Trinity Baptist Church

The Book of Mark

To Speak or Not to Speak

Mark 7:31-37

 

Mark 7:31-37

 

As you know, the Gospels don’t provide every detail of everything that happened in the Lord’s earthly ministry.  Even when they are all compiled, we still have some gaps.  In fact, John said if everything was written one by one, the world couldn’t contain the volumes that would be written.  That’s just John’s way of describing how full and eventful as the ministry of Jesus. 

 

So what we are left with is a collection of the more notable or representative events of His days on earth, and almost without exception, they involve the Twelve. 

 

 

In fact, as we come to the 7^th chapter of Mark, for well over a year, the Lord has ministered in the region of Galilee.  By the time we get to chapter 10, we are in the final months of His life and ministry and He makes His way through the towns and villages of Judea, ending up in Jerusalem with a triumphal entry and then His crucifixion and resurrection and ascension.

 

So at the beginning of chapter 7 He’s about to leave Galilee and begin a walking seminar with the Twelve that will last several months.  This will be an intense training time for them as He prepares to entrust the ministry into their hands.

 

As that happens, we will see less time with crowds and multitudes and more with them. Early on in His ministry He would taught the crowds openly, then as they began to reject His teachings, He used parables and eventually, because of their unbelief, He doesn’t even explain the parables to the crowds in general.  He would explain them only to the Twelve and His other disciples in private. And now it isn’t even messages to the crowd that are explained in private.  It’s just alone with the Twelve.

 

They have a formidable task. They will be the first generation of preachers of the gospel. They will be empowered by the Holy Spirit to do that. They will set in motion the proclamation of the salvation that is found only in Jesus Christ which will eventually stretch to the corners of the world. They need to be prepared and so this is their private, personal, walking seminar as they travel with Jesus for a number of months into Gentile regions where He is going to be able to isolate Himself from the busyness from around Galilee to have time with them uninterrupted.

 

So as we come to Mark 7, it is in that context.  HE is preparing the disciples for a world-wide ministry that is designed to reach all people.  We’ve already seen Him ministering to this Syro-Phonecian woman and commenting on her great faith.  Now we are introduced to another example of the reach of His ministry.  By the way, we ought to really pay attention ot his story because it is one of three accounts in Mark’s gospel that appear nowhere else in the other three gospels.

 

So let’s break the story down and see what it has to say to us.

First we have a man who is

 

 

Verse 32

 

Now remember, according to verse 24, He is unable to hide.  Multitudes and masses of people are searching Him out, seeking His healing. 

 

This man has some unnamed friends who bring this man to Jesus. This man is deaf and has a speech impediment.  Chances are he was not born deaf, but became deaf early in life and his hearing problem produced the speech problem.  So his friends get him to Jesus in hopes of a miracle like others are experiencing. 

 

And that’s exactly what happens because in the presence of Jesus, the scene changes from a man unable to speak to a man who is

 

 

verses 33-35

 

The Lord responds to this man’s friends and to him as he is there at His feet.  There’s a heap of people there wanting to be healed. But when this man arrives, Jesus takes him aside from the crowd by himself.  He’s not just another face in the crowd to Jesus.  He’s a person and he’s going to have time alone with Jesus.  Jesus gives him his full, undivided attention.

 

 

And then Jesus began to speak to him in his own version of sign language. They didn’t have American Sign Language. Jesus has His own version of sign language and that’s how He communicates with the man. 

 

There are four signs He uses.  First of all, verse 33 says He put His finger into his ears. Why did He do that?  He was identifying for the man that He knew about his problem. He couldn’t hear and Jesus knew that and He wanted him to know that He not only knew that, but that He was about to heal that. So there is first of all, a symbolic gesture to show the man what He was going to do.

 

Secondly, still in verse 33, after spitting, He touched his tongue and I think the implication is He touched the man’s tongue with His saliva, letting the man know He understood He had a speech problem and that will be fixed also. 

 

That’s not all. In verse 34 we find Jesus looking up to Heaven.  That’s another sign. He’s saying to the man, “What is about to happen to you comes from heaven.” Everybody understood that. Even pagans understood that the gods were above them and were supernatural. 

 

We can’t assume that he knew anything about Jesus.  Nothing is indicated that he did. But Jesus wanted him to know that the power of healing he is about to experience came from on high.  It was from beyond this world.

 

 

 

 

And then the fourth sign is in verse 34 also.  He sighed.  It is not unusual for people who have difficulty hearing to have heightened awareness through other senses like vision. They have to read lips and watch body language.  And a sigh is very apparent.  You don’t have to be able to hear to understand a deep sigh. 

 

SO what does this deep sigh communicate from Jesus to the man?  It is an expression of sympathy and empathy with the man’s problem.  And with this very personal sign language, Jesus gives him his first lesson about God. God understands what you’re going through.  His compassion moves Him to do something about it and His power is available to fix the problem. 

 

And in verse 334b-35, it happened.

 

The response was instant.  With a single word out of His mouth, the power came. In an instant he could hear perfectly and he could speak plainly.

 

Now don’t read by that too quickly.  To hear is one thing, but to be able to know that what you’re hearing is something completely separate.  TO hear and understand language when you’ve never heard or learned that language is another miracle. 

 

He requires no time to assimilate the information.  He doesn’t need speech therapy here. He doesn’t have to go to language class to learn Aramaic or Greek. He has full facility in the language that he’s never heard to hear and understand it and speak it plainly.  The word “plainly” in the Greek is orthos from which we get orthopedics. 

