1. "There are just certain facts of life which seem incontrovertible. I mean, there's the unlikely, and then there's the impossible."

2. "It's as if the Lord specifically left this one miracle, the miracle of sight being restored, to happen when he sent his only Son to take on flesh and become incarnate, as if that miracle had about it a special sign significance of sight."

3. "Bartimaeus encountered Jesus's power not on the basis of his strength, but in the context of his weakness."

4. "There is no other way to come to Jesus but on the basis of our need and His adequacy to meet it fully."

5. "You may be looking at me right now, but did you know the Bible says that you are spiritually blind if you don't know who Jesus of Nazareth is, if you don't know that He is the Son of David, that He is the Messiah, the Savior."

6. "Friends, Jesus will be invisible to you unless you put on the glasses of your own needs. If you don't know your own needs, you won't see Jesus."

7. "This faith here is not full power, but it's empty reliance rightly aimed. It's empty reliance, rightly aimed."

8. "The blind man came not with power, but with simple need. His eye didn't work to recover its own power. It yielded to its Creator's powerful and effectual command."

9. "Our prayers, uttered in sincere faith, show our estimate of the one we're praying to. They suggest who we know He is if we ask of Him such great things."

10. "When Pharisees and other respected people or a rich young man and Jesus' own disciples don't recognize Jesus, even though they are looking right at Him—who recognizes Jesus? A blind beggar. You've got to love that."

Observation Questions

1. According to Luke 18:35-38, what was the blind man doing when Jesus approached Jericho, and what did he cry out when he learned who was passing by?

2. In verse 39, how did those in front of the crowd respond to the blind man's cries, and how did he respond to their rebuke?

3. What specific question did Jesus ask the blind man in verse 41, and what was the man's request in response?

4. According to verse 42, what two things did Jesus say to the blind man when He healed him?

5. What three actions did the healed man take immediately after receiving his sight, as described in verse 43?

6. How did "all the people" respond when they witnessed this miracle, according to the end of verse 43?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that the blind man called Jesus "Son of David" (v. 38) rather than simply "Jesus of Nazareth" as the crowd had described Him (v. 37)? What does this title reveal about the man's understanding of who Jesus was?

2. The sermon noted that no blind person was healed in all the Old Testament, yet Jesus healed multiple blind people during His ministry. Why might God have reserved this particular type of miracle specifically for the time of the Messiah, and what does it signify about Jesus' identity?

3. Jesus said to the man, "Your faith has made you well" (v. 42). Based on the passage and the sermon's teaching, what is the nature of this faith—is it an inner power the man possessed, or something else? How does this help us understand how anyone comes to Jesus?

4. Why do you think the crowd tried to silence the blind beggar (v. 39), and what does Jesus' response—stopping and commanding the man to be brought to Him—reveal about Jesus' priorities and character, especially given that He was on His way to face rejection and crucifixion in Jerusalem?

5. How does the immediate healing of the blind man and his subsequent following of Jesus (v. 43) serve as a picture of spiritual salvation and regeneration, according to the sermon's teaching?

Application Questions

1. The blind beggar came to Jesus with nothing but his need and his trust in Jesus' power. In what area of your life are you currently trying to come to God based on your own strength or qualifications rather than simply acknowledging your need and relying on His adequacy?

2. The crowd tried to silence the blind man when he called out to Jesus, but he "cried out all the more" (v. 39). Have you experienced pressure from family, friends, or coworkers to quiet your faith or stop pursuing Jesus? How might you respond to that pressure this week in light of this passage?

3. The sermon challenged listeners to consider whether they are spiritually blind even while physically seeing. What is one step you could take this week to more carefully examine whether you truly see and understand who Jesus is—perhaps through reading Scripture, asking questions, or talking with a mature believer?

4. After being healed, Bartimaeus immediately followed Jesus and glorified God, and the crowd gave praise to God when they saw what happened (v. 43). How regularly do you share with others what God has done in your life? Who is one person you could tell this week about how Jesus has changed you?

