Mk.7:31-37   (Mt.15:29-39)  The Deaf Will Hear, the Dumb will Speak!

The Promise of Restoration

When God decided to reveal Himself to us, He chose to do it by putting information about Himself in a Book.
    The next decision God was faced with was how to start that book.  Of all the things God could tell us about, what would be the very first thing He would say?
    Like all God’s decisions, this decision was a perfect one.  He chose to begin with an emphatic statement about the fact that He created everything, then spent a week making this place habitable for us, and when He was done, it was very good.
    The word “good” (TOV in Hebrew, kalos in Greek), is a very profound term.  
    A couple times I have preached an entire sermon on how that one word is used in Scripture, and those have been some of the most often requested messages we have ever done.
    I’m not going to review that whole message again now, but here’s the summary: TOV (or kalos) is the difference between a desolate, desert waste and perfect paradise.
    When God was finished making things kalos, the result was the Garden of Eden.   
    I suppose one reason why God started the Bible that way is because He knew we would be wondering – if He created this place, why does it have so many problems?
    And the answer is, it didn’t have those problems when He created it.  He created it only kalos, and the problems came two chapters later when man sinned.
    Man’s sin and the resulting judgment transforms paradise to desolation.
    In Isaiah 34, God is furious with humanity.
    Isa.34:1
Come near, you nations, and listen; pay attention, you peoples!  Let the earth hear, and all that is in it, the world, and all that comes out of it! 2 The LORD is angry with all nations
    God is angry, and in v.9 Isaiah is describing the judgment:
    9 Edom's (represents all the nations) streams will be turned into pitch, her dust into burning sulfur; her land will become blazing pitch! 10 It will not be quenched night and day; its smoke will rise forever. From generation to generation it will lie desolate; no one will ever pass through it again. 11 The desert owl and screech owl will possess it; the great owl and the raven will nest there.  God will stretch out over Edom the measuring line of chaos and the plumb line of desolation. (the words there are TOHOO and BOHOO – the words translated “formless and empty” in Gn.1).  
    The idea is to describe a place that is uninhabitable. 
    In poetic language, Isaiah is saying, “God’s judgment is going to be so severe that he’s going to turn this place into such a wasteland it will be like the creation in day one before the creation week.”
    The rest of the chapter goes on to describe a horrible, hideous, lethal desolation. 
    The imagery in this chapter is rich in symbolism.  Obviously Isaiah is announcing judgment that goes way beyond just the physical climate…  
    - Just as the curse in Gn.3 goes way beyond just thorns.
    The point is life itself will become thorny.  
    Existence in this world will dry up.
    Life will be fruitless, dominated by death.  And where life does exist it will struggle.
    Have you noticed how the second law of thermodynamics applies across the board – not just to physical things?
    Left untended your prayer life will become as weedy and dead as your garden when it’s left untended. 
    Without constant nurturing your relationships will dry up just like your lawn when you don’t water.
    Take just a little time off of managing your spiritual life and it will become just as much a chaotic disaster area as your garage. 
    That’s the curse.  That’s the leach of death clamped on to the life that exists in this world – sucking out the lifeblood and drying it up into a desert.
    When you read about the desert in Isa.24 that’s not talking just about literal sand and arid climates.  It’s talking about the kalos of life drying up.
    So suddenly what may have sounded like an irrelevant chapter a moment ago in the Scripture reading now becomes as relevant as it gets.
    We can all relate to this chapter. 
    Everyone in this room knows what it’s like when the kalos of life dries up. 
    Those desert owls and buzzards of vv.13-15 have been circling around your life all week, and your soul has become so parched and dry that from time to time you just collapse…
    (and usually land on some cactus!)
•	    This desert is the reason your back aches
•	It’s the reason you get migraines
•	It’s the reason your spouse disappoints you and your kids hurt you
•	It’s the reason your bills pile up faster than your paychecks.
    We groan in this life because we were designed to live in a wonderful, kalos paradise, and for now we are stuck in a dried up, trackless wasteland.
