Recover Your Sight

We are all blind beggars, on the side of the road with nothing, and only the mercy of Christ can change that.

All right, church. The season has officially arrived. Summer has come to a close. School has started. Autumn leaves will soon begin to swirl with winter snow, the very next day, if I understand Minnesota correctly. But I am not referring to any of those seasons. I am, of course, referring to our annual return to the Gospel of Luke. That age-old tradition of picking up where we left off. It’s a time-honored tradition here at Calvary that began in the fall of 22. We were all so young back then. One of our elders recently pointed out to me that 500 of you weren’t even here at Calvary when we started this series. That is half our church. So you might be wondering why we go so slowly through books of the Bible like this. There are two reasons. One is practical, the other is theological. The practical reason is simply that there are certain books in the Bible that are long, like the Gospel of Luke. And so we take breaks, and as we go, we preach other sections of Scripture so we’re not just in one book for 100 weeks in a row. The theological reason is much more important. See, the Bible is God’s Word to the world. It is the message of salvation that we have new life in Jesus Christ. You don’t breeze through that. You don’t. I know our culture is used to doomscrolling TikTok videos that are all 10s long and full of nonsense, but that’s not the Bible.

The Bible deserves our very thoughtful contemplation. Every word of Scripture is God-breathed, and it is all equally God’s Word. To experience the change of heart and mind that God intends for us, we need to mull over God’s word. We need to sit in it, ponder it, wrestle with it. So that we can also ultimately submit to it. So I go slow. I take it a piece at a time. I just don’t know how to do it any other way. We’re picking it up in Luke chapter 18 this morning with a story of a man who has nothing going for him. Nothing. He’s got no prospects, no power, no choices in front of him. He has no assets. He’s got nothing to lean on. He sits figuratively at the bottom of society while he sits literally on the side of the road. And he’s blind. Imagine everything you have. Everything that you own has been taken away from you. That your only hope for survival is to somehow pull yourself out of the mess that you’re in by your own strength, and you’re blind and nobody will help you. Most of us can’t even imagine ourselves in a scenario like this. We have too much. We are too successful. What can we possibly learn from a man in a situation like this? Well, I’m going to propose to you this morning that we are all blind beggars on the side of the road with nothing and only the mercy of Christ can change that.

In fact, I’ll go a step further than that. Unless you understand just how blind and helpless you are, you cannot be saved from your sin and be forgiven by God at all. We’re about to read the story of our own spiritual state. Okay? We’re not just reading somebody else’s story. We’re reading our story this morning. This is our predicament. We’re going to start in Luke chapter 18, verse 35. As the story progresses, I want you to try to picture yourself in the role of the blind man, because that’s the reason that Jesus interacts with this man. It’s the reason that Luke records this encounter in his book. Put yourself in the action this morning. Here’s the situation. As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside, begging and hearing a crowd going by. He inquired what this meant. They told him, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. So Jesus is continuing his teaching tour and it’s bringing him closer and closer to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is his ultimate destination. And you’re going to notice that from here forward in the book of Luke, that the places where Jesus goes, the cities that he enters are going to be named a lot more. And that’s because Luke wants us to know how close Jesus is getting to Jerusalem, the city where the most important event in human history is about to happen.

So as he approaches Jericho, a blind beggar is sitting on the roadside. And there are three things that we need to understand about this situation. Okay. The first is we need to recognize just how utterly hopeless this man’s situation is. You know, in a sense, we really don’t have any idea what this man was up against, because our culture does not have this level of poverty. I know that we have homelessness and poverty. I know that. There are plenty of people in real trouble here in the United States. I’m in no way diminishing that. But we also have social safety nets and programs and organizations full of people that want to come alongside and help people and alleviate poverty. And by the way, all of those organizations exist because biblical values have shaped our society historically. But that’s a that’s a different sermon. The point for this morning, is that we don’t see this. Okay. Not on a daily basis. You might travel somewhere and see something close to this. But here we don’t see this. We don’t walk down the streets of Rochester and see people completely destitute, with no hope and no help at all. But in the first century, you might see it every day. There were no organizations. No one was coming to help this man get into a rehabilitation program.

