Slide 1
And they came to Jericho. And as he 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!” And Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart. Get up; he is calling 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.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.
Mark 10:46-52

Slide 2
Two words: Jesus stopped

Slide 3
Life is messy… But God!

Slide 4
Jennifer Fitzgerald, Brandon Preveau

Slide 5
The world is broken and messy!

Slide 6
What is the Gospel?

Slide 7
Romans 1:16: “The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”

Slide 8
The gospel is not good advice about what we should do. It is good news about what God did, and that news has power.

Slide 9
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Ephesians 2:1-3

Slide 10
The Bible doesn’t say we were spiritually injured.
It says we were dead!

Slide 11
Life is messy… But God!

Slide 12
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:4-9

Slide 13
Bartimaeus shows us what saving faith looks like:
1. Cry: “Have mercy on me!”
2. Come:  He comes to Jesus.
3. Call it:  “Let me recover my sight.”
4. Cast the cloak:  Drop the identity that’s keeping you stuck.
5. Commit to the way: He followed Jesus.

Slide 14
“Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. I confess I am a sinner and cannot save myself. I believe You died for my sins and rose again. Make me alive by Your grace. Pour Your love into my heart by Your Spirit. I receive, not earn, Your salvation. I choose to follow You. Amen.”

Turn with me to Mark chapter 10. We’re gonna start in verse 46. Now, now I, I mentioned this from time to time, but here’s one of the things that’s challenging about scripture. There’s lots of things that are challenging about scripture, but one of them is we tend to look at passages out of context. So we’ll read a story and we typically start at the beginning of the story and end at the end of the story. But we don’t look at the story in the context of the big narrative of everything that’s happening around it. And so there’s this really cool story we’re going to read right now about Jesus healing a blind man. But I want us to understand the context. ’cause We’re at the very end of March, chapter 10, and in March chapter 11, something really significant happens. And that is the triumphal entry.

We call it Palm Sunday. It’s the moment where Jesus goes into Jerusalem and Jesus going into Jerusalem, he knows that he’s going to be crucified and he’s going to die in March chapter 10, just, just a few verses before the ones we’re gonna read. He’s talking about his death to his disciples. He’s warning them that this is going to happen. And we know that that weighs on Jesus, the garden of Gethsemane. You see him and there’s this burden where he is saying, God, if there’s any other way, take this cup from me. And so you can imagine that he’s on the road going from Jericho to Jerusalem. You can imagine that the weight of the world is on his shoulders. Have you ever been in the middle of something and you’re really focused and, and maybe you’ve got high emotions and you’ve got these distractions that are popping up.

And what do we try and do with those distractions? We try and turn ’em off. We try and ignore ’em. Sometimes the distraction are a, are a family member. And, and oftentimes we’re pretty short with that family member, unintentionally, because there’s this big heavy burden that we’re carrying and any interruption to that distracts us from what we’re feeling. So if you’ve got your Bible, mark chapter 10, er verse 46 says this, and they came to Jericho and he was leaving Jericho with his disciples in a great crowd. Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of TEUs was sitting by the roadside. And when he had heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out saying, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent now. Now pause for a moment and try and picture yourself as Bartimaeus, that he’s a blind beggar outside the city of Jericho.

So his livelihood is that he would sit by a very prominent road. He would ask people to give him funds in order that he might survive and live, and he hears about Jesus. Now, clearly Jesus was such a big deal that everybody was talking about it. And him being a beggar on the side of the road outside the city, was aware of who the person of Jesus was. And so he knows that Jesus is coming by. He hears the rumblings, he hears the whispers. And so he starts to cry out to Jesus, Jesus, son of David, which would’ve been this, this cry of Messiah, have mercy on me.

What do other people

Do? They hear him crying out and they say, Hey,

Hey,

Keep it down. Hey, hey,

Stop.

