In his sermon titled 'A Picture of Salvation,' Peter Allison explores the interconnectedness of two passages from Luke 18: Jesus' prediction of his suffering and death, and the healing of the blind man, Bartimaeus. He emphasizes that these passages together illustrate the sovereignty of God and human responsibility in salvation. Allison explains that signs and miracles serve as a picture of deeper spiritual truths, with the healing of Bartimaeus symbolizing the opening of spiritual eyes. He discusses Jericho's historical and biblical significance, noting its location and events, such as the Israelite conquest and the story of Rahab. Allison highlights God's sovereignty, detailing how Jesus' suffering was prophesied and ordained by God. He contrasts the disciples' lack of understanding with Bartimaeus' recognition of Jesus as the Messiah. The sermon asserts that salvation is entirely God's work, and human response comes from God-given understanding. Bartimaeus' cry for mercy and his subsequent healing exemplify the human response of faith and its role in salvation. Allison concludes by encouraging obedience and glorification of God as a response to salvation.

Please turn in your scriptures to Luke chapter 18. We'll begin reading at verse 31. Then He took the twelve aside and said to them, Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon, and they will scourge Him and kill Him, and the third day he will rise again. But they understood none of these things.

This saying was hidden from them and they did not know the things which were spoken. Then it happened as he was coming near Jericho that a certain blind man sat by the road begging and hearing a multitude passing by he asked what it meant. So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, and he cried out, saying, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Then those who went before warned him that he should be quiet. But he cried out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me.

So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he had come near, he asked him, saying, what do you want me to do for you? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And then Jesus said to him, receive your sight. Your faith has made you well.

And immediately he received his sight and followed him glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. May we not delay to keep all of His commandments. Heavenly Father, What a heritage and a privilege we have in your word. We ask that as we hear this morning, it might be mixed with faith.

We ask that you, Lord, might be our instructor, and that your Holy Spirit might be our guide. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, These two passages aren't usually connected. This passage of Jesus predicting His death and suffering at the hands of the Jews and this blind man receiving his sight from Jesus. Luke doesn't give his name, but the other two Gospel accounts tell us that this man's name was Bartimaeus.

So that's what we can call him this morning, Bartimaeus. But these passages And this miracle that Jesus performs is a picture. Revelation is a picture book where truths are presented in picture format. And that's what we have in these miracles, the miracles of Christ, these were signs. And we'll look at what is signified about our salvation in these miracles.

But These two passages, the reason I put these two passages, wanted to look at these two passages together is because they connect to things that are true about our salvation, the sovereignty of God, and our responsibility, human responsibility. You see signs provide information about things that can't be seen. They point to something other than themselves. And we can get into trouble if we don't keep the sign from that which it signifies and recognize that they are separate things. You know, baptism is a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit being poured out, but it is not itself that Holy Spirit being poured out.

And so we need to keep those things in mind, that the sign is not that which it signifies, but the sign does point to something, it points to a reality that we may not be able to see. And it tells us things. It gives us information about that to which it points. And so this account of Jesus' healing is a sign. It's a sign, it's a picture of our salvation.

The setting of this account is Jericho, the city of Jericho. Jericho is a historically fairly important city and It sits below sea level, almost a thousand feet below sea level. It's not too far from the Dead Sea, which you know is well below sea level. Jericho sits on that plain by the Jordan. And you remember that's where the Israelites, when they came into the land of Canaan, that's where they came in.

They crossed there, right at Jericho. That's where the people camped. They took a census there. The nation was circumcised because Moses had not allowed the Israelites to circumcise themselves in the wilderness because of unbelief. That was an unbelieving generation.

So they were circumcised and then you remember there was the miraculous crossing of the Jordan River and they came to that first city of Jericho and that city was destroyed. It was conquered without the Israelites having to do anything they except walk around it they didn't lift their sword they were to stand and see the the salvation the deliverance of the Lord And so they marched around it once a day for six days, and on the seventh day they went around it again, and the priests blew the trumpets and the people shouted, And the walls of Jericho came crashing down. But of course you remember this is where Rahab was. Rahab lived in Jericho. And she was able to, when the spies came in, she was able to help those spies and the Lord used her.

He used her concealing of the truth to save the spies from the people in Jericho who would have put them to death as spies. And then Rahab, because she believed, she was saved in her house. And she, as you know, became part of An ancestor of David, the line through whom Christ came. She would have married one of the tribe of Judah that came out of Egypt. And so when that city was destroyed, Joshua cursed it.

