Mercy Me! Sermon Notes for Sunday, August 26

Becoming a Disciple
Part Two: Desperate Prayer for Boundless Mercy
Mark 10:46-52
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 26, 2012

If you were to name one thing most necessary for the life of this congregation, what would it be? “Pray that they will always be desperate for God.” - Rev Dr Skip Ryan

I can only say “Amen” and add that if there were only one prayer I could ever pray, one prayer that brought together my own desperate condition and God’s own abundant grace and love, it would be the prayer of Bartimaeus: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”

I. Prayer to the King of Kings - Mark 10:47-48
A. Crying to the “Son of David” - Messiah Language
* Joshua (Jeshua) and the walls of Jericho - Joshua 1
* Desperate for God: the last time someone named Yeshua showed up at the wall of Jericho things didn’t go so well for the city. Now the greater Yeshua has come, the One who rebuilds the ruins of our lives and restores what has been destroyed.

B. Crying out for Mercy from the One Who is Merciful
* Mercy - not simply withholding the penalty justly deserved but restoring the damage caused by the crime.
- Vessels of Mercy

* Confessing our abject poverty, while receiving and depending on God’s rich and bountiful supply, as we extend the same to others, is the indispensable quality of those who have received Mercy.

II. Prayer for the King’s Kingdom
* Eyes Opened to ‘know him’ and thus to be gripped with -
A. The Merciful Hope of His Calling - a summons to holiness: Ephesians 1:18

B. The Merciful Riches of His inheritance - a consuming passion to see all that the Father promised to his Son become his indeed: Ephesians 1:18

C. The Merciful Greatness of His power - a renunciation of our power while depending utterly on His - Ephesians 1:19
* Psalm 68; Acts 1:8

Praying ‘The Jesus Prayer’ - for ourselves and for others - summarizes in much the same way the Lord’s Prayer does, that the need is ours and the supply belongs to God. It is to bring the Name - and thus the power - of the Almighty to bear on the walls that would otherwise remain standing. The trumpet blast of Jesus’ Name uttered in prayer topples walls, restores what has been lost, and leads to healing for the hurting. “The Jesus Prayer” is the plea for mercy, made by the needy, to the One who is Merciful, and who will call us to himself in our prayer.

* “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning...” -

Yes, that’s right, and where is that quotation from? Lamentations. Before the fallen walls of Jerusalem. Mercy doesn't only knock down the walls that are keeping us away from God's purpose, it also restores the protective and beautiful walls our unloving actions have broken down. Are the beautiful and essential walls down in our lives? The answer is as close as a cry for mercy - and as the Psalmist said, “I love the Lord because he hears my cry...”

Sermon Notes for August 19, 2012

Becoming a Disciple
Part One: From Darkness to Light
Mark 10:46-52
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 19, 2012


One of my favorite cookbooks is entitled “First You Eat with Your Eyes”, and while that’s certainly true, food isn’t the only feast our eyes can enjoy. The moving beauty of a Rocky Mountain skyscape first entered my heart through my eyes. During this recent break, there were two weeks spent in the mountains of northwest Montana - constantly awestruck by their heights, astonished at the powerful waters ripping through canyons and carving their way into rivers and gentle streams. I constantly thought, “How can I ever tell others how fabulous all this is? Its impossible. Words fail.” But beauty beheld begs to be described and shared. The joyful awe of magnificent vistas leads inevitably to the joyful telling of what’s been seen, whether a mountain’s lofty grandeur or a newborn’s tiny smile.

Great business creators are perceivers as well. Whether the name is Gates, Dell, Jobs, Cuban, Zuckerberg, Whitman, or Page - their eyes saw something others didn’t see. Eyes opened to beauty lead to open mouths and new paths for our feet. Eyes that see everything from new business opportunities to unperceived dangers lead to radical action. That’s also what happened to the man about whom we’ve just read in Mark. His eyes were opened and he was never the same.

“The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch...” - Acts 11
Disciple - mathetes: apprentice
“He followed him on the road...” - that’s what it means to be a disciple, to be a radical Jesus follower. We will come back to this idea of following Jesus on the road he takes a few Sundays from now, but today I want you to note the man’s confession of his need.

I. Disciples Confess Their Blindness - Mark 10:51
A. Vision “Regained”
* Blind Beggars - ancient world blindness: very prevalent, largely untreatable, and sometimes made the victims helpless, outcast, and almost always desperate
- That’s usually not how we ‘see ourselves’
- “The first absolute condition of being a disciple is not to deceive ourselves, to fully acknowledge our interior state, to see ourselves reduced to misery after trying to create a life for ourselves apart from God, or one in which we only gave God lip-service.” - Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis

B. Start with the Dark
* Genesis 1; Acts 9; Jesus to the Pharisees - “Because you say, ‘I see’ your sin remains.”
- We move from darkness to light. Following Jesus doesn’t start with telling him what you ‘see’
* Nicodemus - “Teacher, we know....” to “How can these things be?” to “You’re the teacher of Israel and you don’t understand these things?”

II. Disciples Have Jesus as Their Vision - Mark 10:52
* Never forget the first time I saw Toni!

The first thing the man saw when his eyes were healed was the face of Jesus. Can you imagine that? To have your eyes opened and find yourself staring into the eyes of the eternal God? That love, that holiness staring right back at you, that smile overwhelming you?

* What’s the vision of Redeemer? Jesus.
- “Can you be more specific?”
- Not really!

* What’s your life vision? Is it Jesus?

One day all of us are likely to experience the closing of our eyes - and their opening. We will close them in death and then find them opened, once again by the very same Savior who healed the blind beggar. We will see his face and he will look us in the eye. Will we smile and rejoice at that vision on that great day? Will will we see his smile?

Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart they shall see God.”

Not much comfort there - my heart is not pure! But the One who said those words is the One who can make all things new, the very One who in the midst of a primordial darkness split the universe wide open, crying “Let there be Light!” This is the One who is ‘the Light of the world’ and will shed his new creation light into our hearts and purify them so that our eyes are captured by his beauty and we follow him on the road, wherever it may lead.

“He shall be the end of our desires who shall be seen without end, loved without taint, praised without weariness...there we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise...” - St Augustine, City of God, Bk 22, ch 30

“I believe in God just as I believe in the Sun. Not because I can see it but because by it I can see all things.”
- CS Lewis