Following Jesus All the Way

In Mark 10:46-52, we’re introduced to the blind beggar Bartimaeus in Jericho, who hears that Jesus is coming his way as the Lord is leaving the city. He calls out to Jesus, undeterred by the people who tell him to shut up. He’s brought to Jesus who asks him: “What do you want me to do for you?” (10:51a). And blind Bartimaeus replies, “Rabbi, I want to see” (10:51b). To which Jesus responds, “Go … your faith has healed you” (10:52a). And immediately, the text goes on to say, Bartimaeus “received his sight and followed Jesus along the road” (10:52b).
 
What impresses me about Bartimaeus isn’t just his determination to meet Jesus—Bartimaeus refuses to let the crowd stymie him—nor that Jesus restored his sight. Both these developments are obviously amazing in themselves. But what I find striking about Bartimaeus is that immediately after receiving his sight, verse 52 notes that Bartimaeus “followed Jesus along the road.”
 
Contrast Bartimaeus with others who were healed by Jesus, but who chose for whatever reason NOT to obey Jesus’s explicit instructions, let alone follow Him. Think of the ten lepers in Luke 17:11-19 whom Jesus healed, of which only one returned to thank Jesus. Or what about the leper in Mark 1:40-45 and the two blind men in Matt 9:27-31, all who were healed by Jesus and were specifically instructed by the Lord to keep their healings a secret. But they disobeyed the Lord by blabbing about what had happened to them—understandably, they were overly ecstatic—and, as a result, made things difficult for Jesus.
 
How interesting, don’t you think, it is possible that our public witness for Christ, when done indiscriminately, could become a hindrance to Him?
 
On the other hand, obedience to Christ may not involve a literal going with Jesus: there’s the story of the demon-possessed man in Luke 8:36-39, from whom Jesus cast out a legion of evil spirits that sent a bunch of pigs to hog hell—like lemmings running off a cliff—rather than hog heaven. The healed man asked to follow Jesus but was told specifically to return to his hometown and share what Jesus had done for him—which he did.
 
There’s something to be said about Bartimaeus, who made use of his restored sight for what it was meant: To see the Lord and follow Him! Or, in the case of the ex-demoniac, to publicly testify about Jesus, in obedience to His directive. Bartimaeus didn’t waste his healing on frivolous things like living it up for his own benefit, now that he could see, but he chose to use his sight to follow Jesus.
 
I’m speculating here, but I suspect Bartimaeus likely didn’t just follow Jesus for a short while. The verses we read note that Bartimaeus received his sight and followed Jesus along the road—even as Jesus was leaving Jericho. Symbolically speaking, by following Jesus out of Jericho and along the road, Bartimaeus could have been leaving his past behind (as represented by Jericho), and beginning afresh and anew as a disciple of Christ, determinedly keeping his gaze fixed on Jesus and following Him.
 
The other example that I really like is Peter’s mother-in-law in Luke 4:38-39, who was nursing a high fever when Jesus visited her home in Capernaum. Right after Jesus heals her of her fever, we read in verse 39: “She got up at once and began to wait on them.”  She didn’t take it easy and rest for a bit after having been healed, but she got up at once and started serving Jesus and the disciples!
 
Have you received healing? Has the Lord answered your request? Has our response been, oh, great, thanks, and that’s the be-all-and-end-all of it? Or are we—like Bartimaeus, like the former demoniac, like Simon’s mother-in-law—using our restored health or restored situations to honor God with our service and ministry?
 
* All Bible quotations are from the New International Version (NIV)
​