The Mosaic law did have systems in it, things like gleaning and Jubilee that were intended to open up opportunities for the poor to get ahead. But Israel was constantly ignoring those laws. They were constantly pushing that part of the law away. Ignoring and abusing the poor is one of the most cited sins among the prophets of ancient Israel. They talk about it a lot. If you read those prophetic books, you’ll see it over and over again. And even if this man had the opportunity to glean some food from the fields, from the farms that were around him, even if he had the opportunity to do that, he’s blind. The level of help that this man needed is staggering. To the point that it’s hard for us to fathom how much help he needed. The second thing that we need to know is that first century Jewish thought put a strong Correlation between personal suffering and personal sin. Okay. They drew really hard lines between those two things. Now, the Bible does teach that all suffering is the result of sin, broadly speaking, because we live in a world that’s been corrupted. Its sin has corrupted God’s creation. But that’s not what I mean here this morning. In Israel at that time, it was widely believed that if something bad happens to you, it is because God is punishing you for something that you personally did wrong.

And blindness in particular, especially if you were born blind, was considered a sure sign that someone had sinned. Either God was punishing you preemptively for some sin you would commit in your life, the person himself, or that person’s parents. Now, not all blindness was judged that way. In ancient Israel, you could just be really old and go blind and no one would accuse you of anything. We have examples of that in the Old Testament, guys like Isaac, for instance. But in the case of this man on the road, it would be totally normal for people to see him and wonder what he did to deserve that fate. What did he do? Wow. He must have done something pretty bad. And it would be totally normal for them to feel morally superior to this man. So he has no hope and he has no help from a community that probably looks down on him. And the third thing that we need to notice is where Luke records this in the book. So this is the story of the blind beggar. And it’s not here just because it’s the next thing on Jesus itinerary. It’s here for contrast. And you’d see this contrast better if I didn’t take forever to preach through books. Sorry about that. But glance up the page if you would to verse 18. If you get your Bibles open, glance up to verse 18 in this chapter and you’ll see the story of the rich ruler.

This man had everything. This guy had everything. He’s got money and power and respect in the community. He can rattle off a list of all the good things he does. He’s faithful to his wife. He’s honest, he’s hardworking. But he comes to Jesus looking for what he has to do in order to inherit eternal life. He wants to make sure that he has that part of life covered as well. And Jesus says to him, you only lack one thing. Sell all that you have. Give it to the poor. That way you’re going to have treasure in heaven, and then you’ll be freed up to come and to follow me. I mean, this guy had everything, but the everything that he had was keeping his heart from the one thing that he needed. He needed to love Jesus more than everything. He needed to prize eternal life with Jesus more than all of his stuff. And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. The money. The money had his heart. He couldn’t follow Jesus because he couldn’t lose everything that he thought was important. His current life was more important to him than eternal life. And now here we are at the other end of the spectrum of human flourishing. All the way at the other end. No money, no reputation, no honor, no opportunities, no hope of anything improving this man’s life.

That’s the situation. So let’s see what happens. And he cried out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me! So this guy hears a commotion in the street. Something is happening that is out of the ordinary. And so he asks someone in the crowd what’s going on? And they tell him, Jesus of Nazareth is coming to town. Now you need to remember we are nearing the three-year mark of Jesus Northern Israel concert tour. Okay. He has been teaching and going from city to city, town to town, synagogue to synagogue. He has been sharing the word. He has been doing miracles that nobody else can do. He teaches with an authority that only God Himself has, and crowds of people have been following him everywhere. Even his detractors, even people who didn’t like him, kept showing up to where he was. The Pharisees wanted to know what he was teaching. Everyone across the region at this point has heard about Jesus the Nazarene, especially if you spend most of your days out on the street listening to people as they walk by and talk about the news of the day. This man on the side of the road was probably better informed than most people about what was going on, because he’s always there and he’s always listening.