Hey, you’re embarrassing yourself. How much of what

We do is based

Off the opinions of others? I mean, so much of what we do is

Based off the opinions of other, and even people that say that, that their life isn’t

Wrapped up in the opinions of others. That’s just not true. I mean, the reason you dress the

Way that you

Dress, the reason I dress the way

That I dress is because this is what

Is fashionable at this time to wear. Now, some of us in this room wear something that was fashionable

30 years ago, but for you, that’s

What makes you

Fashionable

In this moment.

Like, but, but people

Say, Hey, I’m gonna look a certain way because

We want other people to value

Us and we wanna look normal. We,

We easily get scared

Of the opinions of others.

And

So it would’ve been very easy in this moment for Bartimaeus to be like, oh,

There’s a lot of

People around. I don’t wanna embarrass myself and they’ve asked me to be quiet. I might as well

Be quiet.

But that’s not what he does. Many rebuked in telling him to be silent. But he cried

Out all the more Son of David

Have mercy on me, verse 49. And Jesus

Stopped

And said, call him. And they called the blind man saying to him, take heart,

Get up. He

Is calling you and throwing off

His

Cloak. Now, now pause for a moment because there’s some, some very big significance to that phrase of throwing off his cloak.

Now that word cloak, it could be a physical

Cloak that he is wearing. It could be the mat depending upon the Greek and how you translate it.

But clearly

It’s something that for a blind beggar is really important,

That this is his livelihood. This is his place. He’s

Throwing off

That to chase after

Jesus. Now, if you’re a blind beggar and you throw off

A cloak or

You throw off your mat, being able to go find it is going to be a challenge. But I don’t think he’s worried about ever finding it again.

He’s just worried

About finding Jesus in 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 faith

Has made you

Well.

Now that word,

Well in the

Greek doesn’t just mean the physical healing, although clearly there’s

A

Physical healing that happens.

The Greek word is soso,

And soso can mean salvation or to be

Saved, but

Oftentimes it’s translated

As to

Be made

Whole. And what the

Author of Mark wants us to understand is he wants us to understand not only is he

Physically healed, but

He is made

Whole.

He has been saved. There’s something

Spiritual that

Is happening with

His soul.

And immediately

He recovered his

Sights and followed him on the way. It doesn’t say immediately he recovers the sight he can see again, and he goes on his way. No, it says he followed him. Jesus. He, he receives his sight. And then he doesn’t leave Jesus. He continues to follow him. Now, I wanna point out two words that I think it get missed, but they’re right in the middle of the passage. There’s an emphasis around these two words. And they’re very simple. It’s just that Jesus stopped. Now Jesus know where, where he’s going. He, he knows he’s headed to Jerusalem. He knows he’s going to be crucified. He, he knows that he’s got this burden in this heaviness that he’s carrying. It would’ve been very easy for Jesus to just ignore everybody, to not pay attention, just be to himself, ignoring the world around him. But he doesn’t do that.

He hears the cry of Bartimaeus and it says, Jesus stopped. It’s a powerful moment that sometimes I think in my relationship with God, I, I think, well, God, there’s so many problems in the world. There’s so many things going on. And so when I’m praying to God, I’m like, well, I’m surely, my prayers aren’t that big of a deal. And yet what the author of Mark wants us to understand, he wants us to grasp, is that Jesus, even though he was on the most important mission, doing the most important thing that, that he was going to do, and that was the cross, he was never too busy for the person in need crying out to Jesus. And can I just tell you that’s the hope for every single one of us in here today, that when we are in that moment where we don’t know what’s going on, we cry out to Jesus, that the attention of heaven and our divine creator, God turns his attention towards us.

Jesus stopped the sermon series. It acknowledges the fact that life is messy. And if life was just messy and broken, that’d be one thing. But the gospel paints a different picture. And that is that life is messy. But God, that if you look at the Bible, that the first two chapters of the Bible, there’s no sin and there’s no Satan. Genesis one and chapter two, then chapter three, Satan enters the scene, sin enters the scene, destruction all the scripture. There is sin, there’s brokenness, there’s pain, there is suffering. Until you get to the very last two chapters of the book of the Revelation. And this is now no more sin, no more Satan. And it says that there’s no more tears, no more crying, no more pain, no more suffering. So, so there’s this, this picture that the, the Bible is trying to get us to understand that the two chapters at the beginning, the two chapters at the end, there’s no sin, there’s no brokenness, there’s no pain, there’s no suffering.

