Every Last Word

Mark: How do we maintain our faith when life circumstances are not the way we'd like them to be? What happens during those times when we think we're losing our faith? Turn to the Gospel of Luke and listen in as we discuss the blind beggar who called out for Jesus to heal his sight.

Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today, we're continuing our studies in Luke, investigating what the Bible says about faith in the work of Christ.

Phil, what are we to think when we see a loved one who's in pain and it appears that God isn't doing anything about it?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Well, Mark, that's a very heavy burden, and that's one I know that you've had to bear and I've had to bear as well. Seeing someone you love go through a lot of earthly suffering, particularly physical suffering, and as we observe that, I think we need to remember that Christ never promised us deliverance from pain and suffering in this life but only in the life to come. But in addition to that, he has promised that he can use our earthly sufferings in some way to glorify him, and we'll see a marvelous example of that in today's story about a blind man by the side of the road.

Mark: Well, how can we know for sure that we'll never lose our faith in Jesus?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Well, Mark, sometimes our faith seems strong. Other times it seems very weak. We may even be afraid that we're going to lose it altogether. I suppose if our faith depended on us, we probably would. But our salvation doesn't depend on our work; it depends on the work of Jesus Christ. He has promised to sustain our faith to the very end. He doesn't just give us faith in the first place, but he preserves us and keeps us to the very end. I hope that'll be an encouragement, Mark, to any of our listeners who feel like they may be struggling in the Christian life right now, that Jesus is able even when we are not.

Mark: Thank you, Phil. Let's turn in our Bibles now to Luke chapter 18, verses 35 through 43, and listen together to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Please turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18, where this week we come to the end of the chapter to a story that has for me in recent years come to have a much more personal connection. The reason for that is as many of you know, my brother-in-law is blind. He wasn't born that way; in fact, Alan used to have nearly perfect eyesight. He was an officer in the US Air Force, flew a bomber for the Strategic Air Command before becoming a commercial pilot for American Airlines.

But in December of 2000, he came down with a life-threatening case of bacterial meningitis. He nearly lost his life. He was in a coma for six weeks, needed emergency, life-threatening, but ultimately life-saving surgery which was successful in many respects. But after all of that, even though by the mercy of God his life was spared, the damage to his optic nerve is irreparable and he will be blind for the rest of his life.

Now, we are all saddened by my brother-in-law's disability, but I think it's fair to say we don't treat him with patronizing pity. We generally expect him to carry his weight, and as a military man, that's what he expects of himself as well. He is strong in his physical health, his trust in God is undiminished, his family is growing in godliness. But having said all of that, if you were to ask him if he could change one thing in his life, what would it be? Surely it would be this: that he would be able to regain his sight.

This is what the man we meet in Luke 18 also wanted. It was the pressing need and the deep desire of his life. Jesus met this man as he was on his way to Jerusalem. We read in verse 35 that as he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. Hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.

So it was that this beggar by the side of the road came into a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. He could hear the commotion on the road, but of course, being blind, he could not see Jesus. And yet, let me point out that there were several things that he could see. He could see, first of all, his need. His eyes were covered in darkness, and thus he could see his need for sight.

When Jesus gave him the opportunity to say what he needed, his answer was simple and direct. It's also the answer I think you would expect from verse 41: "Lord, let me recover my sight." A man needed his sight. He also needed money. We see that as a direct result of his blindness, he was in extreme poverty. Day after day, he sat by the side of the road begging, and really, what else could he do?

He had no way to earn a steady income. No one was making any special provision for him as a disabled man, and so it was that he was destitute, and he could see his need. Out of that desperate need, he cried out for salvation. You can see his prayer in verse 38: "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me."

I wonder if this word here for mercy may even suggest that he could perceive his spiritual need because, generally speaking, mercy is the love of God for sinners. This is the way that the Bible speaks about mercy. It's the grace that God has to rescue us from our lost and sorry condition. Perhaps when this blind man was asking for mercy, he was asking for something more than merely his sight but asking for salvation in a more comprehensive sense.

