Believing Is Seeing

I invite you to turn again with me to Luke 18:31.

Before we look to the Word of the Lord, we turn to the Lord of the Word:

Open our eyes that we may see wonderful things in your Word, O God.[1] For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Jesus is leading the way towards Jerusalem, and he is doing so in a way that makes it absolutely clear that this is a man with a mission; this is someone who has a date with destiny. Despite the way in which some have tried to suggest that Jesus went with a sense of reluctance to the cross, in actual fact, a careful reading of the text of the New Testament makes it clear that there was something about his demeanor as he moved towards Jerusalem—such a striking determination, such a humble dependence upon his Father—that it caused those who were closest to him to marvel at all that was taking place. There was a sense of wonderment that went throughout the disciple band as they were astonished, Mark tells us, at the things that Jesus was saying and the move that he was making to this eventuality. Mark also tells us that the crowd that followed along with the disciple band, they themselves were actually afraid; that there was something about the dynamic that was taking place that created in them a sense of uncertainty and even fearfulness.[2]

And it is as the time draws very close for him to arrive in Jerusalem that Jesus does here, Luke tells us, as he’s done on a number of occasions before: take his disciples, as it were, offline and privately give to them a word of explanation concerning what is going to take place when he goes up to Jerusalem. And that’s why Luke records his words, “We[’re] going up to Jerusalem,” verse 31. Of course, they knew that. They were making their way; the Passover was drawing near; the crowds were beginning to gather. “And [when we go up there],” he said, “everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled.”

“Everything That Is Written”

Now, it’s not my purpose to delay here this morning, but I want to pause purposefully to remind those of you who are wrestling with a question about the Bible—“How does the Bible fit together?” and so on—that the Old and the New Testaments that we have fit together in a perfect harmony. And Jesus is here saying to his followers, “If you will pay attention to the words that the prophets have spoken and written, then you will find in those words the prediction of that which is about to unfold when we finally reach this climactic moment there on that hill outside the city wall in Jerusalem.”

Now, of course, this covers a great body of Old Testament material. For some of you, the notion “[all that was] written by the prophets about the Son of Man” means virtually nothing at all. If one of your friends said to you, “What does that mean? Give me an illustration of that,” you wouldn’t know where to go or what to do. So let me give you just two Old Testament references that will get you started and will then repay your further study. The good teacher doesn’t give the answers to all the questions but creates within his pupils the expectation for the subject and a desire to know more themselves.

The Old and the New Testaments fit together in a perfect harmony.

So, Psalm 22 I turn you to. That is “Som” for you, but that’s all right. “Som” 22. Psalm 22. And here in this psalm of David, when you read it, as you read it, given that we now live on this side of the Old Testament divide, you will find that as you read this that it has a striking foreshadowing of all that was to take place on the cross. We could turn to a number of places, but let’s just go to the fourteenth verse. The psalmist says,

I am poured out like water,
 and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
 it has melted away within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd.

You remember that Christ, as they give him the crossbeam to move towards Golgotha, bows down under the weight of it. And as a result of the beating that he has undergone and the brutality of what has taken place, it is to [Simon of Cyrene] that is given the responsibility of helping him out. “My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.”[3] And someone in the crowd said, “He is thirsty,” and they gave him a sponge of wine mingled with gall.[4]

 You lay me in the dust of death.
Dogs have surrounded me;
 a band of evil men has encircled me,
 they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones;
 people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my garments among them
 and [they] casts lots for my clothing.[5]

“You see, all that is written here will be fulfilled,” says Jesus.

Now to Isaiah 53. I need hardly turn to it for many of you, but simply for those for whom this is new material, to give a start here in understanding what Luke is making reference to. “He was despised,” verse 3,

         and rejected by men,
 a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
 he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Verse 5: “He was pierced for our transgressions.” You remember they came and they broke the legs of the thief on either side of Christ, but when they came to Christ, they merely pierced his side with a spear.[6]

 He was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
 and by his wounds we are healed.

So Jesus, speaking to these men whom he loves and with whom he is spending all of this time, says, “I want you to understand that the cruel scenes that we’re about to undergo—when I am mocked and when I’m insulted, when the people spit on me, when I am flogged, and when I am finally killed, know this: that this will be in fulfillment of all that the prophets have written concerning me. And remember, this will not be the end of the story, because on the third day, I will rise again. The Son of Man will rise again.”

