WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO FOR YOU?

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Matthew 20:29-34

Good morning. My name is Daniel Duce. I'm one of the pastors here, and we don't do this very often, but because he did such a great job back in May, I asked my buddy Luke Evans to come and bring the word for us. This morning I met Luke, 2012, right at a church planting conference outside of Houston.

I thought, man, this guy is pretty cool. He loves Jesus. He loves his family, he listens to good music, and he's a Lord of the rings nerd. So yeah, I think we'll we'll get along. Sincerely, though. He has been my friend for a really long time. I'm very thankful for him. So, help me welcome the coolest Presbyterian I know, Luke Evans.

Okay, so, yeah, that's a low bar. Cool. Presbyterians. Okay. Good morning everyone. Merry Christmas. Happy new year. It's great to be with you again. Love mission church. Love this church. Followed the church for a long time as a partner. Church in the city. So thanks for letting me come talk to you about Jesus again this morning. Gospel Matthew's where I want us to spend a little time today.

First book of the New Testament. If you have a Bible, you can go there. We're looking at Matthew chapter 2029 through 34. It's on the screen there too. So here's what we'll do. I'll read this for us and pray and ask for God's help. And then we'll see what God has for us. So here from God's Word Matthew 20.

Excuse me, beginning in verse 29. And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him. That's Jesus. And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside. And when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, Lord, have mercy on us, son of David! The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried out all the more, Lord, have mercy on us, son of David!

And stopping. Jesus called them and said, what do you want me to do for you? They said to him, Lord, let our eyes be opened. And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would, right now come through the ministry of your spirit and remind each one of us, particularly and personally, what is true of all of us, that we are at the same time beloved by you because we're made in your image and have inherent worth and value and dignity as people, and also broken by our own sin

in rebellion against you and in need of your mercy. And we thank you that you have shown us mercy in your Son Jesus, who through his life and death and resurrection has made a way for us to be reconciled. So, Jesus, will you continue your reconciling, renewing work in our lives today, perhaps maybe even opening up our hearts that have been apathetic or hardened, or are just weary to the depths of your love, to how much you want to help us God?

Will you remind us of that and show us that this morning, as we close out one year and move into a new one? Help us to believe and remember that you don't change. You're always for us and never against us. In Christ. We pray this in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen. One thing my wife and I struggle with, among many things, is finding a TV show.

We both like anybody else. No, we found one like five years ago. It's called Ted Lasso. Have you familiar with Ted Lasso? Not endorsing everything in Ted Lasso? So don't get all ramped up about the thing that was bad in there. But the first season of that show, and particularly I found to be quite good, Ted Lasso is this show, in case you don't know, it's about this Division two football coach in America who gets hired to coach a Premier League soccer club.

The only problem is he knows literally nothing about soccer. And so he, he and his assistant coach travel across the Atlantic, and his coaching career has a good bit of comedy to it. The owner of the soccer club is this woman named Rebecca Welton, who has recently divorced her adulterous husband and is in the middle of processing her grief from that.

And we learn early on in the story that Rebecca has hired Ted Lasso in an attempt to really, completely sabotage the team just to get back at her ex-husband. She wants Ted to fail, and she's silently working against him and against his interests throughout the early part of the show. But here's the deal with Ted Lasso. He is unceasingly kind.

It's one of the things I like about the show. It's so hard to find that in the media today. He's unceasingly positive and unceasingly cheerful, and one of the ways this shows up is first thing every morning, Ted Lasso walks into the soccer facility, into Rebecca Weston's office with a box of cookies. In the UK, they call them biscuits and he gives her a box of biscuits.

First thing, no matter what is on either of their schedules, he always shows up with the biscuits. And here's the thing Rebecca doesn't like Ted. She doesn't want anything to do with Ted. She doesn't want to know Ted. She doesn't care about Ted. She resists his attempts at friendship and generosity. She blows him off. She insults him. She ignores him.

So what does Ted do? He keeps bringing the biscuits every single morning. He pursues her with his kindness. That part of the story has stuck with me over the years, because I think it's one way of thinking about the way God relates to every single one of us. One of the most beautiful things about the Christian life is that God consistently and persistently shows up in our lives every day, whether we know it or not.

