What do you want Jesus to do for you?

[0:00] If you turn to Mark chapter 10, beginning at verse 32. So Mark chapter 10, beginning at verse 32.

[0:30] Now hear God's word. And they were on the road going up to Jerusalem.

[0:41] And Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him.

[0:56] Saying, And he said to them, And they said to him,

[3:34] And they called the blind man, saying to him, Take heart, get up, he is calling you. And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, What do you want me to do for you?

[3:46] And the blind man said to him, Rabbi, let me recover my sight. And Jesus said to him, Go your way, your faith has made you well.

[3:58] And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way. Well, may God bless his word to us this morning, which we'll come back to in a minute.

[4:09] First we'll sing. And if you have your Bibles, please turn there to Mark 10, verse 32, is where we pick up from last time. Jesus had already said in verse 31, But many who are first will be last, and the last first.

[4:27] And in this passage, we get to see that Jesus, the Son of Man, the ruler of all, is the servant king. He is the suffering servant of the Lord.

[4:42] And in many ways, if you really want to understand God's mercy towards you, what is it for God to be merciful towards you, then you've really got to see Jesus as the suffering saviour.

[4:57] So here we have a passage at length where Jesus is about to change what you think about him. Now, many people already have their minds made up about Jesus, but as we're looking at our Bible studies, who controls the meaning?

[5:15] Who determines what is said, what is meant by what is said? And in many ways, if I read, for instance, Treasure Island, and I decide to ignore chapters 3 and 4, nothing bad is going to happen to me.

[5:36] Okay? Robert Louis Stevenson is not going to, you know, awake from his grave and say, how dare you? It's just not going to happen. And if I don't listen to the words or follow the words in Treasure Island, nothing, nothing, there's going to be no negative consequences.

[5:55] But Jesus' words are very different. In other words, how we listen to them and how we follow them matters, because by not listening to them, we go off track, and therefore, they matter if we don't take notice of them.

[6:12] And so, remember the principle that none of us here follow Jesus by sight. We all follow Jesus by hearing. That's how you follow Jesus.

[6:23] If you want to know how to follow Jesus, you follow him by hearing his words. And that's how you follow Jesus properly. The disciples here recognize that Jesus has already had several thousand people leave him because of his words.

[6:40] He said things that people don't like what he said, and they decide no longer to follow him. Imagine for a moment having a congregation of over 5,000, then bringing that congregation down to a handful of people, all because of words.

[6:57] And so, Jesus here this morning is about to change what you think about him. Because it is possible to listen to what Jesus says, and for what he says to be so startling that you almost carry on as if he never said it.

[7:13] So, Jesus here is speaking about the fact that he's going to suffer, and that he's going to die, and the disciples hear everything that Jesus says, and then the next thing they say is, well, can we come and sit next to you on your throne?

[7:27] As if everything that Jesus just said about suffering and dying and rising from the dead just didn't penetrate their minds or hearts whatsoever.

[7:39] And when Jesus asked the very famous question, well, can you drink the cup that I have to drink? So foolish are they? Well, of course we can. They have no idea what Jesus is about to do for them.

[7:53] And so it's possible to follow Jesus, it's possible to listen to Jesus, and it's possible for everything you listen to, really not to sink down into your head, into your heart, because you just carry on with the next thing.

[8:07] Well, Jesus doesn't want us to carry on with the next thing, he really wants us to understand what he has said here. It may be startling, but you are to know what he means by what he says.

[8:22] Now, if I was one of the disciples here with Jesus, I might have asked the same thing, and if you are one of the disciples, you might have asked the same thing as well. When we get into glory, can I sit on your right side, and can my friend Bob, or whatever his name is, sit on your left side?

[8:36] Can we reign the world together? And if you're asking that type of question of Jesus, you clearly don't see who Jesus is. You clearly don't see the distance between who he is and who you are.

[8:51] You're elevating yourself to Jesus, and yet there's such a gap between us in one sense that we're missing who Jesus actually is.

[9:01] They just don't see. Jesus speaks, and they don't see what Jesus is speaking about. And this is illustrated by the fact that Jesus takes a blind man and proves to the disciples with the blind man what it takes for a person to see.

[9:21] And that's what we're going to be looking at this morning. Everything in this passage revolves around the same question that's asked twice. Verse 36, Jesus says to the disciples, what do you want me to do for you?

[9:33] And then verse 51, the same question appears, but to the blind man this time, what do you want me to do for you? So imagine for a moment that you're sat here and Jesus is asking you that question.

[9:46] What do you want Jesus to do for you? What will you ask for? What do you want?