5. The sermon pointed out that parents are "crowds" for their children—people who can inform them of what God has done. If you are a parent or have influence over young people, what is one specific way you could share your own story of faith or point them to Jesus in the coming week?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Isaiah 35:1-10 — This prophecy promises that when the Lord comes to save His people, "the eyes of the blind shall be opened," directly connecting to Jesus' healing ministry as a sign of His messianic identity.

2. 2 Samuel 7:8-16 — God's covenant promise to David that his throne would be established forever provides the background for the title "Son of David" that Bartimaeus used to identify Jesus as the Messiah.

3. John 9:1-41 — This account of Jesus healing a man born blind includes the statement that "never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind," reinforcing the unique significance of this miracle.

4. Luke 4:16-21 — Jesus' first sermon in Nazareth, where He reads from Isaiah 61 and declares that "recovering of sight to the blind" is part of His messianic mission, shows that the healing of Bartimaeus fulfilled Jesus' stated purpose.

5. 2 Corinthians 4:1-6 — Paul's teaching that "the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers" and that God shines light into hearts to give "the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" connects physical blindness to our universal need for spiritual sight.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Introduction: The Impossible Made Possible

II. This Story Is About the Blind Beggar

III. This Story Is About Jesus

IV. This Story Is About the Crowd

V. The Kingdom of God Is Coming—Are You Part of It?

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Dead men don't get up, and blind men don't see, right?

There are just certain facts of life which seem incontrovertible. I mean, there's the unlikely, and then there's the impossible.

So let's take me in eighth grade.

Tall, big boned, as my mother always kindly put it. Husky, I believe, was the brand in the Sears catalog. Strong, but not an athletic bone in my body. When dodgeball would happen in eighth grade gym, my speed, or lack of it, assured I would be the last chosen and the first out. But there was the one time Ah, the glory day.

When I somehow stayed in to the very end of the game and I was able to get a number of other guys out and finally beating one of the best players in the one-on-one duel that was such an unlikely outcome that even my fellow eighth graders, no offense eighth graders, not the most emotionally sympathetic lot of humans, even my fellow eighth graders on the opposing team were cheering me.

I was that bad.

My getting the other guy out wasn't quite impossible, but it was shockingly unlikely.

Now, if after I had done that, I then elevated from the floor and flew around the gym a few times, now that, while maybe being no more shocking than what had just happened, would in fact have been impossible. And that is what our story is about this morning. We're in Luke's gospel and Jesus does for a final time what had never been done in history between Abraham and him. At no time in all the pages of the Old Testament will you find the miracle of a blind man being made to see. There are all kinds of miracles in the Old Testament, including even a few dead people revived.

But it's as if the Lord specifically left this one miracle, the miracle of sight being restored, to happen when he sent his only Son to take on flesh and become incarnate, as if that miracle had about it a special sign significance of sight. In seeing and understanding who God Himself is. We recall the blind man who Jesus healed in John 9, saying to the Pharisees, as astonished as they were at his being given sight, Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. Friends, we're in Luke chapter 18, verses 35 to 43. If you're using the Bibles provided, you'll find that on page 878.

Jesus is taking his last steps in his long earthly journey. More than 30 years since his birth in Jerusalem, more than three since his baptism, where he called his 12 disciples together and began his ministry of teaching the truth and living in love and doing miraculous things to illustrate and confirm his identity as the one who was the long promised God sent king. And God's own Son. Now, Jesus and His followers were going through Jericho, an extraordinary 800 feet below sea level, as they were going on to Jerusalem, 15 miles away, all uphill, Jerusalem being 2,600 feet above sea level, about a 12-hour walk. But before they began that steepest in, perhaps on the Thursday night, the Gospels don't tell us exactly when, before spending the day Friday going up, this happens.

Our text, as I say, is Luke chapter 18, verses 35 to 43. As He drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging.

And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.

And he cried out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped. And commanded him to be brought to him.

And when he came near, he asked him, 'What do you want me to do for you?' He said, 'Lord, let me recover my sight.' and Jesus said to him, 'Recover your sight. Your faith has made you well.' and immediately he recovered his sight. And followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. One simple question I want to ask you this morning.

Who is this story about?

Who is this story about? I pray that as you consider this, you'll see more of who Jesus is and more of how it matters.