And he offers us his affection and his kindness and his love. And here's the thing about God he keeps on doing this to us and for us. Whether we resist him or ignore him or verbally assault him. And more than anywhere else, we see that this is what the real God is like in the person of Jesus. Colossians chapter one tells us that Jesus is the exact representation of God.

So if you want to understand God, look to Christ. And in Christ we see again and again and again that God can't help but be drawn to his people in kindness. That's just who God is. I wonder if you know that about God. You know that God, like at his very core, in his heart of hearts, is kind.

He's loving. He's gracious to you no matter who you are, no matter where you're from, no matter what you have done. Knowing that God is like that, it has real significant nuclear transformative power. Really, it's the only thing that's going to change your life. And that's what this story in Matthew 20 shows us. It's impossible for us to over celebrate God's affection.

We can't over celebrate it. So let's do our best to celebrate it through this story. Jesus, in this story is leaving Jericho, and he's walking south into the city of Jerusalem. His disciples and another group of friends are with him, and we read in the beginning that these giant crowds are following him. Two And Jesus is heading into Jerusalem for the last week of his life.

The Passover week is just beginning, and right now he's got a big, massive following. In one week, he's going to have basically no following at all. He's going to be dead and buried. But for now, he's headed into town and Matthew recounts this story. This is actually Jesus's last miracle. I guess if you don't include his resurrection, this is his last miracle before his death and resurrection.

And this miracle of healing reminds us of God's heart, of God's heart for all people. God's heart is to always pursue us with his loving kindness. So last Sunday of the year, we used to call this youth pastor Sunday by the way, when I was pastoring a church is always a son. A youth pastor would preach anyway. I'll happily take that on three things okay?

On youth pastor Sunday. Three things I want to show you from Matthew 20. First thing the people Jesus wants to help the kind of people Jesus wants to help. Matthew tells us, verse 30, there's two blind beggars, two blind men sitting on the road. Now it goes without saying, right? Blindness, not a good thing. Blindness. Very challenging. But in the ancient world, when there were no, you know, government programs for physically disabled people, when there were not anywhere near as much medical technology and care, being blind would have been a particularly horrible life.

And we don't know how or when these two men became blind if they were born blind. But we do know that blindness would have condemned these men to a world of social isolation, to literal, physical, oppressive darkness. And one say one thing. You see, throughout Matthew's gospel and really throughout all of the Bible, is that Jesus regularly connects physical disability, in this case blindness with spiritual disability, physical external reality with spiritual internal reality, and that's no more true than with blindness.

Of course, these men, they're literally blind. But in the Bible, blindness almost always personifies or illustrates a problem that all of us face. Don't matter how well we physically see all of us because of sin, are spiritually blind. Before Jesus meets us. We're all lost. All of us. We're all groping in the darkness. We're all condemned to a life of confusion.

That's true of every single human person before they meet with Jesus or before Jesus meets them. That's true of these two men. They're blind and they're also beggars. That's why they're sitting by the road in verse 30. Matthew doesn't tell us they're beggars. Mark does tell us that explicitly, and they're homeless and they're begging, probably because they're blind.

And they know, like I just said, Passover week is coming. And so a lot of people are going to be moving into the city of Jerusalem. And so they camp out there on the side of the road, hoping to beg for homes and get a little bit of help from people in the crowd. So imagine that, okay, the Gospels paint these beautiful images of us for us, these pictures.

So imagine this picture of these guys daily life. They're laying on dirty blankets next to a muddy road. They're smelly, they're filthy, they're blind beggars completely reliant on the charity of other people. We individualistic Western Americans really don't like that. Being completely reliant on the charity of other people. And sometimes when you see a blind or not even a blind person, a beggar on the road, when you see a homeless person on the road, I imagine in a room this size, we have various internal responses to that, maybe various external responses to that.

Some of us perhaps might make sure the car doors are locked. We might avoid making eye contact. We might hope our kids don't ask mom, dad, what's going on with that person? We might feel some level of repulsion. Here's the thing though. The people that we sometimes can be repulsed by and want to get away from, don't miss this.

