Sermon Notes / Transcript

Mark 10:46-52 — Have Mercy on Me

Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: Sunday, Jul 12, 2026 at 10:30 AM

Mark 10:46–52 — Bartimaeus, Mercy, and Following Jesus

Scripture Reading

Our Bible reading today is Mark chapter 10, verses 46 through 52. It'll be on the screen, but if you have a Bible and you want to open it up, we are in Mark's Gospel in the New Testament, second book of the New Testament, the Gospels. So we are working our way through Mark and we're getting there.

We'll be done sooner than later. So this is Mark 10:46 through 52. This is God's word, and it is eternally true.

Then they came to Jericho, and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road.
When he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And many were sternly telling him to be quiet. But he kept crying out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said, Call him here.
So they called the blind man, saying to him, Take courage, stand up, he's calling for you. Throwing aside his cloak, he jumped up and came to Jesus. And answering him, Jesus said, What do you want me to do for you?
And the blind man said to him, Rabboni, I want to regain my sight.
And Jesus said to him, Go, your faith has made you well. Immediately he regained his sight and began following him on the road. This is the word of the Lord.

Opening Prayer

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts will be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Seeing Bartimaeus in Context

Now, if you're just here for the first time, this is, we're picking up, you know, Scripture is one of those things. You have to read it in context. You have to read in order because there's an author.

There's the human author, and there's the Holy Spirit. And together, they make God's Word God's Word, right?

It's got, this has the flavor of Mark in it. And Mark is thinking through all the stories that he's heard about Jesus' time of preaching and teaching and healing and walking.

Power, Blindness, and Spiritual Sight

And Jesus and the Holy Spirit worked together by God's providence to set these events up in ways that they work together. And so we just were talking about how James and John they wanted Jesus to do what for them?

Did they want to have their eyes open so that they could see?

No. What did James and John, Jesus' inner circle, want?

They wanted power, right?

They wanted the best seats in the house, right?

Right up here, right?

That no one ever takes. I keep, you know, I keep inviting y'all, and no one comes up here to take these seats. That's what James and John wanted. They wanted the seats of power.

They wanted to be right there, vice president, senate president, and rule over Jesus's earthly kingdom. And then immediately we transition. You know, Jesus says, I've given my life as a ransom for the many. And we transition to what?

The Blind Beggar on the Road

The blind beggar, Bartimaeus. The blind beggar. What do you think of when you think of a blind beggar?

Do you have a mental picture?

Have you driven through Topeka recently, or Kansas City, or Chicago, or wherever you drive through?

Have you seen the street corner beggars?

Well, they all have a sign, right?

Usually kind of disheveled. I want you just not to hear these words.

I want you to see this image of Jesus walking with a throng of people, right?

He exits, they're coming into Jericho, and there's a large crowd with him, right?

Who are these people?

Who are the people?

Who's the large crowd around Jesus?

It's not his enemies, these are the people who are really excited about Jesus and his teaching and maybe his healings and definitely his bread making, right?

His fish multiplication. These are people who Jesus, who are attracted to Jesus and form this crowd around Jesus to go with him.

And here's a blind beggar. We often hear that when someone loses one of their senses, their other senses get activated, right?

So, if you're blind, you know, I think it'd be hard for us to read Braille, right?

Because we can see and it's easier for us to interact that way.

But if you're limited there, then your hearing's attuned or your sense of touch is attuned, so you can, you can easier, you can better sense these other senses. And there is a sense in which we see that in Bartimaeus. He is blind, and yet he sees something that the rest of the crowd doesn't see.

This is deliberately placed just after James and John, and their focus on what he can do. They had walked with Jesus for years, they had seen him, you know, heal the sick, calm the sea, cast out demons, raise the dead. They had eaten the bread that he made and the fish that he multiplied.

And yet they were still arguing about these places of honor. They wanted thrones, they wanted glory. They're still thinking in earthly terms. And then you see, I'm pointing at the ground, right?

Because, I mean, that's where a blind beggar lays, right?

He lays by the side of the road. The contrast is striking and it's intentional. The disciples can see physically, but spiritually they're nearsighted.