Surely that is what he received in answer to his request. You know, people say that the first step is always to admit that you have a problem, and this blind man admitted that. He saw his need for a savior. In fact, you can see by way of contrast—and Luke is a great one for presenting us with these kinds of contrasts—you can see by way of contrast that this man could see his need for Jesus much more clearly than the rich man that we met earlier in the chapter.

Remember, that man's material prosperity prevented him from seeing his spiritual poverty, and he went away from Jesus unsaved. As we look at the comparison between these two men, one man a rich man, the other man a poor man, we can see that the rich man would have been much better off if he had been a blind man like this and able to see his spiritual poverty.

This is what we all need to see, whether we are rich or poor, whether we are seeing or blind. We need to see our need for Jesus, and specifically our need for him to save us from the blindness of our sin. In his book on the miracles of Jesus, Richard Phillips makes the very helpful point that in these miracles of Jesus as we read about them in the Gospel of Luke, we see, in effect, all of the deadly and disabling effects of sin.

Each of the miracles that Jesus performs is a real physical miracle, but the disabilities that these people had each of them in some way relates to the needs of the sinful soul. Here's the way that Rick Phillips writes about that. He says, "Leprosy shows sin's corrupting power and condemning presence. The lame show sin's debilitating power. The dead proclaim the wages of sin. The demon-possessed show the destructive domination that is always the result of our bondage to sin and to Satan."

You can see the point that's being made that for each miracle, there's a kind of analogy between the physical needs of the body and the spiritual needs of the sinful soul. You get a kind of picture of the effect of sin. What the beggar of Jericho shows us, of course, is the blinding power of sin. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, we can't even see how sinful we are or how much need we have for the grace of God.

I wonder, have you ever come to the place in life where you have really seen your own need for salvation, where you've seen clearly the depth of your sin against God? You know, the Bible says if you can't see that, it's because the god of this world has blinded your mind to keep you from seeing the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ.

But you see, the Holy Spirit has the remedy for that. He has the cure because it is his function to open your eyes and to show you how much you need Jesus. Apparently, the Holy Spirit had done that kind of work in the life of this man because here was a man who saw his need for a savior.

Here's another thing he saw: he saw who Jesus was. You see an interesting contrast in verses 38 and 39 because whereas the other people were calling him Jesus of Nazareth, the blind man called him Jesus, Son of David. Now, this title does not appear all that often in the Gospels, but I think it would have been familiar to any Jew who knew the Old Testament.

What it meant when it said that Jesus was the Messiah was that he was the Savior that God had always promised to send. In those days, the traditional Jewish synagogue prayers included a petition asking God to have mercy on the kingdom of the house of David, the Messiah of thy righteousness. So there you have a regular prayer of the Jewish people. It's a prayer for mercy specifically from the house of David, the Messiah.

By calling Jesus the Son of David, the blind man was acknowledging that this was the Savior God had promised to send. We may wonder how he knew that. Perhaps he had heard something of the miracles of Jesus Christ; the word was getting out. Maybe he even knew that Jesus was descended from the line of David.

In any case, this blind man, in calling out for the Son of David, was declaring Jesus to be Israel's royal king, to be David's rightful heir, and to be God's righteous Messiah. Whereas other people looked at Jesus and saw perhaps a teacher or a preacher or maybe even a miracle worker, this blind man was able to put it all together and see him as the Savior of God.

Not just as Savior, but you'll see he also refers to Jesus as his Lord. This is what he says to Jesus in verse 41. He says, "Lord, let me recover my sight." Now, this was a sign of respect in those days, an honorific title, and the man may have been using the title in that way. But it's true in a deeper sense, isn't it?

Jesus is not just Lord in the sense that he's a master, but he is Lord with a capital L, that he is himself the Lord God. Here is a man who was coming into a right relationship with Jesus as Savior and as Lord. Really, you can't receive Jesus as Savior without acknowledging him as Lord. The only Savior there is is the Lord Jesus Christ.