But Luke is honest enough to let us know that the disciples didn’t get it. They just did not understand it. This, of course, is true to what we’ve seen back in 9:45: when he had given them another indication of what was going to take place, Luke has to tell us again that they were afraid even then to ask him about what was going on. The reason was that when they thought about the Redeemer of Israel, they thought of him in triumphant terms, and they couldn’t somehow or another get to grips with the way this Messianic King and this story of the Suffering Servant was going to coalesce, was going to come together in the experience of Christ. And so, as they listened to him talk in these terms, they looked at one another, and they said, “How can it possibly be that the Redeemer of Israel could ever be on the receiving end of this kind of treatment?” And they were unable to grasp his meaning. “They did not know what he was talking about.”

Now, the very fact that they had such a difficult time grasping what he was saying actually came to work out for their good. Because we know, don’t we, that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him”?[7]—that their very misunderstanding and difficulty at this point would serve to anchor these notions in their minds, in the same way that things that we may have difficulty grappling with, the very fact that we have difficulty with them mean that they’re registered in a file somewhere, a kind of “We must come back to that” file; “I need to figure that out somehow or another. I’m not sure how this and this and this and this fits.” Well, that’s how they were, so that finally, when the penny dropped—finally, when the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place—then they would be able, on that occasion, to recognize that when Jesus died, he did not die as a result of unavoidable and unfortunate circumstances that just swept him and overwhelmed him, but rather, then they would realize that he had not been overwhelmed by suffering and death; he had gone resolutely to the cross, and all that had taken place had taken place in fulfillment of what the prophets had written.

Now, you see… And since it’ll be a long time till we get to Luke 24, we should just turn there. I’ll turn you to two more passages. But Luke 24: even after the events of Calvary, these gentlemen and the surrounding company, they do not grab it. You go to Luke chapter 24. It’s now the third day. It’s the day of resurrection. Two individuals are “going to a village called Emmaus,” verse 13. It’s “about seven miles from Jerusalem.” They’re walking and “talking with each other about everything that had happened.” What had happened? Jesus had been handed over by the chief priests to the gentiles. He’d been handed back and bounced around all over the place. He’d undergone a mockery of a trial. They had driven a crown of thorns into his head. They had nailed him to a cross. They had cast lots for his garments. And the disciples had made a run for it into hiding and closed the doors in case the same thing might happen to them. And they’re walking along the road, and as they walk along the road, who comes up beside them but Jesus?—verse 15. And he walks along with them, and they are “kept from recognizing him.”[8] They don’t realize it’s Jesus.

And so he said to them, “What are you discussing as you walk along the road? What’s the news?” you know. It’s kind of like, “What’s up!” you know. That’s what he’s saying. “What’s happening? What are you talking about?”

And they said, “What are we talking about? Are you the only person in Jerusalem doesn’t know what everybody’s talking about?” What an amazing irony, isn’t it? I love that. The two guys, they don’t know it’s Jesus, and they said, “We’re talking about Jesus. Don’t you know about Jesus?”

“Well, what things?” he asks, milking the situation. “Are you the only one that doesn’t know about what happened here in the last days?” He says, “What things?”

“Well,” they say, “this Jesus of Nazareth. He was a prophet. He was powerful. All the people knew it. The chief priests hung him up. They handed him over. They crucified him. We actually hoped that he was going to be the one to redeem Israel. And here we are, and it’s the third day since all this took place. Apparently, some of the women have come out of the Golgotha area and the place where he was buried with some old wives’ tale about visions of angels and so on and so forth, but we sent some of our companions—some of the men went down—and it’s apparently old wives’ tales. The women have—they let their hearts rule their heads! You know how it is.”

And Jesus says to them, “You two are really dumb, aren’t you?”[9]

Well, you say, “Well, that’s not very nice, is it?” Well, yeah, but he arrested them. He said, “How foolish you are.” (“You’re a couple of dimwits.”) “How slow of heart to believe”—what? Notice: “all that the prophets have spoken!” (“I told you guys this!) “‘Did[n’t] the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all [of] the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”[10]

Now go forward to Acts chapter 2. It’s only when their eyes were opened that they recognized him.[11] And when their eyes were opened and they recognized him, then, suddenly, they began to put it together. Luke 18, they’re unable to get it; Luke 24, when their eyes are opened, they get it; and now on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, Peter gets up to preach; and by now, he’s got it all systematically put together. Acts 2:22: “Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.” He says, “I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Jesus of Nazareth did amazing things. Now,” he said, “let me explain”: “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to [a] cross.”

