Introduction
Twenty-two years ago tomorrow, nearly three thousand Americans died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Americans, and people the world over, were left wondering: where is God in all of this? Is God real? Does he have a plan? Why is there so much evil in the world?
Today, we continue to ask the same question. Where is God, and why does he allow all of this evil? Racial ideologies pit countrymen against one another. Abortion - though no longer protected nationally - seems to win more and more legal protection in many states. The transgender ideology being pushed by the elites in our culture seems to be taking root, with little thought to the long-term harm done to children and civilization . Lord, where are you in all of this?
The Scriptures, on the one hand, don’t answer one of our deepest questions: why did God allow the world to become this way? Why, in the beginning, did he allow Adam to fall?
But while we can spend all day wringing our hands, trying to figure out philosophical questions like that, and getting nowhere (Deuteronomy 29:29 says that the secret things belong to the Lord), that won’t get us far when it comes to life. Rather, what we need are a set of beliefs - the Truth with a capital T - that will allow us to navigate and live in, have hope in the midst of the world as it actually is. We live in a world full of sin, pain, and death. Do we know why God allowed it? No. But we do know what he has done about it. And if we observe carefully, with ears to hear and eyes to see, what we will see is that “he does all things well.”
Text
31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. 34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
The Recipients of Jesus’ Work
Before we get too far, let me lay some of my Bible-related assumptions out on the table. When I pick up the Bible, I assume that the most important thing I can see or learn is what it teaches me about Jesus. I assume this because that’s what Jesus in John 5:39-40.
39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
I also assume, based on John 1:14-18, that the eternal Word, the Son, took on flesh and became True Man - Jesus of Nazareth - in order to reveal to us what God the Father is like.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
I say these two things by way of preface, because this sermon is structured to help you see the truth about Jesus. My hope is that, in the end, all of the sermons I preach are serving that end. Even when we pause on the gospel of Mark in a couple of weeks and take up the first 11 chapters of Genesis, my fundamental goal in preaching the Bible is to point you to Jesus Christ, through whom you can be forgiven by and enter into the family of God the Father, which is the definition of eternal life. I am preaching that you might know and mature in Jesus Christ. So let’s see what Mark 7:31-37 teaches us about Jesus.
Gentiles
First of all, we see the sort of people Jesus goes to. We looked last week at the fact that his mission was first of all to the Jews (v27, cf. Matthew 15:24). To again quote John 1(v11): he came to his own. But they were not the only recipients of his ministry and kindness. That text we read last week had seen Jesus move toward the northwest, outside of Jewish held territory, toward the region of Tyre and Sidon. He must have been in or closer to Tyre, because verse 31 tells us he went up through Sidon - some 20 miles north of Tyre. And he did this on his way back southeast to the Sea of Galilee. You don’t have to be a geography wiz to understand that moving north is usually not the quickest way to get south. So Why did Jesus do this?
The short answer is that we don’t know. Not for sure. What we do know is that this route takes him even deeper into Gentile lands, and then he goes from there, around the Sea of Galilee, to the region of the Decapolis. This region, east and southeast of the Sea of Galilee, was largely controlled by Gentiles as well, though a number of Jews lived there. This is where Jesus drove Legion from the demon-possessed man and into the herd of pigs. So Jesus was spending time with Gentiles, and may well have taken this giant, 100 miles plus, horseshoe shaped-route to stay primarily in Gentile controlled territory during that period of his ministry.
And as we think about the fact that Jesus was willing to spend time with and minister to those who were considered by his people to be “unclean”, it ought to make us wonder: who do I consider unclean? Who are “those people” to me? Now hear this: those are the people Jesus came to spend time with, and to save.
A Man Who Couldn’t Ask - And Wouldn’t Know To
We see this in the curious case of a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. The man is not completely mute, which is what you would assume if he had been born deaf. So we don’t know the exact nature of his speech troubles - whether he had been learning to speak and then went deaf at an early age, or whether something happened to him which robbed his hearing and made speech difficult - we simply don’t know. We do know that if he was deaf, he wouldn’t have the same knowledge everyone else did about this mysterious healer from Galilee, Jesus of Nazreth. He wouldn’t be hearing the constant chatter, he wouldn’t be able to hear him teach to the multitudes.