But everything in the middle is messy. The whole thing is messy. And you don’t have to look very far to realize that the world around us is messy. The relationships are messy. We are messy, that our culture is messy. Our country right now feels messy. The world, there’s, there’s all kinds of problems globally. The world is messy. And so it’s messy in big ways, but it’s also messy in very small ways. If you have kids, you know that kids are messy, sometimes literally messy. They spill stuff all the time, all over the place. And you don’t teach a kid how to sin. They, they know that coming right out on their own. Like it doesn’t take long, especially if you’ve got siblings. If you’ve got children plural, they will have moments where they shed blood on one another. That’s just what happens. And then even sometimes when it looks like a relationship is healthy and great relationships that look beautiful can turn messy really quickly.

Now, let me show you a picture of a couple that looks great. It’s Jennifer and Brandon. This is a picture taken somewhere around 2006. And at that moment, I mean, look, they’re happy. Life is great. They dated for three years. They broke up in 2009. And I don’t know the context of the internet, doesn’t know the context of what caused them to break up, but here’s what I do know, it was a messy breakup. And here’s why I know that, because Brandon decided that that messy breakup was so painful to him that he was gonna do something to his ex-girlfriend to kinda get her back. And what he did is he bought a car for $600 from his uncle. It was this car right here. It was a 1999 Monte Carlo. And Brandon was an employee at the, the airport. He worked for United.

And so he took this car that he had bought for $600, he registered it in his ex-girlfriend’s name, put all the paperwork in her name. So that license plate was registered to her and connected to her. He took that car, he took it to the airport, he dropped it off in a paid parking lot, specifically the employee paid parking lot of United, because that’s a harder one to get to. And he left it there, not just overnight, not just for a week, not just for a month. He left it there for almost three years. There were 678 parking tickets written to that car who was in the name of Jennifer, his ex-girlfriend, $106,000 worth of parking tickets. Now, now, I mean, you saw the picture, like they look so happy, they look so quaint, they look so great, and then something happens at the end that upsets him so much.

He’s like, I’m gonna get her back. Here’s how I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna like the effort it takes to purchase a car for $600, register it in your ex-girlfriend’s name, and then drop it off at the airport parking. Like that’s some high level vengefulness stuff. She ended up, she ended up having her license revoked. Like she had to go through all kinds of legal battles in order to get it all taken care of. And we’re not surprised by that. That why? Because life is messy and relationships are messy. Here’s the reality. And it doesn’t take us long to figure this out. The world is broken and messy. It just is. And so in the midst of all of that brokenness, God sends Jesus. And, and if you’re around church or you’ve been in church, you hear us talk about the gospel. Here’s what I want you to do for a second.

I want you to pause and ask yourself, what is the gospel? What is the gospel like? If you had to define the gospel, what do you think it is? ’cause Oftentimes what people think the gospel is, is the teachings of Jesus. And that’s a piece of the gospel. But that’s not the gospel. The gospel isn’t just a, a nice way to live. No, the gospel is something far more profound than that. Fortunately, the book of Romans tells us what the gospel is. Look what it says in Romans chapter one, verse 16. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Now, unpack that the gospel is the power of God for salvation. So to put it a different way, the gospel is not good advice about what we should do. It is good news about what God did, and that news has power.

You see, I, I think that the thing we gotta understand about the gospel is it’s not, it’s not just good advice. It’s not just nice. It’s not just something. Well, hey, if you follow these steps, then life’s gonna be great. And we see that in the world around us all the time. There’s always a new podcast. There’s always new social media P post, there’s always a new influencer. There’s always a new movement. There’s always a new group. And all those things are wonderful and great, but only the gospel has the power of God to save us. And when we talk about the good news, I think sometimes what gets lost about the good news is the good news is not just the teaching of Jesus. The good news is that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and for your sins, but he didn’t stay dead, that he conquered sin and death.