So the problem with this, for him, is that while he knows of Jesus, he can’t go where Jesus is going because of his blindness. Jesus is going to Jericho. This man is probably not welcome in Jericho. And no one is helping this guy get to Jesus. But here’s the thing. Jesus is coming to him. He can’t go to where Jesus is, but Jesus is coming his way. Church, I want you to picture the very narrow window of hope that just opened up in this man’s life. The very narrow vision of hope. One fleeting moment that there’s a flicker of a possibility that the terrible situation that this man is in could change. This is his shot. And as that great prophet Eminem once said, this opportunity comes once in a lifetime, you better lose yourself. And this man did. This man lost himself. Son of David, have mercy on me, son of David, have mercy on me. Do you know how we know he was loud? You know how we know? Because he’s one guy and the crowd is trying to get him to be quieter. Okay? That’s how loud this man is. But he’s got to get his voice heard, right? He’s got to get his message, his request into this one narrow window that is opened up in his life. And what does he want? He wants mercy. He wants mercy. He needs the mercy of the Lord that he knows is found in Jesus.

You know, mercy is something unique. We don’t think about mercy very much. It’s not the same thing as kindness. Anybody can be kind. We’re kind to people all the time. Mercy is also not quite the same thing as Grace. They’re related, but they’re not quite the same thing. Grace is an undeserved gift. In the case of the Lord, it’s an undeserved gift of forgiveness. God’s forgiveness to us as sinners comes by grace because we don’t deserve it, that’s for sure. That is the gospel. We get to have a gift that we don’t deserve. But mercy is a slightly different way of looking at the gospel. A person who needs mercy is a person who can’t bear the situation that he’s in. He just can’t bear it. If you give someone grace, you’re saying, you don’t deserve this, but I’m going to give it to you anyway. But if you give someone mercy, you’re saying, I can see the trouble that you’re in and I’m going to help you out of it. And the gospel is both. It contains both. It’s two different ways of looking at the same great news. I need God’s grace to forgive my sin because I don’t deserve his forgiveness, but I need God’s mercy because I can’t bear the consequences of my sin without his mercy. If it falls on me, I can’t bear it.

And whether it’s the consequences of our own sin or sins that have been done to us, or just the pain of living in a broken world, we all need God’s mercy. And just like all of us, this man, quite acutely, feels the pain of living in a broken world. And he sees his one opportunity to get some relief from the Lord. Now, we don’t know all that this man believed about Jesus at this point. He probably did not have a fully formed Christology. Not even the 12 disciples had that. But he did believe in Jesus, that he was his King. And we know this because he was told, Jesus of Nazareth is here. And he turned that into Son of David. That’s the label that’s given to the descendants of David, King of Israel. Israel was waiting on the king in the line of David to come save God’s people. And this man believed that Jesus was that king. And he’s not just parroting back what he’s heard. We’re going to hear in a moment. Jesus is going to commend him for his faith. So he really believes this. He’s not just echoing and trying to butter up Jesus with this label. He really believes he’s king. He’s saying, my King, you can see that I’m in great need. I have nothing. Please give me the Lord’s mercy. Now I want to pause here.

If you were to ask me what has to happen in a person’s heart to be ready to receive salvation in Jesus. I’d describe what’s happening right here. Do you see yourself in need of God’s mercy like this? Do you see that you are spiritually blind and hopeless without the intervening grace of Jesus? Too many people approach the idea of becoming a Christian from the position of the rich ruler. I’m just doing fine. I’m doing great. I’m doing pretty well, actually. But how can Jesus add to my already awesome life? If you come to Jesus from that angle, if that’s how you approach him, you will inevitably decline Jesus because he’ll demand too much of you. You see it over, all the time, over and over again. He’ll demand too much of you. He’ll demand that you trade your kingdom for his kingdom. But if you come to him realizing just how spiritually impoverished, blind, and weighted down you are with your sin. Then you will cry out for mercy, too. No matter how much you have in life, no matter how well you’re doing in this world apart from Christ, you are this man on the side of the road. We all are. All of us are here. We need Jesus mercy. So does he give it? And Jesus stopped, commanded him to be brought to him, and when he came near, he asked him, what do you want me to do for you? All right.

