When You Can't See What's Ahead

Well, good morning and welcome. My name is Mark, one of the TLC pastors, and so glad that you're joining us right now, whether it's here in the Santa Cruz area. I'm told we even have someone watching from the parking lot, or perhaps from someplace around the globe, wherever you are, welcome.

Some of our older folks in the church may remember all the way back to August of 1959 when New York City went through a literal meltdown, record high temperatures for 12 straight days. So you got people, millions of them, sweating it out in high-rise apartments and office complexes. You've got every single AC unit just cranked to the max. The electrical meters are just spinning like fans until on one particular day, just after sunset, the electrical grid just couldn't take it anymore. And right in the heart of Manhattan, 500 city blocks are plunged into darkness.

Now, today, New Yorkers would look back at the heat wave of '59 like it was a minor inconvenience. I mean, it's really nothing compared to today's pandemic. But even so, there are some similarities. For instance, back then, the power outage created a run on batteries and candles. People were hoarding them, and they flew off the shelves much like toilet paper does now. Also, in countless markets and homes, without power, there's no refrigeration, no AC, and so food is beginning to quickly spoil. People are worried about how they will be able to restock their refrigerators.

Some of the stores were able to stay open while others were not. And just like today, people felt disoriented and anxious. The question on everyone's mind was, of course, how long will this last? Now, at the time, there were close to 8 million people living in the city, and imagine being in one of those high-rises in the sweltering heat, trying to find your way down and through the exits, and it's really a scene that's playing out in building after building after building, except for one.

Because in that particular building, there was no panic. There was no problem finding the exits. Because in that building, the main tenant was the Jewish Guild for the Blind, and so they just waltzed out like they did every other day. In fact, they picked up a bunch of stragglers on the way, sighted people who also shared that building. They're like, "Come on, we got this. Just follow us." And they led them through a maze of hallways and stairs all the way down to the relative cool of the city sidewalks.

Well, today's scripture has something very similar. We're going to meet a blind man who's able to see what pretty much every single person around him cannot. And just like he did back in the time of Jesus, he's going to serve as a guide for us today. He's going to point the way because, listen to me, there is hope even when you can't see what's ahead. And we all need this so desperately right now because, let's face it, we're in the dark when it comes to questions like, "When will this pandemic end? When will a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19, when will it become available?" And at the moment, it's really anybody's guess.

So if your hope hinges on answers to those questions, then right now your hope is going to be in short supply. But it doesn't have to be that way. After all, scripture says, "We live by faith, not by sight." And it's always been this way for God's people. But, you know, we don't like this. We want to eliminate all uncertainty. But if you think about it, even after this pandemic ends, there will still be uncertainty about all sorts of things, so there has got to be a better way. And we're going to see that way today.

If you have your Bible or a Bible app on your computer at home or phone, open it up to Mark chapter 10. Our story today is going to be in verse 46 through 52. Now, earlier in this chapter, Jesus does something remarkable. He basically tells his disciples what's about to happen next in vivid detail. He says, "Guys, we're going to Jerusalem. And when we get there, the religious rulers, they will condemn me. They will hand me over to the Romans, and the Romans are going to mock me, torture, and kill me. And then three days later, I will rise."

And in response to this revelation, the disciples are like, "No, Lord, please say it isn't true. There has to be some other way." No, actually, they didn't say anything remotely like that. They actually argued among themselves as to who was the greatest among them. And it's not a real shining moment for them. But it just goes to show that God can tell you exactly what's about to happen, spell it out like Jesus does to the disciples, and it still doesn't register.

I mean, human beings, it's just something about us. We're not always real quick when it comes to seeing even the most obvious things, like, for example, was this sign ever really necessary? I mean, what--I don't even want to think about how they decided they had to bolt that thing up there, but just because something is clear doesn't mean that people will get it. And we're going to see that today again in Mark 10. They're on their way to Jerusalem when it says this, "Then they reached Jericho, and as Jesus and his disciples left town, a large crowd followed him. A blind beggar named Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, was sitting beside the road."

Now, at the time of Jesus, Jericho was known as an oasis city. Even Herod the Great built his winter palace nearby because of the warm climate and the abundance of freshwater springs. So the city catered to rich and powerful people, which also made it attractive to someone like Bartimaeus, whose only real option in life is to beg for help from others. And you notice that when Jesus passes through town, just by doing that, this large crowd forms, and it starts kind of a parade as they follow him through the town and out to the other side.

