The Frustration that Fuels Faithfulness

In Mark 7:31-37, Jesus heals a deaf man with a speech impediment, but not before letting out a deep sigh that reveals His holy frustration with the brokenness of our world. This wasn't mere exhaustion—it was a divine lament over how sin damages bodies, relationships, and communities. Jesus demonstrates that godly frustration should fuel meaningful action, not passive resignation. He gets personally involved in the messy work of healing, touching the man intimately before speaking the powerful word 'Ephphatha' (be opened). This story challenges us to identify what causes our own deep groans and to follow Jesus' example by transforming that frustration into compassionate action that brings healing to broken places.

Transcript

All right, church, I'm going to invite you, if you have your Bibles this morning, to open them up to the Book of Mark. It's in the New Testament. We're going to start in Mark, chapter seven, verses 31 through 37. This is six verses we're going to read today. We're going to be done at 11:52.

Okay, get ready. Just kidding. We're probably not 115. All right. All right.

Let's read scripture together today. If you've got your Bibles, you can pull those out. If you don't have your Bibles this morning, you can follow along on the screen. Here is a word of the Lord for us today. Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis.

There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk. And they begged Jesus to place his hand on him. After he took him aside away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears, then spit touched the man's tongue. He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, ephafta, which means be opened. At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened, and he began to speak plainly.

Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone, but the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it, people will. People were overwhelmed with amazement. He has done everything well, they said. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.

So, friends, you may have recognized that over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about the emotions of Jesus. Did you notice that at all? Some of you? Yes. Everybody else is like, what?

Yeah. So two weeks ago we talked about Jesus and his radical rage. And last week we talked about the joy that comes with finding and celebrating the lost. And this morning we're continuing on this kind of series that we're talking about dealing with the emotions of Jesus and how they reveal to us the very heart of God. As we look at this particular scripture here in Mark, where Jesus heals this deaf man who can barely speak.

So, as we read the scripture this morning, what was Jesus response to the people who begged Jesus to heal their friend? Jesus looked up. He gave a deep sigh.

So I don't know if you guys are anything like me, but I find myself last night washing dishes, just sighing on a regular basis. How often is it that you guys sigh deeply? Once a day, five times a day. How often is it in your life that you get frustrated or exasperated or Overwhelmed. And the only way that you can get rid of that is just kind of just let it all out with this audible.

I'm not just talking about a boring, you know, sigh. I'm talking about the kind of sigh that comes from deep within, the kind of groan that makes everything feel like. It kind of feels like there's so much in your life, it's just too big to be fixed on your own. Almost a desperation like, Jesus, just come take me. Right?

Bless you. In this moment we just read, scripture tells us that this is exactly the kind of sigh that we see Jesus make. And if you're reading it in the New Testament, in the NIV version, it doesn't show us that exasperation of Jesus. It says he looked up to heaven and he sighed deeply and then heals the man. And I think if we gloss over that moment, we don't recognize some deeper truths that we can find here in Scripture.

We recognize our. Our Savior deals even in his own time, with a spiritual and holy frustration. So I want to dive a little deeper into the first part of that scripture this morning. So on the screen, we're going to start with just two verses, Mark 7, 31 and 32. And here's what it says.

Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went to Sidon, down through the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk. And they begged Jesus to place his hand on him. Jesus, in this moment, as he's doing this ministry, he's in Gentile territory. He's no longer safely among the Jews.

This is outside the bounds of safety for him and his disciples. And in this situation, outside of the safety of Israel, it just says that some people decided that they would bring this deaf and semi mute man to Jesus for healing. It doesn't tell us how he knows them. We assume they're probably friends, but we don't know. And as we've discussed probably a hundred thousand times in this church before, this deaf man would have probably felt pretty isolated, right?

His disability would have meant that he would have been kind of pushed over to the margins of society. And let's be clear, this guy, he probably would have been mocked. Remember, this is a time long before political correctness.

And I don't know if you guys were children like I was a child, but if I heard something that was outside the normal, it became a target for me to make fun of. And so without any sort of social correctness, this guy's feelings hurt probably all the time.