To you. Who is this story about? Well, the obvious answer is right there in big print above your passage, a blind beggar. I mean, he's the one who cries out, the crowds tell him to be quiet, he cries out all the more loudly. Remember Luke 18 began with the parable of the persistent widow.

This chapter now concludes with the insistent beggar personifying this. We read in verse 35 that there was a blind man sitting by the roadside begging. Now this would not have been an unusual sight. The Jews understood from the Scriptures that God is sovereign over sight. Some people were in providence blind.

They were properly objects of special charity and care because they were unable to work. They commonly lived as beggars. It was common to see them along the roadside. And the road, particularly from Jericho up to Jerusalem, would have been a very busy road, a good place. To beg.

Mark tells us that the blind beggar had a name. If we look over in Mark's account in chapter 10, his name is Bartimaeus. But otherwise the story is recounted almost identically in the other Gospels. As we read it here, it's clearly about the beggar who was blind, and we're probably right in assuming that he was a beggar because he was blind. Throughout the Old Testament, blindness is presented as a tragedy and also as an image for spiritual Peril and danger can dog the blind at every step.

They can't see where they're going. They could be more easily taken advantage of. And just like the children earlier in chapter 18, up in verse 15, the unfortunate, the poor, the blind were assumed by so many around them to not be worth Jesus's attention. Do you know it's the same way the disciples kind of poo-pooed the parents who were trying to bring their kids to Jesus. So here the crowds, and we don't know if it's like part of the disciples' crowds or some other part of the crowds, but whoever they're telling him, Be quiet.

But with the coming of Jesus, this effect of the curse was actually reversed in some cases as a kind of down payment of first fruits of the transformation that was to come in the general resurrection. And so earlier when John the Baptist is wondering, is Jesus really the Messiah? John's thrown in jail and he's thinking, I thought when the Messiah came, everything was gonna get fine. And now here I am in jail. So he sends some of his followers to ask Jesus, are you the Messiah?

Jesus's first response is, go and tell John what you've seen and heard. The blind receive their sight. Friends, Jesus's ministry was a strange time where part of the effects of the curse and the fall were being reversed. We were used to things only running one way. Sight fades into blindness.

But now, just like the first twigs of a new plant poking above the soil, a few times blindness was giving way to sight. Something else was going on. Notice what the blind beggar asks for when he calls out to Jesus.

He says, have mercy on me. It's a simple request. It's a request we see often repeated in Scripture. It simply means, Help me. It's the request that every Christian here this morning has to be familiar with making to God.

Have mercy on me. Have pity on me. But the people around the beggar didn't seem to have pity on him.

They were, we don't know, embarrassed, irritated. Verse 39, those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. Again, just like those disciples with the children earlier, maybe they thought Jesus was too important. He's the King. Maybe it's a kind of right respect for Jesus.

They've just misunderstood what he would want, though. But they're showing that he's a great man and he wouldn't be concerned with someone like you. You're not important enough for him to care about.

He was someone who would not look at somebody like a blind beggar with any concern at all, they thought.

But the truth is, like the persistent widow and the children, and like Zacchaeus who we're about to see next week, God did care and Jesus cared.

We see here that the man crying out, Bartimaeus, actually was approaching Jesus the right way. Sinclair Ferguson said this, Bartimaeus encountered Jesus's power not on the basis of his strength, but in the context of his weakness.

Oh, DC crowd, this is a great thing for you to hear this morning. The crowd around him believed rightly that he had nothing he could contribute to what Jesus was doing. They didn't understand that this was not a disqualification from calling on the Lord's name. And in fact it was they, not Bartimaeus, who were blind. Bartimaeus brought nothing but his need.

But in so doing he fulfilled a fundamental law in God's kingdom. There is no other way to come to Jesus. But on the basis of our need and His adequacy to meet it fully. Oh, man. This guy cries out to Jesus, verse 40, Jesus stopped, commanded him to be brought to Him.

And Luke tells us that in his plain and summarizing manner. Some of you who are new Christians may not be used to much of the different feel of each of the gospels, 'cause they all tell the same story. But when you've read 'em a lot, you can begin to feel, and Luke, he's a good historian. Man, he's done his work, he's interviewed everybody, and it's a kind of just the facts, man, gospel. It's a great one.

