SPEAKER_00: Mark chapter 7, verse 31, Jesus returned from the region of Tyre, went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of Decapolis.
SPEAKER_00: They brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment.
SPEAKER_00: They begged him to lay his hand on him.
SPEAKER_00: Taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue.
SPEAKER_00: Looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, Apaphatha, that is, be opened.
SPEAKER_00: And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus charged them to tell no one.
SPEAKER_00: The more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.
SPEAKER_00: They were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well.
SPEAKER_00: He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.
SPEAKER_00: Until the 1800s, with the advent, mostly in France, of sign language, there was nobody in the world more to be pitied than a deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: Unable to hear, the person would be unable to speak.
SPEAKER_00: Born without the nerve connections in the head, allowing audio waves to register in the brain, just clinically deaf.
SPEAKER_00: The child wouldn't be able to hear speech and so wouldn't be able to develop his own speech.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in a world without hearing tests, there would be no indication that what was wrong with the child was auditory.
SPEAKER_00: He would have a fully functioning brain, fully functioning vocal cords.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing's wrong in his mind, nothing would be wrong with his speech if only he could hear.
SPEAKER_00: But because he can't hear, he's unable to learn vocabulary, unable to learn how to talk.
SPEAKER_00: And for the first several months of life, that wouldn't necessarily be evident.
SPEAKER_00: He could make uh different baby sounds, goo goo and gaga and whatnot, and a parent, even with other children, other fully functioning children, wouldn't possibly even notice a difference.
SPEAKER_00: But it starts around the age where you would expect children to respond to commands.
SPEAKER_00: Prohibitions, don't do that, don't touch that, etc., where the child wouldn't be able to comprehend, wouldn't hear.
SPEAKER_00: Other children around those ages would start speaking, and this child wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's just a late developer.
SPEAKER_00: What the child would be able to perceive better than his peers is facial expressions.
SPEAKER_00: The child would become an expert at reading the room to compensate for his lack of being able to hear.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the first expression the child would pick up on and become an expert in is that of disappointment.
SPEAKER_00: The baby would be disappointing his or her parents, the playmates, brothers and sisters, who again aren't aware that there's an auditory deficiency, only recognize that the child doesn't seem to be listening, doesn't seem to be obeying, is uncapable of responding to the sound of voices.
SPEAKER_00: When other kids are speaking, this child wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: The child, probably around the age of two or so, would become aware that he's missing something.
SPEAKER_00: There's something wrong with him, not with the others.
SPEAKER_00: In most nations, that kind of child would be put to death, abandoned in the woods, left to the wolves.
SPEAKER_00: In the Roman world, they would build asylums.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the Roman Empire had built asylums in uh Israel for these kind of people, not just these kind of people, but all you know, all kinds of illnesses were placed there.
SPEAKER_00: In some parts of the world, they'd be left as beggars.
SPEAKER_00: Those who were parents would sometimes hide kids from the authorities to keep them from being put to death until they were old enough to beg for their own life and then be turned onto the streets.
SPEAKER_00: In Israel, these people were considered unclean.
SPEAKER_00: You weren't supposed to touch them.
SPEAKER_00: You definitely were not allowed to teach them to read or write, as if that were even possible.
SPEAKER_00: Again, you're not able to hear sounds, you can't phonetically connect letters to sounds, it just makes it impossible.
SPEAKER_00: I had somebody tell me after first hour, the first deaf mute who learned to read was in the 1800s from the United States, but taught by some French doctors.
SPEAKER_00: Until that, it never happens.
SPEAKER_00: It never happens.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews had forbidden teaching them or showing them written words, because the idea is that written words contain the words of God.
SPEAKER_00: You're not able to tell what's going on in the person's mind, so you don't want to put them in a situation where they could blaspheme by reading things that are holy but without understanding them.
SPEAKER_00: Basically, these people were treated like spectacles, mentally dysfunctional, is what everybody assumed.
SPEAKER_00: And again, that would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
SPEAKER_00: They'd be treated like they were crazy, they would become crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Their brain, able to develop, hinged or restricted by the lack of proper nouns, not knowing what things are called.
SPEAKER_00: Left to a life of despair and ridicule.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of person Jesus meets in verse 32.
SPEAKER_00: They brought to him one of these deaf mutes.
SPEAKER_00: He was deaf, unable to hear, and he had a speech impediment.
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting word in the Greek here.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier I said their tongue is perfectly fine.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with their actual speech.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard people say, you know, see, the Bible doesn't understand what's really happening in the medical world.