They're missing some really important things. And Bartimaeus, on the other hand, he can't see nothing. And yet he can see spiritually. He's got discernment. He's heard, right?

In contrast with the disciples, he's heard about Jesus' miracles, maybe.

He's heard about Jesus' reputation as being a healer, but it's all secondhand knowledge, right?

He couldn't have seen any of this, he didn't experience it himself. He just heard rumors. And as Jesus passes by, he cries out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.

“Son of David, Have Mercy on Me”

Son of David's an interesting title, it's a messianic title. The Son of David was the promised king, the heir to David's throne, the one sent by God to save his people. And then notice what he asked for. He doesn't ask for riches, he doesn't ask for power, he doesn't even ask for justice or fairness.

We were talking about fairness last night. So, you know, he doesn't ask for justice. Oh, I was born blind and I deserve to have eyes. He asks for mercy.

Mercy at the Center of Redemption

The cry for mercy runs throughout the entire story of redemption. When Adam and Eve sinned, God would have been perfectly just to have taken their lives that day. Instead, he showed them mercy and promised him a deliverer that was going to be born of woman. When God instructed Moses to build the tabernacle, the very center of Israel's worship was the mercy seat.

Right?

There was the ark, there was the tabernacle, there was the Holy of Holies, there was the ark, and on top of the ark was the mercy seat. And over top of the mercy seat were the angels with their wings extended to cover and protect the mercy seat.

And God's presence was there at the mercy seat. God spoke to Moses and Aaron from the mercy seat. In fact, the Israelite priests were instructed that they couldn't even enter there without spreading blood on the mercy seat, because they were sinful men. And for a sinful man to approach the presence of God without an acknowledgement of sin, without the atonement of blood, would have been, well, more than an offense would have been sacrilege.

Every sacrifice, every priest, every day of atonement preached the same message: sinners survive only by the mercy of God. And Bartimaeus testified to this. He did not come demanding his rights. He came pleading for mercy.

Our Need Is Worse Than Blindness

And this is one of those parts. I always look for the tension, the friction in the verse. We all have a tendency, a natural tendency, to think we're doing pretty well, right?

To compare ourselves with others.

We remember our good works. You know, we point to our church attendance or our baptism or our good works. Maybe we point to our family name or our morality or the service that we've done, and we think, All right, I'm pretty good. You know, I come from a good family, go to church every week, I try and do good.

Like like, I'm doing all right. The problem is, God's standard is not our neighbor, He's not even the person sitting across from you in the pew. God's standard is His perfect holiness, His perfect righteousness. Many of us feel healthy spiritually the same way we feel healthy physically.

I just had a physical, my annual checkup with my doctor, and she reminds me how unhealthy I am. She does blood work that shows me things that I, you know, I can only see kind of indirectly. And she's like, listen, this needs to get addressed. Like, you think you're doing well, you're not doing well.

This is going to catch up with you, and this is going to be a problem. That's how life is for us spiritually, too. We need to be confronted with Scripture that says, Listen, brother, sister in Christ, you are not doing as well as you think you are. Here are problems, here are concerns, here is the ways that you have been deceived by sin in thinking that you live righteously and you are falling short of the glory of God.

Not to shame, not to say you're unworthy, but to say, listen, this is your duty as a Christian, is to love the Lord, is to kill your sin, is to cast off these wicked desires. We have the opportunity to do that, to confront one another in love, not in condemnation, not to throw each other aside.

We were talking about the body at Sunday school today, the body of the church, and how it doesn't make sense for the hand to say to the eye, pluck you out, right?

Because what happens?

Is a hand very good if you're blind?

How do you find the doorknob, you know, if you, if you're walking around blind?

You, the body is meant to work together, to work together for the good of the rest of the body, not for its destruction. Our spiritual condition is worse than blindness. Blindness is a difficulty, right?

We talked about how you could close your eyes and walk through the building.

It would be hard, but you could, you know, with a cane or enough stumbling, you could eventually get through the building. Sin, on the other hand, is fatal. And until we understand our natural condition, we don't cry out for mercy. The question that probably Bartimaeus had was: would anyone listen?