By a show of hands. How many of you think that Jesus doesn’t know what this man’s issues are and needs to be filled in on the specifics? Anybody? Anybody? Yeah. Of course not. Of course not. As we like to say here in the Midwest. Yeah. No. That is not a thing. There is no way Jesus asked this question with some doubt about what this blind guy needs. So why ask the question? Why does he ask this question? Well, if you spend enough time in the Gospels, you’ll know that Jesus asks questions like this to help the one asking to reveal his own heart. He did this with a rich ruler too. Why do you call me good? He asked him. Here, the reason for the question is to get this man to say out loud exactly what he wants from Jesus and what he believes Jesus can give to him. There are a whole lot of ways that the Son of David could show this man mercy. One way would be to give him money. Think about it. The rich ruler was held back from following Jesus because he had too much stuff. Maybe this guy’s problem is just the other end of that problem. Maybe it’s a lack of money that’s keeping this guy down. He’s a beggar, after all. And if he had some resources, perhaps he’d be able to get his life together so he could actually follow Jesus.

Maybe that’s the problem. And maybe this man is on the side of the road, and he’s deep down in his heart he’s thinking that Jesus really can’t cure his blindness. I mean, it was common knowledge in the first century to think that blindness was irreversible. So maybe the next thing out of this man’s mouth is going to be something like show me mercy by getting me off the street and filling my stomach and improving my life the best that you can. Before we look at this man’s answer, let me ask you, what do you want Jesus to do for you? What do you want Jesus to do for you? It’s a pretty important question. There are a lot of folks who want Jesus to improve their lives. There are plenty of people who are happy to call themselves Christians if it comes with blessings. That’ll change if they don’t get what they want, they’ll go about getting it some other way if they don’t get what they want through Christianity. I’ve experienced this recently. I was talking to a guy who believed God’s word all his life until it didn’t match up with what he wanted to believe now. Staying true to Scripture no longer gave him what he wanted. So did he change what he wanted to match the truth? No.

He changed the truth in his mind to match what he wanted. He decided God’s word no longer is God’s word. I ask you again, what do you want Jesus to do for you? Here’s the blind man’s answer and the conclusion of our story. He said, Lord, let me recover my sight. And Jesus said to him, recover your sight. Your faith has made you well. And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. He went big. Lord, recover my sight. Do for me what only God Himself can do for me. There are two things happening here that are absolutely true at the same time. First, this man wanted his physical sight back and he believed that Jesus could give it to him. He trusted and God healed him miraculously. You say does God still do that in the world today? I believe that he does. I’ve heard too many stories from too many trustworthy people to believe that God doesn’t do this anymore. But it’s rare. It’s rare in a form like this, especially. Certainly miracles were far more prevalent when God himself came into the world and was performing them. But I have no trouble telling what is basically the Christian subset of the world class medical community that God is the Great Physician. God is the one who heals. That’s the truth.

But right alongside of that truth is that this man was not just healed to improve his life. He was healed to showcase the truth of the gospel that heals for eternal life. In John chapter nine, Jesus heals a different blind man and he teaches those who were there that this man was born blind “so that the works of God might be displayed in him”. And lest we think that Jesus was just talking about how God wants to impress us with a miracle, at the end of that chapter, he explains himself. He says, for judgment I came into this world that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind. In other words, the physical miracle of healing and of opening blind eyes is meant to show us all that we are spiritually blind and in need of God to open the eyes of our hearts so that we can see the truth of God’s grace to us in Christ. That’s the spiritual reality behind healing blindness. And anyone who thinks they already know the truth apart from Jesus, they remain spiritually blind. I ask you again, what do you want Jesus to do for you? I want you to see Jesus this morning, I want you to see what he did for this man. He didn’t just restore his sight. What he did is he created a true encounter with this man so that this man could become, not just a man with sight, but a worshiper, a follower of Jesus.

