The Vision (10.14.22): Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David

 

Image: North Garden, Virginia, October, 2022.

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Matthew 20:29-34.

And, behold, two blind men sitting by the way side, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David (Matthew 20:30).

Matthew 20:3-34 records Christ’s healing of two blind men. Notice three things in their crying out to Christ:

First, notice the cry for mercy. Grace is when you get what you don’t deserve. Mercy is when you don’t get what you do deserve.

The cry for mercy is, in some ways, a confession of sin. It is saying, I know that I have come short of God’s glory. I deserve God’s wrath and punishment, both in this life and that which is to come. But I am asking Christ to be the instrument through which I do not receive what I deserve.

The cry for mercy is a common refrain found in the Psalms. David’s great Psalm of Repentance in Psalm 51 begins, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions” (v. 1; see also Psalm 86:3; 123:3).

Second, notice that they call Jesus “Lord.” This anticipates the earliest Christian creed, “Jesus is Lord” (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:3; Romans 10:9; Philippians 2:11).

Third, notice that they call him “the Son of David.” The Gospel of Matthew began in 1:1 with calling our Lord “the Son of David.”. This is the fulfillment of prophecy, that the Messiah would come from the line of David and establish an everlasting kingdom (see 2 Samuel 7:12-13).

This prophecy is there when Isaiah spoke of a rod that would come forth from the stem of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1-2), and when the Lord said through Jeremiah, “I will raise unto David a righteous Branch” (Jeremiah 23:5-6).

To say Jesus is the Son of David is to declare he is true man; to say he is Lord is to say he is true God.

This healing of the two blind men is a faithful record of an event that took place in Christ’s ministry, but it also has spiritual overtones. It relays the experience of all those who were spiritually blind in their unregenerate state, but who were converted and who then called out to God through Christ for mercy, confessing him to be their Lord and King.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle