“And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight,” Mark 10:51.

Asking questions has always been a chief means used by the Lord to enlighten men’s minds to their own lost spiritual condition. Man needs prompting in order that he might consider his own spiritual and eternal needs.

Questions help this process.

“And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” Genesis 3:9.

“And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions,” Luke 2:46.

The question Christ asks of the blind man Bartimaeus would have made the poor man consider a number of things. Consider:

THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF A KNOWLEDGE OF OUR NEED

1. The man was begging for money, food but is that what he needed most of all? He had a greater need which if met would also result in these lesser needs being met. He needed healed from his blindness. Many are unaware of their real need. “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,” Revelation 3:17. We need to know the ‘plague’ of our own hearts, 1 Kings 8:38.

2. Man’s chief need is a cure for his spiritual blindness. “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch,” Matthew 15:14. These spiritual leaders had no consciousness of their spiritual blindness.

3. Bartimaeus knew his own need. He felt his blindness and it was for deliverance from it he sought. Men seek much in this world without ever seeking for that which is most important - a spiritual deliverance from their sin.

4. Here is why the LAW must be preached. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies,” Matthew 15:19-20. “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster [to bring us] unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith,” Galatians 3:24.

5. He recognised the opportunity that was his. This why he addressed Christ as he did and why he would not be silenced. How few are like him? How many can be robbed of the glorious chance of God’s mercy and of heaven!!

6. His knowledge gave a preciseness to his prayer. In answer to Christ’s question he gives a precise answer. “Lord, that I might receive my sight.”