I've mentioned it before, but I've heard, I've read accounts of orphaned babies in Russia. And you know how a baby cries and it's annoying at night, you know, three in the morning, Hudson wakes up and he cries out and you have to get out of bed to go change a diaper or feed him.

Well, did you know that a baby would eventually stop crying if no one ever responded?

There are babies, these aren't like purposeful experiments, these are just wicked, cruel situations in which when babies are neglected, seriously neglected, they stop crying. They stop with any expectation that help will come.

And here's Bartimaeus, blind. I heard a rumor. It's an assumption. We don't have the text of that, but the assumption is he heard some sort of talk about who this Jesus was. Otherwise, he's crying out to Jesus, son of David, with the question: would anyone listen?

And the surprise, the twist here is that it's not that Jesus listened or didn't listen. What does the crowd do?

This is striking. The crowd starts off, they sternly told him to shut up. Hey, we're trying to hear something here, man.

You're annoying me with all this have mercy on me calling. The very people surrounding Jesus tried to silence Bartimaeus' call for help. The man who was desperately seeking mercy, help, was told just be quiet, just stay down there. You know, maybe they flicked him a couple coins.

When the Crowd Becomes a Barrier

The very people surrounding Jesus became a barrier to someone trying to get at Jesus. Can we transition from 2,000 years ago to today and think about how that might look?

The people closest to Christ, trying to keep a needy sinner away from him. Bartimaeus refused to be silenced.

Persistent Faith Cries Out

Look at verse 48. He kept crying out all the more. Why?

Well, because genuine faith is persistent. Genuine faith sees its need and won't be deterred.

Bartimaeus knew he was blind and he knew he couldn't heal himself. That's self-obvious, self-evident. He knew that if Jesus passed by without hearing him, he would remain as exactly as he was in his state of desperation. And his state of desperation made him persistent. I need help.

I need help. Help is here. I need you. I need you, son of David. I need you. Have mercy on me. This is often how God works. Many people never seek Christ because they never become desperate enough to realize their need.

They're comfortable, they're self-sufficient, they think they're doing fine. Others are shamed by the crowd into not coming to Jesus, thinking that they have to clean themselves up before they can come. They have to look pretty. They have to wear their church clothes.

They have to, you know, they have to have stopped sinning for maybe a week or two before they come to church. How's that working out for y'all?

Bartimaeus knew better. He knew that Jesus wasn't merely helpful. Jesus was necessary. And the church, this is not like a one-time thing.

The church history is filled with this. The prophets were told to keep quiet, they were thrown in jail, they were kicked out of the city. They were shamed and persecuted. The apostles were commanded not to even speak in Jesus' name.

Moral men with high respectability, even professing Christians, have pressured faithful Christians in every generation to keep their convictions private, to moderate their witness. Hey, you wanna go out to the Brown County Courthouse?

No, no, no, no, no. Read your Bible at home.

This softens uncomfortable truths of Scripture. Scripture often puts us in uncomfortable situations. It's always easier to go with the crowd and turn away from the wounded and the fringe. It's always easier to remain silent than to speak up.

It's always easier to compromise than to stand firm. Just think about, you know, okay, you can think about yourself, don't do this. You can think about yourself as Jesus, right, in this account, of the healer, the one desired, the one trying to be attracted to. You can think about yourself as Bartimaeus.

That's helpful, right?

Our desperate need for salvation, our desperate need to be healed. But probably the better place for all of us to think about ourselves is think about being in that crowd. Do we want to seek approval or do we want to be faithful?

It's easy to go along with the crowd, but faith doesn't ultimately take its cues from the crowd.

The Fickleness of the Crowd

Notice how quickly the crowd changes, too. You can't read this passage without being struck by this. A moment earlier, they're like, hey, man, shut up. Be quiet. We don't want to hear your pleadings, your crawlings.

None of that. And then, as soon as Jesus stops and calls for him, the crowd changes, right?

Oh, hey, get up, get up, come on, let's go. He's calling you, come on. It's like the fickleness of the crowd.

