They came to Jericho. As he went out from Jericho, with his disciples and a great multitude, the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the road. When he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out, and say, “Jesus, you son of David, have mercy on me!” Many rebuked him, that he should be quiet, but he cried out much more, “You son of David, have mercy on me!”
Jesus stood still, and said, “Call him.” They called the blind man, saying to him, “Cheer up! Get up. He is calling you!”
He, casting away his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On v46 Christ only, being called upon by faith, healeth our…
Christ only, being called upon by faith, healeth our blindness.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv46–50 43 But so shall it not be among you:…
43 But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister:
44 And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.
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45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
46 And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging.
Ver. 46. Blind Bartimeus] Named and celebrated in the Gospel, when many mighty monarchs are utterly forgotten, or else lie shrouded in the sheet of shame.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On v46 This history is a mere narrative of a matter…
This history is a mere narrative of a matter of fact, in the relation of which no difficulties occur which stand in need of explication. Matthew, Mark, and Luke relate it with but two considerable differences. Matthew mentions two blind men, the other two evangelists but one. It is probable the one was the more remarkable, and his father a person of some note, therefore he is mentioned also; the other probably some obscurer person. Luke reports it done, as he was come nigh unto Jericho; Matthew and Mark, as he went out of Jericho: but though Luke saith that he sat begging by the way as they came nigh to Jericho, yet he doth not say the miracle of his cure was wrought then. It is most probable that he followed Christ into Jericho, crying after him, and also when he went out of Jericho, and that it was as he went out of Jericho (as Matthew and Mark say) that our Saviour took notice of him, called him, and wrought the cure upon him.
See Poole on "Mat 20:29", and following verses to Mat 20:34.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On v46 This chapter concludes with the recital of a famous…
This chapter concludes with the recital of a famous miracle wrought by our blessed Saviour upon blind Bartimeus, in the sight of a great multitude which followed him.
Where note, 1. The blind man’s faith, in acknowledging Jesus to be the Messiah; for so much the title of the son of David signified.
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2. His fervency, in crying so earnestly to Christ for mercy and healing: Have mercy upon me, thou son of David. A true sense of want will make the soul cry unto Christ with earnestness and importunity.
Observe, 3. The great compassion and condescension of Christ towards this poor blind man: he stood still, he called him and enlightened his eyes. A mighty instance of Christ’s divine power! He that can open blind eyes with a touch of his finger, and that by his own power, is really God: his touch is an omnipotent touch.
Observe, 4. Although Christ well knew the condition of this blind man, yet, before he will restore his sight, he must sensibly complain of the want of sight, and cry unto him for help and healing. Christ knows all his creatures’ wants, but takes no notice of them till they make them known to him by prayer.
Observe, 5. The way and course which the blind man takes to express his thankfulness to Christ for recovered sight: He rose, and followed Jesus. Mercy from Christ is then well improved, when it engages us to follow Christ. This should be the effect of all salvations wrought for us. He praiseth God best that serveth him most: the life of thankfulness consists in the thankfulness of the life.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v46 This passage of story agrees with that, Mat 20:29,…
This passage of story agrees with that, Mat 20:29, etc. Only that there were told of two blind men; here, and Luk 18:35, only of one: but if there were two, there was one. This one is named here, being a blind beggar that was much talked of; he was called Bartimeus, that is, the son of Timeus; which, some think, signifies the son of a blind man; he was the blind son of a blind father, which made the case worse, and the cure more wonderful, and the more proper to typify the spiritual cures wrought by the grace of Christ, on those that not only are born blind, but are born of those that are blind.
I. This blind man sat begging; as they do with us. Note, Those who by the providence of God are disabled to get a livelihood by their own labour, and have not any other way of subsisting, are the most proper objects of charity; and particular care ought to be taken of them.
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II. He cried out to the Lord Jesus for mercy; Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David. Misery is the object of mercy, his own miserable case he recommends to the compassion of the Son of David, of whom it was foretold, that, when he should come to save us, the eyes of the blind should be opened, Isa 35:5. In coming to Christ for help and healing, we should have an eye to him as the promised Messiah, the Trustee of mercy and grace.
III. Christ encouraged him to hope that he should find mercy; for he stood still, and commanded him to be called. We must never reckon it a hindrance to us in our way, to stand still, when it is to do a good work. Those about him, who had discouraged him at first, perhaps were now the persons that signified to him the gracious call of Christ; "Be of good comfort, rise, he calls thee; and if he calls thee, he will cure thee." Note, The gracious invitations Christ gives us to come to him, are great encouragements to our hope, that we shall speed well if we come to him, and shall have what we come for. Let the guilty, the empty, the tempted, the hungry, the naked, be of good comfort, for he calls them to be pardoned, to be supplied, to be succoured, to be filled, to be clothed, to have all that done for them, which their case calls for.
IV. The poor man, hereupon, made the best of his way to Christ; He cast away his loose upper garment, and came to Jesus (Mar 10:50); he cast away every thing that might be in danger of throwing him down, or might in any way hinder him in coming to Christ, or retard his motion. Those who would come to Jesus, must cast away the garment of their own sufficiency, must strip themselves of all conceit of that, and must free themselves from every weight, and the sin that, like long garments, doth most easily beset them, Heb 12:1.
V. The particular favour he begged, was, that his eyes might be opened; that so he might be able to work for his living, and might be no longer burthensome to others. It is a very desirable thing to be in a capacity of earning our own bread; and where God has given men their limbs and senses, it is a shame for men by their foolishness and slothfulness to make themselves, in effect, blind and lame.
VI. This favour he received; his eyes were opened (Mar 10:52); and two things Mark here adds, which intimate, 1. How Christ made it a double favour to him, by putting the honour of it upon his faith; "Thy faith hath made thee whole; faith in Christ as the Son of David, and in his pity and power; not thy importunity, but thy faith, setting Christ on work, or rather Christ setting thy faith on work." Those supplies are most comfortable, that are fetched in by our faith. 2. How he made it a double favour to himself; When he had received his sight, he followed Jesus by the way. By this he made it appear that he was thoroughly cured, that he no more needed one to lead him, but could go himself; and by this he evidenced the grateful sense he had of Christ's kindness to him, that, when he had his sight, he made this use of it. It is not enough to come to Christ for spiritual healing, but, when we are healed, we must continue to follow him; that we may do honour to him, and receive instruction from him. Those that have spiritual eye-sight, see that beauty in Christ, that will effectually draw them to run after him.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv46–49 And Jesus stood still,.... Hearing his voice, and knowing…
And Jesus stood still,.... Hearing his voice, and knowing what charges and reproofs were given him to be silent:
and commanded him to be called and led and brought unto him: this order was given; either to his disciples, or to some of the multitude, probably the latter:
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and they call the blind man, saying unto him, be of good comfort, rise, he calleth thee; or "because he calleth thee", as the Arabic version renders it; suggesting, that some hopes might be conceived from thence, that something would be done in his favour. The Persic version renders it, "our master calleth thee", so that that interpreter thought, that the disciples were the persons that were ordered to call, and did call the blind man: the word "rise", is left out in the Persic and; Ethiopic versions. It may be observed from hence, that such whom Christ effectually calls by his grace, of which this instance is emblematical, have reason to be of good comfort; or that the effectual calling is a ground of comfort: called ones may take comfort from it, and be assured that they are loved by God; since it is a fruit, effect, and evidence, of God's everlasting love to them; and that they are the chosen of God, for, whom he did predestinate, he calls; and that they are Christ's, and are redeemed by him, seeing he has called them by name: and they may expect all good things from him; seeing they are called according to grace, given them in him before the world began; and are called to the participation of the blessings of grace; and it is affirmed that all things work together for their good: wherefore they may live in the faith of eternal glory and happiness; since they that are called, are justified, and shall be glorified.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv46, 50 Matt. xx, 29; Luke xviii, 35.
Matt. xx, 29; Luke xviii, 35.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv46, 50 Verse 46. Blind Bartimeus] בר bar in Syriac signifies…
Verse 46. Blind Bartimeus] בר bar in Syriac signifies son. It appears that he was thus named because Timeus, Talmeus or Talmai, was the name of his father, and thus the son would be called Bar-talmeus, or Bartholomew. Some suppose υιος Τιμαιου, the son of Timeus, to be an interpolation. Bartimeus the son of Timeus, ο τυφλος, THE blind man. It was because he was the most remarkable that this evangelist mentions him by name, as a person probably well known in those parts.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v46 Mar 10:46-52. And as he went out of Jericho,…
Mar 10:46-52. And as he went out of Jericho, blind Bartimeus sat by the way-side — Matthew (Mat 20:29) says, there were two blind men. It seems this Bartimeus was the more eminent of the two, and spoke for them both. See on Mat 20:29-34. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth — Of some of whose miracles he had doubtless received information; he began to cry out, Jesus, thou son of David, &c. — Our Lord’s name was no sooner mentioned than this blind man, who was well acquainted with his fame, conceived hopes of obtaining a cure; and being deeply impressed with a sense of his own affliction, he cried out so vehemently that the people rebuked him, as they will not fail to rebuke all who, from a sense of their guilt, depravity, and misery, cry after the Saviour of sinners. But he cried the more a great deal — An example worthy to be imitated by those who are concerned to obtain the cure of their spiritual diseases. And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called — He would not perform the miracle till the blind man came to him, that, by the manner of his walking, the spectators might be sensible he was truly blind. And they call the blind man — Some of the people, having their expectations raised of seeing Christ work a miracle, ran immediately to call the man and his companion; saying, Be of good comfort — Take courage; rise, he calleth thee — And therefore he doubtless intends to grant thy request. And he, casting away his garment — Through joy and eagerness; rose, and came to Jesus — The other blind man also following as fast as he could. And Jesus said, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee — What is the mercy which thou so earnestly entreatest? The blind man said, Lord, that I might receive my sight — The other also, doubtless, made the same request. and Jesus, who had compassion on them, touched their eyes, and said to each, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole — The strong persuasion which thou hast entertained of my power and goodness, and thy confidence therein, makes thee fit to receive this cure which I now bestow on thee. And immediately he received his sight — As did his companion likewise; and they followed Jesus in the way —
Travelled with him, probably all the way to Jerusalem, being deeply affected with a sense of his power and goodness, and earnestly desirous to show their gratitude, by declaring openly, unto all the persons they met, what a great miracle Jesus had performed for them. “Thus Jesus, by his touch,” says Erasmus, “cures the mind that is blinded with worldly lusts, and gives light for this end, that we may follow his footsteps.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v46 See this passage explained in the notes at Mat…
See this passage explained in the notes at Mat 20:29-34.
Mar 10:46
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Blind Bartimeus - Matthew says there were two. Mark mentions but one, though he does not deny that there was another. He mentions this man because he was well known - Bartimeus, the “blind man.”
Mar 10:50
Casting away his garment - That is, his outer garment - the one that was thrown loosely over him. See the notes at Mat 5:40. He threw it off, full of joy at the prospect of being healed, and that he might run without impediment to Jesus. This may be used to illustrate - though it had no such original reference - the manner in which a sinner should come to Jesus. He should throw away the garments of his own righteousness - he should rise speedily - should run with joy - should have full faith in the power of Jesus, and cast himself entirely upon his mercy.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v46 Bartimæus is a Syriac word, and signifies, son of…
Bartimæus is a Syriac word, and signifies, son of Timæus.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v46 2. The Passing through Jericho. Mar_10:46-52
2. The Passing through Jericho. Mar_10:46-52
(Parallels: Mat_20:29-34; Luk_18:35-43; Luk_19:1-28.)
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46 And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples, and a great number of people, blind Bartimeus, the20 son of Timeus, sat by the highway-side begging. 47And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth,21 he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. 48And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me. 49And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called:22 and they call50 the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose,23 and came to Jesus. 51And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. 52And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus24 in the way.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
See on the parallels in Matthew and Luke.—From Ephraim and the desert, Jesus, with the Twelve and His trusted Galilæan dependents—who had joined Him at this point or before—turned to Jericho, where He united His company with that of the great Galilæan-Peræan band going up to the feast, which had come from Peræa over the Jordan. Upon the question of time, and Jericho itself, and the difference among the Synoptists in regard to the healing of the blind, consult the notes upon Matthew. Like that Evangelist, Mark passes over the narrative of Zacchæus, and gives instead all the more exact account of the healing of the blind man. The fundamental idea of Luke’s Gospel demanded that the favor shown to the rich publican should not be omitted. Matthew and Mark are so intent upon depicting the great procession to the feast in its unity, that they cannot linger upon another episode, such as that of Zacchæus, in addition to the healing of the blind man. Matthew, indeed, might hesitate through modesty to record prominently so many instances of favor shown to the publicans; and Mark would probably prefer to omit a new remembrancer of the embittered hatred which subsisted between the Jews and the Romans—writing as he did so much for Roman Christians. Moreover, the occurrence with Zacchæus was not properly a miraculous history, such as both these Evangelists mainly record at this time.—Now, while Matthew gives an account merely of the departure from Jericho, Mark mentions also the entrance. In his account of the departure, he describes the great numbers that accompanied Jesus, and records the full name of the blind man, Bartimæus, the son of Timæus. Luke joins him in saying that this man was a beggar. Mark, again, has the specific note that he, Bartimæus, began to cry aloud. The words of the people to the blind man, “Be of good courage, rise; He calleth thee”—the conduct of Bartimæus generally, and his casting away his garment, and standing up, and coming—are all characteristic touches of painting which Mark alone gives. Only Matthew records the compassion of Jesus, and the fixing His eyes upon the man. Mark also omits “Receive thy sight.” The word of healing is condensed, and the conclusion is briefer than Luke’s, touching only the main points.
Mar_10:46. Bartimæus.—The patronymic בַּר טִמְאַי is made into a proper name (after the analogy of Bartholomew and others); as it is explained by the additional clause, “son of Timæus.” This last seems to place Timæus among the number of well-known Christians. Meyer: Probably a Christian who afterwards attained distinction. And this might be true, notwithstanding the fact that he had allowed his son, a blind man, to beg on the highway. But, if we read with Codex A. and the Text. Rec., “a son of Timæus, Bartimæus the blind man, sat and begged,” it is plain that this is an account of him more precise and consistently carried out, which however seemed too full and specific to most copyists. According to it, Bartimæus, the blind man, was himself a personage well known to Christians as a monument of the Lord’s miracle, as was probably also Simon the Leper; and the designation “a son of Timæus” would distinguish him, not merely from the father, but also from other sons.
Mar_10:47. And when he heard.—He therefore believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of David, that is, the expected Messiah. He thus bore testimony to the widely-scattered seed of faith, and especially to the renewed stimulus given to the Redeemer’s cause, since the beginning of the festal journey, amongst the masses. But the blind man might also have heard on his hill-top of the recent resurrection of Lazarus, which took place in his own neighborhood; and this might have been matter of many silent night-ponderings in his blindness.
Mar_10:49. And Jesus stood still.—We now have reached the great crisis. He now hears the loud cry of the people—Messiah! See on the parallel of Matthew.—Be of good comfort.—Meyer: θάρσει, ἔγειρε, φωνεῖ σε: most affecting asyndeton.
Mar_10:51. Rabboni, רַבּרּנִּי, my Master.—If the Yod is taken paragogically, it means merely “master” (see Meyer); but even then it has so emphatic a sense as to be almost equal in personal reverence. Bartimæus adhered from that time to the Lord. He followed Him, praising God, Luke says; he followed Him in the way, in the procession, says Mark. He immediately joined the festal company of Jesus’ triumph. It was, indeed, the triumphal procession of the Prophet, and not yet that of the High Priest: this is formed by the living Church, even as the risen saints will be the triumphal procession of the King.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. See on Matthew and the previous notes.
2. The contrast in the sentiments of the people round Christ: type of the contrast between the hierarchical and the evangelical Church. In the former, the poor and wretched are threatened, and bidden to keep silence, when they cry directly to Christ; in the latter it is, “Be of good comfort, rise; He calleth thee.” It was natural that those who surrounded Christ should be led, by the thought that His kingdom was beginning, into conventional notions as to the value of courtly customs and hierarchical order; but it was also natural that the mercy of our Lord towards the wretched should scatter all such mists.
3. The casting his garment away was an expression of joyous boldness and zealous haste, and a removal of all impediments.
4. Mark intimates the dignity of the crisis in which the Lord now stands, by the circumstance that He heals the blind man simply by words: “Go thy way, thy faith,” etc. We know from Matthew how they are to be explained in detail; nevertheless, it is observable that Mark, who earlier records the sighing, the anointing with spittle, etc., introduces here so few intervening circumstances.
5. The Lord declared, by act and deed, that He would have no courtly state in His kingdom, no intermediate personages between Him and His dependents; that He was come, not to rule, but to minister. And, so far as this goes, our history is an acted illustration of the former section.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See on Matthew.—The beginning of the procession of Christ was the opening of blind eyes.—Light must be diffused in the world.—The fame of Bartimæus the best fame for all men; the best reputation for all Christians. (He was a blind man, a beggar; he believed and importuned; the Lord took pity upon him, and healed him.)—With the name of Christ the names of those whom He saved are immortalized.—The most beautiful homage with which Christ was publicly hailed as Messiah: Have mercy on me!—It is a pitiable thing when the cry, “Lord, have pity on me” (the κύριε ἐλέησον, to wit), becomes a dead formula in our poor Christendom.—How Jesus can transform the harsh threateners of the wretched into compassionate comforters and helpers.—The three words of true Christian sympathy and help for the wretched: Be of good comfort, rise; He calleth thee.—Through the compassion of Jesus and nearness to Him, one is taught to preach the Gospel even unconsciously.—How the helping “Go thy way” of the Lord to Bartimæus and others becomes a glorious and encouraging announcement, “Come unto Me.”—All the uncalled ceremonialists in the royal procession of Christ are unable to suppress the cry of faith sent forth to Him.—The ear of the King detects the lamenting cry of the blind beggar through all the tumult of the crowd.—Thus the royal procession is magnified by the cry of misery.—A blind beggar can arrest the course of it; a blind beggar, turned into a seeing disciple, can advance it and add to its dignity.—The true petitioners of God throw away for ever the beggar’s array.—Mendicancy appears or vanishes as men are guided: 1. It appears in the ancient priestly and royal states of this world; 2. it vanishes in the kingdom of Christ. Compare with this passage Joh_9:8; Act_3:2; Act_4:34.—Men may at first hinder the beginnings of Christianity, and then agree afterwards to further it prematurely and rashly. (The first three centuries, and the three following, are examples.)
Starke:—Luther:—Blindness and poverty cause a double distress: so it is in spiritual matters, when both are rightly felt and mourned over.—Canstein:—The preaching of the Gospel is a perpetual announcement that Jesus is near; and we should, knowing our misery, incessantly and confidently cry aloud to Him for His mercy.—Luther:—Sufferers oftentimes meet with scanty sympathy and poor intercession.—Cramer:—It would be a sore thing if the good God were as easily wearied as men are with our praying and beseeching.—Quesnel:—We should let no opportunity pass of getting good either to body or soul, for such opportunities do not always return.—Hedinger:—In prayer we should let nothing interrupt or divert us.—The simplicity of faith in prayer holds fast and holds out.—Luther:—God’s call is even in spiritual things the beginning of actual cure.—He who truly wants salvation must disencumber himself of all embarrassments and come to Christ.—Hedinger:—He who would see, must acknowledge his blindness.—Luther:—Faith is counted of such high dignity that salvation is ascribed to it, although the work of God.—Hedinger:—Christ is our Physician and our Light.—Faith is the best of all medicine.—Canstein:—Those who receive gifts follow their benefactors. Ought we not then to follow Christ?—He is indeed our greatest Benefactor.—Rieger (with reference to those who murmured):—Those who stand around are often unaware how much harm they may do by light words, and how easily a tender germ is trodden down and ruined.—The inward earnestness of the blind man broke through everything. Happy he who lets himself be restrained from faith and the cry of faith by nothing under the sun.—Things are continually occurring which might have a tendency to turn us in part or wholly away from Christ. What then? So much the more does the blind cry out, and faith believe; and the more it is hindered, the more it is helped.—The Lord was not always so willing to be followed by those who were healed; but in this last journey to Jerusalem an exception was admitted. Envy was not now to be excited; it had reached its highest point. Praise, on the other hand, was now, by all the wonderful works of God, to demonstrate its power against “the enemy and the avenger.”—Gossner:—The blind man runs to Jesus without seeing Him; so must we hasten to Him in faith, though we see Him not.
Footnotes:
[20]Mar_10:46.—We read, with A. and Recepta, υἱός without the Article, and ὁ τυφλός with the Article. [Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Meyer, following B., D., L., Δ., omit it.] So also προσαιτῶν, although important Codd., including B., L., Δ., Tischendorf, and Meyer, read προσαίτης. See the Notes.
[21]Mar_10:47.—Ναζαρηνός, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Meyer.
[22]Mar_10:49.—Εἶπεν φωνήσατε αὐτόν: B., C., L., Δ., Tischendorf, Meyer.
[23]Mar_10:50.—Instead of ἀναστάς, Lachmann and Tischendorf read ἀναπηδήσας, after B., L., D., Δ., Vulgate, &c.
[24]Mar_10:52.—Αὐτῷ instead of τῷ Ἰησοῦ.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On v46 § 108. — HEALING OF BLIND BARTIMEUS, Mar_10:46-52.
§ 108. — HEALING OF BLIND BARTIMEUS, Mar_10:46-52.
(See notes on Mat_20:29-34.
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46. Bartimeus — The word Bar in Hebrew signifies son, as Bar-Jesus, son of Jesus, (Act_13:6,) Bar-Jona, Bar-tholemew. Bartimeus is son of Timeus. He seems to have been a well known blind beggar of that locality, and hence his name is given.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv46–50 46–52. Passing through Jericho.—Blind Bartimæus
46–52. Passing through Jericho.—Blind Bartimæus
46. And they came] Leaving behind them the upland pastures of Peræa, the little company travelled along the road which led down to the sunken channel of the Jordan, and the luxuriant “district” of Jericho.
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to Jericho] This ancient stronghold of the Canaanites,—taken by Joshua (Mar_2:6), founded for the second time under Hiel the Bethelite (1Ki_16:34), visited by Elisha and Elijah before the latter “went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2Ki_2:4-15)—was still in the days of Christ surrounded by towers and castles. Two of them lay in ruins since the time of Pompeius, but “Kypros, the last fortress built by Herod the Great, who had called it after his mother, rose white in the sun on the south of the town.… The great palace of Herod, in the far-famed groves of palms, had been plundered and burnt down in the tumults that followed his death, but in its place a still grander structure, built by Archelaus, had arisen amidst still finer gardens, and more copious and delightful streams. A grand theatre and spacious circus, built by Herod, scandalized the Jews, while a great stone aqueduct of eleven arches brought a copious supply of water to the city, and the Roman military road ran through it. Geikie’s Life and Words of Christ, ii. p. 385.
as he went] It is most probable that at the entrance of Jericho He met one of the sufferers, who having learnt from the crowd that He was passing, joined the other sufferer, whom the Saviour encountered as He was going out of the city on the following morning. (Comp. Luk_18:35; Mat_20:29-30.)
a great number] of pilgrims accompanied our Lord, who had come from Peræa and Galilee, and met at this central point to go up to the Passover, at Jerusalem.
Bartimæus] The patronymic is made into a proper name after the analogy of Bartholomew and others. The true reading seems to be the son of Timæus, Bartimæus, a blind man, “This account of him hints that he was a personage well known to Christians in St Mark’s time as a monument of the Lord’s miracle, as was probably also Simon the Leper; and the designation ‘son of Timæus’ would distinguish him, not merely from the father but also from other sons.” Lange. As in the case of the Gadarene demoniacs, he was probably better known, and hence his case is more particularly recorded. “All the roads leading to Jerusalem, like the Temple itself, were much frequented at the time of the feasts, by beggars, who reaped a special harvest from the charity of the pilgrims.”
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv46, 49 (46-52) And they came to Jericho.—See Notes on Mat_20:29-34.…
(46-52) And they came to Jericho.—See Notes on Mat_20:29-34. St. Mark agrees with St. Matthew in placing the miracle as the disciples were leaving Jericho, and differs from him in speaking of one blind man only, and in giving his name.
Blind Bartimæus.—Better, as giving the same order as the Greek, the son of Timœus, Bartimœus, a blind beggar was sitting by the wayside begging. The later MSS. have the definite article before “blind,” as though he were well known and conspicuous. It is noticeable that the name was Greek with the Aramaic prefix Bar (= son), a combination not found elsewhere.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv46, 48, 49, 50 And they come to Jericho. Jericho, situated in the…
And they come to Jericho. Jericho, situated in the midst of a fertile, well-watered country, celebrated for its palm trees, was situated about seventeen English miles east-north-east of Jerusalem, and about six miles from the nearest bend of the river Jordan. In the time of our Lord it was one of the most important cities next to Jerusalem. It is now known by the name of Richa or Ericha, and is almost deserted. The journey from the Jordan to Jericho is through a fiat country; but that from Jericho to Jerusalem is very hilly. It is supposed that it was upon the rocky heights overhanging this city that our Lord"s temptation took place. Jericho derives its name, either from "the moon," or from the fragrant odours of the "balsam" plant, which was extensively cultivated in the neighborhood. Its palm groves and balsam gardens were bestowed by Anthony upon Cleopatra, from whom Herod the Great purchased them. It was here that Herod the Great died. It is now one of the most filthy and neglected places in Palestine. To this place our Lord came; and St. Luke (18 and 19) gives a full account of his reception there. St. Matthew speaks of two blind men; but he agrees with St. Mark in saying that the cure took place as he went out from Jericho. St. Luke mentions only one; but he places the cure at the time of our Lord"s entrance into Jericho. How do we reconcile St. Mark"s account of one only, specially named, Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus? St. Augustine says that there were two blind men; but that the one, better known, overshadowed the other. He also says that Bartimaeus was a well-known character, and that he was accustomed to sit by the wayside, not only blind, but as a beggar. It is of course possible that St. Luke may refer to another ease altogether. But on the other hand, with the exception that he mentions only one, and that he places the cure at the time of the entrance into Jericho, and not at the time of the departure, all the other circumstances are identical. May not this latter discrepancy be reconciled thus? the blind man may have sought a cure from Christ at his first entrance into the city; but he may not have been able to be heard on account of the crowd. Or our Lord may have passed him by at first, in order to stimulate his faith and hope. So the day after, he may have placed himself at the gate of the city, close by where Christ would pass through; and there again he may have urged his request, and so obtained healing. Dr. John Lightfoot (p. 348) says that the careful description of Bartimaeus would seem to imply that his father may have been a person of some note. Dr. Lightfoot adds that it is possible that Timaeus, or "Thimai," may be the same with Simais, blind, from the use of the letter thau from samech, common amongst the Chaldaeans; so that Bartimaeus might mean nothing more than "blind son of a blind father.
Vers. 46-52. Blind Bartimaeus.
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It is not without a purpose that the evangelists have put upon record so many of our Lord"s miracles wrought on behalf of the blind. In all such miracles the "sign" is prominent, the moral lesson is instructive, impressive, and encouraging.
I We recognize, in the privation of Bartimaeus, AN EMBLEM OF THE SINNER"S STATE. For:
1. The sinner is without spiritual knowledge. The blind are necessarily, by their deprivation of the highest of the senses, cut off from much knowledge of the outer world, and of the properties of matter, and consequently of the appeals of the Creator to the mind and heart of man.
2. The sinner is a stranger to many pure and elevating pleasures. The enjoyments of the sightless are grievously curtailed. The votary of sin has indeed his pleasures, but they are impure, debasing, and unsatisfying.
3. The sinner lacks true guidance. Just as the blind man depends upon others to lead him, and unless so assisted goes astray, so the unenlightened are doomed to wander in the mazes of error and of sin.
4. The sinner has no assurance, for he has no means of safety. As the blind fall into dangers for want of sight, so those whose minds are dark know nothing of true spiritual security, and have no well-founded hope.
II Here we have an EXAMPLE OF THE CRY OF DAWNING FAITH.
1. There is presumed a sense of privation, of misery, of need. This expresses itself when opportunity invites the expression.
2. We observe a recognition of Christ"s power and willingness to help and save. When Bartimaeus heard that it was Jesus who drew near, he cried aloud for help, having no doubt heard from some credible quarter of the customary compassion and the miraculous powers of the Prophet of Nazareth.
3. This shapes itself into a definite appeal for mercy.
4. And this appeal is distinguished by perseverance and persistency. Hindrances and dissuasions are of no avail; they only incite the applicant to more earnest supplications. The soul that truly feels its need, and has caught a true glimpse of Jesus, is not to be deterred from entreaties for grace and help. Obstacles may hinder the indifferent; they quicken the zeal of those who are earnest.
III AN INSTANCE OF CHRIST"S COMPASSIONATE INTEREST. When the blind beggar cries aloud, Jesus hears; he pauses to allow an interview; he bids that the suppliant be brought to him. It is ever so. Nothing is so welcome to the Savior as the entreaty and appeal of the penitent and believing sinner. No voice is unheard, no wretchedness unfelt, no applicant rejected, by him. The sinner"s need is his concern; the sinner"s cry prompts his interposition.
IV AN INDICATION OF THE CHURCH"S PROPER MISSION The people, attentive to Christ and friendly to the sufferer, call the blind man, raise his hopes, encourage his approach. This conduct is exactly that of our Lord"s faithful ministers and of all his true disciples. The Church cannot save, but its privilege and its duty is to point to him who can save. The vocation of the Church is to tell of Jesus, to point to Jesus, to lead to Jesus. This is the true ministry, at once humbling and ennobling; for whilst it presumes the spiritual powerlessness of man, it affords to human benevolence an abundant scope, and assimilates it to the pity of the Savior"s gracious heart.
V AN ILLUSTRATION OF EARNESTNESS RESPONDING TO THE INVITATION OF CHRIST. How picturesquely does Mark tell us that this blind man, casting away his garment, "sprang up, and came to Christ"! A suggestion that he who hears the gospel should fling from him all his doubts, should abandon his evil companions and the sin that doth so easily beset him, should forsake his evil ways and thoughts, and so should draw near to Christ.
VI THE CHARACTERISTIC MANNER IN WHICH CHRIST IMPARTED THE BLESSING SOUGHT. The dialogue between Jesus and Bartimaeus was brief, and it was "to the point." Question, answer, and final assurance were all satisfactory. The point upon which stress is chiefly laid is the faith which makes whole. It is the one condition. When this is complied with, all things are possible; the blind see, the prayer is granted, the soul is saved.
VII THE GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF THE BOON CONFERRED IS A LESSON TO ALL WHO ARE BLESSED BY CHRIST. As Bartimaeus followed Jesus in the way, doubtless to testify to the pity and the power of the Redeemer, to glorify his Deliverer, and to invite others to extol and praise him; so does it become all those whose eyes Christ has opened to witness to the Divine Healer, and to say fearlessly in the presence of all men, "He hath opened mine eyes;" "Whereas I was blind, now I see.
Vers. 46-52. Blind Bartimaeus.
I THE BEHAVIOUR OF THOSE WHO ARE IN EARNEST ABOUT BEING SAVED. They will:
1. Seize every opportunity that presents itself.
2. Make the most of it, by
a. putting all their knowledge to the proof, and
b. exerting all their powers to attract attention and help.
3. Not be easily discouraged.
4. Hasten to do what Jesus commands.
II THE SPIRIT THAT OUGHT TO BE SHOWN BY CHRIST"S SERVANTS TOWARDS THOSE SEEKING SALVATION. TWO standards of conduct observed by them, viz. the dignity and glory of their Master, and the good of men. The mistake has been in overemphasizing the one or the other of these, or in divorcing them. They are really but the two sides of one thing. The glory of Christ is that of a Savior, i.e. in saving from misery and sin.
1. Christ corrects what is faulty in their attitude.
2. Employs them to further his purpose of mercy.
3. Infuses his own spirit of gentleness and love. "Be of good cheer: rise, he calleth thee," is the expression of the spirit of the gospel as it ought to be proclaimed to the world.
III CHRIST PROVING HIMSELF THE SAVIOUR OF MEN.
1. By his sympathy for distress. He heard the cry of the beggar notwithstanding the tumult, and the thoughts which agitated his mind. It was natural for him to postpone everything to attend to such a cry.
2. My inspiring others with his own spirit, and employing them to further his purpose.
3. By calling forth and exercising the principle of faith in the subjects of his mercy.
4. By freely and completely delivering from distress, pain, and sin. M.
Vers. 46-52. Blind Bartimaeus: the publicity of Christ"s miracles.
Our Lord stood face to face with men. He said with truth, "I spake openly to the world, and in secret have! said nothing." His life was spent in the glare of publicity. His miracles were not performed among chosen witnesses, who might be interested in the propagation of what was false; nor in the secrecy of some convent or retreat. They were wrought on the mountain-side, in full view of five thousand men, besides women and children; in a synagogue full of worshippers hostile to his claims; or on a public road, crowded with pilgrims going to the Passover. This not only strengthened the evidence of the supernatural, but it was a sign that the blessings signified by such wonders were not intended for a class but for a race. Therefore we must beware lest we, by act or word, should be saying to any earnest seeker, what the crowd said to Bartimaeus, "Hold thy peace!" By our coldness we may tacitly rebuke enthusiasm, and by our inconsistencies we may destroy the desires of the contrite. Christ can save us from this. He can by a word transform us, as he transformed that crowd, so that those who had just been saying, "Hold thy peace," became ready to say, "Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee." Subject In this miracle we have reminders of some characteristics of our Lord.
I THE POWER OF JESUS. Its exemplification outside Jericho was appropriate both to the beauty of the city and to its memories. Jericho was an oasis in the desert. There palms flourished and roses grew. Whether approaching it from the robber-haunted road from Jerusalem, or from the Dead Sea valley, it was significant of the Paradise Christ came to restore, which would be beautiful with the flowers of his grace and fragrant with the sweetness of his love. And here Joshua, the Jesus of the Old Testament, had proved the power that was his because the Lord was with him. The angel of the covenant which appeared to him was a precursor of the mighty Conqueror who came now. As the giant walls of the city had fallen by the simplest means, so now the darkness was conquered by light through a single word.
1. This power is manifest if you consider the condition of the sufferer. Blindness then was common, unalleviated, incurable. No wonder that it was used as an emblem of insensibility to spiritual facts and things. There is a sphere of thought, hope, and desire which many never know. Intelligent and active, they ask, "Are we blind also?" and the Lord says, "Because being blind you say, We see, therefore your sin remaineth." Because there is no sense of want there is no cry for a blessing, and because there is no such cry the light is not given. "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not." Tests may be applied to the spiritual condition as to the physical malady which represents it. An oculist is not satisfied with a casual question; he patiently and variously tests the organ, by presenting objects and asking respecting one after another, "Can you see this?" So we may test ourselves by seeing what sin is, and what God is to us.
2. This power appears greater as you contrast it with the weakness of men. Like those in the crowd, we can see the Lord and hear his voice, and as far as sympathy and prayer go may lead others to him. But after all the main issue rests between each man and Christ. If there is no spiritual contact he is left in darkness. Sometimes the most unlikely are chosen. A publican like Zacchaeus is visited in a city of priests, and a blind beggar on the road is invited to join the festal procession.
3. This power appears in the exercise of its Divine freedom. Bartimaeus was not dealt with as were those of whom he had heard. The man born blind had been told to wash in the pool of Siloam, and he of Bethsaida was led out of the town uncured. Yet no one would question the reality of the change in the other. Each could say, "Whereas I was blind, now I see." Let us not expect the same experiences, but only the same effects of Divine contact with Christ. He is willing to lead us into light, but each one of us in his own way.
II THE PITY OF JESUS. Describe the pitiable condition of Bartimaeus. It is sad enough for a rich man to be blind, but it is a terrible aggravation of the privation when he who endures it has to beg his daily bread. Nor did Bartimaeus know, as we do, God"s love in Christ. He had not the assurance that "all things work together for good." He had not seen the cross which sanctifies sadness to each believer. In his darkness he cried to the Light of the world, and not in vain. The pity of the Lord always surpassed infinitely that of those around him. The disciples rebuked the children, but Jesus said, "Suffer them to come." Simon the Pharisee condemned the sinful woman, but Jesus let her bathe his feet with her tears. Judas blamed the waste of the ointment, but the Lord said, "She hath wrought a good work on me." The crowd said, "Hold thy peace," but the Lord said, "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?
III THE PRESENCE OF JESUS. A crisis had come in the life of Bartimaeus, when a single resolve would make all the difference to his future. Jesus was "passing," and therefore was within reach; but he was "passing by," and therefore would soon be beyond reach. Such crises appear unexpected to us; but he who knows the heart sees that they are not really so. Bartimaeus had heard of the words and works of Jesus before this, and, shut up to his own thoughts, he had pondered them in the dark; so he was ready now to salute Jesus as "the Son of David." Similar preparation has been going on in your heart. A trouble has solemnized your thoughts; a tender touch at home has aroused new sensibility; a word has startled you to consideration; and now you are nearer Christ than before. "Jesus is passing by." Unseen, as by Bartimaeus, yet able to hear the believing prayer for mercy. See to it that the world"s "Hold thy peace!" does not stifle the cry for help. A.R.
Vers. 46-52. Bartimaeus.
On the roadside near Jericho sat a blind beggar, making his appeals to the pilgrims that passed up to Jerusalem to attend the feast. "A great multitude" accompanied Jesus on his leaving Jericho on his way to the holy city. The tramp of many feet and the hum of many voices caught the quick ear of the sufferer, and "he inquired what this meant." Learning it was "Jesus of Nazareth," he, having evidently some knowledge of the great Healer, cried aloud, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me!" Thus did the blind sufferer of that day formulate a cry a prayer for all sufferers and sinners in all subsequent ages; a cry which will ascend to heaven as long as suffering saddens the history of our race. The hindering, self-occupied crowd strove to silence the cry. But the very impediment to his earnestness only gave greater intensity to it, and "he cried out the more a great deal" the same pitiful words. As every earnest, fervent prayer, this entered the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, without whom not one sparrow falleth, and who again and again had laid an emphasis of attention on individual sufferers and sinners. Standing still, for a cry of need arrests him, he silenced their rude, unfriendly words by, "Call ye him." Then the same selfish spirit veers round to the favourite, and they cheer him and bid him rise. Casting aside his loosely flowing garment, he sprang to his feet and came to Jesus." Brief and beautiful is the colloquy, in its sweet and simple haste. "What wilt thou?" "My sight." "Go... thy faith" hath brought it thee. Straightway he receives his sight, and follows in the way. Brief as this narrative is, it holds much teaching.
I ON THE TRUE METHOD OF PRAYER.
II OH THE SPIRIT OF HIM TO WHOM PRAYER IS ADDRESSED. Prayer springs from a sense of need, and it must express the sincere desire of him who prays. Words thrown into the form of a petition do not of themselves constitute prayer; without the heart of him who utters them they are dead, being alone. He who asks with his lips only cannot expect him in hear who looketh on the heart. Prayer must needs be offered to One who it is believed is able to answer. Jesus laid down the clear and definite rule in his demand," Believe ye that I am able to do this?" "The prayer of faith" is the true prayer, though the patient Lord will "forgive" even the "unbelief" of timidity. Nevertheless, the Lord declares the immediate cause of the answering cure in this case: "Thy faith hath made thee whole." Prayer must be prepared to push its way through surrounding discouragements and opposition; nor will it exceed propriety if it the more fervently plead by how much it is hindered and impeded. Prayer must, moreover, have respect to proper objects. Here one imperfectness in the life called forth the one petition when the "What wilt thou that I should do?" opened wide the permission to ask many things. Surely to him who came to redeem life, it was a perfectly right subject of petition: "That I may receive my sight." Thus we learn that for the freeing of the life from its incumbent evils, and for whatever will lead that life on to perfectness, we may ask, and ask in the full assurance of faith, in the readiness and ability of the Lord of life to hear and to answer. Happy the man who has learned thus to pray. G.
Vers. 46-52. Blind Bartimaeus.
Viewed from the side of Christ, the incident may teach
I THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF THE BLIND IS THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. If the physical boon be great, let it express for us the far greater spiritual boon. Ignorance is painfully felt by large numbers. Few who have not received a good education but bitterly feel the lack at some period or other of their life. In spreading knowledge freely we follow the example of Christ.
II THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY IS PECULIARLY TO THE LOWLY AND THE MEAN. It is easier to be kind to our inferiors than to avoid jealousy among our equals. The gifts that bless both giver and receiver the most are worth much, though they cost little. From the side of Bartimaeus we may reflect
III LONG SITTING IN DARKNESS MAY PREPARE FOR THE WELCOMING OF THE LIGHT. Yet in the darkness the lamp of hope may be kept burning, as did Bartimaeus. "In our griefs we find reliefs." As every night gives place to morning, so the very constitution of nature prophesies the deliverance of mankind and of the individual. The memories of the dark hours of life mingle with attained joys. Life would not have its full significance without these mingled threads in the texture.
IV PERSEVERANCE IS EVER REWARDED. Faith proves itself by constancy, and is in fact the perseverance of the whole man towards his hope, the realization of his life in God. In the change of events, things will change for the better to him who endures. "All things come round to him who waits." "Yet a little while, and he who is on the way shall come." The tarrying of God is in our imagination. To gain one sight, to see God and the world in God, this compensates for an age of waiting and watching, suffering and toil of the spirit. J.
Vers. 46-52. Parallel passages: Mat_20:29-34 Luk 18:35-43The cure of two blind men at Jericho.
I BLIND BARTIMAEUS.
1. His condition was blind; he was deprived of that most valuable sense of sight. He was a stranger to the beauties of nature. "The light is sweet, and a plant thing it is for the eyes to see the sun;" but that sun, that light, those beauties, those bright colors of sky or earth or sea; those lovely forms that appear in the heaven above, the earth beneath, and the waters round the earth all, all were to him a blank. We know nothing of this blind man"s family or friends, but from the patronymic, "Son of Timaeus," we may infer that his father or family had been of some note; but the former had gone the way of all the earth and the latter had fallen into decay. That morning, however, whether by relative or friend or neighbourly hand, he was led forth to his accustomed seat by the Wayside. He could hear the sound of the voices round him, but he could not see the persons who spoke; he could feel them if they came in contact with him, but could not behold them. Of all that passed by that way he could only judge by the voice or sound. The expression of their countenance, their form or figure, their smiles or tears, their bright eyes or sad looks, their sweet or sullen, were to him unknown and by him unseen. Our Lord, having continued his journey through Peraea, crossed the Jordan opposite Jericho, and arrived at that once famous city, upwards of five or six miles to the west of the river, and miles in a direct line eastward of Jerusalem. This ancient place, round which so many associations gather such as its conquest by Joshua, its rebuilding by Hiel the Bethelite in the reign of Ahab, notwithstanding the curse; its mention in the history of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, its close connection at an early period with our Lord"s own ancestry was celebrated for its palms and balsams. Its fertilizing spring contributed to its wealth and importance. It was beautified by Herod the Great; subsequently destroyed, but rebuilt by Archelaus; celebrated by the historian Josephus as a populous and prosperous place in his day. But its glory long ago passed away. It is now a miserable hamlet called Riha. At the time of our Lord"s visit, however, it was a flourishing town, and entitled to its ancient designation of the "city of palm trees," or city of fragrance," as the name derived from the verb ruach imports. Fragrant flowers and aromatic shrubs perfumed the air; the scenery around was fresh and lovely; while every prospect was pleasing, and "man alone was vile." On the morning of the day that our Lord arrived at Jericho the gardens round the town bloomed in beauty, as usual, and charmed the eye of the beholder; the feathery palm lifted high its head in air or waved in the morning breeze; the Jordan valley stretched away into the distance. It was springtime, moreover, for multitudes were on their way to the great spring festival of the Passover at Jerusalem, and spring had clothed the landscape with vernal beauties. Over all the loveliness of earth was spread the clear blue of a Judaean sky, while down on all the glorious sun was shedding his bright beams, lighting up the whole with brilliancy and beauty. But what were all these beautiful sights and bright scenes to the blind Bartimaeus? As far as he was concerned, they might as well have been dark and dismal, blank and black, like a moonless, starless night, with its darkness thick as in the land of Egypt, even "darkness that might be felt.
2. His circumstances. He was poor. Incapable of any worldly calling, he was a dependant on the charity of others; he was reduced to solicit alms of the passing traveler. Thus he was not only blind, but a beggar. Troubles love a train: one trouble seldom comes alone. The blindness of Bartimaeus was aggravated by his poverty, and his poverty had no relief nor remedy but begging. His blindness had been the visitation of God; his poverty and beggary were misfortunes consequent thereon. For both he was to be pitied, for neither to be blamed. There was no special sin in his blindness, and therefore none in his begging. What a complication of misery had fallen to this poor man"s lot in life! One almost fancies he sees Bartimaeus as he sat that day by the wayside, with face pale, his head bare, perhaps bald from age; while those placid features as the features of the blind always are and those sightless eyes might well move the hardest heart to pity. The blind man hears the footsteps of travelers going on their way; he hears the earnest conversation of passers-by, eagerly bent on business or pleasure. Many a time the proud priest has gone that way, but ever passed by on the other side; or the haughty Levite has only cast a glance of curiosity at the blind man; sanctimonious Pharisees, with broad phylacteries, have looked with scorn on the poor mendicant. Many a time the cheerful voices of men and women have sounded in his ears, and many a time he has listened to the sound of childhood"s fun and frolic. Day by day, as such sounds were repeated in his hearing and close at hand, all must have seemed to him lively, all cheerful, and all happy save himself, the poor blind beggar, doomed to melancholy darkness. This day, however, he hears the rush of many feet, the tread as of a numerous crowd, the shouts as of a mighty multitude. He wonders what the sound of those many footsteps means, what the swell of those voices can be. He listens till the crowd comes nearer, and he hears them speak in praise, a few, perhaps, in blame, of the Prophet of Nazareth.
3. The corresponding state of the unconverted. Many in the state of their soul resemble that poor blind beggar. The Scriptures speak of blind people that have eyes have eyes, but see not;" their understanding is darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart. Satan, the prince of darkness, blinds the minds of them that believe not. His followers are of the night and of darkness, and at last, if they follow him to the end, they shall be east into outer darkness. By nature men are spiritually blind. They are face to face with great realities God and heaven and eternity but they do not see them. They are on the brink of a great precipice, they are close to great peril, but they do not see it. Like a blind man on the edge of a frightful abyss, and yet seemingly secure just because he is blind to the danger. They are side by side with great truths, but, not seeing them, they deny their existence, as if a blind man denied the existence of mountains and rivers, the great sea and the bright sun, because he does not see them. There are great beauties just beside them beauties of holiness, of grace, of glory, of Christ, and God; but they are as blind to spiritual beauties as a blind man to all the multiform beauties of this lovely world a world so lovely notwithstanding the blight of sin. The spiritually blind see no comeliness in Christ that they should desire him, no glory in the gospel that they should embrace it, no preciousness in salvation that they should seek it, no beauty in holiness that they should practice it. Neither do they see any terror in the threatenings of God, nor much, if any, sinfulness in sin; nothing to attract in the promises of the gospel, and nothing to terrify in the curses of a broken Law. Sinner, you are blind, though you know it not! The sinner is poor as well as blind. He has no peace in this world, no prospect for the next; he has no real satisfaction on earth, and no sure hope of heaven. He has no shelter from the storm of Divine wrath, and no refuge in the day of danger. He has neither part nor lot with the people of God, no interest in the covenant of promise, no title to the heavenly inheritance, and no meetness for it. He is without the only blood that can cleanse from sin, the only righteousness that can justify a sinner, the only Spirit that can sanctify the soul. In a word, he is without Christ, and without God, and without hope. This surely is poverty spiritual poverty, the deepest and the worst. This is the sad state of all unregenerate persons. They are, in the words of Scripture, wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." They are blind in soul as Bartimaeus in body, poor in spiritual things as he was in temporal. And yet to such the advice is addressed, "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve,
II THE APPLICATION OF BARTIMAEUS TO JESUS.
1. His inquiry. The first step here was inquiry. Hearing the noise of the oncoming crowd and the voices of the multitude passing by, he asked what it meant, and the answer returned to his inquiry was "that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." This was good news for the poor blind beggar. Bartimaeus had no doubt heard of Jesus, of his works of wonder and miracles of mercy. Some report may, nay, must, have reached him about the lepers cleansed, the demoniacs cured, the sick restored to health, the deaf whose ears were opened, the dumb whose tongues were loosed, even the dead raised to life, and, what came more closely home to himself, the blind whose eyes were opened. Bartimaeus might, most probably did, hear all this; but how was he to reach the Prophet? Where could he find him? How could he, a poor, blind beggar, make such a long and weary way? Unless Jesus came into the neighborhood of Jericho, he could not expect to be blessed and benefited. Now, however, what he never expected has come to pass. Jesus is at his side he is passing by; and now Bartimaeus feels that it is his opportunity, a most precious opportunity, far too precious to be lost. When his condition had rendered it impossible for him to go to the Savior, the Savior has come to him. Instantly and energetically he avails himself of this blessed opportunity. Now or never, he thinks with himself. He does not lose a moment; he cannot afford it, for he knows not but that the chance may be lost for ever. Bartimaeus bethinks himself of all this, reasoning thus: He is come to me; I could not go to him; and it is do or die now. If I lose this opportunity I may never have another. The tide will soon ebb; I must take it at the flow. The steamer will soon start; I must enter it or it will go without me. The bell is ringing and the train will soon be off; if I do not take my place at once I am left behind, and perhaps for ever. Somehow thus reasoned the poor, blind beggar if we may be permitted to translate his words, or rather express his thoughts, in modern parlance.
2. His earnest appeal. And so "he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me." Previous occurrences had prepared for this: Christ was passing by that way; Bartimaeus was informed of his approach; he felt his need, and the Friend of sinners was near. Thus the Various stages were inquiry, information, felt necessity, and the Savior"s presence. His appeal was earnest as well as instant. He cried out, and it was a strong and loud cry. Many things might have prevented his appeal, but they did not; many impediments lay in the way, but he did not allow them to keep him back. The crowd did not deter him, for he was in earnest, and cared not what the crowd either said or thought. The fact of so many strangers being round him did not stop him, for their presence was nothing to him, and he was too anxious for relief to feel false shame. The circumstance of his poverty did not prevent him; on the contrary, it prompted him all the more. True, he had no introduction to the Prophet from Galilee no one to make known his situation or explain his unhappy circumstances, and bespeak the Savior"s favor on his behalf. Still he hoped his earnest appeal would find an echo in the bosom of the illustrious Stranger. He had no merit, he knew, to recommend him, and no particular claim on that Stranger"s clemency; yet he was resolved to try whether his misfortune might not awaken his sympathy.
