How To Deepen Your Insight - Mark 10:47-52 Series

Mark 10:46 Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus was leaving the city with his disciples and a large crowd, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" 48 Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" 49 Jesus stopped and said, "Call him." So they called to the blind man, "Take courage! On your feet! He's calling you." 50 Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. 51 "What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked him. The blind man said, "Rabbi, I want to see." 52 "Go," said Jesus, "your faith has healed you." Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

Seek Urgently/Humbly

Last time we learned how absolutely essential and urgent it is that we gain more and more spiritual insight. And I mentioned three principles from the passage on how to do that (Seek it from Scripture, believe what you know, and use the insight you receive to enable you to follow Christ on the road of suffering). Those were minor points, but there’s a fourth principle that stands out in the passage far more than any of those. More than half of the words of this whole story occur between when Bartimaeus asks for mercy and Jesus says, “Your faith has healed you.” And it’s all about Bartimaeus’ persistence and enthusiastic, excited, urgent, undaunted faith even in the face of resistance. That’s the central emphasis of the passage. We see it in his shouting, we see it in his bold request, we see it in his ignoring the rebukes and shouting even louder, and we see it in his response when he throws his cloak aside and jumps to his feet. The Son of Honor will not be denied, and we’ve seen in this gospel that Jesus loves that kind of gutsy faith—people tearing holes in his roof, a woman getting into a battle of the parables to get him to heal her daughter—Jesus responded to people who threw pride and caution to the wind, acted decisively, and seized the one chance they get when Jesus passes by. Jesus doesn’t want a mealy-mouthed, tepid, desireless approach to prayer that says, “Just do whatever your will is God.” He wants someone who will wrestle with God all night in prayer because it shows passion and strong desire. So the principle is simple: if you want insight, seek it desperately.

Proverbs 2:1 My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, 2 turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, 3 and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, 4 and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. 6 For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

Psalm 119:18 Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.

Understand the Desperation of Your Need

Why are we so easily discouraged in our prayer life? The reason we don’t pray more than we do is very simple: lack of urgency. If you get desperate enough, you’ll pray hard. We don’t beseech God for insight because we don’t feel a strong need for it. I think most people think of insight as icing on the cake. It would be great to have some more, but it doesn’t feel like you’re going to be in desperate trouble if you don’t get it. So when we take prayer requests, rarely if ever does anyone say, “You’ve got to pray for me. I need insight! I need deeper understanding into who Christ is!” We don’t feel a desperate need, but what does God’s Word tell us about how important it is?

Philippians 1:9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-- to the glory and praise of God.

Do you want to glorify God? Do you want to be filled with the fruit of righteousness? Do you want to be pure and blameless? That will all happen when your love abounds in knowledge and depth of insight. In Ephesians 3 Paul begged God to give the readers insight into God’s love so they could be filled to the measure of the fullness of God. And that happens only when you have enough insight to grasp and appreciate high and long and wide and deep God’s love is. And it takes tremendous spiritual power to have enough insight to grasp those dimensions of his love, and so Paul prays for that. He prays that because he knows—if you had more insight into the dimensions of God’s love, it would change your life in amazing ways.