Mark, I think, this is speculation, but it's very old speculation, I think Mark is probably Peter's witness. And it sounds a little bit like Peter, quick, maybe even impatient, vivid in some details in his memory. And so this is the one little bit of the story where Mark adds a little something. Luke here just says he came near him. That means the blind man came near.

Mark 10:50, when Mark's telling this, it says, and throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. The beggar was clearly excited. So Jesus asked him directly in verse 41, what do you want me to do for you? I mean, maybe the man wanted money. He was a beggar.

He said, Lord, let me recover. My sight. For instance, we don't know how old this beggar was. Was he 15? Was he 35?

Was he 68? How long had he been out there begging? We don't know. But I wondered how many people would he have ever made that request in his whole life? Probably nobody.

Who else would you ask? Let me recover my sight. I want to see.

Never since the beginning of the world, they say in John 9:32, had we heard of a man born blind being given his sight. No, he knew something was up with this Jesus of Nazareth, as the crowds called him, Jesus, son of David, as he called out. The blind man knew that he was not just asking for a physical handout of some money or some food. He could have asked a lot of things. A wonderful prayer would have been for him to ask for grace to live with this weakness.

Nothing wrong with that prayer. We're in a fallen world. We should have no expectation that we will not experience this fallenness unless we're alive when Christ returns. We can be sure that death itself will take all of us. And we can't be surprised at the various ways its tentacles grab hold before it finally pulls us down to death.

But Bartimaeus here realized that it was the most special times. The Son of David was walking past. That means the King, the Messianic, the promised King, he was there. It was a time of special celebration. The time Jesus said elsewhere for fasting would be when the bridegroom was taken away, but not now.

Now was the time for joy and celebration. Never had this man had the Messiah walk past him. So he knew if there was ever a time he could ask for healing, for the blind to receive their sight, because Isaiah even promised it would happen when the Messiah came. Maybe now is the time. Maybe this is the time he should ask that request.

And look what happened, verse 43, and immediately he recovered his sight. He was healed, body and soul. We read in verse 43 that he literally followed Jesus. My friend, you may be looking at me right now, but did you know the Bible says that you are spiritually blind if you don't know who Jesus of Nazareth is, if you don't know that He is the Son of David, that He is the Messiah, the Savior. 2 Corinthians 4:4 we read, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Friends, you may be more desperately blind than this beggar even as you look at me. You heard Parker share his own story from just a couple of years ago. Friends, a few decades before that, I was an agnostic. I enjoyed the idea of publicly embarrassing Christians by comments I would make about the obviously false things they believed. And yet, what am I doing right now?

I'm here spending my life talking to you all about Jesus, trying to persuade you that he is in fact this Messiah, this Son of David. What happened?

Friends, according to the Bible, exactly what this beggar saw, what Parker saw, what I saw, what so many of you have seen, is what the God of this world would blind you to. Be aware of that. Did you realize the Bible says that there are worldly spiritual powers that are actually laboring to make sure you do not perceive the truth? About Jesus, that there is more going on than you may have imagined in this life.

To understand Him as uniquely the image of God, to rely on Him as Bartimaeus did here in our story. You may be here today like this beggar who's made an initial call out to Jesus. Maybe that's even you're coming to church today. Maybe you're somebody who's not normally at church. Maybe it's a kind of Hail Mary pass.

He says, well, let's just try this. See if maybe this will work. Can't really hurt much. But then, like the beggar after he first shouts out, maybe family or friends are giving you disapproving looks. You're going to church?

Really? Everything okay?

Friends at work concerned when you ask a religious question?

So maybe you're kind of like the blind man this morning who'd been shushed. And the question is now, do you go ahead like the blind man and yell out more loudly? Or do you just kind of go with the crowd, step back, yeah, sorry, I shouldn't have done that. Shouldn't have called out like that.

Friends, call out. As if your life depends on it, because it does. I wonder if you think maybe that you're too unimportant for Jesus.

