Jesus heals a man who was both mute and deaf and he told his followers to not say anything about it... but no one listened. Hear Pastor Thomas Terry break down this beautiful passage of Mark's gospel.
Transcript
Welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. We hope this message inspires you, roots you down deep into the Lord, into His Word, and may His Spirit be your guide as you enjoy this teaching. Thanks for joining us. Here’s the message. This morning’s scripture passage comes from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 7, verses 31 through 37. Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis. 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. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, Ephatha, that is, be opened. And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. He who has ears to hear, let them hear. This is one of those statements said by Jesus on multiple occasions throughout his Gospels. And it’s a very interesting statement because it’s so much bigger than what appears on the surface. It’s not just a statement on the biological realities of a person, that if a person has physical ears that happen to function properly, that they’ll be able to hear all things. What Jesus means by this statement is that in order to hear anything, to understand anything pertaining to spiritual realities, you must have spiritual ears.
You must have ears that have been tuned by the Lord. You must have ears that have been open to God to understand the things of God. It’s not enough to have physical ears. You need divine help. This is why there’s millions and millions of intelligent people across this world who know a lot of things about God, who can recite a lot of facts concerning God, but really know nothing pertaining to the spiritual realities of God and his Gospel. Because hearing certain things or hearing facts about God doesn’t mean anything if you’ve not been given the ears to hear. And you should be encouraged by that reality. Because what this means is that Christianity and the message of the Gospel is not relegated to smarter or more sophisticated people in our society. It’s not exclusive to intelligent or articulate people, praise be to God. You don’t have to be a professor or a PhD to know the God of the Scriptures.
You need only appeal to the mercy of Jesus who gives you the ears to hear, who gives you understanding concerning the saving power of his Gospel. And this is in many ways what we’ll see in our text this morning with this deaf and mute man who not only needs his abilities to physically hear and speak helped, but also needs the ability to spiritually understand. This morning we’ll also see what happens when a needy person is thrown at the multi-sensory mercy of God who opens not only the human ears, but also the human heart to help comprehend or understand the very mercy he’s received. And so this morning I’ve once again broken down our passage into three scenes. You know this is my style. So we’ll look at the pitied person, the private healing, and the public confession. But before we dive into these scenes, I first want to help establish some context to help
Setting the Context
frame this narrative. Now one of the things I really do love about Mark’s Gospel is that with each one of his sections he oftentimes sets the context with the first verse. That’s actually what’s happened here this morning. This first verse 31 helps to frame this narrative with some important context. So before we dive into the scenes, let’s look at verse 31. Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis. So Mark picks up this narrative again, not so much chronologically, but this time geographically. He picks up where we left off last week with the Syrophoenician woman in the region of Tyre and Sidon. Now Mark doesn’t account for the space and the time between this encounter with the Syrophoenician woman and where it picks up this morning in Decapolis. But what we know from commentators and church historians is that it’s believed that Jesus
moved around this region for at least eight months. Now what was Jesus doing in these eight months in this Gentile region of Tyre and Sidon? Well he was most likely teaching and training his disciples for their ministry mission. He was doing the work of equipping and establishing ambassadors who would be sent out to lead this ministry of proclaiming the gospel after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Now Mark’s gospel is the only gospel that gives you the detailed story concerning this deaf and mute man. But just like last week, Matthew’s gospel does give us some important details leading up to this particular scene. So if you’d be so kind to turn with me to Matthew chapter 15, starting at verse 29, this will give us a bit more of the specifics leading up to this narrative. Starting at verse 29, Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee, and
he went up on a mountain and sat down there. And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others. And they put them at his feet, and he healed them, so that the crowd wondered when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel. So from Matthew’s account, you get a better perspective of the kind of environment where this healing ministry took place. By now the news concerning Jesus has spread through the entire region, and so great crowds have come to Jesus. Notice the text says great crowds. That’s plural, meaning a lot of big crowds have come to Jesus, bringing with them all kinds of broken and needy people. See, if you remember the last time Jesus was in this region of the Decapolis, it was when
we were in Mark chapter 5. And it was then where Jesus was approached by this demon-possessed man, a man who was possessed by a thousand demons. Jesus lands in this completely Gentile region, and right as his feet hit the shore, he’s confronted by this legion of demons. You remember this man was in such a bad place. It was so bad for this man that the people of the town had banished him to the outskirts of the town. And they chained him up, but the chains couldn’t keep him locked down. He literally kept breaking his chains. He was so isolated from the community that he lived among the tombs of dead people. That was his community, dead people. He was always crying out and cutting himself - this man had no dignity. He had no self-worth. The people of the region treated him so poorly.
