The Gospel of Luke 18:35-43 – Bartimaeus made formerly blind
Luke 18:35-43 · Vern Peterman · May 22, 2016
Gospel of Luke, No. 71
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926533436981

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We're going to continue our investigation of Jesus, led by Dr. Luke. And so we'll be looking at Luke 18, 35 through 43, as Brad just read for us here. And we'll start right in with Luke 18, 35. And it says, As Jesus was approaching Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the road begging.

Now, is there anything unusual about this scene? Not at all. It was quite common. Now we'll talk about that a little bit. Here is just kind of a map of that section of Israel, noting things at the time. Here's Jerusalem, kind of at the peak of a ridge, and then quite a drop down elevation-wise from Jerusalem, roughly 2,500 feet elevation, down to Jericho, about 800 feet below sea level. So quite a drop.

Old Testament Jericho is shown there with a white dot and right to the south of it, and actually we'll talk about that in a little bit, New Testament Jericho. So the Old Testament Jericho was a mound. New Testament Jericho was a city that by New Testament times had been developed a part of that by Herod the Not-So-Great.

Here is a aerial photograph of it from a satellite and it shows the north end of the Dead Sea and you see some somewhat greener areas both to the east and to the west of the River Jordan which you see winding into the top of the Dead Sea. This here is the location of Old Testament Jericho, where all the buildings were tight because you were trying to keep everything protected and behind the walls. Old Testament Jericho actually had two walls. It had one outer wall and then an upper wall, kind of an additional factor of safety there. So here's Old Testament Jericho.

New Testament Jericho spread out a bit more, unlike Old Testament Jericho, which is all tightly built. They weren't worried about defending it, and so it was more spread out and kind of winding about through that area. So anyway, that gives us the geography here. It also turns out that there are parallel accounts in the book of Matthew, Matthew 20, 29-34, and as we'll see shortly another one in Mark, and you'll have two slides on that. So here's the one Matthew 20, 29-34, as they were leaving Jericho a large crowd followed him.

And two blind men, sitting by the road, hearing that Jesus was passing by, cried out, Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David. The crowd sternly told them to be quiet, but they cried out all the more, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us. And Jesus stopped and called them and said, What do you want me to do for you? And they said to him, Lord, we want our eyes to be opened. moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes, and immediately they regained their sight and followed him. So here's the account in Mark, Mark 10, 46, and I've got it on two slides, so this is 46-48. Then they came to Jericho, and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples in a large crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road.

And when he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Many were sternly telling him to be quiet, and he kept crying out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. So here's verses 49 through 52.

And Jesus stopped and said, Call him here. So they called the blind man, saying to him, Take courage, stand up. He is calling for you, and 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."

So here are the three different accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So Matthew, Mark, and Luke offer some complementary insights, some additional information. However, Matthew has two blind men as Jesus was leaving Jericho. Mark has just one blind man named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, also while Jesus was leaving Jericho. Luke has just one blind man and Jesus encountered him while entering Jericho. Do we have a problem here? Matthew has them calling out Lord, but Mark and Luke calling out Jesus. Do we have a problem? Which author was right?

So here's the real version as we look in the varying accounts. The resolution of these apparent conflicts is that there were two blind men, one of whom was named Bartimaeus, who was the son of Timaeus, and he was more prominent of the two. Therefore, he was the one that is mentioned by name in Mark, and singled out as a single blind man.

The truth is, there may well have been well over two blind men, and maybe a whole string of them, but only two of them said, hey, Jesus of Nazareth. That's something I don't want to miss, right? So there may well have been more, but who didn't get healed and didn't recognize who Jesus was. The blind men both called out, Jesus, Son of David, and Lord, Son of David. So it may have been one blind man saying both of those, or one may have said one and one the other. And passing between different parts of Jericho, Jesus was both leaving and entering. What? You must be kidding me. No, I'm not.

In the Denver metropolitan area, if I were to lay out this map, give each of you a copy, I'd say, how many places can you find where you could be both leaving and entering the same city? As it sprawled out and spread out, a lot of the cities in our general metropolitan area have a very, you know, circuitous path and a very strung out path. And it's possible to be, by just going through one street, to leave and enter the same city. And so it's possible even here to do that very thing. When we see a conflict or a difference between different accounts, it is valuable for us to have some perspective on how do I resolve that. And I would point us to Jane Warner Wallace.