3. A lesson for ourselves. Jesus passeth by; he is near to us, and his presence is close at hand. In this sense he passeth by every time a sabbath dawns upon us, and every time we see the light of the sabbath sun? He passeth by, that is, is present, every time we enter the sanctuary and assemble ourselves with the people of God. He passeth by, and we are apprised of his presence, every time we are privileged to listen to a gospel sermon. He passeth by us every time we read his Word, or sing his praise, or call on God"s name in prayer. He passeth by us every time we partake of the sacrament of the Supper, and he maketh himself known to us in the breaking of bread. Oh, how often on such occasions has "our heart burned within us as he talked to us by the way, and opened to us the Scriptures"! He passeth by us every time his Holy Spirit strives with us or exercises his gracious influences upon us. He passeth by and makes us feel his presence times and ways past specifying or reckoning. He assures us of this; for has he not said, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me"? Jesus has come near and close to each of us. He assumed our nature and became our Kinsman. He saw us in our blood, cast out into the open field on the day in which we were born; he pitied us and passed us by, and his time was a time of love. He has come to us, or we should never have gone to him; he has sought us, or we should never have sought him. He has passed us by and made his mercy known to us. He has made good his word, "I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry." Nor is it a mere hasty and passing visit he pays us. He has stood at the door of our heart until his head has become wet with dew and his locks with the drops of the night. But he will not stand always. He passeth by; and while we understand this statement of his presence, and of that presence manifested to our souls, of his gracious presence in his ordinances, and of his Holy Spirit stirring in our hearts, yet we must not make the fatal mistake of supposing that this will last always. In the very nature of things it cannot continue. Life itself is uncertain, and time is short. Besides, the day of grace will not always tarry; like the Savior himself, it passeth by. Jesus never visited Jericho again, nor did he ever pass by that way again. So with ourselves. He has visited us often; who can say when or which shall be his last visit? Oh, then, for such earnestness and eagerness as Bartimaeus showed, on the part of all that hear the gospel! Jesus has passed near us many a time, and yet some of us, up to the present moment, care for none of these things. We have never cried for help as we ought, or sued for mercy as we should; we have never eagerly sought his grace, or earnestly supplicated forgiveness. We have been lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot. If so, let us beware lest, like the Laodiceans, we are spued out of his mouth. We may have been at ease in Zion, and like wine settled on the lees, forgetful of the woes pronounced on such. How little of the earnestness of this blind beggar do we show in the things of God! And yet, if like him we felt our need, we could not but be earnest and energetic. The hungry man will beg for bread; the thirsty man will repair to the clear cool spring; the starving babe, by the very instinct of its nature, will cry for nurture; even the dumb animals have ways of making known their wants and of seeking a supply: and shall we be so indifferent to spiritual necessities and eternal interests?
4. Characteristic of discipleship. Bartimaeus exhibited several characteristics of true discipleship characteristics Which all should seek to possess. He was prompt. There is need for promptness, for God"s long-suffering has its limits. He may wait long, but will not wait always. He passeth by, vouchsafing his presence for a time, but withdrawing it when he sees fit so to do. He was humble, for his plea was for mercy: "Have mercy on me." He was conscious of the entire absence of all merit. He came at once, and came as he was in his blindness, in his poverty, and in his beggary. So should it be with ourselves. We must come according to the spirit of the simple lines"Just as I am without one plea But that thy blood was shed for me, And that thou bidd"st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come! "Just as I am poor, wretched, blind Sight, riches, healing of the mind, Yea, all I need, in thee to find, O Lamb of God, I come!
His faith was remarkable; he was fully abreast of his times in theological knowledge; he was fairly ahead of the crowd in his knowledge of the Savior. They informed him that it was Jesus of Nazareth that was passing by. They represented him correctly, as far as they went; but their representation was sadly imperfect and shamefully incomplete. They regarded him as a prophet, but a prophet of a despised place and of a despised province. His native town and native province were both of little, or rather of ill repute. "Can any good thing," asked Nathanael, "come out of Nazareth?" The Pharisees said scornfully to Nicodemus, "Search and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." Bartimaeus knew better. Blind as he was, and so shut out from books as the source of knowledge; poor as he was, and so deprived of the means of acquiring information, he had made himself in some way or by some means acquainted with the descent and dignity of Messiah. Hence he accosted him, not as Jesus of Nazareth, but addressed him, "Jesus, thou Son of David." In any case the Spirit of God had been his instructor. Thus, too, we must come to Jesus with a proper apprehension of his character and claims, of his mercy and his might, as well as of our own worthlessness and helplessness. Feeling ourselves sinners, our individual inquiry must be, "What must I do to be saved?" Accepting the answer furnished by God"s Word, we must "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we shall be saved." Feeling ourselves lost, we are encouraged by the Savior"s own gracious assurance, that He "came to seek and save that which was lost." Feeling ourselves deep down in the pit of sin, in this low and lost condition, we are cheered by the declaration that his errand into our world was to save sinners, even the chief. However blind the eyes, Christ can open them; however hard the heart, he can soften it; however dark the stain of our sin, his blood can wash it out; however desperate our case, his grace can meet it; however sorrowful and forlorn our spirits, he can soothe and comfort them. His perseverance was also remarkable. His ardor was not to be repressed, his earnestness was not to be checked. Having found the long-expected Deliverer, he was determined not to be parted from him; having attained a conviction a rapidly growing and speedily maturing conviction that he was now within reach of One who could convert the soul as well as cure the body, he continued to cry to him, and ceased not till his cry was heard and answered. The crowd wished to impose silence on him, yet he persevered; the multitude rebuked him, that he should hold his peace, yet he "cried the more," says St. Matthew; "the more a great deal," says St. Mark; "so much the more," says St. Luke. They protested against his appeal, and many not one, or two, or three, but many of them charged him to hold his peace. His outcry appeared to them, no doubt, so loud, so boisterous, so rude, that they did their best to suppress it; but he refused to desist. Some thought him too contemptible to deserve notice, or to delay the procession; felt or feigned concern for the Master, as have too many objects of others, perhaps, solicitude on his spirit, and too many and too heavy burdens on his shoulders already; but in spite of all these obstacles, and in face of all this opposition, Bartimaeus persisted, and in the end succeeded. Such was this poor beggar this brave, blind man! When sinners set about seeking God, they may expect similar obstruction, and rebukes equally heartless and cruel. Satan will be sure to rouse opposition from some quarter. The world will flatter them or force them to desist; friends will speak words of pity or persuade them to abandon their self-imposed task; formalists may shake the head and speak of fanaticism, enthusiasm, or unwisdom. But earnest souls, like Bartimaeus, will not, must not, give up or give over. Once they have put their hand to the plough, they may not turn back; once they have set their face Zionward, they must not turn away or turn aside. The language of the twenty-seventh Psalm will be on their lips, and acted out in their life, as the psalmist says, "Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after .... Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me." Thus waiting on the Lord, they shall be enabled to hold on their way; waiting on the Lord, they shall be strengthened; waiting on the Lord, they shall experience that merciful support, of which mention is interjected six and twenty times in the psalm which records Israel"s trials and triumphs his mercy endureth for ever.
III THE SUCCESS WHICH CROWNED THE APPLICATION.
1. Jesus stood still. " So says St. Matthew, so says St. Mark, so says St. Luke; all three evangelists agree in recording this fact. He was on his last journey to Jerusalem; he was hurrying on to drink and drain the cup of bitterness, and be baptized with the baptism of blood; he was hastening forward with eager steps to bear his people"s sins in his own body on the tree, to satisfy Divine justice by the sacrifice of himself, to vindicate God"s truth, express God"s love, and magnify God"s Law, to maintain the glory of the Divine attributes, and secure the salvation of countless human souls. Never was there a journey so important, never was errand so deeply interesting, and never was there another embassy involving such weighty consequences and vast concernments. Heaven and earth and hell were all affected by that journey; the glory of God was connected with it; and the redemption of man depended on it. And yet, notwithstanding all the urgencies of that journey, and all the ardor, even bordering on impatience, with which our Lord was speeding forward on that journey, the cry of distress arrested him; the prayer of a blind beggar stopped him! And so it is still, for the prayer of the penitent has a potency that Divine mercy never resists, and will not repel. The waves of the sea stood still, and the waters of the river stood still, in the interests of God"s people, and in order that they might pass over; the sun and moon stood still at the cry of Joshua, and that the hosts of Israel might prolong their victory; the shadow stood still, or rather went back, on the dial-plate of time at the prayers of good King Hezekiah, and to assure him of an addition of fifteen years to his limit of life. But what are the waters of the sea, or the luminaries of the sky, or the element of time to him who furrowed the channel for the one and fixed the place of the other, and who himself fills all space with his presence and all time with his fullness? And yet he stood still when that crisis, the greatest in all this world"s history, was fast approaching for Messiah to be cut off, sin to be made an end of, and everlasting righteousness brought in; and all this in answer to Bartimaeus"s earnest entreaties, and to restore sight to his blind eyes and impart life to his dead soul.
2. What he did on standing still. We have three accounts of this also, but, while identical in the main, they exhibit the same thing under different aspects. "He called" is the statement of St. Matthew; "he commanded him to be called" is the version of St. Mark; "he commanded him to be brought" in the addition of St. Luke. In the first we have the sovereignty of God, who calls us by his grace calm us out of darkness into marvellous light. In the second we have the ministry of man. "The Lord gave the Word," we read: "great was the company of those that published it." In the third we have the agency of the Holy Spirit. God, of his sovereign grace and mere good pleasure, calls us calls us, as St. Peter assures us, "unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus;" and so, as stated in other Scriptures, it is a "high calling," a "holy calling," and a "heavenly calling." To men, as his ambassadors, is committed the ministry of reconciliation; they are employed to explain the Divine call, to enforce it and repeat it. The Holy Spirit"s agency must accompany the minister"s message, to bring it home in power and demonstration and assurance, convincing of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Thus we are made willing in the day of his power; and thus at his own command we are brought unto him. The lessons of his Word, the dispensations of his providence, the ordinances of religion, the movements of his Holy Spirit on our hearts, are all employed in drawing us to Christ for the salvation of our souls.
3. A strange question. We almost see the blind man rise in haste at the word of command, which is now repeated to him by the crowd, with the encouraging "Be of good comfort," and, in obedience to the Savior"s call, rush forward, "casting aside his garment," in his eager, earnest haste. We almost hear the Savior answer the unspoken thought of the blind man"s heart, as he said unto him, "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?" There was little need for such an inquiry, one would think, on the part of our Lord. There was not one in all that crowd that could not guess, and guess correctly, the answer; the Savior knew the thought that was uppermost in the blind man"s heart, for he knew what was in man. Why, then, does he ask the question? Just in order to give him an opportunity of presenting his petition and making known his wants in his own words.
(1) So in our own case we come to Jesus by his command and gracious invitation; that command is expressed in many forms, such as "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden;" "Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." His invitations are multiplied.
(2) In coming we must lay aside every weight, and the sin that would most easily beset us, just as Bartimseus cast aside his outer garment, to be free from every entanglement that might retard or altogether prevent our reaching him. The young ruler, as we have seen, came to Jesus; he longed for Jesus, and Jesus esteemed him; he panted for life eternal, but could not bring himself to part with the things of this present life; he did not cast aside his garment.
(3) We are to come with prayer. Once the gracious desire is formed in our heart by the Spirit of grace, it will soon shape itself in prayer, for the spirit of grace is also the spirit of supplication. Though he knows our wants better than we ourselves, and before we ask him, and even our ignorance in asking; yet he will hays us express them in prayer, so that "Behold, he prayeth!" indicates the first outgoing of spiritual life. God grants to our feeblest petitions what he will not give without them. Prayer fits us for receiving the blessing; it puts us into the proper position that of humble dependence; it exalts the Giver without in any way degrading the receiver; it brings us into conformity with God"s own plan. Fixed, as the alternation of day and night, or as the succession of the seasons, or as the order of the universe itself, is God"s purpose that we must ask in order to receive, seek in order to find, and knock in order that it may be opened. When our necessity is greatest, let us go to him by prayer, and he will supply it; when the trial is sorest, let us go to him in prayer, and he will alleviate it or entirely remove it; when the burden is heaviest, let us go to him in prayer, and he will lift it entirely off our shoulders or at least enable us to bear it.
(4) Another reason for the question was to suggest the large liberality and great generosity of the Savior; there is a glorious fullness in the inquiry, "What wilt thou?" There is a gracious freeness in it at the same time. There is a royal ring in the question; there is a kingly munificence. It reminds us of, though it surpasses, both in reality and richness, the question of King Ahasuerus to his queen, "What is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed." So to Bartimaeus the Savior said, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?" and it shall be done; you have only to make your choice; you have only to mention what you want. I do not limit you; if straitened, it is in and through yourself. So to the suppliant still Christ says, "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The wealth of worlds is mine; the power of omnipotence is mine; the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are mine; ask, and you shall receive what you want, as much as you want, yea, all you want, provided it be really expedient for you, conducive to the Divine glory, and consistent with the welfare of your fellow-man.
4. The blind mans direct reply. Bartimaeus, we are sure from all the known circumstances of the case, wanted many things better clothing, more wholesome food, a more comfortable place of abode, more of the necessaries of life in general; some even of its simple comforts would not be likely to spoil this poor mendicant, who had suffered so long from privation, pining in poverty, and pinched with want. Bartimaeus refers to none of these things, or such things as these; he comes directly to the point; he names at once the thing which he needs most; he mentions the one thing needful for the relief of his direst necessity. "Lord," he said, "that I might receive my sight." In like manner, whether we engage in public supplication, or family worship, or private devotions, we should have before our mind our most urgent necessities, rightly discriminate them, really feel them, and with pointed earnestness and plain directness of speech express them; we should have some felt want, some real necessity, an actual petition to prevent or hearty thanksgiving to render.
5. The cure. It was immediate: "immediately he received his sight." It was a wonderful change for this poor, blind man; it was a new and blessed experience; it was like a transference into a new and beautiful world; in fact, we cannot realize, and words fail to express it. Equally new, and gracious, and wonderful, and blessed is the translation out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God, which takes place in regeneration, when the eyes of the understanding are opened and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God flashes in upon the soul.
6. The means employed. The gentle touch of Jesus" hand was the outward instrumentality. Lovingly, tenderly, he passed his hand over the sightless eyeballs. What a thrilling touch that was! What condescension withal! How it helped the sufferer to hope for the best, and to have faith in the Savior"s power! The inward means was faith: "Thy faith hath saved thee." Nor is it said, "Thy promptness hath saved thee," though his promptness was laudable; nor "Thy humility," though that was most becoming; nor "Thy perseverance," though that was commendable; nor "Thy Scriptural knowledge in relation to the Messianic hopes of the nation," though that was of a superior kind; but "Thy faith." Faith and salvation go hand in hand together; God has joined them; let not man separate them: God has wed them, and let not man divorce them.
7. How faith saves. It saves, not by any merit in itself, not by any virtue of its own; it saves by bringing us into contact with Christ. It is the instrument that extracts virtue from the grace of Christ; it is the link of gold that unites with and binds us to Christ; it is the arm that puts on the robe of Christ"s righteousness, and that is the robe of salvation; it is the hand stretched out to receive the gifts that grace bestows. "He that believeth shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be damned.
IV HOW BARTIMAEUS PROVED HIS GRATITUDE.
1. He followed Christ. His faith, as usual, wrought by love; and love keeps near, and delights in, the presence of the beloved object. So with all who love the Lord; they follow him. Soon as the eyes are enlightened to see his beauty and his excellence, we follow him; soon as the heart begins to burn within us by his teaching, we follow him; if true disciples, we follow him; if sheep of the Good Shepherd, we follow him. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." In Old Testament as well as in New Testament times, it was so with all who loved the Lord. Thus it is recorded to the honor, and redounded to the salvation, of Caleb and Joshua that they" wholly followed the Lord." The psalmist speaks his personal experience in the words, "My soul followeth hard after thee." The children of God in both Testaments followed the Lord as monuments of his mercy, as trophies of his grace, as living witnesses of the power of his love, and as witness-bearers to his truth. Bartimaeus followed him "in the way." We read of the Israelites, in their journeyings, being on one occasion sorely "discouraged because of the way." It may be so with ourselves, yet we must follow the Savior whithersoever he leads; whether it be up the hill of difficulty, or down the hill into the valley of humiliation; whether it be a way of toil and trial, of danger and distress, or in green pastures and by still waters; taking up our cross, we shall, by his gracious help, follow him; through evil report and good report we shall follow him. Even when his way, as often, is in the sea, and his path in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known, we will follow him. But how do we make sure that it is the way the right way? He has himself marked out the way in his Word, and said to us, "This is the way, walk ye in it;" his providence has erected signposts along the way, so that a "wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein" or wander therefrom; his Spirit guides us in the way and comforts us by the way. Thus instructed in his Word, led by his providence, and guided by his Spirit, we shall follow him in the way which, rough though it be at times, and painful, and even distressing, leads in the end to glory, honor, and immortality.
2. He glorified God. "Glorifying God," says St. Luke. So, too, shall we. We have always admired that opening statement in one of the Westminster standards, which says, "Man"s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever;" it contains at once the whole duty of man, and the chief blessedness of man. We glorify God by deep and heartfelt gratitude; we glorify him when we praise his name and defend his cause; we glorify him by the devotedness of our life and our consecration to his service. Thus by the homage of the heart, by the fruit of the lips, and by the sinlessness and faithfulness of the life, we glorify him. We have good cause to glorify God for his unspeakable gift the Son of his love and our beloved Savior. We glorify God for raising up "a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;" for the perfection of his person, the purity of his life, the suitability of his offices, the efficacy of his death, the prevalence of his intercession; for "his agony and bloody sweat, for his cross and passion, for his precious death and burial, for his glorious resurrection and ascension, and for the coming of the Holy Ghost;" for all he has done for us, for all he is doing, and for all he has promised to do.
3. The happy influence exerted on others. "All the people," says St. Luke, "when they saw it, gave praise unto God." There is a holy contagiousness in this work. When one gets good for his own soul, he cannot keep it to himself, he cannot hide it; the gratitude is so deep, the joy is so great, that he must declare it aloud and to all around, just as the psalmist, saying"All that fear God, come, hear; I"ll tell What he did for my soul. Or again"God will I bless all times; his praise My mouth shall still express. Extol the Lord with me, let us Exalt his name together.
4. Conclusion. We would sum up our study of the case of this poor, blind beggar in the now somewhat trite, but still touching and tender verses of a poet lately departed"Blind Bartimaeus at the gates Of Jericho in darkness waits; He hears the crowd; he hears a breath Say, "It is Christ of Nazareth!" And calls, in tones of agony, Ihsou elehson me The thronging multitudes increase; "Blind Bartimaeus, hold thy peace!" But still, above the noisy crowd, The beggar"s cry is shrill and loud; Until they say, "He calleth thee! Yarsei egeirai fwnei se Then saith the Christ, as silent stands The crowd, "What wilt thou at my hands?" And he replies, "Oh, give me light! Rabbi, restore the blind man"s sight! And Jesus answers, Upage H pistiv sou seswke se "Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see, In darkness and in misery, Recall those mighty voices three, Ihsou elehson me Yarsei egeirai upage H pistiv sou seswke se We may here add, in a very few words, the common solution of two seeming discrepancies of the evangelists" narrative: viz. our Lord cured two blind men together on this occasion; but Bartimaeus was better known, either previously, as already hinted, in reference to the patronymic, or subsequently as a "monument of the Lord"s miracle;" while in reference to the place or time of cure, one of the two had made his application to our Lord as he approached or entered Jericho, yet was not cured at that time, but in company with the second, as our Lord left the city. J.J.G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v46 Blind Bartimeus.
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Blind Bartimeus.
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Observations on the narrative of blind Bartimeus
I. Observe how singularly is the providential goodness of God displayed in the direction of the events leading to this interview. The blind man takes his place by the roadside, not to meet with Jesus or anyone else whom might restore his sight, but merely to procure from the uncertain compassion of travellers a small pittance that should serve to prolong his weary existence. Just at this juncture Jesus, having left Jericho on His way to Jerusalem, passes that way. Many travellers came and returned, but he knew them not. In this instance the rush of a multitude attracts his notice. That God who has denied him the use of sight can convey His blessings through another organ. It is affecting to think on what a trifle appear to hinge the most important relations and destinies of our existence.
II. The notice bartimeus takes of the information conveyed to him. It is with him no idle speculation. He did not fix on mere circumstantials, or on a topic of interest to others; he contemplated the matter in direct and prompt reference to his own case. Go at once to Christ, and cry so as to be heard through the crowd. The petition of Bartimeus deserves notice not less for the terms in which it is expressed than for the urgency with which it is preferred-Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. It contains a full and prompt confession of Christ in that character, in which of all others He demanded the recognition of mankind, and of that age and nation in particular, and in which He was most obnoxious to the malice of His enemies. Nor is this testimony to Christ as the Son of David less valuable as an indication of great faith in the covenant mercies of God as set forth in prophecy (Isa_55:3; Psa_72:12).
III. The cold and chilling repulse which he met with, not from Jesus but from the bystanders, perhaps even the disciples, for they had not yet learnt much of the spirit of the Master. Some undervalue accessions to the kingdom of Christ from the ranks of the poor. Indifference and suspicion often hinder religious inquiry.
IV. The conduct of bartimeus. When thwarted in your approach to the Saviour how has it operated? it has grieved you; but has it driven you back? Like the tide pent up, which bursting every barrier, rushes with accumulated force, Bartimeus is prompted by this ungracious repulse to cry so much the more. Go thou and do likewise.
V. Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought. Of what importance is it, in the career of the great mass of individuals, when they move along or when they stop? There are men whose movements are eyed with anxious care. The steps of a Caesar, an Alexander, or a Napoleon, have borne hope or dread with them; the incidental halting of such characters has been identified with the fate of a city or a province. It is only of such as preach the gospel of peace that we can say, How beautiful are their feet upon the mountains. The cry of one poor man was of sufficient importance to arrest Christ in His progress.
VI. The commands are obeyed with alacrity.
VII. The same promptitude and determination which bartimeus before manifested guides him in this new aspect of affairs. His tattered cloak is cast away as a hindrance. He has an all-absorbing object before him. The sinner rejects as idle encumbrances his self-righteousness and self-indulgence, which have clung to him as his second self, and rushes alone into the arms of a compassionate Saviour.
VIII. The scene now increases in interest. The man is healed in the way of inquiry, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? This is the way disconsolate sinners are encouraged to tell their own tale.
IX. What reply is made to this inquiry? Lord, that I might receive my sight. He came by the shortest step to the matter in hand; in prayer we should have a specific object in view.
X. How it succeeded in the case before us? Go thy way. (A. G. Fuller.)
Sightless sinners
I. We look closely at Bartimeus on this occasion. It is true that Jesus is the centre of the picture, as He always is. But this miracle is peculiar in that the details of it am more than usually brilliant as an illustration of simple human nature in the one who receives the advantage of it.
1. The state of this poor creature is given at a stroke of the pen. It would be difficult to crowd more biography into one verse than we find in here. He was sightless. He had come to be called by that name, Blind Bartimeus. He was a pauper. Begging was his business. He was a professional mendicant. We do not look upon him as one who had got behind-hand for a little, and so was out on the street for a day or two, until he could get into employment. He sat by the highway side begging. He was helpless. There is no evidence that he had any friends who cared for him; they would have made themselves conspicuous after his cure, if there had been many of them. He was hopeless. It was impossible for him to do anything; he could not see to learn a trade. He was unpopular. Anybody had a right to snub him, the moment he said a word (see Luk_18:39). He was uneasy, and fiercely on the alert to better his condition.
2. Now notice his action. Here we need the verse which has just been quoted from Lukes Gospel, for a link between the two apparently disjointed verses of Marks (see Mar_10:47). The way in which this man heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth is shown there; the multitude told him. Bartimeus sought information. He was not too proud to acknowledge he did not know. Does anyone suppose this poor beggar got offended because someone insisted that he was sightless? If a neighbour had showed himself a little friendly, and proposed to lead him up for a cure, would Bartimeus simply spite him for being impertinent about other peoples concerns? Then, next, this blind man began to ask for help (see Luk_18:38-39). His request was singularly comprehensive and intelligent. His cry was personal and direct: have mercy on me. He wastes no time in graceful opening or becoming close; what he wanted he tells. His prayer was courageous and importunate (see Mar_10:48). Bartimeus then rose, and came to Jesus. It would have been the height of folly for him to say to himself, If it is the will of this rabbi to open my eyes, he can do it from a distance just as well as if I were there. Then, also, this blind man put away the hindrance which it was likely would delay him in going for his cure (Mar_10:50). A simple garment, no doubt, but almost indispensable to him. Still, if it interfered with the restoration of his eyesight, it could well be spared.