I couldn't imagine what this poor man's heart would would have felt like living on the margins of society, not being able to hear people, but being able to see them point and laugh.

And so this group of people, whoever they are, bring this deaf and mute man to Jesus with a strong petition. It says, touch him, Jesus. Just lay your hands on him and he'll be healed. Right. And so I've been really loving to dive into the Greek here because again, I think we lose some things in the New Testament when we are not reading it in its original language.

And I am no Greek scholar, but there are Greek scholars that I like to listen to. And I want to bring you some a deeper understanding of the words today. The word that is used here that describes the word begged is a form of Greek called perakaleo. Does that sound like a nice word? It's beautiful.

Perakaleo, right? This word literally means to beg, to implore, to admonish, to advocate for, to urgently counsel or to urge. Right. It's not just a please just put your hands on him. It is a bigger deal than just, hey, Jesus, heal this guy.

But it's pretty interesting because this word can also have kind of the strange second double meaning. It can also mean to come alongside someone, to call for help, or even to be comforted. The same root word here is used in the Sermon in the Mount in Matthew chapter four. I've got this verse on the screen, you can follow along. This section is literally in the Beatitudes.

It's the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says this, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be paracletis on Thai they will be comforted. So we can see this kind of dual meaning in the Gospels. It can mean both a desperate begging and a desire for comfort. In Mark, there's this kind of dual purpose with the Gospel writers words. There's this feeling of desperation in the group that they know Jesus can do it.

Jesus, just do it. And we can see that through the interpreted phrase. They begged Jesus to place his hands on the man. There's this kind of empathetic recognition that Jesus had the power to provide comfort. They're desperate for this man.

And one other sweet connection I have to make here in this moment is something that many of you probably don't understand. It's that same word that parakaleo also relates to the same word that we used very early in the church, when the church was just getting started, a word for The Holy Spirit. That word is paraclete, capital P. Paraclete. They called the Holy Spirit the Paraclete. The Holy Spirit was considered to be the advocate for us, for humanity, the helper, the comforter, the intercessor.

So the word that the gospel, right, the gospel writer uses here in this moment to express how desperate these people were to convince Jesus to heal this deaf and mute man has at its root the same beautiful connection to the power of the Holy Spirit. There's a double meaning where these two words, like come alongside this deaf man to offer comfort and help by begging Jesus to heal him. Just as Jesus reminds us the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit comes alongside each of us to provide us with comfort and healing. Still to this day, the word chosen here to express the desperation in these people's voice, it was intentional. It displays the desperation these people had for this man.

They didn't offer polite pleas. They brought implorations, supplications, and they groaned to Jesus. And I don't believe the NIV does a complete and total justice to the intensity of the feelings among the people who sought their friends healing. Their cries were soaked in love and urgency. Making this plea of Jesus was a communal act of faith.

Those that begged Jesus believed that Jesus could help. And then they acted. They interceded on behalf of someone who couldn't speak up for himself in the most literal sense, right? These people saw what this man was experiencing in his life. Without being able to speak correctly.

Being on the edges of society, he wasn't able to hear language or the sound even of the Torah, his sacred and holy book, being read. He couldn't hear the bird sing and he couldn't tell the people closest to him that he loved them. Like many of the people that encountered Jesus, his life would have been lived as an outsider. And what was Jesus response? Did he turn his back?

Did he walk away? No, Jesus doesn't ever do that. But we do.

Jesus then takes this man aside and he offers this man a new hope. So Mark 7 goes on in verse 34, sorry, 33 and 34. And it says this, after he took him aside away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears, then he spit and touched it to the man's tongue. He looked up to heaven with a deep sigh and said to him, ephphtha, which means be opened. So now we're going to talk a little bit more Greek.

We're going to talk about this word that is the sigh of Jesus. We're going to figure out what that means. So the Greek word that's describing Jesus, psi, is the word estinaxon. This word comes from the Greek word steno. If you've ever seen any of you guys ever seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, right?

