Inland Empire: Riverside
I Can See - Audio
(upbeat music) All right, well it's good to be together. Good to see everybody. Harvest Festival plus one this week. What a great time. But welcome if you're visiting, welcome. We're gonna be in Mark 10 today in just a minute. And we're just excited to have you here. And it's good that everyone is hanging out and ready to hear what God has to say here. This, I had to post this picture of the Harvest Festival pumpkin carving. I was one of the people I never knew you could put flowers in pumpkins, right? That was something that, it's like when it never enters your mind before and now it's in my mind. So every pumpkin I have ever carved, I will now think about how can I put flowers in this. And obviously Jasmine's pumpkin won the contest, I think. If it didn't, it should have. I don't know exactly who won, but that was pretty awesome. So what a great week last week. Thank you for everybody who served and set up and cleaned up and everything in between. And God really blessed our church here and with just people coming from all over, people we knew, people we didn't know. And just really the community event that really was beyond even our imagination. So thank you for all your prayers and help. And just store that away of just really what you saw, what did God do? What happens? And hopefully it doesn't relate back to anything that we did, but just that God really brought people out. So that was really a great victory. And I know everybody from St. John's was super excited and they were like, wow, that was amazing. And the tot stop owners came by and they were really encouraged and they have a harvest festival that they do in November, but they were super encouraged. And everybody loved the pony too, that was pretty awesome. The poor pony, I saw Jamie riding the pony. And I'm like, dude, what's the weight limit for this pony here? (audience laughing) At the end of the night, he's probably gonna sleep for like a week at pony. (audience laughing) That was, that was awesome. And the puppets show. (audience laughing) I told you they were amazing, but you didn't believe me. (audience laughing) I didn't believe Justine before either. So I was really, I was telling him, I was like, people actually stopped whatever they were doing and came over and watched the puppets show. And usually, people are just like, oh, cool puppets. And then they keep going, but that was really a special part. Hopefully they'll kind of join us in the future here too. I think they want to. And this was yesterday, a picture from where I was out with Connor, we went duck hunting yesterday. I spared you any of the ducks. You know, I was kind of thinking of all of you. And this is where I was actually standing in the middle of these reeds and I just took a picture from where I was. And it was really cool, but most of all, it was really special to be reunited. It was myself and a friend of mine from Orange County and his son, who's Connor's best friend. And it was kind of the first time we've been together doing that in about four years. So it was really a special time. You know, God gives you just special little blessings here and there, things that you appreciate. I'm sure you have little traditions that you do with your family that God really knows and encourages and appreciates. And I'm just amazed thinking about the relationship that I have with my kids versus what I had with my parents. And I'm just like blown away. And I know that it's because of God and it's because of all of you and it's because of all the amazing examples. And yeah, we're not perfect. We're not even close to perfect. But just it shows me that God blesses our lives in more ways than we can imagine. And I just was encouraged by that and I know that a lot of, and then I saw this. I was like, who, I had to like triple take this to know that that's Dr. Moya. And I was like, wow. And some of you were like, wow, Lewis is pretty cool. I'm just playing around. He's way cooler than me. I'm sure I know he could dance way better than me. So I stand down. I take it back, Lewis. So he was Snape and Mrs. Snape. I don't know who you were. - Cedric. - Yeah. - Okay. Okay, that's good. You guys can come tell me who it was later. I just knew Snape and that was about it. So that was fun. I know everybody had a good time at the costume party yesterday and I think Lewis won the adult prize with his costume there. I think Faith won the little kids prize, right? She was joy from Miss Pickable Me. - Inside out. - Inside out? (audience laughs) What number was it? Inside out? See, there we go. It's good. If you can't laugh with me, just laugh at me, okay? (audience laughs) All right, so I did see the movie, by the way. Just couldn't remember the title. All right, it's enough. But why don't we say a prayer and then we're gonna get into the lesson here in Mark chapter 10. Father, we're just grateful to be with you. Thank you for this time to worship you, to sing together, to talk with one another, encourage each other, God. I pray that you get me out of the way, that you open up our hearts to what you wanna say to us, God, whether we've come here a million times or this is our first time, that I know you have a message for each of us, God. We love you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. In Mark chapter 10, we're gonna read 46 to 52. See here. All right, well, I did that at 10, 30 last night after a long day of duck hunting, so don't pay attention to that. I think the right one is not even on there, okay. Did you see the thing that said I can see somewhere? Okay, in the very beginning, okay, you got it. There you go. All right. I was in Rancho this morning. I'm not even sure why I am right now, okay. All right, in verse 46. Says, "Then they came to Jericho. "As Jesus and his disciples, "together with the large crowd, were leaving the city, "a blind man, Bartimaeus, which means son of