Mark 10:1–52 | The Jesus Way

For me growing up, Jonathan and extracurricular activities didn't get along so well when I was going through school. It was either that I just wasn't any good at the things I was participating in. When I was in elementary school baseball, I was the kid off in right field because no one ever hit the ball over there. And I was way more focused on the bugs that were landing on the brim of my hat than the game that I was literally in. Or it was that I liked the stuff, I just wasn't very good at it, like middle school volleyball. I wanted to be on the team so bad, but I wasn't good enough to make it. But when I got to sophomore year of high school, I learned about a sport that I really didn't know anything about, and I finally found that balance of one, liking it, and then two, being pretty decent at it. I got to compete in men's gymnastics. I competed in two of the six events that gymnastics has for men. I competed in the rings, those rings that hang down from the ceiling about 10 feet high, and you do some flips and tricks and stuff like that. And then the parallel bars, two really long bars that run parallel to each other, and the same kind of deal. But I got to practice in all six events. The coaches wanted us to know each thing and understand it. That way, if we got good enough, then we'd be able to compete in those too. Gymnastics is a scary sport. There's not a lot of room for error, even in practicing gymnastics. You know, in football, if you're out on the practice field with your buddies and you're a wide receiver, you can take off and forget what route you're supposed to be running. And you know what, mainly no harm, no foul. You can just go back to the line of scrimmage and start over and run the right route. But for practice, even in gymnastics, when you're 10 feet up in the air and you're practicing a routine, trying to do some flips, and you fall, you still smack your face on the ground, whether you're in competition or you're in practice. And I definitely am no stranger to smacking my face on the ground. falling off of the rings. But one of the scariest of all of the events was a vault. I didn't practice in vault. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't practice, or I didn't compete in vault, but I got to practice in it a little bit. Can you hear me? Perfect. I got to practice in the vault, and this one was terrifying because you don't have a lot of time to sit and think about what you're going to do. From start to finish, the event is about 7 to 10 seconds. There's a 25-meter-long run of carpet, so it's about 80-some feet, and it's 3 feet wide, and as soon as it starts, you take off running as fast as you can to the end of the carpet where there's a springboard. And then there's this obstacle in front of you called the vault table, which looks like an oversized horse saddle, basically. So you're running at this thing at full speed. Then you have to take off in the air at the right time, land on the springboard, jump up over the vault table. But then, by the time you're over the vault table, you're upside down. And you have to use your hands to propel off of it to get you higher up in the air so that you can do some flips and tricks and then land perfectly. There's no time to sit and think about what you're doing. You have to know before you go. So it was pretty scary for me. I was not very good at it. But one of the beautiful things about the vault table and what makes it so unique is that, yes, there is a hurdle or an obstacle that you have to get over, but then you also have to use the vault table to get you to where you want to go. So the hurdle is an obstacle, but it's also a a part of the routine, something that allows you to look graceful while you're in the air. And you know, we have a lot of real life hurdles that God wants to use the same way in our lives. God places trials in our lives, but he doesn't place them in our lives just to make life hard for us. That's not the character of God. He uses them to take us to places that we couldn't get to without them and without him. So the trial is an obstacle to get over, but we also then use it. The book of James talks about it like this. In James 1, 2 through 4, it says, "'Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.'" So when God places trials in our lives, he's placing them there to grow us, but then also to bless us, because when we complete the trial, our faith is stronger. And when we find more hurdles, more trials in our lives, we're prepared because of what we've been through in the past, because of how God has grown us in the past. Our faith is stronger. God will lovingly place hurdles in our lives to get us to learn a lesson. And the thing is, is that we can't avoid the hurdle. Sometimes we want to try to find a way to go around the hurdle, get to that place without having to go through the difficulty, or we just turn around and go the opposite direction entirely. The book of Jonah talks about this, where God called Jonah, this prophet, to go preach repentance to the people of Nineveh, a godless people who didn't love God, and they were known for their atrocities. to surrounding countries and even to their own people. Jonah didn't want to do it. So what he does is he goes down to the docks and finds a boat that's taking off in the opposite direction and he goes there. Well, God's not going to let him avoid