And nobody was to rebuild it. Well, eventually somebody did, but what the curse that Joshua had put on it came to pass and they lost their oldest and youngest son in the course of rebuilding that. This was also where Zedekiah, the last king of Israel, tried to flee away and escape the king of Babylon and he went out, but he was captured here near Jericho in this plain. The city was rebuilt by, like I said, it was rebuilt at the cost of the children of the man who rebuilt it. But there's actually there are actually a couple different cities.

This ancient city that was destroyed. Harrod. I guess that button won't work. Herod rebuilt it. Herod, and it had become a summer home for him, and he rebuilt it.

And of course, but the modern day Jericho is a third city. And I think this will be significant in a minute when we get to look at this account. But what I want, before we get to Bartimaeus and his response to Jesus being near him, I want to just look at this passage where Jesus predicts His death and His resurrection. He took the twelve aside and He said, Behold, we are going to go up to Jerusalem. And all the things that were written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished.

And He lists them very specifically. He will be delivered to Gentiles. He will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him, and the third day He will rise again. Very detailed account.

God is sovereign over every detail in this crucifixion of Christ. These things that Jesus lists are all a fulfillment of what was spoken of in Isaiah 53 and other places. But Isaiah 53 has all of these elements. Isaiah prophesied that he was despised speaking of Christ and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

He was smitten by God and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities and by His stripes we are healed. He was oppressed. He opened not His mouth.

He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. He was cut off from the land of the living. They made His grave with the wicked, but with the rich at His death. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He was put to grief.

He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, for he will bear their iniquities." He was numbered with the transgressors and he bore the sin of many and he made intercession for the transgressors. All these things that Isaiah was talking about, this wounding, this bruising, this being rejected, being whipped, Jesus says, this is all going to happen. You think about this, these are all passive verbs. These are all He will be delivered, He will be mocked, He will be insulted.

Jesus is describing the actions of people. These are people that are going to do this. These actions were actions that Isaiah prophesied hundreds of years earlier. And yet God can say in his word with absolute certainty that they are coming to pass because God is sovereign over the free and unrestrained actions of men. These people who are exercising the liberty of their will to make choices and yet in doing that, they are doing nothing except what God has ordained, sovereignly ordained should happen.

Also, I would also note here that Jesus is not a victim. Knowing that all these things would happen, he still sets his face to go to Jerusalem. He willingly went to Jerusalem. He wasn't tricked into going there. He wasn't forced to go there by some power outside of himself.

He wasn't captured and bound and carried to Jerusalem. He went willingly, knowingly. Jesus said that, I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down of myself.

I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again. This command I received from the Father Jesus says in John 10, 18. He's not a victim. He is willingly, He's willingly offering himself as a sacrifice because it is the will of the Father. And he came to do the will of the Father.

And he perfectly does the will of God. He's going to Jerusalem, not because he wanted to. You remember in the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed, Lord, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but Your will. So he's going to Jerusalem because he is committed to doing the will of the Father. He's committed to doing it even when it's difficult, even when he knows it will result in his crucifixion.

But these disciples, in verse 34, they didn't understand. They didn't, they had unbelief in them. They had, they didn't understand. They, the saying was hidden from them and they didn't know. Three times, three different ways.

They didn't understand. There's a mental inability. See, our ability to comprehend anything at all comes from God. Isaiah speaks about even the ability of the farmer to know when to stop plowing and to plant and how to thresh the different types of grain. Even those mundane, we would say, and by that I mean earthly, even those earthly things are taught to us by God.

And so these disciples have this mental inability. They did not understand these things because God had not given them that understanding yet. It says they were hidden from them. There was a spiritual blindness because spiritual things are revealed by the Spirit and the natural man can't understand them." Paul told the Corinthians, the natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. He can't know them because they are spiritually discerned.

And Luke also says that they didn't know the things that were spoken. There was an experiential deficiency. A suffering Messiah who willingly offered Himself, that didn't fit any of their experience. That didn't fit any of their experience. That didn't fit any of their things that they thought they understood.

This isn't saying that they were outside of Christ. But it is saying that their eyes are not yet opened. It's like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we'll get to a little later in Luke 24 after Jesus' resurrection. These were disciples and yet their eyes weren't open to understand the things that had happened. And remember, they're walking on their road to Emmaus, and Jesus just kind of came up and joined them.

And he said, what kind of conversation are you two having with each other? And the one whose name was Cleopas said, well, are you the only one in Jerusalem that doesn't know what's going on? What do you mean? What kind of conversation are we having? And Jesus said, no, what things?