So everything goes back to the Greek, right? Like this is true in scripture. And so this Sorry, Esther inaxen comes from estreno, which means to groan, to moan, or to sigh deeply. Jesus is exasperated. He looks up to heaven and goes, right.

I don't ever really ever imagine Jesus doing that. But in this moment, it's more than just a. It's something deeper. It's guttural. It's not a polite exhale that Jesus is making.

It's literally a prayer that's hidden by this verbal or, sorry, this kind of nonverbal exasperation that Jesus is feeling. It's a lament. It's a holy frustration with the brokenness of the world. And in this moment, the world. Sorry.

The word insinuates that Jesus is in distress, not for himself, but for us.

Jesus isn't tired of healing people. He's not groaning because he's just fed up with all the work he's got to do. He's sighing because this man's suffering is a symptom of something that was deeper.

He's suffering because he lives in a world where people are silenced. He lives in a system that isolates the vulnerable. And Jesus groans not because Jesus doesn't have the power to fix it, but because he feels the weight of the work that he's got to do. It's not just one man's healing that has to happen. Jesus is looking around him and he groans because the whole world is broken that keeps this man from having his voice?

What are some things that make you groan? Is it the fact that you had some trees cut down in your yard recently, and when you get home this afternoon, your wife is going to expect you to cut out the roots with an ax? Is that what just me. Okay, but what are the things in your life that make you groan? Not just something that makes you complain, but something that makes you completely and entirely frustrated?

Is it an injustice in our city, divisiveness of our world? Is it the criminalization of poverty here in Tulsa? Is it the loneliness of someone in your family? Is it the silence of the church when it should be speaking up? Does that frustration come from things in our world that isolate, misrepresent, sorry, misrepresent, or fail those who are vulnerable?

Friends, I believe that when Jesus groans, he's giving us permission to groan too. It's important for us to remember that Jesus doesn't just sigh and walk away. He goes deeper, right? He touches the man. He puts his fingers to the man's ears.

He touches his tongue. It's intimate, it's messy, it's personal. And let's be honest, it's a little bit weird. But then Jesus speaks be opened. And suddenly the man hears.

And here's what's beautiful. I didn't write this in my sermon, but this is what's beautiful. The people who were standing around Jesus, who heard Jesus speak and then new life was given, they would have hearkened all the way back to the story of creation where all God has to do is speak. And it happens, right? We read it on Wednesday night when Jesus.

Sorry. When God spoke the world into creation, everything God said was just spoken. He didn't have to act. God didn't choose to step down and like, build stuff out of tinker toys and then make it all a thing. In the first story of creation, God speaks and it becomes.

And then God says it's good. And so these people in this moment would have recognized Jesus language that he was using be opened. And then it happened. Jesus is bigger than just some guy healing the poor.

And as soon as Jesus speaks, this once broken man is restored and Jesus grown here. His estanaxon comes as a result of his frustration. I'm sure that Jesus was frustrated with the world silencing this man's suffering. Remember again, people in this world who suffered from physical limitations were limited by how they could interact. They were limited to the periphery.

They were literally cast to the margin society so that they could be really easily ignored.

Jesus was also frustrated with the fact that this man's voice was literally silenced by his own body.

He was broken because the world was broken.

This world in which we live is made broken because of its impediments. Through afflictions, through disease and deformity, we recognize that sin is real. And the irony here in this moment is thick. When Jesus is healing this man's physical ailments, he recognized that this was a symbolic act, that what would have needed to happen through the whole world was happening here in this man. The world had become deaf to the needs of those in the margins and very unwilling to speak up against injustices.

Jesus groans because this is not how the world was supposed to be. Remember, the world was created good. It's our sin that causes brokenness. His size of protest against the damage that sin has on our bodies. On our relationships, on our communities.

Jesus deep sigh and didn't lead to the avoidance of the situation that he was facing. It led to life change. His frustration with the brokenness of the world was channeled into healing. And then there's a twist in the story. We see that Jesus heals the man.