Maybe you're a young person here, you're 10 or 12 or 13 or 14. And you think, well, God's got bigger fish to fry, bigger things to worry about. He's got parents and adults. He's got sports stars and social media influencers and politicians and people in big trouble. Not really time for somebody like me.

Oh, friend, I'd like you to rethink that. Do you know there are a lot of 12 and 13 and 14 year olds who became believers and they're members of this church now in their 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s.

In fact, if there were, if I were to ask everybody to stand up who had become a Christian before they graduated from high school, do you know there'd be a whole lot of people in here? Wouldn't be everybody, but friends it'd be a lot. So if you're here as a young person and you're thinking you're too unimportant to matter, that's not true. And there are lots of people around here who would love to talk to you about that. Those early years are the best time to start following Jesus.

Start out as you mean to go on. Begin to understand what it means to follow him. Call on the name of the Lord today.

Know that we here are praying for you, whatever category you're in, to see the light of the gospel of Christ, to understand who he is. Look at verse 43. I just love that verse. Immediately he recovered his sight. He followed him.

Glorifying God. So Bartimaeus became a follower of Jesus, glorifying God. It seems like he was a follower of Jesus even before he got his sight. The way he called out to him and relied on him, we don't know how Bartimaeus recognized Jesus, but it says he followed him. And of course Jesus' next stop was Jerusalem.

What did he see in the space of a few days?

Blind Bartimaeus with those newly opened eyes of his.

This is a story about the blind beggar, isn't it?

But this story is also a story about Jesus.

This is a story about Jesus. Notice how everyone in Luke 18 seems to come to Jesus along the way. The Pharisees come to him. The rich young man came with a question up in chapter 18, verse 18. The people brought children to him for his blessing in verses 15 to 17.

And now here this man yells out to him in verse 41. Whatever spotlight we put on the beggar, he seems to turn it to Jesus. The narrator's shot is of the beggar, but when he shouts, the camera, as it were, pans over to the one he's shouting at.

The one walking past, Jesus, son of David. Look again at verse 37, they told him, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, and he cried out, Jesus, son of David. Bartimaeus was recognizing who Jesus was. Jesus is the King, the Messiah. Son of David is one of his most basic titles.

If you want to see where that comes from, later today, you can go to your Old Testament, look up 2 Samuel, Chapter 7, and read that, and you'll find out where that title came from. But again, how could Bartimaeus have known this about Jesus?

Well, presumably he knew the Scriptures. He had heard them read. He had heard them talked of in the synagogue or among others. And he must have heard reports of what Jesus had done. Jesus had been having a public ministry for a few years now.

And he put these things together and he recognized Jesus as the Messiah, which would also mean it could be the time for a blind man like him to be given his sight. Because this was definitely part of the vision for the day of the Lord that was to come. The Lord had promised in Isaiah 35, Then will the eyes of the blind be opened. So God gave Bartimaeus this gift of faith, just as he had earlier put this understanding of who Jesus is in Peter's mind. Do you remember that?

If you look back in Matthew's gospel, turn over to Matthew chapter 16.

Peter is the first of the disciples to confess Jesus as the Messiah. But it's very interesting when he does this in Matthew, chapter 16, verse 16, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus does not say, Bright boy, Peter, well educated. I knew your reasoning abilities were sharp. Look at what he says in verse 17, Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, that's Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. The same thing has happened with Bartimaeus.

Whatever facts he's had to put together, flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but it was his Father who was in heaven who had given him this gift of faith in Jesus Christ. Friends, seeing and perceiving who Jesus is is at the very center of Christian faith and hope. But in these last stories we see here in Luke 18, it wasn't the disciples or the Pharisees who were the teachers of Scripture or the rich young ruler, but it was the blind beggar who ended up showing the way to Jesus. Verse 40, Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And once again, you see Jesus there.

We looked at that verse thinking of the blind man, but now look at that verse thinking of Jesus. His compassion seems to exceed the compassion of all of those around him. He wants this blind man yelling out brought to him. He wants to talk to him. What's always struck me about that is when you remember where we are in the story, Jesus is walking.