Now, the reason I delay on this is because this is of phenomenal importance. And some of you don’t understand, like the disciples in Luke 18. You say, “It doesn’t seem that important to me.” Well, may God open your eyes so you understand just how important it is! Listen: the suffering and death of Jesus for our sins was not something that was contrived in time—as it were, to correct a defect in the system; that somehow or another, God had made the world, and that it took him by surprise that man turned his back on him and went his own way, and then, in response to this surprising incident, God, if you like, had somehow or another to conceive of a plan within the framework of time to rectify the predicament that was now before men and women. No! Absolutely not! What we discover is that from eternity, the plan of redemption—the covenant of redemption, if you like, between the Father and the Son—established the fact that the Father would give his Son as the outcome of his everlasting love and that the Son, in obedience to the Father, would voluntarily give himself as the propitiation for our sins.

So when you ask the question, “Why was Christ in the world?” the answer is far more than “He was there to be a great teacher” or “He was there to manifest love” or “He was there to be a guide and an example through life.” All of these kind of easily absorbable notions in a pluralistic environment do not even come close to answering the question. Why was Christ in the world? He was in the world to be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of men and women—that Christ, if you like, and the Father entered into a preincarnate agreement with one another, whereby Christ the Son agrees to fulfill a specific task given him by the Father.

So that is why his language fits so perfectly: “Father,” in John 17, “I have finished the work that you gave me to do.”[12] That is why one of his cries from the cross in one Greek word, tetelestai, is so dynamic. He is crying out, “It is finished.”[13] What is finished? The work of redemption. And when this grips the soul of a man or a woman, then they will not be scurrying off to some other sacrifice for sins, be it in a Mass or any other place, for they will be saying to themselves,

I need no other [sacrifice],
I need no other plea,
[Because] it is enough that Jesus died,
And that he died for me.[14]

And he died once and for all as an atoning sacrifice for sins. Nothing that may be added to it! Nothing that could be subtracted from it! A full and a final atonement. And it is this which Luke is recording and pointing forward to as these disciples wrestle with it.

So here, if you are a believer this morning, understand this—and this is not something that ought to make you feel good about yourself, but this is something that ought to make you marvel at the grace of God: that in eternity, the Father planned that you would be his child; that in time, Christ the Son died to procure the salvation that the Father planned; and today, the Holy Spirit applies that truth by giving himself as the very deposit, as a guarantee, of what is to come.

I stand amazed in the presence
Of Jesus the Nazarene
And wonder how he could love me,
A sinner, condemned, unclean.[15]

So any notion that appeals to our ego to make us feel good about ourselves as we look upon the cross, and then we can feel good about ourselves that he realized how wonderful we were that he would go to that extent for us—it is the absolute antithesis of that, my dear friends. And it is that our condition was so ugly, so messed up, so vile that only in the exercise of this covenant of redemption in the expression of the covenant of grace could we enter into its benefits.

Now, there is that little paragraph, and we must go on.

“Lord, I Want to See”

So, with his disciples, aware of the dimness of their sight—they bump into a man who’s completely blind. They just couldn’t see it, and Luke says, “Let me introduce you to somebody else who just couldn’t see it.” And here in this little incident we see again what we’ve noted before: that Jesus calls those who are least and who are last and who are left out. And I love this, and you should too. And that’s why some of us have never heard the call of Christ: because we believe ourselves to be the most, to be the first, and to be on the inside track. After all, we’re religious. After all, we attend. After all, we do our best. After all, he knows. That’s why the work of the Word of God is to bring the law of God before us to show us we’re totally out up the creek. And then, when we are gripped by the fact that “I am actually the least likely person that God would ever save, ’cause I am so proud, so self-assured,” that “I am actually last on the list,” that “I’m actually on the outside looking in”—when we come to that amazing awareness, then the good news of the gospel, you see, comes along to the least and the last and the left out and says, “Come here!”

So, the pilgrims are going up. The Passover is looming. There’s all kind of expectation in the air. There’s all kind of animated conversation filling the environs of this blind man at the entry to Jericho. His condition is clear: he’s blind and he’s a beggar. He sits alone. He is essentially an unproductive member of society. He is forced to rely on the generosity of others. He may actually be placed there by his family members, who see him as some kind of sordid mechanism for supplementing their own earthly income. Were it not for the place given to alms-giving in the Jewish mindset, this marginalized life would have been short-lived. But as a result of the Jews’ commitment to give to the poor, he was able to sustain at least this sorry existence. He’s aware that there’s a buzz. He asks the crowd, “What’s the buzz? What’s happening?” He doesn’t know what’s causing it, and so, when he discovers that Jesus is passing by, he calls out.

