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Luke 18 35-43 THE FAITH OF BARTIMAEUS 01 God’s healing
📖 Luke 18:35-43
31Oct2020 - *God’s healing* - _Luke 18:35-43_ - THE FAITH OF BARTIMAEUS 1 – Bible reading: _Psalm 24:1-2_
We now begin a fresh study. The passage that we will look into is _Luke 18:35-43_ We will title this passage as, “The faith of Bartimaeus”.
_Luke 18:35-37 Then it happened, as He was coming near Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the road begging. (36) And hearing a multitude passing by, he asked what it meant. (37) So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by._
_Mark 10:46-47 Now they came to Jericho. As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging. (47) And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"_
We begin by looking at Bartimaeus. He was blind. His blindness had driven him to beggary.
Bartimaeus was carrying upon himself the burden of a physical special need and he had made it a place of defeat. He had decided that he was unfortunate to be blind and therefore blindness meant for him that he could not function to his full potential.
Isn’t this the situation for some of us? We have a certain disability, weakness, circumstantial crisis, family or inherited calamity. This issue or a combination of issues, which are not imaginary but real, have debilitated us.
We have come to the conclusion that “I am a victim of my disaster and so I can only live on the goodness of others”. We live a beaten life, a life of self-pity.
Society is also quick to stigmatise such people and tells them that the misfortune that they are experiencing is ill-fated and therefore society has consigned them to a lifetime of disappointment. We see a large number of people in such a predicament, all around us.
The victims see themselves as the defeated ones, they look up to society to throw them their crumbs or serve them, handouts. The society also feels that when they give a handout to such a person, who lives in the throes of woes, they have done a good deed in life.
To others, when we see such people, we have chosen to immune and hardened ourselves against such calamities, that we pass by.
God is showing us that He is the God of the poor and those who are cast out by society. _I Samuel 2:8 He raises the poor from the dust And lifts the beggar from the ash heap, To set them among princes And make them inherit the throne of glory. "For the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, And He has set the world upon them._
God is the owner. Everything belongs to Him.
We see sadness and sorrow in our world because of our sin of rejecting God and choosing to live our lives on the basis of our own will. Yet, when we turn to God from the midst of our sorrow and pain, He is able to raise us up from the ash heap.
All of us, those of us who consider ourselves as victims and those of us who see ourselves as part of the rest of society, need a major paradigm shift. *We must see God*, who is in control and whose ways can overrule the norms and rules that society places on us.
_Psalm 24:1-2 A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD's, and all its fullness, The world and those who dwell therein. (2) For He has founded it upon the seas, And established it upon the waters. Psalm 102:25 Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands._
_II Corinthians 12:9-10 And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (10) Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong._
God is calling all of us, both the affected as well as the unaffected, to live by the principles of God. We can only do so when we are in a relationship with Him, where God is our habitat. We live in Him. He is our atmosphere, our environment.
Bartimaeus was to soon enter into the habitat of God
When we do so, what we perceived as our weakness actually becomes our place of strength.
*Thought to ponder*
```Are you living by the laws of God or are the laws of this world, dominating you?```