If You Can Catch His Presence

Mk 10:46-52 If You Can Catch His Presence

I’m going to start this message by prophesying: I prophesy that tonight somebody is changing positions in life.

I prophesy that somebody is going to receive their sight tonight, and you’re going to see the life that God has ordained for you, and you’re going to see how the devil has been deceiving you.

Somebody is going to get mad at the devil tonight, and you’re going to stand up in your faith and you’re going to go after your inheritance in Christ.

Somebody listening to me (You’ve been a victim of circumstances and you have let your circumstances define you, you have let your circumstances decide and determine what you can have in life and what you can do, and what you can’t do.

You’ve worn those circumstances like a strait jacket, and they’ve held you in bondage and kept you from the unlimited, free, abundant life that Jesus came to give.

But tonight you’re going to pull a Houdini and your coming out of that strait jacket and it’s not going to take a year or a month or 15 days, but in the next 15-20 minutes you’re coming out and you’re never going to wear that jacket again.

Bartimaeus = Foul, unclean, polluted, he was the son of timaeus.

Timaeus = Highly prized.

Bartimaeus represents who we are without Christ. Before we met Jesus we were foul, unclean, polluted by sin, and yet we were so highly prized by God the Father that he sent his only begotten son into this world to die for us. (Jn 3:16)

He sat by the Highway side begging.

You may be a millionaire living in a mansion with servants and maids, you may have multiple bank accounts and your own private jet and ride around in a chauffeured limousine but if you don’t know Jesus You are no different than a skid road bum rejected by society a slave to alcohol and drugs no house no car no servants and not knowing where his next meal is coming from.

Without Jesus you are both in the same condition, You’re blind you’re lost and you’re unclean polluted by sin.

There is only one cure for you (Rich and Poor alike) That is the blood of Jesus.

You were so highly prized by God that he sent his son to die for you and you were so highly prized by Jesus that he willingly shed his blood for you and died in your place.

Millionaire or bum professional or prostitute (It’s the blood of Jesus, if you’ll cry out to him like Blind Bartemaeus did he will come and he will save you he will heal you he will deliver you and he will set you free.

Multitudes today are like blind Bartemaeus, they are sitting by the highway side begging.

They are blind, they are lost in the darkness of sin, they don’t know their worth and their value to God; They are slaves to the devil, being led around with a leash around their necks and they don’t know who they are where they’re going or why they’re here.

But Blind Bartemaeus also represents another group of people that we find not in the world but in the church.

These are the ones who are in the body of Christ who love God, they’re saved, but they are living the limited life, the small beggarly life, they are the ones who live with the mentality that they are not worthy, and that if they could just get the crumbs from the masters table they would be satisfied.

But this is a spiritual blindness: They are blinded to their inheritance in Christ, they have not realized that it has nothing to do with our being worthy it has everything to do with our accepting what Jesus did as being enough. Our righteousness is in him.

And he didn’t come to give us crumbs (He came to give us life and that more abundantly: Jn 10:10)

The church has gone to great lengths to prepare us for eternal life, but to a large extent has failed to show us how to experience the abundant life right here, right now.

The highway represents (the concourse of life) i.e. the place where life is taking place, where the business of life is going on.

On this highway is Jesus (the anointing) peace, joy, abundant life, favor.

Bartimaeus is on the side of the highway and he is begging.

Again Bartimaeus represents many of Gods people who love God and yet they are willing to live a substandard life.

Like Lazarus the beggar who sat at the rich mans gate desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich mans table, like the syrophenician woman who said to Jesus (even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the childrens table.)