    And without the irrigation from God’s Word and prayer, things just get worse.
    And the irrigation pipes themselves need constant maintenance, because our very prayer life itself can dry up. 
    With that in mind, I shouldn’t even have to preach ch.35.  It’s meaning is as obvious as can be.
    As usual, Isaiah announces judgment but then promises deliverance.  The deliverance comes in ch.35.
    Let’s take turns reading it.  Stand up and read as loud as you can.  Each person take 2 or 3 verses. 
    The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.  Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.  The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God. 
    Lebanon was a mountain range that was emblematic of majesty and spectacular glory.
    Carmel represented beauty, and Sharon called to mind fertility and plush vegetation. 
    Do you see what that’s saying?  
    The leach of death will be done away with.  There will be no second law of thermodynamics physically or spiritually. 
    Instead of the kalos of life drying up, the dried up wasteland of life will turn to a good, kalos paradise. 
    How does that sound?  Your prayer life will naturally grow and flourish on its own.
    Relationships will be like a plant in a garden paradise that just gets greener and healthier and bears more fruit that you can harvest. 
    The dried up weeds and thorns that are creating the pain in your soul will turn to plush, green pastures that comfort and nourish. 
    That’s why this chapter is directed to the reader who is weak and suffering and faltering. 
    3 Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; 4 say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you." 
    5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 
    Throughout Isaiah the promise that the blind will see and the deaf will hear apply both physically and spiritually.
    God will come and heal the blind and deaf physically as an illustration of the same kind of healing spiritually.
    The day is coming when God’s people will no longer trust in the nations, but in God.
    6 Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. 
    7 The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs.  In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. 
    So many of you are right now in the midst of walking across the hot, burning sand of fiery trials, and your not even sure if you can take the pain one more day.
    V.7 is a precious promise, isn’t it?  That hot sand is going to turn to cold, refreshing, spring water bubbling up around you.
    And as if all that isn’t enough, in v.8 everything gets even better.
    In v.8 we see an onramp.    
    8 And a highway will be there
    This isn’t the normal word for a road or path.  It’s just like our work “highway.”  It refers to an elevated main road between cities that is wide and smooth and has no obstacles.
    Isaiah uses this term to symbolize quick, easy, full access to a place.  
    Isa.19:23 
In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. 
8 And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness.  The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it.   
    No more evil!  
    Right now that broad, easy road is the road to destruction, and we have to struggle and fight to stay on the difficult, narrow road.
    But the day is coming when the way of holiness will be broad and smooth.
    9 No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there.  But only the redeemed will walk there, 
    No pitfalls, no dangers, no snares, no temptations or distractions…
    10 and the ransomed of the LORD will return.  
    Return home.  We were sold to sin and bought back by the Lord, and we will be on the Interstate back home.
    But on our journey, believe it or not, something is going to overcome us.
    We will be zooming along without any trouble on this highway, and there won’t be wild animals to overtake us – but in v.10 there is something that catches up and actually overtakes us.
    They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.  Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. 
Everlasting joy and gladness will come speeding up from behind and overwhelm you on your journey home.
    No wonder Ps.84:5 says Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on the highway.
    So that’s the promise.  Someday the Messiah will come and put in place His Kingdom, and life itself with flourish like the cedars of Lebanon.
    And best of all we will be on the fast track, bullet train, non-stop to Zion.  We will be on the highway to God – flying along so fast that the only thing that will be able to catch us will be everlasting joy and gladness.
    That’s just a little background that will help you with the next miracle in the life of Jesus.
Review 