this hurdle because there was something in this that Jonah needed to learn too. And so God sends a storm that's so ravenous that it's going to tear apart the boat that he's in and kill everybody on board. Well, Jonah realizes this and says, God's calling me and I'm avoiding him. Throw me over the boat and the storm will stop. And so the crew reluctantly did. And when they did, the storm stopped. And God sent a giant fish to swallow Jonah. It kept him in his belly for three days. And when the fish spit him up, he landed on a beach. And where was that beach? It was the beach of Nineveh. Because God said, you're not getting away from it. I need you to do something here. He preached repentance to those people and the people accepted, but Jonah didn't like the people of Nineveh and he didn't want God to spare them. But God was teaching Jonah in this, I love all of my people because they're all my creation and I have the right to love them. And so Jonah learned something through the calling that God was giving him and God loved Jonah enough to not let him miss the lesson. The trials that we face in our life may have to do with a unique calling of God, but there's also some universal truths in all of our lives that we all need to hurdle over. God wants us to learn this lesson, and he will keep placing these hurdles back in front of us until we do because he loves us enough not to let us miss the lesson. We're continuing on in our series this week of the Jesus way, how we model our lives after Jesus and how he lived. And in Mark chapter 10, we're going to be talking about five hurdles to get over in order to stay on the Jesus way. This is the life that Jesus lived and it's the one he's calling us to. But there's some difficult teachings here that we need to grapple with and encounter and not run away from. in order that we may walk closer with him. The first hurdle is choosing faithfulness over convenience in our lives. So as we go through Mark chapter 10, I want you to have your Bibles out if you have them, because we're not gonna have every single verse up on the board here today. It's a long chapter, there's 60 verses, and so I'm gonna be condensing some of the stories in here, so have your Bibles out if you've got them, but we will have some of the key verses up on the screen as well. So a little context here. Jesus is leaving Capernaum with his disciples and they're making their way towards the region of Judea. And as they're walking, a crowd meets them. And as was Jesus custom, he would take the time to stop and teach them. But, as was also custom, usually there were some Pharisees in the crowd listening to Jesus teach, and starting in verse 2, 10-2, the Pharisees came up, and in order to test Jesus, asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? And Jesus answered them, what did Moses command you? And they said, well, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away. And Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So they're no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. A little context to what the Pharisees are doing here, they are trying to trap Jesus in a controversial issue of the day. This was actually something that was argued between rabbis at the time, because what this stems from, when the Pharisees say that Moses allowed the men to give a certificate of divorce to their wives, This comes from Deuteronomy 24, 1 through 4, where if you read the Hebrew, Moses uses what would be thought of as an ambiguous term for the justification of divorce in the day. Some people looked at the term that Moses used and said, well, this is obviously talking about a wife that would commit adultery against her husband, then that would therefore bring grounds to divorce. And then there were some more lenient people who looked at it and said, well, no, what this term means is that anything a husband finds wrong with his wife, if he happens to be annoyed with her one day and says, I'm done, then that would be justification. So this was the argument that was being had. And the Pharisees wanted to trap Jesus in this by taking a side to lessen his credibility with the people. If he sided with the strict rabbis, he may lose popularity with some who wouldn't want to follow him anymore. And if he sided with the lenient rabbis, they could accuse him of opposing God's law. And therefore, he would lose credibility with others. So they were trying to get him to say something that would lose credibility with people. But Jesus catches them in this because he brings something new that the people hadn't heard before. He says, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. That means whether it's the adulterous person who is responsible for the divorce or it's someone who's leaving, it was hardness of heart. It was hearts that are sinful and far from God that God made a concession. God did not design divorce. He made a concession for the hardness of people's hearts. But then Jesus goes deeper and he raises the bar, which we see him often do, He talks about God's design in marriage and what it is for that God is literally responsible for joining men and women together. And that we cannot separate what he has joined together. We do know the teaching team knows this is a touchy subject, even in our culture today. And so Jesus is saying a lot here. And I want to run through with you some of the things that Jesus is