And because it's only 15 miles from Jericho to Jerusalem, it's very likely that many of these folks are gonna follow him to Jerusalem. Passover is coming up very soon, and so may as well go with Jesus right now. That means that some of these very same people are gonna be in the crowd at Jerusalem when Jesus rides in on a donkey, and they will be cheering, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" And they'll be waving their palm prawns. And then just days later, some of the very same people will be yelling out, "Crucify him!" But of course, they're oblivious to all this back in Jericho.

Now, there's one guy who has no plans of following Jesus to Jerusalem, and that's Bartimaeus. Not quite sure why Mark makes a point of telling us that his name means "son of Timaeus," because the prefix "bar" in Aramaic means "son of Timaeus," and you have to think that his audience would know this. Some scholars think that Mark does this because he's kind of giving a shout-out to Bartimaeus because he was a known figure in the early church. He's saying, "Hey, you can check out this story from the guy himself. It's legit," and that's certainly plausible.

Another thing that I discovered in my study is that Timaeus is related to the Hebrew word "tame," which means "unclean," "defiled," "impure," which is exactly what everyone would think about Bartimaeus and his parents because of him being born blind. I mean, to their way of thinking, to be born with any kind of congenital disorder was proof that God was cursing you for sin. This is why when the disciples encounter another blind man in John's gospel, they ask Jesus this. They say, "Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind?" So again, that was a cultural assumption, and this may be just another reason why Mark points this out as if to say, you know, even his name sets him up for ridicule and scorn.

Whatever the answer is, it says that when Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." And this is amazing because "Son of David" is a title for the Messiah. And prior to this, Peter is the only person who has ever directly said to Jesus, "You are the Messiah." And yet now here's Bartimaeus. He recognizes that Jesus is the Messiah. He's never even met him. He's never even seen them. All he can do is hear that Jesus is passing by. It's an incredible insight into who Jesus is.

And what are the people following Jesus do when he says this? Verse 48, "Be quiet." Many of the people yelled at him. And you gotta love the compassion, right? They're like, "Jesus, yay, we love you. We wanna follow you wherever you go. Hey, be quiet, miserable beggar. I mean, you're interrupting our worship." Now, can people who follow Jesus, who crowd around Jesus, you might call them the Jesus crowd, can they sometimes get in the way of those who are trying to reach Jesus? Yeah, sadly it happens.

It kinda reminds me, one of my all-time favorite church signs simply says, "We love hurting people." We really do. It really kinda comes down to wherever you put the emphasis, right? But it's not funny when it happens, and maybe it's happened to you where the church discouraged you or disappointed you in some way, and not to minimize or excuse that, but there is a reason for that. And the reason is this, the church is filled with people, 100% imperfect people, including me and including you. But let me just ask you politely, please don't confuse Jesus with the crowd. There's a massive difference.

And watch how Bartimaeus reacts to all of this blowback. It says, "But he only shouted louder, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.'" And I have to think that for some of you, you have negative voices in your head that you heard from maybe people at church or people who call themselves Christians or whatever, and they were essentially saying to you the same thing. You know, be quiet. Jesus doesn't have time for you. You're just a nuisance. Now, that couldn't be more false.

And maybe for others, you know, your source of disappointment, despair, discouragement, whatever it might be, it's from a completely different source. We all have those. There's no doubt that all of us share in common this accumulated stress that's been brought about because of this pandemic. Speaking personally, I mean, we're healthy, we're grateful for that. We're grateful for that, personally as well, but one of the effects I felt, it comes in the form of the daily barrage of emails and texts and phone calls and Zoom meetings, and they're all good and necessary, but they don't all necessarily bring me closer to Jesus.

It feels more like just this cacophony of just too many voices that I can respond to in any one moment. In fact, there's a brand new article that came out in "J geographic" just this week where they described this as Zoom brain, you know, with the Zoom conferencing program, where it's--they're learning that talking to people through a virtual experience on screen actually taxes your brain more than when you're talking to someone in real life face to face.

So whether it's because, you know, you just feel bombarded with information, you're too busy, or you're in distress because you're not busy enough, maybe you're full of fear, anxiety, fatigue, maybe you're feeling grief because you know someone who has suffered perhaps has been lost because of the pandemic or some other cause, whatever it is, I wanna share with you three prayers this morning that I pray. I pray this when I can't focus. I pray these prayers when I don't even know what to pray for. In fact, I pray this even when I don't even feel like praying, and yes, this happens to pastors too.

