CRY FOR MERCY

Mark 10:46-52
And so they reached Jericho. Later, as Jesus and his disciples left town, a great
crowd was following. A blind beggar named Bartimaeus (son of Timaeus) was sitting
beside the road as Jesus was going by. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus from Nazareth
was nearby, he began to shout out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!
Be quiet! some of the people yelled at him. But he only shouted louder, Son
of David, have mercy on me! When Jesus heard him, he stopped and said, Tell him to
come here. So they called the blind man. Cheer up, they said. Come on, hes
calling you! Bartimaeus threw aside his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus.
What do you want me to do for you? Jesus asked. Teacher, the blind man
said, I want to see! And Jesus said to him, Go your way. Your faith has healed you.
And instantly the blind man could see! Then he followed Jesus down the road.
(New Living Translation)
The rest of the family has already made their way from the supermarket to the
parking lot. The mother and her young son, a child of about four or five, are the last ones
out the door. Just as they are about to cross over to the lot also, the boy hesitates, his eyes
drawn to the man sitting off to the side of the entrance. He hesitates uncertainly, knowing
he is supposed to stay close to his mother, but knowing also that his feet suddenly will
not cooperate. The mother sees the man also, and comes over to the boy, placing a coin
in his hand. He still hesitates, not fully understanding what he is to do, but she gently
encourages him, Go ahead.
He walks timidly, slowly over to where the man sits. As he approaches from the
side and comes around in front of the man, he gets a better look at the face he has seen
only from the side. The man is old, and the boy thinks he is probably the oldest man hes
ever seen. But he sees something else unusual, something totally unexpected: where the
mans eyes and eyelids should be, there are two solid folds of skin covering empty
sockets. The sight is so unnerving, the boy freezes for a moment, unable to move, or to

take his eyes off the strange sight. Then he sees the hat in the mans hand and he
suddenly understands what the coin is for. But he is puzzled at the pencils he sees in the
hat with the other coins, not realizing they are there to be sold. He holds the coin for a
moment over the hat, then drops it. The man grunts something the boy doesnt
understand, and then, his task performed, the boy runs quickly back over to join his
mother.
I rarely come to this story without remembering that incident. You see, that was
the first encounter I ever had with a blind person, and the images have stayed with me
ever since. Ive often compared that moment with the stories of Jesus healing blind
people in the Bible, and this time has been no exception. But as I re-read the story this
time, I was drawn to a striking difference that for some reason I had not thought of
before. Unlike the man I had seen, whose almost inaudible grunt of thanks was the only
sound he made, this man is loudvery loud. He refuses all urges to be quiet, screaming
all the more loudly; not the quiet asking of a beggar for assistance, but the anguish of a
suffering man pleading for deliverance.
I call your attention today, not to the beggar, nor to the actions of Jesus or of the
crowd, but to that cry for mercy. I believe that cry is at the heart of this passage. I
believe that cry reached the heart of Jesus, because the scripture tells us that when Jesus
heard him, he stopped. I believe it was not necessarily the cry itself, but something
Jesus heard in that cry that stopped him in his tracks. The genuine cry for mercy catches
the very heart of God and seems to draw a response from God that will not be received in
any other way. So it is that cry that I want to draw into our focus today.

I would suggest to you first of all that the cry for mercy is always heard, because
it is a cry of sincerity. There is something in the genuine cry for mercy that gets beyond
all the insincere motivations that sometimes control our actions. Sometimes when we
feel we come in genuine faith, our cry for mercy is in reality a cry for attention. Or
perhaps it can be a cry simply for partiality, or for recognition, or any one of many wrong
motivations. But while we may deceive ourselves, the heart of God cannot be deceived,
and when the cry for mercy is genuine, God will know it and will hear.
Notice in our text, for example, that Jesus heard this voice even though there was
a great crowd present. And with the clamor of the crowd, and the voices insisting that
the man be quiet, it would have been very easy for this mans voice to be lost among the
noises and voices of the crowd. I dont believe the man was heard simply because he was
louder than the crowd. Ive always compared this singling out of this one voice with
another incident in Jesus ministry, when a woman in another crowd pushed through to
touch the hem of his garment in search of healing. In the same way as Bartimaeus, she
had a sincere desire to be healed, and a sincere belief that Jesus could heal her. And in a
different sense, her cry also was heard by Jesus, who recognized immediately that she
had touched him. Whether that cry is as vocal as the cry of Bartimaeus, or as silent as
this womans cry, it is a cry that catches the attention and the heart of God.
Over and over in Scripture, the sincere cry of Gods people has been the occasion
for mighty acts of God. The first example that comes to mind is the descendants of Israel
in Egypt, who cried out to God and were heard, and delivered. In addition, who could
not be touched by the heartfelt cry of Hannah for a son, and Gods response to her? Or
how about Hezekiah pleading with tears when told he would die from the illness he had?