SPEAKER_00: It calls them a deaf, you know, with a speech impediment, but we know they don't actually have a speech impediment.
SPEAKER_00: But when you look carefully, it's an odd Greek word that's used here.
SPEAKER_00: The word that's used here is chains, that their tongue is chained as if it's chained to the back of their mouth.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with their vocal cords, their tongue is just tied up to the back of their mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Because they don't have the vocabulary, they're not able to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And so I just draw your attention to that because even in those kind of details, the Bible is inerrant and exactly correct.
SPEAKER_00: His tongue is chained to him.
SPEAKER_00: They bring him to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And even the phrase they brought him to Jesus, the word is thrown.
SPEAKER_00: They threw this guy at Jesus' feet.
SPEAKER_00: The setting here is important.
SPEAKER_00: This is in the Decapolis, the Decapolis, Decca 10, Polis City.
SPEAKER_00: It's a collection of ten cities built by uh Pompeii to be a testimony of Roman culture into the Arab world.
SPEAKER_00: These ten cities are built on the uh peninsula, the edge of the desert, before the desert hits the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be really a pillar of Roman culture.
SPEAKER_00: When you understand these cities, they were, if anything, a pillar of Roman decadence and depravity.
SPEAKER_00: They had gymnasiums were the focal point of these cities, the saunas and the nudity and everything that went with this kind of Roman uh decadent lifestyle was on full display in the decapolis.
SPEAKER_00: One of the cities, the decapolis is was devastated by an earthquake, Vashan.
SPEAKER_00: And if you go to Israel, you can tour it.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the largest uh ruins in the world.
SPEAKER_00: It was a fully occupied and functioning city until it was really overnight destroyed, and it remains there today.
SPEAKER_00: So you get to see what the Decapolis is is like.
SPEAKER_00: But there were 10 of these cities, and they varied in you know in strengths, and there's probably 12 or 13 cities that claim to be part of the Decapolis, like the, you know, those college football conferences where the numbers do not match the number of cities.
SPEAKER_00: There are certainly like 12 or 13 of these cities in the Decapolis.
SPEAKER_00: That's where Jesus goes.
SPEAKER_00: Why he's going to the Decapolis is also noteworthy.
SPEAKER_00: He had been doing ministry in Galilee, he had multiplied the fish and the loaves, he had fed the masses, he had raised the dead, he had healed the blind, he'd done miracle after miracle, and yet the Jews were not embracing his witness.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't listening to his message.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted the bread from him, but they didn't want to surrender their lives to him.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, he was rejected in Nazareth, thrown out of town.
SPEAKER_00: They tried to kill him already at this point.
SPEAKER_00: And so after the fish and the loaves, Jesus said, That's it, we're out of here.
SPEAKER_00: And he takes his show on the road, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: He leaves Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He goes from Galilee, where he had been ministering for around two years at this point.
SPEAKER_00: He goes from Galilee up uh up north, up to modern-day Lebanon, over through Jordan and Syria, and he's entering back over six months.
SPEAKER_00: He was gone in Gentile land for probably six months if you track the timeline in Mark's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He re-enters the orbit of Israel through the Decapolis, which is about where he started.
SPEAKER_00: It's only on the other side of the Dead Sea.
SPEAKER_00: So he makes a six-month detour to get to this place.
SPEAKER_00: That would be like me telling you, I'm gonna go to lunch today in Baltimore, next stop, Richmond.
SPEAKER_00: You would wonder about my navigational capacity.
SPEAKER_00: And that scale right there is about the scale that Jesus covers.
SPEAKER_00: From the edge of the Decapolis, it's not that far away from Galilee, and yet he goes so far out of the way to get there.
SPEAKER_00: And while he's going through these Gentile areas, he is healing people.
SPEAKER_00: He is teaching and healing.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the story just before this was a Syrio-Phoenician woman.
SPEAKER_00: That's a woman from Syria with a Phoenician background, Phoenician Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: This is the old school nemesis of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: She's a citizen of Syria.
SPEAKER_00: She comes to Jesus and asks for healing, specifically for her daughter.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus tells her that I came for the Israelites, not for the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Which is a bit of an ironic exchange in the middle of Gentile land.
SPEAKER_00: He's in, you know, Tyre and Sidon, and he's telling you, Oh, I'm here for the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: He's meaning this as a teaching opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: And you remember what she tells him back.
SPEAKER_00: Like when the kids don't want the food, you feed the dogs, right?