3. Notice, in the next place, Bartimeuss full surrender (see Mar_10:51). Two things are to be noted in this remarkable speech. We shall not understand either of them unless we keep in mind the most singular question which Jesus puts to the man, the moment he comes within hearing. It was not because He did not know this beggars condition, that our Lord asked him so abruptly what he would have Him to do. It must have been because He desired to fasten his faith upon one chief object of supreme desire. There was no end to the needs of Bartimeus: he wanted food, friends, clothing, home, everything that anybody demands in order to make a mendicant a man. But, more than all besides, he wanted eyesight; and he found that out when he went in upon his own soul to make inquiry. This explains his reply. He speaks with a declaration, Lord. This address, most inadequately Tendered here in Marks Gospel, means far more than mere respect. The word in Luke is different from this; here it is actually the same as that Mary Magdalene uses when she discovers that one she thought was the gardener is Jesus: Rabboni! There is concentrated in just a single word, a whole burst of generous and affectionate feeling: My Master! Faith, reverence, love unspeakable, adoring wonder, were in that word. He speaks with an ellipsis. As, before, we found more in his utterance than we expected, so now we find less. Bartimeus does not reply directly to our Lords question. He cannot: how could he know what a miracle worker should do? All he knew was what he himself wanted to be done. So his answer would read in full: I do not understand what Thou writ do, nor even what I would have thee to do-oh, do anything, anything-that I might receive my sight!
4. Once more, notice Bartimeuss cure (Mar_10:52). It was instantaneous-immediately. It was perfect-whole. It was sovereign-go thy way. It was complete, including salvation-thy faith hath saved thee (see Luk_18:42).
5. Lastly, notice the mans experience (Luk_18:43). He was full of joy; a new world had been suddenly opened upon him. He was obedient: he followed Jesus as a disciple. He was grateful: he glorified God. He was zealous. We may be sure he left not so much as one blind man in all Jericho without the knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth. Oh that all the blind but knew Him, and would be advised by me! Surely would they hasten to Him, He would cause them all to see.
II. So much then, concerning this miracle as a wonder; let us now study its lessons as a parable. It very beautifully pictures the steps of a sinner coming for spiritual relief to Jesus; the state, the action, the surrender, the cure, the experience. Indeed, this was a real part of the story that day.
1. Sightlessness is the symbol of sin. Not darkness now, for Christ has come (see Joh_8:12). The trouble is in the heart (see Eph_3:18). Who did this? (see 2Co_4:4). How deep is it? (see Rev_3:18).
2. Sin destroys the whole nature. We do not say Bartimeus was injured in any of his senses except his eyes. But his blindness made him a beggar. His touch, hearing, and taste may have been perfect: indeed, they may have been rendered sensitive, sharp, and alert more than usual. But he walked as a blind man, he reasoned as a blind man, he thought as a blind man, and he went to his regular stand as a blind man, and then begged.
3. Awakening of sinners is often due to Christian fidelity.
4. In the salvation of his soul the sinner has a work to do. It is of no use to fall back on ones blindness; the first step is to confess blindness, and go to Christ for help.
5. Prayer is indispensable in every case. No one can be saved who will not ask for salvation. The petition might well become a cry. And whatever hinders, let the man continue to pray, and pray the more a great deal.
6. All hindrances must be put away if one is in ear, eat to be saved. Many a man has seemed to start well, but has been tangled in the running by his garments of respectability, fame, fortune, social standing, literary eminence, or pleasant companionship. One may obtain the whole world, and lose his own soul.
7. Jesus is always ready to save anyone who cries to Him. Oh, most impressive moment is that when the Lord of Glory pauses in the way, and commands a soul to be called!
8. Unqualified acceptance of Christ in all His offices is the essential condition of acceptance by Him. The sinner must say Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, Son of David, and Rabboni.
9. Experience of salvation is the instrument to use incur efforts to save others. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
How to procure blessing from God
I. Cry aloud. What is the noise? asks this blind man. Who is it? Jesus, they say. And at once he cries, Son of David, have mercy on me. Hush, say some; hush,-not liking the loudness of the cry, nor the shrill, sad tone of it. But Bartimeus only cries the louder. Misery often makes a great noise in the world, a great and displeasing noise, if it can but get opportunity to make its want and its woe known. Surely, happy people should be ready to bear with the disturbance a little time; for misery has perhaps had to bear its sorrow for a long time.
II. Be in earnest. It has always needed an effort to come at Jesus. You must not be discouraged by hindrances.
III. Cast off incumbrances. The blind man throws aside his garment, lest it should hamper him, in his eagerness to get at Christ. Give him his sight, and he will not care even to look for this soiled and tattered garment any more, but will find a better. People that have their eyes opened will at the very least get their clothes washed. A neat, decent dress is often an early sign that a man is becoming careful who has hitherto been reckless. And new talk, new tempers, new estimates of things, are garments of the spiritual man, that show he has become a new man. (T. T. Lynch.)
The blind beggar of Jericho
This man is a picture of what we would fain have every seeker of Christ to become. In his lonely darkness, and deep poverty, he thought and became persuaded that Jesus was the Son of David. Though he had no sight, he made good use of his hearing. If we have not all gifts, let us use those we have.
I. He sought the Lord under discouragements.
1. No one prompted his seeking.
2. Many opposed his attempts.
3. For awhile he was unheeded by Christ Himself.
4. He was but a blind beggar, and this alone might have checked some pleaders.
II. He received encouragement. This came from Christs commanding him to be called. There are several kinds of calls which come to men at the bidding of Christ.
1. Universal call (Joh_3:14-15).
2. Character call (Mat_11:28; Act_2:38-39).
3. Ministerial call (Act_13:26; Act_13:38-39; Act_16:31).
4. Effectual call (Rom_8:30).
III. But encouragement did not content him: he still sought Jesus. To stop short of Jesus and healing would have been folly indeed.
1. He arose. Hopefully, resolutely, he quitted his begging posture. In order to salvation we must be on the alert, and in earnest.
2. He cast away his garment, and every hindrance.
3. He came to Jesus.
4. He stated his case.
5. He received salvation. Jesus said unto him, Thy faith hath made thee whole. He obtained perfect eyesight: complete health.
IV. Having found Jesus he kept to him.
1. He used his sight to see the Lord.
2. He became His avowed disciple.
3. He went with Jesus on His way to the cross, and to the crown.
4. He remained a well-known disciple, whose fathers name is given. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
This man came out of cursed Jericho
Are there not some to come from our slums and degraded districts? This man at least was a beggar, but the Lord Jesus did not disdain his company. He was a standing glory to the Lord, for everyone would know him as the blind man whose eyes had been opened. Let seeking souls persevere under all drawbacks. Do not mind those who would keep you back. Let none hinder you from finding Christ and salvation. Though blind, and poor, and miserable, you shall yet see, and smile, and sing, and follow Jesus. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Blind Bartimeus
;-
I. We take those points which speak to us of our Lord. We are struck by the obvious fact that though attended by a wondering joyful crowd, He has an ear, grace, gifts, for the one; so to the one miserable man. We are apt to think the Lord of all has so many dependent upon Him, our distress may be overlooked by Him; and this fear is strongest when we are weakest. Lord, that I may receive my sight. Receive thy sight responds Christ. Christ gives us just as much as we can take-as much as we really ask for.
II. Let us now glance at bartimeus and his faith. It is to his faith that our Lord attributes his healing; therefore our attention is specially called to it. It was surprisingly great. There was pertinacity in his faith. Those who stand near Christ may rebuke the cry for mercy. The doctrinal rebuke. The philosophical rebuke. (S. Cox, D. D.)
The gate of the city
The gate of the city was, in the East, the favourite resort of the mendicant class; for there, not only must all travellers, and caravans, and peasants bringing their wares to market, pass them by, but the broad side arches of the gate, with their cool recesses and divans, were the justice halls in which suits and quarrels were adjusted, and the lounging place in which, when the labours of the day were over, the citizens gathered to discuss their local politics or to enjoy their neighbourly gossip. The very reason, therefore, which draws the beggars of Italy to the fountains or the steps of churches, and the beggars of Ireland to the doors of hotels, or to the spots haunted by tourists, and the beggars of England to the crowded thoroughfares and market places, drew the beggars of the East, and still draws them, to the gates of the cities. There men most congregate, and there they are most likely to meet some response to their appeals for pity and help. (S. Cox, D. D.)
Prayer of a solitary individual heard
You have seen a mother laughing and making merry with happy friends. Suddenly she pauses, listens, and leaves the noisy room. She has heard a tiny wail of distress which you could not hear, and she cannot be content till the cry of her babe be hushed, its wants satisfied. And shall God, who made the mothers heart, be less tender, less pitiful, than the creature He has made? I tell you, Nay; but as one whom his mother comforteth, so will God comfort all the distressed who cry to Him. (S. Cox, D. D.)
The blind beggar
I. The origin of this poor blind mans faith.
II. Its quickness in grasping the gracious opportunity.
III. Listen to this faith whilst it cries and begs.
IV. Observe how eagerly it obeyed the call.
V. Listen to this faith describing his case. He told it at once. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Thy blind man a earners cries
Wherever Jesus Christ is found, His presence is marvellously mighty Providence at all times co-works with grace in the salvation of the chosen people.
I. The blind mans earnestness as a contrast to the behaviour of many hearers of the word. By a very short sermon he was led to prayer. Instead of praying over sermons, a great many disport themselves with them. Some are anxious for others, whilst this man cried for himself.
II. Notice this mans intense desire as an absorbing passion. Some plead the excuse of poverty, and demands of business; and these are the two obstacles that Bartimeus overcame. Passover: and the passover time when roads crowded with pilgrims, was his harvest.
III. His vehemence was a most reasonable zeal. He knew the misery of blindness. He was a beggar, and had learned the weakness of man. He knew that Jesus Christ was near. He felt it was now or never.
IV. He experienced checks in his prayer.
V. His importunity at last became so mighty, that rebuffs became arguments with him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
A great number of people.-
Christ and His many followers
I. That the followers of Christ are not necessarily his friends or true disciples. He went out of Jericho with His disciples, and a great number of people.
1. In the multitudes who accompanied Jesus out of Jericho, some, doubtless, followed Him out of mere curiosity.
2. Some followed because it was just then fashionable to do so.
3. Some followed with a view to future worldly advantage.
4. Such following is generally useless, deceptive, and mischievous, being of no real or permanent advantage to anyone.
(1) It confers no substantial benefit on any Christian country.
(2) It is of no real advantage to those followers themselves.
II. The text suggests to us that among a multitude of Christs followers you may generally expect to find some friends. With His disciples. Out of those who follow from curiosity Christ is drawing many real followers.
1. This should encourage us to persevere in our own following.
2. This should encourage us in relation to other followers. (J. Morgan.)
Christ and the true friends
I. That the true friends of Christ should follow Him constantly, closely, and collectively. But why should we be anxious to follow Christ thus?
1. Because it would gratify and glorify Christ.
2. Because it would bring great blessings to our own souls.
3. Because such following would exert a blessed influence over our fellow creatures.
II. But while the friends of Christ should thus follow Him constantly, closely, and collectively, they should also preach Him simply, directly, and lovingly. Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.
1. The sermon was a very simple one.
2. It was a very evangelical one.
3. It was a very sympathetic or loving one. (J. Morgan.)
A great number of people
There he sits hoping for mere worldly gain. He has not come to meet Christ. It was not in all his thoughts to get his eyes opened. How many like him are before me-dying sinners on whom Gods curse is resting, who yet did not come to secure the great salvation. God grant a further parallel; that you may get what you did not come for, even a solemn meeting and saving closing of your souls with Jesus Christ. A multitude with Jesus! a multitude of followers! How can He then complain, I have laboured in vain, I have spent My strength for nought? Simply because He had many followers, but few friends. A multitude with Jesus! But it is not all following that blesses. A multitude with Jesus! Yes, when His march is at all triumphal-when as He goes He invests His progress with the splendour of miracles, there will be no want of a crowd to gape after Him. A multitude with Jesus! Take care, then, ye members of the Church. Examine yourselves closely. Profession of religion is easy now. Numbers give power, respectability, fashion, even enthusiasm. A multitude with Jesus! Blessed be God, in that multitude some true disciples may be found; some who, though weak and sinning, forward, like Peter, when they should be backward, and then backward, of course, when they should be forward; ambitious, like Zebedees children, or doubting, like Thomas, are still true friends of Jesus, living for Him, suffering for Him, growing like Him day by day, and dying for Him without a murmur, if He so appoint. Among the professed people of God there have always been real people of God. And hearing the multitude. Oh, what a blessing is that! His ears are open though his eyes are shut. Thus God remembers to be gracious. Where He takes one mercy He leaves another. My text shall be my guide. The roadside was the church, the multitude preached, and Bartimeus was the hearer. And now for the sermon-And they told him, Jesus of Nazareth passeth by! Jesus of Nazareth passeth by! So you see it was a powerful sermon. It went to the heart and took complete possession of it. It was a very simple sermon. Who cannot preach it? Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. There is no follower of Jesus who cannot tell poor blind souls this. A good preacher tries to make all truth simple. He is a bad shepherd, say the old writers, who holds the hay too high for the sheep. According to Lord Bacon, little minds love to inflate plain things into marvels, while great minds love to reduce marvels to plain things. The very essence of truth, says Milton, is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness are our own. Better the grammarian should reprehend, says Jenkyn, than the people not understand. Pithy plainness is the beauty of preaching. What good doth a golden key that opens not? An old lady once walked a great way to hear the celebrated Adam Clarke preach. She had heard he was such a scholar, as indeed he was. But she was bitterly disappointed, because, said she, I understood everything he said. And I knew a man who left the church one morning quits indignant, because the preacher had one thing in his sermon he knew before! It was a little explanation meant for the children; dear little things-they are always coming on, and I love to see their bright little faces among the older people. We used to need and prize these simple explanations, and why shouldnt they have them in their turn? But, best of all, this sermon was about Christ. He is mentioned alone. The excellency of a sermon, says Flavel, lies in the plainest discoveries and liveliest applications of Jesus Christ. He passeth by! Now is your time; make haste to secure your salvation. How near He is! He passeth by in the light of every Sabbath sun, in every church built to His name, in every reading of His Word, in every gospel sermon, in sacraments and prayers and psalms, but most of all in every movement of His Spirit on the heart. But He passeth by! He will not always tarry. The day of grace is not forever. Its sun will go down, and the night that follows is eternal despair. Christ never passed that way again; He may never pass your way again. That was His last visit to Jericho; this call may be His last visit to you. This was Bartimeus only opportunity; today maybe your only opportunity. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
Blind Bartimeus.-
Three kinds of blindness
The eye of the body may be out, and we have no name for the result but blindness. The eye of the intellect may be out, and we name the result idiocy. We say the man is a fool. The eye of the soul may be out, and God names the result wickedness. He calls the man a sinner. Think of Bartimeus. He rose this morning, and his wife blessed him, his children climbed his knees and kissed him. They ministered to his wants. They led him a little way by the hand. But he did not see them. He knew of them, but he could not behold them. Their smiles or beauty were nothing to him-he was blind. Think of yourself, O sinner! You rose this morning, and the eye of your heavenly Father looked upon you. His hand led you, His power guarded you, His goodness blessed you. But your soul did not see Him. A vague idea that God had done it all may have occurred to you, but it had no vividness. He was no blessed reality to you. You saw not the lineaments of a father-the loving eye, the benignant smile. You saw nothing-your soul was blind. Think again of Bartimeus. He went abroad, and the rich valley of the Jordan spread out before him. The stately palms rose toward heaven, and waved their feathery tops in the early breeze. The gardens of balsam were clothed in their delicate spring verdure, and Jericho sat in the midst of these vernal glories, deserving its name-Jericho, the place of fragrance, deserving its frequent description among the ancient writers-the City of Palms. And high above all was the blue sky, bending over as if to embrace and bless so much loveliness of earth; and the great sun, filling earth and sky and balmy air with glory. But what was all this to Bartimeus? It might have been narrow and black for aught he could tell. It was an utter blank, a dreadful gloom to him. All was night, black, black night, with no star. Why was it so to him, when to others it was splendour and joy? Ah! he was blind. Unregenerate man, think again of yourself. You went abroad this morning, on an earth once cursed, as of old Jericho had been, but spared and blessed by redeeming mercy, even as Jericho was that day blessed by the presence and healing grace of Jesus. Around you, too, was spread a world of spiritual beauty. The walls and bulwarks and stately palaces of the city of our God were before you. The rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, the vine, the palm, the olive, and the fig tree all stood about you in the garden of the Lord. Through them flowed the river of life, reflecting skies more high and clear than the azure of summer mornings ever imagined, and lit to its measureless depth by a sun more glorious than ever poured splendour even upon Eden, in our poor worlds ancient prime. You walked forth amid all this beauty, and many saw it-none perfectly, yet some very blessedly-but you saw nothing. You see nothing now. Nay, you cannot see it. Strain your blind soul as you will, you cannot see it. I see a beautiful mother gaze anxiously on her babe. She is trying a fearful experiment. She stretches out her arms to it, beseeches it with loving looks, holds out sparkling jewels to it, and flashes them before its eyes in the very sunshine at the open window. But the little eyes move not, or move aimlessly, and turn vacantly away. And she cries out in anguish, Oh, my poor child is blind! And now I understand why even tender children turn away from Christ, seeing no beauty in Him that they should desire Him, and caring nothing for all His smiles or tears, or offers of the rich jewelry of heaven. They see nothing of it all. They are blind, born blind. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
The danger of the blind
I once saw a man walk along the edge of a precipice as if it were a plain. For anything he knew, it was a plain, and safe. He was calm and fearless, not because there was no danger, but because he was blind. And who cannot now understand how men so wise, so cautious in most things, can go so securely, so carelessly, even so gaily on, as if everything were safe for eternity, while snares and pitfalls are all about them, and death may be just at hand, and the next step may send them down the infinite abyss! Oh, we see it, we see it-they are blind! A blind man is more taken up with what he holds in his hand, than with mountains, ocean, sun, or stars. He feels this; but those he can neither touch nor see. And now it is plain why unconverted men undervalue doctrine, saying, that it is no matter what a man believes, so his heart is right; that one doctrine is as good as another, and for that matter, no doctrines are good for much; and that they dont believe in doctrinal preaching at any rate. They, forsooth, they! blind worms, pronouncing contemptuously of the stupendous heights and glories of Gods revelation, where alone we learn what we are to believe concerning Him, and what duty He requires of us. It is plain, too, why they see no preciousness in the promises, no glory in Christ, no beauty in holiness, no grandeur in the work of redemption; why they make a mock at sin, despise Gods threatenings, brave His wrath, make light of the blood of Christ, jest at death, and rush headlong on certain perdition. They are blind. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
Light no remedy for blindness
But we want to see them. If they are real, they are our concern as well as yours. Oh, that some preacher would come, who had power to make us see them! Poor souls, there is no such preacher, and you need not wait for him. Let him gather Gods light as he will, he can but pour it on blind eyes. A burning glass will condense sunbeams into a focus of brightness; and if a blind eye be put there, not a whit will it see, though it be consumed. Light is the remedy for darkness, not blindness. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
Blindness disqualifies the critic
Let the people of God no more wonder then at the clamours of infidels against the Scriptures. Would you heed a blind man criticising pictures, or raving against your summer skies? If he denies that the sun has brightness, or the mountains grandeur, will you believe him? And if a hundred blind men should all declare that they cannot see the stars, and argue learnedly that there can be no stars, and then grow witty and laugh as you as stargazers, would the midnight heavens be less glorious to you? When these men had thus satisfactorily demonstrated their blindness, would not the mighty works of God still prove their bright reality to your rejoicing vision? Would they not still declare His glory and show His handiwork? And shall the spiritually blind be more trusted? (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
The blind man happy
In a journal of a tour through Scotland, by the Rev. C. Simeon, of Cambridge, we have the following passage:-Went to see Lady Rosss grounds. Here also I saw blind men weaving. May I never forget the following fact. One of the blind men, on being interrogated with respect to his knowledge of spiritual things, answered, I never saw till I was blind: nor did I ever know contentment when I had my eyesight, as I do now that I have lost it: I can truly affirm, though few know how to credit me, that I would on no account change my present situation and circumstances with any that I ever enjoyed before I was blind. He had enjoyed eyesight till twenty-five, and had been blind now about three years. My soul, Mr. Simeon adds, was much affected and comforted with his declaration. Surely there is reality in religion.
Begging.-
When may a man be called poor
Is wealth for the body alone? Has She heart no riches? May not a mind be impoverished, a soul be bankrupt? Ah! yes, there are riches besides money, wealth to which gold and rubies are as nothing. A man is poor when his need is not supplied. The higher the wants, the deeper the kind of poverty, the more the want, the deeper its degree. A man with neither food nor shelter is poorer than he who lacks shelter only. And is not the man without love or hope poorer than he who has merely no fire nor bread? Who shall deny the name of poor to him whose soul is unfurnished? What is the chaff to the wheat, the body to the soul? Are not the souls desires larger and more insatiable than those of the flesh? Does not the heart hunger? Is there no such thing as a famine of truth and love? Do desolate spirits never cower and shiver and freeze, like houseless wretches in stormy winter nights? Night and winter and storm-are they not also for the soul? And when it has no home in its desolations, no refuge from its foes, no shelter from the blast, no food for its hunger, no consolation in its sorrows, is it not poor? poor in the deepest poverty, which almost alone deserves the name of poverty? How much of such poverty is there, dwelling in princely halls, clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day! How often does it walk in royal processions, and flash with jewels, and handle uncounted gold. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
Every sinner is a beggar
How can it be otherwise? Can such poverty be independent? In outward poverty, a well-furnished mind, a wealthy soul may be an inward solace. But when it is the soul that is bankrupt, there is no region still within, where it may retire and comfort itself. It will seek for happiness, and it must look without-it is forced to beg. And thus I see poor, guilty, blinded souls begging-begging of earth and sky, and air and sea, of every passing event, of one another, of all but the great and merciful God, who would supply all their need through Jesus Christ. They must beg. The vast desires of the soul, which God gave that they might be filled from Himself, and which nothing but His own fulness can satisfy; the noble powers degraded to work with trifles; the aspirations which thrill only as they mount heavenward, but now struggle and pant like an eagle with broken wing, and his breast in the dust; the deathless conscience, filled with guilt and touched with unappeasable wrath, drugged indeed, and often sleeping heavily, but waking surely, and then lashing the soul inexorably-all these compel it to be a beggar. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
Begging begins in childhood
We beg then with eager hope. We are sure we shall not be disappointed. Games, holidays, sight-seeing, all promise much, and childhood begs them to make it blessed. Vexed, wearied, sent empty away again and again, the boy sees, further on, the youth, pursuing his great hopes, and hastens to join him, confident that in higher excitements and larger liberty, in new aspirations and tenderer love, his souls thirst shall be slaked. Deluded once more, he grows sober and wise and firm. He is older. He is a man. He lays deep plans now, puts on a bolder face, and begs with sterner importunity. He can take no denial. He must have happiness; he will be blessed. Fame, wealth, power-these have the hidden treasure he has sought so long. He knows now where it is, and they must give it up. Years are passing, his time will soon be gone, and now he begs indeed! How these idols lead his soul captive! How he toils, cringes, grovels, sacrifices for their favour! Fame, wealth, power-deceitful gods!-still promise that tomorrow the long-sought good shall be given. But how many tomorrows come and go, and leave him still trusting to the next! Now he forsakes the pleasures he might have, dries up the fountains of his early love, sweeps all sentiment from his heart, crushes his dearest affections, tasks every power to the utmost, wrings out his hearts blood, and lays all his soul before his idols feet-and is disappointed! Disappointed alike in failure and success! If he wins the prize, this is not what he coveted, and worshipped, and bargained away his soul for, and he curses it for a cheat. If he fails, he still believes that the true good was there, and he was near it; and he curses the chance, or envy, or hate which snatched it from his grasp. But who shall describe the base arts of this beggary? The disguises, the pretences, the fawnings-all the low tricks of street beggars-are adopted and eclipsed by those who will be rich, will be great, will have fame. And what are the profits of thus begging the world for what God alone can give? Observe a street beggar for a while. How many go by and give nothing, where one drops even a penny in the hat! So many of the passing things of time refuse altogether to give the soul the good it asks. See again. Do you mark the impudent leer of that mean boy? He knows the beggar is blind, and so he comes up pretending sympathy, and puts a pebble, a chip in that trembling hand. So a thousand times have you seen the world do for a begging soul. But there comes a still meaner boy; he puts that which, when the grateful old mans hand closes on it pierces or stings it, and, laughing loudly in the blind, bewildered face, he runs away. And thus have I seen the gay, polished world put a sparkling cup to the young mans lips; but when at last it bit him like a serpent and stung him like an adder, the polished world, jeered his imprudence, and turned him from its door. His excesses and agony and death must not be seen there! And when the beggars gains for the day are fairly counted, what are they? A few copper coins, foul with gangrene, and little bits of silver, rarely,-enough to buy a scanty meal and a poor lodging, and tomorrow all is to begin again. And thus the world gives-few pleasures, low pleasures, brief pleasures. They stay the souls hunger for a while, but never satisfy it, so that straightway we must go out and beg again. The world never raised a mans soul above beggary. It is both too selfish and too poor. It gives but little of what it has, and if it gave all, gave itself, that would not fill and bless an immortal soul. These things make me think how sadly all this begging from the world ends. The hour comes when the world can do no more. It is a bitter hour-an hour of pain and anguish, of weakness and despair-the hour of death. The world is roaring away as ever, in business and mirth, all unconscious that the poor man who loved and worshipped it so, is dying. But oh, the begging of God which now begins! Bitter crying to Him whose gracious heart has been waiting to bless these many years, waiting in vain for one sigh of contrition, one prayer of faith to His infinite grace! But it is too late. His patient, insulted Spirit has been grieved at length. He has departed. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
And when he heard.-
And when he heard
Eternal salvation depends on right hearing. There are just two kinds of hearing, not three. There is a hearing unto life, and another hearing unto death; but there is no hearing between-none to indifference. You may try to hear merely that you may hear, and let that be the end of it-but that will not be the end of it. The end of it will be life or death! You may resolve that the preaching shall make no difference in you; but it will make a difference in you, and the difference will be salvation or perdition! The gospel leaves no man where it found him. If it be not wings to bear him to heaven, it will be a millstone to sink him to hell. Some of you think it the lightest of pastimes to come to church and hear a sermon.