Those are the exact kind of people that Jesus of Nazareth is drawn to. Jesus is just different. Jesus moves in close to where others keep a safe distance. Jesus, who again, is God's very image, who shows us what the real God is like, is attracted to the most needy and hurting and broken among us. Who is it that Jesus loves?

Who does God love? Whether you're a Christian, not a Christian, I don't know what in the world you are. That's a relevant question. If there's a God up there that cares at all about us, how do I get him to notice me? How do I get God to love me? How can I be sure that Jesus cares? Who is it that Jesus commits himself to being around?

Who is it that Jesus reaches out to remember all the way back? Earlier in Matthew, Jesus's most famous sermon, he begins by saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is for those who are spiritually broken and bankrupt, and know it. Jesus goes after those who have nothing and are nothing. Listen to how Dane Auckland put it in his beautiful book, Gentle and Lowly.

He writes this quote time and again. It is the morally disgusting, the socially reviled, the inexcusable and undeserving who do not simply receive Christ's mercy, but to whom Christ most naturally gravitates. He is by his enemies testimony the friend of sinners. Do you see who the people that Jesus wants to help are? It's those who really, really need it.

How do you get God to notice you? How do you get God to love you? It's not by measuring up. It's not by being enough. It's by admitting how desperately needy you are. The counter-intuitive nature of the Christian faith, and the reason so many people oppose it. Frankly, the counterintuitive nature of the Christian gospel is that the requirement for friendship with God the only one, is unceasing neediness, unceasing helplessness.

There's no way actually to truly encounter God, to truly encounter Jesus, except through our weakness. There's no way to be healed by Jesus other than to be sick. If you are here today and you're feeling sick, if you're feeling hurt, if you're feeling weak or tired or confused or broken or just completely overwhelmed by your own sin, you're exactly the kind of person Jesus wants to help.

Think about it in your own life. Like do some internal work just for a second here and ask yourself, where am I feeling the most hurt? Where am I feeling the most need? Maybe it's a family member struggle. Maybe it's an addiction. Maybe it's a relationship that's got all kinds of scars and it's just a mess. Maybe it's a physical ailment that you keep hoping will get better and you keep going to doctors, and it's only getting worse.

And you're like, one, the world is going on. Whatever it is. Those are the places where you will meet with Jesus most deeply. Those are what qualify you for his love. You're the kind of people and I'm the kind of person in my own need that Jesus wants to help. Second, the request Jesus wants to hear. So there's these blind beggars we've seen.

They hear that Jesus is coming and who knows what they've heard about Jesus. But it's clearly enough for them to do some quick thinking and conclude, maybe this guy can help. Maybe this guy can heal. And so what do they do? Verse 30, Matthew says they cry out from the side of the road. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.

I preferred the translation Jesus, have a heart for us. Have a heart for us that, my friends, is a beautiful cry of helpless trust in Christ. And there is a really interesting irony in this story. The Bible often gives us irony. I don't know if you caught it. The people that see Jesus most clearly are the two blind men.

I mean, look at it. They grasp his person. They call him the Son of David, which is a confession that this man is the fulfillment of all of God's promises to his people. And they grasp his work. They say, have mercy on us. They know who he is, and they know what he came to do. Have a heart for us more than anyone else in the story, the blind, the blind see, they see God.

They understand who God is and what God does. The story reminds me of Psalm 72. Verse 12 says, God delivers the needy when he calls the poor, and him who has no helper. So they cry out. They get Jesus, at least to some level. And what's more important, I think, is that their cry. It's persistent, isn't it?

Matthew records verse 31. The crowd surprise, surprise, told them to shut up. The crowd rebuked them. Would y'all be quiet? You're embarrassing us. But what happens? They cry out all the more. These guys are not going to be silenced. Now was their chance, maybe their only chance to get Jesus's attention. He might never pass this way again. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

And so they desperately cry out to him. When I was 12, 1992 was the year I love baseball, and my favorite team, for some bizarre reason was the Chicago Cubs. And when I was 12, my grandparents took me to a Cubs Pirates game in Pittsburgh. Super random, but we got there like two hours early, and I don't know if this still happens at baseball games.