As a social outcast, they wanted nothing to do with him, so they pushed him out. But Jesus, full of compassion, exercised the demons, and then threw the demons into these pigs, and then pushed the pigs into the sea where they drowned. Immediately after the demons left this man, he was a totally different person. So different that the people of the town didn’t even recognize him anymore. Jesus restored this man’s dignity and set him free. And as Jesus gets back into the boat to leave the area, this man begs Jesus, please take me with you. I want to go where you’re going. And Jesus says no. He says no. And in Mark 5, 19, he says, go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. Well now, as Jesus returns back to this region of the Decapolis, we see that the man who
was liberated by this legion of demons actually did exactly what Jesus called him to do. He stayed in the region, proclaiming to his friends and the people what Jesus had done for him, how the Lord had mercy on him, how Jesus radically saved this man’s life, changed him and restored dignity. So the people of the town knew what Jesus had done for him. He was so vocal about it. So word gets out, Jesus is back, the one who restores dignity and destroys demons. And so everyone in the town is now bringing their broken and needy people to Jesus. The original language here says that they threw people at the feet of Jesus, like literally tossing these marginalized, disenfranchised, broken people at the merciful feet of Jesus. It’s likely that the whole town was roaming around looking for these broken and needy people, looking for the least of people to bring them to Jesus.
The Pitied Person
And of course, some people in the crowd think of this one man that everybody has seen on the side of the road begging, desperately needy, this social outcast, this person who is beyond repair, a person that most people in this city felt sorry for. So in verse 32, we get introduced to the first scene: the pitied person. 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. So as Jesus is healing and restoring all these types of people, crippled people, broken people who are literally being thrown at his feet, some of the people bring this mute and deaf person to Jesus and beg Jesus, lay hands on him. Now the fact that they beg Jesus to lay hands on him speaks two things. One, the people bringing this deaf and mute man to Jesus are either related to him or
they’re close friends with this man, because you wouldn’t beg someone to heal a person if you didn’t really know that person. And two, there was an overwhelming sense of pity for this man. They bring him to Jesus because he is pitied among his friends and relatives and certain parts of the community. See, you have to understand what kind of condition this kind of condition would mean for someone in a first century culture. There were no speech therapists. Sign language wasn’t invented yet. There were no specialists that could help this man flourish in a society with these kinds of abilities. In fact, in this culture, to be both mute and deaf would render a person completely useless, helpless, really good for nothing other than begging for handouts. If you can’t hear anything, you can’t know anything. If you can’t speak anything, you can’t ask for anything.
And so from the vantage point of a pagan society, a person like this would be completely just existing, relegated to the outskirts of society. They would have been treated as an inconvenience or far worse, as someone not worthy of attention or investment, a person pitied in the public square. Now we don’t know much about this man’s condition, but what we do know is that it wasn’t that this man couldn’t speak at all, it was that he had a difficult time speaking. The original language tells us that it was more so a severe speech impediment. In fact, most scholars believe that the man wasn’t born deaf, but through some sort of disease became deaf in his early years, which ultimately resulted in this speech impediment because you can’t hear the words that you’re saying, it impacts the speech. And apparently his speech was so bad that the people of the crowd pitied him.