[9:58] And why do you want it? What do you want me, Jesus, not me, Jesus, but what do you want Jesus to do for you?

[10:09] What do you want him to do? Well, that's the question that he puts to the disciples, and that's the question that he puts to the blind man. And so I've got three headings in order that we can navigate our way through.

[10:21] And here's the first, why we don't see. There's a reason why people don't see Jesus and see the things that he does and who he is, why we don't see.

[10:32] Secondly, what do we need to see? And then thirdly, how do we get to see? Okay? So firstly, why we don't see. Secondly, what we need to see.

[10:43] And then thirdly, how do we get to see what we need to see? So here's the first, why we don't see. The disciples here are told, and they've been told before that Jesus is going to suffer and die.

[10:55] Peter's already said back in chapter eight, no, Lord, you know, this can't happen to you. He just can't comprehend that Jesus has to suffer and die. But the reason we get to see that they don't see it here is in verse 32.

[11:09] They're making their way towards Jerusalem, as we know, and they're walking ahead and they were amazed and those who followed were afraid. Now, the reason for the amazement and the fear is twofold because they all imagine Jesus walking into Jerusalem, in fact, riding into Jerusalem and turning right on his donkey.

[11:32] But instead, as he rode into Jerusalem, he turned left. Everyone was expecting him to turn right and go in and throw out the Romans. But instead, he went in and turned left and went into the temple and dealt with his own people.

[11:45] They just got the whole idea about what Jesus was going to do completely mixed up. They expected Jesus to sit on a throne in Jerusalem. They expected Jesus to rule from there.

[11:57] They expected him to get rid of the occupiers of Jerusalem and make Jerusalem great again. And so there's amazement that this is going to happen, but then there's great fear because they recognize that the only way that that can happen is if there is a battle.

[12:16] And in battle, there is death and there is war and there is blood and there is all of that. So there's both fear and amazement at what's going to take place. The trouble is, Jesus isn't going to Jerusalem for that.

[12:29] See, they think that because Jesus is the Messiah, that the Messiah should make other people suffer. And that's what, but the Messiah is going to Jerusalem and he will suffer.

[12:48] And the people just don't see what Jesus has come to do. Just don't see it. In fact, you're sat here this morning.

[13:01] Do you see why Jesus had to die on the cross for you? Do you see why it had to be that way and it couldn't have been any other way? So we've all got this filtered view where we see partially but not completely.

[13:22] Well, the reason why the disciples don't see here is found in the question, what do you want me to do for you? And they come up with several reasons. One of the things, several answers.

[13:32] One of the answers that they don't come up with is, I want you to die on the cross for me to take away my sin. It's not even in their mindset to ask or to see the need for redemption or forgiveness or for ransom.

[13:47] No, they say, we want to sit on one on one side, one on the other side in your glory. That's what we want. But Jesus hasn't come to elevate men in that sense.

[13:59] He's come to die on the cross for men. In other words, they fail to see the mercy of God. They fail to see exactly what God has come to do for man and what man cannot do for himself.

[14:12] And so Jesus asked the question, can you drink the cup that I'm going to drink? And the cup here is to do with the wrath of God. In other words, can you go to Jerusalem and take the wrath of God upon yourself like I'm going to take the wrath of God upon myself?

[14:26] And because they don't understand the question, they say, yeah, of course we can. Because they've got no concept of what this cup and this drink is. They're just, it's a bit like saying, yeah, I can do it, I can do it, I can do it, just so that you can get the opportunity to be somewhere and then you get there and you realize you can't do it.

[14:44] You've talked yourself into a position that you can't now fulfill. And we've all done this, I did this growing up, you know, are you sure you can handle this? Yeah, I can do it.

[14:54] It's not because I really want to do the job, I want to be where the job is. Yeah, I can do it, I can do it. And so I get to be where the job is but when I get there I can't do the job. And so when the disciples here are saying, yeah, we can drink the cup, what they're hoping for is what lies beyond the cup and they're so focused on what lies beyond the cup that they have no conception what it means to actually drink the cup, which is to take the wrath of God.

[15:20] If they only knew that they might have been a little bit more or totally mindful of what Jesus was actually going to do. The disciples fail to see yet again what Jesus has actually come to do to save people.

[15:37] Jesus has come to save us. Jesus is the mercy of God. Jesus by his suffering, his death, and his resurrection takes away our sin.

[15:50] And we can't do it. We want what comes after it but we can't do that. We fail to see and understand what Jesus does when we want something.

[16:06] Just like the disciples. And so if you're coming to Jesus perhaps even this morning or even your prayer life throughout this week, it's possible to fail to see what it takes to have the life that we have.