SPEAKER_00: And parents of toddlers have this image in their mind.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the kids are like, I'm never eating this, this is awful and gross.
SPEAKER_00: And the happy dog who loves you is just sitting there smiling.
SPEAKER_00: All right, I'll have a full dog, an angry child, and a content heart, and I can go to bed with a clean conscience.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus tells the woman.
SPEAKER_00: The dogs, I'm here for the Israelites, not the dogs of the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: And she says, Yeah, but even dogs eat the crumbs.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the Jews rejected you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Remember?
SPEAKER_00: That's why you're here.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus grants her her healing, extols her faith, and moves on.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's in the Decapolis.
SPEAKER_00: He's in one of these cities, we don't know which one.
SPEAKER_00: And the word of Jesus has traveled here.
SPEAKER_00: The demoniac who had the demons cast out of him, if you remember that, into the pigs and all that, that was in this part of the world.
SPEAKER_00: That was in the Decapolis.
SPEAKER_00: And so they know who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: He's back now, and he's re-entering the Galilee region.
SPEAKER_00: And they bring to him this deaf mute and they throw him at the feet of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus looks at him.
SPEAKER_00: They're begging him to lay his hand on him.
SPEAKER_00: They know he has the power to heal.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus takes this person aside.
SPEAKER_00: Takes him privately, it says in verse 33, separates him from the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how he was able to pull that off.
SPEAKER_00: There's a big crowd there.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if he had a tent with him, perhaps, which wouldn't be as crazy as it sounds.
SPEAKER_00: There's traveling for six months on the road.
SPEAKER_00: They're sleeping.
SPEAKER_00: He says during this time period he has no place to lay his head.
SPEAKER_00: It's likely they did bring some kind of tent with him.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe he brought him into a tent.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he left the crowd on the hill and led him by the hand somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't say, but he took him privately, and that's important.
SPEAKER_00: Because this guy has been a spectacle his whole life.
SPEAKER_00: He has been ridiculed, he has been mocked, he's been on public display.
SPEAKER_00: His source of food has been begging publicly, probably.
SPEAKER_00: He's this isn't the Jewish world, so it's not like he has this unclean stigma.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, they're touching him and throwing him at him, which would not have happened in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: This is a Gentile land, but he would have been reduced to begging.
SPEAKER_00: He would have been like a carnival show kind of guy.
SPEAKER_00: And now, probably for the first time in his life, he's encountered somebody who sees him as an individual and cares for him as a person.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus takes him aside.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a show for the crowd, in other words.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not exploiting this person's deficiency for the audience.
SPEAKER_00: This is a one-on-one encounter.
SPEAKER_00: This might be the first time in this guy's life that he's ever been treated with this kind of personal care and dignity.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus takes him aside and puts his fingers, it says, in the dude's ears.
SPEAKER_00: So that's weird.
SPEAKER_00: They're nose to nose.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how far do arms reach for you to get your fingers in somebody's ears?
SPEAKER_00: They're looking eyeball to eyeball, and Jesus grabs his ears.
SPEAKER_00: This is showing the guy, again, probably for the first time in his life, that Jesus knows what is wrong with him.
SPEAKER_00: Other people don't know what's wrong with him.
SPEAKER_00: He's not able to tell other people what's wrong with him, but Jesus knows what's wrong with him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus reads this guy perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: Never met him before.
SPEAKER_00: But is able to diagnose and knows, of course, through his sovereignty, what exactly the ailment of this person is.
SPEAKER_00: It's his ears.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows it's not his brain.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows it's not his tongue, primarily.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to the tongue in a second.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows the main problem with this individual is that of the ear.
SPEAKER_00: Other people don't know that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows that.
SPEAKER_00: And so he puts his fingers in the guy's ear, nose to nose, eye to eye, hand in the ears, as a testimony to the fact that Jesus knows what is wrong with him.
SPEAKER_00: What a picture of the sympathy of our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It gets weirder.
SPEAKER_00: He spits and touches his tongue.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, the Greek says he spits into his tongue.
SPEAKER_00: His hands are in the ears, so I I mean you have the same information I do.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't seem like he spits on his hand and touches the tongue.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like he spits on the tongue.
SPEAKER_00: That's how it reads in both English, but it's even more clear in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: It's he spits into the tongue.
SPEAKER_00: Why does he do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's demonstrating that whatever is about to happen to this guy comes from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the source of what is going to happen to this guy.