Further, though he may well have understood his need, this severe speech impediment wouldn’t have made communication difficult or impossible. Kids, try to imagine asking you parents for a glass of water when you’re really thirsty, but they just don't understand you. No matter how many times you try to ask, they just don’t know what you’re saying, and so they just shoo you away. How would you feel? Sad because they don’t understand? Mad because they don’t see your needs? One thing is for sure: you’d still be thirsty.
That is how this whole man’s life is. He has needs that he can’t communicate to others. He is unheard, and thus probably spends a lot of his life being unseen. He needs healing, but he can’t speak to ask for it. And because he can’t hear, he probably doesn’t even know to ask for it.
But that’s where “they” come in. We don’t know who “they” are, but like the friends of the paralytic back in chapter 2, they bring this man to Jesus. And instead of waiting for some expression of faith on the part of the man who needs healing, Jesus simply heals him.
Friends, who do you know who needs to be brought to Jesus? Have you invited them to meet him? Invite folks to church, ask them questions about what they believe, tell them about Jesus. He is the only One who can satisfy our deepest longings, and people don’t know that he is the answer unless we tell them.
The Method of His Work
Now, this is one of the more peculiar miracles of Jesus. It’s one that only Mark tells us about, and he tells us in v33 that Jesus took this man aside from the crowd. He wasn’t trying to make a public spectacle of him. He wasn’t trying to make a demonstration. Rather, Jesus cared about this man as an individual. He wanted to address his needs. Do you know that Jesus deals with you in the same way? Of course, the results when you encounter Jesus are public, as we’ll see shortly. But Jesus cares about you.
So he pulls the man aside, which is itself a little abnormal for how Jesus did his healings, but then it gets real weird, especially for the modern reader. Jesus sticks his fingers in the man’s ears, and then spits. After spitting, he (possibly taking some of his own saliva) touches the man’s tongue. We read that and think: 1) weird, & 2) gross.
And it’s another one of those aspects about this passage that is somewhat mysterious, because Jesus doesn’t explain why he used saliva to heal the man. But the two most common explanations probably both have something to them. The most basic is that ancient healers often used saliva as part of their method. And so Jesus may simply have been using an action which made sense to those around him, especially those who hadn’t seen him work before. By actually touching the man’s ears and mouth, he could be brought in to understand what was going on and where the healing came from, whereas if he had simply spoken, the man would not have been brought in on the process in the same way. There’s probably something to that.
A second possible explanation, and the one that I am particularly partial to, is that saliva is an unclean substance in the Old Testament. If you spit on someone, that was the ultimate sign of disrespect and degradation. And yet here, Jesus uses this substance of degradation and uncleanness to make the man’s body whole - to free him from the bondage of deafness and his speech impediment. And that has elements of foreshadowing in it, which will tie to the next spitty miracle which, Lord willing, we’ll look at in two weeks. But this won’t be the last time that an unclean bodily fluid is the means of salvation for those who are bound. The same thing happened at the cross.
The Nature of His Work
Which brings us to verse 34, where after Jesus had stuck his fingers in the man’s ears, and touched his tongue, he looked to heaven, sighed, and spoke: “Ephphatha.”
Why does Jesus look to heaven, and why does he sigh? A sigh, in itself, seems pretty ambiguous. But if you keep reading into chapter eight, Jesus sighs there in verse 12, and it’s clearly tied to frustration over unbelief. Here it would seem that Jesus is angry or frustrated or groaning over the effects of sin in the world. The difficulties which this deaf man faced moved Jesus, and sighing, he looked to heaven. We might imagine him praying with the Psalmist, “how long, O LORD?”
But unlike a merely human Psalmist, the Lord Jesus is not impotent in the face of human suffering. We look at suffering, and ask, what can be done? We look at the craziness in our culture and think, who can save us? We look at the sin in our lives and despair, who will deliver me from this body of death? The answer: Jesus. Jesus can save from any circumstance. He stopped, looked to heaven, and sighed. But then he spoke. And the voice which called the stars into existence, the voice which stilled the seas, the voice which blessed bread and saw it multiply for 5,000, this same voice spoke to the man - not the man’s ears or his tongue, but his whole person - the voice of Jesus spoke this Aramaic word: “Ephphatha”, which means, “Be opened.” Open to hear. Open to speak. Open to be free from the bondage that had previously owned him.
And the Word of the Lord did not return void, it accomplished the purpose for which he sent it out: the man “spoke plainly.” He didn’t just receive the ability to speak at some basic level. This man could speak clearly and articulate that which had been bottled up inside. Jesus made him free.