[16:18] The fact that we can even have a prayer meeting is based on the cross. The fact that we can even sit here in relative comfort singing hymns and praising God enjoying fellowship is because Jesus died on the cross.

[16:34] There's absolutely no way we could get to enjoy any of these things. The reason why you get your prayers answered and because you know God's presence will be with you wherever you go is because of the cross.

[16:45] the reason you know that that I'm speaking and the reason why it's true is seen in the cross. So your picture of Jesus should be this.

[16:59] The king of the world of the universe who comes down to a point where even he serves the lowest man.

[17:12] I love the picture at the cross where Pilate washes his hands of Jesus. Do you remember? And only a few hours earlier what do you find Jesus doing?

[17:28] But washing the feet of the disciples. The king of the world the king of the universe the son of man the rightful ruler of all washes your feet.

[17:40] to show us what it is to be a Christian. What it is to be like God on earth.

[17:53] But these disciples here think no no we want the greatness we want to sit either side your throne and we want to be able to sit there without the judgment on the way.

[18:06] So we fail to see what we need to see when we have our minds already made up about what Jesus has come to do or who Jesus is. And even now as Christians we can still get Jesus wrong when we determine what we think it ought to mean rather than really sitting down and thinking well what does Jesus mean by doing this?

[18:31] The disciples fail to see the mercy of God in Jesus who will suffer and die to take away their sins. They fail to see it because they think their minds are already made up that Jesus being the king has not come to serve has not come to suffer but has indeed come to rule and make other people suffer.

[18:57] But he hasn't come to do that. He hasn't come to start a war. He's come to suffer and die. So what then do we need to see?

[19:10] Well in order to see that Jesus is going to suffer and die first we need to be told about it. We need to be told by Jesus that this is what he's come to do.

[19:21] We also need to see that we cannot do this for ourselves and we also need to see that it is the very thing that is needed in order to make us right with God in order to be blessed by God in order to remove our sins.

[19:32] That's what we need to see. We need to see that the cross of Jesus that this suffering servant is the one and the only way by which man can be right with God and the only way we can have our consciences cleared and clean and our sins forgiven.

[19:49] That's what we're meant to see. And we're also meant to see that the way God does it is through serving us. We're meant to see that the cross is absolutely necessary.

[20:02] Now, over the years, I've spoken to myself about my own sin before God. I've also spoken to other people as we've discussed in discipleship programs and one-to-one programs and, you know, Bible studies to deal with sin.

[20:21] And it is amazing that over the course of the years, even your own years in your own life, you get to think that some sins in your life require the cross and other sins don't.

[20:37] Why do you do that? Why do we do that? Why do we get to the point where we tend to think that, yeah, that sin deserves, you know, we need the cross for that sin, but I've just made a mistake.

[20:53] And so the moment you reduce sins into mistakes, mentally, it no longer requires the cross because it's just a mistake. I didn't mean it.

[21:04] It was an accident. Right? And the moment you reduce sin, you reduce the need for a cross, you get rid of the cross. And it's a terrible thing, but it happens to all of us, as I'll be saying this evening from Colossians, sin is so deceitful that the way it gets you to commit sin is by telling you you can be forgiven of it.

[21:28] You can ask forgiveness in a minute. Sin hides itself in the fact that you can be forgiven. Sin is much cleverer than you.

[21:41] Sin is much cleverer than me. It's much cleverer than all of us. The cross is absolutely necessary to deal with everything. Now, whether we've reduced it down to just making a mistake, or whatever it may be, the cross is necessary.

[21:58] And so, the Son of Man here, verse 33, okay, the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priest and to the scribes. They will condemn him to death, deliver him over to the Gentiles.

[22:10] They'll mock him, spit on him, flog him, kill him, and after three days he will rise. We're meant to see the Son of Man, which is another way of saying that Jesus is the rightful ruler of everything.

[22:21] of everything. I mean, that's a massive challenge because we give up. You know, sometimes Jesus lives in our life in the same way that children live in somebody else's house.

[22:41] You know, you can go in this room, this room, and this room, but these are the, right? I don't know, I grew up in a house where most rooms you were allowed into, but there are some rooms that were shut, the door was shut, and they stayed shut.

[22:56] You know, I was longing to get older just to see what was on the other side of the door, and because most of them were upstairs, you couldn't actually go out and look through the window, but the curiosity didn't just kill the cat, it almost killed me, just wanting to see.

[23:11] But Jesus, if Jesus is occupying your life in the same type of fashion, where you let him in this room, this room, and this room, but these, right? What's the problem there?

