Gospel—Rick Shower
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Good evening. I'd like to welcome you to the gospel meeting tonight. I noticed that you all came in here and I noticed something about all of you back to know two things about every one of you.
Whether you're young, tall, older, shorter, I know two things about everyone of you.
The first one is every one of you was born a Sinner.
So some of you are wondering, what's the other thing?
Every one of you has 2 bones in your inner ear that are the same size from birth to death.
And everyone of you have those two bones in your ear or you couldn't hear me.
Now, there's a reason why God gave you those two bones, and that's so that you could hear. And those two bones are the same size whether you're very young or you're over 90.
So that you could hear. And what is the purpose of God giving you those bones? To hear, To hear the gospel of the grace of God, that he sent his Son to be a Sinner for you.
Yeah, I can probably tell you a third thing. It might not be true of all of you, but I think most all of you have searched for happiness.
You want to be happy.
We've all been around people who are unhappy and you know, that's pretty hard, but we all want to be happy.
Not too long ago I was in a store.
And this store had a lot of house decor in it, and it was one that had a number of these fancy kind of plaques with the, uh, farm look to it, kind of rusty. And it has all these words written in fancy letters. But there was one plaque that really stood out to me.
And you know what it said?
It said it's never too late to live happily ever after.
And I thought, wow, that is the gospel. That is the good news. It's never too late to live happily ever after.
Ever after, not just in this life, but in the life to come to live happily ever after. So we're going to speak of some things tonight that can make you happy ever after. And you all have those bones in your ears. So I know you're going to hear what I have to say or what the Lord has to say to you tonight. I'd like to start with a song.
If you look at your hymn sheets.
I'd like to sing #2.
Her brother had raised the tune to #2.
Jesus gently calling. He will care and call our friends.
With your guilt, thou air appalling.
Command I will give you rest.
For your sake.
He won't pass suffered on the.
Uh, the work was done.
And outward down South now utter, to which we Resov.
Come, the father's husband.
And I will return into the folder.
All due to you may not be alone.
So long to do his sisters and smile down.
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Tell her father's out of the plane and the father's welcome to come.
Come for lunch and gathering with sleep our little world like we see the day.
Yes, and then dress down from the fire and sniff yells and we're blinking. You're alive. I have to go away to me.
I've been waiting till one day. It's hard as long.
When his patients are amazing, Jesus is making him hurts for you. Come, just ask God's help.
Our God and our Father.
So what the Lord Jesus said himself, Matthew 1128 Come unto me, not somewhere else, Come unto me, all ye that weary and heavy laden. Now you might say tonight that you're not weary, especially if you're younger and you're not heavy laden, that is burdened down with sins. I'm all right, I'm OK.
But you know that's a lie of Satan.
At His desire to make you comfortable as a Sinner. He doesn't want you to be uncomfortable. He wants you to be comfortable so you'll continue on on a course that you chose in sin.
So what is sin?
Send.
It is simply the evil principle of doing one's own will without reference to God.
Just doing your own will, just doing what you wanna do. We hear it all over in our society.
Just do it. That was Nike slogan.
Do your own will. Don't think about God. Don't think about God has an influence on your life at all. Just do what you want to do.
And that's what Satan has done. Satan is the greatest example of doing your own will. He wanted to exalt himself above God, and ever since then, he's wanted to do his own will.
And that is to bring down God.
And so he faithfully works at it in your life as a Sinner. Now he's going to make you feel comfortable.
Because if you're uncomfortable, you're gonna question things. You're gonna question, well, why am I unhappy? Why am I not, uh, joyful? And.
Having a good time like everybody else.
Couple of years ago my wife and I were in a Bible museum in Arizona.
About, uh, less than half the size of this room. And this gentleman who owned the museum had collected a lot of original Bibles, the originals, and he had them in a glass plate glass case where you could look at them and as we were walking around and he had them kind of in order as you went around the glass case from the.
From the oldest that he had around to the newest and.
As we were there, there was a young man and his wife and two children, and I noticed he was pretty intent at looking at those bibles, so I struck up a conversation with him. Turns out he was from Indonesia.