I don't want to call it a sea change because I'm not a hopeful man generally. But there was a politician being interviewed in England recently, and he was asked about his changing positions on transgenderism. And so he used to be an advocate for LGBTQ, you know, all the rights for people to, for a man to identify as a woman and to be treated as a woman.

So, this was, you know, he wasn't, he was a proponent of this, he was an advocate of this, and he was on an interview. This was a BBC, it was, it was a pretty high-visibility interview. And he's totally changed his position. Now he thinks, you know, men are men and women should be protected.

Women's spaces should be protected from men being in those spaces. And the interviewer is like, What changed?

Like, did your understanding change?

And you know what changed?

He's starting to sense that the crowd is moving this direction. And so, all of a sudden, in order for him to maintain his power, what does he need to do?

He needs to move with the crowd, right?

This is, influencers are great at this.

If you want to be an influencer, you're basically a surfer. So a surfer has to watch a wave and they have to know where the wave's going. I'm not a surfer, but this is my understanding of surfing, right?

Okay, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, right?

You have to see the wave, you have to know where the wave's moving to and when it's going to break, and you have to be at the right point on the wave in order to catch it and go with it. That's what an influencer is, right?

The word influencer is not a great word because they're as much influenced as they are an influencer.

They're trying to see, okay, what seems to be the thing right now, and how do I stay just on the cusp, just on the cutting edge of the wave, so that I can ride it and spread my influence, right?

Scripture warns against the dangers of the crowd. This is Exodus 23, 2.

You shall not follow the masses in doing evil. Now, as we're thinking about this, remember, we are just on the cusp of the triumphal entry, where the crowd's saying, Hosanna, Hosanna, praise the Lord, the king has arrived. And then what's going to happen within days of the triumphal entry?

Crucify him! Crucify him! Do you see the fickleness of the crowd?

Right here with their response to Bartimaeus, we see it like instantaneously change. The crowd is fickle, the truth is not. Christ is not. This is why you must never build your faith on public approval, public opinion, religious trends, cultural respectability, or the approval of others.

Christ, Not the Crowd, Is the Foundation

There is one solid foundation to build upon, and it is Jesus Christ and his everlasting truth. Because what happens is, you try and change, and you try and go with the crowd, and what happens?

You end up on a foundation of sinking sand, and what happens to the house?

We live in a time where there's tremendous pressure to make Christianity respectable, respectable enough to be academic, respectable enough for political power, respectable enough for our neighbors, respectable enough that no one feels uncomfortable, especially not the person that you invited to be with you at church or to come into your home or to be at Morrill Days or sees you at the Brown County Courthouse.

That's one of the advantages of being a blind beggar: you already don't have power. The problem with power is the temptation to try and keep it. Bartimaeus was not concerned with being respectable, he's lying on the road. I mean, can you imagine trying to get dressed, being blind?

Imagine trying to eat, being blind?

Like, you're just covered in junk. Imagine trying to clean yourself up, do your hair in the morning. His concern was mercy, and a man who knows he needs mercy is hard to silence.

Because what does he have to lose?

There is a holy desperation in genuine faith. When a sinner understands his need and sees Christ as his only hope, the opinions of the crowd lose their power. The crowd can shout, the crowd can ridicule you, it can exclude you and say you can't be a part of our cool group, our runners group, our social media, Facebook moms group, our little homeschooling clique, our, you know, whatever it is, the crowd may pressure and threaten, but faith keeps on crying out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

That persistence isn't just stubbornness, it's the fruit of believing that Christ alone can save. Who else should we go to?

You have the words of eternal life. And as soon as Jesus calls to him, Bartimaeus throws aside his cloak and jumps up.

And isn't that just a glorious thing?

Here's Jesus, the servant's offer. What do you want me to do for you?

And Jesus stops, and everyone else stops, and everyone else goes along, and Jesus opens up the door and says, Okay, what does mercy look like to you?

You want mercy?

What does mercy look like?

Teacher, master, he says, Rabboni. I want to regain my sight. And what happens is immediately he regains his sight.

It's always fascinating to see how Jesus works. Sometimes his healings are slow, sometimes they're remote. Here, go, your faith has made you well. And what happens next?

