ who is willing to pray with us as we call out to the Lord for Mercy? Is it because of the crowd? Is it because we hear , at least in our head, we hear the crowd saying, you know, you're going to be embarrassed if you go forward. What do people going to think of you? What ?

What kind of image will you be able to maintain if you go up and you asked for prayer for what's really burdening your heart, what , what really your mind is on is you're sitting there through the service and the sermon, are you deterred by the fear of the crowd from seeking God's mercy? Well, Bartimaeus wasn't, and I think here's the thing, Bartimaeus wasn't because ultimately Bartimaeus was desperate and maybe that's the key. Are we really desperate enough and what we're wrestling with?

Are we really desperate enough for that burden that we have for somebody that we love? Somebody who has lost somebody who is in some other form of physical or mental or emotional distress or misery? Ultimately Bartimaeus was desperate. The Kingdom of Heaven. It is often said, it's not for just people who are well meaning. It's for people who are desperate.

Those are the people that God hears, cry out to him and hears that cry of faith and responds and here's where the identity of Bartimaeus I think needs to become more and more our identity, our spiritual identity. Bartimaeus was not one of the respectable people in the crowd. He, one of the people who was going up to Jerusalem, well dressed well fed money in his little money pouch. He wasn't one of the religious leaders.

The Pharisees, Bartimaeus was a beggar and not just a beggar, but a blind beggar. He was at the lowest place in society. He knew he had nothing to lose by calling out for mercy. He had no reputation. He was trying to protect. He had no image that he was trying to to keep up. Let me ask you, when you come before the Lord and you are burden with some, a thing on your heart, something in your life, something in the life of somebody that you love, how do you come before him?

You come before him as a beggar, as a blind beggar, or do you come before him as a pharisee? Do you lay it all out before him? No . Knowing. Not that you have nothing to preserve, no image to uphold or are you reserved and do you hold back? Our true spiritual identity is that we are blind beggars. We are blind spiritually before Christ intervenes in our life and we are beggars. We bring nothing. We need what is offered to us.

Jay Vernon McGee , uh, tells a story , uh , and I certainly can't capture McGee's accent or, or just the way he gives lives to his stories, but he tells the story of a young man who's being interviewed for church membership and a large faithful church and he's being interviewed by the deacons, I believe it is. And they ask him to tell them about how he came to saving faith and his answer, again, this is Magee's language, I'd done my part in the Lord.

He done his part, the deacon scratch their heads a little bit, you know that , that, that sounds just a bit off. What, what do you mean that you done your part? You know, they're thinking they're worried. Are you thinking you contribute to your salvation and such some way. And so they ask them , tell us further what you mean. And he says this, I done the sinning and Jesus done the saving. And that's exactly it, isn't it? We come as bakers and the only thing we bring is our filth.

The only thing we bring is our poverty. The only thing we bring is our sinning . We come as beggars needing all of his mercy and all of his grace. And that is our identity as we come before the Lord. And so here's what I know. Every one of us here today is in need of God's mercy. We are in need of the Lord's tender, compassion towards us and our misery and distress. And if you are not feeling some form of misery distress this morning, give it a week or give it a month.

You know if you've lived life long enough that walking with Jesus has no protection from the hard things of life. He walks with us through the hard things of life, but we still experience things that make us miserable, that distress us. We need God's tender compassion. We need him reaching out to us in our misery, in our distress.

So what holds us back from crying out to the Lord for mercy is that our pride is that our desire to protect our image is that our desire to make ourselves feel better falsely. Then we really are. Who was it in this crowd? I had all this crowd wanting Jesus attention. Who Was it? Who got his attention? For whom did Jesus stop? It's this blind beggar who cries out for mercy and recognizing the faith of this blind beggar crying out for mercy, acknowledging his desperate need.

The Lord demonstrated he is merciful. Verse 52 your faith has made you well or literally your faith has saved you. That word faith has made you well. It's a , it's the Greek word Sozo. It literally can mean physically making you well, physically healing, but as well can can mean spiritually making you well, spiritually healing. In other words, the act of salvation, and I think that's the case here. It refers to both meanings as mark is using it here.

Jesus restored Bartimaeus his physical site , but more than that he opened. Bartimaeus is spiritualize. It's like the line of that famous hymn, amazing grace. I once was lost, but now I'm found was blind. But now I see. That's what Bartimaeus experienced , the restoration of his physical site and the restoration of his spiritual sight . And we know this because 52 goes on to say immediately he recovered his sight and he followed him on the way.

The proof, the evidence that we are truly saved is when we begin to follow Jesus on the way on the way of the cross. Bartimaeus didn't go back to his begging. Bartimaeus didn't go back to his village. Bartimaeus stood up and continued to follow Jesus as one of his disciples. Let me just drill down again to that main point. The Lord is merciful to those who are desperate enough to cry out to him for the relief of their misery and distress.

So let me ask you just a couple of questions as I close this morning. First of all, most importantly, have you ever cried out to Jesus to deliver you from the misery of your sin, of your alienation, from of your pattern of trying to live life your own way without God? That's the first cry for mercy. Lord have mercy on me. A sinner saved me. Lord have mercy on me because I am a sinner. If you've never done that, that's that's the cry you need to make even this morning. That's the cry.

People will pray with you and help you to make in prayer even this morning if you have done that. How about this? Do you cry out to the Lord in the struggles of your Christian life? When you feel as , as Paul says in Galatians five your flesh, your old person at war with your spirit, when you are stumbling in sin, when you keep picking yourself up again, when you recognize that in your sin and in your stumbling, you bring misery on yourself. Do you cry out to him for mercy?

Do you cry out to him to meet you in the midst of that misery and that distress? Oh Lord have mercy on me. I am a clay pot. I am a broken, cracked clay pot. I am made of dust. Lord, I need your mercy. Do you cry out in desperation to the Lord on behalf of those that you know and love in your life who are lost, who are trying to live life their own way without him?

When , when, when those people and the knowledge that they are headed for hell unless they are saved, when that begins to burden, you do cry out to the Lord for mercy on their behalf. Lord have mercy on them or leave their misery and their distress of their lives in a way that opens their blind spiritual eyes.

And then finally this morning, do we cry out to the Lord for mercy as a church has the pain and the distress that we've gone through over the recent years, has that stripped us enough of our pride and made us desperate enough to pray together for God's mercy on us? Are we crying out together? Lord, we don't come before you as proud people. We come before you together as beggars , have mercy on us. Have mercy on our church.

Over and over in scripture we are told that you are a god of mercy, that your mercy even motivates you to save us. So Lord, if there is anyone here who has not made that first cry, crying out for mercy because they are a center because they are trying to live life in their own way, apart from you, move in their hearts even this morning, Lord, to make that first cry, to cry out to you for the mercy that leads you to even save them from their sin.

Lord, for my brothers and sisters here who like me feel daily, regularly the struggles of the Christian life, the burdens of the Christian life. There are ups, but there are downs. There are ways that you bless us greatly and yet there are many hard things in the midst of Lord of those hard times when we are burdened by our misery and our distress, our move us to call out to you as Bartimaeus for mercy.

Lord, move us to call out for mercy on behalf of the people that we know and love in our lives who are lost. May , may we seek Lord you working through the distress and the anguish of their life. Not to punish, not to, not , not to, not in any way to punish, but to drive them to Jesus. Use their distress Lord , to drive them to you for your mercy and grace. And then Lord, may we as a church humbled. Now may we continually regularly call out to you for mercy upon us as a church.

May we come together seeing that we are nothing more than blind beggars telling each other where to find food. Maybe we call out to you for mercy. We pray this Jesus in your name. Amen.