I. His hearing led him to action. His very soul seemed to be roused, and he began to do something. Oh, for a pulse of life in those frozen hearts! A flush of blood, even though it were angry blood, in those pale cheeks! I came to break your head, said a man once to Whitefield, but by the grace of God you have broken my heart. That was a vile purpose to go to church with, but if he had gone in a complacent frame, and quietly slept or coolly criticised the preacher, it would have been far worse. He would not have carried away that priceless treasure-a broken heart. If what we say is true, why do you not act upon it? If false, how can you bear to be charged with it? If our charges are false, they are also insulting and outrageous. If you believe them to be false, your conduct, in hearing them so calmly, and coming back to hear them again, and even sometimes applauding us for the vehement way in which we assail and denounce you, is perfectly astonishing. Or if you say you believe these things to be true, your conduct is still more amazing. If true, they should concern you infinitely: yet you are not concerned at all. You will call Bartimeus a fool if he does not try to get his eyes opened this very day. But what name will you reserve for yourselves, if, while I this day, as one of these ambassadors of God, offer you pardon and healing and eternal life through Jesus Christ, who now passes by to bestow them, you once more refuse the Saviour, and go on as before toward perdition?
II. This reveals to us the second mark of right hearing-it fills a man with earnestness. If he has heard such truth as he ought, he not only acts, but acts with energy. Thus Bartimeus acted. When he heard he cried out. So it must be with you, O sinners. If you would enter heaven you must be in earnest about it. Let us now see how this earnestness found expression. So shall we have another mark of true hearing.
III. When the gospel is heard aright, it leads to prayer. This was the first thing Bartimeus did, when he was told that Jesus was passing by-he prayed. And this is always the first thing for a lost sinner who hears of Christ-let him pray. A soul truly in earnest after salvation will cry for help. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and when our strength fails, prayer is natures messenger for helpers. And when did nature fail to pray in her need? Hunger will beg and pain cry out. Though the fever have caused madness, the sufferer will still cry for water. None need teach the babe to clamour for its nurture. Birds can plead for their young, and the dog entreat you, with all the power of speech, to follow him to the forest, where his master lies robbed and bleeding. And has the soul no voice in its sickness unto death? Is the instinct of the brute a sure guide, and do the reason and conscience of men slumber or lie? Or are they quicksighted and honest about bodily wants and earthly things, only to show themselves utterly besotted, when glory, honour, and immortality are at stake? When your souls are in jeopardy, must you be plied with such urgency before you will cry for help? If the voice of grace, sometimes warning, sometimes inviting, cannot wake you and bring you to your knees, God will try the voice of unmixed vengeance.
IV. And do it at once. Promptness is another mark of a good hearer of the gospel. It is found in Bartimeus. And when he heard, that is, as soon as he heard, he began to cry out. But what need of such haste? Jesus is going slowly, he might say, and some little while must pass before He is gone. Be sure I will be in time. Or if He does get a little out of sight, Bartimeus might say, while I am attending to some little matters, I will run after Him and call Him. But I only want a little time, and that for most important business, Bartimeus might plead. But if Bartimeus choose to attend to his alms instead of his eyes, see if he has not a still stronger reason. Begging is not only his business, but this happens to be a very busy season, as we say in the city, or harvest time, as they say in the country. A multitude was passing! He might go home almost rich-might almost retire from business! And after all has not Providence given him this opportunity, and would it be exactly right to throw it away? So have I heard professors of religion and non-professors reason. So do they put earths business above all the calls of God.
V. and
VI. Two other marks of a good hearer of the gospel are found in Bartimeus. He heard with faith and humility. He trusted in Jesus and was lowly in heart. His faith even outran the word of the multitude. They spoke of Jesus of Nazareth,-Nazareth of Galilee-a despised town of a despised province: but he could call Him Son of David, and Lord. And how deep was his humility! He hid nothing, pretended nothing. He came as he was. Blind, he came as blind. Poor, he came as poor. A beggar, he came as a beggar. And so it is always. Faith and humility meet in the sinners experience, not as occasional companions only; they ever walk lovingly together as sisters. They cannot separate. Like the Siamese twins they live in each others presence alone; should they part, they would die. A sinner cannot believe in Jesus and not be humble; he cannot be truly humble without believing in Jesus. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
That he should hold his peace.-
That he should hold his peace
There is never a knock at heavens gate but it sounds through hell, and devils come out to silence it. The ungodly world bids anxious souls to hold their peace. It cannot bear the sinners distress. If his conscience is disturbed its own is not quite easy. Therefore the world sets itself to make an end of these convictions. For this it has innumerable devices. It will flatter or curse. For some it has persecutions, for others promotions. But I pause not on any of these. I wish now to address the professed people of God. I say, then, plainly: you are in great danger every day of rebuking anxious souls, and charging them to hold their peace.
I. By injudicious criticism of sermons you may stifle convictions and drive sinners away from Christ. I cannot better illustrate this caution than by a true narrative from The Central Presbyterian. A pious lady once left a church in this city (Richmond), in company with her husband, who was not a professor of religion. She was a woman of unusual vivacity, with a keen perception of the ludicrous and often playfully sarcastic. As they walked along toward home, she began to make some amusing and spicy comments on the sermon, which a stranger, a man of very ordinary talents and awkward manner, had preached that morning in the absence of the pastor. After running on in this vein of sportive criticism for some time, surprised at the profound silence of her husband, she turned and looked up in his face. He was in tears. That sermon had sent an arrow of conviction to his heart! What must have been the anguish of the conscience-stricken wife, thus arrested in the act of ridiculing a discourse which had been the means of awakening the anxiety of her unconverted husband!
II. Beware also of unseasonable levity after solemn appeals.
III. This brings to mind another way by which you may bid sinners hold their peace-by blindness to any beginning concern. Would you see how you should watch? Come with me to the chamber where a babe lies dying. A breathless messenger has gone for the physician, but still he comes not. How the worn mother gazes on her little sufferer in an agony of fondness and fear; how she sinks in anguish before the mercy seat, and pleads like the Syrophenician woman at the feet of Jesus; how she rises wildly, and watches at the window for the physician; how at every sound of wheels she flushes with eagerness, and then grows sick at heart as they turn the corner, and the sound dies away; how she springs to the door as his well-known step is heard on the stair; and then, as he searches every symptom, how she waits on his every look, living on a gleam of hope, ready to die if his face is darkened by a cloud!
IV. Nor is this the worst. Professing parents often lay plans for their children directly opposed to the Spirits work. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
Pertinacity successful in the end
Success in this world comes only to those who exhibit determination. Can we hope for salvation unless our mind is truly set upon it? Grace makes a man to be as resolved to be saved as this beggar was to get to Jesus, and gain his sight. I must see him! said an applicant at the door of a public person. You cannot see him, said the servant; but the man waited at the door. A friend went out to him, and said, You cannot see the master, but I can give you an answer. No, he replied; I will stay all night on the doorstep, but I will see the man himself. He alone will serve my turn. You do not wonder that, after many rebuffs, he ultimately gained his point: it would be infinitely greater wonder if an importunate sinner did not obtain an audience from the Lord Jesus. If you must have grace, you shall have it. If you will not be put off, you shall not be put off. Whether things look favourable or unfavourable, press you on till you find Jesus, and you shall find Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
And Jesus stood still.-
Arresting Christ
When Jesus thus stood still, He was on His way for the last time to Jerusalem. His hour was drawing nigh, and He was hastening to meet it. Can He be arrested in this journey? Where is the event mighty enough to stay His course? What destiny of man or empire is worthy even of a thought from Him now? He stood still. Let us also stand and admire. Here let us learn the grace of our Redeemer, and lay up in our hearts the blessed teaching. Then may we learn how unreasonable and how unnatural is a favourite clamour of infidels against the gospel. They say they cannot believe that the Son of God came to this world and died for its redemption. This world is too small and mean in the great scale of the universe, to allow them to think that the Creator of countless millions of glorious suns and systems, could have stooped to love and care and suffer and die for the poor creatures of a day, who live on this insignificant planet. To a narrow vision a structure may seem unsightly from its vastness, while in miniature the same eye might find the proportions exquisite. And have we not, in this standing still of Jesus, amidst the urgencies of such a journey, at the call of a beggar, a miniature of the very things by which some are confounded or repelled, in the immense transactions of the Atonement? It was worthy of the illustrious Stranger-nay, it was beautiful, it was sublime-to stay for the relief of the unhappy beggar, though His own mind was burdened with the weight of the infinite sacrifice He was about to offer. Then who shall so vilify the redemption of men by the Cross, as to pronounce it unworthy of the Sovereign of a universe to which our earth is but an atom? Shall an astronomer be so lost in Gods glory declared by the heavens, in their measureless and bright immensity, as to scorn the thought of His upholding and blessing each sun and star? Then if these philosophers gaze on the luminous, illimitable fields of creation, until their dazzled minds turn back with contempt to the world on which they dwell, and find no worth nor grandeur in the Cross which redeems it, though it saves numbers without number from perdition, and glorifies them in the light of God, and displays His Attributes before an admiring universe, let us hold up the confessed truthfulness and beauty of this simple incident, till, like a mirror of diamond, it pierce their misty eyeball and lead them on to the acknowledgment of the truth. Jesus stood still, and when did He ever refuse to stay at the call of the distressed sinner? Nay, if He stayed then, when can He refuse? Is He not the same yesterday, today, and forever? The fires of eternal vengeance stood still over Sodom till Lot was gone out. The waves stood still, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea till the children of Israel passed over. The down-rushing waters of swollen Jordan stood still, as the feet of the priests touched their brim, and rose up as a wall till the chosen tribes had gained their inheritance. At the cry of Joshua, the sun stood still in the midst of the heavens, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, until the Lords hosts had avenged themselves upon their enemies. So we may look upon His call, and the gracious call of every sinner who becomes a saint, in its Divine origin, its gentle instruments, and its effectual aids.
I. He called. Our vocation is of God. He hath called us out of darkness into His marvellous light. He called. This word of Matthew contains, as in the seed, the expressions of Mark and Luke. All the agencies, by which the soul is persuaded and enabled to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel, are hidden in this, His loving call, as the leaves and flowers and golden fruit are all folded in the germ. Many providences, many scriptures, many ordinances, many movements of the Spirit may lay hold on a soul to draw it to Christ; but they are all so many threads which Christ holds in His own hand. They have all their power from His drawing. Then let us use this truth for holy fear. If you resist the appeals of Gods ministers, you resist God. He called. In Jesus Christ we behold the best of preachers-the Divine Exemplar after whom all should copy.
II. He commanded him to be called. The Lord gave the word; great was the company of them that published it. Let him that heareth, say, Come! Then all the called may themselves become callers.
III. And now what a word of good cheer the third evangelist speaks-He commanded him to be brought unto Him! Admire the Lords grace to the blind man. He will not leave him to grope his dark way alone. Some shall lead him by the hand. In whatever way, he shall have all the aid he needs to come into the Saviours very presence. Blessed thought t that we who are but men may have some share in this dear work of guiding blind souls to Jesus. But here I rather choose to think of the higher than human aid, which Christ sends with His word to the souls of His chosen. The energy of Almighty power accompanies the preaching of the truth. The Spirit and the Bride say, Come! (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
A gospel sermon to outsiders
I. Many persons who are really seeking the Saviour greatly want comforting. There is a sort of undefined fear that these good things are not for them. They are cast down because they think they have been seeking in vain. They are sad because many round about them discourage them. Their sadness also rise from their spiritual ignorance. They regard conversion as something very terrible.
II. This comfort is to be found in the text. The general gospel call ought to yield great comfort to any seeking soul. But there is also an effectual call.
III. This comfort should lead to immediate action. The exhortation to rise means instant decision. It means also resolution. You are also to cast away everything that would hinder you from finding salvation. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
He calleth thee.-The analogy would be perfect, if those who were sent to Bartimeus had themselves been blind, until their eyes had been opened by Christ. And who can say that it was not so with some of them? Then with what generous indignation must they have heard the cruel rebukes of the multitude! Then, too, with what alarmed sympathy would these men, once blind, now seeing, have regarded Bartimeus, if he had wavered in his earnestness after Christ! And with what alacrity would these messengers of Christ have hastened to bear His words of welcome to the blind man! Joy beyond expression would have inspired them. I have heard of a caravan which had lost its way in the desert. For days they could find no water. The suffering was sore, and many were perishing. Men were out in all directions searching for the water that was to be indeed water of life. At last, faint and ready to die, one man lighted on a spring. Cool and clear the stream gushed from the rock. Almost frantic with thirst, he rushed forward and drank, drank. Oh, how deep was the bliss of that draught! Is it strange that for one moment be thought only of himself? But suddenly the perishing multitude came before his mind, and he leaped up, and ran shouting, Water! water! Enough for all! Come and drink! And so from rank to rank of that scattered host he sped, until he had told them all, and was himself thirsty again. But when he saw the eager crowds rushing to the fountain, when be beheld the refreshment and gladness of all hearts and faces, and then stooped once more himself to drink the liberal stream, was not his second draught full of deeper bliss than even the first? Had he ever tasted such water as that? O blessed souls who have drank of the river of life, lift up your voice upon the mountains, and let your feet be swift upon the plains, publishing the good tidings of salvation. This brings to view the joyfulness of the gospel. It is not a message of gloom, a thing to be whispered in darkness as a dreadful secret. We dishonour the gospel when we would recommend it by a melancholy visage. Such is the spirit of the tidings these messengers bring to Bartimeus, in this, his second gospel sermon. The first told him simply that Jesus was passing by. Now he hears these heart reviving words, Be of good comfort; rise; He calleth thee. Be of good comfort. On thy long night, without moon or star, or even a dim candle in thy dwelling, the Day star is dawning. Thine eyes have never been used but for weeping; they seemed only made for tears. But now they shall serve thee for seeing. Sinners, poor, wretched, and blind, but crying for the Saviour, be not disconsolate. Be of good comfort. After your night of weeping, your morning of joy has come. Rise! say the preachers to Bartimeus, and so we cry. There is salvation for the sinner, none for the sluggard. Rise, then, ye unpardoned, Away with your fears and doubts. They are unreasonable and wicked. Break off your indifference. It is a noiseless chain, indeed, but be not deceived; the chain that does not clank is the tightest. Let me take the trumpet of the Holy Ghost, and may He fill it with sound that shall pierce your heart;-Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light! He calleth thee. What more canst thou want, Bartimeus? If He calls thee, He will cure thee. If He calls, who can forbid? Thy call is thy warrant. The call of Christ is warrant enough for any sinner. He may use it against the Law and Satan and his own evil conscience. For example, Satan comes to him and says-What, wretch! art thou going to Christ? Ay, that I am, with all my heart. But will He receive thee? Ay, that He will, with all His heart. Truly, thou art a brave talker! Who taught thee this lofty speech? Nay, my speech is lowly, and I learned it of my Lord. But where is thy warrant? None can go to Christ without a warrant. He calleth me-be that my warrant! But where is thy fitness? says Satan, shifting his ground. Be my warrant my fitness-He calleth me, answers the sinner, keeping his ground, his only ground. But listen, soul! Thou art going before a King. He cannot look upon iniquity (for you see Satan can quote Scripture), and thou art but a mass of iniquity (here the devil affects a great horror of it, to fill the sinner with fear). The heavens are not clean in His sight; how then shall thy filthiness appear before Him? Look at thy rags, if thy blind eyes will let thee, and say, what a dress is this to take into His presence! It is all true, says the contrite sinner, still I will go, for He calleth me. I will bind this call about me and it shall be my dress, till He give me another. I will hold up this call, written with His own hand, and signed with His own name, and sealed with His own blood, and it shall be my defence and plea. Miserable and unworthy as I am, and deserving, I know, to die, with this I have boldness and access with confidence, saying only, like little Samuel, Here am I, for Thou didst call me! Bartimeus needed no more. Casting away his garment, he rose and came to Jesus. It could not be otherwise. True earnestness does not wait. Conscious wretchedness in the presence of a trusted Saviour cannot delay. Only half-convictions can procrastinate. The ancient heathen had this saying: The feet of the avenging deities are shod with wool. Shod with wool! Yes, they crept with noiseless steps, that the touch that aroused might be the blow that destroyed. It is not so with our merciful God. He sounds an alarm that we may seek a refuge. His thunder rolls along the distant horizon, that we may take in sail and be ready for the storm, the storm which would have burst upon us no less surely without this gracious warning. As Bartimeus rose to hasten to Jesus, he cast away his garment, his loose upper robe. He would suffer no hindrance. He may have thrown it aside unconsciously, but it was the action of nature-nature in earnest for some great end. Let us take the lesson. If we would win Christ, we must lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us-the sin we have daily wrapped about us like our garment. (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
What wilt thou?-
Our wants must be expressed
If we would commune with Christ, we must draw near to Him. If we would hear His voice, we must fall down before Him. It is only there that heaven and earth may meet in peace. What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? A goodly word, indeed! What would not a soul, struggling in the depths and entanglements of sin, give once to hear it from his Lord? Let us admire-
I. The fulness of the grace. The tender love of Christ to lost souls is a great deep, without bottom and without shore. The wing of no angel can bear him so high that he can look over all its extent. The guilt of no sinner has been able to sound all its depth. King Ahasuerus said unto Queen Esther at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? even to the half of my kingdom shall it be performed. And so the monarchs of the East delighted to speak. But their utmost premise was half the kingdom, and their kingdoms were earthly, bounded and unsubstantial, and their pompous generosity often but the flourishing rhetoric of lust, pride, and wine. But Jesus puts no limit to His offers. Ask, it shall be given you. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do. In Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. All power is given unto Him in heaven and in earth.
II. Let us also admire the freeness of Christs offers to lost sinners. The freeness of the offer springs from the fulness of the grace. What wilt thou? Choose for thyself, Bartimeus. If thou dost not carry away a noble gift, it is thine own fault. I do not set bounds to thy desires. The treasure is infinite, and thou hast it all to choose from. The Spirit of the Lord is not straitened, and if we are, it is in ourselves. Gods grace is always larger than mans desire, and freer than his faith. If we take little pitchers to the well, we shall carry little water away. Though the golden bowl be full of golden off, the lamp will burn dim, if the golden pipe be narrow or choked. The ocean itself can pour but a scanty stream through a slender channel.
III. See how Christs grace condescends to every souls peculiar need. He will suit His granting to our asking. To every soul He says, What wilt thou?
IV. This question teaches that, though Christ knows what we want and what He will do, He will have us express our wants. Through all the cold, dark night the petals of the flower were shut. So the sun found it and poured his rays upon it, till its heart felt the warmth. Then it yearned to be filled with these pleasant beams, and opened its bosom to drink them in. And so it is with mans prayer and Gods grace. How pointless are the prayers we often hear. They scatter weakly over the whole ground. They have no aim and do no execution. If we would pray well, we must have something to pray for, something we really crave, we must know our wants, feel our wants, express our wants. We must have an errand at the Throne. I learned that expression from a pious old slave. He was asked the secret of the fervour and spirit with which he always prayed. Oh, said he, I have always an errand at the Throne, and then I just tell the Lord what I come for, and wait for an answer. Thus, too, shall we wait for an answer. Even the sportsman, who cares not for his game, follows the arrow with his eye, till he sees it strike. But how many never cast a second glance after a prayer which has left their lips! (Prof. W. J. Hoge.)
What wilt thou
?:-Did the omniscient Redeemer not know what was the calamity under which this man groaned? He did. It was evident to all the world. Was He not aware of the desire of Bartimeus heart? and that what he sought was not an ordinary alms? Undoubtedly, and He had already resolved to restore his sight. Why then did He put this question? It was that He might more fully manifest His Fathers glory; that He might awaken the man to a deeper consciousness of his misery; call forth his faith into liveliest exercise; and, especially, teach him and all of us the nature and necessity of fervent prayer.
1. God has appointed a definite way in which we are to obtain His aid and deliverance. If we would have we must ask. Prayer is the means He has prescribed. Why? We could not enjoy the blessing of God without it. It is indispensable as a preparation of our hearts.
2. Our prayers must be definite and precise. Beware of vague, general, pointless prayers. State at once the evil you would have removed, the want you would have supplied, the promise you would have fulfilled.
3. He who asks the question in the text, can answer it. Jesus has all things at His disposal. There is no limit either to His resources or His readiness to help. Be not afraid to ask much, to expect much, and much you shall obtain. He in, poses no conditions, no price, no merit. (A. Thomson.)
Immediately he received his sight.-
Blindness removed
I. What, then, does this healing stand for in the higher spiritual world? Surely, nothing less than regeneration-the new birth of the soul. Of the many images employed by the Holy Ghost to set forth our natural state, perhaps none is more frequent than blindness. Darkness is ever the chosen symbol of the kingdom of Satan, and light of the kingdom of God.
1. That the new birth is from God. If the harp be broken, the hand of the maker may repair it, and wake the chords again to their old power and sweetness. There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground, yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant. But who can restore the shattered crystal, so that the sunbeams shall stream through it without finding a flaw, and flash, once more, as of old, in the ever-changing play of their splendour? And who can open the eyes of the blind? Who can restore to that most lustrous and precious of gems, its expression and power, when distorted and blotted by disease or violence? Who shall open again those delicate pathways for the light of two worlds-the outer world shining in and filling the soul with images of beauty, and that inner world shining out in joy, love, and thankfulness? Surely none but the Maker of this curious frame, who, when sin had so cruelly marred it, came in compassion as infinite as His might, to be Redeemer and Restorer where He had already been Creator. Only He can open the eyes of the blind. The power of God is in that work. But if a man die shall he live again? Oh, if the soul be dead, dead in guilt and corruption and the curse of Almighty God, can it revive? Yes, thanks be to God! by reason of the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead (after He had been delivered for our offences), we also may be quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, and children of wrath, we may be quickened together with Christ; for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
2. In the light of this miracle we also learn that, whatever activities the sinner may put forth before and after his regeneration, in the great change he is passive. All, the agonies of the blind man, all his tears and cries, all his rolling and straining his sightless balls, had just nothing at all to do with the act of restoration. That was Christs alone. And so in the new birth-born of God, tells it all. It is the unparticipated work of the Holy Ghost. In this, regeneration is distinguished from conversion. God turns the man, but the man, so moved, turns with his whole heart. It is the day of Gods great power, but also of the sinners great willingness. The fire which the sun has kindled mounts toward it at once. The kindling of the heavenly flame is regeneration; its upward motion, conversion. Regeneration is the Divine cause; conversion, the sure effect. Where there is the grace of life, there will be a life of grace.
3. Light did not open Bartimeus eyes, nor does truth alone regenerate the sinner. Pouring light on blind eyes will not heal them. Flashing truth, even Gods glorious truth, on the sinners mind will not regenerate him. Bartimeus was as blind at noon as at midnight. The sinner is as blind under the blaze of the gospel as amid the glooms of heathenism.
II. Let me now speak of the greatness and glory of this change.
III. As Bartimeus immediately received his sight, so, in regeneration, the great change is instantaneous. There is some one moment when the vision of the blind man, and the new life of the sinner begins. It may be feeble, but it has begun, and for the faintest beginning the creative act is needed. The main thing for every sinner is, to be able on good ground to say, Whereas I was blind, now I see. If he can say this, and have the witness of the Spirit to its truth, it matters little whether he is able to add, On such a day, in such a place, by such and such means, my eyes were opened. A good ship has been broken by the tempest. Mast and rudder and compass, all are gone. The storm is over, but the wreck is drifting away blindly through night and fog. At length all is still, and the wondering sailors wait for the day. Tardily and uncertainly it dawns, and as the heavy mists slowly dissolve, all eyes are busy trying to discover where they are. At length one descries a cliff which seems familiar, another a pier in which he can hardly be mistaken, a third the old church spire, under whose shadow his mother is sleeping, and now, as the sun breaks forth, they all cry out in joyful assurance, that they are in the desired haven! Mysteriously and without their aid, the Ruler of wind and wave has brought them there, and all are exulting in the great deliverance. Nay, shall we say not all? Can you imagine one poor melancholy man refusing to rejoice, and even doubting these evidences, because he cannot tell the hour and angle of his arrival, nor whether he was borne chiefly by currents of air or ocean?