But these prayers are so short, so simple, they're just three words each, that I can pray them even when I am mentally, emotionally, spiritually just tapped out. And every time I do, I can honestly tell you I'm reminded of where my hope is. And so I wanna share these prayers with you. So they all come right out of the story, and the first prayer is this, "Lord, have mercy." Have mercy for those suffering, those grieving. Have mercy on me as the stress exposes my weakness or I find myself temperamental or angry or whatever it may be. Lord, have mercy.

You know, if you feel beaten down by, you know, coronavirus this and COVID that, there's no better time to just ask God for his mercy on yourself and those around you. And look what happens when these words reach the ears of Jesus. I love this next line. It says, "When Jesus heard him, he stopped and said," well, before we go any further, notice, what did he do when he heard him? He stopped. He stopped because there's something about the cry of faith that gets to Jesus.

And it says that when he heard him and he stopped, he said, "Tell him to come here." So they called the blind man. And I want you to see how the crowd changes its tune here. They say, "Cheer up. Come on. He's calling you like, 'Hey, buddy, you know, don't be so sad. Come join us. We're pals, right? Hey, high five. Jesus loves you, so do we.'" Little bunch of jerks, right? So it says, "Bartimaeus," in response, "threw aside his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus." And don't miss this because his coat had to have been his most valuable possession in life, and yet he just tosses it aside.

In order to get to Jesus, and you know what? You and I will face the same choice from time to time. There will be times in our lives when we will have to leave something behind in order to get closer to Jesus, and that's something you may be more aware of that right now than you've been in a very long time because of the stress of this particular time of life that we're in. And I don't know what it is for you, but I'm certainly well aware of the things that God has been showing me, and make no mistake, Jesus loves us just the way we are, but he also loves us too much to leave us that way.

And so as we face tough times and we are stretched, there's always the opportunity to grow at the same time to let go of the things that are holding us back and leaving all else behind, Bartimaeus finally comes face to face with Jesus, who says, "What do you want me to do for you?" Imagine that. The Son of God, the King of all the universe turns to this nobody, this person that, you know, everyone else in society, he's less than a nobody, you know, he's an outcast, he's cursed, and yet God in the flesh turns to him and sees him very differently, and he loves him, and he says, "What do you want me to do for you?"

And, you know, if you believe in a small, limited Jesus, then you're going to pray small and limited prayers, but not Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus swings for the fences, and he says, "My rabbi, I want to see. I want to see." And again, if you struggle with knowing how to pray, Bartimaeus shows us right here, and it doesn't mean that Jesus will always heal us of everything that we ask for, that whatever ails us, you know better than that. In fact, he may not heal us of those things many of the times or most of the time, but he will always say yes when we pray this second prayer, which is, "Open my eyes. I want to see."

You know, some of you have heard me share a story about when several years ago, I was building a fence, and a lot of fence to build, and at the time, my son Jack was just three years old, and he very much wanted to be daddy's little helper, so much so that Laura, my wife, built him his own little tool belt here, I think that's about a 10-inch waist on there, and he had his own little tools, and he was all ready to go, but to be honest, he really wasn't a whole lot of help.

If he wasn't sticking nails all over the place, he was trying to get to my skill saw, and so I'm constantly being interrupted in little fits and starts, couldn't get any momentum established, and I'm feeling frustrated about this, like I'm never going to finish this fence, and I don't know if I even asked God for help, but it came in the way of a very clear thought that just dropped into my mind, and it went like this, "Mark, you're not building a stupid fence, you're building a boy." You're building a boy, and that realization, it just became my mantra, so when Jack puts, you know, the 10th nail in the wrong place, I just, "I'm building the boy, I'm building the boy," or when I'm like, "No, Jackie, let Daddy cut the wood, I'm building the boy, I'm building the boy."

Well then I blinked, and 17 years have passed since he was that little three-year-old boy. The fence is done, the building the boy project, it's pretty well done too, now he's a man. I can never go back to that time. Listen, we're in a very peculiar time, and it will pass, but what might God want you to see right now? Would you be bold enough to ask Him to open your eyes to opportunities that exist now, opportunities to see your spouse and your family with different eyes or a neighbor, to see needs in your community that God has empowered you to meet?