SPEAKER_00: At this moment, the guy doesn't know he's going to be healed, but he now is having a personal encounter with the Lord, and Jesus is engaging with him in such a way it's very evident Jesus is not getting medicine.
SPEAKER_00: There's no potion from this, there's no homeopathic remedy.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, you know, dip a cactus in flour and lick it twice a day or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: He's, or essential oil, which is even weirder than the cactus looking.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't engage him at that level.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say, here's a potion, here's a medicine, even.
SPEAKER_00: No medicine is involved.
SPEAKER_00: It's only Jesus and Jesus' personal power.
SPEAKER_00: And he's communicating that to a deaf mute who's, you know, not able to communicate anything back.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is able to communicate to him.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus can't tell the guy, hey, what's going to happen to you is from me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing this, not medicine.
SPEAKER_00: The guy can't hear.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus, by spitting on his tongue, is demonstrating to him what is about to happen to you is all from me.
SPEAKER_00: Even in the Roman world at this time, there were so many of these fake faith healers, not unlike Christian television today.
SPEAKER_00: You could send them money and they would send you potion.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of their potions were of their spit.
SPEAKER_00: They would spit in these vials and sell it.
SPEAKER_00: They put snake venom in with their own spit, sell that.
SPEAKER_00: There's a whole market going on in the Roman Empire this time with these fake healer remedies.
SPEAKER_00: I don't call them faith healers, I call them fake healers.
SPEAKER_00: And that was certainly evident.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't send it away for something like this, he's doing it himself.
SPEAKER_00: The power is all from him.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus looks up to heaven, verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: Looks up to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Why does he look to heaven?
SPEAKER_00: He's again communicating to the deaf mute that what's about to happen to him, we've already established, is from Jesus, but it's also from God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is operating here in his humanity.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, spitting on someone is a human characteristic, not a divine characteristic.
SPEAKER_00: But by looking to heaven, he's explaining to the deaf mute that what's about to happen to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's from me, that's the spit, but it's also from God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is operating here in concert with his heavenly father.
SPEAKER_00: The will of God the Father for this deaf mute is the same as the will of God the Son for this deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is communicating, it sounds too technical, but it's not.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is communicating to this deaf mute that he has two natures, that Jesus is God and he is man.
SPEAKER_00: He's in communion with our Heavenly Father, and he's operating in the will of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: He has a true human nature, and it's demonstrated by the Spit.
SPEAKER_00: This guy has never had a theology lesson in his life, but he's being put on full display in front of him that the Savior has two natures.
SPEAKER_00: He is both God and man.
SPEAKER_00: He can look to God for help, and he has the power within him to heal.
SPEAKER_00: We sometimes act like that kind of theology is too complex.
SPEAKER_00: It's not too complex for a deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is communicating to him in such a way that shows when I speak to God, he hears, because God and I are one.
SPEAKER_00: When I spit, I'm healing you.
SPEAKER_00: It is from God and it is from me, one person, two natures, human and divine.
SPEAKER_00: God hears Jesus' prayer, sees Jesus' look.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says in John's gospel, if you've seen the Son working, you've seen the Father working, you've seen the Father working, you've seen the Son working.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot separate the works of God the Father from the works of God the Son.
SPEAKER_00: They are the same works.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' look to heaven communicates that.
SPEAKER_00: What he is doing here, often the decapitus, and again, the decapitus is like the least likely place to encounter the Jewish Messiah in the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where Jesus is giving this Gentile deaf mute a lesson in messianic theology.
SPEAKER_00: God and man joined in the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He looks to heaven, and then he sighed.
SPEAKER_00: He sighed.
SPEAKER_00: What does a sigh communicate?
SPEAKER_00: You saw in the video earlier, if you ask somebody, you know, how are you doing, and they say busy, that communicates to you that they live in Northern Virginia.
SPEAKER_00: But if you ask somebody, how are you doing, and they go, okay, well, that's communicating to you that they're not okay.
SPEAKER_00: The only worse answer than that is fine.
SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus sighs.
SPEAKER_00: He looks to heaven and he sighs.
SPEAKER_00: He's communicating that this is not okay.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus in his sovereignty is aware of what is wrong with the deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, as God, is fully aware of this guy's condition.
SPEAKER_00: He's sovereign over his condition, isn't he?
SPEAKER_00: You think of Exodus chapter 4, where Moses tells Yahweh, I can't speak for you.
SPEAKER_00: I can't go be your messenger because I don't speak well.
SPEAKER_00: And remember Exodus 4, I think it's verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh really rebukes Moses and says, Who are you, Moses?
