In the Gospel by Luke, the Gospel by
Luke, chapter 18, verse
35, And it came to pass, as he
drew nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man
sat by the wayside begging.
And hearing a multitude going by, he inquired
what this meant.
And they told him that Jesus of Nazareth
passeth by.
And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of
David, have mercy on me.
They that went before rebuked him that he
should hold his peace.
But he cried out the more a great
deal, thou son of David, have mercy on
me.
Jesus stood and commanded him to be brought
unto him.
When he was come near, he asked him,
What wilt thou that I should do unto
thee?
And he said, Lord, that I may receive
my sight.
Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight.
Thy faith hath made thee whole.
And immediately he received his sight and followed
him, glorifying God.
And all the people, when they saw it,
gave praise unto God.
Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.
That title or designation of our Lord is
full of wonderful significance.
Of that fullness, I am just going to
take a very little this morning to point
it out to you.
Jesus of Nazareth.
There were so many Jesuses in the country.
It was one of the most common and
favored names among the Jews.
Derived from long back in the Old Testament.
Joshua, Jeshua.
They are in the original the same name.
People in Israel loved that name and frequently
gave it to their boys at birth.
The country was full of Jesuses.
Josephus, the historian, tells us that there were
at least twenty well-known Jesuses in the
country when our Lord was there.
So, in some way, they've got to distinguish
him from the others.
They called him Jesus, the one of Nazareth.
Something quite ordinary.
Something quite common.
Something without any wonderfully, strikingly
impressive association in itself.
And Nazareth.
Nazareth.
We know what Nathaniel thought of Nazareth.
When someone said to him about Jesus, we
have found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.
He said, can any good thing come out
of Nazareth?
Evidently had a bad name.
We know that after his temptation in the
wilderness, Jesus went back to Nazareth.
And what happened?
He met the bigotry.
The bigotry of that little town.
The exclusiveness.
As a result, they led him to the
brow of the hill on which their town
was built to cast him over.
Jesus of Nazareth.
Now, the point, dear friends, for the moment
is this.
That this is all of a piece with
something in the great divine plan.
Naturally, it was a handicap.
The despised Nazarene.
With a common name.
Not outstanding amongst all the others in his
day and country.
And with associations that gave him nothing whatever
of honor and glory in this world.
He carried with him in this life a
handicap.
Jesus of Nazareth, until the day of Pentecost,
was just a title without honor.
And the great divine meaning and significance of
that is this.
That the real values of Jesus are spiritual
and not natural.
If he is going to mean anything in
this world to anybody anywhere, if there is
going to be any glory and honor, it
will all be in the spiritual realm.
He had none in the natural.
Indeed, he was at a disadvantage from his
birth in the natural.
His whole life was without anything that gave
him place in this world, honor in this
world, and his very name carried nothing in
this world to commend him at all.
And yet, and yet, what tremendous forces had
been let loose in this world through that
life.
What a significance he has really taken on.
We know it now.
After two thousand years of his influence in
this world, we know.
But we know quite well that it is
not because he came into this world with
any worldly fame or honor or setting at
all.
With anything to commend him to men from
this world's standpoint.
It is all because of his spiritual meaning
and value.
And that is the realm in which values
are really tested and proved.
For all the other passes, however great it
is, this is eternal.
And you notice that that is just something
that the Lord has to say to us
all.
Association with the Lord Jesus will mean just
the same where we are concerned.
Not what we are naturally, great or small.
Not our name, title, success, achievements, degrees, or
anything.
Our real value will be spiritual.
What we are and what we have of
spiritual measure.
So with him, and if it is so
with him, how true.
It must be of us.
Now you see, born, brought up, living with
a natural handicap where men uttered his name
with something of a sneer, reproach, any good
thing to come out of Nazareth, don't tell
me.
Don't tell me that any good can come
from there.
That's the discounting, naturally, despised and rejected of
men prophesied the prophet.
And yet over against them.
What spiritual forces.
It does seem so often that where the
greatest spiritual value is, the Lord has to
say that there is nothing natural or of
this world to glory in where we are
concerned.
However, even though we may achieve something, you
might attain unto some position of honor and
success in this world.
Do ever remember that that is not your
measure with God.
Your measure with God is your spiritual value.
And also remember, and I'm sure this applies
to most of us, we may naturally have
what we would call a handicap.
We have that which would give us no
place of honor amongst men.
We may be of the despised.
And when men are looking for qualifications, we
might be rejected.
But that's not the measure at all.
The thing that matters is the spiritual measure.
The spiritual measure.
And God is set upon that.
He is concentrated upon spiritual measure.
And if he can bring that out over
against natural limitations and things that give us
no standing at all, it's all the more
to his praise.
You see, this little story we've read is
a man with a handicap.
Indeed a handicap is blindness.
He felt it.
It pierced him every day.
He groaned and cried against it with all
the limitations that it brought to him.
In those days there were no schools for
the blind and all that which is provided
today to put them on their feet and
make them self-sufficient.
Nothing.
A beggar.
A blind beggar.
A beggar because he was blind.
What a handicap.
Down amongst the dishonored, and there were many,
many like that filling the land, Jesus of
Nazareth came into his life and brought in
spiritual value.
Result?
He glorified God and the people glorified God.
Glory of God comes along the deepest channels
and God is at pains to cut very
deep channels because spiritual value weighs most with
him and explains a lot of his dealings
with us.
Jesus of Nazareth.
Passeth by.
What arose as the issue in this case
and does always arise as the issue when
Jesus of Nazareth comes into proximity to a
light.
