There are at least six different occasions recorded in the New Testament when Jesus healed a blind person. What is special about Bartimaeus? Join Pastor Clark as he builds a bridge of understanding from the time when the Healer of Galilee passed through Jericho, down to our day today. You’ll be surprised how much can be applied to your life!

<p>There are at least six different occasions recorded in the New Testament when Jesus healed a blind person. What is special about Bartimaeus? Join Pastor Clark as he builds a bridge of understanding from the time when the Healer of Galilee passed through Jericho, down to our day today. You’ll be surprised how much can be applied to your life!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

Chester Clark

Blind Bartimaeus

It was said of the Messiah that when He came, He would open the eyes of the blind.

Now I suppose that there's more than 1 way to understand that.

We're going to look both at the physical story of the opening of Bartimaeus' eyes, But we also want to think about the spiritual application of that prophecy, that Jesus' work would be to open the spiritual eyes of the spiritually blind.

You see, there are about 6 different stories of healing blind people in the Gospels, in the New Testament.

This 1 of blind Bartimaeus is found in 3 of the Gospels, in the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, and also the Gospel of Luke.

And there's, at least most people believe it's talking about the same story.

There's some minor differences between them.

In another, they are, the story is going out of the city while on some it is going into the city.

Perhaps we can resolve those differences.

Perhaps Bartimaeus was sitting by the beginning of the city and followed Jesus shouting towards the end of the city.

Perhaps Bartimaeus was just the better known of the beggar and that's why his name was recovered and recorded by Mark.

But the content of the story is the same and the Savior of the story is the same and the Savior of the story is the same.

And that's what's important for us today.

Let's bow our heads as we begin with a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we just thank you that you've given to us another opportunity to hear your word.

We Think of those living so long ago in Galilee who looked for opportunities to meet you, and yet you invite us every week, in fact every day, to spend time personally with you.

And as we open Your Word and come into Your presence in a special way, we ask that Your Spirit would be here to guide our hearts and our minds, and we thank You in Jesus' name.

Let's take our Bibles once again and open to Mark chapter 10, and beginning with verse 46, the story of blind Bartimaeus.

Now, as we look at this story, we're going to remember that the application and the interpretation of Scripture requires a certain process for us to go through, right?

The first process for us to go through is to understand what took place then.

We understand what took place then, and we try to understand as much as we can about the culture, about the setting, about the background and the situation.

Because as we begin to understand what that person was and who they were and where they were and how they were experiencing life and how Jesus came and changed their lives, that begins to give us a bridge, we call it a bridge of interpretation, down to 2016, down to our day, when we can then apply those same principles and lessons learned to our situations, to ourselves.

And we call that an interpretation so that we can make an application, right?

And so we're going to do that here together.

This morning, Mark chapter 10, begin with verse 46, and they came to Jericho.

Let's stop right there for just a moment.

In fact, when we look back in the Old Testament, the story of the settling of Canaan by the Israelites, we remember that Jericho was the first city after they crossed the Jordan, the first major city I should say, after they crossed the Jordan River.

It's only about 6 miles from the Jordan River.

And so as the Israelites came in, and you remember how they conquered the city of Jericho?

If you may have sung a song about it when you were a kid in Sabbath school or Sunday school, the walls came tumbling down, right?

The instructions of God were to go to the city of Jericho and this was God's plan.

God's plan was that he would be the ultimate arbiter of who should die and who should live.

God's plan was not that the Israelites should go and like a bloody nation begin exterminating people that had rejected the truth or the God of heaven.

The God of heaven was in fact casting judgment upon the sins of Canaan, I believe that.

But you'll remember that here God is giving an example of how he would like to overthrow this promised land and give it to his people.

All they were to do was to go and to march around the city 1 time.

Now this must have struck some fear into the hearts of the Jerichoites, I would assume.

And as they would march around the city and in return, they would come back the next day and do the same thing, but on the seventh day they were to march around 7 times, led by the priests behind them carrying the Ark of the Covenant.

7 times on the seventh day they marched around the city and at the end of the seventh time they took the 7 priests with 7 ram horns trumpets and they blew those trumpets and the walls came Tumbling down right the walls came tumbling down by the way We won't have time to explore this further But in the book of Revelation this story is used as an allegory, it's used as a symbol.

Before God's people go into the promised land of Canaan, our heavenly Canaan, There once again is 7 trumpets.

We won't take time, but in the last, the seventh trumpet is actually when the ministry of Jesus in the most holy place begins, right there before the Ark of the Covenant.

We understand Revelation better as we understand the stories from which it was taken as illustrations.

The story of Jericho, and here it is in Jericho's, in Jesus' time, it's a fascinating city.

We're gonna take this passage, and we're gonna look at these characteristics.

Okay, so this is how we're gonna build this bridge of interpretation and application down to our day today.

Jericho is situated in the middle of a fertile, well-watered country.

It was celebrated in Jesus' day for its palm trees.

In fact, it had been, some of the Roman rulers had made it a beautiful place.

And this was 1 of the most important cities in the time of Christ next to Jerusalem.

And this was where we find blind Bartimaeus.

The Bible says, back to Mark 10, verse 46, they came to Jericho, and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside.

And specifically, he was sitting by the roadside.

Now the Greek word here actually symbolizes, or could be translated a little more accurately, he was sitting customarily by the roadside.

This was his habit, this was where he usually sat.

This was Bartimaeus' spot, you might say.

Bartimaeus is sitting, now why is he sitting?

Why wasn't he out working like any other productive person would have been?

And as a blind person, you had no ability to work.

There weren't handicap laws and there weren't seeing eye dogs and there weren't a lot of things that tried to help those who were handicapped have a more functional existence today.

In those days, if you were blind, you were uneducated.

In those days, if you were blind, you were useless.

In those days, if you were blind, you were a burden on your family because your family had to support you.

And the only thing you could do is go out and try to engender some sympathy and beg for money from people who had their full faculties.

Now if we were to answer this question, who was he?

Some of you know that the prefix bar in a name means what?

And so the son of Timaeus, and our text here in Mark chapter 10 actually explains that for us, so we don't even need to know anything about the Hebrew language.

But there are some who have looked at this word and they've said, okay, this is somebody who's very interesting or not very interesting at all.

There's some who say, look, this man's only claim to fame must have been his father.

It's as if he doesn't have his own name, he's just the son of his father.

Now, that would make sense in a way because actually he was not a very important person.

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Blind Bartimaeus

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