SPEAKER_00: Like who do you think made the mute person?
SPEAKER_00: Who do you think makes the deaf?
SPEAKER_00: Who gives life?
SPEAKER_00: Who takes it away?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it I, Yahweh?
SPEAKER_00: Of course, God is sovereign over the deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, God appoints the number of our days.
SPEAKER_00: God is sovereign over the deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: And so we in our fallen reasoning often extrapolate and we say, if God is sovereign over my son who's deaf, or my daughter who's mute, or over whatever ailment or deficiency is physical deficiencies in our children, we think if God is sovereign over that, that means he must not care.
SPEAKER_00: If God is sovereign over the deaf mute, that means he doesn't care about all the suffering the deaf mute goes through because he's sovereign over it.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, again, is communicating with such clarity and specificity here that he is sovereign over the deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: He knows it's the ears, he knows it's the tongue, and he cares about the suffering.
SPEAKER_00: He sighs, communicating this is not how it was meant to be.
SPEAKER_00: When Adam was in the garden, there were no deaf mutes.
SPEAKER_00: Sin entered the world, and sin brought suffering into the world.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is the reason there is so much decay, so much physical decline, which God is sovereign over, and yet still his heart grieves in that sense.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord relented or regretted that he had made man for this kind of suffering where he was going to flood the earth.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is sovereign over the flood and he cares about the suffering that it causes.
SPEAKER_00: Both are true.
SPEAKER_00: You can't pit God's sovereignty against his compassion.
SPEAKER_00: God is sovereign over the deaf mute, and Jesus sighs when face to face with the deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: Remember in John's gospel where they brought Jesus the blind man and they asked with the question, who sinned that this man would be born blind?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Nobody sins.
SPEAKER_00: In that sense, it wasn't that he sinned or his parents sinned.
SPEAKER_00: You want to blame sin for this.
SPEAKER_00: It's Adam's sin.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Who sinned that this guy, that this guy would be a deaf mute?
SPEAKER_00: Certainly this guy has sinned, certainly his parents have sinned, but this deaf muteness is not a punishment for sin.
SPEAKER_00: The punishment for sin is for Adam's sin.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a decaying, fallen world.
SPEAKER_00: My family right now for our family devotionals is reading through Genesis, and we just read yesterday Genesis 10 and 11, and it stands out.
SPEAKER_00: It's the genealogy there after the flood, and they're coming off the ark and they're living 490 years and 420 years and 405 years and then 200 years and 150 years.
SPEAKER_00: The lifespan is declining because sin is in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Sin makes you live less time.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is why there are deaf mutes in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is why there's physical deficiencies in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Not your personal sin, but human sin.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus knows that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is about to go die for sin.
SPEAKER_00: Another six-month time from here.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna go to the cross for sin.
SPEAKER_00: He knows the power of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's right that he sighs.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't complain to God, he doesn't grumble against the divine plan.
SPEAKER_00: He's the author of the divine plan.
SPEAKER_00: But he does sigh in the face of human suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And like I said, every phrase of this miracle gets more strange.
SPEAKER_00: After this, he then says, apathetha, which is in Aramaic.
SPEAKER_00: He speaks to the guy in Aramaic.
SPEAKER_00: Mark's gospel was written in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews spoke Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek, but this is the decapolis.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek would have been the language they spoke there.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't speak Aramaic.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus speaks to the guy saying, Let your tongue be open, your ears be opened, your tongue loose, speaks to him in Aramaic, which is not his language.
SPEAKER_00: In mitigation, he has no language.
SPEAKER_00: I'll grant you that point.
SPEAKER_00: But everybody around him would be speaking Greek.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, it doesn't matter what language Jesus speaks to him until he says it, the guy can't hear anything.
SPEAKER_00: Makes me wonder why he chose to say it in Aramaic.
SPEAKER_00: It was significant.
SPEAKER_00: Mark brings it across in Aramaic.
SPEAKER_00: Mark doesn't translate it to Greek.
SPEAKER_00: Mark brings in the Aramaic word and leaves it there.
SPEAKER_00: And the ESV does the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: The ESV just gives you the Aramaic word and says, you can figure it out.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's, this is my guess.
SPEAKER_00: He's demonstrating that he is the Lord of both the Jews and the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: He's a savior in both places.
SPEAKER_00: I think part of it is to demonstrate the totality of the healing the guy's about to experience.
SPEAKER_00: But regardless, he speaks to him in Aramaic.