He Followed Jesus on the Road

Go, your faith has made you well. And Bartimaeus begins following him on the road. Bartimaeus doesn't just receive the gift and return to his old life. He doesn't, I mean, we don't even hear that he goes and gets his coat that he threw off.

Maybe he did. Mercy leads to discipleship. If you receive mercy, if you receive help, then it would be wicked ingratitude to return to your old way of living. I think this is the most frustrating thing in counseling men and women, is to help them through a difficult situation and see them immediately return to their wicked way of living.

And they never say it like that, right?

They're never like, oh, I'm returning to my wickedness. They're like, oh, now thanks. I'm all patched up and buttoned up, and now I'm going to go back.

And you're like, no, listen, that was, you needed that, but there's more. Like, Bartimaeus got his sight restored, but that's not it. He doesn't just need his sight restored. What does he need?

He needs a new heart. He needs a new life. He needs to follow Jesus. What a disappointment Bartimaeus would have been if he would have just gone and picked up his cloak, laid back down, and said, Alms for the poor, I need some contribution.

Someone help me, right?

We would remember Bartimaeus very differently if that's what we saw, but we don't. His new sight led to following Jesus. We read about this consequence of faith in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 14 through 15.

The love of Christ controls us, that they who might live no longer, live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf. This is the new life. Have you received mercy? Then the love of Christ controls you.

The drive to know and follow and serve Jesus compels you. If Jesus has this power, this compassion, this mercy, if we really believe He does, who wouldn't follow him?

And so, what I see here, and what you should see in this passage, is Bartimaeus illustrates this simple pattern.

• True faith sees Jesus as he really is, Son of David, have mercy on me, full of mercy.
• True faith persists despite obstacles. You will inevitably have your husband, or your wife, or your parents, or your children, or your neighbors who tell you too far, you're going too far.

This religion thing is nice, but keep it in order, right?

You know, religion is what you do on Sunday morning. That's enough. Don't bring it into, you know, caring for your grandchild. Don't bring it into caring for your children.

Don't, you know, you should go and maybe spend an hour at church. That's enough. Don't be weird. Don't talk about that religious talk here. You know, you go do your religious thing and then you come hang out with us. We're going to play video games.

We're going to play board games together. True faith cries for mercy. True faith receives Christ's transforming work and then what?

And then follows Jesus afterwards.

This is the Christian life. The evidence of genuine faith is not perfection, it's reorientation, it's a change of allegiance. This is repentance. Repentance is to, instead of going this way, you turn and you follow Jesus. Instead of going your own way, of which there are 359 degrees, right?

Let's say Jesus is here at degree zero. You all know degrees. Sometimes I take for granted some things. I have kids going through math.

And so I think about weird things like degrees, right?

But then, if you go in a circle, there's 360 degrees, of which one of them is pointed towards Jesus. One of them is oriented towards Jesus. And there's all sorts of ways for us to be pointed in different directions.

Keep Crying Out to Christ

The Christian life is a life spent following Jesus. That is discipleship. That following, that flows out of the recognition of God's mercy. Seeing the faith of Bartimaeus should make us persist in faith. It reminds us to keep crying out to Christ for mercy and to see that while the crowd may change and our circumstances may change, Jesus doesn't change.

He is the rock. Jesus hears those who call out to him for mercy.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would humble us, that instead of seeing ourselves as good and good enough, instead of seeing us as, instead of seeing myself as someone to go along with the crowd, that we would cling to Christ and let the crowd go their own way.
That to have Christ and to be rejected by man is eternal life. That the glories of our heavenly home, the glories of being an adopted son, the glories of being washed clean and having Christ's righteousness credited to our account are so much greater than a life where we are the star and popular, and surrounded by friends, friends who are fickle, whose love is really for themselves.
The crowd builds on the crowd's own energy. And how often the crowds turn to wickedness and evil. Father, let us persevere in faith, keeping you as the head, the head of the church, this body of which we are members. Let us work together, building each other up, loving each other, and clinging to the cross.
Help us, Father, in this. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.