And he was looking at these Bibles. And so I asked him, are you saved? Oh, yes. He said, yes, I'm saved. And I, I said, well, what are you doing here in the United States? Always says I'm, I'm putting together a video for our people back in our land of how we got the Bible.
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He says, you know, in our land they don't know much about the history of the Bible and how it all came to pass.
So he said.
That's, that's, uh, what I'm on and we're kind of combining our, a little vacation and we're traveling around here to different places in the United States. Uh, and I'm making a video and I said, wow, that's, uh, quite interesting. I said, uh, how did you get saved? He says, well, he says, my wife and I were into the now times.
He said. We both had very good jobs, we were making good money there in Indonesia.
And he said every night we partied and every night we drank.
And we come home, we go to bed, we get up, we do the same thing the next day, we go to work, do our work. So the work was over, we go party. And he said we did that for several years on a daily basis. And he said one day.
I thought to myself.
Is this all there is to life? Is this it just to have a good time and even the good times we're wearing out?
And so he said out of boredom he turned on the TV and he was turning down. I think he said they had a couple of channels there on the TV, but one of them was a channel that a group of Christians had and they were able to broadcast the gospel. And he listened to what was said and got saved.
And he immediately realized there was something more to this life than the happiness that he, quote, had up until that point. And so he was happy. He realized his sins forgiven. The first person he told was who?
Is why? And she said, really? She said, you mean you weren't having fun All those times that we were out and we were partying and doing all the things, you weren't having a really good time. He said, no, you got to be just terrible. And she looked at him and she said, me too. And she said, I didn't want to tell you.
And he said I found something better.
And so he gave her what he had heard from that radio of that TV station, and they both got saved now, he said.
The first thing we wanted to do was get in contact with that TV station and they were not allowed to solicit any kind of feedback from in their country because it's mostly a Muslim country. They as Christians, they were not allowed to have any kind of a feedback. So what he did, he said there was a telephone number down on the bottom of the screen.
And he said. So we called the telephone number.
And he says, the short of it is, I'm working for the TV station now, my wife and I. And he said just through that telephone number, we are able to send out books only if they ask. We send out Bibles to them. And so it was very interesting to hear a young man and his wife whose lives were turned around. They thought they were happy. They really thought they had the world.
As they say by its tail, they were just having a great time and yet deep down inside they were not happy.
Not happy at all.
Now there's something interesting I think about every person that gets saved.
Because when the Spirit of God works in your heart to make you realize you're a Sinner, He makes you realize you have a need.
You have a need.
You might use your sins, he might use circumstances, he might use whatever because he knows what works with best with each of us. But he had a knee, and that young couple had a need.
They had a need of something more than what the world would call a great life at all. The money they needed at all the time they needed, and they just lived it up. They had to admit after a short time that was not happiness at all. So tonight I want to look at a man who had a need. So we'll turn to the book of Mark.
That I firmly believe.
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That God creates needs in our lives, and when that need is met, it will be met by the Savior, the one we were just singing about, the one who wants us to come to Him. So we're going to look in the Gospel of Mark chapter 10. Mark chapter 10.
And umm, I'm going to read the whole passage and then I'm going to come back and make some comments. So mark chapter 10 and we're going to begin at verse 46. I think this is a story many of you already know and have heard.
Mark 10 verse 46 And they came to Jericho. As he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side.
Begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace. But he cried the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still.
And commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, Rise, he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?
A blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.
Now the the very beginning here is kind of an odd expression. It says when they came to Jericho and as he went out of Jericho.
And sometimes if you read it in the in Matthew and Luke where you get the same portion, one talks about coming in and the other talks about going out. Well, if it's the same incident, how are you coming in and going out at the same time? I'll just say for those who like to convey with the scriptures, research excavations have found that in connection with Jericho, there are two cities.
The one the original back from the days of judges.
And coming into the land, the other one being a ruins of a Roman city. And they were slightly apart from one another, the whole foundation of the original old city, the whole foundation of a Roman city. So it was very possible to come into one city, pass through and go out the other city. And he was in between a little space where they were. So he sat by the wayside. So that's the by the by there, for those of you that think about it. But the city was Jericho. Remember about Jericho.
Place of a curse.
You live in Jericho, you know.