    We have been studying the miracles and works of Christ, and we come this morning to Mk.7.
    Jesus has performed His mightiest and most spectacular miracle in Israel – the feeding of the 5000, and they rejected Him.
    He tested their faith and found it to be non-existent. 
    So He takes the 12 and leaves Israel, and goes up into paganland in the area of the vile, wicked Tyre and Sidon.
    And there he finds what appears to be a worthless, unclean, gentile, Canaanite woman…
    But then He tests her faith and exposes the fact that she has great faith.
    That woman is one of the great heroes of the faith.

Gentile Ministry
    Mt.15:29 
Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. 
    You may not think anything of that, but Mk. Tells us the route He took.  It was circuitous to say the least.
    Mark 7:31
Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis.  
    Jesus spends most of the rest of His life in v.29 – about 1/4 of His ministry (this trip most likely took at least 8 months)..  
    Tyre is about 20 mi. NW, Sidon is another 26 mi. N of Tyre, and Decapolis is on the east side of the Sea of Galilee.  
    This would be like walking to DIA via Fort Collins.
    Obviously Jesus is going out of His way to be alone with His disciples.  
    He goes to a foreign country and wanders all over – staying on the move, to remain obscure.  
    Finally He gets to the Decapolis area, where Mt. Picks up the story.
    There are three major things we can learn here from Jesus’ approach to ministry:

Jesus’ Example:
#1 Compassion 

Attention to Individuals 

    Mt.15:29  
Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. 30 Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. 
    Have you ever wondered how Jesus healed large crowds like this?  
    When we just see a report that He healed all the sick in a crowd, does that mean He just waved His hand over the whole group and took care of them all at once?
    Or is there an individual story for each person healed that just isn’t included in Scripture because of the limitations of space?
    This is the perfect place to ask that question, because the parallel account in Mark gives us an idea.
    Mk.7
32 There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged him to place his hand on the man. 33 After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue. 34 He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!"). 35 At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
    When you see a little offhanded remark in the Gospels about Jesus healing everyone in a crowd, He did that through hundreds of individual events like this.
    The Gospel writers didn’t pick out the most exciting ones or the most dramatic ones.  They just picked out the ones that fit whatever theological point was being made at that point in the Gospel.
    You may wonder, “How did Jesus heal so many people efficiently?”   The answer to that question is “He didn’t” (heal them efficiently).
    Dr. Paul Brand who works with lepers in his book Fearfully and Wonderfully Made:  “Jesus reached out His hand and touched the eyes of the blind.  He touched the skin of the person with leprosy and the legs of the cripple...I have sometimes wondered why Jesus so frequently touched the people He healed.  Many of whom must have been unattractive obviously diseased, unsanitary and smelly.  With his power he easily could have waved a magic wand, if fact a wand would have reached more people than a touch.   He could have divided the crowd into affinity groups and organized His miracles.  Paralyzed people over there, feverish people here, people with leprosy there, raising His hands to heal each group efficiently in mass.  But He chose not to.  Jesus’ mission was not chiefly a mission against disease, but rather a ministry to individual people.  He wanted those people one by one to feel his love and warmth and his full identification with them.  Jesus knew he could not readily demonstrate love to a crowd for love usually involves touching.
    And He healed the people one at a time in a personal way.  
    Let’s look at just one.
    I have two purposes this morning:
1.	To show you how Jesus did ministry so we can learn from His example
2.	To show you the theological purpose Mark has in the way he reports this particular miracle. 
The Man’s Condition (2)
    32 There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk
    This man is a tragic figure.  
    You might think that deafness wouldn’t be as bad as other problems like blindness, but deafness is no picnic – especially in the ancient world.  
    Blind people do not suffer the social pain and stigma experienced by the deaf – people gawking at them, impatient stares of those who are not aware of the condition.
    On top of that there is the humiliation of people always assuming you are stupid, because of the way you talk, and treating you as though you were mentally slow.
    Deaf people aren’t any less intelligent than anyone else, but their speech often makes it seem that way.  
    And on top of that is the fact that there would have been no way for this man to learn.
    They didn’t have schools for the deaf.
    This man couldn’t ask questions, He could hear any teaching – no doubt he was unable to read, so the truth of the Scriptures were totally cut off from Him.  
    His condition is terrible, and we see that in the concern of the friends.
    The result for this guy seems to be that it made him timid.  
    He can walk just fine, and yet it says some people brought him to Jesus.  And they beg Jesus to touch this man.  
    He doesn’t have the initiative to come on his own.