He rose from the death. The gospel is the power of God. To save a flip with me over to Ephesians chapter two, it it helps us unpack the need for the gospel. Ephesians chapter two, starting in verse one. It says this, and you were dead. And the trespasses and sins, pause. And just let that sink in for a moment that we were dead in our trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh in the mind. And where by nature, children of wrath

Like the rest

Of mankind,

It feels like it describes

The world we’re living in, children of wrath

All over the world,

Death and brokenness. Now, now unpack this for

A second. ’cause The Bible doesn’t say that we were

Spiritually injured.

The Bible says that we were dead because

Here’s the thing about an injury. Injury means, well, you just need to stitch it

Up.

The Bible doesn’t say, well, hey, you’re spiritually injured. And so you need a spiritual bandaid for your

Bobo. And if you

Just get that on there,

It’ll be better. Someone that’s injured,

They can take care of themselves depending upon the injury. Oftentimes, you can injure yourself. Now, you can just chat your butia and self-diagnose

Yourself.

The doctors in the room, they do not like that

By

The way, I’ve been told.

But there’s a lot of things

That we can just say, well, I can take care

Of it.

But Paul intentionally does not give us that option.

He says that we were dead,

Not partially

Dead or a little bit dead, like fully, fully dead.

And someone who is dead cannot save themselves, and nobody else can save them either.

But God, you see, what

Paul’s trying to get us to understand is that life is messy,

But God,

That’s what Ephesians chapter two,

Verse four says, the first two words are, but God, that he sets it up at the beginning

Of the chapter.

He says, Hey, you’re dead.

Children are the wrath

Of this world. The world is

Broken. There’s nothing we can do to fix

Dead. But God,

Being rich in mercy,

Because of the great love with which he loved us,

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us

Alive together with Christ by grace,

You have been saved and raised us

Up

With him and seeded us with him in the heavenly places in Christ

Jesus. So that

And the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable

Riches of his

Grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace,

You have been saved

Through faith.

And this is not your own doing. It is the gift

Of God,

Not a result

Of works

So that no one may

Boast. Dallas Wood once wrote

That grace is not opposed

To effort. It is opposed

To earning.

The idea

Of grace is that I’m receiving something

That

I have not earned. I’ve done nothing to earn it. That is tion of Christianity. The distinction when you look at the gospel compared to the world around us,

Is

That you can’t earn salvation

With Jesus. That every other

Religion, there’s some amount of good

Works

That are connected to it. And, and even inside

Christianity,

Sometimes you hear

Those whispers, those false teachings that start to prop up, that we

Somehow convinced ourselves, well,

The way you get to have

It is by being a good person. And if I just do enough good things, that’s how I end up earning my way into heaven. And and here’s what Paul is saying. He’s saying, you can’t earn it when you’re dead.

He said, you’re dead. It is only the grace that we receive, the free gift of God that saves us

Not by my own works. I

Don’t get to boast. I don’t get to say, well, hey,

Jesus did most of it. And then of course

It was, there was all the good stuff that I did too.

No, Paul says,

I

Add nothing to my salvation.

It’s only

The redemptive work what Jesus did for me on the cross.

So if we wanna look at what

A saving faith looks

Like,

And I want you to pause for a moment and, and ask yourself,

Do you

Have a saving faith? Have you had a moment where the

Power of the gospel

Transformed your life,

Took you

From death

To life?

And maybe you’re not sure what it means to have one of those moments? Well, fortunately, Bartimaeus shows

Us really clearly

What a moment of salvation looks like. Some very simple steps that that number one, that

He cries out. What does he say? He

Says, have mercy on me. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me in the same way. We’ve gotta reach a point in our life where we recognize and understand I am dead. I can’t do it on my own. My life is messy and broken, and we have to cry out, Jesus have mercy on me. And then the second is that he comes to Jesus.