Now we tend to see pity only in negative terms. When we see the brokenness of a person in our society, and when we see the devastating effects of brokenness play itself out in the life of a person, it’s oftentimes very ugly. I mean, think of a drug addict. Someone completely strung out on drugs, so damaged by the drugs, it could be so bad that your knee-jerk response is to turn away because it’s so ugly to look at. But there is a positive beauty in pity. When we see the brokenness of people, but we don’t turn away from it, but instead express compassion and empathy when we respond to the brokenness of people who need it the most, we actually reflect the heart of God. The one who saw us in our ugliness and in our neediness, who demonstrated the greatest act of pity by taking our sin and taking it to the cross to pull us out of our deep
despair and to free us from the bondage of our sin. There is a deep beauty in that kind of pity. The people of the crowd exercised to a certain extent that kind of positive pity. They acted, they brought this man to the feet of Jesus for help. And it’s here we see how Jesus demonstrates perfect pity. You see this perfect pity of Jesus play itself out in verse 33 through 36 with the private healing. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue, and looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, Epithet, that is be opened. And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. It’s here where you get this beautiful picture of the multisensory mercy of Jesus, where you get this picture of perfect pity.
The Private Healing
It’s also a massive picture of the grace of God and the compassion of God. It’s so much more than a demonstration of God’s supernatural power, though it is that, you actually see the heart of man, the heart of God with this man. Not only in terms of the fact that he heals this person who’s so desperately needy, but also in terms of the process of Jesus’ healing, the way that Jesus heals this man. This whole encounter here demonstrates the love and sympathy of Jesus for this man. The first thing Jesus does is he pulls this man away from the crowd. It is the sympathy of Jesus that pulls him away privately. See, this man has dealt with this social stigma for most of his life. He’s likely been made fun of. He’s been ostracized, passed over, neglected as an outcast. He’s begged people, and people don’t want to be around other people who are begging,
so they pretend he doesn’t exist. He’s been a public spectacle. And so Jesus moves this man out of the social sphere, away from the public square, so as to not make this man another public spectacle. Jesus is moved with compassion, and so he pulls this man aside from the chaos, from all these spectators to give him personal attention. Jesus pulls him aside. He’s intimate with this man. He is engaging with this man where most people would have nothing to do with him. Jesus engages with him privately. And when they get alone, away from the crowd, what Jesus does next is so seemingly strange and awkward. We haven’t seen this kind of situation here with Jesus in his healing ministry in Mark. Jesus sticks his fingers in this man’s ear. Jesus spits on his own hand, and then takes the spit and touches this man’s tongue.
He looks up to heaven, and then he sighs this deep sigh. Now why does Jesus do all that? He could have simply spoke the words, be healed, and this man would have been healed. I mean, last week, Jesus exercised this demon-possessed daughter by simply saying to the mom, the daughter wasn’t even around. But Jesus says, she’s made well. Jesus speaks, and powerfully, the demon is exercised. We see all kinds of accounts where Jesus simply speaks, and there’s healing. So why now does Jesus do all this crazy stuff? Well, it’s in these crazy details where we get this beautiful picture of the kindness, tenderness, and sympathy of Jesus. You’ve got to remember, this man’s biggest issue was one of understanding and communication. This man couldn’t hear or speak, so when the people go to get him to bring him to Jesus, he doesn’t know what’s going on.