Tameis, "was sitting on the roadside begging. "When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, "he began to shout, 'Jesus, son of David, "'have mercy on me.' "Many rebuked him and told them to be quiet, "but he shouted all the more, 'Son of David, "'have mercy on me.' "Jesus stopped and said, 'Call him.' "So they called to the blind man, cheer up on your feet. "He's calling you. "Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet "and came to Jesus. "What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked him. "The blind man said, 'Rabbi, I want to see.' "'Go,' said Jesus, 'Your faith has healed you.' "Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus "along the road. "And this is an amazing story "that comes right before Jesus enters the city "for what we know is holy week. "And so this is the last story, "which is actually somewhat of a parable "for the disciples and also for us, "of people that couldn't see and now can. "And I started thinking as we've been "going through the book of Barks, "some of the different characters that we've seen so far, "and I kind of put them into three different categories. "The first is obvious, it's the disciples, right? "They're in the middle of everything, "part of most of the things. "When Jesus called them, two of them, "they were in their boat and they were so excited "that they left their boat, they left their father "in the boat and they just said, "Hey, we got to go follow this roving teacher named Jesus "because we don't want to miss this opportunity," right? That was an example for us of just leaving everything behind our old ways and following Christ. So they started out there and then at the end, the story right before this, they're not so sure about Jesus' mission anymore because he wants to go to the cross and they want him to be this triumphal king. And they're like, "Jesus, I don't like this. "Why are you, no, don't go that way, "don't let them kill you, let's go kill them." I mean, let's establish our kingdom and so they didn't quite get it. Even at one point, Peter, the most famous disciple of all, confronts Jesus when he tells him he's gonna die and what does he call him? Satan himself because his idea of what the Messiah was supposed to be. Satan, if you don't know, doesn't really care. He actually doesn't mind that Jesus was the Messiah as long as he wasn't the Messiah that died for your sins, right? He could have been the triumphal Messiah all day and that wouldn't have accomplished God's plan. But these guys were on roller coasters 'cause they went out the disciples and they healed people. They actually drove out demons and they healed the sick and they did all these miracles. And yet other times they forgot who Jesus was and were surprised that he could do miracles. He calmed the sea and hear like, "What is going on here? "We don't understand this person." He fed the 4,000 and the 5,000 and they were still confused. So they were up and down and wanted honor. And as soon as he said he was leaving, they wanted this fight for who's gonna take his place. Right there, that sounds a lot like who? Sounds well like us, right? We have these great moments, we have these low moments. Sometimes we understand what Jesus is doing. A lot of times we don't quite get it. We want power, prominence, safety, security, comfort, all those things that Jesus didn't have. And sometimes we want to be the ones walking on the water. We want that, we sang that song "Power" this morning and it was like, "Power" and I was like, "Yeah, that's what I want. "I want to sing that song. "I want that to be my life anthem. "Not humble yourself in the sight of the Lord. "I want power." And some of us, I'm realizing, need to embrace that more, like me. That to go up, you need to go down, you need to be humble. But what I realized, and I said that last week, but as I was thinking about it this week, I'm thinking, "Well, some of us need to actually "think of ourselves higher than you do, "or you can't go on to what God wants for you." Right, some of us, we just naturally think we're amazing. Not me, I'm not talking about myself. Other people, maybe you feel like, "Hey, I'm nothing. "Why would God pay attention to me?" And so to those people, if that's who you are, you have to know yourself, then you need to actually realize that Jesus died for you because you were that amazing. You were that valuable that God wanted to die for you. And that's one of the lessons that we're going to get from the story today. You know, there's the Pharisees. The disciples were up and down, the Pharisees were mostly down, right? There was a few Pharisees that got out of the down position. What's his name? Nicodemus, right? Nicodemus got out of it. He saw Jesus, he wasn't quite there, but he got there, I believe, in the end. But most of them, they wanted to talk about clean and unclean kitchenware, right? How's that sound for a real spiritual discussion, right? They wanted to argue about what you were allowed to do on the Sabbath. What were all the rules of the things that you could do on God's holy day so you wouldn't mess up? They wanted to talk about fasting. And I thought fasting was between you and God. I mean, you're actually doing it wrong. You're fasting wrong. They wanted to talk about divorce. And in the next week of Jesus' life, they confronted him about authority, about taxes, about marriage in heaven, and about who the Messiah is. And so these were good church-going people or temple-going people, and all they wanted to do was talk about all these different boundaries and issues and hot topics. And surely, none of us are Pharisees, right? Good church-going people, I'd like to talk about all these random things like boundaries and hot topics. Yeah, that can be us. So I think this was a good reminder to the Christians who were reading this 20 or 30 years later of like, yeah, those things aren't really that important. That