Sign Language

    32  and they begged him to place his hand on the man. 33 After he took him aside, away from the crowd, 
    The crowd is laying people at Jesus’ feet, and swarming around Him, and Jesus takes this one man and moves away from the crowd.
    Only the disciples would witness this.  
    Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue. 
    Why does Jesus do this?  And why does Mark record it? 
    One clue comes from the fact that Jesus did not touch the man’s ears and tongue to heal them.  We know that, because after Jesus touched them, he still wasn’t healed.
    This was not a healing touch.  Jesus often healed with a touch, but not here.
    He did it to communicate to the man.  He can’t say, “OK, I’m going to heal your ears now.”  
    When Jesus put His fingers in His ears, you know what that was?  Sign language.  Jesus was saying, “What is about to happen is a result of what I’m doing.”
    Many times before healing someone Jesus would ask, “What do you want?”  And they would request healing, and He would grant it.
    But He can’t have a dialogue with this guy, so He communicates in a way he can understand.
    “But what about the spitting?”
    Some commentators say Jesus spit on the guy’s tongue, because saliva was thought by some to have healing properties.
    Others things that’s too gross, and so they say Jesus spit on His own fingers and then touched the man’s tongue. 
    One commentary said Jesus spit on the ground.
    Can I point something out from the text?  It doesn’t say Jesus spit on anything.
    I don’t think we need to make this into something profane or gross.
    This is just more sign language.
    Jesus did something with His mouth, and then touched the man’s to communicate that something was going to happen involving this man’s mouth.
    Jesus is saying, “Your ears are stopped.  I’m going to unplug them.”  
    “Your speech has ‘dried up’ – I’m going to restore it.”

The Effort of Caring
 
    34 …and with a deep sigh
    The man couldn’t hear it, but he could see it.  That’s sign language for, “I care about you.  This situation moves Me.”  
    This is a very personal miracle.  No doubt they all were.
    Jesus got this guy up close the devastation on his life – the shyness, his crumpled spirit, hurt upon hurt upon hurt, and it moved His great heart.  
    That’s one of the secrets to compassion.  If you want to be a more compassionate person, you have to take the time to pull aside some of the needy, tragic figures around you, and give them your direct attention.
    In many cases we don’t want to look the needy person in the eye, because we are afraid of what it will end up costing us to show compassion.
    But showing compassion was so important to God that it wasn’t enough for Him to just sit up in heaven and feel it…
    He had to come to earth, set aside His glory, take on human weakness Himself and suffer, so He could identify with our suffering.
    No matter where you look in Jesus’ healing ministry you will see this.
    In Mt.8, after healing all the people, it says, This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases."   
(v.17)
    He didn’t just heal.  He took the sorrow upon Himself. 
    So many times when Jesus heals someone the Gospel writer says, “He had compassion and healed the person.”  
    It wasn’t just healing.  It was compassion and healing, and the compassion was visible.  
    Heb.4:15
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses
    “There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than in heaven.”
    That’s where the effort came in Jesus’ ministry.
    The healing part is always effortless.  Jesus just heals instantly with a word or touch or thought.
    The healing is never labor intensive for Jesus, like it often was for the OT prophets.
    What was labor intensive for Jesus was the time and energy and effort that went in to showing genuine compassion.
    This is another area where Jesus is the opposite of the modern faith healers.  
    For them, it’s a big effort to try to get the person healed.  But the amount of energy put into relating to that person personally is minimal.
    For Jesus the miracle was the easiest part.  
    Much more humanly taxing was the work of caring and loving – that’s always the part where you see tears flow from Jesus, or a great sigh, or some other significant expression of effort.
    In the unfathomable paradox of the union of Jesus divine nature and human nature, He could move heaven and earth effortlessly, but caring, and loving the lowly was as taxing and draining and arduous for Him as it is for us.
    And that’s our example.
    This is the hardest part of ministry.  
    Other things can be taxing:
-	learning Greek or Hebrew is hard
-	showing up at church early in the morning to rehearse for worship is hard,
-	being faithful week after week when no one seems to notice what you are doing is very hard…
    But nothing is as hard as caring.
    It’s so easy to become like the emergency room doctor who may become indifferent to suffering.  
    But a doctor can administer medicine just as well regardless of whether he feels empathy.  We can’t.
    The spiritual medicine we have to offer has its most profound effect when administered in love.
    I know most of you well enough to know that what you really long for in this life is an effective ministry in God’s service.
    Do you want to have a powerful ministry?  Don’t shut off the valve of your compassion.  
    Genuinely care about people’s suffering, and they will flock to you.  And when they do, give them God’s Word, and I guarantee you will have a powerful ministry.  
    The more closely you look into a person’s life, the more vivid and real his life becomes to you.  
    None of us believers were meant to go through this life with dry eyes.  
    The second thing we can learn from Jesus’ example is His reliance on divine power rather than human methods.