The greatest of all issues, I think, found
up with the coming near to us of
the Lord Jesus.
It is nothing less than having our eyes
open, being given spiritual sight.
Perhaps spiritual sight is the greatest of all
the spiritual values.
To see.
For this man brought him into a world
that had been closed to him.
Into possibilities that were all shut to him.
A new world, a new life, a new
prospect.
Everything new.
By having his eyes open.
By seeing.
And those of you who are familiar with
the later spiritual teaching of the New Testament
know what a tremendous value is placed upon
spiritual sight.
We are almost too familiar with the words
on that matter.
The eyes of your heart being enlightened that
you may know.
By having the eyes of your heart enlightened
you may know what is the hope of
his calling.
What the glory, the riches of the glory
of his inheritance in the saints.
What the exceeding greatness of his power is
to us who believe.
Those are not small things to know.
They are the superlative things for spiritual knowledge.
The word is they come by having the
eyes open.
What a world.
What riches.
Coming into touch with Jesus of Nazareth holds
nothing less than that whole question of spiritual
sight.
First for that seeing him as saviour and
lord.
Our saviour.
Our lord.
And then a continual seeing of him in
his great fullness of meaning and value.
That's bound up with touch.
With Jesus of Nazareth.
If he comes near.
It's like that.
But Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.
Passeth by.
Maybe that he passed by many blind.
We've said there were very many.
Common malady in those parts.
This man came into the values of Jesus
of Nazareth because he cried and cried and
he was not going to let him pass
by without securing those values.
Now that is of very wide application.
Of course in the first place applies to
our salvation.
Lord's Day morning gathering of Christians is not
perhaps regarded as the time to preach the
gospel of salvation.
But it may be.
We have known unsaved people to be saved
in the morning gathering of the Lord's people.
Jesus of Nazareth is here with all these
wonderful potentialities and possibilities for your life.
You may come into a knowledge and a
seeing of that which will give you a
new world.
You're going to let him pass by.
No accident that he comes this way.
No mere chance and hap are you going
to say Jesus have mercy on me.
And not allow yourself to be smothered or
stifled by anything.
By any kind of consideration.
Not by public opinion.
Not by the thought of what others will
say.
No.
Nothing at all.
It's so desperately important that you have this
new world of his life and light.
You're going to say and refuse to be
silent.
Have mercy on me.
It's a still wider and more advanced application
for us as Christians.
There is a sense in which Jesus comes
into the life of Christians, passes their way
with a secret desire for something more in
their lives.
And offers in his very presence a greater
fullness.
Offers through ministry.
Offers through fellowship.
Offers in this way and that some greater
fullness.
And his very presence always means something more.
It means something more this morning.
And yet we can let him go so
to speak.
Take it all as commonplace.
Take it for granted.
Yes I believe what you say Jesus is
nearby.
He's here.
Hasn't he said where two or three are
gathered to my name that I am.
Of course we believe.
Yes but there are momentous things bound up
with every contact with him.
And not least is this momentous possibility that
he may go on.
And we not get what he meant us
to have.
And as I have thought about this I
have called to mind so many many places
and lives that I have known in my
life.
From my early days of Christian work I've
had contact with people and places.
And you know dear friends it's true over
a wider area but over this very country
of ours.
In and around this very city of ours.
There are places which were once world famous
for their spiritual value.
I could mention the names.
I could tell you where they are.
This place and that place and that place.
Outstanding people came to them from all over
the world for the spiritual value that they
got there.
They have a name in history and tradition.
Today they're derelict.
They're just derelict.
You go there.
I know one.
I know a number.
I think of one where every time the
place was open it was crowded with twelve
hundred people.
There are thirty people meeting in that place
today.
The building still stands.
They still try to carry on.
Thirty people.
They used to have a mighty open air
meeting just a little way off on Sunday
night.
Great crowds.
They have got six men trying to carry
on their open air today.
And I could repeat that again and again.
Places where the Lord came.
Where the Lord was met.
But for some reason, like the churches in
Asia, the churches in North Africa, in other
parts of the world which are in the
Bible, their names are gone.
Their testimony is gone.
It's not there now.
Jesus of Nazareth has passed by.
Reasons we need not say to try and
enumerate.
It is always like that.
The point is let us, let us make
good every opportunity that he gives.
See to it that we secure every possibility
that is bound up with him and his
presence.
That we don't become tragedies like that day
of great opportunity.
And it's passed.
Jesus of Nazareth, it does not want something
very great and wonderful from this world's standpoint.
Doesn't need that to bring us into great
spiritual measure.
It was not so with him.
Need not be so with us.
What does it want?
Something of the persistence and the tenacity and
the wholeheartedness of this man.
He said, I'm not going to lose my
chance.
I'm not going to lose anything that this
time holds for me.
A possibility.
I just refuse to take this as something
that is casual.
It is and will perhaps go on.
Not at all.
Always this tremendous possibility on the one side
that is wrapped up in Jesus of Nazareth.
Do you notice on the day of Pentecost,
on the day of Pentecost when Peter stood
up, it was that name.
Jesus of Nazareth, a man mighty.
God was with him.
Pentecost, issuing from Jesus of Nazareth.
All that in this one, set at naught
in this world.
Not distinguished by anything in this world, but
came from Nazareth, that's all.
But what distinction.
And you and I really get to know
him and set our hearts upon knowing all
that there is to know in him.
What a world.
And for all of us, it's not just
for unsaved people, for all of us, there
needs to be this determination, this resolve.
I am not going to miss anything of
what God has offered me in his Son
and brought into proximity to my life.