we should probably let those things go and really focus on Christ. How about that? That sounds pretty good. And then there was all these other people that no one expected to see Jesus that saw Jesus and the one Bartimaeus today was one of them, right? He was forgotten, or maybe not forgotten because he had to have friends to take him to the side of the road. And on the side of the road, literally, that's like a picture of someone that you just walk right by, right? He wasn't a part of the temple. He was not someone that people were looking to for spiritual advice, that's for sure. And they blamed him because in that culture, if you were blind, it meant that your parents sinned or you sinned. So you were just receiving the punishment for somebody's sin. So that even made you worse, but not to Jesus, right? And there's other people like this, people that no one expected to see Jesus and yet saw Jesus. There were, you know, Gentiles, I want to say Galilean. No, there were Gentiles. There were, you know, people that were outside of the norm. And that's something that we're going to realize today, that sometimes when you go outside of the structure, it messes up church people, but it doesn't mess up Jesus. And that's something that we see in our story today. That Bartimaeus was literally reborn from his life, where he couldn't even see Jesus to where he was following Jesus and where he was respected. And his name actually, it means son of Tameis and Tameis means honor. So he was son of honor. And Jesus was probably the only one that would see him in that way. Maybe his family too. You know, so it's a good lesson for us to see people that maybe others overlook that maybe those are the people we need to honor. And maybe those are the people that God honors. Amen? All right, let me get past all these things. Okay, so there it is. And so Jesus comes by and he starts shouting, "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!" to the point where everyone starts to rebuke him. I mean, if you can imagine, I don't know how many people, you've just random people that you don't know, that you've just started to rebuke lately. Anybody? Not really. It would have to be something like really, really bad to just go up to some random person that says, "Hey, you need to stop. You need to stop talking. You need to be quiet right now. Jesus is busy. Jesus has got stuff happening. And sometimes, as I was thinking about it, sometimes I rebuke people not because it's a good thing to do, but just because I'm in a bad mood. Because I'm busy, because I'm stressed out. I'm just like, "Get away from me right now. I need to be doing something." And I can fail to listen to what people are actually saying. Imagine to think like, "Wow, why is this person yelling right now for Jesus?" He's probably hurting. It's probably a reason. He wasn't going through all the channels, but he was crying out to God. Probably what the disciples should have been doing. They weren't seeing too well either. They probably should have been crying out to God, "Hey, have mercy on me. Help me see. I want to see too." Because I'm not seeing too well. But here's a blind person that's given kind of that parable that I was telling you about. It reminded me of in Romans 1 where it says, "God created the world, but people didn't see God and they didn't give thanks to God and they didn't worship God." And it was like, "Here's this blind man, and he saw Jesus, and he worshipped Jesus by crying out to him." And then he honored him by following him. And so many times we can miss what God is doing right in front of us. I love that. This was his last opportunity to catch Jesus. If he didn't reach out to Jesus on this very day, he never would have seen Jesus. Because he was going to the cross, right? He was going to Jerusalem and he wasn't going to come back unless he resurrected and came back to this person. You never know when your opportunities are, right? When you need to grab on to your opportunities. I think a lot of us could think back. Imagine if you didn't reach out to Jesus at that moment where your life would be. I think about that. Imagine if I didn't hear the words. If I didn't listen to my friends or I didn't understand what was happening. Our life could have turned out a lot worse or even worse than that. We might not even be around. Somebody in Rancho this morning shared with me and he says, "What this story means to me is that no one is too insignificant for Jesus to meet their needs." If you're someone that's like, "Oh, God doesn't want to help me. I don't want to pray for myself." He's like, "No, he cares about you." He stopped and listened to. That's one of my favorite parts of this story. I love when the disciples weren't really advocating for him before. But once Jesus stopped, they're like, "Oh, okay, this guy is a good guy. We got to help him out." They're like, "Cheer up. He's calling." He's like, "Man, you're good now. He stopped for you. You're good." Just to know that the Creator will stop for you. And when he does, you're good. When he hears you, you're going to be fine. You're going to be great. It says that he threw everything aside and jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. Oh, no, that's an excellent one. He jumped to his feet and it just reminds you that he just threw everything off. Kind of like the disciples in the beginning, right? They left everything behind and they followed Jesus. He's doing that again. As a reminder that if you were hearing this after being 20 or 30, 40 years in the faith, you might be thinking, "Wow, I remember that. I remember when I did that. I remember when I just let go of the wheel and let Jesus drive my life when I turned it over to him." And, yes, some of the things that we did back in the day in the name of surrendering to Jesus weren't all that great. But still, he wants to be that in our lives. He wants us to give up our control of