IV. On the blessedness of this change in Bartimeus-image of the spiritual blessedness of him who is first tasting that the Lord is gracious-I can hardly bring myself to comment. When after long imprisonment in the chamber of suffering, we go forth again, leaning, perhaps, on the arm of a congenial friend, to breathe once more the fresh air, and rejoice in the measureless freedom of nature, she seems to have clothed her green fields and forests, her blue skies and waters, in a brighter pomp of summer bravery than ever before, and the strange beauty fills and almost oppresses the soul. In what affecting terms does Dr. Kane describe the almost adoring rapture with which the return of the first sunshine was hailed, after the long horror of an Arctic night-the frozen blackness of months duration, when he eagerly climbed the icy hills to get the luxury of basking in its brightness, and made the grateful record, Today, blessed be the Great Author of light! I have once more looked upon the sun; while his poor men, sick, mutilated, broken hearted, and ready to die, crawled painfully from their dark berths to look upon his healing beams; when everything seemed superlative lustre and unsurpassable glory, when they could not refrain; they oversaw the light. But what was this, what were all these, to the wonder and joy of Bartimeus first vision of the mighty works of God? They already had the sense of sight, and had enjoyed many pleasurable exercises of it. To him the very sense is new, unimagined before. And now, at the word of Christ, the glorious element comes streaming, suddenly and for the first time, and in its fulness, with thrills of inconceivable bliss, upon the sense and soul buried from birth in utter darkness. And what did he see first? Jesus, his best friend, his Saviour! Jesus, chiefest of ten thousand and altogether lovely; O enviable lot! The first image which the light of heaven formed in his soul was the image of that dear face; O rich recompense for the long pains of blindness! The first employment of his eyes was in beholding Him that opened them; O blessed consecration of his new powers and pleasures! Gaze on, old man! Thou canst not look too ardently or too long. But is the joy which attends spiritual illumination answerable to this? Not always (we have seen) as the immediate result. But it is attainable, and very soon the believer aught to have it, and, unless through ignorance, error, or guilt, will have it, and that abundantly. Moreover, the Bible is the sole Revealer of a conception of joy, in comparison with which every other idea of it, wherever found, is poor, earthly, and already darkened with the taint of death. It is a conception in which every best element of every earthly delight, by whatever name known-all the serenity of peace, all the exhilaration of hope, all the satisfaction of fruition, all the liveliness and sparkle of joy, all the mellower radiance of gladness, all the flush and bound of exultation, all the thrill and movement of rapture, are wrought into one surpassing combination, which, chastened by holiness, softened by charity, dignified by immortality and transfused by the beams of the all-encircling glory of the Godhead, is Blessedness. It elevates the soul to know of such a state as possible for itself; it purifies it to hope for it; strengthens it to strive after it. What, then, must it be to taste it, as we may on earth, and drink it to the full, as we shall forever in heaven!
The Lords answer
An echo from within the Veil! Lord, that I might receive my sight! cried the suppliant without. Receive thy sight! answers the Sovereign within. And so, if Christ suits His granting to our asking, it is because the Spirit has first shaped our asking to His granting. The purpose of grace is the foundation of the prayer of faith. Eternal grace is the mould into which faith is cast. Therefore there is harmony between faith and grace. Grace crowns what grace begins. And so faith saves and grace saves; faith as the instrument, and grace as the Divine efficiency; faith the channel, and grace the heavenly stream; faith the finger that touches the garments fringe, and grace the virtue that pours from the Saviours heart. Faith cannot scale the dreadful precipice from which nature has fallen, but it can lay hold on the rope which grace has let down even into its hands from the top, and which it will draw up again with all the burden faith can bind to it. And this is all the mystery of faiths saving. Christ reaches down from heaven, and faith reaches up from earth, and each hand grasps the other; one in weakness, the other in power. Yea, the hand of faith is often but a poor, benumbed hand, stretched out in anguish from the dark flood where the soul is sinking.
Followed Jesus in the way.-
Attachment to Christ
Whoever has looked unto Jesus as the Author of his faith, will look unto Him as the Finisher. If the eyes be opened truly to see Him, the heart will be opened truly to love Him; and when the heart is thus enlarged, like David, we will run in the way of His commandments. This is the test of discipleship: If any man serve Me, let him follow Me. O friends, let us follow Him whithersoever He goeth. Let us follow Him in the way-the way laid down in His Word, the way opened by His Providence, the way of which the Spirit whispers, This is the way, walk ye in it. Sometimes His way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known. The path of many of us may lie much in the Valley of Humiliation-a life of obscurity, poverty, and lowly toil. We may be Christs hidden ones all our days. So thy way, believer, must lie by the cross and the grave. But beyond the grave is the resurrection, and then the crown of life forever.
Christ revealed to the needy
The loss of sight is spiritually the most significant of all privations. The loss of Eden was perhaps truly a loss of sight-a great shadow, as of an eclipse, fell over all the beauty and splendour of the world, as the sinners eye grew dim. Sin is privative. It works on us by limiting and finally destroying our powers. But this blind beggar had learned in, perhaps through, his blindness, more than Scribes and Pharisees knew. None of them have an eye for the Son of David, whom he saw in his blindness. Christ is revealed to those who need Him most. The mans importunity. He cast aside his garment and came to Jesus. It means impetuosity, and carelessness about external things. He came in the naked simplicity of his need.
I. To see spiritually is to see Christ, the Light of the world, and to be penetrated with the sense of the beauty and fulness which are in Him.
II. A soul fully enlightened sees that in Jesus is all its salvation and all its hope. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
Christs recognition of faith
I. The application.
1. He applies in the right quarter.
2. In the right spirit.
3. At the right time.
II. The reception.
1. Most gracious.
2. Most satisfactory.
III. The effect of the cure. He followed Jesus in the way up to Jerusalem. The love of Christ constrained him. Thus gifts from the hands of Jesus attach us to His Person. They form a link between us and Him. They are as a magnet to draw us. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Christ and the blind
I. Christ came to open the eyes of the blind, and to be the Light of the world.
II. He did not disregard the meanest, and was ever ready to do good.
III. Some wait long in darkness before obtaining the help desired.
IV. Faith perseveres, receives encouragement, and attains its end. (J. H. Godwin.)
.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v46 CHAPTER 10:46-52 (Mar_10:46-52)
CHAPTER 10:46-52 (Mar_10:46-52)
BARTIMAEUS
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"And they come to Jericho: and as He went out from Jericho, with His disciples and a great multitude, the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the way side. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And many rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried out the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still, and said, Call ye him. And they called the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good cheer; rise, He calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, sprang up, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered him, and said, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? And the blind man said unto Him, Rabboni, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And straightway he received his sight, and followed Him in the way." Mar_10:46-52 (R.V.)
THERE is no miracle in the Gospels of which the accounts are so hard to reconcile as those of the healing of the blind man at Jericho.
It is a small thing that St. Matthew mentions two blind men, while St. Mark and St. Luke are only aware of one. The same is true of the demoniacs at Gadara, and it is easily understood that only an eyewitness should remember the obscure comrade of a remarkable and energetic man, who would have spread far and wide the particulars of his own cure. The fierce and dangerous demoniac of Gadara was just such a man, and there is ample evidence of energy and vehemence in the brief account of Bartimaeus. What is really perplexing is that St. Luke places the miracle at the entrance to Jericho, but St. Matthew and St. Mark, as Jesus came out of it. It is too forced and violent a theory which speaks of an old and a new town, so close together that one was entered and the other left at the same time.
It is possible that there were two events, and the success of one sufferer at the entrance to the town led others to use the same importunities at the exit. And this would not be much more remarkable than the two miracles of the loaves, or the two miraculous draughts of fish. It is also possible, though unlikely, that the same supplicant who began his appeals without success when Jesus entered, resumed his entreaties, with a comrade, at the gate by which He left.
Such difficulties exist in all the best authenticated histories: discrepancies of the kind arise continually between the evidence of the most trustworthy witnesses in courts of justice. And the student who is humble as well as devout will not shut his eyes against facts, merely because they are perplexing, but will remember that they do nothing to shake the solid narrative itself.
As we read St. Mark's account, we are struck by the vividness of the whole picture, and especially by the robust personality of the blind man. The scene is neither Jerusalem, the city of the Pharisees, nor Galilee, where they have persistently sapped the popularity of Jesus. Eastward of the Jordan, He has spent the last peaceful and successful weeks of His brief and stormy career, and Jericho lies upon the borders of that friendly district. Accordingly something is here of the old enthusiasm: a great multitude moves along with His disciples to the gates, and the rushing concourse excites the curiosity of the blind son of Timaeus. So does many a religious movement lead to inquiry and explanation far and wide. But when he, sitting by the way, and unable to follow, knows that the great Healer is at hand, but only in passing, and for a moment, his interest suddenly becomes personal and ardent, and "he began to cry out" (the expression implies that his supplication, beginning as the crowd drew near, was not one utterance but a prolonged appeal), "and to say, Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me." To the crowd his outcry seemed to be only an intrusion upon One Who was too rapt, too heavenly, to be disturbed by the sorrows of a blind beggar. But that was not the view of Bartimaeus, whose personal affliction gave him the keenest interest in those verses of the Old Testament which spoke of opening the blind eyes. If he did not understand their exact force as prophecies, at least they satisfied him that his petition could not be an insult to the great Prophet of Whom just such actions were told, for Whose visit he had often sighed, and Who was now fast going by, perhaps forever. The picture is one of great eagerness, bearing up against great discouragement. We catch the spirit of the man as he inquires what the multitude means, as the epithet of his informants, Jesus of Nazareth, changes on his lips into Jesus, Thou Son of David, as he persists, without any vision of Christ to encourage him, and amid the rebukes of many, in crying out the more a great deal, although pain is deepening every moment in his accents, and he will presently need cheering. The ear of Jesus is quick for such a call, and He stops. He does not raise His own voice to summon him, but teaches a lesson of humanity to those who would fain have silenced the appeal of anguish, and says, Call ye him. And they obey with a courtier-like change of tone, saying, Be of good cheer, rise, He calleth thee. And Bartimaeus cannot endure even the slight hindrance of his loose garment, but flings it aside, and rises and comes to Jesus, a pattern of the importunity which prays and never faints, which perseveres amid all discouragement, which adverse public opinion cannot hinder. And the Lord asks of him almost exactly the same question as recently of James and John, What wilt thou that I should do for thee? But in his reply there is no aspiring pride: misery knows how precious are the common gifts, the every-day blessings which we hardly pause to think about; and he replies, Rabboni, that I may receive my sight. It is a glad and eager answer. Many a petition he had urged in vain; and many a small favor had been discourteously bestowed; but Jesus, Whose tenderness loves to commend while He blesses, shares with him, so to speak, the glory of his healing, as He answers, Go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole. By thus fixing his attention upon his own part in the miracle, so utterly worthless as a contribution, but so indispensable as a condition, Jesus taught him to exercise hereafter the same gift of faith.
"Go thy way," He said. And Bartimaeus "followed Him on the road." Happy is that man whose eyes are open to discern, and his heart prompt to follow, the print of those holy feet.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On v46 46–51. They came to Jericho. They had now crossed…
46–51. They came to Jericho. They had now crossed the Jordan into Judea. For Jericho and the healing of the blind man, see notes on Matt. 20:29–34. Compare Luke 18:35–43.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v46 Mar_10:46-52. See R.V. for several graphic touches obscured by…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mar_10:46-52. See R.V. for several graphic touches obscured by A.V.
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Mar_10:51. Rabboni.—The highest title he could give, the gradations being Rab, Rabbi, Rabban, Rabboni. See Joh_20:16.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_10:46-52
(PARALLELS: Mat_20:29-34; Luk_18:35-43; Luk_19:1-28.)
Bartimeus.—There are three powers which, interacting upon one another, work out the drama of life. There is the power within us, the power of self. There is the power without us, the power of the world. In proportion as we can make the power within operative on the power without we are successful. But above these two powers there is a third—the power of God over all. If the power of self, working in conjunction with the power of the world, brings about success or failure, the realisation of the power of God is the way to that best success—the success over ourselves and the world, the victory of character. The story of Bartimeus shews us a man in difficulties, and exhibits his conduct when face to face with these three powers of life.
I. The world is the first power we shall think of in this case.—
1. The world has its power. There is something which the world can do, and that something is what the world on the whole very readily does. Bartimeus found that this was the case. The world gave pity, also practical evidence of its pity. The world gave its alms.
2. But the world has its limitations. The one thing which the man most needed was the one thing which the world could not give. The world could not supply his real need, for his real need was sight. The world seldom can reach the real needs of men. She can bestow honour, she can alleviate suffering, but she cannot heal or satisfy the soul. The gifts which the world gave to Bartimeus, kind and well intentioned as they were, were just those gifts which reminded him most keenly of his misfortune. In receiving the alms of men he felt his dependence. Men in all ages have found out the world and its limitations. Like Severus, who had reached the supreme height of power, they have tried everything and found that everything was naught. Like Augustine, they have found that the heart which is made for greater things cannot rest in the lesser. Like Lacordaire, they have exclaimed with indignation and loathing, “I cannot leave my heart in this heap of mud.” The world, great, kindly, and generous as it is, cannot satisfy the desire of the soul.
3. The world, too, has its moods. The society in which we live is kindly and well disposed. It is not hard-hearted, but it likes to help in its own way, and it is relentless in its opposition to those who strike out their own line. Society has its moods as well as its limitations. The story of Bartimeus illustrates this, for it not only shews us what the world could do and what it could not do, but it also shews us what it did do. The action of the world in this respect may be described in one word—hindrance. It hindered the man in his attempt to realise his most cherished dreams. He desired to be no longer a profitless and dependent creature, but to be restored to the possession of sight, and with it to that capacity for self-direction which is requisite for true life. The moment came when it was within his grasp. The Healer, the Prophet of Nazareth, endowed with the powers of restoration, was near. Bartimeus lifted up his voice in earnest appeal. Society chided Bartimeus for his cry. “They rebuked him that he should hold his peace.” The picture is true to life. The world is intolerant of the best aspirations of men; it resents the attitude of those who take a line of their own. The world has a way of stifling the utterance of the great and unexpected voices which are lifted up in earnest desire or noble appeal. Genius has found it so. The world has hindered, frowned upon, and too often clamoured down the man whose intellectual range was beyond the grasp of average dulness. Philanthropy has found the same. Even a Howard and a Wilberforce cannot escape detraction; and society has shouted against those who have cried aloud in the cause of humanity, and has bidden them to hold their peace. The reformer has fared no better. There are always Eliabs to be found who chide the aspirations of young faith. And even apostles proclaiming a nobler life and spiritual emancipation to society will be clamoured against as those “who turn the world upside-down.”
II. What the man Bartimeus did for himself.—There are two principles which are essential to independent success. One is the principle of self-dependence, the other is that of single-mindedness. Bartimeus illustrates both these principles in his action.
1. He was self-reliant. He took his own course. He did not abandon his purpose because of the clamour of the crowd. This is a lesson which life soon teaches us. Men begin life by hoping much from their patrons. They know men who have influence; they look forward to an easy grasp upon the object of their desires. But they soon unlearn this delusion. Like Dr. Johnson, they discover that too often the office of patron is to leave the struggling man unassisted, and to encumber him with help when he no longer stands in need of it. Men soon discover that their own best patron is their self-reliance. It is this quality which Bartimeus displays. He is heedless of the crowd; but it is not the heedlessness of a coarse and indifferent nature. It is the heedlessness of a man who knows what he wants, and who has the courage to dare all to secure it. It is the quality of soul which Wellington displayed when he planted himself on the heights of Torres Vedras, and held to his choice in spite of the clamour, abuse, and accusations of home ignorance. He knew what he was doing, and he was in earnest. He was not to be turned aside from his purpose because of the empty chatter of impatient and inexperienced criticism.
2. The companion virtue of self-reliance ought to be single-mindedness. Single-mindedness seeks, by concentration of all the attention and all the powers upon one thing, to secure the end in view. It is the spirit which will not be turned aside or seduced. It knows that some sacrifice is needed, and it is ready to pay the price. It compels the attention of the whole mind to the thing in hand. It will cast overboard the most precious freightage in order to reach its harbour successfully. This spirit also Bartimeus displays. It is necessary for him to reach Christ. He must run no risk of failure. The long robe about him was useful enough as he sat by the gate of the city the whole day through. But it might prove a hindrance to his advancing footsteps. There is no hesitation in his action. If there is any chance of its being in his way, it must be sacrificed. He flings aside his robe, and so, unimpeded, advances towards the Lord. Greatness possesses the courage which can sacrifice what may be useful, when it may also prove a temptation or an encumbrance to its advancing march. Cæsar knows when to burn his boats. Industry knows that many a social pleasure and many an hour of relaxation must ruthlessly be sacrificed if ultimate victory is to be achieved. Like Lord Eldon, it knows that the way to success is to live like a hermit and work like a horse! The message of successful lives is the lesson of a single-minded devotion to the object in view. That which is the counsel of successful lives is the command of religion. For the sake of the higher life the encumbrances of the lower must be laid aside. The garments of the old life must be left behind. When the soul is filled with one strong passion, such single-mindedness becomes easy. To Bartimeus it was as nothing to cast aside his robe. He thirsted for sight. What was raiment compared with such a dowry? To those who thirst for the vision of God no sacrifice seems too great. Indeed, it is only those who are possessed of a spirit ready to sacrifice all who can behold that light.
III. What Christ did for him.—When we have spoken of self-reliance and single-mindedness, we have not said the last word about success. As far as temporal life is a conflict with the world these two are indispensable factors of success. But there are ranges of life which lie outside the compelling forces of energy and self-denial. Life is not merely energy, industry, achievement. There is place for repose and worship as well as for zealous activity. Man is not merely a busy, achieving sort of creature; he is a receptive being also. Self-assertion works well against the world; but in the presence of Him who is greater than the world, the spirit of self-assertion drops away. As Bartimeus stands before Christ his whole demeanour is changed. He is no longer the strong and stout pleader of his own cause and his own need. Jesus commanded him to be brought; and when he stands before Christ he is silent till Christ speaks. He stands as one who waits. It is right that it should be so. There are gifts which come only to waiting souls. There are utterances which are open to all the world, which only they hear who wait to hear—
“Celestial harmonies then only heard
When the heart listens.”
This calm and trustful attitude of mind has a kind of natural devoutness in it. It recognises a source of inspiration greater than itself. Great men of different faiths and different ages have realised this. Avicenna found his subtlest syllogisms given him after meditation and worship. Haydn prayed before he composed. Many a man of genius can truly say of some of his best works, “They were given to me.” Inspirations are for men who can and will wait upon God. In the Albert Memorial Chapel at Windsor one of the most suggestive pictures on the walls exhibits this aspect of the soul waiting for God’s gift. David and the harpists of Israel are represented with their instruments in their hands. Their fingers hang listless upon the strings. Their heads are bowed. All the appliances of their art are in their grasp, but the Divine gift is not yet. They are waiting for the inspiration from on high. So Bartimeus, the man of energy and self-assertion, waits before Christ for the gift which his force and his determination cannot seize, which must be given as love’s free gift. He waits till Christ asks, “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” To say that our Lord shewed love to the blind man is to say what is true enough and obvious enough; but it does not help us to the full appreciation of Christ’s personal dealing with Bartimeus. His action shewed much more than a vague and limp benevolence. His love was ever exerted with an everlasting moral influence upon those whom He helped.
1. There was sensibility. Here, amid the clamour of the crowd, He detects the voice of want, just as at another time He knew at once when the weary and suffering woman laid a trembling finger on His robe. His love was of that delicate and responsive order which makes kindness twice welcome in being so obviously the outcome of a sympathetic and ready heart.
2. There was decision. No clamour or noise of discountenancing crowds could stay the march of His love. Jesus, in the midst of the outcry against Bartimeus, stood and commanded him to be brought. In one moment the clamouring crowd changes its demeanour. “Be of good cheer. Rise: He calleth thee.” Nothing succeeds like success. A little firmness, and the strong man brings the whole multitude over to his side. The man who knows what he means, and has the requisite firmness to pursue it regardless of noise, is like a solid mass floating on the surface of the water which draws the purposeless jetsam to its side.
3. There was judgment. He does not heal the blind man all at once. There is a pause; there is a question. “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” The need was obvious, but it was well the man should express it. The interchange of speech created a feeling of confidence; the bond between him and Christ became one through which moral sympathy might flow. It was no cold exercise of power; it was no heartless magic which restored the sight. It was power exercised by wise and loving sympathy. Here we touch a principle which may shed light upon the mystery of prayer. Why go through the form of asking God to help us, when God, if He be all-knowing, knows all about our needs? If all-powerful, He can help us. If all-good, He will. What need is there, then, of prayer? But is prayer only so to be measured? Is the establishment of sympathetic confidence between the soul of man and the love of God to count as nothing?
4. There was capability. With Christ, love and power were one. “Receive thy sight.” The words are spoken, and Bartimeus looks up. The restoration of sight is restoration to his true and complete manhood. He can see things as they are. It is this which Christ can bestow on all. It is the power to see in their true relationship the great forces of life—the world, self, God—the force without us, the force within us, and the power above us. It is the power to see God as He is—in His purity and lovingness as well as in His might. It is the power to see ourselves as we are in our weakness and dependence, in our sinfulness and foolishness. It is the power to see the world and life as they are, and therefore to see life not as the opportunity of accumulating the things which perish, but as the opportunity of being what we ought to be, and of doing what we ought to do.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mar_10:46. The uncomfortable situation of the blind.—In what uncomfortable circumstances are some of the children of men placed! One is deprived of his eyes, another of his ears, a third of his legs, and a fourth of his judgment. Of all these there are none more pitiable and helpless than the blind.
I. The uncomfortable situation of the blind.—
1. They are deprived of the benefit of light, which is so cheerful and animating.
2. They are deprived of the advantages of reading, either for instruction or entertainment.
3. They are incapable of following the common occupations of life, by which to earn their bread.
4. They are in a great measure dependent upon others.
II. Some means by which to alleviate the miseries of the blind.—
1. To furnish them with some employment, which may prevent them from being a burden to the public.
2. That the occupation be of such a nature as gently to engage the mind without fatiguing it, and by diverting their attention to make them less a burden to themselves.
3. That they be taught the principles of the religion of Jesus, which are so nobly suited to afford consolation under the hardest lot, and to render them contented and happy.—D. Johnston, D.D.
Mar_10:47. In the Nazarene Bartimeus saw the Messiah. Why did he so? Why more than the rest of the crowd that followed? Can we doubt the reason? Can we be in a difficulty about it? He was blind now. But there had been a time, perhaps, when he was able to see. If so, he had used his eyesight for a heavenly purpose. He had read and marked and inwardly digested the truth as it is in Jesus. Happy Bartimeus! He can see clearer than the most keen-eyed. The penetration of philosophy is nothing to his; he understands all mysteries; he pierces the thick palpable darkness; he sees through the veil of the outward sense the glory and the majesty of Him who is the Light of the world. What an example for us to follow! We may not be dark-visioned, like Bartimeus, but we shall have our hours of the heart’s darkness, or of moral twilight. How shall we prepare for them? Most surely in the way that he prepared—by reading God’s Holy Word, by diving into its hidden depths, by praying for enlightenment, by committing to our memories, and by treasuring up in them the holy texts of promise or of prophecy which lie like jewels within that great sea of wonder.
Mar_10:48. Want and faith not to be silenced.—Could their hands stop the mouth of him who spoke and felt as Bartimeus did? Nay; for he had a double tongue. His faith and his misery alike were speaking. You may stifle almost anything else; but there is a life and an energy in want and in faith which nothing can overpower. Did the winds and the waves ever prevent the seaman that has been washed overboard from crying for the cable to be thrown him? Is not his cry the mightier for their tempestuous riot? It is the cry of nature, the cry of that voice which God has implanted in all. But the cry of the new nature is in this case added to that of the old; it is the cry of grace and of nature too. It is nature that feels the want; it is grace that believes the remedy.
Mar_10:49. “Commanded him to be called.”—By this circumstance Christ administered reproof and instruction: reproof, by ordering those to help the poor man who had endeavoured to check him; instruction, by teaching us that, though He does not stand in need of our help, He will not dispense with our services, that we are to aid each other, that though we cannot recover our fellow-creatures we may frequently bring them to the place and means of cure.—W. Jay.
Mar_10:50. Renunciation.—The action of the blind man in casting aside his garment in order to come to Jesus means to us much more than a mere revelation of personal character—a disclosure of the faith and zeal of the blind beggar. It may be taken as a type of the removal of the hindrances of whatever kind that prevent a soul from coming to Jesus as its Saviour.
