See God’s Merciful, Miraculous Love!

Sermon for Quinquagesima, February 23, 2020

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Luke 18:31-43  ³¹ He took the Twelve aside and said to them, “Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished.  ³² Indeed, he will be handed over to the Gentiles.  They will mock him, mistreat him, spit on him, ³³ flog him, and kill him.  On the third day, he will rise again.”  ³⁴ They did not understand any of these things.  What he said was hidden from them, and they did not understand what was said.  ³⁵ As he approached Jericho, a blind man sat by the road, begging.  ³⁶ When he heard a crowd going by, he asked what was happening.  ³⁷ They told him that Jesus the Nazarene was passing by.  ³⁸ He called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  ³⁹ Those who were at the front of the crowd rebuked him, telling him to be quiet.  But he kept calling out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”  ⁴⁰ Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him.  When he came near, he asked him, ⁴¹ “What do you want me to do for you?”  He said, “Lord, I want to see again.”  ⁴² Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight.  Your faith has saved you.”  ⁴³ Immediately he received his sight and began following Jesus, glorifying God.  All the people, when they saw this, gave praise to God. (EHV)

See God’s Merciful, Miraculous Love!

Dear friends in Christ,

            In the Old Testament, there is a word that pops up again and again in connection with God’s care for His people.  The English language doesn’t have an exact complement for the word, so you see it translated variously as mercy, love, lovingkindness, or steadfast love.  It is how we are to treat others, but that Hebrew word, chesid, expresses God’s completely unselfish, unmerited, covenantal devotion, compassion, and kindness, and that is precisely the kind of mercy the blind man in our text begs for from Jesus.  So, as we look at this miracle, See God’s Merciful, Miraculous Love!

It is apparent that not everyone in this text could see very well.  Of course, you knew that because there is a blind man in our text, but it appears that he isn’t the only one who couldn’t see.  Jesus took His twelve specially selected disciples aside to tell them, for the third time, what was about to happen to Him in His upcoming visit to Jerusalem, and for the third time they couldn’t understand what He was talking about—maybe not even what man He was talking about. 

Jesus told them, “Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished.  Indeed, he will be handed over to the Gentiles.  They will mock him, mistreat him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him.  On the third day, he will rise again.”  Here, Jesus summarizes what we will see in our upcoming Lenten worship.

To the disciples, Jesus’ forecast sounded like nonsense.  They believed Jesus was the promised Messiah who would sit on David’s throne, and they understood that as the Messiah He had the power of God, but along with many of His enemies, the disciples mistakenly assumed that Jesus had come to fight for an earthly kingdom.  They considered the crowds of people who flocked to Jesus to hear Him preach, and saw Jesus heal all the sick, suffering, tormented souls brought to Him, and they just couldn’t understand why Jesus would talk about being betrayed, tortured, mocked, and killed. 

Luke reported that “They did not understand any of these things.  What He said was hidden from them, and they did not understand what was said.”  Those twelve disciples couldn’t see the reality Jesus was facing as our Savior.  God had been promising the Savior from the beginning of time, and all of the Old Testament pointed toward His coming, yet most of the people held misguided ideas of what they would see.  They hadn’t understood that all the Temple sacrifices had been pointing toward the final sacrifice of Christ as the Lamb of God.

So, how about you and me, do we see Jesus properly?  How many people in our world see Jesus for what He really is?  Jesus is widely acclaimed as a great teacher, and many preachers will tell you to study the great prophetic words Jesus spoke to show us how to live right.  Thus, many modern Christians have come to view Jesus, mostly, as a good man to imitate.  We are even told by some that Jesus was nothing more than a great socialist—so compassionate with the suffering and the poor and how we should likewise focus all our efforts on helping the needy.  According to those teachers, we should be focused solely on performing acts of mercy that all people supposedly deserve.  So, just who do we see in Jesus?  A teacher, a hero, a role model?  Or is He something more?

After Jesus finished His brief explanation with the disciples, He set His face resolutely toward Jerusalem, and as you might expect, the crowds were again crowding around Him.  Much like the celebrities of our day, Jesus was continually being crowded by those who wanted to get close to Him for His attention or His healing touch.  It is in connection with one of those crushing mob scenes that Jesus approaches Jericho.  The crowd was likely especially large that day because many Jews were traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration, and it just so happened that a beggar heard the commotion.  Being blind he had to ask about the cause, but after receiving the answer, we see that this blind man was one of the few who saw by faith.

Immediately upon hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth passing by, the blind man began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Though he couldn’t see with his eyes, the blind man had heard of Jesus and he saw with his heart that Jesus was the promised Messiah whom the prophets had foretold would come to save His people.  By calling Jesus the Son of David, this blind man showed that he knew the Old Testament prophecies, and he believed Jesus was the One God had promised David would reign on his throne forever.  When he heard of the miracles Jesus had done, he had no doubt that Jesus could heal him, too, so by faith, the blind man could See God’s Merciful, Miraculous Love. 

