I want you to open your Bible with me. We're going to look at Mark, Chapter 10, down to Gospel of Mark, Mark, Chapter 10. The Bible tells us in Proverbs, Chapter 29, it tells us that without a vision people are naked, or dwell naked, or dwell carelessly. One of the most important senses you've got in your life is vision, the ability to see. Imagine what it would be like to live in a world with darkness. This is the world that Jesus came into, a world with spiritual darkness, to help people. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were blind? The way your life would be affected, the way your life would be impacted? You'd live in a world of darkness. Think about that, constant darkness.
You would trip over things, constantly not knowing what you're tripping over but always you would walk with uncertainty because you never know whether you'll strike an obstacle or something, so instead of walking confidently you walk hesitantly, tapping with a stick, trying to see what's out there in your imagination. If you were blind and lived in blindness you'd live not only a world of darkness but you'd have no idea quite where you're going. You'd need someone to point you in the right direction. If you were in a world of blindness people could deceive you very easily. It would be very hard to be able to work out what's going on around you.
Imagine what it'd be like to live in a world of blindness. Horrendous. You could be easily led astray by someone. You would be easily deceived by people. Living a world of darkness is a horrendous thing and so we need to understand that there are different kinds of blindness and different kinds of darkness, so just picturing it now what it would be like physically, the kind of things that would happen in your life if you were blind - living in darkness, stumbling, unable to see your way, lost, dependent on others, easily deceived and easily losing your direction. This is what the majority of people in this world live like all the time.
God wants you to have vision for your life, wants you to see, so I want you to have a look at the story of this man who was lost in blindness and he came to see. Let's go and have a look at it in Mark, Chapter 10 and at Verse 46; he came to Jericho, went down to Jericho with his disciples. There was a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus sat by the roadside and he was begging, so there are different kinds of blindness; first blindness that people can have is a natural blindness. That's what he had, but there's other kinds of blindness too.
Here's the second blindness you can have and that is spiritual blindness. You can't see your way to God, can't see at all. Imagine what it's like to live your whole life knowing somehow there's something out there, but you actually can't see or can't tell. You don't know about God. You don't know him personally at all. You're living in spiritual darkness. Sin brings darkness in our life. Then there's another form of blindness and that is destiny blindness, where maybe you have got your eyes and you can actually see and maybe you've come to Christ, but you can't see at all what you're supposed to be doing with your life. Those are three forms of blindness. There's probably other ones as well, but each one of them presents problems. Each one of them leads you to difficulties in your life, so I want you to see this man who broke his way out of it and want us to learn a couple of things from it.
So here's the guy - in Mark 10, Verse 46. There it is. They came to Jericho and he went out of Jericho with the disciples. There's a great multitude and blind Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging and when he heard that it was Jesus he began to cry out, saying Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Then many warned him, be quiet and he cried out even more; Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped. This is the story of the man who stopped Jesus. Jesus stood still, commanded him to be called and they called the blind man and saying to him, oh, look, hasn't this turned out good for you? Rise up, he's calling for you - and he threw away his garment and he rose and he came to Jesus and Jesus answered and said what do you want me to do for you?