SPEAKER_00: Mark translates it for you into Greek and says it means be opened.
SPEAKER_00: And at that point, verse 35, his ears were opened.
SPEAKER_00: His tongue was released.
SPEAKER_00: There's a sense of immediacy.
SPEAKER_00: As soon as the words left Jesus' mouth, they probably met the ears of the guy.
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as they met his ears, his tongue was freed, unchained.
SPEAKER_00: And then he spoke plainly.
SPEAKER_00: Probably in both Aramaic and Greek.
SPEAKER_00: In our world, if somebody was a deaf mute and pretend we were able to invent a hearing aid that can circumvent the neural deficiency that's causing it and allow the brain to understand the audio waves and they could be healed in that sense, they could hear right away.
SPEAKER_00: It would probably take, according to one journal article I read this week, about two years for the person to be able to make the full range of human sounds.
SPEAKER_00: Two years of speech therapy, two years of learning how to form the lips, how to roll their R's if they speak Spanish, how to make the gutturals if they speak Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: Two years.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus at this point heals this person, and immediately he's speaking plainly, is the word.
SPEAKER_00: Speaks clear as a bell.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if he had the Galilean accent with him, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But he spoke perfect.
SPEAKER_00: There's no speech therapy here.
SPEAKER_00: This is an instantaneous miracle.
SPEAKER_00: Right away.
SPEAKER_00: And then to cap this all off, the strangest thing yet.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus then charges them, speaking of the crowd, he's bringing him back to the crowd now, to tell nobody about what happened.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, come on.
SPEAKER_00: The guy hasn't been able to speak his whole life.
SPEAKER_00: And now he's he has a conversation with Jesus, so he goes back to the crowd, and now Jesus says, end no more talking.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a riddle.
SPEAKER_00: Who has something to say but can't speak, and then can speak but is not permitted?
SPEAKER_00: This guy.
SPEAKER_00: It's an impossible command.
SPEAKER_00: Don't say anything about this.
SPEAKER_00: It's the one thing he would want to do.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier in the decapitals, the same thing happened when he cast the demons into the pigs and they ran away, and Jesus said, Don't tell anybody about this.
SPEAKER_00: And the guy wants to go with Jesus, and he says, Go tell your family and your friends what the Lord has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's the message here.
SPEAKER_00: He's telling them, don't tell anybody.
SPEAKER_00: Remember earlier in Mark's gospel, even Jesus raised a girl from the dead at her funeral.
SPEAKER_00: He goes to the house, there's all the mourners.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he cuts through the crowd of mourners to get into the bedroom where the little girl who died and her parents are there, and the whole family is outside, and the professional wailers are outside, and Jesus is in the bedroom and he resurrects her back to life and then tells them not to tell anybody.
SPEAKER_00: Well, she's gonna have to come out of the bedroom eventually.
SPEAKER_00: The funeral is going on, and when you're at the funeral for somebody who then walks in and gets a piece of cake or whatever, it's gonna raise questions.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Don't tell anyone.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, deaf mute, don't tell anybody that you can speak now.
SPEAKER_00: And why is that?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is because Jesus' ministry is not about the healing.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't come as a healer.
SPEAKER_00: He healed to validate and underscore the true message, which is the death and resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And through Mark's gospel, you see this over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Mark keeps describing miracles Jesus does, and then Jesus says, Don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone, until ultimately the resurrection, and then they're freed to go into the world and tell everybody about the Lord who died on the cross, bearing the penalty for their sin, and rose from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: That's the message for the whole world to hear.
SPEAKER_00: But until then, the message we bring to the world is not that Jesus can heal you because he doesn't heal everybody.
SPEAKER_00: There are deaf mutes today that Jesus doesn't heal.
SPEAKER_00: So the message would be wrong to bring come to parents of a deaf mut and say, if you put your faith in Jesus, Jesus would heal your son or daughter.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the message.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus makes it clear that's not the message by saying, don't tell anybody this.
SPEAKER_00: But once he bears the penalty for sin and rises from the grave, then the stops are removed.
SPEAKER_00: Then it's all systems go, full throttle, tell the world about what the Lord has done.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 37 or verse 36, the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.
SPEAKER_00: The more sternly Jesus said, don't tell anybody, the more ramped up they were to tell everybody.
SPEAKER_00: It's this language of uh equality here.
SPEAKER_00: The more sternly Jesus spoke, the more sternly they disobeyed.
SPEAKER_00: You picture the argument with the parent and their rebellious child in Walmart.