Responding to Jesus’ Work
This is an incredibly important miracle. Jesus will ask his disciples in the text we look at next week if, having ears, they do not hear. The hardness of heart which is so often seen in Mark’s gospel is pictured throughout as a dullness of ear, a dimness of vision. To not hear Jesus clearly speaking, to not see him clearly working, these are signs of spiritual deadness. And there is only one solution: the Sovereign work of Jesus to save. He is the one who can open the eyes of the blind, and release the ears of the deaf. And when he does so, it will loose our tongues to sign his praises.
That’s what we see in verse 36. “And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.” And it’s pretty tough to blame them. If you had known someone for years who struggled with an inability to speak, who couldn’t hear a word you said, and now all of a sudden this guy is speaking clearly, and you’re holding a genuine back-and-forth conversation, how could you not tell everyone you knew? This is not the sort of thing you keep quiet about!
So while Jesus was still not, at this point in his ministry, seeking the acclaim of the public, the acclaim nonetheless came. And the reason it came in in verse 37: ‘And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”’ That first line that the astonished crowds speak is the one I want to meditate upon. He has done all things well.
Brothers and sisters, do you believe that Jesus has done all things well? This is one of those questions where the rubber of faith meets the road of life, and the quality of your spiritual tires gets put to the test.
When you have a flat tire on the side of the highway in the blistering summer heat: has he done all things well?
When you are diagnosed with cancer and don’t know what’s going to happen: has he done all things well?
When your child is walking away from the faith and running away from wise living: has he done all things well?
When you are falsely accused and unable to defend yourself from those accusations: has he done all things well?
When you are dealing with chronic pain and physical suffering, and have suffered much from many physicians: has he done all things well?
When you are dealing with the same sin over and over and over again: has he done all things well?
When you are lonely and feel like know one knows or cares what you are going through: has he done all things well?
To return to our examples at the beginning: when your country is attacked from without, or feels like it’s splitting apart from within: has Jesus done all things well?
Our flesh wants to answer these questions with a “no.” We believe that God owes us an explanation for how he is running this universe. But the fact of the matter is that he doesn’t. His ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts than our thoughts. His understanding is deeper than we can search out.
But we can see what he has clearly revealed. And he has revealed that he is not distant from us. The Word, the eternal Son, did not simply speak words from heaven. No, he took on flesh, and dwelt among us. Hebrews 4 says he is not unable to sympathize with our weaknesses - he knows what it is to have a frail human body, subject to pain and suffering and death. He knows the hurt of rejection and betrayal. He knows what it is to have others mock, despise, and scorn him. He knows what it is to have a family fractured by allegiance to the kingdom of God. He knows what it is to live under a government concerned with keeping the powerful in power, and promoting false worship. There truly is nothing you go through in this life which Jesus cannot look at and say, “I know.” And the Lord of all the universe will stand by your side and weep with you as you weep.
But this text also shows us that we need to trust him. Because Jesus didn’t just come to empathize, he came to liberate. Hebrews 2:14-18
14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Jesus came and lived a life that makes his empathy possible. He died an atoning, propitiating death, that we could be forgiven. And he rose from the dead so we no longer have to fear death.
And the Lord who has power over life and death, the Lord who spoke to the deaf man with a speech impediment and freed him, this same Lord Jesus has the power to free you. He will free you from the guilt and sentence of your sin if you will trust him. Ask Jesus to forgive you, and all your sins will be forgiven.
And he has the power to address every other problem in your life. Ask him for his help. He may change your circumstances. Or he may, in his divine wisdom, be in the process of using those circumstances to change you and shape you into the Christian he wants you to be. I said early in this sermon that the goal of the Bible, and my goal in preaching, is to see you know and mature in the likeness of Jesus Christ. You need to understand that this is God’s goal in your whole life, not just your Bible reading and sermon listening. God is bringing circumstances to you which, if you respond in faith and trust towards him, will shape you and press you further in towards him.
And this is what maturity looks like: no matter the circumstances, you look to heaven and say: he does all things well. Sometimes you will say that with a smile of rejoicing. Sometimes you will say it through hot tears, begging him to help you believe it’s true. But the mature Christian, and the growing Christian on their way to maturity, is the one who looks at the work of Jesus in the past, trusts him for the future, and says: He does all things well. He does all things well. He does all things well.
