“A blind beggar named Bartimaeus,
son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road.” (Mark 10:46)
When the chips are down, most people cry out
for help...“God, help us!” When everything else has failed, a desperate prayer, often little more than wishful
thinking, is offered…“God help me!” The gospel of Mark gives us a story of a man at rock bottom who meets
Jesus and is transformed. His name was Bartimaeus, a blind beggar man sitting by the road who was pushed aside by the crowd.
I sense that there is a bit of the ‘Spirit of Bartimaeus’ in us all.
Blind… We may not be blind in the physical sense, but we can be blind to the things that really count in life, endlessly pursuing unreachable ideals, hoping something
good will happen next time, or maybe the time after. But are our ideals worth pursuing? What if nothing good happens next
time? What about such things as love, beauty, and truth? What place in our lives do they have, and how much do they matter?
Beggar…Aagain not
in a material sense, but spiritually speaking we can be living in total poverty. We can talk a lot about God but know God
very little. We can talk a lot about prayer, yet often our prayers boil down to little more than cries for help, and we can
find praying an empty, desperate, and desolate task.
Sitting by the road…Sometimes we feel life
is passing us by. Feelings of isolation, loneliness, just being left out of it are all common amongst most people.
Pushed aside by the crowd…Who wants to know our
problems? Who cares about us? Everyone is too busy getting on with their own
lives.
The situation of Bartimaeus is a blind beggar man sitting at the side of the road, pushed
aside by the crowd. Bartimaeus came to Jesus and was healed. If we come to Jesus as we are, then He will also meet our needs.
The story starts out with an act of recognition. At the lowest level, Bartimaeus
sees his only hope in the person of Christ. He persists in his request for help in spite of what others around him suggest.
Secondly, there is response . . he hears the call of Jesus to come to Him and
he makes known to Jesus exactly what is on his mind.
Finally, there’s reception. He receives from Jesus new vision and resolves
to follow Him.
Let us then take a closer look at Bartimaeus’ story.
“When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, ‘Jesus! Son
of David! Take pity on me. Many of the people scolded him and told him to the
be quiet, but he shouted even more loudly. ‘Son of David, take pity on me!’”
Can you imagine the scene if some famous person were visiting Beckley? A reception would
be held. The mayor and council members would be informed. The police would be out in force. Crowds would line the roadside.
Imagine the embarrassment
if amongst the crowd there was an old blind beggar who insisted on shouting at the top of his voice “Take pity on me.”
No doubt people would say “Sh . . don’t make a fuss.” There would be an air of embarrassment. No one likes
a scene.
Such a situation would be similar to that of Bartimaeus when Jesus came to town. He shouted
out “Jesus, have mercy on me!” and the crowd told him to be quiet. But he kept shouting. He knew that Jesus was
the only one who could meet his need. The doctors had failed him. The crowd were embarrassed by him and pushed him aside.
What had he to lose? If only he could get through to Jesus then he’d be fine. Bartimaeus recognized his need of Christ
and shouted out for the need to be met.
Jesus said, “Wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, then there am I in the midst
of them.” He told them to follow him- -“I’m with you always, even till the end of the age.”
As we gather together to worship God, His promise is that He will be present in the power of His Holy Spirit.
Bartimaeus was blind. He couldn’t see Jesus, but he sensed something was happening!
He’d heard enough about Him to think that Jesus was worth seeking out and worth shouting about. The voices of the crowd
come to him, scolding him, telling him to be quiet.
So today, many voices come to us. “Jesus isn’t interested in you. Don’t
take this too seriously. He’s got no time for you! Even if you shout it out, nobody’s going to hear you! He’s
not here--you’re imagining things.”
Jesus is interested in us and He’s already dealt with our problems. When 2000 or so
years ago, they nailed Him to a cross, the cry came from His lips—“It is finished” . . . His work was complete.
The Son of God came to set men free from sin which was destroying the whole of creation. In a once-and-for-all act, He took
the penalty of sin, bore the burden upon Himself, and so broke its power for all eternity.
The root of all our problems is the fact that we rebel against God. That rebellion is called
sin. But God in Christ has dealt with the problem at its root. “It is finished.” The finished work of the
cross is sufficient to meet all our needs. It is there that God has dealt with all our problems.
The first thing we see in Bartimaeus’ story is recognition of Christ.
We need to recognize certain things. Christ is here in His risen power. He is able to deal with our needs. The voices of the
crowd say “don’t listen . . . He’s not interested in you.” The voice of faith responds, “God
loved the world so much that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not die but have eternal life.”
Bartimaeus recognized his need of Christ and was persistent
in shouting out for that need to be met in spite of what the crowds said. What happened next?
V49 - Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called the blind man. “‘Cheer
up,” they said. “Get up; He is calling you.” He threw off his cloak, jumped up, and came to Jesus. “What
do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. ”Teacher,” said the blind man, “I want to see again.”
One of the greatest privileges of Christian life is prayer. To be able to communicate with
God, to know God responding to requests, to know Him as a friend is tremendous. But it’s also the most difficult of
all Christian disciplines. We are called to persevere in prayer, as Paul wrote to the Ephesians (6:18) “Pray on every
occasion as the Spirit leads--for this reason keep alert and never give up. Pray always for all God’s people.”
One reason why prayers don’t always seem to be answered is that we give up too easily.