#2 Reliance on God 

The variety of Means
 
     It’s always fascinating to watch the never-ending variety with which Jesus works.  
    His mercies are new every morning, and he never runs out of ideas for new ways to convey his blessings.
    No doubt, one reason why Jesus sealed in so many different ways was to keep us from fixating on the method, as if that were the issue.
    If every time Jesus healed, He followed some routine procedure, can you imagine the idol that would be made of that?
    Jesus was not like the bogus faith healers like Benny Hinn or the other crackpots on TBN who always follow the same routine, which is part of the whole manipulation process.
    The people learn that when he puts his hand on your forehead you are supposed to feel some sensation, because he does the same thing every time.
    But every time you see Jesus heal, He’s doing it a different way.
     That’s a good reminder for us.  It’s so common for someone who has been deeply touched by a small group, for instance, to go on a crusade for the church to pour all of its resources into small groups, as if that’s the only tool God uses.
    Someone else has a bad experience with some other type of ministry, and they want to write that off altogether as an invalid method for God to use.
    God ministers to us through his Word, and the primary means of delivery that he ordained is preaching.
    But beyond that there are countless secondary means of dispensing God’s Word.  God is endlessly creative in the way He touches our hearts. 

The Upward Look 
34 He looked up to heaven 
    That’s sign language for, “You are about to be healed by power from on high.  This is not magic; this is God working.  The One who made your ears will now repair them.”
    Ex.4:11 The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?
    There are so many applications to the understanding that God is Creator.  One of them is, when you have a problem, He is the One Who can solve it. 
    The Christian life is a sacred balance – between effort and reliance on God.
    The “let go and let God” crowd (the quietists) are on one extreme.  They are all for relying on God to act, but they refuse to lift a finger to become the instrument God uses to act.
    On the other extreme is man-centered human religion, which sees God as a philosophy or inspiration, but doesn’t think of Him as actually having any direct power.
    Those people think if a human being doesn’t do something, it can’t get done.  So they rely completely on man.
    The true Christian life avoids both errors.  We are God-centered in our trust, and yet at the same time we strive to be obedient tools in God’s hand.
    And if you ever wonder if you have fallen of the beam into the error of being to man-centered, just look at your prayer life.
    You can tell how much you rely on God and how much you ultimately rely on yourself by how you pray.
    If I know my ministry is struggling, you can tell how much I look to God as the source of spiritual life by how much a resort to prayer as opposed to how much I resort to reverting to my ingenuity and creativity and problem solving skills. 
    If Jesus had need of looking to heaven, how much more must we!