When you come to him, it's not just for the forgiveness of your sins; it's to come to him in submission for your whole life and to acknowledge his lordship and his divine authority over you. This is the kind of faith that this man was beginning to show: faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord.

Would you agree with me that this blind man could see better than most people, including probably many people in the crowds that were following Jesus around Jericho? I mean, here's a man whose spiritual acuity is 20/20. I'm reminded of a question that was once posed to Helen Keller. Someone asked her, "Isn't it terrible to be blind?"

She responded by saying, "Better to be blind and see with your heart than to have two good eyes and see nothing." What an apt description those words are of this beggar by the side of the road because, for all of his spiritual blindness, he had penetrating spiritual insight. I wonder, do you see your own need for salvation, and do you see Jesus as well as this man did?

Well, there was another thing that he saw, a third thing: not just his own need and who Jesus was, but he also saw Jesus himself. By his miraculous divine power, Jesus made the blind to see. There was a man who experienced the saving cure of Jesus Christ, the miraculous deliverance from his blindness.

Jesus heard his cry; he had mercy on him. He opened the man's eyes, and no doubt the first thing that he saw was his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus was fulfilling the ancient promise that he would come to recover sight for the blind, a promise that he had made at the beginning of the Gospel in Luke chapter four.

When he was beginning his public ministry, Jesus said, "I have come for this purpose: to give sight to the blind." Here, that promise was fulfilled in the life of this man. Let me say that this promise is fulfilled in a spiritual way anytime any sinner comes to faith in Jesus Christ.

This is what it means to be a believer in Jesus Christ, to be a Christian. A believer is someone who has been delivered from the blindness of sin, someone for whom the eyes of the heart have been enlightened by the grace of God. Yet, let me also say, because it's important to this story and also important to us as people living in a fallen world, that there is also a physical dimension to that promise.

This restoration of this man's sight is a reminder that salvation is for the body as well as for the soul. It's interesting that when Jesus describes what he had done for this man, as he does in verse 42, that he says, "Your faith has made you well," or more literally, "Your faith has saved you." It's the New Testament term for salvation.

It's used here in a comprehensive sense. It's not just spiritual but also physical. The blind man's salvation included much more than just the recovery of his sight. But let me also say that his sight was not to be overlooked. Jesus was saving this man from his physical distress with the expectation of his eternal destiny.

God has promised that in the end, he will provide physical as well as spiritual wellbeing for every one of his children. What hope this gives to the blind, to the deaf, to the crippled, to anyone suffering from the physical diseases of the body: the promise that one day God will deliver us from every last consequence of sin, from all of our sickness, all of our disability, all of our disease.

Now, these healing miracles of Jesus should not mislead us into expecting that full salvation right away. In fact, someone was telling me after the earlier service that she had been teaching Sunday school to a group of four and five-year-olds, and they had been considering one of the miracles of Jesus, and one of the children in great faith went over to a crippled classmate who had braces on his legs and attempted to perform a healing miracle right there.

Now, that was the right instinct, wasn't it? To have faith that the power of God really could bring that kind of deliverance. But Jesus has not promised that he will bring that deliverance immediately. You know, even in his earthly ministry, Jesus didn't heal everyone in Israel.

God has not promised that he will save us from this suffering in a fallen world, but rather that he will save us through suffering into glory. When we see the healing miracles of Jesus Christ, we are given the hopeful promise of a glorious salvation that is yet to come.

It is only in heaven that we will have our perfect health, where death shall be no more, where there will be no more mourning or crying or pain. Even this man on the Jericho road would still experience suffering in a fallen world. He was still waiting for that perfect salvation as much as we are.

But you see, in this miracle, Jesus was giving him a glimpse of that perfect and full salvation when Jesus made his blind eyes to see. We are seeing a glimpse of it ourselves as we read the Scriptures and receive the assurance of a deliverance that is coming soon for the body as well as for the soul.