For example, just about a week ago, a couple in our school, Twin Lakes Christian School, both of them were laid off within days of each other, and so they contact the principal of our school saying, "Hey, we wanna finish the year, we are committed to paying the tuition, but can we spread it out over the course of the summer?" Just very, very sweet couple. What they did not know was just days ahead of that, another couple, very grateful to still be in their jobs, they contacted our principal and said, "We'd like to give a gift and ask you to use it on behalf of another family who will very likely need help with their tuition."

And so it was with great joy that our principal was able to tell the first couple, the ones that were laid off, "You don't have to worry about your tuition, not this month, not for the rest of the school year, because someone who had a concern for you has paid it in full." Wow. How might God use you? How might God even provide for you? Ask him. Pray, "Open my eyes."

Because look, with Bartimaeus, the first miracle isn't physical. We're gonna get to that. The miracle is that he has this incredible insight into the person of Jesus. How did that arrive? How did he have that? Well, it's the same way that any of us come to realize who Jesus is. It is through the gift of God's grace, and it is the same grace that propels Bartimaeus. He's so determined to reach Jesus no matter what. And when he does, Jesus said to him, "Go, for your faith has healed you." And instantly, the man could see, and he followed Jesus down the road.

I love that last line, because the last thing we're ever told about Bartimaeus is that he followed Jesus down the road. What a great epitaph. Wouldn't you love to have that set of view? I mean, I would take that any day, you know? Jesus opened Mark's eyes, and he followed him down the road. End of story. Now, there were good times on that road, and there were tough times, but through it all, he followed Jesus, which brings us to this third and final prayer, "Help me follow." Help me follow no matter what, Lord, and we need to be clear here, because the moral of this story is not, you know, Bartimaeus was smarter than everyone else.

Bartimaeus tried harder. He was more determined, and so be like Bartimaeus. Now, of course, his life is instructive, but the point of the story is Bartimaeus was helpless. Bartimaeus, the circumstances of his life were absolutely hopeless. He had no power to change that, and yet, by God's grace, Bartimaeus, son of impurity, was able to see Jesus through the eyes of faith and follow him from there on out. Now, yes, he was ultimately given physical sight, but it was through the eyes of faith that he followed Jesus, and do you remember where that road would lead? To Jerusalem, and to the cross, and to the darkest day ever, and yet I have every confidence that Bartimaeus kept following, kept placing his hope in Jesus, and that hope was not disappointed.

Listen, I don't know how you start each of your days. Maybe you make time for prayer. Maybe you don't feel like you have the time, or you don't have the energy. You just don't feel it. You don't even know where to start. I want you to know I get that. This all became very personal to me almost five years ago when my best friend, lifelong best friend, Phil, passed away, and then sometime after that, we lost our dear friend and neighbor, Lisa, and so it was these two griefs that came to us, and whether it's grief or some other type of trial, you find yourself in a valley, a valley where you don't know how deep it is, you don't know how wide it is, you don't know how long you're going to be there.

You don't even, you can't even envision what it looks like to reach the other side. Most days just come down to the slow slog, and some of them can be very dark, and so I can't tell you how many of those days, hundreds of them, where I would start out in the morning, I would do a little exercise and end with some stretching, and my little routine would always end in the very same way, when I'm on the floor, laying on my back, looking up at a skylight in the ceiling above me, and then beyond to the sky, and even further than that, and that's when I pray, "Lord, have mercy. Open my eyes and help me follow, and I'm pretty sure you can manage to do the same."

And along the way, I want you to count on something, and it's this, that while these may be three short prayers, they are in no way three small prayers, and that's because the one who hears them is bigger than anything we're facing right now, bigger than anything that lies ahead, because after all, we don't have to know the future when we know the one and are in the hands of the one who holds our future for us. May you be encouraged by this today, and now let's go to him in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you this morning for your grace, for your mercy, for your love, your provision in our lives, and Lord, I have to think there are many, many folks right now, they're feeling anxiety, they're feeling fatigue as this pandemic goes on, they're feeling loneliness, they may be wondering about how you're gonna provide for rent or groceries as they're laid off. Whatever the case is, wherever we find ourselves today, they may feel, in fact, unworthy, so much so that they're afraid to even ask you of anything, but for all of us right now, if we need a point of clarity, if we need to look to a sign of your love for us, then may we look at the cross today as your ultimate expression of how much you love us, how far your son would come to rescue and redeem us.

And so, Lord, in just a moment, in a few minutes, when we have the opportunity to gather around your table and receive communion together, may it nourish our souls and encourage our hearts, may it strengthen our faith, Lord, and I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.