You live in the place of the curse. This world we live in is under the curse.
And there was a man there that had a need. His name was Artemaeus, the son of Timaeus. And he had a need. Now. He had a need that was very obvious he couldn't see. And everyone of you and myself.
The Lord uses a need in our lives to bring us to Him.
Now sometimes the need is totally inside.
The young couple that were there from Indonesia.
Their need was inside. If you'd have looked at them, you'd have thought, oh, this is a happy couple. They're making good money and they're seem to be happy and had two children. They have a family. Everything is going right. Uh-huh. Until the Lord Jesus became their savior, they weren't happy. They were truly unhappy. But the Lord created a need inside. Sometimes Lord might use circumstances to bring about a need.
There was a story of a of a young man who was a rebellious young man, as young men sometimes are in their family. He had a praying mother. She prayed for him every day. He would go out. Sometimes he'd be gone all night. You come in the wee hours of the morning.
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You find his mother down on her knees, praying for her son.
And that all went on for some time and as it got a little older, probably out of high school.
You couldn't take it anymore, so we left.
But he knew his mother was still praying for him.
But he went on, and as we said, what is in It's the principle of doing one's own well. He went and did his own well. He went and lived his life the way he wanted to.
But a circumstance came in.
One of the people there that knew his parents sent him a letter and said your mother's sick.
Mother's really sick. You really need to come home and see your mother.
Any thoughts? I probably should really go home and see mom. Been a long time. You know how Satan is.
If don't worry about it.
Oh, he didn't. He got a second letter. The 2nd letter said your mother's no better.
And so he thought, I better go see my mom.
So AI think it was a train, He took the train, the city where he used to live and he got off the train and it was already dark, but he knew the way to the house and he thought he'd take a shortcut. And the shortcut happened to go through a cemetery. And so he knew his way and there was enough light for him to be able to see where he is going, sort of.
And as he went through the cemetery, he was hurrying because he he just had this feeling he needed to get home and see his mom or she died. And as he was hurrying along, all of a sudden.
You sell right over on his face.
Ripped.
He brushed himself off. He thought. Oh.
A triple. And he turned around and looked. Lo and behold, there was a fresh grave.
Nissan, OH.
And so he worked his way to the head of the grave. And there was a little.
Cross with.
Piece of board on it, at his mother's name on it.
Too late.
Never got back.
There was a circumstance in his life. God brought it in for a reason.
He broke his heart.
And he realized that he could never tell his mother he was sorry. He could never tell his mother that, uh, he lived a life that really wasn't pleasing and it really wasn't happy. And what did he do? He cried out to God.
To save his miserable rotten soul.
It had no use for a praying mother.
What about the mother?
She never got to see, her son say.
You think she ever quit praying?
She loved her son.
Lord Jesus loves each one of you far more than a mother's love. Sometimes we might not think that's possible when we're younger because we really love our mother and He loves us far more.
And so so it was too late.
Mother's prayers were finally answered. So there were circumstances that brought that person to the Lord. Young couple, it's inside for Brian Bartamas. It's something visual, literally, that you could see.
Verse 47 And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out.
Now, you know, there's something about blind people. If you've been around them a little bit, it seems that God gives their other senses the capacity to make up for one that's missing. Whether they're deaf, whether they're blind. It's amazing sometimes just how well they can function without something you and I think they couldn't function without.
Well, flying borrowed Emmaus.
Had those air bones and they were working really well.
You know, sometimes blind people can often hear. Their hearing becomes so acute that they are able to hear things. You and I just kind of tune out. We just, we just don't hear it.
And blind Bartimaeus had heard about this one called Jesus of Nazareth.
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I don't know how long he'd heard or how much he had heard. It doesn't tell us. But he did know something about him. He knew that he was the son of David.
Because it says in verse 47 he cried out, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. Now he wouldn't have said those words if he didn't have a little bit of understanding about who this was.
But what did the people around him do?
They said in verse 48, and many charged him, that he should hold his peace. In other words, they said shut up, be quiet. We don't need to hear you crying out to this one who's going by.
If you're not saved tonight.
That's what your friends wanna do.
That are in the world they wanna and Satan wants. Do they wanna shut out?