He's about to begin this long ascent up to Jerusalem where he knows he'll be rejected. He's just said that in the verses right before this in Luke 18. Look at verses 31 to 34. He's explained to his disciples what they didn't seem to understand, that he was about to be rejected and even crucified. So with all of this heaviness on him, he hears this beggar and he wants him to be brought over so he can talk to him.

And hear from him.

The bigness of the man's request there in verse 41, Let me recover my sight, was like a spotlight on Jesus' power and his identity. Yeah, Bartimaeus wanted to see, nothing surprising there, but it's like the question I asked a few minutes ago, who else do you think he ever asked that to? Probably nobody. So what does that tell you? Who at least Bartimaeus understood Jesus was.

What he understood about Jesus, that he would turn to Jesus in full faith that Jesus could grant such a request. That was staggering, and it showed an amazing insight and fullness of faith in who Jesus was, the messianic king who does make all things new. So, kids, once again, If you're like, particularly in junior high, you almost by definition think your life is badly messed up. I mean, hey, I told you about my eighth grade dodgeball, right? I mean, that's just, that's what happens to us in sixth, seventh, eighth grade.

You need to understand that there is a God who can make a tremendous difference, even in the life of a sixth, seventh, or eighth grader, let alone a 10 year old or college student or somebody who's just retired. This God is a great God who cares, and we can ask of Him great things. Our prayers, uttered in sincere faith, show our estimate of the one we're praying to. They suggest who we know He is if we ask of Him such great things. If you cry out in your own desperation to the Lord, you're showing that you believe his ability to answer even such big requests.

Jesus said to him, recover your sight. Your faith has made you well. That that word there for made well is the word usually translated saved. Sodzo, it's a general word. It means made safe, or in this case it particularly seems to mean cured or healed.

But here it seems Bartimaeus' body was cured the same time his soul was, recognizing Jesus for who he really is. And so Jesus delivered him, both physically as a sign of it and spiritually. So friend, you'd be misunderstanding this if you read that and thought that the amount of the person's desire and will or sort of positive imagining, spiritual energy that you can build up. Your sort of faith is then what gives you the power to create, as it were, the sight in your own eyes. This is not like that kind of innate power.

No, this faith here is not full power, but it's empty reliance rightly aimed. It's empty reliance, rightly aimed. Because Bartimaeus saw the truth about who Jesus was, it was appropriate that Jesus seal that understanding by performing this miraculous healing because miracles were signs to confirm faith. Jesus' whole ministry was all about glorifying God, trying to show that God was worthy of all of our praise. So he would bring his name glory as he was both the Savior of his people and was known as the Savior of his people.

And this little smaller salvation that this guy being able to see again would be a picture of the larger salvation that Jesus was bringing. The beggar's faith was the means by which this sight came. Faith is simply belief and trust. It's the faith which Ephesians 2 tells us is a gift from God. The simplicity of Jesus' healing and the immediacy of the answer both point to Jesus being in complete control.

Friends, if you read through Luke's Gospel, you get familiar with it, you would expect that this would be happening. In Jesus' very first sermon recorded in Nazareth, he opens up the Isaiah scroll to Isaiah 61, And do you know, he reads it out loud, and do you know how that begins? The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind.

That ancient prophecy, Jesus said in his very first sermon, is what he was about fulfilling. And that ancient prophecy is exactly what had come true in Jesus' own ministry. Friends, here's a picture of regeneration and of it being entirely of God's power. The blind man came not with power, but with simple need. His eye didn't work to recover its own power.

It yielded to its Creator's powerful and effectual command. The faith Jesus mentions and commends here in verse 42, you, faith has made you well, is not then this spiritual power inside the man, but it's a looking to Christ. It's a belief. It's a trust, wholly relying on Christ's power. Jesus is the one that he's staring at.

It's Jesus' power that does the work. Friend, the only way you can really come to Jesus, like that Sinclair Ferguson quote said earlier, is through your need of him. In fact, Jesus will be invisible to you. Unless you put on the glasses of your own needs. If you don't know your own needs, you won't see Jesus.