They say, Hey, Jesus wants to talk to you.

And he runs over

To Jesus.

The the third thing is that he

Calls it out. Jesus

Says, what do you want me to do for you?

He could

Answer with anything. And he asks him, Hey, I want you

To

Help me recover my sight. In doing that, he was willing

To cast off his cloak. He dropped the

Identity that

He was

Stuck in. And now here’s what’s interesting in the first century, is there’s

A lot of bad theology that

Existed in the first century. And one of those that we

See in a different story with the disciples is they see a

Crippled person, and they ask

Jesus, they said, Hey, Jesus,

Whose sin was it this crippled person or this crippled person’s parents?

Because that was the

Idea at the time. The idea was if something bad in your life happens, or if you have an ailment, it’s because of sin in

Either

Your sin or your parents’ sin, or maybe even generational sin. And Jesus

Corrects that

Teaching. He says, no. I said, that’s not true at

All. The, the reality is that

Things like

Diseases

And sickness exist

Because we live

In a broken and fallen world.

But Jesus

Then says this.

He says, this is for the glory of God. That the

Glory of God might be revealed in this person. Meaning that, that when we have brokenness in our life, that’s

A result

Of the sin that exists in the world, not necessarily because of my sin,

But

Even in that brokenness. God wants to redeem it for

His glory.

But in order to

Do that, we

Gotta be willing to throw off the mat. So often our identity gets wrapped up into, oh, well, what is everyone gonna think? And what are they gonna say? And, and people are gonna look up at me, and that’s gonna be embarrassing.

But

Bartimaeus didn’t care.

Why? Because

Bartimaeus wanted

Jesus.

And he wanted Jesus more than he cared about

What the

Opinions of other people

Were.

And then he commits to it. He doesn’t just

Receive

Healing. He doesn’t just save Soso made whole and then goes about his merry way. No,

It

Says that. Then he turns and he follows

After Jesus.

And here’s what I wanna start with when it comes to invitation. We’re gonna, we’re gonna do a couple invitations, but here’s what I wanna start with.

Are you in the room

And you’ve never had a moment where you responded to the gospel? Maybe you’re showing up for the very first time today, and this is all brand new to you. Or maybe you’ve been showing up for months and months and months, or maybe

You grew up in the church

And you’ve been here your whole

Life, but

You’ve never had a moment where you responded

To the gospel. The

Gospel is not just good

Advice.

It’s not just, Hey,

If you

Do these things and these things will happen, no.

The gospel is the power of God to save, to take what was dead

And make it

Alive again.

And so if you’re in this room and you’re not a Christian, I wanna give you an opportunity to become one right now

That

We’re gonna, we’re gonna pray

A prayer of

Salvation. So, so to make it really crystal clear, I’m gonna put the prayer up on the screen. I’m gonna show you the

Prayer.

And here’s what the prayer

Would be. It would be, Lord Jesus,

Have mercy on me. That’s exactly what we saw Bartimaeus say, I confess that I’m a sinner and cannot save myself.

I believe that you

Died for my sins and rose again, make me alive

By your grace. Pour your

Love into my heart by your

Spirit, I

Receive, not earn your salvation. I choose

To follow you

In name. Amen. That’s, that’s the prayer. And so here’s what I

I’d like you to do.

If you’re in the room and you are not a Christian, and you say, but man, I’m ready and I’m ready to respond, I’m gonna ask everybody to bow your head and close your eyes. And I just want you to, to

Quietly to yourself, pray that prayer

You can repeat after me.

If you

Right now, if the words

Of that prayer would be

Real in your heart and your mind and your soul, you’re just gonna repeat it after me. Say, Lord

Jesus,

Have mercy on me. I confess I’m a sinner and cannot save myself.

I believe you died

For my sins. And rose again, make me alive

By your grace. Pour

Your love into my heart

By your spirit. I

Receive not earn your

Salvation. I choose to follow you.

In Jesus name, amen.