Now, I think you'll agree with me that this blind man could see more than most people, and let me say that the way that he received this sight was by grace through faith. What a significant verse it is, the statement that Jesus makes in verse 42: "Recover your sight; your faith has made you well."

This man was seeing by believing. It was his faith that made him well. Now, of course, properly speaking, it was Jesus who healed him. You could also say that Jesus made him well, but you see the man was receiving Jesus by faith. Thus, faith was the channel by which he received his salvation.

This is what saved the man by the Jericho road; it was faith in Jesus. His example therefore shows us what it means to put our own trust in Jesus Christ. I've been sharing with you in a few ways the things that this blind man saw, but let me also now share with you the things that he believed.

What can this blind man teach us about the life of faith? What can he show us about what it really means to have saving faith in Jesus Christ? Let me mention three aspects of his faith. First, that it was persistent. It was persistent. This man did something more than simply call out to Jesus; he kept crying for mercy until Jesus stopped and healed him.

Of course, this was part of the man's plight. He couldn't see his way to Jesus. He had to cry out even over the noise of the crowd so that Jesus could hear him and save him. He continued to shout for mercy even when everyone else was trying to tell him to shut up.

Those who were in front rebuked him, verse 39, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more. Well, he should have. I mean, these people were trying to stop him from making a scene, but here was a man who was desperate for his salvation, and so the more they tried to get him to silence, the louder he shouted, begging for Jesus to save him.

He would not give up on his desire to come to a full deliverance. This is an example for us if we've begun to think about Jesus Christ and try to understand what the message of salvation the Bible gives. We should pursue that until we really come to an understanding and are saved by faith.

This man was rewarded for the persistence of his faith because Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. You get the impression there, don't you, Jesus commanding the crowd that that's not what they really want to do? They need to be instructed by Jesus to bring this man to him.

When he came near, he asked him, "What do you want me to do for you?" The answer, of course, was that the blind man wanted to see. He believed that Jesus had the power to save him, and he would not stop praying to Jesus until he was saved. There are a number of lessons we can apply from that example.

One is to ask ourselves the question that Jesus asked this man: "What do you want me to do for you?" What is it that you really want God to do for you? Now, many people have a long list of things that they would like God to do in their lives. But this is the fundamental thing: that God would bring you salvation through Jesus Christ, that you would have the forgiveness of your sins.

That's what you ought to be asking Jesus to do for you. Don't keep quiet about it either, but cry out for deliverance until Jesus brings you to salvation. There may be some family and friends that try to discourage you; that was the experience that this blind man had, but he wasn't dissuaded by that. He wasn't discouraged by it. He kept on crying out to Jesus persistently until by the word of God and by the mercy of Christ, he was saved.

That's what we should do as well. That's what we should do if we're not sure that we have yet come into a saving relationship with God. We should ask Jesus to come and save us, and we should keep praying that until we have an assurance by the Holy Spirit speaking in the word that we too have been delivered through Christ.

But of course, it's not just for our salvation that we need to come to Jesus. We need to cry out to him for anything that we need, for everything that we need. Jesus is listening to us by his Spirit. How he loves to answer the prayers of the needy when they cry to him.

If you cry to him in persistent faith, he will not pass you by. He's not too busy saving others to save you. No, he will stop in the middle of the road, and he will come and save you. Unless this man's faith had been persistent, I suppose humanly speaking he would not have caught Jesus' attention.

Unless his faith had been personal, he would never have asked the way that he did. Look again at his request: "Lord, let me recover my sight." Here you see a second aspect of the man's faith: that it was a personal faith in Jesus, that he himself is calling on Jesus directly for his salvation. There is an interpersonal transaction that is taking place here.

Somewhere in his writings, O. Hallesby has commented that the essence of faith is to come to Christ. Faith manifests itself when sinners come into the presence of Christ with all their sin and all their distress. I wonder, is that something that you've done? Have you come into the presence of Christ with all of your sin and distress and asked him to be your savior?