This man was picked up off the roadside. And he had his sight restored so that he could worship the Lord and follow Jesus wherever he goes. Do you see that’s what happened? It’s exactly what we were. This is what happened. He became a worshiper and a follower of Jesus. And by the way, we have seen this over and over again throughout Luke and throughout all four Gospels. Jesus doesn’t just open our eyes to see clearly so that we can more effectively live our lives apart from him, on our own terms, with our own goals. He restores us so that we can be worshippers of God and disciples of Jesus as we were designed to be. I love this image of a man so downtrodden, having his life turned around through a miraculous healing. But I don’t want you to miss the point. Don’t miss the point this morning. God isn’t making your old life work better. He’s making your new life in Christ. That’s what the gospel does. You are only setting yourself up for a rich-ruler style disappointment if you come to Jesus looking for a way to have a great life your way. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re going to be in for disappointment because he’s not in the business of making that happen.

Jesus mission is to restore our sight so that we can follow him closely and love God wholeheartedly and love others sacrificially. I ask you again, what do you want Jesus to do for you? I have been captivated all week, by the thought of that narrow window as I read this story. That narrow window, that one moment. This man had. I’ve been just captivated by that. I’ve been thinking a lot about it for a few different reasons. I think about it, the brevity and the unpredictability of our lives that the time we each have to cry out for Christ’s mercy. You know, that could that can end literally in a heartbeat. I don’t know how large your window is. This idea has been especially prominent in my mind. As we remembered on Friday, the 25th anniversary of one of the most unpredictable things that any of us has ever experienced. In the blink of an eye, in the blink of an eye lives were changed forever. And the world hasn’t been the same. I want to share a story with you. The story is not meant to tug at your heartstrings. Although I must admit that as I read the story, as I read articles about this story this week, I could hardly do that without coming to tears. But I believe this story illustrates that narrow window, that narrow window, that that brevity, that urgency of the hope we’re talking about this morning.

Perhaps you’ve heard the story of a man named Al Braca. Al was a vice president for a high-powered brokerage firm in the North Tower. And even though Al worked around a lot of money and a lot of power, he was unashamedly a witness for Christ to his co-workers. They even had a nickname for him. They called him the Rev. Hey Rev, are you going to pray for us? And they joked with him a lot, but they also respected him because of his kindness and because he would pray for them. He was constantly talking about Jesus with them. And on that morning, when their tower was hit and confusion and panic set in to the office, as we would all expect, Al started praying. And according to a few different reports, he then gathered together his office, so it was about 50 people in his office. He gathered together his office and he stood up on a table so he made sure everybody could see him. And he said one of two things, or possibly both things. He said, I’m going to heaven, who’s coming with me? Or he said, I’m going to see Jesus today, who’s coming with me? All 658 employees of the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald died that morning. Do you know how we know Al Braca did this? Think about it. We don’t know from Al.

Al was never able to get through on the phone to his wife. She never heard from him that day. So we don’t know it from Al. We know this from the testimony of the spouses, of the employees who were able to get through in those final moments. What would compel a husband or a wife to use their final moments on the phone with their spouse to share what Al just did on the desk? What would compel a husband or wife to make that the final thing that they wanted their spouse to know? Well, it’s because in the narrowest possible window of their lives, some of these people heard Jesus was passing by and they cried out for mercy, and their lives were transformed. And they wanted their spouses to know that everything was going to be okay for eternity. Friends, we do not know how narrow our window is. We don’t know. Life is too short. It is far too unpredictable not to cry out for God’s mercy when we see that it is available to us. If you see your need for Jesus, if you call on Jesus, you see your sin and you see that Jesus can provide what only he can provide, salvation for life, eternal life. If you see him, you will be saved if you cry out for his mercy because he will give it to you. I ask you again, what do you want Jesus to do for you? Would you pray with me?