saying. It doesn't mean that they're not hard. but they're true, and we want to talk about them. Like I said, first, marriage is God's doing. It's not man's idea. And what God joins together, man must not undo. The culture can look at marriage like a post-it note, almost. That it's stuck on the fridge, and if it's left alone, it can stay there for a good long while. But with any little bit of tension, it pops off pretty easy. But it's okay that it pops off pretty easy, because it's a post-it note, and there's not a lot of damage that's going to be left behind. But the thing is, is that it's not for man to dictate what God is responsible for. God's responsible for marriage, so man is not meant to dictate when it ends. It's messier than a post-it note. You know, I think of a couple of years ago, my wife and I were looking at pulling up some flooring in our entryway and in our kitchen to lay a layer of cork down underneath. We live in a second floor condo and there's some people under us. And so we said, well, if we can soften our steps a little bit, that would be great. And me, I thought, well, I've got a genius idea. I'm going to save us a bunch of money. Let's pull up this flooring and lay the cork down and we'll just remember exactly where all the pieces go and we won't have to buy new flooring. It's going to be great. My wife stopped me because her dad used to flip houses and so she's worked on houses before. She knows this stuff. And she said, Jonathan, it's not as easy as you're saying it's going to be. There are so many pieces here and they're so perfectly cut and laid out that there's no way that you can pull this apart and put the pieces back together. There's more damage than I would have realized and it would have been costly because we were going to have to buy a new floor. Marriage is the same way. It's so perfectly designed and laid out that when you pull it apart, there will be destructive effects and it will be costly. We can often think, well, if we just, you know, if we dissolve it amicably, you know, no one's going to be affected. Eventually this is going to be fine, but that's not true. husband and the wife affected, of course. But kids, whether they're still in the home or whether they're grown up, my dad, when he was in college, he had left the house and he was the youngest, saw his parents get divorced. He was an adult. And it still broke his heart. And it still affected him years after. It doesn't matter whether you have kids in the home or they're out of the home. It will affect the people around you, the extended family. It will affect friendships. Divorce causes damage, and it is costly because it's not God's design. He didn't make it. Remarriage after wrongful divorce equals adultery. Jesus says to his disciples, because in verse 10 through 12 here, The disciples pull him aside after this because they're having a little bit of difficulty understanding the teaching. And Jesus elaborates further saying, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Because in this situation, these people are making decisions without God being a part of it. They didn't have a right to dissolve what God put together in the first place. And a key word I want to note here is that it's remarriage after wrongful divorce. Because the Bible does give two exceptions for a biblical divorce. And we want to talk about that a little bit. The first is sexual immorality. Jesus talks about that in Matthew 19, 9. But I also want to put this caveat in here. And Pastor Carl reiterates this as well because he's counseled people in this same situation. Something he says first. to the couples that he's counseled, is let's not make any decisions until we see what God will do. And through humble hearts, repentant spirits, and a couple that is willing to get on their knees and look to the Lord, through his redemptive spirit, they have seen marriages restored, even in this scenario. Decades later, they're thriving because they were willing to seek the Lord. We have a redemptive God, and he can redeem us, even in scenarios where you may have biblical standing for a dissolving of a marriage. And the second one is abandonment. It talks about that in 1 Corinthians 7, 15. But it's not just abandonment as in a husband physically leaving or a wife physically leaving. Exploitation within the home is abandonment. You can be in the home with your spouse and be so against them that your heart has abandoned them. That takes place in physical abuse. And I want to say that because I don't know what your stories are. If you are in a situation with physical abuse, God is not calling you to remain in that. That is dangerous. It is unsafe. And you need to get help. You need to seek the law and you need to seek spiritual counsel to get you safe and to walk through it with you. But when it comes to these two situations, if you are seeking a justification for for divorce. If you're looking for a reason, you might be in the wrong ground because the Bible makes it very clear what the biblical reasons are. The final word on this is that marriage mirrors Christ's covenant love, and when we are faithful in marriage, we preach the gospel to people. Christ designed marriage so that we can see his faithful, undying love for his church and his church's responsive love and faithfulness back to him. That is what a faithful marriage mirrors. And when we do it in that way, even