You have to do that in a personal way. That's what the blind man did in this particular case. You'll notice, as you look at what the blind man was doing, that he was trusting Jesus with his whole person. When theologians talk about personal saving faith in Jesus Christ, they often emphasize that it's a matter of the mind and the heart and the will.

I think you see all of that in this man's example. This is the kind of personal faith he had in Jesus Christ. He was trusting Christ with his mind; he had knowledge of who Jesus was. Of course, it's impossible to come to faith in Jesus without knowing who he is and what he's done.

Faith isn't a kind of vague feeling of dependence, but it has very specific objective propositional content. In this man's case, it meant knowing that Jesus was the Son of David, that he was the Messiah, that he had the power to save. For the Christian, faith means knowing that Jesus is who the Bible says that he is and has done what the Bible says that he has done.

It means believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. It means believing both in his human nature and its divine nature. It means believing that he lived a sinless life, that he offered perfect obedience to the Father by the things that he did, and it means believing that he died on the cross for sinners, that he offered his own body and blood as an atonement for our sins. It means believing that he was raised from the dead. It means believing that God has acknowledged him to be the king of the universe. It means believing all of these things about Jesus.

Since faith requires knowledge, really the first thing you need to do if you're interested in becoming a Christian is simply come to an understanding of what it is that Christianity teaches, have somebody explain what the Bible is saying about Jesus. But of course, there is more to faith than simply that. Faith may begin in the mind, but that is not where it ends.

I think John Calvin was right when he said the word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain but when it takes root in the depth of the heart. You see, faith is an acceptance of the message of salvation, not just knowing that what the Bible says about Jesus is true but believing in the heart that it really is true and receiving that and embracing that within the heart.

I mean, even the demons know that there is a God; they believe in Jesus in one sense, but they do not accept him. They do not have faith in the sense of receiving Jesus in the heart. But here's a man who did that. He was ready with all his being to receive Jesus, to acknowledge him as Savior, to call out to him as Lord, embracing the Savior.

Faith also is a matter of the will. The blind man had this as well; he had a trust. It was his will; it was his desire. It was his choice to put his confidence in Jesus Christ. This too is part of faith. It's not just a matter of the mind and the heart, but it's a matter of the will offering its unconditional surrender to Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther explained that there is a difference between faith which believes that what is said of God is true and faith which throws itself on God. This is the kind of faith that Jesus is calling us to in the Scriptures, a faith which really throws itself on his mercy.

This trusting aspect of faith, I think, was graphically illustrated in the ministry of John Paton. Some of you are maybe somewhat familiar with his missionary work, and many of you, I'm sure, are familiar with this story, but it bears repeating because it illustrates so clearly the trusting aspect of faith.

John Paton had gone out as a missionary to the New Hebrides islands. He found that the natives among whom he was called to work had no way of writing their language. He began to learn their language, eventually to teach them how to read their language, eventually after that to begin working on a translation of the Bible for them.

But he came up against an unexpected difficulty in that that language had no word for faith. How could you translate the Scriptures, which have so much to say about faith, without even having a word for faith? One day, he went out with one of the villagers on a hunt, and in the providence of God, they were able to kill a deer, and then they brought it home, the two of them tying it to a pole and trekking over hill and over mountain to bring it back. It was a laborious journey.

When they returned to Paton's home and they reached the veranda, the man, having set down the deer, flopped into a chair, and he said, "My, it is good to stretch yourself out and rest." Immediately Paton jumped up, very excited, because he knew that that was the expression that he needed for faith. Faith is stretching yourself out and resting on Jesus the way that a weary man will throw himself down on a sturdy chair.

This is what faith is. Have you stretched yourself out? Are you resting on Jesus? The Bible says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Well, I don't think you could come up with a better example of that, could you, than the blind man in the Gospel?

Here was a man who was certain of what he did not see; he had that assurance. Do you have the kind of assurance that he had? Do you have a trusting faith in Jesus Christ? Now, that's not to say that Christians never have their doubts. We know that from the Gospel of Luke, that there were times when the disciples had little faith, when they needed to ask Jesus for more faith.