But God responded to these prayers. Perhaps the most prominent example we have is
David, who again and again in the Psalms pours his heart out to God, and is heard and is
blessed by God. And though sometimes it may feel like God doesnt hear, you can be
assured, that sincere cry for mercy is a cry that will always touch the heart of God.
Not only will that cry always be heard, but the cry for mercy will not be silenced,
because it is a cry of desperation. You will never cry out from the depths like this man
did until you come to an inner realization that your situation is desperate. Websters
dictionary defines desperate as having lost hope; and yet people and circumstances
that we define as desperate have not lost hope, they have lost every hope but one. People
who do desperate acts have placed all their hope on one final avenue that they see as the
avenue of escape.
Thats the way I view the cries of Bartimaeus. We are not told how long he had
been blind, but it surely was long enough to drive him to the point of desperation. His
life had been an existence of roadside begging, a common sight along the roads of Israel.
It was one of the most powerless forms of life in Israel, which may have had a lot to do
with the crowds insistence that he be quiet. Who are you to bother the Master? He was
considered a distraction, much as the children had earlier (10:13). But Bartimaeus had
heard about the miraculous things Jesus had done, and this was the one in whom his hope
had come to rest. Jesus hears the cries that will not be silent, for the things that his
followers considered to be distractions are the very things that Jesus seems to have
singled out as important.
I believe in our time, we still tend to silence the cry for mercy, but we have found
more subtle methods. Rather than silencing the cries, rather than insisting directly that

they be silent, we simply ignore the cries. There are a variety of means of ignoring: we
move to better neighborhoods if poorer neighbors move too close; we tune out the
evening news reports of calamities that in themselves are a cry for mercy; we distance
ourselves by calmly considering that anything we can do to help would be so little, or that
these things are in such faraway places. Very few people, for instance, would remember
that nearly thirty years ago, a cyclone and a tidal wave in Pakistan brought a death toll of
150,000. But let Fort Lauderdale, Florida get wiped out completely and they would
never forget. There are cries for mercy all around us, and our ignoring them will not
silence them.
Ignoring those cries often reaches us at personal levels. I recall a cry for mercy
that went unheeded in my lifeor would have, except that the mans desperate cry would
not be silenced by my complacency. While I was a student in Kentucky, a man I had
known, whose sons I had been good friends with while a teenager, was diagnosed with
terminal lung cancer. My mother had been to see him, and she had called me to tell me
that when the man found out I was at seminary, he seemed insistent that I come see him
the next time I came home. A couple of weeks passed, and in another conversation with
her, she told me she had seen him again and he had repeated the request, and that he
really wants to see you.
This time there was something in the request that stayed with me, and I could not
get it out of my mind for the next couple of weeks. So I made the seven-hour trip home
ahead of my planned schedule, found out the directions to the mans house, and went to
visit him. It didnt take long to discover that he wanted to see me to reconcile a falling
out he had had with my brother many years earlier. My brother would not speak with

him, so he needed someone close to my brother to hear his side of the situation. At the
same time, he was about to reach the end of his lifes journey, and he wanted all paths
clear before his departure. I was the one he desperately clung to with the cry for mercy,
because in a sense I fulfilled a dual role. His was a cry for mercy, and a cry of
desperation that almost went ignored.
How many cries go by us unnoticed each day? I am reminded of the persecution
of Christians taking place in Sudan, which went largely unnoticed for quite some time.
Thank God for the efforts of Richard Wurmbrand and his Voice of the Martyrs
publication. Richard Wurmbrand was a missionary who was imprisoned in Romania for
many years. Upon his release he came to this country and began focusing efforts at
increasing peoples awareness of Christian persecution in different places around the
world. Largely through this mans efforts, attention was brought to the situation in
Sudan, and eventually even the United States Congress could no longer ignore what was
happening. Ignorance, willful ignorance, and indifference cannot silence the desperate
cry for mercy.
No, the cry for mercy will not be silenced, and it will always get results, because
the cry for mercy is a cry of faith. The words of Jesus to this man were, Go your way.
Your faith has healed you. His words to the woman who touched his garment were
similar: Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. You have been healed.
You see, this thing we call faith isnt always a state of mind, or a thing that is believed in.
It is an active thing that goes in pursuit of the things claimed by faith.
We are given great encouragement from the great faith chapter of the Bible,
Hebrews 11. And all of those commended there are commended for their acts of faith:

