“As Jesus and His disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Mark 10:46-47.
In this cry of blind Bartimaeus we see the accumulation of all that we have considered so far in this study. Once we have recognised our sin, our failings in love and desire for Jesus, our need of repentance, our need of Christ and our recognition of who He is then we should also find ourselves crying out in desperation, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
This is, firstly, our cry for salvation, but it is also our cry for any gift or blessing from Jesus’ hands – for Bartimaeus it was healing from his blindness; for us it may include the gift of Jesus Himself, the closeness of His presence, baptism of the Holy Spirit, or healing from our natural proneness to waywardness, of anything and all that takes us away from Jesus.
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Jesus’ ultimate purpose for coming into the world through the incarnation was, of course, the redemption and salvation of His people – a purpose that was always leading to Calvary’s cross, and to the resurrection and glorification that followed – but Jesus also spent much of His ministry going “around doing good and healing” (Acts 10:38). We mustn’t overlook this aspect of Jesus’ work. Jesus certainly didn’t!
The first thing that we need to see from this “doing good and healing”, these miracles, is that they were “signs” (John 2:11) that revealed and confirmed Jesus’ deity and personage (John 20:31, Matt. 9:6), as well as revealing aspects of the salvation that He came to bring. The second thing that we need to see from these miracles is how they are all, without exception, motivated by Jesus’ compassion for those who were in need.
As well as the great need of seeking to proclaim salvation to a dying world, we mustn’t forget the importance of also doing good to those in need – both of which are to be motivated by our compassion for them. In fact, the latter ought to be an extension of the first.
Matt. 14:14 and Matt. 20:34 are just two examples of Jesus’ compassion over people’s sicknesses and diseases; Matt. 15:32 even reveals Jesus’ compassion over the people’s hunger.
But that isn’t all that we are to learn from these works of Jesus. They also teach us something very important about Him – a truth that will be to our great benefit to hold on to tightly!
In Mark 10:48, the people had a problem with Bartimaeus’ cry for mercy (as they did in Matt. 20:31 with the two blind men there). This potential act of mercy was seen by the people as nothing more than a distraction from what they considered to be the main work of the Messiah – the redemption of His people and the restoration of their nation. They were impatient. They were selfish. They were wrong.
The people didn’t want Jesus to waste time in healing needy men, women and children, but to Jesus, so moved was He by compassion, this wasn’t a waste of time at all.
We can look at the abundant pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon us, bringing the presence of Jesus Himself to come upon us so that we are filled to overflowing with His graciousness and love, as something that can happen to others, but not to me – maybe to others, great Christians like the George Whitefield’s and Jonathan Edwards’ of the world, but not to little old, nobody me.
If we do find ourselves feeling like that then we need to be encouraged by Jesus’ wonderful compassion for His people, and cry out, together with Bartimaeus, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
We need to see Jesus looking upon Jerusalem with such longing in His heart, as He says, “How often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34).
We need to see Jesus, after Lazarus’ death, weeping as He looked upon the grief-inducing effects of sin on His people (John 11:33-35).
These are examples of Jesus’ compassion for His suffering, struggling, grieving people (there are many, many more to be found in the Gospels alone!). We must see these examples, looking upon Jesus within them, and be encouraged to cry out to Jesus for mercy, not because of who we are, but because of who Jesus is.
We can’t guarantee that we can get the physical healing that we might desire, or our wants all satisfied, but we can guarantee that we can come to a gracious and compassionate Saviour “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).
“We do not make requests of You because we are righteous, but because of Your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act!” Daniel 9:18.