Oh, yes, he calls out, verse 38, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” Now, by his use of this terminology, it’s clear that he possesses an insight that others may never have expected. Because what he’s doing is he’s calling out to the Savior. He’s calling out to the Messiah. “Son of David” is a messianic title. Somewhere along the line, this chap had put two and two together, and he had managed to come up with the right answer. It’s a fact of life, so they say, that people who have an impairment in one of their senses (in this case, the man’s eyesight) often have a heightened ability in at least one of their other senses (in this case, his hearing). Whether that is given or whether it is developed or whether it’s a bit of both I don’t know, but what he was unable to see he was making up for by listening. And sometimes it’s our seeing that prevents us from listening. That’s why sometimes, as an exercise, someone will say, “Now, I want you to close your eyes, and I want you just to listen to what’s going on here.” And as a result of listening without seeing, then we will actually see things that we missed when our eyes were open.

So this man is listening. And presumably he listens as people have conversations. It is at least possible—this is conjecture—that he would be made keenly aware of who Jesus was as a result of the conversations that he had heard people having.

Perhaps he had listened as some had said, “You know, we were in the region the other day, and we heard that John the Baptist has taken cold feet.”

And someone said, “Well, what do you mean?”

He said, “Well, apparently, he had messengers go to Jesus, and when the messengers went to Jesus, they were to say to Jesus, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for someone else?’”[16]

And the person says, “Well, what did Jesus say to the messengers?”

Well, here’s the blind man. He can’t see anything, but he’s all ears. He wants to know, “What did Jesus say to the messengers?” And when he hears what Jesus said to the messengers—man, he’s charged! Because Jesus says, “Go back and [tell] John …: The blind receive [their] sight, the lame walk, [and] those who have leprosy are cured.”[17] The blind receive their sight! It must have just reverberated through him, echoed in his head. When he laid down on the pavement, he would just say, “The blind receive their sight! The blind receive their sight!”

Or perhaps he had listened in on a conversation as a result of some who’d been present in the synagogue in Nazareth when Jesus had read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And he’d listened as people said, “You know, the amazing thing was not so much the passage from which he read, but the amazing thing was that after he read the passage, he sat down—and listen to what he said!” And of course, he’s listening. “He said, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’”[18] What scripture? “He … sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind.”[19]

Now, who like a blind man is going to jump on this? Here he sits, a picture of marginalized helplessness. Every day, it’s always the same. There he sits: the same spot, with the same lousy bowl, dealing with the same dreadful circumstances. And the conversation and the chatter as the pilgrims head towards the Passover is such that he has said to himself, “I’m telling myself something.” He’s talking to himself. I can see him now. And he said, “If this Jesus of Nazareth ever comes within spitting distance of me, I’m just going to shout out!” And what did he shout out? “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

And how did the crowd respond? Well, they rebuked him! They said, “Hold your tongue!” They turned around and said, “This is no time for a confrontation—especially with you. We don’t need to get Jesus tied up here at the moment. What can you contribute to what Jesus is doing? You contribute nothing!” Exactly! Don’t miss that. See, haven’t we been discovering as we’ve gone along that it’s the people who believe they’ve contributing a great deal that Jesus has no time for, but the people who say, “I got nothing to contribute,” Jesus says, “Come here. I want to talk to you.”

“Get out of here,” they say. They rebuke him. They order him to be quiet. But instead of withering away, instead of retreating to his bowl, instead of grabbing his blankets or his cloak around him and withdrawing into himself, their attempts at intimidation just serve to draw it out of him all the more. You can imagine him saying, you know, “Second verse, the same as the first: a little bit louder and a little bit worse. Son of David, have mercy on me!” And he cried out “all the more.” They must have looked at one another and said, “Listen, this is a fiasco. I mean, look at this.”

And then how embarrassed when Jesus says to them, “Call him. I want to talk to him.”[20]

“Oh, no. No! We just told him, ‘Shut up.’ We told him, ‘You’re out of it.’ We told him, ‘You’re not in the thing here. This isn’t for people like you! This is for the in crowd, the Jerusalem gang. We’re on our way. We can’t be stopping every time some blind beggar shouts out!’”