through the hardest moments, we proclaim the gospel to people. But when we give up on it and when we throw it out, we hurt the testimony. Because God remains faithful to us, and he's called us to remain faithful to each other. Does that mean that marriage is easy? Absolutely not. But it is not hopeless. Our God is a redemptive God. Marriage is the example that Jesus is giving in this story, but marriage is not the only place in which we choose convenience over faithfulness. We have to remember that we stick through to what God is calling us to in the hardest moments because it is a testimony to those around us that our God is real, alive, and powerful. What he's calling us to is often uncomfortable. I feel like I say that a lot in my sermons, but it is. But when we remain faithful to it, we shine his light through us to others around us. And I want to say this as well because, like I said, I don't know your stories. And so there may be people here who have been affected by divorce or have been a participant of divorce. And this message is hard to hear. I say two things. First, we have to preach the word because it is what Jesus says. And we have to say it unashamedly and unafraid. But like I said before, our God is a redemptive God. And so I do not preach it with shame or condemnation, but I preach it with saying that even though we do wrong things sometimes because all of our sin is looked at equally by God, he can redeem the situation in which you are now. So do not feel condemnation and do not feel left by the Lord. He is with you and he loves you and he wants to walk with you. The second hurdle that we need to get over is choosing a childlike trust over our status. In verses 13 through 16, after Jesus had this conversation, the crowd started to bring children to Jesus, and the disciples looked on that as a problem. They started to rebuke the people bringing children to Jesus because they didn't want Jesus to be bothered by these kids. In the culture, kids were not respected. They had no status. And so the idea to them of bringing a child to the Messiah seemed disrespectful to them. But Jesus shows us a really great part of his character here because when he sees them doing this, the Bible says he became indignant or angry with them. And he says, let the children come to me. Do not hinder them for such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. And he took them into his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them. We can often think that we need to have a certain level of status or cleanliness in order to receive the embrace of Christ. Christ disproves that right away because not only does he take the children into his arms, but he also says, if you don't have the heart that they do, you don't get the kingdom. What is he talking about here? Well, Jesus uses two Greek words to describe a child. One is pation, which means humble, and the other is nepios, which means immature. Christ is asking us to have a heart of humility and immaturity when it comes to running to him. I think of my daughter, Eliana, who's almost two now. But when she was younger and had less words in her vocabulary, she still needed things from me. She just didn't know how to ask for it, and she wasn't able to get them herself. And so she would run to me with her arms up saying, "'Dah, dah,' because that's all that could come out of her mouth. But whether she needed comfort or milk or food, I was there to give it to her because I'm her dad." And I don't expect her to be farther along in order to give it to her. I don't look at her and say, well, dang, kid, if you could just get maybe a couple things yourself, I would love you more. No, that would be absurd, right? Because I'd like to think of myself as a good dad, an imperfect dad, but I love her, and I'm going to get her what she needs, whether she's able in any sense to do it herself or not. And she's immature, but she's growing as she spends more time with me. And her mom, she learns, and she grows, but she's still always going to need me. And she's always going to need her mom, and we're always going to be there for her. Christ wants us to know the same thing. He wants us to come up to him with our arms in the air saying, dah, dah, because we don't have anything else to say. Because we can't do anything else by ourselves. He wants us to be like that because that's the reality of life is whether we like to think of it or not, whether we have a high status in standing with the world or not, we are way more incapable than we think. Jesus says in John 15, you can do nothing apart from me. That's the truth. So come to him with a heart that has nothing to offer, but everything to gain from coming to him. And come and grow and become more mature as you spend time with him, but never lose your need for him. And in the same way as we look at ourselves and our status, we can often look at other people and their status too. We can look at people and become skeptical when they walk in the doors of the church because we may know their past and the things that they've done and say, I don't know if God's really changing that person. What's the real reason they're here? Or they're gonna give it up in a week because now I know them, I know what they've done. Don't discount any heart that wants to come and grow in the Lord. Because all of our transformations are miraculous. I don't care if it happened when