He has been a cold case detective in Southern California for a number of years. He recently retired. He frequently appears on 60 Minutes, Dateline, 48 Hours, shows like that because he's really good. He's really good. He'll take a cold case where everybody in the way of witnesses is dead and he'll go and take the old material and crack the case and catch the bad guy.

He wrote a book called Cold Case Christianity because he had a very interesting transition. He was raised an atheist and he was an atheist for the first nine years of his job as a detective. And then suddenly it dawned on him, the Gospels are a cold case. All the witnesses are dead.

But I've got written testimony from four different witnesses, and I can use the methods that I've used in actual cases. And I can apply those principles, the same methods of evidence, the same methods of resolving accounts that appear to be conflicted. I can use those same methods and apply them to the New Testament.

And do you know that using that brought him around to being a believer? And now that he's retired, he's full-time in an apologetics ministry and writing books like Cold Case Christianity. and God's crime scene. Here's one of the things that he said when we come to accounts like this where they appear to be conflicted.

Reliable eyewitnesses never agree. If they do, you suspect that somebody's matched up their stories. And I'll read what he wrote. In all the cases I've ever worked, from simple theft and assault cases to robberies and homicides, I've yet to have a case where the witnesses of the event agreed on every single detail. After this, I ran out of room. He says, it has never happened. It has never happened.

Reliable eyewitnesses raise questions. He continues to write, for every question an eyewitness answers about what occurred at a crime scene, a new question is often raised. There are times when eyewitnesses even raise more questions than they have answered.

Now, one of the fellows that he writes about is Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is a man who is a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He writes largely about the New Testament and mostly about the Gospels. Bart Ehrman went to Moody Bible Institute, he went to Wheaton, and then he went to Princeton and became an agnostic. And so he writes agnostic books.

Example, Misquoting Jesus is the title of one of them. Forged is another. God's Problem. This man is prolific. He has written many, many books. I don't know how many dozens of books. I have most of them. I can hardly keep up with him. He writes lots of books, and I'm very familiar with what he's written.

I don't believe it, though. So here we have J. Warner Wallace writing. He says, OK, now let's take a look at the gospel accounts. Skeptics often cite the variations between accounts as evidence of their unreliability. And Bart Ehrman's books are full of that. Lots and lots of this differs from that account. So is that a problem or is that actually a good thing? Let's take a look here. Skeptics often cite the variations between accounts as evidence of their reliability and that is a great deal of what Bart Ehrman's books are.

As a detective, I'm reading again, as a detective who has worked multiple eyewitness cases and by now he's done it for decades, I find their variations to be with an expected and acceptable range. The variations from one gospel to the next is to be within an expected and acceptable range. We'll say more about that in a minute.

I spent the first nine years of my career investigating crimes as a committed atheist. Even then, I would have approved the notion that witnesses who fail to agree on every detail, raise as many questions as they seem to answer, and are inaccurate in some detail of the event, could still be trusted as reliable eyewitnesses.

Ding! Very important. He then writes, I now know that the Gospels actually exceed what I would require to consider them reliable. Ding! This is big. This is big. So when someone comes up to you and says, hey, the difference is here, you say, hey, differences are good.

Because it means I've got witnesses that aren't just colluding and lining up their story. And it's a matter of harmonizing the perspective difference of those different witnesses. So Mark and Luke each emphasize one particular blind man. Matthew says there were two, right? But those are not incompatible accounts.

So just in case you're interested, there's why I know the Gospels were written early as a supplement that's available in the cabinet to the right as you exit this room. And so that's one I would encourage and one that was distributed in last year's Defense of the Faith elective. Now, let's look at blindness and begging in New Testament times. And one of the things I think to keep in mind is, is the Jewish culture, and as a matter of fact, even the Gentile culture, very status conscious.