To him, it’s crazy. Why are you moving me here? What did I do? Is this it? Are you guys done dealing with me? Did I beg too much? Is this the final straw? He would be very confused, scared. So what Jesus does to this man is he condescends to this man’s issues, and uses nonverbal communication to alleviate this man’s fear, to alleviate his confusion and his potential anxiety, and begin to walk through, step-by-step, everything that is about to happen. It is the kindness and tenderness of Jesus that he uses this kind of first-century sign language in which this man would totally understand. What a glorious picture of the God that we serve, who condescends to us, who helps us understand, who confronts our fears with tender mercy. And so look what Jesus does here through this grid, and see the compassion of Jesus. First he takes his fingers and sticks them in this man’s unhearing ears to show this
man, I know what your problem is. I know that you can’t hear, and I know that this is the root of all of your problems. You don’t need to be scared. I intend to do something about that. Then Jesus spits in his own hands and takes the spit and places it on this man’s tongue so as to communicate to this man, I know you have a problem with speech. I know you can’t communicate well, which is another massive problem, which is one of the reasons why you’ve been ostracized from your community and separated from these people. Listen, don’t be scared, I intend to do something about that. So this man - just so this man doesn’t get the wrong idea as to who is helping him with these issues, Jesus looks up to heaven to communicate to this person, the one who will be responsible for your healing is Jesus, the one, is God, the one who sits in the heavens.
This is the one who’s responsible for your healings. It’s not medicine, it’s not magic, it’s the mercy of God that is going to heal you. He is giving this man these nonverbal cues that Jesus was praying to the Father for this man to be healed. And then finally, this deep sigh, this sigh of pity and compassion, the sigh that comes from the deep sorrow that Jesus has for suffering humanity, he is communicating to this man that this is not how things were supposed to be for you. Your condition is not how it was supposed to be. And Jesus has compassion, he’s hurting for this man. Jesus’ heart for humanity is expressed here, that his aim is for things to be made well. Jesus reveals to this man and to us this morning that he hurts for humanity. He has deep despair for humanity, anguish from the effects of sin, from the effects
of the fall and how it wrecks humans. After this deep sigh, Jesus says the word, Ephetha, which is an Aramaic word that means be opened. The original language for that word is better translated to be unchained, to be set free, to be unlocked, and that’s exactly what happens here. His ears were opened, his tongue was loosed from the chains that restricted his speech, and immediately, immediately this man begins to hear and speak perfectly. He was set free. Now think about this for a second. The same God who spoke creation into existence, the same God who holds stars and planets in their place, the same God who spoke wind and seas into submission, condescends personally to this man who is in deep need. The powerful God, the God who is everywhere, condescends to this person and meets his specific needs. This is the personal nature of the God that we serve.
He cares. He cares deeply about this man, and he cares about us, and he speaks into our despair. He speaks into our loneliness. He speaks into our brokenness. This is a beautiful picture of the compassion and mercy of God. Not only was this man instantly able to hear and understand, he was able to speak perfectly and plainly. And the phrase, he spoke plainly, it actually means he continued to speak, that he couldn’t stop speaking, and why would he stop speaking? He hadn’t been able to speak his whole life. He hasn’t been able to hear, and so now that God unlocks all of that, of course he can’t stop speaking. And listen, this healing, just like all of Jesus’ healings, it’s always more than what appears on the surface. Yes, it’s a miracle. He could now hear and speak, but it’s also a picture of something far greater.
In fact, the word epithah, be opened, it’s more than opening the ears and the tongues. This word means to open the whole of a person. Jesus opened up the whole of this man. He meant more than just his physical needs. You see, unless God opens the whole of a person, we cannot know God. We cannot receive from God. We are incapable of hearing or knowing God. We’re incapable of speaking to God. Our hearts must be open to the truth of God’s word. We just talked about this a few weeks ago, that the human heart is really what makes up the whole of a person, and what is inside that heart is ugliness. It’s brokenness. It’s all kinds of defilement that comes from that heart. Our hearts are sick and broken, that our hearts were locked and enslaved to all kinds of sins until Jesus said to us, epithah, be opened.
And it was at that point when our hearts of stone were made hearts of flesh. You see, this whole healing encounter here is the gospel in miniature. We were helpless and hopeless. We couldn’t understand. We couldn’t hear. We couldn’t speak. Our hearts were locked and full of sin, but Jesus pitied us. He condescended to us, taking on human flesh, suffered even to the point of death, taking our sin to the cross, saving us from our biggest impediment, the sin that separated us from a holy God. And if you’ve come to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, it is owing all to the fact that Jesus has said to you, be opened. That should make you stop and thank God for his radical mercy and his radical compassion that he had towards you, for his perfect pity. This should compel us to worship. Through this miracle, this man was a social outcast, casted out from the rest of society.