We give up too easily because we don’t seriously believe in our hearts that God is listening and is prepared to answer.
How different was the plea of Bartimaeus. He kept yelling his prayer for Jesus to restore his vision. He knew that if he kept
yelling, his prayer would be answered. He knew, that in spite of the voices around him stating the opposite, God was interested
in him.
One way of gauging, whether we pray from the heart or not, is to examine our persistence
in prayer. If something is important, then it will be on our lips in prayer to God. If our prayer is not from the heart, then
God will see through the words and hear what our heart’s actually saying.
Bartimaeus yelling in the crowd was his prayer from the heart. It stopped Jesus in His tracks,
He ignored the clamor of the crowd, and said “Call him.” Jesus called Bartimaeus to come to him. One reason why
we pray is because Jesus calls us to Himself. We read God’s word in the Bible, and it calls us to modify our vision
on life. We look at the symbols of faith - the cross, bread and wine, water of baptism - and they are all calls of Jesus for
us to come to Him.
When we pray, God responds. He calls us to see what Christ has accomplished for us in the
cross. He calls us to encounter Him in the risen power of His Spirit. That is His response to us. How then should we respond
to Him?
Bartimaeus was told to do two things. “Cheer up” and “Get up.”
“Cheer up”-- if we believe God is calling us then we will respond with
joy. Joy should be at the center of our response to Jesus. The fruits of the Spirit are described as love, joy, and peace.
To our shame, formal worship of God is often a joyless experience. “People fall asleep! Church is boring!” These
are accusations laid at our door. Someone has put it rather cynically: “When you’re thinking of heaven, put a
smile on your face; when you’re thinking of hell, your normal face will do!” Yet this should be the most joyful
place in town today--because Jesus is here and is calling us to cheer up--for He knows all about our worries and problems
and has dealt with them on the cross.
“Cheer up.” Jesus is calling you
to Himself. You’ve also got to “Get up.” In Bartimaeus case, he threw off his cloak, jumped up, and
came to Jesus. For a blind man, that really was a leap of faith. Beggars don’t usually have much in the way of possessions.
But a cloak was a valuable piece of clothing. You could sleep in it at night, wrap it around to keep out the cold, sit on
it during the day. He probably knew the texture of the cloth, rather like a well-worn pair of shoes. There’s nothing
as comfortable as that which you’re used to. It was, even though not much of a cloak, worth looking after and protecting.
It was all he had. But he recognized and responded to Jesus. It was time to throw that cloak off.
We all wear cloaks of a kind. We wrap ourselves up in material security, our homes, and possessions.
We have a cloak of preconceived attitudes and our own system of values and ideas of right and wrong.
Responding to the call of Jesus means being prepared to leave our particular cloak behind.
It means rethinking our attitudes and values in the light of His teaching. It means casting off those things which are not
to the glory of God in our lives. To put it in the words of Scripture—“casting off our cloak of unrighteousness
and putting on a garment of praise.”
Here is the challenge of Christ calling us to Himself. What will our response be? If we respond
by “cheering up” and “getting up,” we place ourselves in a position where we can bring Him our requests
and needs with the assurance that He is listening and able to meet them.
Once Bartimaeus had gone forth in faith, Jesus asked “What do you want me to do
for you? Bartimaeus says, “Teacher, I want to see again.” A simple request and an obvious one for a blind
man to make, and his need is met. His story ends V52 - “Go,” Jesus told him. “Your faith has made you
well.” Once he was able to see, he followed Jesus on the road.
We all need healing. The love of Christ brings healing to a sick world. Often that healing
is the spiritual rather than physical. We can be spiritually dead--indeed, if our lives are without Christ then that is our
condition. For Bartimaeus, the final step in his healing process was one of reception. He had already shown his faith by recognizing
in Christ the answer to his needs and responding to His call. He had made the request. All that he had to do was to receive
His healing. Jesus spoke the word, and it was done.
God has shown His love for us in Christ crucified. That death has dealt already with all
our problems. If that is to be real in our own lives, we need to receive the Spirit into us; receive the Spirit of the Living
God.
Only then will we “see.” Only then
will our vision of what God can and wants to do for us be restored. Only then will we see clearly how we can follow Jesus
along roads in our present life that lead to His kingdom.
Jesus healed blind Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus was a man who recognized his need of Christ’s
touch in spite of the voices of the crowd and wouldn’t keep quiet about it, for he knew that only Christ could truly
meet his need. He was also a man who responded to the call of Christ by launching out in blind faith, being prepared to leave
the old way behind and look for the new. This was his joy--to respond to the call of Christ.
Finally, he was a man who received. His faith
translated into action. His actions meant he was in a position that Christ could say to him “What do you want me to
do for you.” He made his request and his need was met. A vision restored and new life in Christ’s service. If
we come to Jesus as did Bartimaeus, He will also meet our needs.
“Would any of you who are fathers give your son a stone when he asks for bread?
Bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more then will your Father in heaven give good
things to those who ask Him?”
God is never too busy to answer our prayers and meet our needs. All that He asks is that
we make our prayers from the heart. He has enough love for each one of us.
That is the message of the story of Bartimaeus. If we come to Jesus as we are, if we seek
Him because we know that He alone can meet our need, then we shall not be disappointed. Resolve in your heart today to make
time for meeting with Jesus, for He is closer to us than we even dare to imagine.
To His name be all honor, power, and glory. Amen.