SPEAKER_00: They're always in Walmart, those arguments, and the parent says, you know, keep your voice down.
SPEAKER_00: No, you keep your voice down.
SPEAKER_00: And they keep ramping up.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Don't tell anyone.
SPEAKER_00: And he tells everybody even harder.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, no, more sternly don't tell anyone.
SPEAKER_00: He more sternly tells people.
SPEAKER_00: I know all sin is against God and no sin is excused, but I have a little bit of a category for this guy, unable to keep his mouth shut.
SPEAKER_00: The result of all this, verse 37, they were astonished beyond all measure.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember our study of Mark's gospel, I pointed out to you that word astonished is one of the key words in Mark's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It's used repeatedly.
SPEAKER_00: It's translated in the SV differently, sometimes astonished, sometimes amazed, sometimes terrified it is translated.
SPEAKER_00: But it's the same word in all the places.
SPEAKER_00: It's a refrain in Mark's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He walks in the water, they were filled with fear.
SPEAKER_00: Astonished.
SPEAKER_00: Demons, pigs, astonished.
SPEAKER_00: Multiplies food, astonished.
SPEAKER_00: Rises from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: It's the last word of Mark's gospel, you know?
SPEAKER_00: The ladies see the grave empty and they went away.
SPEAKER_00: It's how Mark closes off his gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Astonished.
SPEAKER_00: Their mind blown.
SPEAKER_00: They can't comprehend what they've experienced.
SPEAKER_00: That's their in Mark's gospel, whenever somebody has an encounter with Jesus, that's the ending of it.
SPEAKER_00: They had an encounter with Jesus and they left with their minds blown.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't understand, they couldn't appreciate, they couldn't comprehend what had just happened.
SPEAKER_00: All they knew is that they were amazed at Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that gets to my next question as I'm thinking through this passage.
SPEAKER_00: If the healing isn't the message, why does Jesus heal people?
SPEAKER_00: If he didn't come as a healer, why all the healings?
SPEAKER_00: If the main point of his message was the cross, why all the healings leading up to the cross?
SPEAKER_00: The answer, which is clear as day, is that all of these healings are gospel pictures.
SPEAKER_00: All of the healings in the New Testament paint you little pictures of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them more evident, some of them bigger pictures than others, like leprosy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus heals the leper.
SPEAKER_00: A leper has an outward uh uncleanliness, an outward deformity that you can't heal.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus heals him from the inside out, Jesus changes his heart, gives him faith, he's healed from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: His leprosy is healed.
SPEAKER_00: Remember what he has to do?
SPEAKER_00: He has to go to the priest and present himself.
SPEAKER_00: The priests in the Old Testament were the ones that were supposed to declare a leper cleansed or healed.
SPEAKER_00: That had never happened before.
SPEAKER_00: No leper gets healed.
SPEAKER_00: So the guy shows up and knocks on the priest's door, healed from his illness, healed from his leprosy.
SPEAKER_00: What's the priest supposed to do?
SPEAKER_00: A priest can't heal somebody.
SPEAKER_00: The law can't heal somebody.
SPEAKER_00: The law can't take away leprosy.
SPEAKER_00: The law cannot change the heart.
SPEAKER_00: It's a picture of the impotency of the law that cannot change the heart.
SPEAKER_00: Only faith in Christ that can heal you from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus heals a blind person, shows that you're spiritually blind.
SPEAKER_00: The blind guy, remember, was asked before he had faith in Jesus, he said, I don't even know who he is.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea who you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: A person without faith in Christ cannot behold spiritual truths.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, through faith in the gospel, opens your eyes to see spiritual truth.
SPEAKER_00: The same thing is true with the deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: Apart from Christ, you cannot hear the words of God.
SPEAKER_00: The words of God are foolishness to you.
SPEAKER_00: This is uh 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: The natural person doesn't hear the words of God.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, they're unable to do so.
SPEAKER_00: They're folly to him.
SPEAKER_00: Apart from Christ, you cannot hear, you have the Bible read to you.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the story of the deaf mute.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have faith in Christ, this is gibberish.
SPEAKER_00: It's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make any sense to you.
SPEAKER_00: You're unable to understand the spiritual truth of it.
SPEAKER_00: That means, by the way, that you don't have anything to say about God if you don't believe God.
SPEAKER_00: It's so frustrating to read books about the gospels or about Jesus or about the Bible written by non-believers.
SPEAKER_00: Be like me writing a book, a how-to guide for cricket.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know anything about cricket.