It means to straighten things out.  In other words, he could speak correctly.  Everything is in the correct alignment.  He heard and spoke perfectly. No therapy.  No learning curve.  Nobody had to teach him how to form the letters or words.  Nobody had to teach him what the words were.

 

He received an instant the ability to hear the language, understand what the words meant and form and use them on his on so he could communicate with others. 

 

He couldn’t hear, now he hears. He couldn’t speak, and now he speaks. And he hears perfectly and he speaks perfectly. This is staggering. The man unable to speak is now enabled to speak.

 

Then we come to a third point. This man who was unable to speak is not enabled to speak and he becomes

 

 

Verse 36

 

Now the command is to those who witnessed the miracle, but it includes the man himself.  Can you imagine how that sounded to him?  He’s never been able to speak understandably in his life.  Now he can, and Jesus tells him not to. 

 

That is an agonizing command which we wouldn’t expect the man to obey, and he didn’t. And not to be disrespectful toward Jesus, I just have o side with the man on this one. 

 

What kind of self-restraint would be involved in him being quiet?  And the truth is, he and the others are unable not to speak about what’s happened. 

 

We’ve already talked about why Jesus told those He healed not to tell others.  Healing wasn’t the main message.  He didn’t want to the focus off salvation and the Kingdom.  So He says, “Don’t spread the message that I’m a healer and a miracle worker, that’s not the whole story. It doesn’t include the cross and the resurrection. That’s the full story. So He says this again, “Don’t tell anyone.”.

 

But according to verse 36, the more He told them, the the more widely they spread the word.

 

Verse 37

 

Let’s think about that for a moment.  First, they said

“He has done all things well”. The way that phrase is arranged in the Greek, it means continuously.  It would be right to say it like this:  Everything He’s ever done He’s done well. Everything He’s ever done He’s done perfectly”. 

 

They’re commenting on the perfection of His miracles. The blind can see.  Look at the lame and they’re up walking around.  The mute are able to talk better than anyone else.  And it’s perfect. They walk perfectly. They see perfectly. They hear perfectly. They speak perfectly. The people who were sick enjoy perfect health.  They’re commenting on the perfection of His miracles.

 

And it did it by the power of a spoken Word.  Does that remind you of anything?  It does me!  IT akes me back to the creation.

God spoke and when He looked at what His word produced, it was good or perfect!  That’s creation.. Everything He made was absolutely perfect.

 

And now here is Jesus creating new eyes, new ears, new voices, new legs, new arms and new organs and He is doing it by speaking them into existence the same way God created in Genesis 1. It is by the word of His mouth. “God said, ‘Let there be and it be’d.  God just spoke and it was created.

 

Now I don’t know if anybody made the connection that day or not, but what that reveals is that Jesus is the Creator. Every miracle was an act of creation, brought into existence by His Word, the same way He had created the universe to start with. And it was all absolutely perfect.

 

The second thing they said was, “He makes even the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” It’s interesting that Mark records that because there was a lot of healing going on that day.  But the crowds focused on these two in particular. 

 

They said, “He makes even the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”  Literally, He makes the speechless to speak.  Now the word they use is the normal word used to describe the mute.  If you were going to refer to somebody who is mute, you would use this word. 

 

But back in verse 32, Mark uses a different word to describe this man with a speech impediment.  And the word he uses is a very rare word. In fact, the only time it ever appears in the New Testament is right there.

 

Now keep in mind, Mark is writing primarily to Gentiles.  Because of that He very rarely refers to the Old Testament.  His hearers have no background in the Old Testament.  But here, he borrows this word from the Old Testament.

 

As I said, this word appears only here in the New Testament, but it does occur again in Scripture with once occurrence in the Greek version of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. 

 

It is found in Isaiah 35. Isaiah’s prophecy is broken into two parts. The first part of his prophecy is about judgment on Edom and Egypt and Tyre and Israel and Jerusalem. And the second part is about salvation for Israel and even for the world through the coming of Messiah.

 

The transition between judgment and salvation comes in chapter 35.  And in this transitional chapter, the hearer is told about this transition from judgment to salvation, from doom to hope, from sorrow to joy as salvation comes. And when salvation comes, when God brings the great salvation of Messiah to the world, notice what we read:

 

Isaiah 35:1-5

 

That is a direct prophecy of the ministry of Jesus. 

This is what will happen when the Messiah comes and establishes His glorious Kingdom on the earth. Not only will the desert blossom like a flower, not only will the land surrounding the nation of Israel flourish with beauty and majesty and see the glory of the Lord, but the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.

And the word used there is by Isaiah and translated in to the Greek language to describe those who cannot speak is the same word Mark uses to describe a man healed by the Lord.

 

Why did Mark use that word? It is such an obscure, rare word.  And why did the people, when they talked about the ministry fo Jesus, point out these two individual miracles in particular? 

 

Only because He is the promised Messiah of God and the miracles authenticate the message.  Yes, He has the power to make the deaf to hear and the speechless to speak, but more than that, He is the Savior of the World. 

 

Jesus is a healer and a worker of miracles, but He is a Redeemer who gave His life on the cross, paid the penalty for our sins, rose from the dead triumphantly and if we come to Him by faith, we shall be saved. 

 

That is the message of those who could not speak and had nothing of which to speak who have been enabled to speak.  May God help us to not be able not speak of what He is done for us!

 

Let’s pray.