By faith these people overthrew kingdoms, ruled with justice, and received what God
had promised them. They shut the mouths of lions, quenched the flames of fire, and
escaped death by the edge of the sword. Their weakness was turned to strength. They
became strong in battle and put whole armies to flight. Women received their loved ones
back again from death (Hebrews 11:33-35a). And one common denominator we would
find, if we were to go back and read each of the stories of these heroes of the faith once
more, would be that cry for mercy. And each of these heroes, in his or her own way,
became known for faith because of the way they responded.
You see, this cry for mercy is a call for us to respond, because it is a cry for help,
to the helper in each one of us. Each of us who trusted Christ for our salvation, were
given that indwelling Spirit, the one we call the Comforter or Counselor, the Helper, the
parakletos who draws alongside us. And when that cry for mercy goes out, if we are in
tune with the Spirit, if we do not shut out the cries, then that Spirit who dwells within us
will cause us to respond to the cry for mercy in ways we never expected.
I can recall when I was a young boy in church, I always looked forward to the
Communion services. And I always knew when to expect the most familiar part of the
ritual to me, a part which was made familiar by the intonation that one particular pastor
put on the words: Have mercy on us; have mercy on us, most merciful Father. The
years have passed, times have changed, and the rituals have changed; but the cry for
mercy is still a part of our ritual. I never fail to be convicted and challenged each time I
read the words in the confession in our ritual: We have not heard the cry of the needy.
I can recall an instance when I heard that cry. I was driving one day when I saw a
hitchhiker by the side of the road, loaded down with a couple of large carrying bags.

Now, I make it a practice normally not to pick up hitchhikers, which may in itself be a
refusal to hear the cry of those needy of transportation. But in this particular instance, I
was rounding a curve and did not see him until I was almost beside him; and my response
of jamming on the brakes and stopping for him was so impulsive and so instantaneous
that it surprised even me. As the young man loaded his bags into the back seat and
climbed in beside me, it did not take very much conversation for me to discover that he
was a Christian. Not only that, he was obviously a man of very evident devotion and
faith.
I had noticed as he approached the car, he had a limp, and when I asked, he told
me of an injury and operation he had had only a short time before. In fact, he revealed
that at the time I stopped, he had given up being able to walk another step and was
praying fervently that someone would stop. I eventually went out of my way to take the
young man all the way to his destination. After I left, I kept running through my mind
just how unlikely the whole incident was. I wondered why I had stopped in the first
place, but at the same time gave thanks that I did. In retrospect, I still attribute it to what
I have already suggested: that the Spirit within us causes us to respond to the cry for
mercy. I did not hear that cry for mercy, but the Spirit did, and I believe the Spirit within
caused me to respond in a way I would not have.
But I believe that very often, maybe even more often, we miss hearing the inner
voice, we miss hearing the cry. Not long ago, I was about to leave with my family to take
a planned trip to the beach. We were already behind our planned departure time when we
remembered I had not checked the mail that day. I quickly drove the couple of blocks
down to the Post Office, intending to get the mail and return quickly and be on our way.

As I came out the door to leave, I was met by a man coming off the street, who asked me
if I knew where he could find a pastor in town. Without revealing that I was a pastor, I
asked if I could possibly help him. He insisted that no, he needed to see a pastor,
something about needing financial help.
Now, ordinarily, I would have been very quick to help the man. But I knew I had
a waiting family back at the house, that we were already late, and I was in a hurry to go.
Besides, even though the church has an emergency fund, this was Saturday, and I
couldnt give him anything that would help until two days later. So I reasoned it out
somehow that it was okay to give this man the phone number of a person at the other
main church in town, whom I had called before when we were unable to give assistance,
and let it go at that. The man insisted instead that he would rather talk to them in person
and wanted to go see them, so I gave him the address and drove off. Before I drove the
short two blocks home, the growing feeling of conviction got the best of me, and I
decided to go back and talk to him in more detail and offer what help I could. But as I
drove up the street, he was nowhere to be found. There was absolutely no way he could
have walked to the persons house already. It was as if he had just vanished! I was left
with thoughts of how some of us, the Scripture says, have entertained angels unawares
and sadly, I was also reminded that many times, some of us have not.
The two incidents reminded me of a very significant passage of scripture I would
like to leave with you in closing. You see, Jesus has told us that the time will come when
he will sit on his throne and the nations will come before him and there will be a
separation between those categorized as either sheep or goats. And the basis of that
separation is going to be on the basis of what each individual has done, or has not done

for those in need. Thats why it matters, and it matters very much, what you do right now
in response to that cry for mercy.
I would like to address this from two different perspectives, represented by two
different groups of people. I am sure everyone present belongs to one group or the other,
or perhaps even both. First of all, I am sure there are some here who are even now facing
a situation, or have a loved one facing a situation that is causing you to cry out to God for
mercy. If this applies to you, let me give you all the encouragement I possibly can to
continue to cry out to God. Maybe it seems there has been no response, the heavens are
like brass, and youve begun to despair for the answer. Take courage, and let your hope
be strengthened, to realize that God hears your cry for mercy. Dont let your cries for
mercy be silenced by the weight of your circumstances, but let your voice be heard, and
let it be heard even more loudly.
If this does not apply to you, then I challenge you with this: are you actively
listening for that voice that stands out above the crowd, that insistent cry that will not be
silenced? Or are you simply a part of the noise that would drown that voice out? Ask
God to put your spirit in touch with the Spirit of God within, so that when the cry for
mercy rings out, it will set up such an echo within you that you will not be able to refuse
or ignore the need.
May God help us to cry for mercy; may God help us to hear.