The Miracle

    said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!").
    Mark is writing in Greek – translating everything into Greek.  But here he just writes down the exact Aramaic word that Jesus spoke, rather than translate it.
    He wants us to hear the exact syllables Jesus said.
    One possible point of significance of that is the fact that Ephphatha would be a very easy work to lip read. 
    Mark does tell us what the word means.  It’s a command.  Jesus is commanding this man’s ears and mouth to “be opened.”  
    When Jesus gives a command to a non-personal thing (like a storm, or ears), there is never any delay in that command being fulfilled. 
    - Which means the first thing this man heard, since the time he went deaf, was this word: “Ephphatha.”  
    The sound would have taken about one 500th of a second to get from Jesus’ mouth to this man’s ears, and no doubt by that time the healing was complete, and the first thing the man heard was Jesus’ voice.
    35 At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
    He didn’t have to learn to talk.  He didn’t need speech therapy.   
    In a split second, Jesus not only repaired the physical damage in the man’s ears and brain, but also instantly trained the man’s brain to be able to properly interpret sounds and to speak properly – something that normally takes years even for a healthy person.
    He did that with each person He healed in this crowd.
    Just imagine this.  Just take one of the 4 major categories Matthew mentions: the crippled. – a word that refers to people who were missing limbs. 
    Someone came up who had only one leg and walked away.
    Someone came up with one arm and went away with two.
    Jesus was replacing limbs right on the spot in front of everyone.  
    So we’ve learned from Jesus’ example of compassion, and His reliance on divine power instead of human methods.  The third one is a little more subtle. 

#3 Focus on God’s Purposes, not Popularity 

The Messianic “Secret”
 
    36 Jesus commanded them (the friends who brought him) not to tell anyone.
    This is a very common theme – especially in Mark.
    When Jesus healed the leper in Mark 1:43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 "See that you don't tell this to anyone. 
    Mark 3:10-12
he had healed many…12 But he gave them strict orders not to tell who he was. 
    When Jesus raised the young girl from the dead in Mark 5 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this  (v.43)
    In ch.8 Jesus heals a blind man:
Mark 8:26
Jesus sent him home, saying, "Don't go into the village."  
    In Mt.9:28-31, when Jesus healed a group of blind men: 
30 Jesus warned them sternly, "See that no one knows about this." 
    Then in ch.12 after He healed the man with the withered hand: 
Mt.12:15-19
15 Jesus withdrew from that place. Many followed him, and he healed all their sick, 16 warning them not to tell who he was. 17 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: 18 "Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. 19 He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets. 
    The Messiah came with a composed dignity.  He wasn’t screaming for attention in the streets.  
    Those who study the life of Jesus refer to this as “The Messianic ‘secret’,” and the word “secret” is always in quotes, because it was more of an attempted secret than it was a successful secret.
    Jesus told people to keep it quiet, but they rarely did.
    People in our day have been very perplexed at this.  If Jesus is here to reach the world, why forbid people from proclaiming it?
    He spends His life going around preaching.  He commands the Apostles to spend their lives preaching…
    He commissions His followers to go out and reach the whole world.
    How does that fit with Him constantly telling them to keep it quiet?
    The reason that’s such a mystery for us is because we tend to idolize publicity.
    The politicians and celebrity wannabes clamor in the streets for attention – any attention they can get.
    But Jesus wasn’t interested in name recognition, or gaining power through popularity or human connections.
    He wasn’t interested in getting the maximum number of people at a rally. 
    He was only interested in seeking and saving the lost through the preaching of the Gospel of the kingdom to those the Father was drawing.
    He never prohibited people from preaching the Gospel.  
    What He did forbid was sheer publicity over His miracles, because all that did was bring in the thrill-seekers.
    And the thrill seekers were the last group He wanted, because they weren’t interested in repentance or finding forgiveness or submission to His Lordship.
    They wanted entertainment.  They wanted to see tricks.
    And all they did was hinder Jesus from reaching the people He wanted to reach.
    This is why we don’t do big concerts to draw in unbelievers who are looking for entertainment.  
    Instead we advertise the fact that we preach God’s Word, and when people come all we give them is God’s Word.
    It may shock some of you to realize this, but what Jesus was forbidding these people from doing was sharing their testimony (if their testimony was about physical healing).
    If your testimony is the story of how God changed your heart, then sharing your testimony can be a powerful way to proclaim the Gospel. 
    But if all your testimony is is the story of how God improved your external circumstances – that will probably do more harm than good.
    I’ve been to so-called evangelistic meetings where people got up and said, “I used to be poor and on drugs, etc. and I came to Jesus and now I don’t have any of those problems.” 
    And all the thrill-seekers come streaming to the front at the invitation.
    But those are the very people Jesus drove away.
    They don’t care about Jesus, they don’t believe what He teaches, they won’t follow Him except to see the tricks, and they hinder His ministry.
    The third thing we learn from Jesus’ example in ministry is to focus on God’s purposes, not popularity.
    So Jesus tells these people to keep quiet, but…