you were five. I don't care if it happened when you were 32. I don't care if you were in church every week and I don't care if you were on the streets doing drugs. Every single transformation is miraculous because all of our hearts were far from God. God wants all of us. Don't discount those. Don't look for status in others and don't look for status in yourself. Have a childlike trust and celebrate the childlike trust of others. Hurdle number three, sacrifice over riches. This story is the story of the rich young ruler the Bible describes him as. Jesus continued on this journey. This was a very eventful journey for him. And as he was walking, this young man ran up to him and fell on his knees and said, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus responded to him, well, you know the commandments. Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, do not bear false witness, don't defraud, honor your father and mother. And probably with a heart that felt a little more glad, the rich young ruler says, well, Jesus, I've kept all these things from my youth. And it says that Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, there is one thing you still lack. Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me. Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. This sentence gets me every single time I read this passage, because he heard what Jesus was saying, he understood it, and he walked away while being sad. He was sad that he wasn't going to inherit eternal life, yet he still walked away because he wasn't willing to give up what he held so tightly to. It was his riches. Jesus turns to his disciples and says how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven And the disciples were amazed by the teaching, it says, because in the culture, people who had wealth were thought to have been blessed and highly favored by God. And so they were very confused with Jesus saying it's difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. But Jesus hears and sees their reactions and says, he goes further down it and says, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Quick context on this. There's been a teaching that's gone around the church for years now that has said that there was something in Jerusalem called the needle gate that When a camel would come up to it, it was so short that the camel would have to get on its knees and crawl through it in order to enter. That is incorrect, if you've heard that. Any historian that knows of the area will tell you that that is not a thing and it's never been a thing. What Jesus is doing is actually way more simple than that. He's taking the largest animal in the known world that he could think of, and he's comparing it to the smallest entrance in the world that he can think of, saying it's easier for the largest thing to pass through the smallest thing than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Because we hold on so tightly to our possessions, to what we've earned here on earth. That we don't want to put Jesus first, whether it's out of a sense of security or a sense of love for it, and we don't trust him, or we just don't want to let it go, that we choose our stuff over choosing him. Now, a couple of things that Jesus is not saying here. He is not saying that you have to give every single dollar you have in order to inherit eternal life. I used to get nervous about this when I was a kid. And I'd read this passage and I'm like, oh, so I literally have to give every single thing away in order to get eternal life? Like, I don't, that's scary to me. But Jesus isn't asking that. What he's doing here is he's recognizing the man. Because if you see, he said there's one thing you still lack. And what the man lacked was an ability to love God over his own possessions. So Jesus is calling him to something extreme saying, I want you to put me first. And the man wasn't willing to do that. And then the other thing that he's not saying is that it's only difficult for a rich person to get into heaven. This was a part of the teaching, but like I said, the disciples were amazed by this, and as he finished that story and that analogy, the disciples said, well, Lord, if not them, who can get into heaven? And Jesus' reply was, with man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. So it's not only difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, it's also difficult for a poor man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Because we can't get in on our own. It's not about what we have or accumulate, it's about our heart for the Lord and what He did for us, not what we do for Him. Now what this is saying is that we need to order our life around sacrifice, around putting Jesus first, even with our possessions. The prosperity gospel has been taught so much in America that it's easy for teachers to get afraid of talking about any type of blessing from sacrifice. And although when the prosperity gospel teachers say, give a hundred and God will give you a thousand, that's not true. Will God sometimes bless you by increasing wealth? Yeah, absolutely. However, God is saying that when you trust him and when you give to him and when you sacrifice, he will take care of all of your needs. He will continue to bless you and provide for you. You don't have to be afraid because he's got you. He says here in this passage, because he talks about it being