our lives to him and trust him with our lives. And it's a reminder not to hold on too tight, not to feel like we're the ones driving, right? Because our life is in his hands. Our finances, that's him too. Our families, our health, really, we get older. We feel like we're really driving the bus and we realize, "Oh, God's the one that's taken over here. Amen?" And so he says, "Three times have mercy on me." As an example to all of us of who we are before Christ, of how we still need help. We still need God. We still need mercy. And he wants to give it to us. He wants to stop for us. Maybe even recently, you've cried out to him and wondered if he's listening. Well, he's listening and maybe he's brought to you here. My favorite part is when it says that Jesus stopped. And he asked him, "What do you want me to do for you?" You know, he asked the disciples in the last story whether they wanted and they wanted to be great. And he's just like, "I want to see. I know you can help me." You've got to imagine he's never seen Jesus before. He's never seen him do a miracle. He's just heard stories. He's heard it from people. You can imagine him asking questions like, "He what? He healed the blind person?" He raised that person from the dead. Are you serious? Who is this Jesus? And he believed without seeing. That's us, right? That caused us to believe without seeing Jesus in the flesh just from what we hear and what we read and what stories that we hear from others of how they were changed. That's how all he had to go on. Amazing. And then he says that he followed Jesus to the cross or he followed him. Jesus says, "Go," but he stays. Right? You would think, "Oh, go! You're free. You can go. You can go home. You can go tell your family. You can go into the temple. You can go tell all your friends." And he decides, "No, I want to stay." Why wouldn't you want to stay with the one who gave you sight? And he got to follow Jesus. I don't know if he followed him all the way. That next week to the cross, but in the chapter before it gives you the rich young ruler, he said, "Hey, you come follow me, too, and you trust me with all of your stuff." And the rich young ruler said, "No, no thanks. I'm good." And so you have someone who they think, I don't know if the rich young ruler was a Pharisee's son. It sure seems like it, if not, he was in the same general area. But it's like, here's someone that was respected and held up because wealth in that time was the sign of righteousness. And God's blessing on you. And here's someone that's all blessed. And they're like, "No, no thanks, Jesus." And here's someone who's cursed. And they want to follow. So it's kind of that upside down world of Jesus again. The Lord has healed you. And that word is the same word that we use for saved. Because God's forgiveness is just the beginning of God saving us. There's so much more to it. It's not just like, "Oh, I forgive your sins, now you're good." Now there's so many more blessings and savings and healings and everything that God does for us. And Jesus' name itself means the Lord saves. I can imagine this man as he followed Jesus, and I don't know if he stayed with him the next week. But imagine you finally get to see. And the first few things you see is the guy that saved you being betrayed, spit on, beaten, and crucified. Now I know that he wasn't in the crowd wanting it to happen, but imagine that like, "Man, this is the guy. Look what you've done to him." And hopefully he got to see him resurrected, too, to know that wasn't the end of the story. And so as we take our communion today, I want you just to think about what does God want you to see in your life? What is he showing you? Through his word, through people in your life, just through circumstances. Or maybe even better, when was the last time you prayed that God would help you to see? Because if we don't ask him to help us to see, that means that we probably feel like we already do see pretty good without him. So that's kind of a constant thing, help me to see, help me to hear. I don't want to just do what I want, because we know what we want. We knew what the disciples wanted, but Jesus knew that they would finally see. Like he didn't give up on him. Like if I was Jesus, and those were my twelve guys, and they were so up and down like that, about halfway through, I'd have been like, "Alright God, I know you told me to pick these, but I think we need to reshuffle this." Like we need to let go of these sticks and maybe bring on a few more. And yeah, Jesus believed in them even when they were all over the place. He doesn't kick us out, even when we're all up and down. And think about what does God want me to see and hear in my own life? And how does the cross play out in my life? Like what does that mean for me to follow Jesus to the cross? That doesn't mean saving ourselves, that means letting him save us. You know, acknowledging that we need saving. And taking that path so that God can lift us up, amen. Amen, let's pray. Father, we thank You for this time, we thank You for this parable, and this story about Bartimaeus. God, it reminds me of just how much I need to cry out to You, how much I need Your mercy. God, how much I need to see, how much we all need to see. God, help us not to overlook the Bartimaeus's in our lives, the people on the sidelines, those that others aren't really looking to respect, maybe they have something for us. God, help us to listen to voices that don't always come through the same channels when there's someone that's crying out, help us to see where they're coming from and see the pain that they want you to fix. Father, thank You for Jesus, thank You for His body and His blood that saves us, that gives us life, that gives us hope, pray that we can trust You as we let go of the reins and let You back in the driver's seat of our lives. God, we love You, we pray in His name, amen.
Inland Empire Church of Christ