He was pitied because he was hopeless and helpless, but he was radically healed. His healing restored, his speech restored, his dignity and his value restored, and he was brought back in. And more importantly, his soul was restored. As a result of this miracle, look at how he and the crowd respond in verse 37 with the public confession. Jesus charged them to tell no one, but the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, he has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. So Jesus tells this man and the crowd, don’t tell anyone. This man’s first time hearing and understanding instruction hears from God, don’t say anything, and what does he do? He speaks about it. He doesn’t listen. I mean, why would they? How could they? They’re so overwhelmed at the witness of God’s great miracle that they can’t help but tell
The Public Confession
everyone around them about it. See, there was no way this man, who was unable to speak, will be able not to speak. He can’t contain it. His lips were unlocked to testify of God’s great mercy. Now, why in the world does Jesus tell him not to say anything in the first place? I mean, the last time Jesus was in this region, he told the man with the legion of demons to stay and to tell everyone, tell your friends, tell everyone what Christ has done for you. So why now does Jesus tell him to remain silent? Well, the text doesn’t explicitly tell us, but we can pretty much assume that it’s because Jesus has every intention to stay in the Gentile region. And if people continue to hear about what Jesus is capable of doing in terms of his miracles, then his preaching ministry, which is his priority, will be significantly hindered.
Because Jesus will not be relegated to a miracle worker as some circus freak show, he wants the crowd to remain quiet about it. But no matter how much he charges them to chill, they go out and they tell everybody about what happened. And I can totally understand this, because this here is the natural response to someone who’s encountered the touch of God. This is the natural response to people who have come to taste God’s rich mercy. When the Lord sets us free, we are compelled at the core of who we are to tell others about what Jesus has done. This is what I love about new Christians. They can’t contain it. They run out and they tell everyone about what Jesus has done. Just like this man. I wonder why we lose the zeal to tell others about Jesus. I wonder why it becomes for us so typical.
Why are we so casual? Why have we lost this zeal to tell others about Jesus? My prayer for Trinity is that God would rekindle the zeal to tell others about Jesus. That we would be so radically compelled to evangelize our world with the beautiful message of God’s mercy. This man couldn’t contain it. We shouldn’t contain it. But it’s not just them telling others what happened. It’s bigger than the crowd telling people what happened. They actually make this amazing statement that’s almost prophetic. Just like last week with the Syrophoenician woman, she says something that I don’t think she quite understood. And the same thing happens here with the crowd. In their amazement, they say unknowingly, this echo of Genesis 131, he does all things well. See, in Genesis 131, it says, and God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. See, what the people saw with the healing of this man was God’s recreation work invading
humanity. What started in the garden that was good, that was lost and broken through sin, God’s recreation kingdom has now entered in, making things good again, making things well again. But the people could only see dimly. We now see more fully that Jesus does everything well. What he did in creation, he did well. What he did at the cross, he did well. This is why in Mark 1, verse 11, immediately after Jesus is baptized and the heavens are cracked open, the father says from heaven, you are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased. The father was pleased with Jesus because Jesus does all things well. He was perfectly obedient to the father, perfectly fulfilled the father’s will, satisfying perfectly all the legal demands of God. He perfectly laid down his life as a ransom for many. In fact, Jesus’ last words were, it is finished, meaning mission complete.