impossible, Peter responds to him saying, see, we have left everything and followed you. And Jesus says, anybody who leaves his father and mother, brother and sister, son or daughter, leaves their house, they will be rewarded 100-fold. And when he's telling the rich young ruler to dispose and sell of all his possessions, he says, and store up your treasures in heaven. And so Jesus is acknowledging that I will give back to you when you order your life around sacrificing, when you order your life around my purposes and my will, he will bless us. I don't know what that looks like in each of our lives, but all I know is that the promises of God are true. and that he will take care of us. We will have treasures in heaven for our sacrifice here, for our willingness to put him first and not ourselves first. You don't have to have a million dollars for it to be difficult to hold on to your dollars. If you are poor, if you are rich, giving up of your resources is hard. But God asks us to put him first. And he only asks us to do things that will bless us in the end. So trust him that you will be taken care of. But seek his kingdom first and all of these things will be added to you. The fourth hurdle, service over power. This one's a funny one. Christ, after this, starts to tell his disciples. This is the third time he's now foretold of his death and what he's going to face to his disciples. And it doesn't really tell us their response. It doesn't tell us how long between, but I could see it being very close after Jesus has this teaching with him. James and John, brothers, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said, Lord, whatever we're about to ask of you, we want you to do it for us. That's really bold. They say, Jesus, I'm about to ask you a question. Just like do it though, okay? And it's bold, but we all kind of have a little bit of that mentality sometimes when we pray. It's like, God, would you bless me with this? And it's like, your will be done, God, your will be done. And then he doesn't answer the way we want and we're kind of mad at him about it because we're like, well, I was really expecting you to do what I wanted you to do. But Jesus is gracious and he says, what do you want me to do for you? And they said, Grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory. And Jesus said, you don't know what you're asking. Are you able to drink from the cup of which I'm about to drink? And are you able to be baptized with the baptism that I'm baptized in? And very confidently, without hesitation, they said, yes, we are. And Jesus responds saying, well, you will. You're going to face persecution. You're going to face hardships and hate from this world. But It's not my position to give who sits at my right and at my left. And then other disciples hear this conversation and they become angry with them. But Jesus has a teaching for all of them. And you know how I said how God will replace hurdles in our lives? He literally had this conversation with them in chapter nine. Like they were all arguing about who was the greatest and Jesus knew what they were arguing about. And then he brings them together and talks with them and teaches them the same exact thing. Apparently they still had some more learning to do So Jesus is going to teach him again. And he says, You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." God's calling us to a way of leading that's different than the world. The world wants to be recognized for their greatness, for their power. James and John did here too. They wanted to sit next to Jesus because they wanted to be looked at as great as well. And they wanted people to recognize it. I told you earlier that I work on the weekdays on the radio with Pastor Carl, and something that I struggle with from time to time is wanting to be the person on the show who has the interesting thing to say, who has the really profound thing to say, who wants to be recognized sometimes because it feels good to be recognized, who wants to be thanked for his hard work, Because who doesn't? But I've noticed, because God has put a common prayer in my heart, either in a break before I know I'm getting ready to say something, or on the way into work that day, and the prayer is this, God, would you speak through me so that people can take their next steps with you? Sometimes I wanna pick the glory up for myself. But when I focus on him, and I ask God to be the one to lead me, and God to get the one to glory, and for the people that I'm talking to to grow closer to him, and that's my heart, and I see people respond in that way, the joy is so much deeper than when I'm focused on myself. Usually when I'm focused on myself and I say something, whether it's quote unquote good or not, I usually sit there going, oh my goodness, I did it again. I was focused way too much on myself. And I don't feel any joy because I made it all about me. But when I make it about God and I see people respond, my joy is increased because I had nothing to do with it. I get to step back and I just get to watch God do amazing things. And I get to see people's lives changed. But you don't have to be behind a microphone or up on a stage to want to get the glory. You can be in your cubicle at work or working under a car in a garage or be a mom or a dad or a husband or a wife to be seeking getting the glory. That's dangerous. Your joy will be increased when you