That cry that you have towards the Lord, they don't want you to do that.
But not for him, he continues it says. But he cried more a great deal. He didn't just say it once and then give up. Oh no, The Spirit of God was working inside of his heart and he cried out the more a great deal.
Thou, Son of David, have mercy on me, says it twice.
Then in verse 48 or 49, excuse me? And Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called.
As someone has said.
A cry of a Sinner will stop the creator God in his tracks.
That's what happened there.
The God of all creation, the Son of God, come down from heaven in bodily form, came to a dead stop as he walked on this earth because.
One cried out with a need.
If God's speaking to your heart tonight and you have a sense of need.
Don't resist the sense of need.
Because he's waiting for you to respond to it, and he's waiting for you to respond so that he can bless you.
Unless you're saved, you don't know what real blessing is.
You only think you do, and that thinking is Satan's thought to keep you where you're at. He doesn't want you to get saved. So what else happens here?
You stand still and he commands him to be called and they call the blind man saying be of good comfort. Oh wait a minute, these are the same ones that just told him to be quiet. We don't want to hear from you, don't bother us.
Now what's happened? They called the blind man saying be of good comfort.
Right Ecolethe.
Did he respond to what they said? Yes, he did. You bet. And he, casting away his garment, rose came to Jesus.
Now, a little sidebar over here. We had some wonderful things brought out before us in the open meeting today.
Precious things. I would like to say this and comment on what was said.
But sometimes in our deportment we do not consider into whose presence we come.
What a blind Bartimaeus do.
It says that he, casting away his garment, rose and came to Jesus.
There was a fit.
Way in which he was to come into the presence of someone greater than himself.
I'll let you do the research.
Joseph.
Ruth.
David.
Peter.
They all changed their garments when they came in the presence of someone greater than themselves.
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I'll let you apply it.
So he changes his garment, he comes to Jesus, And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?
Did he know what blind Bartimaeus wanted? Yes.
He knew, but he wanted blind Bartimaeus to verbalize it. He wanted him to say it.
Because usually when we say things, we mean what we say.
And he wanted him to articulate that he had a need.
And then what does he do? He meets that need.
So completely.
And So what should I do unto thee in the blind man? Sent it to him, Lord, that I might receive my sight.
Doesn't tell us why he wanted his site so bad, but we could probably think of a lot of reasons. If we were blind, we'd really wanna have the ability to see again.
It doesn't tell us.
I'll later make a suggestion as to what it might have been.
Verse 52 And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.
What's faith?
Talked about what sin is. It's doing your own will without reference to God. Just go do what you wanna do.
Faith is believing what God has revealed to you about Himself.
That's what faith is believing God, believing what God has revealed to you.
Uh, sometimes faith might be pretty simple.
Here, with blind Bartimaeus, he's simply taking the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.
And believe me.
We have a whole lot more than blind Bartimaeus had. Do we believe it? We take it by faith, and just simply what God has given to us we're able to believe and put into practice.
And he said, So go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and he followed Jesus in the way.
Follow Jesus in the way there's no thought of him doing his own will again.
The thought is that he is going to follow Jesus and what his will is in the way.
Now.
Oh, if you don't know the Savior One, you're not happy.
Two, you're headed for hell, lost eternity, tire separation from God.
And three.
You make a mark of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for you.
You mock it in the sense that you have nothing to do with it. OK.
If you're in that state tonight, I trust you'll re realize your condition and do something about it by accepting Christ as your Savior now.
What's the first thing that Blind Bartimaeus did?
The first thing that he did?
Is.
He said one word, Lord.
Yeah, I want to share something here because it's kind of a nice way to end the conference.
The word Lord there is not Lord, it's rabona, and if you check Mr. Darby's translation, you'll see that it's Ramona.
The word roboni doesn't mean just master.
Rabo and I in the case here and the only other place it's used in scripture, means the master of my heart.
A master of my heart. It wasn't just the fact he was owning that Jesus was Lord or the one having authority over him.
Oh, it was the heart that had been captured, the affections had been brought into play. And so he says, Lord, that I might receive my sight. This is the first use of the word rabona in the New Testament.
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It's a man, the only other case we had at the beginning of the conference with Mary Magdalene.