1. The necessity of casting away our garment of self-righteousness in order to come to Jesus. Every man thinks that he has whereof to boast—his acts of worship or kindness, his upright character and goodness of heart. We are slow to believe that God does not ask some valuable consideration at our hands, and that if we would seek His blessing it is not necessary for us to be furnished with some price or equivalent to give. We have our formularies, our ordinances, our offerings, which we think will open our way; and we exact from ourselves certain spiritual qualifications as a preparation. But if we are to be cured of our blindness and poverty, we must fling this garment aside. If we would get near enough to Jesus to get personal benefit from Him, we must have the conviction inwrought in us of our utter destitution of true religion. We must be brought to believe that we do not believe. We must hide our poverty no longer from ourselves. We must honestly and humbly take the beggar’s place and raise the beggar’s cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
2. The necessity of casting away the garment of effete forms and methods in order to grow in knowledge and grace. Religion itself is often made a hindrance in the way of coming nearer to Christ. What would happen if, when the warm, quickening sun of spring is calling every living thing to new growth and development, the buds of the trees persisted in retaining the scales in which they were wrapped up, merely because they had been indispensable in preserving the vitality of their buds during the winter’s frosts and storms? There would be no foliage, no blossom or fruit, no formation of new wood for man’s use, no shade for the earth and its creatures. The whole economy of nature would suffer grievous loss and be deranged. Nay, more, the arrested buds themselves would either die into hard knotty excrescences, or would be transformed into formidable thorns. And so, if we persist in retaining the old effete wrappings of religion merely because they were formerly, at an earlier stage of growth, indispensable, when the summer sun of a higher faith is quickening us and calling us to a fuller Christian life, we shall become mere dry sticks in the vineyard of the Lord, providing no shade or fruit or beauty for ourselves or others; we shall derange the whole economy of the Church by our deadness and conservation, and our arrested growth will be transformed into a wounding thorn.
3. The necessity of casting away in the end the garment of the body by death in order to be present with the Lord, and to be effectually cured of all our poverty and blindness. All nature is deciduous. The bud casts off its scales in order to produce its foliage; the flower casts off its petals in order to produce the fruit; the fruit decays in order to liberate the seed; the seed dies in order that the germ may grow. The worm leaves behind its silken tomb in order to emerge a butterfly. And at every stage of advancing life some old garment that suited an old purpose is cast away. So we cast away our body every seventh year in order to grow and mature our physical nature. And in the end we must cast away our body itself in order to finish our development and emerge into ampler life. As the growth of the young foliage of spring from the cast-off husks of autumn is a process of life and not of death, so in the expansion of the soul through the casting off of the body death loses all the elements which make it death. It is a process of life and development—in the harmony, and not out of the harmony, of the Divine order. A higher miracle than that wrought upon Bartimeus will be performed upon us; and what this world under the bright sunshine was to him when his eyes were couched of their films, and he saw the glory of nature for the first time, this in a far grander form will be the heavenly world that shall burst upon our purified vision, and we shall see the glorious form of Jesus in the light in which He dwells. We shall see Him as He is, and we shall be changed into the same image. Surely it is worth casting away the garment of the body; surely what things are gain to us in this world we may well count loss, to have such a revelation and experience as that!—H. Macmillan, D. D.
Mar_10:52. “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”—Ask for this faith, if you have it not. Exercise it if you have it. It is the appropriator of every blessing; it is the hand which lays hold of every blessing, yea, which puts on Christ Himself. Grace stands, so to speak, above us, holding out the mantle of blessedness; faith raises its hand, takes the mantle, and puts it on. Poor, blind, naked, ignorant, wretched, as we may be, yet come we in faith, come we in tears, in penitence, in deep contrition, and yet in faith to the Friend of penitents; and there is not a stain we lament which shall not be wiped out, nor a heart-wound which shall not be healed.
Following Jesus.—So with us, when our eyes are opened we follow Jesus in the way. Before that we walk in our own way, in the way of the world; we follow the multitude to do evil, we follow our own sinful lusts and passions; we choose our own way instead of God’s way; we prefer the path which is most pleasant, most easy, most profitable; but when our eyes are opened all is changed, we learn to say, “I loved to choose and see my path; but now—lead Thou me on.” Thus we come to follow Jesus in the way; and that way is the way of holiness, the narrow way which leads to life. It is not always a smooth way; it climbs up the Hill Difficulty, and anon winds down into the Valley of Humiliation; it passes through a garden of Gethsemane, a place of agonised prayer; it leads to a cross, a lifelong cross sometimes; it carries us to a grave, but, thank God, a grave from which the stone is rolled away, and which is bright with the light of a glorious resurrection. And withal it is a way of pleasantness, and a path of peace, of peace such as the world cannot give, and it ends in heaven.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 10
Mar_10:46. The blind beggar and the multititude.—Origen gives a very pretty allegorical turn to this narrative. He makes the blind man, who calls on Jesus, an Ebionite; and the multitudes around, who commanded him to hold his peace, believers from among the heathen converts, who generally held the more exalted views in regard to the Passion of the Messiah; and then he continues thus: But although the multitudes commanded him to be silent, yet he said the more because he believed in Jesus, although his faith was of a human kind; and he cried out aloud, and said to Him, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” How different would many things have been if men, in this spirit of love and freedom, had always allowed the grace of the Redeemer to fall on all who call upon Him! if they had always taken into account the various stages in the Christian progress up to the ripeness of manhood in the faith, and had not wished to force different spirits all at once into the same measure and degrees!
Treatment of the poor.—The Jews had a law that there should be no beggar in Israel. England has statutes also to correct impudent poor and to provide for impotent poor; but, as it is observed, our laws have a better prologue than epilogue; they be well penned, but ill kept; and so this good order is neglected among us, as it was about Jericho, to the great scandal of Christian religion and dishonour of our English nation. It is written of the Athenians that they punished idle persons as heinous offenders. And the Egyptians had a law that every man should bring his name to the chief ruler of the province and show what trade he followed. The Romans enacted severe statutes against such as negligently left their ground untilled. Among the Chinese every man is set about somewhat, according to his strength and years; one labours with his hand, another with his foot, etc.; and (which is most admirable) they keep in Canton four thousand blind men, unfit for other service, to grind corn and rice for the people. If either the law were believed as gospel, or the gospel kept as law, such as would not labour should not eat. Loiterers and sturdy rogues should be sent to prison, or some place where they might work well; and as for such as cannot labour, it is fit, we that are strong, should help to bear the burdens of the weak, being eyes to the blind and feet to the lame.—Dean Boys.
Mar_10:47. Soul sight.—One day a cry went down the street, every one fled, as a runaway horse came tearing along the road. A little blind girl, left all alone, stood in the road, not knowing which way to turn to escape from death. She could not see, and no human hand was there to guide. She did not try to run, but sinking down on her knees just where she was, with upturned face to the heaven the bodily eye could not see, she commended herself to the Father of all. The horse dashed on—it was upon her! It swerved and thundered past, leaving the lonely kneeling child unhurt. That little one’s bodily eye could not see, but the soul eye, looking out beyond all, saw the Maker and Creator of all. So sometimes blind folk see more than those who think they see.
Mar_10:50. “And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.”—I remember once reading these words on a memorial tablet in a country church. Inscriptions on tombstones are often unsatisfactory, and Scriptural quotations upon them most inappropriate; but this one was as suitable as it was singular. The squire of the village had late in life come under the influence of Christian friends, who brought him to a knowledge of the gospel; and to him the words of the Evangelist were applied. They were very suggestive. They told of pride, and worldly pursuits, and self-righteousness, of all to which the man had clung for a lifetime, cast away that he might come to the Saviour. For a sinner saved in life’s last hours a better epitaph could hardly have been chosen. I admired the piety that compared the rich man lying there to the poor blind beggar of the gospel story, the once highly esteemed garment of personal righteousness to the beggar’s worthless robe, and that expressed the one hope and refuge of the soul in Christ by the words “he came to Jesus.” It reminded me of the lines on William Carey’s tomb:
“A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall;
Be Thou my strength and righteousness,
My Jesus, and my all.”
What is your mant?—We complain of wandering thoughts; we kneel at our devotions, and our thoughts go fluttering away from us like the sparrows that flit and twitter in the trees. The remedy for this is to have a want. Let us pause at the threshold of prayer as Jeanie Deans did at the door of the audience-room, laying her hand upon her heart. Let us, if we would present a petition at the throne of heavenly grace, feel the parchment to make sure it is there.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v46 Mat 20:29-34; Luk 18:35-43; Mar 10:46-52. “And they are…
THE BLIND MEN AT JERICHO
Mat 20:29-34; Luk 18:35-43; Mar 10:46-52. “And they are coming into Jericho. And He and His disciples and a great multitude going out from Jericho, blind Bartimeus, the son of Timeus, was sitting by the wayside begging. And hearing that it is Jesus the Nazarene, began to cry out, and to say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me! And many continued to rebuke him, that he must keep silent; and he continued to cry out much more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!
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And Jesus, standing, said that he should be called. And they called the blind man, saying to Him, Take courage, arise; He calls you. And laying aside his cloak, rising, lie came to Jesus. And responding, Jesus says to him, What do you wish that I shall do to you? And the blind man said to Him, Master, that I may look up. Jesus said to him, Go, thy faith hath saved thee; and immediately he looked up, and follows Jesus in the way.” As you see, Matthew, Luke, and Mark all give this narrative. However, it is pertinent to observe that Matthew says He healed two blind men as He came out from Jericho, while Luke speaks of but one, whom He healed as He was coming into Jericho; Mark alone giving us the name of Bartimeus, the son of Timeus, and stating that he was sitting by the wayside begging as the multitude passed out of Jericho. Doubtless his home was near by, and he made his living by begging of the travelers along the highway from Jericho to Jerusalem. On hearing the tread of the multitude, and learning that the Prophet Jesus is passing by, and as he had heard so much about His wonderful miracles, restoring sight to multitudes of the blind who had been enabled to reach His ministry in His peregrinations through Galilee, Judea, Perea, Samaria, and other countries, and having determined to avail himself of the opportunity if He should ever pass that way, and doubtless already having information that He had crossed the Jordan, out of Perea into Judea, the day preceding, and was traveling toward Jerusalem, and would certainly come that way, the only great road leading through the wilderness of Judea from Jericho to Jerusalem, he now cries aloud incessantly, “O Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me!” As the prophecies revealed that the Messiah was to be the Son of David, in this appellation He really acknowledges His Christhood.
I always met many beggars in that country. While they all have their places, and unhesitatingly speak out in their language, asking for a contribution, I never heard one scream and roar as this one did. Luke uses the word eboese, which is from boao, which, you observe, if you will pronounce it loudly, makes a noise like the lowing of an ox. Hence we see that this man threw his mouth open, and roared aloud, refusing to be quiet, though many of the multitude rebuked him for his impetuosity and disorder. Jesus, however, gives His fur approval to his persistent roaring by calling him to Him unhesitatingly. Consequently, throwing aside his outer garment for the sake of expedition, rising, he hastens to Jesus, who immediately opens his eyes, certifying to him, “Thy faith hath saved thee;” thus laying an illimitable emphasis on the grace of faith, as Jesus is accustomed to do. O how wonderfully does Jesus preach salvation by faith! Blind Bartimeus not only received his eyesight, but the salvation of his soul, through simple faith in Jesus. Therefore we are not astonished that, having now become a disciple, he falls in with the crowd, and follows Jesus, doubtless, the remnant of his life, and is now playing on his golden harp. This is a notable case of whole-hearted, importunate seeking of Jesus. When they did their utmost to moderate him, telling him that screaming and roaring in the presence of that great multitude was so indecorous, you see he only roared the louder. Find a penitent on that line, and look out! — something wonderful is going to happen.
Now, as you see, Matthew tells of two blind men restored as Jesus passed out of Jericho; Luke speaking of but one, and that one as he entered into the city; while Mark tells us of Bartimeus as he came out. How do we reconcile this apparent disharmony? There is no need of any reconcilement. I have no doubt but He did, as Luke says, restore a blind man as He went in, and, as Luke says, two as he came out, of whom, doubtless, Bartimeus was one; as you must remember that many of our Lord’s great miracles are not found now in the inspired records, but only a few salient ones.
The Jericho so celebrated in the days of Joshua stood on the plain of the Jordan, near the base of the Mount of Temptation, where Jesus was tempted by Satan, and ten miles from the ford of the Jordan where Israel crossed over and Jesus was baptized. You know when this city was destroyed, Israel having shouted down the walls, God forbade its rebuilding. So it has never been rebuilt. However, they built a new city, two miles south, where the road from Jerusalem reaches the foot of the mountain and proceeds out, crossing the plain of the Jordan. This was the Jericho in the days of Christ. In the desolation of Judea by the Roman armies, soon after the crucifixion of Jesus, Jericho was destroyed. When the Crusaders conquered and took possession of the Holy Land, A. D. 1099, they rebuilt Jericho, about two miles farther east, along the road to the Jordan ford. This Jericho is still standing. I lodged there during both of nay visits in that country.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v46 Subdivision 1. (Mar 10:46-52; Mar 11:1-33; Mar 12:1-44; Mar…
Subdivision 1. (Mar 10:46-52; Mar 11:1-33; Mar 12:1-44; Mar 13:1-37.)
The King.
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The first subdivision has also its three parts. The first of these has its central significance in the barren fig-tree, which the Lord curses for its barrenness, a figure scarcely to be mistaken by any who look below the surface, and which in Mark is woven together with the story of His purification of the temple, His Father’s house. Israel, alas, for this had to be driven out of that which they had profaned. The "Canaanite (or merchantman) in the house of the Lord" had found in the favored people of God its sorrowful fulfilment.
The second part shows us, along with their hostility to the Lord, His judgment in detail of their condition. This comes out in His answers to their various and evil-designing questions and efforts to entangle Him in His talk, - efforts which end for them in disastrous confusion. He closes it with His unanswerable question to them with regard to David’s Son; and then denounces to the people the heartless and ostentatious religiousness of the scribes.
The third part announces (for disciples, ears alone) the coming of the rejected Son of man in glory, to deliver His believing people out of the great final tribulation into which the nation has come because, rejecting Him who came to them in His Father’s name, they have received him who comes in his own.
The connection all through, as generally in Mark, is close and intimate with Matthew’s Gospel; Mark, however, omitting much, especially of the dispensational details, as the marriage of the King’s son; and in the prophecy of the final scenes, all that has reference to the Church and to the judgment of the nations, the separation of the sheep from the goats.
1.(1) In the three synoptic Gospels alike, the Lord’s presentation of Himself to the people as their King is prefaced by the miracle at Jericho, which is expressly wrought in answer to an appeal to Him as Son of David. Matthew mentions two blind men, but Mark only one, whose name he (and not Matthew) gives. Bartimaeus is simply the son of Timaeus, so that he gets his personal name from his relationship. Timaeus is in Greek,* "one that is prized," and "the son of one that is prized" would well represent the state of Israel in her blindness of unbelief still "beloved for the fathers, sakes" (Rom 11:28). It is surely a striking name for one whom we have already looked at as on other grounds (see notes on Mat 20:29-34) foreshadowing the remnant of Israel in days to come, when. God is preparing the way of His King to come to Zion. They need and will find, spite of the opposition of the mass by whom they are surrounded, in Jesus of Nazareth, One who is sent to "preach recovering of sight to the blind" (Luk 4:18). To Him they will come, "casting away the garment" of religious self-righteousness, which has been ever the hindrance with the people to whom they belong. They will receive sight and follow Jesus.
{*A Greek name need scarcely be a difficulty, where Greek had been almost the common language for so many years, and where Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nicodemus, Stephen, are all Greek. Its being Greek (the common synonym of Gentile) is in fact spiritually significant, Israel’s father Abraham, God’s Timaeus, having been called in uncircumcision, according to the apostle’s argument in Rom 4:1-25.}
Such spiritual sight given in Jericho, the world under the curse, into which Christ has come, and which still converts blind beggars into joyful followers of the Lord, is even now His witness. He had to come under this curse to redeem us from it, and the deliverance at Jericho, may well be the pledge of His victory at Jerusalem and elsewhere, though He go to present rejection at the hands of men. The blessed Servant has anticipated it all, and sees with no uncertainty the path before Him. That very rejection shall only give Him occasion for deeper service.
(2) So they come near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage (the "house of unripe figs") and Bethany (the "house of affliction" or "humiliation")* significant names both for Him; and now He sends two of His disciples to bring to Him the colt upon which He is to ride, proclaiming His Kingdom of peace, into Jerusalem. Mark, as little as possible touching the dispensational side of things, omits from his account the mother ass (see Matthew). The acclamations of the multitude hail the "coming kingdom of our father David." There seems at present no opposition. He simply enters Jerusalem, goes into the temple and looks round upon all things there. Then, it being now evening, He withdraws and goes out to Bethany.
{*More generally taken now as "house of dates," but quite conjecturally.}
Matthew does not notice this first visit of silent contemplation on the Lord’s part, but puts the cleansing of the temple, which did not really take place till the next day, in connection with the triumphal entry. This has of course been charged upon him as a discrepancy. It is in fact the substitution of an order of thought for the order of time; and this is not infrequent in the Gospels.
This simple looking round upon everything and then turning the back upon it is very solemn. It is not judgment that is inflicted, but He finds nothing to His satisfaction, and leaves it to them, and leaves them with it. His own personal position is outside it all. The temple as His Father’s house should have been His own. There, if anywhere in Israel, would have been the throne of God, and here was the King of this kingdom, the Son of the Father; and He turns His back on it. Leaving it, He leaves the city also, for Bethany, the "house of humiliation." He can only abide there.
(3) On the morrow, as He returns to the city, He hungers. A spiritual hunger was, in fact, upon Him. The zeal of His Father’s house was consuming Him, with all that that house implied, as established among men - a place of approach to Him, not for Israel only, but for all nations. This had been committed to Israel’s care, and their privileges upon which they prided themselves, only to look down with disdain upon the Gentiles, were really responsibilities on their behalf. The blessing of the earth depended - and still depends - upon Israel’s blessing. As God’s vine they had failed, and the vineyard had been laid waste; but He had suffered a remnant to come back, according to His own figure as to them, to be as "a fig-tree planted in" the desolate "vineyard" (Luk 13:6), to see if yet there might be fruit for Him.
Here, then, the significance of the present act is seen. The returned people stood before God with its profession of faith in Him, in striking contrast with the nations round, for whom plainly as merely heathen; "the time of figs was not yet." The fig-leaf was the promise of fruit wherever found; and therefore the Lord comes to it to find this. There was none: and for this He pronounces its doom.
No more is said about this here, but He goes on to Jerusalem and the temple, and what He had found at the beginning of His ministry (Joh 2:13-16) He finds unchanged at the end of it. Greed was profaning the very house of God, and that which should have been a house of prayer had become a den of robbers. He purges them all out, assuming for a moment the authority which was His; but the effect is only to bring the chief priests and scribes together to plot for His destruction. As yet the fear of the people holds them back.
We return then to the actual destruction of the fig-tree, which they find next morning dried up from the roots. The Lord uses it to impress upon His disciples the power of faith in God. Not a tree merely, but a mountain would disappear in this way from the path of faith, where faith laid hold of the Invisible for it. But He joins with believing prayer the need of a tender spirit of forgiveness towards any against whom the heart might retain the sense of wrong, lest the Father’s government should be made to remember one’s own offences.
The Lord leaves the application both of the fig-tree and the mountain to be made by His disciples. They were evidently not yet prepared to realize the doom that Israel as a nation were bringing upon themselves, or that they might be such an obstruction as He pictured to the path of faith. The divine foresight of the end would not prevent the most assiduous tenderness in warning and entreaty till the end should come. God has taken care even to proclaim by the mouth of Jeremiah that His own prophecies of coming judgment might be set aside by a nation’s repentance (Jer 18:7-8); and has even given us in Nineveh an example of this (Jon 3:10).
But Israel went on unrepenting until it was in fact, as a nation; sunk like the mountain of which the Lord speaks into the sea of nations round her; and the fig-tree died withered up because it had no fruit for Him who sought it. The blessing of which the Word still gives assurance for them can only be through a veritable resurrection (Eze 37:1-28).
2. The next section is almost entirely similar to Matthew, save in the omission of two parables, and in the addition by Mark of the beautiful and significant incident of the widow’s mites. It gives, as already said, the Lord’s judgment in detail of Israel’s condition, in her chosen leaders, who unite in opposition, though veiled, against Him. Everywhere they are met, refuted, their disguise stripped off, until He closes argument with His own triumphant question how Christ can be the Son of David. This is followed by His denunciation of the scribes, and His appraisal of all their ostentatious giving to the temple treasury as less in value than the widow’s "two mites which make a farthing."
(1) The question of authority is the one first raised; upon the face of it unutterable folly; for His works bore witness of Him, and it was impossible to suppose that divine power, such as was manifest in them, could have been gained unlawfully. He refuses, therefore, to answer their question, except they answer first His own. If competent to discern as to Himself (and if not, it would be of no use to answer them), they should know as to the baptism of John, whether it was from heaven or of men. If they knew, let them answer.
But they dare not answer. On the one side they cannot excuse themselves, if it were from heaven; for not being his disciples: on the other, they could not deny his claim for fear of the people. And the only refuge left for them is in what for them is a complete and yet most insincere humiliation; they cannot tell!
(2) The parable of the two sons which Matthew gives is here omitted, and that of the vineyard comes into the second place. The thought of the vineyard was familiar to them from the prophets, who had pressed upon them the claims of God as to it; and they had built the sepulchres of these prophets, whom they could not deny that their fathers killed. With the murder of the One who spoke to them in their hearts, how could they deny that they were in the succession of the parable? Then came their own Scriptures to prove that the corner stone of God’s building was one rejected by the builders. Clearly they could understand that all this spoke of them, and feel it enough to be maddened by it.
(3) Now they break up into parties, (Pharisees and Herodians) which unite together, however, in dexterous combination. They do not question His authority any more: they know that He is true and teaches the way of God in truth. Nor will the fear of man shut His mouth.
So they have a question to ask, an important one, touching closely all ranks and conditions among them, and quite apt to kindle dangerous passions. Pharisees and Herodians were divided about it: here it was for Him to settle: Should they give tribute to Caesar? Aye, or no?
But they cannot dig deep enough to hide from Him the hypocrisy of that question, that they were merely, as He tells them, tempting Him. Yet He will not decline it: let them only bring Him the tribute money. And they bring it: and there is the image of Caesar stamped broadly upon it.
They cannot deny, - they are not suffered to ignore the fact, - that this is Caesar’s money. But how much lay hid under this for those that were still capable of entertaining such questions. How long they had given up any full, entire reliance upon the Almighty, the God of their father Abraham, and by profession their own! They had leaned upon another arm than His. They had coveted the riches of a world which Abraham had refused. They were trafficking with Caesar’s money, and must pay him back his money. Issachar in their father Jacob’s prophecy had proved but too surely their type: Issachar, the "bony ass, couching between the hurdles: and he saw the land that it was good, and rest that it was pleasant; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became servant to tribute."
Give Caesar then what is his: no use to expect divine help to ignore what their sin had brought them into. No! and yet a way there was - a way which they had never taken: give God also His own! how surely then would the burden pass from their back, and the rest they longed for be obtained! "My yoke is easy, and my burden light." "And they marvelled at Him."
(4) But they are not yet silenced; and after the Pharisee and the Herodian appears the Sadducee: a not unusual order at any time. With them we find the intrusion of mere human thought into spiritual things, and which with its own beggarliness would beggar heaven. But they know neither the Scriptures, - when did an infidel ever know the Scriptures? - nor the power of God. The Lord proves to them how the simplest sayings of God may contain what would enrich us for ever and we do not find it there. Shall we ever awake to the need we have of putting under adequate tillage the rich land which God has given us? As to the Lord’s argument here, we can add little or nothing to what has been said in Matthew.
(5) As to the next question, Mark shows us under the tempting spirit of which Matthew speaks a certain effect nevertheless produced in the man who asks it. How apt we are to fight with the truth just when it is gaining access into our hearts! and how contrary often are the thoughts which unite to move us! In the scribe before us we find a further effect of the answer given to his question, and the Lord Himself pronounces him "not far from the Kingdom of God." We are not told that he ever entered it; but we have good reason for hope that he had reached the place in which he was as the result of a seeking which could not fail of divine guidance. It needed some boldness to proclaim so heartily his acceptance of the truth, (simple as it may seem and is,) that love to God and to one’s neighbor is "more than all whole burnt-offering and sacrifices," and this in sympathetic admiration of Jesus of Nazareth, and in the midst of those who were His open adversaries.
With the exception of this, Matthew’s account is almost exactly that of Mark, and we cannot add to what is said of it in the former Gospel.
(6) After the scribe’s confession; "no one any longer dared to question Him." But He now turns upon His silenced enemies with a question on His own part. The charge against Him was that "He made Himself the Son of God." The creed of the scribes was that Messiah was simply Son of David. He produces David himself therefore in proof that He must be more: otherwise how, as in the 110th psalm, could the father call his son his lord? To this they have, and could have, no answer.
(7) He proceeds to warn the people against the scribes. Mark does not however reproduce here the detailed judgment which is given in Matthew. He speaks of their love of display, of human applause, of leadership, their very prayers a hypocrisy, while they devoured in their greed the substance of the poor and unprotected. Such were the religious chiefs of the nation, and their character was one most easily to be discerned surely. Yet these blind leaders were as blindly followed.
(8) He turns the page, and shows us amid such a state of things what the eye of God could discern; and His heart delight in; the act of a poor widow, too poor to tempt even the rapacity of a scribe, yet not too poor to put into the temple-treasury a gift beyond all the rich gifts of the wealthiest worshipers. "Two mites which make a farthing:" really about three quarters of a farthing! but the value of it, as our Lord declares, was not according to the market - according to its buying capacity, but intangible and spiritual. The two mites were all the means she had: "all her living." She had put her heart in with it: a heart that had no reserve, - that would keep nothing back from God. The value of it was that of sacrifice, and could not miss appreciation by One who was Himself the Great Sacrifice, or by Him who spared not for us His own Son.
