Remember that Jesus was now on His last journey to Jerusalem. That
night He would sleep at Bethany; Calvary was but a week off. He had
paused to win Zacchaeus, and now He has resumed His march to His
Cross. Popular enthusiasm is surging round Him, and for the first time
He does not try to repress it. A shouting multitude are escorting Him
out of the city. They have just passed the gates, and are in the act
of turning towards the mountain gorge through which runs the Jerusalem
road. A long file of beggars is sitting, as beggars do still in
Eastern cities, outside the gate, well accustomed to lift their
monotonous wail at the sound of passing footsteps. Bartimaeus is
amongst them. He asks, according to Luke, what is the cause of the
bustle, and is told that 'Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.' The name
wakes strange hopes in him, which can only be accounted for by his
knowledge of Christ's miracles done elsewhere. It is a witness to
their notoriety that they had filtered down to be the talk of beggars
at city gates. And so, true to his trade, he cries, 'Jesus ... have
mercy upon me!'
Now, note two or three things about that cry. The first is the clear
insight into Christ's place and dignity. The multitude said to him,
'Jesus of _Nazareth_ passeth by.' That was all they cared for or knew.
He cried, 'Jesus, thou _Son of David_,' distinctly recognising our
Lord's Messianic character, His power and authority, and on that power
and authority he built a confidence; for he says not as some other
suppliants had done, either 'If Thou wilt Thou canst,' or 'If Thou
canst do anything, have compassion on us.' He is sure of both the
power and the will.
Now, it is interesting to notice that this same clear insight other
blind men in the Evangelist's story are also represented as having
had. Blindness has its compensations. It leads to a certain steadfast
brooding upon thoughts, free from disturbing influences. Seeing Jesus
did not produce faith; not seeing Him seems to have helped it. It left
imagination to work undisturbed, and He was all the loftier to these
blind men, because the conceptions of their minds were not limited by
the vision of their eyes. At all events, here is a distinct piece of
insight into Christ's dignity, power, and will, to which the seeing
multitudes were blind.
Note, further, how in the cry there throbs the sense of need, deep and
urgent. And note how in it there is also the realisation of the
possibility that the widely-flowing blessings of which Bartimaeus had
heard might be concentrated and poured, in their full flood, upon
himself. He individualises himself, _his_ need, Christ's power and
willingness to help _him_. And because he has heard of so many who
have, in like manner, received His healing touch, he comes with the
cry, 'Have mercy upon me.'
All this is upon the low level of physical blessings needed and
desired. But let us lift it higher. It is a mirror in which we may see
ourselves, our necessities, and the example of what our desire ought
to be. Ah! brethren, the deep consciousness of impotence, need,
emptiness, blindness, lies at the bottom of all true crying to Jesus
Christ. If you have never gone to Him, knowing yourself to be a sinful
man, in peril, present and future, from your sin, and stained and
marred by reason of it, you never have gone to Him in any deep and
adequate sense at all. Only when I thus know myself am I driven to
cry, 'Jesus! have mercy on me.' And I ask you not to answer to me, but
to press the question on your own consciences--'Have I any experience
of such a sense of need; or am I groping in the darkness and saying, I
see? am I weak as water, and saying I am strong?' 'Thou knowest not
that thou art poor, and naked, and blind'; and so that Jesus of
Nazareth should be passing by has never moved thy tongue to call, 'Son
of David, have mercy upon me!'
Again, this man's cry expressed a clear insight into something at
least of our Lord's unique character and power. Brethren, unless we
know Him to be all that is involved in that august title, 'the Son of
David,' I do not think our cries to Him will ever be very earnest. It
seems to me that they will only be so when, on the one hand, we
recognise our need of a Saviour, and, on the other hand, behold in Him
the Saviour whom we need. I can quite understand--and we may see
plenty of illustrations of it all round us--a kind of Christianity
real as far as it goes, but in my judgment very superficial, which has
no adequate conception of what sin means, in its depth, in its power
upon the victim of it, or in its consequences here and hereafter; and,
that sense being lacking, the whole scale of Christianity, as it were,
is lowered, and Christ comes to be, not, as I think the New Testament
tells us that He is, the Incarnate Word of God, who for us men and for
our salvation 'bare our sins in His own body on the tree,' and 'was
made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in
Him,' but an Example, a Teacher, or a pure Model, or a social
Reformer, or the like. If men think of Him only as such, they will
never cry to Him, 'Have mercy upon me!'
Dear friends, I pray you, whether you begin with looking into your own
hearts and recognising the crawling evils that have made their home
there, and thence pass to the thought of the sort of Redeemer that you
need and find in Christ--or whether you begin at the other side, and,
looking upon the revealed Christ in all the fulness in which He is
represented to us in the Gospels, from thence go back to ask
yourselves the question, 'What sort of man must I be, if that is the
kind of Saviour that I need?'--I pray you ever to blend these two
things together, the consciousness of your own need of redemption in
His blood and the assurance that by His death we are redeemed, and
then to cry, 'Lord! have mercy upon _me_,' and claim your individual
share in the wide-flowing blessing. Turn all the generalities of His
grace into the particularity of your own possession of it. We have to
go one by one to His cross, and one by one to pass through the wicket
gate. We have not cried to Him as we ought, if our cry is only
'Christ, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ, have
mercy upon us.' We must be alone with Him, that into our own hearts we
may receive all the fulness of His blessing; and our petition must be
'Thou Son of David! have mercy upon _me_.' Have you cried that?
Notice, further, the attempts to stifle the cry. No doubt it was in
defence of the Master's dignity, as they construed it, that the people
sought to silence the persistent, strident voice piercing through
their hosannas. Ah! they did not know that the cry of wretchedness was
far sweeter to Him than their shallow hallelujahs. Christian people of
all churches, and of some stiffened churches very especially, have
been a great deal more careful of Christ's dignity than He is, and
have felt that their formal worship was indecorously disturbed when by
chance some earnest voice forced its way through it with the cry of
need and desire. But this man had been accustomed for many a day,
sitting outside the gate, to reiterate his petition when it was
unattended to, and to make it heard amidst the noise of passers-by. So
he was persistently bold and importunate and shameless, as the shallow
critics thought, in his crying. The more they silenced him, the more a
great deal he cried. Would God that we had more crying like that; and
that Christ's servants did not so often seek to suppress it, as some
of them do! If there are any of you who, by reason of companions, or
cares, or habits, or sorrows, or a feeble conception of your own need
or a doubtful recognition of Christ's power and mercy, have been
tempted to stop your supplications, do like Bartimaeus, and the more
these, your enemies, seek to silence the deepest voice that is in you,
the more let it speak.