But you see, when you have a true faith in Jesus Christ, it has this assurance with it that you never completely lose trust in the saving work of Jesus Christ. Thankfully, our salvation does not depend on our own ability to trust but rather on the faithfulness of God. He has promised, by the abiding presence of his Holy Spirit, that we will never abandon our confidence in Jesus to save.

Know that having come to Jesus with the mind and with the heart and the will, that he will preserve us. The Heidelberg Catechism says that true faith is not only a certain knowledge whereby I hold for true all that God has revealed to us in his word, but true faith is also an assured confidence which the Holy Spirit works by the Gospel in my heart.

That's what faith is: not something that comes from us but something that comes from the Holy Spirit, something the Holy Spirit works into our heart so that even our faith is a gift from God. Let me ask you, do you have this personal saving faith in Jesus Christ? Do you know Jesus in this way? Are you trusting him? Have you put your mind and your heart and your will at rest in Jesus?

Let me say finally that if you have that kind of faith, it will be productive. It will be a productive faith as it was for the blind man. Notice the way that this scripture ends in verse 43. We read that immediately he recovered his sight and followed Jesus, glorifying God.

He wasn't the only one who was glorifying God either because all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. This is what happens when someone comes to saving faith in Jesus Christ: it leads to a whole life of worship and obedience. As soon as the blind man could see Jesus, he was committed to being one of his followers.

He had been saved by faith; he was ready now to live by faith because saving faith always leads to a life of obedience. It's productive of obedience and worship. Here, finally, the blind man was fulfilling the purpose for which he had been made, which was to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

The joy of his salvation was infectious. Other people saw what God had done in his life, and then they too started offering praise to God. This is what true faith produces: joy in God, a commitment to follow Jesus. This man's example gives us a good way to test our own relationship to God.

Ask yourself: Do I experience joy in the worship of God? Am I keeping the commandments of Christ? Am I keeping them in those areas which the Holy Spirit is convicting my conscience that I'm out of keeping with God's will for my life? Am I ready now to follow Jesus? That's what true faith does: it keeps the commandments of God.

Does my life point other people to Jesus in a way that makes them want to follow Jesus too and join me in the worship of God? You see, if I have a true faith in Jesus Christ, my faith should be evident in the way that I worship, the way that I witness, the way that I live.

This story of the blind man on the road is a call to that kind of persistent, personal, productive faith in Jesus Christ. If we have that kind of faith, we'll receive the same grace that this man received: we will see Jesus. One day soon, everyone who has this faith will see Jesus, and I mean that in a literal sense.

The Son of David has gone on ahead of us into glory, where he has promised that we will see him face to face. This is what my brother-in-law is waiting for: not just the recovery of his physical sight, but the glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what I'm waiting for as well. I want to see Jesus, and by faith, I will see him. That's the promise of Scripture.

What about you? Will you see Jesus? Do you have the kind of faith that leads to that kind of sight? Let me warn you not to let Jesus pass you by. I imagine how tragic it would have been if this blind man in Jericho had heard the commotion, had heard that Jesus of Nazareth was there, and had let him pass by without crying out to him in faith.

I mean, really, unless the man had raised his voice at that very moment, he would have missed his chance to see Jesus. He would have been lost forever. You might say how lucky he was that Jesus was there and how lucky he was that he said something. But of course, the Bible doesn't speak about luck.

No, it speaks about the providence of God, about God's purpose. You see, in the providence of God, Jesus has come your way just as much as if he had been walking down the street and you had heard the commotion, you had heard the news, you had heard what people were saying. In this case, you've heard what is said from the Scriptures about Jesus.

The question is: Will you call out to him in faith? Because you see, Jesus has to be believed to be seen. If you believe in him, you will see him, and he will save you by his grace. Father, we give you praise for the mercy of Jesus in opening the eyes of this man. How fortunate he was, how blessed to meet the Son of God and to see him face to face. Father, we pray that you would give us this same trusting faith in Jesus Christ so that we too may see him for your glory. Amen.

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