It's been a while, but it did back in my day. We got there early when all the players are taking batting practice, and I went with my granddad from our seats all the way down to the very first row, right behind the home team's dugout. And I had a hat, a Cubs hat, and I held it out for what, an autograph, a signature.

And I was with this mass of other 12 or so year old kids. And everybody is crying out for these Cubs players. My favorite player was Ryne Sandberg, second baseman for the Chicago Cubs, and his nickname was Rhino. So I was well, I wasn't, but all the other kids Rhino, Rhino, Rhino signed my dad, signed my hub, signed my jersey, signed my glove.

Screaming, crying, asking, wanting to get Rhinos attention. But I was sort of, again, a Presbyterian. Even at 12, I was in the back, not not being very vocal and I don't know what was going on with me. I wouldn't cry out. And my dad, my granddad kept saying, Luke, you have got to cry out, you've got to cry out.

He's never going to hear you. And I'm like, okay, okay, granddad. But I just could not bring myself to do it. I don't know why a lot of therapy has gone into that, but I don't know why I couldn't cry out all these other kids. Eventually when he came over, got the autograph. I just couldn't get it. I wasn't desperate enough.

I know, very sad. I wasn't desperate enough. These guys, they were desperate enough. They were willing to not give a rip what anyone thought about what they were doing, because their need was just that great. They knew there's no way they could parlay with Jesus or negotiate with Jesus or trade with Jesus. They have nothing to offer Jesus, and they weren't foolish enough to think they could ever get anything to offer Jesus.

All they could do was ask him for mercy, and then ask him again. And then ask him again, and then maybe scream it again. Jesus, Son of David, have a heart for us. So I was thinking about the story even this morning, and here's something that struck me. There's a there's an irony here we've already seen, but there's also a contrast.

On the one hand, you know, we've been talking about these beggars. You've got these beggars, blind guys crying out desperately for mercy. But on the other hand, you've got the crowds embarrassed, annoyed. And the crowds, make no mistake, they're following Jesus. These are not anti Jesus people. At least not yet. They're following Jesus because they're interested in Jesus.

They might even be fascinated with Jesus and they will offer Jesus praise. In fact, they do that in the very next story, which is the triumphal entry. But they aren't desperate. They're not desperate for his mercy. In fact, they're embarrassed that these blind beggars are asking for it so loudly and repeatedly. And so the question, I think, is which of these two groups, the beggars or the crowds reflects the way you relate to Jesus?

Are we often like the crowds, especially if we've been around the church for a while, or going about our lives or moving to the next thing we're even interested in and engage with? Jesus. You showed up to church on Youth Pastor Sunday. You've got to be at least somewhat engaged with Jesus, but we aren't crying out for him in desperation.

Part of what the Holy Spirit says to us through this story is the posture and standing that draws Jesus is the posture of asking for help. That's what Jesus wants from us. He wants us to cry out to him for help, as if he's our only hope. He wants us to cling for him to him as if he's our only resort.

And I'm getting convinced as I get a little older and a little more life under my wing. That, and this is a little bit theologically complicated, I reckon that I recognize that, but I think one of the reasons God allows suffering, even on his people, whom he loves, is to get us to the point of desperation. Just real quick aside, my dad is sick right now.

He's got cancer and he's doing quite well in his treatment. But you know, it's not very pleasant. About two months ago, he had a little procedure. I went up to help him. I spent about three days. My dad, you know, great gift for him to have his son be a caregiver to his son, not a daughter. No daughters.

Just three sons trying to take care of their dad. And, the first night was just terrible, and I was I was thinking about it that night. And, you know, normally I kind of live with, like, the bubble wrap, the bubble wrap of, like, Western influence around my life all the time. That basically protects me from significant suffering and pain.

And I would probably venture to say that most of us live in sort of a bubble wrap life just by the fact that we live in America, but when suffering hits, sometimes that cushion, the bubble wrap boom for a minute at least, is gone. And your face to face, neck to neck, shoulder to shoulder with really, really significant pain and hurt and suffering.

Why does God do that? He does that, at least I think, because that's what will get us to the point of desperation. And when I felt the bubble wrap removed that night with my dad, you know what I found myself doing? Like really, really, practically. I was praying a lot. And they were not like theologically profound prayers. But maybe they were.

