Something about which we are all agreed is that the problem in this case was blindness. And what exactly is that? There are blind people who cannot see anything, including the sun on an exceptionally bright day. But there are others who can see light and even some shapes, and they are still considered blind. Some people with macular degeneration may have some peripheral vision, but not direct sight, and by law these people are blind. Besides these there are a number of other kinds of blindness, some of which we’ll come to in a minute. So what is the definition of blindness, and what sort of blindness did Bartemaeus have?
Probably most of us have seen people with “seeing eye” dogs – animals which help to guide sightless people. When I worked at the mall in the maintenance department, I would see thousands of people every week, but very few animals. It was mall policy to keep all animals out — probably because they don’t spend much money. Known felons were perfectly acceptable, but parrots, Pekinese and Pomeranians were excluded. The only exception were seeing eye dogs – probably because they do help their masters to spend money. One day during work, I was watching a man with a nice big dog walking down the mall. I thought to myself – “that man really is not much different from me, or anyone else here today.” He was able to get around to a reasonable degree, and was probably a happy, well-adjusted person. That man had a dog to help him see – while I have very strong prescription lenses to help me to see. And like that man there are many things that I cannot see, whether I have my glasses on or off. There are tiny things which can only be seen with a microscope. There are things which may or may not be seen with senses other than sight. Then there are things, like the future, which cannot be seen at all until we get there.
Adding Mark’s account to that of Matthew, let’s call the blind man of this text “Bartemaeus.” Bartemaeus may have thought that the loss of his sight was the worst disaster to ever strike his life. But in his case it may have been the key to the greatest blessing that he would ever receive in this world. And if we don’t join him in his blindness today, we will die in another kind of blindness, perhaps as early as tomorrow. I’d like us to observe three things – the obstacle, the opportunity, and the obedience in Bartimaeus’ life.
Blindness was undoubtedly a great OBSTACLE in his life.
But obstacles are not always bad things. We’re not told if this man was born blind, so let’s assume that he had sight as a child. Let’s say that through some accident he lost his sight as a young teenager. He might have had great plans and goals – which hinged around the use of his eyes. But one day he fell and hit his head, or some chemical was accidentally splashed into his face. Now, his inability to see, had turned him from a wise-eyed, high-goaled young man – into a beggar. Alternatively, we could say that he was born blind. That would mean he had never seen a sunrise, or caught a ball, painted a bird-house or drawn a picture. In either case by this time he was a beggar, and he would probably never leave the city of Jericho. He might never have visited Jerusalem or the Temple of the Lord. He was a nobody – a noisy, troublesome beggar, a lead-sinker on the economy of Israel. He was an eyesore, sitting under a tree on the way into the city of Palm trees. Too bad we can’t get a city ordinance against panhandling on the highway. Bartemaeus was handicapped by blindness.
But may I add, that we are blind, but perhaps in different ways. When I was pastoring in Calgary, Canada, we invited Forrest Keener to hold some meetings for us. The scheduled date was in the springtime, when Calgary was beginning to turn green once again. Brother Keener flew out of Oklahoma City with the temperature in the high 80’s and had been for several weeks. When he arrived in Calgary the temperature was a balmy 50 something. He had no idea that there would have been that much difference in temperature. There was a sense in which he was blind to what he was to encounter in Calgary. Similarly, we are all blind – about tomorrow, next week and next year. Furthermore, unless we realize our blindness, we are more blind than we need be. Shouldn’t our blindness encourage us to prepare for those as yet unseen events? Perhaps if, thirty years ago, I realized that I’d soon be turning sixty-five, I would have prepared myself a little better than I have.
One day, Jesus of Nazareth came out of obscurity and began to fulfil His purpose on earth. He walked into the synagogue in His home town and picked up a Bible and began to read. When he finished, He said to the crowd – “This is an outline of my eternal mission.” He read from Isaiah 16, and we have the event recorded in Luke 4:16-19. “And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias, and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” I’m sure many who heard Jesus that day, thought that the Messiah was supposed to heal people like Bartimaeus. That was undoubtedly a part of the ministry of the coming Messiah, but much more was true than that.
You and I were born blind to the eternal things of God; to His righteousness, to eternity, to God’s Holiness. Isaiah 59:9-10 – “Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.” II Corinthians reminds us that “the god of this world has blinded men’s eyes, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto us.” Ephesians 4:18 says that we have had our understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God. We are ignorant and wounded – through the blindness of our hearts. But the Son of God came into this world to heal people from this fatal ailment.
The unbeliever says, “That is a lot of religious ridiculousness. I don’t believe a word of it.” I ask that man to take this simple test. Can you see and distinguish the red and white cells which make up the blood flowing through your veins? I can bring my microscope from home, prick your finger and put a drop of your blood under its light and show you the components of your blood. I can prove that there are degrees of blindness, and there are various types of blindness. Perhaps you have met or heard of people who have 20/20 vision – but who are color blind. You may not wear glasses, but you’ve yet to see the spiritual ambassadors which we call “angels.” You may not wear glasses, but you’ve never seen Paris, France or Buenos Aries, Argentina. We are all blind by our sinful nature to the things of Christ, heaven and grace, until the Lord says, “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”
So there is Bartimeaus, more blind than a bat, sitting in the sun next to the road. But the word was spread, “Christ Jesus is coming is coming toward you.” And the blind man cried out: “Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.”
Bartemaeus’ blindness provided him with a special OPPORTUNITY.
Christ was passing by, on his way to Jerusalem, knowing full well that He would die there on this visit. Bartemaeus may not have known that, but he was not going to miss this opportunity. So he raised his most pitiful voice, “Help us; Help me.” There were hundreds of other people in Jericho, who, because things were going relatively smoothly in their lives, felt no need to call on the Saviour. But these two blind men saw their need and saw and opportunity to do something about it.
But think about this: did Bartimaeus ever see Jesus work a miracle? I question whether or not the faith which the Lord likes to see is built upon things that anyone can see. Humanly speaking, what gave Bartimaeus his sight was the Lord’s blessing upon his faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” The Bible never says that faith cometh by seeing or by experiencing the miracles of the Lord. For example, there was a man, of whom the Lord Jesus spoke, who died and awoke in hades. His torment was immediately, and he somehow knew that his escape from hell was impossible. Immediately his heart went out to his family who were left behind. “Father Abraham, send someone to warn my brothers about this place. Send someone back from death; they will undoubtedly respect a messenger from the grave.” Abraham basically replied, “if they saw with own eyes the resurrected body of a friend, and heard him with their own ears, they would not believe.” Faith cometh by hearing the Word of God, not by seeing anything – even seeing divine miracles.
So where did Bartimaeus get the faith which the Lord blessed? Had he ever talked to someone whom the Lord had healed? As far as I know this trip was the first time that Christ ever ministered in this area. Had Bartimaeus ever traveled to Galilee where the Lord had ministered? It is not likely. His faith came from the same source from which ours must come: from the Lord and from the testimony of the Word of God.
How important it is for the Christian to speak about what the Lord has done for him. How important it is to repeat what the scriptures say about the Saviour. Obviously someone had told this blind man about the power of the Lord Jesus. He was well-aware of his need, perhaps making him more receptive than most others. But he had to have been told that there was help in this man from Galilee.
I once read of a missionary doctor in China who had removed cataracts from a man’s eyes. A few weeks later the man returned with forty-eight blind men, all holding on to a long rope guided by the man who had been cured. I wonder if he was as diligent about bringing the spiritually blind to the missionary as well? The rope which the spiritually blind need, is the life of the cured sinner – the new saint of God.
So Bartimaeus cried out to Christ: “Thou son of David, have mercy upon me.” His plea was based upon the person of Christ. Don’t think for a moment that God is interested in helping us because of who WE are. We are sinners, and because of sin we deserve only eternal death and eternal judgment. Our blindness may make a few tender-hearted women pity us, but it doesn’t impress God at all. The Lord is no respecter of persons. He gives spiritual and/or physical sight for His own glory, not ours. Bartimaeus based his request upon one of the aspects and titles of the Saviour.
And then he cried for nothing more or less than “mercy.” Initially, he didn’t ask for sight, money, food or even a good pair of seeing-eye dogs. Mercy is the only thing for which we can plead, and in some ways it is the only thing worth pleading – besides the Person of the Lord Himself.
People tried to get Bartimaeus and his friends to shut up – why? The Lord is too busy – no He is not; he is never too busy. The Lord is too important to look to the needs of a blind beggar. No, He is not too important, though He is the Sustainer of all the universe. You are embarrassing us. There is nothing embarrassing about needing the Saviour. The more people tried to dissuade him, the more the blind man cried out.
And despite that opposition, and despite Jesus’ mission in Jerusalem, the Saviour stopped. I like the idea that Jesus stopped what He was doing.. Several times in the Bible, the Lord was on his way to some important work, but He stopped. There were ninety-nine sheep already in the fold, but Jesus broke away to look for that one lost sheep. He was on his way to heal one person and another touched the hem of his tunic, and He stopped. Jesus stopped and called for the blind man.
And his brings us to Bartimaeus’ OBEDIENCE.
It is one thing to realize that we are in desperate need, blinded, broken, and begging. It is one thing to cry out to the Lord to help us in our need. But that recognition and that need do not make us actual recipients of God’s grace. Jesus called the man, and he immediately followed Christ’s voice and came to him. Bartimaeus didn’t have to be invited a second time, nor did he stop and think about it. Up he popped, and with his arms outstretched he headed toward the sound of Jesus’ voice. He cast aside the old beggars cloak which might have tripped him or hindered him. It might have been old, ragged and even filthy. It represented all that the life a blind beggar possessed. Did he have an hat, a pot, or an old tin cup with a few coins in it – if he did, he left it behind. That too was a part of his old life – it was a part of his previous religion. He came to the Saviour.
That was it: Jesus asked him what he wanted, he told him, and he received it. People imagine becoming a Christian in so many different ways. To some it is a ceremony or a membership in some religious club. To others it is performing some difficult task or living a difficult life for fifty years. But what gave Bartimaeus his sight, his soul and his life was coming to Christ, believing the Lord.
The pattern is no different for us today in the kind of blindness that handicaps us all. The only things that the Lord requires is casting off the beggar’s cloak coming and trusting the Saviour. There must be a recognition and repentance in regard to the sins that have blinded us. In other words: there must be a willingness to hate what God hates in us. There must be a willingness to forsake our sins as God enables us. And there must be faith that Jesus can forgive us and wash away the stain of our sins before the sight of God. Bartimaeus came to Jesus believing that Christ could heal him – and that is exactly what Jesus did. Praise the Lord, He has been healing sin-blinded souls for over two thousand years since that day.
This morning, are you willing to admit before God that you, too, are a blind beggar? You are helpless and facing an eternity, completely empty and fearful of Hell. Will you also cry out to the Lord Jesus: “Saviour, help me, I give myself to you”? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”