That beggar asked for Christ’s mercy, but the way he asked shows that he realized he didn’t deserve it.  He didn’t offer a bunch of reasons why he should be healed.  He didn’t brag about anything he had done for Jesus. He just cried out again and again “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

The crowd didn’t appreciate him.  The people told that poor suffering man to hush himself.  They didn’t want this hurting soul to interfere with their time with Jesus.  We might be reminded of how often we can be like the crowd: maybe we were too busy to help some struggling neighbor, or perhaps we ignored a cry for help, or maybe we didn’t like it when someone else’s baby made noise in church.

Thanks be to God, Jesus wasn’t in too big a rush.  Upon hearing the man’s desperate cries, Jesus stopped and asked for the man to be brought to Him.  Now finally, someone in the crowd could reach out a helping hand to the blind man.  They brought the beggar to Jesus, and Jesus, the King of the Universe with so many things on His agenda to accomplish, takes the time to tenderly ask this poor blind man, “What do you want Me to do for you?” 

The beggar didn’t hesitate.  He answered, “Lord, I want to see again.”  That blind man had no doubt about Jesus’ ability to provide this miracle.  He didn’t, for even a second, doubt that Jesus was willing to help him.  He just asked in humble faith for Jesus’ Merciful, Miraculous Love. 

Jesus did exactly what He was asked to do.  He said, "Receive your sight.  your faith has saved you."  The healing was immediate.  That poor, blind, beggar’s eyes were restored and not only could he see, but he began to follow along with Jesus, giving thanks and praise to his God and Savior.  Even the crowd got excited.  They had seen the healing and praised God for His mercy.

Now, before we get too far from the scene, let’s look at the second half of Jesus’ statement to the beggar.  Jesus said, “your faith has saved you.”  The beggar was cured because he believed in Jesus, but more than that he was saved from sin because of his faith in Christ as the Messiah.  The man received his sight, but most importantly, his eternal salvation was granted to him through the faith God’s prophetic promises had worked in him.  So, we See God’s Merciful, Miraculous Love!  To a beggar who had nothing to offer except faith in Jesus’ name, God’s love and mercy granted both physical healing and eternal salvation.  The same is true for you and me. 

The first half of this text gives us a look at what is really God’s Merciful, Miraculous Love!   There, Jesus taught us that He didn’t come to this world to teach everyone how to be good neighbors, though Jesus certainly was good to all who came to Him.  And though Jesus could have called up many legions of angelic warriors, He didn’t come to restore Israel’s greatness in the world’s political realm.  Though almost everyone around Him expected the Messiah to lead a military conquest, Jesus resolutely set His face toward Jerusalem, submitting Himself to suffer and die in shame, because of all the times we don’t humble ourselves under God’s instruction, and for all the times we don’t obey His Laws, and for all the times we do not take care of the less fortunate as we should.

Jesus told the twelve disciples, "Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished.  Indeed, he will be handed over to the Gentiles.  They will mock him, mistreat him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him.  On the third day, he will rise again."  Everything that the prophets had written about the Messiah, Jesus would fulfill.  That included His birth, His life, His demonstration of God’s power through miracles, and His compassion for the poor and lowly.  Primarily, it was the humble way Jesus would suffer and die for you and me.  Then, in final triumphant victory, Jesus would rise again from the dead. 

If Jesus would have just died and not returned to life, it would have been proof that he was only a man full of delusions.  However, the Good News for us and for the whole world is that Jesus did rise from the dead on the third day just as the prophets had foretold, and just as He Himself had promised.  Jesus’ resurrection from the dead proves that He is the Son of God.  It proves that God has accepted Christ’s sacrifice as payment for all our sins.  It proves that the Bible truly tells God’s Merciful, Miraculous Love. 

Dear friends, God loved us even when we were His enemies and completely immersed in sin.  He loved us before we knew of Him or came to believe in Him.  You and I could not come to Him, believe in Him, obey Him, or love Him on our own, but God so loved us that He sent His Son to restore us to His grace.  In His Merciful, Miraculous Love God sent Jesus to deliver us from every woe.

In the coming Wednesday evenings of Lent, we will be following Jesus as The Son of God goes forth to war.  We will see Jesus engage our enemies in the battle for our eternal souls.  However, we will see Jesus armed not with mighty weapons of war, or backed by vast armies of soldiers, either human or angelic, but rather, we will see Jesus win our freedom with humility, obedience, and sacrifice.  

In our lesson this morning, we hear the promise of the greatest act of love and mercy the world has ever known—not Jesus carrying out an act of love for a blind man outside of Jericho, but that His greatest act of love, done for the whole world, came on a cross outside of Jerusalem. 

Look to Jesus for His teaching and for His demonstration of love to all.  But most of all look to Jesus for the forgiveness and salvation that He won for you with His personal sacrifice.  See Him hanging on that cross so that you never have to die for your sins.  Then, see Him also rise in undisputed victory.  In Jesus Christ, See God’s Merciful, Miraculous Love!  Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto everlasting life.  Amen.