He is the one who has come specifically to bring us new life spiritually and reconcile us with His heavenly Father. He calls, the beggar calls Jesus Son of David, because David was the great king of Israel where to whom God had promised in 2 Samuel 7, I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that. He is God's Son incarnate and David's Son by descent. Luke chapter 1 even begins his whole gospel with these words, making sure that people reading his book knows this.

The very first words are about Jesus. Matthew rather begins with the very first words of his gospel, Jesus son of David. And in Luke's Gospel, in Luke chapter 1, Gabriel appears to Mary and says, you, shall call His name Jesus, He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and ever, and of His kingdom there will be no end. So the pressing question for his faith was personally, about his own eyesight. And today, what about us?

Why don't we see these kinds of healings today? How many blind people in this room have been physically healed like that? Friends, the miracles Jesus did during his earthly ministry were specifically to reveal who he was. So when blind Bartimaeus relied on Him by faith. Bartimaeus was whether he realized it or not, taking part in the very purpose of Jesus' ministry, not merely to heal the blind.

There were always more blind people around he could have healed, that he didn't heal. No, but to reveal Jesus' own identity. Jesus was doing what the Messiah did, glorifying God by bringing sight, bringing life, because Jesus was the Messiah. And Bartimaeus became an occasion for that to be known. Friend, if you want to understand more of the truth about Jesus, you're going to have to come to grips with the idea that this man died and this man was raised from the dead.

If that is not true, none of what we're saying makes any sense. And yet that seems the most unusual of facts. So if you want to think more about that, we've got a few copies of J. D. Anderson's little book, the evidence for the resurrection. Most of the pastors at the doors on the way out in just a few minutes will have copies of this. If you'd like one to read for yourself or think of, we would love to give you one or talk to you about that, to try to understand more of who Jesus is.

Again, how did this blind man come to so understand Jesus? Perhaps even beyond what so many of the disciples even did at the time. Maybe he'd heard 2 Samuel in the synagogues, maybe Isaiah, maybe elsewhere. And then, you know, he is a blind man. He is a beggar.

He's spending a lot of time on the roadside. Maybe he had heard a lot of people talking about Jesus. Maybe he'd been hearing these stories for three years now, gathering up these facts about him, and then he puts it all together. And so when he heard along the roadside this chatter, he could begin to see what even his sighted friends couldn't see. And then when his own sharp need gave him that advantage that need can give you, when Jesus comes near, he he blurts out that he knows that Jesus of Nazareth is not just Jesus of Nazareth, he is Jesus, son of David.

He was the fulfillment of the ancient promise to David. And so he called him and he prayed like it.

Friends, as a church, that's why we pray as we do. You come back tonight at 5:00, you'll see us praying. And we pray because we believe that this is who Jesus is. And we give ourselves in regular and unspectacular ways to pray relying on him because we know this truth about him. Big ideas about Jesus means a big giving of yourself, even to make big prayers, big asks of this one.

This is a story about Jesus, about who Jesus is. Who is the story about? One more suggestion. The story is about the crowd. This is a story about the crowd.

Look at verse 36. And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. Crowds would have been pretty thick this time of year, Passover, every year, annual festival in Jerusalem.

Main way to Jerusalem going through Jericho. Thousands and thousands of people would come up to Jerusalem, most of them making the ascent from Jericho. Jericho, streets, busy, roads, busy this time of year, filled with these pilgrims. Maybe it was especially thick that year because people knew something was happening. Maybe even they knew that a confrontation was coming.

Maybe they knew that Jesus himself would be appearing. At this point, you see, Jesus was popular. He was part of the crowds that were going up, but he was also part of what was causing the crowds. Crowds every year going up to Passover, greater crowds this year.

Perhaps never had there been someone who had stirred Israel so as this man who for years now had gone around teaching and doing miracles that no one had ever heard of. And even as rumors circulated about his messages and his miracles, speculation was rife about his mission. Soon enough the leaders in Jerusalem would be alarmed at one acclaimed by the crowds as the Son of David. Here we read in verse 37 that they informed the blind man who was there. Verse 39, They wrongly tried to silence the man's cries.