Jesus said, “Go and call him.”

And so they turn and they say, “Jesus says cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you!”[21]

And Jesus said, “Say it again, and say it with a smile this time, okay?” He didn’t say that; I made that up. But the fact of the matter is, this is a dramatic turnaround: from “Hold your tongue” to “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you!”

What a rebuke it is, my dear Christian friends, when in our self-centered preoccupation with our religious exercises, we find that we are saying the same thing to the marginalized, and Christ comes to us and raps us on the back of the head and says, “Listen, I’ve had enough of your nonsense. I came for the likes of those. You go to them and tell them, ‘Cheer up! On your feet!’ I want to talk to them.” Jesus wants to talk to people that we ourselves are happy to pass in the street. Jesus came for the least and for the last and for the left-outs.

He didn’t come for the high school quarterback. He didn’t come for Miss America. He didn’t come for the intelligentsia. Not that they cannot come, but the only way they can come is not on the basis of the fact that they are “Hey, I’m sure you’d like to meet me, Jesus. I’m well respected in the high school.”

“No, I couldn’t care less. But when you know that you’re the least, the last, and the left out, I’ll have a conversation with you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m certainly not that.”

“Okay, well I’ll talk with you later. Now, let’s go over here to these kids that are hanging around by the lockers, that look like death warmed up. They’ve apparently marginalized themselves, and they like this, and they feel somehow or another that organized religion is a sham and a mockery and a bunch of junk, and with justifiable reason in many cases.” Jesus says, “Now, I would like you to get down in the lockers there, and I want you to talk to these guys.”

“Cheer up! On your feet!” Oh, how ridiculous they must have felt. But how quick was his reply.

They brought him to him, and “when he came near, Jesus asked him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’” Look at his reply. It’s five words in English. Punchy, isn’t it? “Lord, I want to see.” The very brevity of it suggests his preparedness, doesn’t it? There’s no sense in which he said, “Well! Mm. Now, I’m glad that you asked. Perhaps we could sit down together. I have a number of…” No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. He knew exactly what he needed. Do you?

You see, when you come to Christ, you don’t need to come to him with a big, long speech. See, when the Bible shows you that you are spiritually blind, what do you need? You need to see! What else is there to say? When the Bible shows you that you’re spiritually trapped, what do you need? Freedom! What do you need to say? “Lord, set me free!” When the Bible tells you that you’re overwhelmed by burdens, by doubt, and by discouragement, by grief, and by sin, what do you need? You need Christ to come and bear that! So, what do you say? “Lord, take it!” Have you ever done that?

Oh, I love the response of this guy. “Lord, I want to see.” You see, his request was the evidence that he believed that Jesus could do what he asked. And so he’s cured! Verse 42: “Jesus said …, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.’” And “immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God,” and “when all the people saw it, they also praised God.” Well, I’m glad to hear that, because some of them must have been mighty embarrassed—especially those at the front. For the guy that they just told “Sit down and be quiet!” is all of a sudden—he’s up leading the charge, you know. He’s in amongst the same group!

I’ve seen that in churches: “Oh, goodness, gracious! Look at this guy! Now he became a Christian. Oh crumbs! We can’t have him as a Christian, Lord! No, he… We were using him as an example! Now you saved him! Now we got him in the Bible study! What’s going on? Let’s keep the lines clear here, Jesus!”

Now, the reply of Jesus is not that the man’s faith created the cure but rather that his faith was the means by which he received the cure.

Now, let me draw this to a close. This man brought nothing to Christ except his need. He brought nothing to Christ except his need. You see, that’s the reason the crowd said to him, “Listen, why don’t you just go and sit down and be quiet? You’ve got nothing to contribute here.” And he said, “Exactly! I’ve nothing to contribute. Let me tell you what I have: I have need. I’m blind, and I need to see.” There is no other way, my friends, to come to Jesus but on the basis of your need and on your awareness of the fact that he is adequate to meet your need. The man comes in his weakness and discovers strength. The man comes in his darkness and finds light. The man comes in his abject poverty and discovers the riches that are to be his in the Lord Jesus Christ.