They were. Help us Jesus. That's what the prayer was. Help. This stinks. Help! Get us out of this. That's what Jesus wants us to ask. Last thing, the question Jesus wants to ask us. Okay. So first 32 Jesus, here's these guys. Okay? And he stops and Matthew tells us, Jesus called them and he said, what do you want me to do for you?

Now, I love this. I love this exchange. Isn't that an obvious question? Does he really need after fear? Thought about that? Isn't it kind of obvious what these men would want him to do? Maybe. Maybe not. But Jesus asks anyway, why does Jesus ask this question? I think it's because, and I think this is the whole sense of the text, he wants to get down to the deepest need these men have.

They asked Jesus. They scream out for Jesus, show us mercy. And Jesus says, response is a question where do you want me to show you mercy?

What do you want me to do for you? What do you need? What do you need? What's the problem you have now? Presumably these men were often asking people for food or money, and maybe Jesus was wondering if that's what they're going to ask him for too. Maybe they just want Jesus to pray for them and touch them.

And yet the sense of the text, again, is that Jesus wants them to go all the way. He wants them to ask for the big enchilada. All of it. Because Jesus here's the here's the thing. Because Jesus wants to heal the place where they're hurting the worst. Jesus really cares about their deepest need. And so he asks them, where do you want my mercy to flow?

What do you want me to do for you? And the beggars is the best part of the story. They liberally answer, we want to be healed.

We would like to see. They asked Jesus for a miracle. They asked Jesus for the impossible. They ask something of Jesus that they can't ask of anyone else because no one else has Jesus's power. They want to see. And this is critical. They believe. They believe that Jesus not only can give this to them, but maybe more importantly, he wants to give this to them.

What do you want me to do for you? That is a question. Jesus. Through the power and ministry of his life giving spirit, asks you and me still today, what do you want me to do for you?

How do you answer?

What deep needs. Do you want him to meet? What deep wounds do you want him to mend? What deep divisions do you want him to reconcile? There might be a little space in your heart that you've just walled off. And you've come to terms with the fact in your own life that this is never going to get better.

My marriage is never going to get better. It's always going to be, at best, average. My health is never going to get better. I'm always going to feel like crap. My kids are never going to love Jesus, no matter how much I pray. I'm just going to stop asking. It's a waste of God's time. I get that it's really quite easy to get to that space in a broken world, still filled with broken bodies and broken souls.

But that's not what this text tells us. This is not a health and wealth tax that says Jesus will magically provide whatever you ask a Porsche, Ferrari, etc. but it is a text that says Jesus wants to help you in the place where you most desperately need it. It is a text where Jesus invites us to ask him to heal in the places that hurt most.

How about as we move into 2026, we recommit, if we're Christians, to opening up that little part of our heart that we might have closed off to God and just stop talking to him about and stop talking to anyone about and really even stop talking to ourselves about because it's just too painful. And this is not a promise from Luke that Jesus will miraculously heal that area.

But it is, I think, a promise from the Bible that if you invite him into those spaces, whether he heals it or not right now, he will show you mercy. He will help you because that's who God is. How can we say that? We can say that because of the logic of the gospel, which undergirds this whole story.

Here's the logic of the gospel. If God loves you enough to send Jesus to die a brutal, savage death on a cross to pardon our guilt which is real, and to restore us to God by grace through faith alone, and to restore us to each other and even really to restore us to ourselves. If that's true, and that is true, then surely God loves us enough to abide with and answer our pleading prayers for help, even if it might not be on the timeline we want, or in the way we expect.

God is a lot like Ted Lasso, always bringing persistent kindness day in and day out. God is so loving that he asks us to ask him for what we most want him to do. That is the posture of faith. Trusting that because he is for us and has died for us and has risen from the grave for us, he can bring the light of his love into the darkest spaces and places of our lives.

Not a good thing to ask him for in 2026. I'm going to commit to doing it again, especially those parts of my life where I've just stopped talking to God. Will you join me? Let's move forward in faith together because Jesus loves us

in the name of the father, son in spirit. Let's pray.