And so they said, well, the things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was this prophet, mighty indeed, and how the chief priests and the rulers and the people gave him over to be crucified. And they said, We were hoping that this was the one that was going to redeem Israel, but this is the third day since these have happened. And yes, certain of our women, company who arrived at the tomb early, have astonished us. And so they're recounting these events, but they didn't have any understanding of what was going on. And so they were actually sorrowful because they thought that their hope of what the Messiah would do didn't work out.

And these disciples here, they didn't have anything, any experience, any experiential understanding of a Messiah who would suffer and die. And it was only for the disciples on the way to Emmaus, it was only when they sat down, after Jesus has explained to them from Moses and the prophets about the Messiah, and then Jesus, you remember, broke bread, and then it was that their eyes were opened. And then they understood. And then Jesus disappeared from them. And so these disciples don't understand.

They are blind Because our salvation is from a sovereign God. God is sovereign in our salvation. Our salvation is all of God. It's 100%. It's not where we do a little and God does most of it.

It's 100% accomplished by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And He is sovereign over when and where and who. But then we come to blind Bartimaeus. And this also is a picture of our salvation. Now This says that it happened as he was coming near to Jericho.

And if we look in the other Gospel accounts in Matthew and in Mark, they both say that it happened as they were going out of Jericho. This is one of those places where the unbelieving skeptics and scoffers love to say that the Bible has errors and it's not reliable. And it's up to us to figure out what the truth is. And yet I would, so I want to take a minute just to point out that no, there's no discrepancy here. Yes, there's a different accounting and that's very typical of first-person testimony.

We can only testify to that which we have seen and that which we experience, and we don't see everything. It doesn't say... Well, and so we know that the word of God is true. We know that it is true in every detail. We know that God preserves His word to us because God says, The grass withers and the flower fades, but my word, the word of God, endures forever." And so we come to this passage knowing that both of these accounts are true.

We may not, Even if we may not understand how they are both true, we know that they are both true. But I would offer several possible explanations for this. One of which is that there are multiple sites of Jericho. There is the historic site that was destroyed when Israelites crossed that was then rebuilt. There was the Jericho that Herod built, which was a little different place physically and a little different place from the Jericho that fell down in the days of Joshua.

And then of course there's the Jericho today, which is a different city which came about in the, you know, a thousand years ago or 900 years ago in the time of the Crusades. I guess that's more like 700 years ago. So there's these different locations and it's very possible that these two writers were referring to the different locations And so Jesus could have been coming out of the old Jerusalem and coming into the new Jerusalem, and these beggars could have been on that road. And so both are true. I know of, I was in Dublin years ago and and there was a the story goes in the in the 90s I believe or late 80s they had a house had a water problem and they couldn't figure out where this water was coming into the house and they ended up digging in and in the process of digging down eventually they discovered that There was a city down there, a whole other city.

And they had been totally covered up and totally lost. And the new city was 30 feet above the old city. And nobody knew that that old city was down there. Well, that happens to cities, they can move. And so there are, there could have easily been these two different cities.

And another explanation is that there may have been, there may have been two different people here that are being referred to. Luke doesn't name him as Bartimaeus, but whatever the reason, there is an explanation. And there is nothing contradictory in these two statements. It doesn't say, Luke doesn't say that there was only one, it just, he just names one. There was a certain blind man.

The other difference between these two accounts is, is that one says that they are, Luke says that there's one man and Matthew says that there's two. And again that's a typical of first person testimony. Luke and Mark don't say that There's only one, they simply mention one, and there's many plausible explanations for why that could be. Which one it is, isn't necessarily important. What is important is that there is no contradiction between those.

There are differences in these accounts. And so, Jesus is coming near Jerusalem, or away from one of the other Jerusalems, and there's a certain blind man by the road, and he hears his multitude passing by, And he asks what that means. He can't see. And that's a picture of us. We're blind.

We cannot see. We cannot understand in our natural states. A picture of our salvation. And so they tell him that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by and then he cries out Saying Jesus son of David Have mercy on me Jesus son of David. He knew who Jesus was.

He uses three names for Jesus. Jesus, Son of David, and the later Lord. Jesus is the name that Gabriel told Mary she was to call him. He shall be called Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. Jesus means Jehovah saves.

But Son of David, Bartimaeus is recognizing that Jesus is the Son of David, that he is a descendant of David, a physical descendant of David, and that Jesus was the one who was spoken of in the Old Testament when God made a covenant with David, and He said He would never cease to sit on His throne, one who had descended from Him. Bartimaeus is acknowledging this when he calls Jesus the son of David. He also calls him Lord. And he said Lord, when Jesus asked, he said Lord that I may receive my sight. This was Caesar's favorite name for himself.