Living with Perfect Pity
I did what I came to do perfectly. He does all things well. And the crowd is simply testifying of this beautiful reality. Now, I want to close this morning with a bit of application, with a few takeaways from what is so clear in our passage this morning. The first is this question for you: Do you have a heart of pity for the lost and broken people around us? Do we look at our city and our world with a deep sigh, with a deep breath of despair for the people totally lost and entangled in sin? Or do we look at the people of Portland with disdain? I can’t believe they would act that way. I can’t believe they would think that way. I mean, just look at these people. If you have no pity, if you’re prone to judgment, then you have lost your grip on God’s perfect
and positive pity for you. And you need to pray that God give you the same positive pity for lost people that he had for you. Listen, they do what they do and they think the way they think because they can’t understand. They can’t see. They can’t hear. Their hearts are locked and need to be opened. You have to remember that had it not been for the grace of God, for the mercy of God who unlocked your heart and opened your eyes and your ears, you would be just like them, thinking the same things, doing the same things. But God had pity on you. He had mercy on you. We need to think in those ways. Incidentally, what we see from this text is that ministry is sometimes messy and inconvenient. Jesus touched people. He got alone with people. He pulled them aside. He saw them in their deep, desperate need and he did something about it.
He didn’t just pray about it. He acted. He touched. He met needs. He healed. He spoke truth and we must do the same thing. Yes, prayer is the appropriate starting point, but we also must do and act and be, even if it’s messy, even if it’s ugly, even if it requires for us to get in the trenches with people. That’s what Jesus did for us. Finally, the testimony of the crowd with their limited perspective was that Jesus did all things well. The testimony of every believer who trusts and follows Jesus should also be that he does all things well, that he does everything well, which means then, no matter our circumstances, no matter the dark providences or the trials or the difficulties of life, the things that we’re going through, we can trust him because he does all things well. In fact, he uses the difficulties and the trials of life to make us better Christians.
That process that he uses through trials is perfect. Even that is done well. He matures us through hardships because nothing else would quite work the same. And if we intend to see our way through the darkness, we must hold to the truth that he does all things well, that he’s working all things together for the good of those who love him. We have to actually believe that. Listen, we must, like the crowd, confess to a broken and lost world that God does all things well, that he’s renovating this world and making all things new. I mean, everyone knows right now that our world is in a very bad place. Everyone’s looking for hope. They’re looking for peace, and they won’t find it anywhere. They’re not going to find it on Tuesday, no matter the outcome of the election. They’re not going to find it there.
Jesus is the only one who can make all things well. He is the only source of true and lasting hope. And what a better time to be a witness to a watching and broken world that God heals, that he restores, that he forgives, that he saves, that he reconciles, that he is recreating this broken world, that he’s coming to bring perfect justice, that he’s coming to right all the wrongs of this world. He does all things well. And I ask you this morning, do you have ears to hear? Do you want ears to hear? Do you want to understand? Do you want to be forgiven for your sins? Do you want to be cleansed from a guilty conscience? Do you want to have peace with God? You can have that this morning. You can hear, you can see, and you can taste of God’s great mercy this morning if you ask
him to open your ears to the truth. Ask him to open your eyes to the realities of his gospel. Ask him to open up your heart and he will do it. He is the God who delights in unlocking the human hearts. He is the God that delights in making all things new. Come to him this morning. Ask him to open your heart and he will do it. He does all things well. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you for this passage because of what it means for us. This passage reminds us of the pity that you’ve had on us, of the way that you have condescended to meet us when we were lost, hopeless, and desperate, unable to hear, unable to speak, unable to know anything. You met us in your great pity. And I pray, O Lord and God, that this text would remind us of that so we don’t lose sight
of it, so that when we look at the broken world around us, we are moved with compassion and pity. Father, I pray that you would help us unlock our tongue so that we might go out into this world to speak, to zealously proclaim that you unlock hearts, that hope is found in the beautiful gospel. I pray, God, that you would compel us, give us greater affections for all that you’ve done for us. What a beautiful passage for us to wrestle with this morning. I pray, God, that as we see a bigger picture of the character, compassion, tenderness, mercy, and love of Jesus, it would radically transform us. Spirit of God, have your way in us. Conform us more into this merciful Jesus that we saw so plainly in our text. And it’s in his merciful name that we pray. Amen. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon.
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