What has happened largely in the United States is as people moved west, there tended to be less and less of a status issue, because it was like, okay, I got this guy, well, like my great, great grandfather, he was a doctor, okay? But he'd be moving with this covered wagon out west, and he came to Seneca, Kansas and settled down. But he made a trip here through Denver and then went back to Seneca before he got drafted for the Civil War. So as we've moved west, we've tended to become less formal, which is why I can get away without wearing a suit and a tie here. So at any rate, we tended to be less formal, whereas as farther to the east, formality has been more the general rule, and then that coming from Europe. In this culture, there were formalities about status. that kind of escape us.

For example, if you're at a table and you've got a group of people, who gets seated closest to the head is the highest rank, and so where's your rank matters a lot. Blind people were considered the lowest rank. If you were blind, considered the lowest rank, and not only that, what would they have concluded as to how you became blind? Their idea in the culture would be, you were blind because you did something really bad. And you got some kind of sin. And they may even conclude what that sin was. It was a sin of lust or something, right? Coveting.

So blind people were way down on the totem pole. And there's something that made it worse. They even debated whether blind people would be allowed into the kingdom. It's like, if you're blind, you might be just going to hell. That's it. So it was debated, it wasn't concluded, but debated, you know, was that even going to happen.

But then you go begging and beggars. To beg was something that a lot of people would write, I would rather die than to beg. And so in a culture that's very status conscious, to be blind and then have to beg, which a lot of times there wasn't any choice, it's the only way you're going to survive, to be blind and have to beg was like so much self-loathing. Just, ugh. And so it's not just, it's a very inconvenient thing for me to be blind, but I'm stuck to begging.

There is just this misery every day of being doubly blind beggar, doubly awful, and everybody walking by concluding, I must have sinned to do this. So a blind person begging, like this guy, social status, zero. You don't have a right to anything. You're the lowest of the lowest.

So Luke 18 36 now hearing a crowd going by he began to inquire what this was So the noise of the crowd and you've all been through the noise of a crowd, right? And sometimes the crowds really loud, you know some football or basketball game or something So a crowd can make the noise level rise considerably even if there isn't some sporting event going on people are talking And especially when a crowd gets all collected, do you ever experience the thing where you have to talk louder because everybody else is talking so loud, right?

And so that effect can impact things too. Crowds are not accidental. I mean, we don't just suddenly, you know, if someone were to come by and say, man, there's people lined up all around, you know, Holly Hills, and they got cars parked for blocks, people would say, what's going on? They would, you wouldn't conclude, well, it's just an accident that we happen to have You know, a gazillion people and cars all over the place. People gather for a purpose to make a crowd. So as the blind man heard the noise, the increasing noise of this crowd over the usual passers-by, he was anticipating there was a reason for the crowd. Why is there this increase in noise level? Likely he was even expecting that Jesus was coming. Think about it.

Jesus, most of the time, about 80% of the time, hung out in Galilee. When did he come down to the south for all the feasts? Seven of them from Moses, then add to that Purim, usually about in March, add to that Hanukkah, usually around December. And so nine different events, and John chapter 10, verses 22 and 23, Jesus observed Hanukkah. So you've got reasons in specific times when Jesus would go from Galilee, where He hung out most of the time, down to Jerusalem. And there's specific times predictable. And there's two different routes. Sometimes He would go through Samaria, and other times He would go along this route that's along the Jordan River. So good odds He's going to come by here again.

And this blind man had heard about this Jesus guy. What does Jesus do? Oh, He heals blind people. He what? He heals blind people. Wow. And He doesn't just do a little bit of it here and there. He does a lot. Oh, man. Because if you think about it, in the day there was nothing available. If you were blind, you're probably stuck being that way. Except for Jesus. Except for Jesus. That's different.

So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. He is? I've heard about him! So Jesus was expected to be coming along because it was the right time, coming up on this Passover time, right? Because this blind man and the other one in Matthew's account recognized the name right away and Zacchaeus was also, and we'll look at that Zacchaeus account next Sunday, was also expecting Jesus to come, which is why he says, I've got to find a place where I can get up and see him, since I'm so short. So the crowd that traveled along with Jesus was wanting to be around him, and even those who were standing along the way wanted to at least get a quick glimpse of Jesus as he went through.