What a wonder this is! Have you already forgotten the little paragraph that precedes this? What was in the mind of Jesus as he meets the man? What has he just told his disciples on the in, on the q.t.? “We’re going up. They will mock me, insult me, spit on me, flog me, kill me.” Now, I don’t know how much time you have for people, but I can guarantee one of the times that it’s hardest to have time for people is when there is something that is overwhelming you in your mind—perhaps a diagnosis from the doctor, perhaps a struggle within the framework of your relationships, perhaps difficulty at the office, or whatever it might be—but that it is so demanding upon you that you have to pass people by: “I’m sorry. Maybe I could talk to you. But I’m sorry, no. But I’ve got this in my mind. I’ve got to go here. I’m sure you’ll understand.” And here we have Christ, under the shadow of the cross, looking forward to the fact that here he’s going to bear sin in his own body. And he says, “Isn’t that someone shouting out?” “Oh, yeah, but that’s the blind beggar, Jesus. Don’t worry. He shouts. He’s been shouting here for ages.” Jesus said, “I hear him.”

There is no other way to come to Jesus but on the basis of your need and on your awareness of the fact that he is adequate to meet your need.

He still hears. He still stops. He stills listens. And he still saves. All that is necessary is that you and I come to understand our blindness, come to recognize the misery and the darkness that it brings, and come wholeheartedly to ask Christ to let us see. This is a fulfillment of the words of the prophet Joel: “All that call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”[22]

When I was small in Scotland, I have nostalgic memories of standing next to my parents—in between my parents—at the end of a sermon, most of which I never listened to at all, apparently. But I was always glad when it came time for the final hymn. So I listened carefully to the final hymn. And we often sang,

Pass me not, O gentle Savior,
Hear my humble cry;
While on others thou art calling,
Do not pass me by.

Savior, Savior,
Hear my humble cry;
[And] while on others thou art calling,
Do not pass me by.[23]

This was the one occasion when Christ would pass by this man and his need. And on that occasion, he called out. My dear friends, without any sense of melodrama: Christ passes by every row of this room right now, and he may never pass this way again in this way. So “today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your [heart].”[24] It’s not so much that it’s seeing that is believing; it’s actually believing that’s seeing. You need to believe, and then you’ll see. Won’t you believe? It’s so simple. That’s why he said, “Unless you receive the kingdom like a little child, you’ll never enter it.”[25]

Let us pray together:

Lord, I pray for those in whose heart you’re working even now, who walked in here this morning with no real concerns about spiritual blindness and have been confronted by your Word. They see themselves, and they see their need. I pray that you’d grant them grace that they may cry out to you from where they are, aware of the fact that it’s not their words that really matters as much as it is the earnest, wholehearted longing. Thank you for teaching us in this little incident the demeanor that is required in coming to Christ: an awareness that we have nothing to contribute, nothing to bring except our need. Thank you for teaching us in this incident how prone we are to be like the members of the crowd who were prepared to pass this individual by in their own interests and preoccupations. We ask you to forgive us for every occasion that we’ve done that and when we tend to do it as a church.

So, Lord, accomplish your purposes in our lives. May the love of the Lord Jesus draw us to himself. May the power of the Lord Jesus strengthen us in serving him. May the joy of the Lord Jesus fill our hearts in going out from here. And may the blessing of God Almighty, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, be with you and abide with you, now and forevermore. Amen.

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[1] See Psalm 119:18.

[2] See Mark 10:32.

[3] Psalm 22:15 (NIV 1984).

[4] See Mark 15:23, 35–36; Matthew 27:34, 48; Luke 23:36; John 19:28–29.

[5] Psalm 22:15–18 (NIV 1984).

[6] See John 19:31–34.

[7] Romans 8:28 (NIV 1984).

[8] Luke 24:16 (NIV 1984).

[9] Luke 24:17–25 (paraphrased).

[10] Luke 24:25–27 (NIV 1984).

[11] See Luke 24:31.

[12] John 17:4 (paraphrased).

[13] John 19:30 (NIV 1984).

[14] Eliza E. Hewitt, “My Faith Has Found a Resting Place” (1891).

[15] C. harles H. Gabriel, “My Savior’s Love” (1905).

[16] Luke 7:19 (paraphrased).

[17] Luke 7:22 (NIV 1984).

[18] Luke 4:21 (NIV 1984).

[19] Luke 4:18 (NIV 1984).

[20] Mark 10:49 (paraphrased).

[21] Mark 10:49 (paraphrased).

[22] Joel 2:32 (paraphrased).

[23] Fanny J. Crosby, “Pass Me Not” (1868).

[24] Psalm 95:7–8; Hebrews 3:7–8, 15; 4:7 (NIV 1984).

[25] Luke 18:17 (paraphrased).