We're kind of like in a crowd today, aren't we? This is a crowd. We're crowded around as the readers of Luke's account. Luke didn't just know these things, he wrote these down to be read. So he understood, you've got the blind beggar and you've got Jesus, of course, and you have the crowds that he's described.

But he's writing because he means the camera, as it were, to pull even a little further out and show that crowd includes us. It includes you.

Friends, these crowds standing around looking.

What do you want Jesus to do for you today?

What should you want Jesus to do for you? I'll tell you what you should want. You should want him to forgive you for your sins. You should want him to give you a new life. You should want to call on him and what he's done when he died as a sacrifice in the place of everyone who would trust in him.

God raised him from the dead that we celebrate on the first day of each week. We celebrate today as well, his resurrection from the dead. That's like God's exclamation point. Everything this man said about himself was true.

Friend, it's a better idea than what you're doing with your life. Your life, you're driving quickly to a dark end. There's a brightness in the promises of Christ that you should learn. Begin to dedicate yourself to understand who is Jesus. What does it mean that He called Himself a Savior?

We read in verse 43, All the people, when they saw this miracle, this healing, gave praise to God. I don't know if most of the crowd here that day perceived anything about Jesus as the Messiah before Jesus healed the blind man, but they couldn't miss the healing. And that's the way it is with God's work. When God does a work in changing somebody, people around notice. I bet when you were changed, People noticed.

It causes them to talk and to wonder. Do you glorify God by telling others about how He saved you? Brothers and sisters, praise for His salvation should mark your life and your speech. Brothers and sisters, how are you doing at remembering to praise God for the deliverances in your life? You know, as a church we covenant together to to rejoice with each other's joys and to bear each other's burdens and sorrows.

Paul tells us in Philippians 4:4 that we're to rejoice in the Lord always. We want our conversations and our times together to be marked by joyful praise to God for his wonderful deliverances of us. Parents, you realize that your kids are crowds for you. They're friends, they're crowds for you. They're people that you can inform, of what God has done in your own life, and so open up the possibility of what he might do in theirs.

Luke is telling this story for us.

When you look hard, you see not only the beggar in the title and the Jesus he pointed to, but as so many of these stories in the gospel look really hard, and there is intended a mirror so that you can see the truth about yourself. What's going on here? Luke recounted the story of the blind beggar so that his testimony will draw readers to Jesus. That like the crowds on that day, we too will see and so believe and so follow Jesus and glorify and give praise to God. We are to make up those crowds of those who come to Follow Jesus.

In this sense, this is a story about the crowds. It's a story about us.

So there we have it. Chapter 18, in which we see Jesus doing not just the unlikely, but what people had taken to be impossible. Never since the world begun has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. But just as Jesus had taught up in Luke chapter 18, verse 27, what is impossible with man is possible with God.

Friend, what hope do you hear in your hopeless situation this morning?

God comes through in surprising ways. At surprising times. Again, we don't know how long Bartimaeus has been sitting there.

But it's like the old song says, He may not come when you want Him, but He's always right on time.

When Pharisees and other respected people or a rich young man and Jesus' own disciples don't recognize Jesus, even though they are looking right at Him.

Who recognizes Jesus? A blind beggar. You've got to love that. There is no qualification of this world we bring to see Jesus and the truth about Him. He had heard enough that he recognized Jesus and so he began to see.

He received his sight. His physical sight followed his spiritual sight. How did that spiritual sight come about? Through his ears. What had he been hearing?

The Scriptures, the stories about what Jesus did, the noise of these crowds of pilgrims headed up to Jerusalem, the pilgrims going from Galilee and elsewhere to the Passover feast. And what would those pilgrims have been saying?

They would have been reading aloud the Psalms of Ascent, perhaps together in unison, perhaps singing or chanting them. That's Psalm 120 to 134. They're short. You could read them this afternoon in a few minutes.

That's what the blind man would have been hearing as the crowds were walking by.

Psalm 123, To youo I lift up my eyes, O youo who are enthroned in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God. 'till He has mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us, O Lord. Have mercy upon us.

The kingdom of God is coming.

Are you a part of it?

Let's pray together.

Lord God, teach us from this blind man. Teach us His view of Jesus. Teach us the truth. Be glorified, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.