Here is this great rabbi, and he teaches us like no other rabbi does. All the other rabbis like to leave us in a quandary. Jesus teaches clear and straight to the point. And Jesus doesn't mind hanging out with people who aren't at the top of the social ladder, which is real different from all the rest of the rabbis. And Jesus will teach women. Jesus will teach women.

And so this was exceptional. There were lots of reasons. And besides that, we might get a free lunch. And I could get over my problem, whatever it is. So this, yeah, this is good. I at least want to get a glimpse of Jesus as He goes by. Hey, they saw Jesus. Right?

So here's Luke 18.38, and He called out saying, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. He called out loudly and with persistence. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. And as Matthew tells us, Lord, Son of David, have mercy. Jesus, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. This man's clarity of understanding and his faith and who he understood Christ to be and what he believed Christ could do for him is quite remarkable.

And think about this, he doesn't know how far away Jesus is, whether he's right nearby, Or is He way ahead, already past me? Or is He still coming? I don't care. I'm going to scream at the top of my lungs and make sure that He hears me, because I have no idea where He is. I can't see Him. But if I scream as loud as I can, then I have my best chance of getting Jesus' attention. So I'm going to do exactly that. I won't do it to you, however. Alright.

He believed. what Jesus could do. He believed who Jesus was. He said all the things that tells us he understood a great deal about who Jesus was, and he understood a great deal of what Jesus could do. See, Jesus could be just the name in the original language, more like Yeshua, but it means Savior. Possibly he even recognized that. Lord, recognizing at least Jesus' authority and possibly His deity.

This guy's on the right track. Son of David. It's another way to call Jesus the long-promised Messiah. How long had it been since the promise was made to David? About a thousand years. Do you think about a thousand years back? Jesus, Son of David. The promised Messiah, we've been waiting for centuries. He's here! The one we've been waiting for, for a long, long time, is here, now!

Have mercy on me. He's asking him, heal his blindness. Heal his blindness. He's been thinking, oh, I hate being blind. and people hate me for being blind and I have to beg and everybody hates that. I'd almost rather die but Jesus can take that all away. The man was recognizing a great deal of truth in his few words about who Jesus was and what Jesus could do completely Cure him of his blindness. Today. Right now.

Luke 18.39, those who led the way were sternly telling him to be quiet.

Hey, you're a blind beggar. You don't have a right to speak. But he kept crying out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. So it says there in the original language, the ones who are at the head of the crowd, perhaps even some of Jesus' disciples, were rebuking the blind man for calling out, and they were hissing or hushing him, coming up, and as we would go, shhhh, or ssss, like that. That's the sound that's communicated there, a hissing or a hushing sound. Be quiet! Shut up! Oh, and by the way, you can ask Nancy, that tells a story about the one time in our marriage where I told her to shut up.

But there was good reason for it. Anyway, they considered that these blind beggars did not have the social standing to ask Jesus for mercy. Poor Nancy. Anyway, and Jesus was not to be bothered by a man of such low social status. That's what was their thinking. You're of such low social status, and Jesus is on His way to an important place, and you just are not worth detaining Him. You're just not worth taking the time, because you're a blind beggar.

And so you don't get that privilege of spending time with Jesus. This man, however, saw it as this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Beyond that, Jesus is the Son of David. This is more than a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You don't just get a Messiah coming through every once in a while, right? It doesn't happen. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I have to turn my life around.

The blind man, this Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, set aside all the rebuking and hissing. He didn't let that detract him at all. He says, I could be healed today. And Jesus, if I can get His attention, He will heal me today. And He's the Messiah. That doesn't happen all the time. He could give him what absolutely nobody else could, his sight back that day. I could be rid of this shame. I could actually see as we'll find again. Though it sounds like Bartimaeus knew who Jesus was and what he could do for him, Bartimaeus knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and even an opportunity beyond a lifetime. The Messiah doesn't come every once in a while. Here's Luke 18, 40-41, and Jesus stopped and commanded that he be brought to him. And when he came near, he questioned him, what do you want me to do for you? And he said, Lord, I want to regain my sight. So that's the clue. That's a big clue.