Saying to the Lord Rabona, it's the same word. Master of my heart, master of my affections.
It's our affections, people.
That guide us. It's our affections that give us the love of the Lord Jesus back.
Now I think it's interesting that.
With Reliant Bartimaeus, it's a man.
With Mary and Magdalene, it's a woman. It's open to everyone in this room, male or female, to have that great affection for the Lord Jesus. It's not limited to the women who tend to be more romantic and loving and so forth, and the men that are more stalwart. They don't have that chance. No, no, no, no, no. It's open to every man and woman in here to have that ribbon eye character to say that you are the.
Lord Jesus, you are the Master of my heart.
The other thing that I'm most impressed with is that with him, it started right at the very beginning moment of his life in connection with Christ, right from the beginning, he said Rabona.
Master of my heart.
Yeah, I mentioned that. I don't know how much he realized about the Lord Jesus. He calls him Jesus of Nazareth. It's a spies term. I don't know how much he learned about him, It doesn't tell us. But I do know that what he had learned was enough to capture his affections.
And so when he said, Lord, that I might receive my sight, what was?
What you What was he really asking?
Captured my affections. I want to see you.
Don't we wanna see?
Physically with our eyes, that one who loved us and gave himself for us. Don't we wanna be in that capacity? What did Mary Mae do? Lynn, say, show me what you did with them. I want to see him with my eyes.
That's the rabona character that you and I should have.
In our relationship with the Lord Jesus.
And so we come to Mary Magdalene. She's a little different.
She's down the road, if a little farther.
She's known the Lord, and the Lord had captured her heart sometime in the past. We don't know exactly how long, but it wasn't as quickly as it was here with Him. And I like to think of it this way.
We want, should want, to love the Lord Jesus and have that affection for Him as we did at the very beginning when we knew our sins were forgiven.
So it's possible to have that affection whether you've just come to know the Lord Jesus as your Savior or whether you're down the road 4050, seventy years.
Still have that affection, just like Mary Magdalene did. The loving with all her heart.
He starts out right here.
Now one more thing.
I mentioned about how he followed Jesus in the way.
What gave him to want to follow him?
The affection of his heart.
What you and I do for the Lord Jesus.
Is but a reflection of how much we love him in our heart.
That rabona character.
Now Scripture only uses the word twice, here and in the resurrection.
The Lord had the opportunity to hear with his ear.
Blind Bartimaeus, say Rabbonae, master of my heart.
After his death and his work was done, resurrection.
To hear it again.
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Mary after resurrection to hear one say.
Master of my heart, Master of my affections.
That's what he wants. That's what he wants from us. But you're not what I'm what I'm saying tonight means absolutely nothing to you.
If you don't know him as your savior.
You can't love something you don't know.
But if you're knowing, shouldn't we have that rabona character?
And we said so many things and there were nice things, just we said, uh.
When the conference started about Mary Magdalene and the situation she was in.
And we all recognize that she had a great affection for the Lord.
But it was a rabona character.
That meant I believe so much to the Lord.
He that was forgiven much?
Loved much and her brother brought out what kind of a life she must have had if she had seven devils in her we can read about one devil taking a child and young man or casting him down, throwing him into the fire, wallowing around, foaming at the mouth, all these things. We can read about the man called legion because he had a legion of devils in 2000 swine going to the into the.
Sea.
Devils, She had seven full complete number.
What it must have been to be delivered from that what it must have been delivered?
From a blind state to be able to see the one.
Who gave him that side?
In the ninth of John, another man is blind, blind from his birth, but he didn't get.
What line bar to Mascot? Because when his eyes were open, he didn't see the one who gave him the ability to have his eyes open. That came later.
But for, uh, blind Bartimaeus, it was right then that's what I would desire for each one of you here, that you might know of the Lord Jesus as your Savior and realize in the heart, deepest part of your heart and your affection that he loves you so much.
And you in return.
And love Him. We love him because He first loved us. That's where it must begin. So you must know Him as your Savior. And I trust everyone here tonight does. And if you don't, don't waste a moment.
Don't delay, now is the accepted time to knowing as your Savior, let's just pray. Our God and our Father, we're thankful.