He groans, he touches his ears and his tongue and he speaks. And the miracle happens. But instead of saying, all right, now go share what I've done with you to the whole world, Jesus says, don't tell anybody what that is weird, right? Why the silence? Why the command to keep silent?

Because Jesus in this moment isn't interested in hype. He's not trying to build a brand. He's not chasing likes or crowds. Jesus is chasing hearts. He knows that people are going to flock to power when they see it, but he wants them to follow love instead.

And here's the thing. The more that Jesus told these people not to speak, don't tell them what you experienced, the more the word couldn't be kept silent, right? Because when you've encountered something like that healing like this man experienced, when you've seen the deaf get the ability to live normally in society, people who couldn't speak now have a voice. It's hard to keep that to ourselves. The people who watch Jesus change this man's life forever were overwhelmed in amazement.

And they said, he has done everything well. Jesus has done some pretty great things. He's done everything well. He can even make the deaf hear and the mute speak. Not just the healing that he's done this moment, everything Jesus has done, he's done it well.

And that's the kind of Savior that we follow. The Savior that groans with us. A Savior who touches us right where we're broken, right where we need it. A Savior who speaks life into silence. A Savior whose silence, or, sorry, whose goodness is so undeniable that even silence can't contain it.

Jesus is good.

So maybe there's a better question we can ask. Maybe the better question isn't just, what are you groaning about in your life? Maybe it's, what story are you carrying that you can't keep quiet about? Because when Jesus opens something in you, your ears, your voice, your heart, you should speak. We live in a world that no longer recognizes the value of Jesus because Jesus followers don't often look like Jesus anymore.

And if we're not sharing the stories of life change that we experience here as followers of that Christian, no one cares. There is nothing that we can offer outside of Jesus that would bring Any excitement to somebody's life if we're not offering Jesus.

So, church, what story do you have to share?

What groan are you working out in your own life?

What can we do with this story of Jesus, Right? What do we do with this ephesa in the estonaction that we've read about Jesus, this exasperation that Jesus has with sin and the brokenness of humanity? Well, first, we have to remember that Jesus didn't just heal a man's ears and his tongue. In the process of doing these things, Jesus showed us how that we can live faithfully in a world that breaks our hearts. He proved to us that we can be angry and frustrated and moan against the brokenness of the world, but that we also have to act to end that brokenness.

Second, we have to feel the importance of justice and wholeness. We can't continue to just let the darkness of our world numb us to the suffering that's happening. We can't just continue to scroll past it in our news feeds. We can't spiritualize it away. We have to let the brokenness of our world move us to action.

Let it ache. Because holy frustration is a sign that we still believe in a Jesus that cares and heals.

It's the Paraclete's way of saying this isn't right and you know it isn't right and inviting us to work alongside to heal it. Next, we have to be like Jesus and we're going to have to get personal. Healing isn't always clean, right? Sometimes it means we have to get close to pain. Jesus didn't heal from a distance.

He got up in that man's face. He touched his ears and his tongue, the broken places of this man that needed healing. He got close enough that he could experience this man's silence, close enough to groan. And if we're going to follow Jesus, we're going to have to do the same. We're going to have to step into the mess, not just pray from the sidelines.

I think it's a combination of those things. We pray and we act, and then we have to speak life. Ephraft, right? Be opened. It isn't just for ears and tongues.

It's for hearts that have been shut down. It's for systems that silence the vulnerable. It's for churches that have lost their voice. So, friends, where do you need to speak life this week? Is it into a friend's despair?

Into a city's injustice? Into your own weariness?

So ask yourself this morning, what are you groaning over today? And Then what will you do with that groan?

Because Jesus shows us that frustration isn't failure. It's fuel for what comes next. It's the holy side that launches us into healing. It's the deep breath before the miracle happens. So, church, while we may groan like Jesus, we are responsible for acting against the things that keep people alienated.

May we be the church that touches the broken. May we be the faithful who follow Jesus to speak life. And may we never quit doing those things. Because Jesus shows us that frustration isn't failure. It's fuel.

Friends, may we be fueled this week into doing what Christ does for us. Let's pray.