Jesus did the opposite of what a great many in Israel did. We mentioned previously he would teach women. The rabbis otherwise refused to do so. There were approximately 150 rabbis in Israel at that time, and he was the only one who would teach women. And he had women who were disciples, not among the twelve, but women who were disciples and learned from him as a disciple.

Jesus, instead of treating the blind beggars like everybody else did, he stopped and commanded that Bartimaeus be brought near. Bring him here. So this didn't just... happened because he came close to the blind man and walked up to him, why would he ask somebody else to bring him here? It's because he wanted to turn the people around from saying, go away, shut up, be quiet. And have them instead say, no, Jesus welcomes blind beggars. And you, instead of being an instrument of pushing that man away, now turn around to being an instrument to bringing that man to me. So this is the message that Jesus is giving by having someone bring the blind man to him. Jesus asked the man the question, what do you want me to do for you?

Do you think he had no idea? No. It was a rhetorical question, wasn't it? He knew of this man's faith as well. Jesus knew hearts. He didn't have to ask the question for his own sake. He asked the question for the sake of others. Jesus asked the man to show his regard for him as a person and also to teach others.

The man was very clear, Lord I want to regain my sight and that tells us he had his sight previously and had lost it. He wasn't born blind apparently. but had, through injury or disease, lost his eyesight. Of course, we have examples, too, where Jesus healed people who were born blind. I was born blind in one eye. So, no matter what the cause, and in this case it was something after he had lived for a little bit, he had lost his eyesight and was now going to regain it.

So Luke 18.42 says, And Jesus said to him, Receive your sight, your faith has made you well.

It's literally recover your sight, which again implies that you once had it, and now you're gaining sight again. Imagine this man knew what it was like to see. He knew what it was like to see, and he lost it. So Jesus said to him, and the faith of you has healed you, is literally what Jesus told him. So recover your sight, the faith of you has healed you. So Jesus' statement recognizes this man's faith, which he knew of already, because he knows hearts.

But it was evident in what the man had said. So what Jesus is saying here is that Bartimaeus' faith in who Jesus was, Lord, Jesus, Son of David, and what Jesus could do for him. Have mercy on me. Restore my sight. It's exactly what's needed for Jesus to heal him of his blindness.

Luke 18.43, immediately he regained his sight and began following him, glorifying God, and when all the people saw it, they gave praise to God. Now, there's some very interesting things to come out of this. So, Bartimaeus regained his sight. Immediately, he began following.

That's what that means, following Jesus as a disciple. It's not, I've got to go home and take care of this and that. No. Immediately, he began following Jesus as a disciple. And, of course, this was after the traditions of the Jewish rabbis and disciples and those traditions, right? But he immediately began following Jesus right then.

He glorified God and gave God the credit for the restoration of his sight. I once was blind, but now I see. I'm sure he went around singing Amazing Grace, even though it wasn't written until 1,746 years later, right? So, anyway. And others saw that Bartimaeus' sight had been restored, and they also praised God for it. They said, oh, wow.

I remember seeing this guy every time we'd walk through Jericho, each way. This guy would be there begging and begging and begging. He always had the same clothes because he probably couldn't afford any others. I remember even where he sat. He'll never sit there again.

But they recognized God had done something. So Bartimaeus was way ahead of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were typically well-off financially, they'd stayed healthy. Seeing who Jesus was and what he could do and asking in faith for Jesus to heal him, he was way ahead of most of the Pharisees. Exceptions to that would be Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who in a short period of time would be the ones to bury Jesus. The Pharisees on the other hand, mostly, Though they were well regarded by the people.

And by the way, what you see in the Gospels is, you know, these Pharisees, they have this and that and that problem, right? That is not found in any other literature. Nobody else saw the Pharisees as having a problem. It is only found in the Gospels.

They didn't know who Jesus was or what he could do for them. They concluded that he was not the Messiah. Because the Messiah would not claim to be deity, they thought. And the Messiah is going to love us, because we're Pharisees. And so since Jesus didn't love them, they concluded, you can't possibly be the Messiah. Most certainly you're not the Messiah, because you don't like us. You don't like what we do. They had no faith in Him, unlike Bartimaeus here. In about two months time, the Holy Spirit would be given, and Bartimaeus would be made to be in Christ. Ding! A church-age saint.

