He Saw More

He Saw More

Prairie Baptist Church – 11/8/09

A.M. Service

Text: Mark 10:46-52

Key verse: Mark 10:52 - Then Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.”

And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the road.

Premise: Jesus saw more than a blind beggar on the roadside. We all have a little Bartimaeus in us that needs the caring eye of Jesus to notice and make it right.

The Introduction

A NEW LIGHT One of the greatest tragedies for people would be to live in darkness when they could live in the light… Rose Crawford had been blind for 50 years. Then she had an operation in an Ontario hospital. She said, “I just can’t believe it,” as the doctor lifted the bandages from her eyes. She wept - when for the 1st time in her life she saw a dazzling and beautiful world of form and color greeted her eyes and she could now see. The amazing thing about her story, however, was that 20 years of her blindness was unnecessary. She didn’t know that surgical techniques had been developed, and that an operation could have restored her vision at the age of 30. The Dr. said, “She just figured there was nothing that could be done for her condition. Much of her life could have been different.”

Imagine that, tomorrow when you wake up, you open up your eyes and see nothing. You are completely blind.

What do you do? What would you think?

What did Jesus see that nobody else saw? We can get a picture of this from His divine mission statement given in Luke 4:18-19.

Luke 4:18-19 - 18“The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”

Body

1. Jesus Saw He Was Spiritually Lost

A. To look into the heart is a talent reserved for God alone

i. Everyone in the crowd was concerned with shutting up the beggar

ii. Jesus could hear his cry through the maddening throng

iii. Yet Jesus saw the heart of Bartimaeus and sensed his need

B. There is a story of a photographer who went to the docks to take a picture of the "The Great Eastern". Its hull was black, having been coated with tar. That same day the man went to his own darkroom to develop the film and print it. As the picture of the ship began to take form, the word "Lewis" appeared on the hull. Immediately the photographer returned to the wharf to see whether that name actually was on the vessel. But it wasn’t visible. Astonished, he contacted the office of the shipping company and inquired about this strange phenomenon. He was told that the word "Lewis" could be found underneath the tar. The camera’s powerful lens and the sensitive film had picked it up. That is how God sees us; not just the surface but inside us as well. He can see the hidden parts.

C. Jesus sees people in need of a Savior (preach the gospel to the poor)

i. The whole world is a guilty, sin-cursed mess

a. All have sinned (Rom. 3:23)

b. No one can even claim any innocence that could make them right with God - Ecclesiastes 7:20 - For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin.

ii. Jesus sees beyond the outer shell to the inner core of each person

a. Jesus sees the heart - 1st Sam. 16:7 – . . . For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

b. Jesus knows the mind - Ps. 139:2 – You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off.

c. We can’t hide a thing from Him - Hebrews 4:13 - And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

2. Jesus Saw He Was Socially Rejected

A. Brokenness has a way of humbling us

i. Bartimaeus was broken through many years of being ostracized

ii. As a social outcast, he felt the sting of rejection and mocking but very little compassion

B. Several years ago the American Heart Association published the results of a remarkable scientific study. In 1998 Dr. Randy Bird did a study of 393 coronary care patients at Duke University Hospital. Dr. Bird is not a Christian and this is not a Christian study. But it asked the question: “Does prayer have any impact on patient’s healing?” Without the patients knowing it, people were asked to pray for only half of the heart patients. The groups were comparable in age & severity of medical conditions. The people praying were given the names of the patients and their diagnosis and were asked to pray everyday for their healing and recovery. Dr. Bird compared the outcome of each group and found those patients who were prayed for did better than those who were not. It was amazing! Everything from recovery rates, hospital stay, length of medication, type of procedure needed, was better for the group that was prayed for. Just to prove this was not a Christian study they observed that distance of those praying for the patients made no difference. Duh! But that’s significant because the people who were being prayed for didn’t know they were being prayed for. So it wasn’t psycho-somatic or a psychological trick. The truth is God cares about your hurts and He still heals! And not just physical hurts.