SPEAKER_00: I know their games take several days, and at that point I'm out.
SPEAKER_00: So don't read any book I write on cricket.
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: You hear non-Christians talk about the Bible, and it's like this they are spiritually deaf, which means they can't have the words.
SPEAKER_00: They can't form the right words to describe gospel truth.
SPEAKER_00: It's not even necessarily their fault.
SPEAKER_00: It's their love for sin.
SPEAKER_00: Their sin has made them unable to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And but Jesus can heal.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows the secrets of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: Even the non-believers' heart.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus reads the non-believer, knows all the secrets in their heart.
SPEAKER_00: Reads them like you'd read the mail.
SPEAKER_00: He knows everything about them.
SPEAKER_00: And that means that through faith in Christ He can heal them.
SPEAKER_00: He can let them hear spiritual truth.
SPEAKER_00: And once you hear spiritual truth, you can't keep quiet about it.
SPEAKER_00: You want to tell everybody what the Lord has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: You want to tell everybody how the Lord saves.
SPEAKER_00: How Jesus saves.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the takeaway from this healing.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 37, when all is said and done, they were astonish, I mentioned that word, and then at the end of verse 37, they say, He has done all things well.
SPEAKER_00: What a great summary of this miracle.
SPEAKER_00: What a great summary of Mark and what a great summary of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: You want a one-sentence summary of the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Here it is.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus does all things well.
SPEAKER_00: Period.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even need a semicolon.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus does all things well.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he does miracles.
SPEAKER_00: It shows you, it validates for you, it authenticates for you the message of the death and resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus does all things well.
SPEAKER_00: He even makes, even makes.
SPEAKER_00: The deaf here and the mute speak.
SPEAKER_00: This kind of miracle had never happened before.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus does it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus does it.
SPEAKER_00: Told you my heart was drawn to this.
SPEAKER_00: I was asked recently to speak at my aunt's funeral.
SPEAKER_00: My aunt died.
SPEAKER_00: She had something called advanced or progressive aphasia.
SPEAKER_00: Aphasia is the erasure of the synapses in the brain that connect vocabulary to the images of those things.
SPEAKER_00: So you look at a cat and you have the word cat in your brain, and there's some part of the brain that does that, and aphasia is the diminishing of that capacity.
SPEAKER_00: So you get to the point where you look at the cat and you don't have the word for it.
SPEAKER_00: And you look at other things, you don't have the words for it.
SPEAKER_00: And when you lose the words, you lose the ability to function with the concepts behind those words.
SPEAKER_00: I went to see her a few months before she died, and she maybe a year or so before she died, and she drove to the airport.
SPEAKER_00: She had this little she loved cars, she had this little Nissan sports car that was incredible.
SPEAKER_00: And she raced to the airport to pick me up.
SPEAKER_00: And this was one of her last times driving because she was starting to lose words.
SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, if you lose the word for stop sign, you don't connect in your mind that you're supposed to stop at the stop sign.
SPEAKER_00: So it was one of her last times driving.
SPEAKER_00: And I was talking to her and I shared this story with her.
SPEAKER_00: You know, eventually you lose the ability to eat.
SPEAKER_00: You lose the word for fork, you lose the word for knife, you lose the word for spatula, you can't cook for yourself anymore, you lose the word for foods, like different kinds of food, they don't have names, so your brain doesn't know you're supposed to eat them, and just you know, you die.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what eventually happened to her.
SPEAKER_00: But when she was still able to communicate and talk, I shared this story with her.
SPEAKER_00: And I told her, you know, the Lord, when you lose the ability to speak, when you lose the ability to form sentences, the Lord knows what's in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Even when your mind's not functioning right, the Lord knows what's in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: When she died, she was able to say three sentences that's the light, that's the car, and dear Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Those were the three sentences she had.
SPEAKER_00: I know there's worse ways to go out of the world, aren't there?
SPEAKER_00: She knows the Trinity, and she likes cars.
SPEAKER_00: This story should encourage you.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord knows your heart.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord knows your secrets.
SPEAKER_00: He knows them, he hears you, and he loves you.
SPEAKER_00: God, we're grateful that you have shown us a powerful picture of your sympathy, your compassion, your love through Jesus Christ, who knows our deficiencies and knows our ailments.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone here today that has never trusted you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that today they would give their life to you.
SPEAKER_00: They would believe that they are a sinner, and they would believe that you paid the penalty for their sin on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: That you rose from the grave, and you now invite people to place their faith in you so they can tell the world about the good things that you have done.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.