Isn't that something? Follow me, and you start off under the Jewish system, and then you follow Jesus. And then, after Jesus disappears, ascends, and about a week and a half later, the Holy Spirit is given. Wow, what just happened to me? That would be a turning point for the disciples too. Their blindness would be ended. Remember, we read last week, Jesus told, multiple times, told the disciples, Look, you guys, you've got to get it. We're going to Jerusalem. I'm going to be crucified by these Gentiles after the Jews get through with me. and I'm going to be buried, and I'm going to be raised on the third day. You guys got that? What? They're not getting it.

But their blindness would be ended on that day. The disciples would come to see that when Jesus had been telling them all along about His death, His burial, and His resurrection. Oh, that's what He meant! Right? They would begin to understand about the church. On the very day that Christ is ascending, they're asking questions like, well, is now the time when you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Nah, the Father is the one who calls the time. We've got something else going on here. See ya. Can you imagine that? Now, how about us? And by the way, this applies to the apostles too. Oh, and it applies to Bartimaeus. Once this day of Pentecost begins and the Holy Spirit is given, and that people have their position in Christ.

We have typically in our classic five senses in our bodies, these five senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, and there are different ways in which that's carried out. Certainly sight is through the eyes. In the same way that we have five senses in the physical realm, Scripture says we have the analog of those, the equivalent of those five, in the spiritual realm. Here are some examples, and it's not by any means the only ones. Ephesians 1, 18 and 19, which we'll be looking at shortly, talks about the eyes of your heart. Not these, but the eyes of your heart, looking into the spiritual realm.

1 Peter 2.3, you have tasted, dull of hearing, in Hebrews 5, 11-14, 2 Corinthians 2, 14-16, the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him. And Ephesians 4, 19 talks about the Gentiles being past feeling, past sensation.

So all five senses are referred to in one way or another, and sometimes multiple times, in the spiritual realm. So, we could illustrate it this way. In the physical realm there is a body, which has the brain as a part of the body, and has mind, emotions, and will, and there are five senses into the physical realm. Scripture speaks of the five senses in the spiritual realm, and the soul, which is a part of the spirit, has mind, emotions, and will. And the soul and the brain are then the interface of mind, emotions, and will for the believer. In the spiritual realm, the unbeliever is blinded, right? Can't see it. Spiritual stuff? Nah, I can't see a thing, right? You're hearing something? Nah, I can't hear anything, right? Doesn't make sense to me. I think you guys are nuts, believing all that spiritual stuff. I can't see it. I can't hear it.

But here's the Apostle Paul's prayer for the believers in Ephesus. And this is a new American standard, but a couple places have gone and changed the wording, and I'll explain why. He says, I pray that the eyes of your heart, having been enlightened. Translations typically say, I pray that the eyes of your heart that you might see, right? But it's actually a perfect tense verb, so it's already having been enlightened. If you're a believer, that sense of sight has been turned on. The ability to see spiritually has been turned on. The unbeliever has not had his sight, spiritual sight, turned on.

And so what does he pray? That the eyes of your heart, having been opened, that you will know what is the hope of his calling, that you will see it in the spiritual realm, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints what what is inheritance His inheritance in the saints and what is the surpassing greatness of His power into, a lot of the translations say toward us, the typical meaning of that Greek word is into us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places where you're seated too.

Ephesians 2.6. far above all rule and authority and power and dominion in every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things in subjection under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." Paul's praying that they would see it. I think that prayer applies to us as well.

That we would see in the spiritual realm. We haven't had our spiritual sight restored because we didn't have it until we believed. But we have gone from being blind to seeing. And as we study scripture, we have a window into the spiritual realm that you can't get anywhere else.

And that's by God's intent. Let's thank Him for that. Lord, we thank You for the eyes that You've given us and the eyes of our heart. And we thank you for your word by which we can have this amazing window into the spiritual realm to see and to hear and to understand what it is you have done and are doing and will do on into eternity. And you've revealed that. You've turned on our eyesight. You've turned on our senses in the spiritual realm because you love us and you care for us and you desire a relationship with us moment by moment. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.