[23:22] The problem is not, it's not that you're treating Jesus wrongly, the problem is that you don't see who Jesus is. You don't see that Jesus can walk through doors.

[23:36] You don't see that Jesus can see everything, you don't see that Jesus is the rightful ruler of everything, that closing the door on him doesn't hide it from him. It's like people who say, would you be watching this if Jesus is here?

[23:51] Jesus is there. What do you think? When you close the door, you kept Jesus on the outside? I mean, what's the problem there?

[24:04] The problem there is not just what you're doing, the problem is you think that you can keep Jesus out. You can't keep it, he's the ruler of all, he's everywhere all the time.

[24:18] One of my children said to me several years ago, can we go to the park, daddy? Yes. Will Jesus be there? Not only is he at the park, but he's with us on the way to the park.

[24:32] He's everywhere. Jesus is the rightful ruler of all, who has come. Notice verse 45, that the son of man, the rightful ruler of all, has come not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

[24:55] And this means that a man in sin needs buying out of sin. Sin is being in debt to God, and if you're in debt to God, you're in debt so far that you can't buy yourself out of debt.

[25:12] Okay, you can't, there's no one else to borrow money from, because God owns everything. And so if you're in debt to God, and sin is that debt, you've got no purchasing power to get your life out of debt.

[25:26] And so Christ, in giving his life a ransom for many, is the purchasing power that Jesus, by dying on the cross, is the payment required to release us from sin and death and destruction.

[25:40] It is the very thing, this is what we're meant to see, to get us close to God and out of sin. It is the, it's the purchasing power of God, God's life himself, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

[25:55] Because those in debt cannot buy themselves out. We have to be bought out by somebody else. And Jesus, by his death, buys us, purchases us.

[26:08] So not only is he the Son of Man in that he is the ruler of all, but he owns all. My life is, doesn't just belong to Jesus, my life is owned by Jesus.

[26:23] Think about that. Your life is owned by Jesus. Jesus does with me whatever he wants to do.

[26:35] And when I sin against it, it's when I do with my life whatever I want to do. Okay? I can even, the moment I make a good thing, an idol, that in itself is wrong.

[26:51] So Jesus Christ has ransomed me from sin and death and destruction. And he, because he's bought me, not just saved me, he has purchased me. I belong to him.

[27:02] But there's a transaction occurred here. I once belonged to somebody else, somewhere else, in sin and death and destruction. That is where I belonged. But sin is so deceitful, it kept telling me that I was free.

[27:17] Sin, death and destruction in my future, it kept, you're free, do whatever you like. Just, but God purchased me through the death of the cross as he purchases you through the death of the cross.

[27:29] So not only does he, you belong to him, not only has he saved you, but he owns you. You're owned by Jesus. And that's why you can have the security of being owned by Jesus.

[27:45] Because that means you can never be snatched out of his hands. Okay. No one's going to break into Jesus' house and steal us. Okay.

[27:55] He is the ultimate strong man who cannot be defeated. So how do we get to see all of this if we don't see all of this? If we don't see it, this is what we need to see, that Jesus is the purchasing power of God, that his life is the purchasing power, that he is the savior, he is the mercy of God in our lives.

[28:16] But what do you say to a person who doesn't see it? How does that person, whether it be your next door neighbor or your brother or your sister or your husband or your wife or whoever it is, how do that, how do they get to see what you see?

[28:30] And this is where you must understand because do you know how you ever got to see it? I ask myself that question quite frequently. How is it that I finally got to see this when I didn't see it before and I knew I didn't see it before?

[28:49] Jesus asked the same question that he asked the disciples to the blind man Bartimaeus. And the question is, what do you want me to do for you?

[28:59] And blind Bartimaeus says, Rabbi, which is another way of saying teacher, let me recover my sight.

[29:11] Now here's the interesting thing. Do teachers recover the sight of anybody? Not normally. So he obviously understood something about Jesus that he didn't understand or that he understood that wasn't true of other rabbis.

[29:28] In order to ask Jesus to recover his sight, he obviously knew something about Jesus that he, that was not true of others. And said, Jesus said to him, go your way, your faith has made you well, and immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.

[29:47] So how do you get to see? Well, the only way anybody gets to see the truth of Jesus is by Jesus Christ healing them from their blindness. I can't educate my children into the kingdom of God.

[30:01] I can't, I just can't do it. I can't get them into the kingdom of God. I can't, I can't get any of your friends into the kingdom of God. You can't get any of your friends into the kingdom of God. It just doesn't happen.