focus on God's glory. When you focus on becoming a servant, how can I take care of those around me today and not care to be recognized? How can I love them today and watch them grow and prosper and watch God get the glory? You just get a front seat to the most amazing show in the world. That's the joy that God has waiting for you when you cross that hurdle. And then the final hurdle for today is healing over hindrance. Jesus was getting close to the end of his journey now and he's Jericho the city of Jericho and as he's walking through it this crowd is following him and a man named Bartimaeus who is a blind beggar starts to Shout out to Jesus because he knows Jesus is there. He knows who's coming and he knows what Jesus can do He's heard the stories so he shouts out to Jesus Jesus son of David have mercy on me and kind of like before with what the disciples are doing and The crowd around him comes to him and basically says, hey, shut it. You're annoying him. And Bartimaeus thankfully gives us a good lesson here by not listening to them. He knows that's not the character of Jesus. So he continues to shout, son of David, have mercy on me. And I like how Jesus waited to respond until after the people told him to shut up. Because it was an example of faith. Okay, what's Bartimaeus going to do here? Is he going to believe the people? Or is he going to believe what he knows about me? And so Bartimaeus shouts again, and it's not until he shouts again that Jesus says, go get that man and bring him to me. And the crowd gets him and a couple people pick him up and they say, take heart, he is calling you. So Bartimaeus jumps up in the air and sprints. He throws off his cloak as if to take anything off of him that might slow him down one millisecond to get to Jesus. And Jesus says, what do you want me to do for you? Bartimaeus says, Lord, recover my sight. And Jesus says, go your way, your faith has made you well. And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way. Kind of like the conversation we had about status, we think less of ourselves when we have conversations with God or when we need something from God. We look at ourselves and say, well, that prayer is too small for him. I haven't been very good lately, so I can't ask him for this. I'm not perfect. He's not going to want to hear from me. That's going to bother him. God in this passage shows us that even the most looked down upon are not a hindrance to him. Those who the culture looks at as only a hindrance, as only a bother, because you know Bartimaeus' life. He's been sitting there for weeks with people crossing on the other side of the road because they didn't want to have to deal with him. But Jesus says, bring him to me. And his faith made him well. How often are we not even giving God the chance to do an amazing work in our life because we are afraid that he's not going to answer us? God wants you to talk to him and he wants you to ask him for what you need. There are so many people in our congregation today that have health challenges, relational challenges, vocational or financial challenges, and we're not talking to God about it because we're afraid he's not going to answer us. God wants you to come to him. Can I guarantee you that he is going to heal the thing that you're going through? I can't. But he might. He is a God who can do that. So don't expect that he just won't. Ask him for it first. And whether he heals you because of your faith, or whether he is just going to give you his presence as you walk through the storm, he doesn't want to leave you be. And I can promise you as someone who has asked for things and not always gotten exactly what he was asking for, but has gotten his presence through the storm, having his presence and his compassion and his consolation is way better than not having it because I didn't ask him for it. He wants to walk with you. He wants to be with you. Don't see yourself as a hindrance. I've got a turning point for you today. I want you to focus on it this week. What hurdle do you need to get over of these five? I want you to focus on one because we're not meant and can't handle taking everything on in our lives at once. We all need all of these, but take one this week. and talk with God about it, do you need to get over your convenience choosing and choose faithfulness? Do you need to choose childlike trust over status? Do you need to order your life around sacrifice over ordering it around your riches? Do you need to choose a servanthood mindset rather than focusing on your glory? Or do you need to seek God for healing rather than thinking of yourself as a hindrance? These are important. We have to tackle them because we walk closer with Jesus when we do. Let's pray. Father, we need you. We can't do any of this without you, God, and some of it feels so overwhelming because life can be so difficult. But God, you want to be present with us in the hurtling. You don't want us to avoid it, but you want to be there to help us. God, let us look at these things that we've seen today and not be overwhelmed by them, but know that you desire to be there with us in the process. Let us seek you on our knees asking for help. Would you reveal to us and then would you help us walk with you? Lord, we love you. We are so grateful for how kind you are to us and how much you want to bring us close to you. In Jesus' name, we praise you and we pray. Amen.