But the Christians use this to refer to God. So Bartimaeus is understanding through this word and we can connect this word that he uses, curio, To God Almighty, because Luke in Luke, Chapter three, and won't won't take time to go there, but Luke uses this word, Lord, to refer to Isaiah, a passage in Isaiah 40, that is speaking of God Almighty, Jehovah. And so Bartimaeus recognizes Jesus is the Son of David and he is God Almighty. He's the Messiah who will be reigning on the throne of David and that he is God as well. So This is a picture as well of our salvation.

This knowledge was given to him by the Lord. The Lord enabled him to have this sight. But what does he do? When Jesus comes near, he cries out to him. So we see the picture here is that yes, God is completely sovereign in our salvation and it is only those he determines when and who and those to whom he will reveal himself But we also see in this picture our responsibility as humans that when Christ comes near, we cry out, Lord, have mercy.

Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us. Note also, I think there's a picture here, especially brought out in some of the other accounts, that the people told him to be quiet. They tried to keep him from coming to Jesus. Remember those who went before warned him that he should be quiet. You need to be quiet.

Don't make a scene. They are trying to keep Him from Jesus. And there are people today that still try in various ways to keep us from Jesus. You remember the disciples themselves tried to keep the parents from bringing their babies to Jesus. And the scribes and the Pharisees, Jesus said, tried to keep people from coming to Jesus.

They didn't like that. And they tried in many different ways. And here the crowd now is trying to keep Him from coming to Jesus. And people still today, right, will try to keep us from coming to Jesus by corrupting the Word, by mocking it, by seeking to point out errors, And even as we saw in this recent years, by seeking to shut down the worship service is nothing more or less than an attempt to keep people from coming to Jesus, to keep them from gathering each week to worship. So another aspect, another picture of our salvation.

He asks for mercy. He asks for mercy. His eyes have been opened where the disciples didn't understand these things because it was hidden from them. The Lord had opened his understanding and he recognized who Jesus was, the Son of David. And when Jesus came near, he asked for mercy.

See, when the Holy Spirit has worked in us to give us new life, to regenerate us, He brings a knowledge and an understanding, and the result of that work that's entirely God's work is that we do cry out to the Lord for mercy. And Jesus told him when he asked, Lord, what do you want me to do for you? Jesus asked, what do you want me to do for you? He said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said, receive your sight.

Your faith has made you well. Now, He wasn't saved by His faith. He wasn't saved because of His faith. It's not like in the Old Testament people had to keep the law of God, but now since that's too hard for people to do, now the requirement is to have faith and because you have faith, you are saved. That's not what is happening.

Faith is the channel. We are saved by Christ. We are saved by the power of Christ. We are saved by the work of Christ, by His obedience on the cross and His obedience to the law of God, His righteousness and His sacrifice. But it is Faith that is the means, the channel by which that power and that salvation is brought to us.

It's not like faith becomes another work, that God saves us because we exercise faith. No, God saves us because of Christ, And it is Christ that saves us, but He does it through faith. Immediately he receives His sight. And then notice that He's immediately saved. It's immediate.

Our salvation is immediate. Secondly, he followed Christ when he was saved. Those whom Christ saved follow Christ. There's no such thing as somebody who is a Christian, who is a carnal Christian not really following Christ. Those who are Christ, those who have received His mercy, those whose eyes have been opened, those who have cried out to Him and know His grace, they follow Him.

That means we walk in obedience to Him. We don't follow Him because we obey. We obey because we are in Him and following. And thirdly, He glorified God. He glorified God.

His mouth was filled, as the psalmist says, let my mouth be filled with your praise and with your glory all the day. All the day. And the people, also, when they saw it, they glorified God. This brothers and sisters is a picture of our salvation and I apologize for all the difficulties that we've had today but may the Lord overrule them all, and I should say that I have had today, may the Lord overrule them all and feed us this morning with his word. Our heavenly Father, We thank you that your strength is made perfect in our weakness.

We thank you that our salvation does not depend upon our own strength. It doesn't depend upon our own ability to see. Lord, you are the one who gives sight. And you are the one who rescues us from a state of a stupor of blindness and darkness and of spiritual death. You are the one Lord who saves us by your power.

Father, may we, may your praise and your glory fill our mouth all the day. May we be those who follow you because we love you, because you have loved us. May we, Lord, be those who cause others to praise and to glorify you, because they see your work in us, and they see your work through us. Pray these things Lord in Jesus name, Amen.