[30:12] It's frustrating, but it doesn't happen. How does it happen? Well, the only way it can happen is if Jesus heals us from our blindness.

[30:23] That is the only way we get to see. That is the only way we get to see Jesus. That is the only way we get to see God's mercy on us. That is the only way we get to see that Jesus is the one who purchases us from sin and death.

[30:37] That's the only way we get to see it. But where does Jesus heal us? That's the question. How do I get this healing? In Isaiah 53, there's a prophecy.

[30:50] And the prophecy is of a servant who will suffer. Now, what happens is, is often we read that and we focus so much on Jesus, which is right.

[31:02] Sometimes we fail to pay attention to the people witnessing this. And the very people in Isaiah 53, as you find in the Gospels, who don't like Jesus, and witness this person's suffering.

[31:16] As they look at him, and they continue to look at him, they begin to realize that the sins that he is suffering are not his own, but theirs. And as people begin to hear the message of the cross and hear about a Savior who has suffered for sins that are not his own, but theirs, we are healed.

[31:40] That's how it happens. The cross is how you get to see the cross. Let me say that again. It is because of the cross that anybody gets to see the cross.

[31:54] That is why everyone who believes in the cross are believers. Think about it. The cross is the very thing that heals us from our blindness.

[32:08] And the reason because we've heard of the cross, and we've heard of the cross more than once, that is the reason why we see the necessity of the cross. Okay?

[32:18] So the very thing that heals us from our blindness is the very thing that heals us from our blindness. The cross of Christ. And so these people in Isaiah, when they see that the sins that the suffering Savior is suffering are not his own, but other people's, it changes them.

[32:41] In other words, the cross is the very thing that removes the blindness from our eyes to see Jesus as he is. In other words, if Jesus didn't die on the cross, we wouldn't get to see the need for the cross or even be saved.

[32:55] The cross is the thing that saves us and removes our blindness. And so I'll say it again. The very people who see the need for the cross and see the beauty of the cross are believers.

[33:11] And the reason you see the need for the cross and the beauty of the cross is because you have been exposed to the cross. And so it is as a person considers the truth of God, God the Son, who came to seek and to save the lost, to be a servant, to suffer and to save, that it is through witnessing that, that the blindness is removed.

[33:39] So let me conclude. If you don't see it this morning, you need to spend special attention to blind Bartimaeus.

[33:54] Because the question you need to ask a blind Bartimaeus is, what did he see in Jesus? And the answer is, he didn't see anything. He's blind.

[34:05] He didn't witness anything. He couldn't see it for himself. The only thing he had to go on was what he heard.

[34:20] He couldn't prove it to be true because he's blind. He simply had to rely on somebody else telling him. He couldn't see it for himself because he's blind. So he couldn't witness it for himself.

[34:31] He's blind. The only way this person came to faith. And the only way this person cried out to God in the first place is because of what he must have heard about Jesus.

[34:42] In fact, let's pick it up. Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard, okay, he got no problem with his hearing, that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me, which is another way of saying Jesus, the king, have mercy on me.

[35:02] The people told him to be quiet, just like they told the children back a little while back. And Jesus says, no, bring him to me.

[35:13] Well, what's the point? Well, the whole point is faith comes by hearing. It doesn't come by seeing. Okay?

[35:24] Sight comes by hearing. It doesn't come by seeing. Following comes by hearing. It doesn't come by seeing. You follow Jesus by what you hear, not by what you see. And so if you're not hearing his word, you're not, you can't, it becomes difficult to follow.

[35:39] It's a bit like the person you're following getting so far ahead of you, you've now lost, did he turn left? Did he turn right? Where did he go? So hearing's essential.

[35:50] But hearing's essential for faith. Hearing's essential for seeing. We see, according to scripture, by hearing. Okay? Faith comes by hearing.

[36:03] We see by hearing the word of God. That's the only way you get to see. So how do we get to see? You get to see by hearing the word of God.

[36:14] And the word of God takes us to the cross of God, and the cross of God is the very thing that tells us how we got healed. It is because of Jesus, and only because of Jesus, can we see the things that we see.

[36:29] That Jesus did not come to serve himself, but came to serve us, who did for us what we cannot do for ourselves, because faith comes by hearing. So having heard God's word this morning, we have every reason to continue to believe, or even believe for the first time.

[36:50] Every reason to continue to believe. And so what do you want Jesus to do for you? And secondly, do you see why you believe?

[37:04] Do you now see why you believe? Do you now see why you see? Because the very thing that you believe in has healed you from your blindness.

[37:15] the suffering saviour, who gave his life a ransom for many. Amen. Amen.