The Rejoicing 

    44 But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. 
    Jesus told them, and they disobeyed, so He told them again, and they disobeyed again.  So He told them again…  
    Each time He cranked up the intensity of His command, and each time they crank up the intensity of their disobedience.  How to explain that?  v.37
    37 People were overwhelmed with amazement.
    Jesus’ miracles were so astonishing, it was absolutely impossible to keep them secret.
    "He has done everything well," they said. "He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."
    Mt.15:31  The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel. 
Theological Meaning 
  
  Now, let me try to show you some of the significance of this miracle. 
    Israel has been waiting for hundreds of years for the restoration promises of the prophets to come true.
    For hundreds of years they longed and prayed for God to come and turn the desert waste into paradise with the glory of ancient Lebanon.
    They longed for the day when the Messiah would come and set up His Kingdom.   
    They longed for the day when the eyes of the blind would be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. and the lame would leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. 
    Mark is very deliberate in the way he describes this.  It’s not just a random story about a miscellaneous healing.
    The normal word for “mute” is kophos (kwfoj).  But that’s not the word Mark uses to describe this man.  
    Mark uses a completely different word – an extremely rare word.  
    It’s a word that is used only one other place in the whole Bible – guess where…
    Isa.35.
    Jesus goes up into the area of Lebanon, finds a deaf mute and makes him hear and speak, and Mark describes it in the language of Isa.35.
    And the result is even the Gentiles – the “nations” are amazed and are overcome with rejoicing and are praising the God of Israel, and praising Jesus saying, "He has done everything kalos" 
    This is it!  This is the inauguration of that Kingdom that will turn the desert into paradise!
    “But I still feel like I’m very much in the desert.”  
    This present age is the desert and the age to come is the paradise.  But at Jesus’ first coming He inaugurated the Kingdom so that from then on the age to come has been breaking in to this present age.
    This is the time of the overlap of this present age and the age to come.
    At Creekside we are constantly reading through the NT together.  We pick a section and everyone reads that section every day for two weeks, then we move on.
    Yesterday we just completed 2 Timothy, and in ch.4 of that book there is a dramatic contrast in vv.8-10:
    Paul knows the end of his life is very near.
    7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day-and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for (lit. “loved” – perfect ptc.) his appearing.
    The perfect tense refers to a completed action in the past with continuing results.  
    Once a Christian perseveres all the way to the end like Paul did, he can look back over his Christian life, and gather it all up in one statement: “I loved His appearing.”
    9 Do your best to come to me quickly, 10 for Demas, because he loved (same word as v.8.  This time an aorist ptc. – pointing not to his whole life, but to the specific event of his apostasy) this world (lit: “This present age”), has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica.
    There are two kinds of people: those who love this present age, and those who love Christ’s appearing.  
    Either you live your life with all your hopes and motivations set on the promises of Isa.35, or you live your life just trying to make this desert as comfortable as you can.
    A Christian is someone whose life doesn’t appear to make any logical sense.  The world looks at a Christian and can’t understand why we live the way we live.
    Because living for the age to come will cause you to live a completely different kind of life than living for this present age.
    I hope this picture Mark and Matthew both close with is a picture of us (minus the disobedience).  
    They show Jesus in the midst of Gentiles who are involved in exuberant rejoicing because Jesus has giving just a tiny little foretaste of the inauguration of the age to come.
    And if they had that kind of enthusiastic rejoicing over the superficial things like physical healing, what kind of rejoicing should we be engaged in?

    BENEDICTION: Heb.6:18-20  God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. 19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.