But this was one among all that had cast in; and the commendation takes the form of condemnation; the joy of approbation is only as of a sweet note amid dissonance. Nay, the existence of this one verity of goodness and devotedness seems only to male worse the awful falsehood and self-service and arrogancy of pretension all around. Israel remains unhealed, unhelped, with her sin upon her, and going on to the culminating sin of sins - the Cross.
And, as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. There is naturally no difference. The lesson here is lesson for us all, and the exception is of divine grace only. Thus the Cross was not man’s sin only, but the grace that meets his sin: and
"The very spear that pierced Thy side
Drew forth the blood to save."
3. But before the Cross is reached, the veil is once more for a moment drawn aside, and we are given to see the One rejected and disowned of men coming in the glory of heaven when unbelief shall be possible no more, and resistance beyond a moment’s possible thought. We have been already through this great prophecy in Matthew, whom Mark in what he gives of it almost entirely resembles. No doubt there are certain differences, and for these and for the resemblances alike there must be spiritual reasons which we should be able to give some account of. But for this the Gospels in their entirety must be better known, and each part apprehended in the light of the whole. Too little believing work has been done in this direction to enable us to say much to the purpose as to it. That there is divine wisdom in it all it should not need to say; but one may have to confess ignorance, which the many with whom we share it prevent being felt with the shame which should belong to it. To avoid mere repetition the notes on Matthew must be referred to throughout.
(1) The introductory portion no doubt takes in, in its general characteristics, the present time; though Christianity, as such, is not contemplated in it. It partakes in this way in the character of Old Testament prophecy, in which the present dispensation has no place; save, indeed, as you may call a type a prophecy, and then we can find such parabolic utterances not seldom. The prophecy of our Lord here has, in Matthew’s version of it, quite similarly its Christian portion couched in this parabolic style. The time had not yet come for plainer speech. Mark and Luke alike omit all this Christian part; while the indefiniteness of this introductory portion leaves room for what is not explicitly found there.
Mark, as well as Luke, emphasizes in a special manner the persecutions that the disciples would have to endure, which in Luke are declared to take place before the signs among the nations. They are, therefore, persecutions of the early Christian days, such as the Acts show us to have taken place as soon as the new message of salvation was proclaimed. In this way the testimony to governors and kings was to be given; and they were, without any anxiety about it, to rely entirely upon the Spirit of God for all that they should say. liven the natural love of kindred would be destroyed by the spirit of hostility to Christ. He that endured to the end would be saved.
(2) The last clause, while as a general principle it applies to all, has certainly a special reference to the time of the end, and the Lord goes on immediately to the abomination standing in the holy place, "where" (above all) "it ought not:" the very place in which idolatrous worship would be the most open defiance of Him who had peremptorily forbidden it. This, as we have seen in Matthew, undoubtedly refers to days that are yet to come, after the present dispensation is ended by the removal of the saints to meet the Lord in the air, and when the "remnant of His brethren" as Micah declares, "shall return to the children of Israel" (Mic 5:3): that is, when those converted to God in Israel will no longer find their place as now in the body of Christ, but share the national hopes and promises of the ancient people of God.
All the warnings of the great tribulation following here are almost word for word as we find them in Matthew, with the omission only of the reference to the sabbath, and the danger of deception as to His being in the desert or the secret chambers.
(3) The signs which precede the coming of the Lord follow, and then the Son of man; coming in the clouds of heaven; sends forth His angels to gather together His elect from the four winds, - Israel, once more His people, from their long dispersion.
(4) The parable of the revival of Israel’s fig-tree from her winter sleep, with what follows to the thirty-second verse, is again almost word for word with Matthew. But Mark alone, in recording the Lord’s declaration that "of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven," inserts "neither the Son."* This the Lord’s character as the Son of God in service sufficiently explains. "The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth." And to the Corinthians the apostle says, "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." It is not a question of His divine knowledge, but of what He knew as about His Father’s business, as the apostle at Corinth knew nothing but the Crucified One.
{*It is found, however, in some copies of Matthew: see notes Mat 24:36.}
It has been urged against this that it is not in this sense that no man or angel knoweth; but this as an objection has no force. For the point of our Lord’s words is the inaccessibleness to man of this knowledge. There was none to whom one could go for this knowledge: neither man nor angel could communicate it, nor the Son either, as the apostle of His Father’s will. It is a pregnant example of how we need to apprehend the divisions of Scripture according to their proper significance, in order to get the details rightly. "Take ye heed, watch and pray," the Lord adds, "for ye know not when the time is."
Notice the interests which Christ has here. He is going up to where He was before, - to the Father’s presence and joy; yet He presents Himself here as having His house on earth, leaving it for a time and coming back to it, to those who have been entrusted with the work and authority of it in the meantime: a theme upon which Matthew dwells more at large. The master of the house comes back at an unknown hour, "at even, midnight, cock-crowing, or in the morning." Later it cannot be, for He of whom this is spoken Himself brings the day. But with the uncertainty, watchfulness is imperative: the true disciple must not be caught asleep.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv46, 50
Mark
BARTIMAEUS
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Mar 10:46.
The narrative of this miracle is contained in all the Synoptical Gospels, but the accounts differ in two respects-as to the number of men restored to sight, and as to the scene of the miracle. Matthew tells us that there were two men healed, and agrees with Mark in placing the miracle as Jesus was leaving Jericho. Mark says that there was one, and that the place was outside the gate in departing. Luke, on the other hand, agrees with Matthew as to the number, and differs from him and Mark as to the place, which he sets at the entrance into the city. The first of these two discrepancies may very easily be put aside. The greater includes the less; silence is not contradiction. To say that there was one does not deny that there were two. And if Bartimaeus was a Christian, and known to Mark’s readers, as is probable from the mention of his name, it is easily intelligible how he, being also the chief actor and spokesman, should have had Mark’s attention concentrated on him. As to the other discrepancy, many attempts have been made to remove it. None of them are altogether satisfactory. But what does it matter? The apparent contradiction may affect theories as to the characteristics of inspired books, but it has nothing to do with the credibility of the narratives, or with their value for us.
Mark’s account is evidently that of an eye-witness. It is full of little particulars which testify thereto. Whether Bartimaeus had a companion or not, he was obviously the chief actor and spokesman. And the whole story seems to me to lend itself to the enforcement of some very important lessons, which I will try to draw from it.
I. Notice the beggar’s petition and the attempts to silence it.
Remember that Jesus was now on His last journey to Jerusalem. That night He would sleep at Bethany; Calvary was but a week off. He had paused to win Zacchaeus, and now He has resumed His march to His Cross. Popular enthusiasm is surging round Him, and for the first time He does not try to repress it. A shouting multitude are escorting Him out of the city. They have just passed the gates, and are in the act of turning towards the mountain gorge through which runs the Jerusalem road. A long file of beggars is sitting, as beggars do still in Eastern cities, outside the gate, well accustomed to lift their monotonous wail at the sound of passing footsteps. Bartimaeus is amongst them. He asks, according to Luke, what is the cause of the bustle, and is told that ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.’ The name wakes strange hopes in him, which can only be accounted for by his knowledge of Christ’s miracles done elsewhere. It is a witness to their notoriety that they had filtered down to be the talk of beggars at city gates. And so, true to his trade, he cries, ‘Jesus . . . have mercy upon me!’
Now, note two or three things about that cry. The first is the clear insight into Christ’s place and dignity. The multitude said to him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.’ That was all they cared for or knew. He cried, ‘Jesus, thou Son of David,’ distinctly recognising our Lord’s Messianic character, His power and authority, and on that power and authority he built a confidence; for he says not as some other suppliants had done, either ‘If Thou wilt Thou canst,’ or ‘If Thou canst do anything, have compassion on us.’ He is sure of both the power and the will.
Now, it is interesting to notice that this same clear insight other blind men in the Evangelist’s story are also represented as having had. Blindness has its compensations. It leads to a certain steadfast brooding upon thoughts, free from disturbing influences. Seeing Jesus did not produce faith; not seeing Him seems to have helped it. It left imagination to work undisturbed, and He was all the loftier to these blind men, because the conceptions of their minds were not limited by the vision of their eyes. At all events, here is a distinct piece of insight into Christ’s dignity, power, and will, to which the seeing multitudes were blind.
Note, further, how in the cry there throbs the sense of need, deep and urgent. And note how in it there is also the realisation of the possibility that the widely-flowing blessings of which Bartimaeus had heard might be concentrated and poured, in their full flood, upon himself. He individualises himself, his need, Christ’s power and willingness to help him. And because he has heard of so many who have, in like manner, received His healing touch, he comes with the cry, ‘Have mercy upon me.’
All this is upon the low level of physical blessings needed and desired. But let us lift it higher. It is a mirror in which we may see ourselves, our necessities, and the example of what our desire ought to be. Ah! brethren, the deep consciousness of impotence, need, emptiness, blindness, lies at the bottom of all true crying to Jesus Christ. If you have never gone to Him, knowing yourself to be a sinful man, in peril, present and future, from your sin, and stained and marred by reason of it, you never have gone to Him in any deep and adequate sense at all. Only when I thus know myself am I driven to cry, ‘Jesus! have mercy on me.’ And I ask you not to answer to me, but to press the question on your own consciences-’Have I any experience of such a sense of need; or am I groping in the darkness and saying, I see? am I weak as water, and saying I am strong?’ ‘Thou knowest not that thou art poor, and naked, and blind’; and so that Jesus of Nazareth should be passing by has never moved thy tongue to call, ‘Son of David, have mercy upon me!’
Again, this man’s cry expressed a clear insight into something at least of our Lord’s unique character and power. Brethren, unless we know Him to be all that is involved in that august title, ‘the Son of David,’ I do not think our cries to Him will ever be very earnest. It seems to me that they will only be so when, on the one hand, we recognise our need of a Saviour, and, on the other hand, behold in Him the Saviour whom we need. I can quite understand-and we may see plenty of illustrations of it all round us-a kind of Christianity real as far as it goes, but in my judgment very superficial, which has no adequate conception of what sin means, in its depth, in its power upon the victim of it, or in its consequences here and hereafter; and, that sense being lacking, the whole scale of Christianity, as it were, is lowered, and Christ comes to be, not, as I think the New Testament tells us that He is, the Incarnate Word of God, who for us men and for our salvation ‘bare our sins in His own body on the tree,’ and ‘was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him,’ but an Example, a Teacher, or a pure Model, or a social Reformer, or the like. If men think of Him only as such, they will never cry to Him, ‘Have mercy upon me!’
Dear friends, I pray you, whether you begin with looking into your own hearts and recognising the crawling evils that have made their home there, and thence pass to the thought of the sort of Redeemer that you need and find in Christ-or whether you begin at the other side, and, looking upon the revealed Christ in all the fulness in which He is represented to us in the Gospels, from thence go back to ask yourselves the question, ‘What sort of man must I be, if that is the kind of Saviour that I need?’-I pray you ever to blend these two things together, the consciousness of your own need of redemption in His blood and the assurance that by His death we are redeemed, and then to cry, ‘Lord! have mercy upon me,’ and claim your individual share in the wide-flowing blessing. Turn all the generalities of His grace into the particularity of your own possession of it. We have to go one by one to His cross, and one by one to pass through the wicket gate. We have not cried to Him as we ought, if our cry is only ‘Christ, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ, have mercy upon us.’ We must be alone with Him, that into our own hearts we may receive all the fulness of His blessing; and our petition must be ‘Thou Son of David! have mercy upon me.’ Have you cried that? Notice, further, the attempts to stifle the cry. No doubt it was in defence of the Master’s dignity, as they construed it, that the people sought to silence the persistent, strident voice piercing through their hosannas. Ah! they did not know that the cry of wretchedness was far sweeter to Him than their shallow hallelujahs. Christian people of all churches, and of some stiffened churches very especially, have been a great deal more careful of Christ’s dignity than He is, and have felt that their formal worship was indecorously disturbed when by chance some earnest voice forced its way through it with the cry of need and desire. But this man had been accustomed for many a day, sitting outside the gate, to reiterate his petition when it was unattended to, and to make it heard amidst the noise of passers-by. So he was persistently bold and importunate and shameless, as the shallow critics thought, in his crying. The more they silenced him, the more a great deal he cried. Would God that we had more crying like that; and that Christ’s servants did not so often seek to suppress it, as some of them do! If there are any of you who, by reason of companions, or cares, or habits, or sorrows, or a feeble conception of your own need or a doubtful recognition of Christ’s power and mercy, have been tempted to stop your supplications, do like Bartimaeus, and the more these, your enemies, seek to silence the deepest voice that is in you, the more let it speak.
II. So, notice Christ’s call and the suppliant’s response.
‘He stood still, and commanded him to be called.’ Remember that He was on His road to His Cross, and that the tension of spirit which the Evangelists notice as attaching to Him then, and which filled the disciples with awe as they followed Him, absorbed Him, no doubt, at that hour, so that He heard but little of the people’s shouts. But He did hear the blind beggar’s cry, and He arrested His march in order to attend to it.
Now, dear friends, I am not merely twisting a Biblical incident round to an interpretation which it does not bear, but am stating a plain un-rhetorical truth when I say that it is so still. Jesus Christ is no dead Christ who is to be remembered only. He is a living Christ who, at this moment, is all that He ever was, and is doing in loftier fashion all the gracious things that He did upon earth. That pause of the King is repeated now, and the quick ear which discerned the difference between the unreal shouts of the crowd, and the agony of sincerity in the cry of the beggar, is still open. He is in the heavens, surrounded by its glories, and, as I think Scripture teaches us, wielding providence and administering the affairs of the universe. He does not need to pause in order to hear you and me. If He did, He would-if I may venture upon such an impossible supposition-bid the hallelujahs of heaven hush themselves, and suspend the operations of His providence if need were, rather than that you or I, or any poor man who cries to Him, should be unheard and unhelped. The living Christ is as tender a friend, has as quick an ear, is as ready to help at once, to-day, as He was when outside the gate of Jericho; and every one of us may lift his or her poor, thin voice, and it will go straight up to the throne, and not be lost in the clamour of the hallelujahs that echo round His seat. Christ still hears and answers the cry of need. Send you it up, and you will find that true.
Notice the suppliant’s response. That is a very characteristic right-about-face of the crowd, who one moment were saying, ‘Hold your tongue and do not disturb Him,’ and the next moment were all eager to encumber him with help, and to say, ‘Rise up, be of good cheer; He calleth thee.’ No thanks to them that He did. And what did the man do? Sprang to his feet-as the word rightly rendered would be-and flung away the frowsy rags that he had wrapped round him for warmth and softness of seat, as he waited at the gate; ‘and he came to Jesus.’ Brethren, ‘casting aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us, let us run’ to the same Refuge. You have to abandon something if you are to go to Christ to be healed. I dare say you know well enough what it is. I do not; but certainly there is something that entangles your legs and keeps you from finding your way to Him. If there is nothing else, there is yourself and your trust in self, and that is to be put away. Cast away the ‘garment spotted with the flesh’ and go to Christ, and you will receive succour.
III. Notice the question of all-granting love, and the answer of conscious need.
‘What wilt Thou that I should do unto thee?’ A very few hours before He had put the same question with an entirely different significance, when the sons of Zebedee came to Him, and tried to get Him to walk blindfold into a promise. He upset their scheme with the simple question, ‘What is it that you want?’ which meant, ‘I must know and judge before I commit Myself,’ But when He said the same thing to Bartimaeus He meant exactly the opposite. It was putting the key of the treasure-house into the beggar’s hand. It was the implicit pledge that whatever he desired he should receive. He knew that the thing this man wanted was the thing that He delighted to give.
But the tenderness of these words, and the gracious promise that is hived in them, must not make us forget the singular authority that speaks in them. Think of a man doing as Jesus Christ did-standing before another and saying, ‘I will give you anything that you want.’ He must be either a madman or a blasphemer, or ‘God manifest in the flesh’; Almighty power guided by infinite love.
And what said the man? He had no doubt what he wanted most-the opening of these blind eyes of his. And, dear brother, if we knew ourselves as well as Bartimaeus knew his blindness, we should have as little doubt what it is that we need most. Suppose you had this wishing-cap that Christ put on Bartimaeus’s head put on yours: what would you ask? It is a penetrating question if men will answer it honestly. Think what you consider to be your chief need. Suppose Jesus Christ stood where I stand, and spoke to you: ‘What wilt thou that I should do for you?’ If you are a wise man, if you know yourself and Him, your answer will come as swiftly as the beggar’s-’Lord! heal me of my blindness, and take away my sin, and give me Thy salvation.’ There is no doubt about what it is that every one of us needs most. And there should be no doubt as to what each of us would ask first.
The supposition that I have been making is realised. That gracious Lord is here, and is ready to give you the satisfaction of your deepest need, if you know what it is, and will go to Him for it. ‘Ask! and ye shall receive.’
IV. Lastly, notice, sight given, and the Giver followed.
Bartimaeus had scarcely ended speaking when Christ began. He was blind at the beginning of Christ’s little sentence; he saw at the end of it. ‘Go thy way; thy faith hath saved thee.’ The answer came instantly, and the cure was as immediate as the movement of Christ’s heart in answer.
I am here to proclaim the possibility of an immediate passage from darkness to light. Some folk look askance at us when we talk about sudden conversions, but these are perfectly reasonable; and the experience of thousands asserts that they are actual. As soon as we desire, we have, and as soon as we have, we see. Whenever the lungs are opened the air rushes in; sometimes the air opens the lungs that it may. The desire is all but contemporaneous with the fulfilment, in Christ’s dealing with men. The message is flashed along the wire from earth to heaven, in an incalculably brief space of time, and the answer comes, swift as thought and swifter than light. So, dear friends, there is no reason whatever why a similar instantaneous change should not pass over any man who hears the Good News. He may be unsaved when his hearing of it begins, and saved when his hearing of it ends. It is for himself to settle whether it shall be so or not.
Here we have a clear statement of the path by which Christ’s mercy rushes into a man’s soul. ‘Thy faith hath saved thee.’ But it was Christ’s power that saved him. Yes, it was; but it was faith that made it possible for Christ’s power to make him whole. Physical miracles indeed did not always require trust in Christ, as a preceding condition, but the possession of Christ’s salvation does, and cannot but do so. There must be trust in Him, in order that we may partake of the salvation which is owing solely to His power, His love, His work upon the Cross. The condition is for us; the power comes from Him. My faith is the hand that grasps His; it is His hand, not mine, that holds me up. My faith lays hold of the rope; it is the rope and the Person above who holds it, that lift me out of the ‘horrible pit and the miry clay.’ My faith flees for refuge to the city; it is the city that keeps me safe from the avenger of blood. Brother! exercise that faith, and you will receive a better sight than was poured into Bartimaeus’s eyes.
Now, all this story should be the story of each one of us. One modification we have to make upon it, for we do not need to cry persistently for mercy, but to trust in, and to take, the mercy that is offered. One other difference there is between Bartimaeus and many of my hearers. He knew what he needed, and some of you do not. But Christ is calling us all, and my business now is to say to each of you what the crowd said to the beggar, ‘Rise! be of good cheer; He calleth thee.’ If you will fling away your hindrances, and grope your path to His feet, and fall down before Him, knowing your deep necessity, and trusting to Him to supply it, He will save you. Your new sight will gaze upon your Redeemer, and you will follow Him in the way of loving trust and glad obedience.
Jesus Christ was passing by. He was never to be in Jericho any more. If Bartimaeus did not get His sight then, he would be blind all his days. Christ and His salvation are offered to thee, my brother, now. Perhaps if you let Him pass, you will never hear Him call again, and may abide in the darkness for ever. Do not run the risk of such a fate.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On v46 J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CII. Bartimæus Healed].
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CII. Bartimæus Healed].
CII. BARTIMÆUS AND HIS COMPANION HEALED. (At Jericho.) aMATT. XX. 29-34; bMARK X. 46-52; cLUKE XVIII. 35-43.
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c35 And it came to pass, as he drew nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way side begging: 36 and hearing a multitude going by, he inquired what this meant. 37 And they told him that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. [Jesus came from the Jordan, and was entering Jericho by its eastern gate. As the crowd following Jesus passed by, Bartimæus asked its meaning and learned of the presence of Jesus. Jesus on this last journey went in advance of the crowd, and hence he had already entered Jericho before the sounds of the following multitude roused [558] the beggar to question its meaning. Knowing that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, he resolved to avail himself of the opportunity to be healed by him before he left the neighborhood. Not knowing how long Jesus would remain in Jericho, and not being sure of his ability to find him if he entered the city, he appears to have passed around the wall till he came to the southern gate, by which Jesus would depart on his way to Jerusalem. Here he stationed himself and waited patiently for the coming of Jesus. The persistency with which he cried when Jesus again appeared goes far to corroborate this determined preparation and fixed expectation of the beggar. While he waited at the southern gate the events narrated in Isa_64:6). In the race to win the presence of Christ on high, Christians are advised to lay aside every weight-- Heb_12:1, Heb_12:2.] cand when he was come near, bJesus answered him, casked him, band said, aWhat will ye cwilt thou athat I should do unto you? bthee? a33 They say bAnd the blind man said aunto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened. cLord, bRabboni, that I may receive my sight. [Bartimæus had cried for mercy without specifying what mercy, and he had asked this mercy of Christ as the Messiah. The Lord therefore in his royal majesty asked Bartimæus to name the mercy, thus suggesting to him the fullness of the treasury of power and grace, to which he came. He was not to blame for this.] a34 And Jesus, being moved with compassion, touched their eyes; b52 And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; cReceive thy sight: thy faith hath made thee whole. [We can see in this instance what faith really is. It caused Bartimæus to cry out, to come to Jesus and to ask for sight. Thus we see that faith saves by leading to proper actions.] 43 And immediately astraightway they che areceived their bhis sight, aand followed him. bin the way. cglorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God. [Being a beggar, it would have been natural for him to hunt first for means of livelihood, but faith and gratitude prompted him to follow Jesus.] [561]
[FFG 558-561]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v46 And they
And they
Cf. (See Scofield "Mat 20:30")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv46, 49 The Healing of Bartimaeus.
The Healing of Bartimaeus.
At Jericho:
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v. 46. And they came to Jericho; and as He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highwayside begging.
v. 47. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.
v. 48. And many charged him that he should hold his peace; but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.
Mark here relates the healing of the blind man on the way out of Jericho. Luke tells the healing of one before they entered the city, Luk 18:35. And Matthew takes both miracles together into one account, Mat 20:29. Jesus came to Jericho and stayed there at least for several hours. His coming and the occurrences during His stay raised quite a stir in the city, and therefore He was accompanied not only by His disciples, but also by a great multitude of people, to whom He spoke words of eternal life as they walked along the way. Near the gate of the city, at a place where all the people passed by, a blind beggar was sitting. Mark notes his name and also explains its meaning for the non-Jewish readers: Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus. The noise of the multitude reached him, and he obtained the information that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. Of Him and of His many miracles Bartimaeus had heard. He had come to the conclusion that the man who could perform such miracles and preach in such a wonderful, convincing way of the need of repentance and of believing, must be the Son of David, in the special, Messianic sense; the Prophet of Galilee was the promised Messiah, Mat 9:27; Mat 12:23; Mat 21:9. Acting upon this certainty, he called out aloud to Him, pleading for mercy and help. And when many people in the crowd, impatient with His whining and crying, bade him hold his peace, he cried all the louder: Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me! He would not be denied. Mark well: Jesus undoubtedly knew of the man’s presence there, even before he cried the first time, but He permitted him to call once and then again. He wants persistence in prayer, He is delighted with importunity of the right kind. Not to grow weary in pleading with Jesus is the secret of success in obtaining spiritual and also temporal gifts.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv46, 49 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
As Jesus and his disciples continue walking toward Jerusalem, Jesus heals blind Bartimaeus, who then walks with them.
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the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar
"a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus." Bartimaeus is the name of a man. Timaeus is his father's name. (See: How to Translate Names)
When he heard that it was Jesus
Bartimaeus heard people saying that it was Jesus. AT: "When he heard people saying that it was Jesus" (See: Ellipsis)
Son of David
Jesus is called the Son of David because he is a descendant of King David. AT: "You who are the Messiah descended from King David" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
Many rebuked
"Many people rebuked"
all the more
"even more"
translationWords
Jericho
disciple
beg
Nazareth
David
rebuke
cry
mercy
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv46, 47, 50 10:46-52 The healing of blind Bartimaeus is the last…
10:46-52 The healing of blind Bartimaeus is the last healing miracle recorded in Mark. This event and the healing of the blind man in 8:22-26 form bookends around this section (see Mark Book Introduction, “Literary Features”). It is also a bridge to Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem as Israel’s Messiah in 11:1-11. Bartimaeus’s confession (Jesus, Son of David) prepares the reader for the confession of the people upon Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem (11:10).
10:46 they reached Jericho: The journey Jesus began in 10:1 was nearing its conclusion. Jericho was the last major city in the Jordan River Valley before Jerusalem. It may be the oldest continually occupied city in the world. In Jesus’ day, it was no longer located on the much smaller site of Old Testament times (Tell es-Sultan) but had been moved and greatly enlarged. The road from Jericho up to Jerusalem was steep, with a difference in elevation of about 3,000 feet (about 1,000 meters). • The large crowd following Jesus might have been fellow pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for Passover, but they certainly show Jesus’ great popularity and charisma. • A blind beggar . . . was sitting beside the road: This was a good location for collecting alms from religious pilgrims going to Jerusalem.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.