Luke 18:35-43: The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus

OUTLINE

The knowledge of faith
The desperation of faith
The asking of faith
The consequences of faith

INTRODUCTION

It has been said that Christ’s miracles of healing various disabilities is a deliberate illustration of how Christ heals our spiritual ailments. Christ raising the dead illustrates how Christ is able to give new life; Christ casting out demons illustrates how the devil’s domination of us is overcome; the healing of leprosy shows how Christ can cure the unclean incurables; the healing of lame shows us the liberty we experience in Christ to live for God; the healing of deafness shows how turns us from truth and how God teaches us to listen to His voice. We see in these physical ailments illustrations of our spiritual condition and the sufficiency of Christ to rescue us from them all. The healing of blindness then teaches us about our sin induced blindness and Christ who gives us eyes to see.

Today we come to the miracle of Jesus healing the blind man one the road to Jerusalem in Luke 18:35-43. This is an important miracle in the context of the journey to Jerusalem. Jesus has been speaking about who enters the kingdom of heaven and has been reeducating us about who can and cannot enter. The best of Jewish religion, the Pharisee cannot enter; the best of Jewish society, the rich young ruler cannot come in; but the child, the tax collector and now we see the blind beggar can come in. At this Jericho pit stop we will see two important converts this blind man and Zacchaeus, and they will be the last converts until the thief on the cross and the Centurion at Christ’s crucifixion. The lesson of this section is that a blind man sees who Jesus really is, and those who see cannot. This miracle acts to reveal to us Jesus true identity and power as the Son of David, the Messiah, and that salvation comes through faith in Him, these truths are authenticated by the act of healing the blind man.

In this section we want to note the blind man’s faith, as it stands as an example of how one is saved. We will divide our message up into four parts, the knowledge of faith; the desperation of faith; the asking of faith; and the consequences of faith.

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