Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Mark 7:31-37
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  September 9, 2018

A few years ago, after a catechism class, I was asked to meet with a young man who was struggling with depression. We talked about his latest doctor’s visit, and the effects of the new dosage he had been prescribed, but then he got around to telling me what he really wanted to talk about. He was having trouble believing that anybody cared about him. He said he felt invisible to everyone at school and no one liked him. He said only his parents loved him, but they had to because they were his parents. We talked for a while and I tried to show him the love of Jesus. He left in better spirits, but I knew this wouldn’t be our last conversation. At 7:00 o’clock, his mom picked him up and gave him a kiss on the forehead before they climbed into the car. I said a prayer for him and headed home as well. But as I stopped at a red light, I noticed three words printed on a faded bumper sticker ahead of me. “Jesus loves you,” it read. And I wondered how many times those words have fallen on deaf ears.

“Jesus loves you.” That’s what the Bible teaches. That’s we are all told, over and over again. But there are a lot of times when it’s hard to believe it. There are times when someone, ever a pastor, has a rough enough day, that he isn’t in the mood to hear about God’s love. The devil works hard, especially in a Christian church, to make sure that God’s love for individuals falls on deaf ears. If he cannot stop us from hearing it, his next strategy is to stop it from being understood uniquely and personally. He wants to neuter the truth of God’s love and forgiveness by reducing them to generalities. He wants us to believe that “God so loved the world” but not, “God has so loved me.” In other words, he is happy to let us see God from a distance, but he doesn’t want it to get personal. He doesn’t want us to see that God is in the details. That’s why I’m so thankful to turn with you to Mark 7. Because here up close and personal, in the details, we get to glimpse our Savior’s genuine care and love for individuals, like you and me.

Verse 31-32, “Jesus left the region of Tyre again and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, within the region of the Decapolis. (Outside of Israel, Gentile turf.) They brought a man to him who was deaf and had a speech impediment. They pleaded with Jesus to place his hand on him.” Deafness was a double disability in the ancient world. There were no hearing aids. there were no sophisticated techniques for training speech. There were no developed sign languages. So deafness, if it occurred congenitally or very early in life, always left a serious speech impediment because it’s nearly impossible to speak words that you can’t hear. Deafness was a double disability because you both you couldn’t understand others and you couldn’t express yourself. It was a sad reality, but in ancient societies, deaf-mutes were often categorized with the insane. They were often outcasts, treated with disdain because it was virtually impossible to communicate with them and it was often wrongly assumed that they had limited mental capabilities as well. This man had most likely lived with a lifetime of stigma, a lifetime of isolation and rejection. Thankfully at least some friends or family who cared about him had heard about a great prophet who was traveling through the Decapolis. And so they fought through the crowds and they brought him, literally the verb is to “throw him”, at Jesus’ feet and begged Jesus to place his hand on him.

Jesus, of course, will help, but not in the way they expected. Verse 33: “Jesus took him aside in private, away from the crowd.” I want you to imagine a massive crowd of people surrounding Jesus. There’s chaos, noise; there are shoulders brushing other shoulders; there’s all kinds of commotion. But, Jesus, in the middle of it all, decides takes to take this man away privately. They may have had to walk a while before they were by themselves, but Jesus sees it necessary. This man, this misunderstood poor deaf man, is going to have the Son of God’s full care and concentration.

And Jesus then begins to communicate with this man in a unique way. He puts his fingers into the man’s ears. He identifies that he knew the problem and he was about to heal his hearing. Then Jesus put some saliva on his finger and touched the man’s tongue, implying that he would also heal his speech impediment. (Saliva was widely recognized in the ancient world as having therapeutic properties.) There is kindness in Jesus’ touch. He doesn’t care if others think this poor man is unclean or crazy. He is willing to touch him, to reassure him, and to prepare him for what would happen next.  Jesus looked up to heaven, sighed a prayer to his Father and said, Ephphatha, which means “be opened”. At the power of his word, “Immediately the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was set free, and he began to speak plainly.” Do you understand the extent of this? The man is not just able to hear, but able to speak. He who was deaf can hear and he who was unable to speak now has full fluency in a language that he’s never heard before. Incredible! It is an impressive miracle and it demonstrates our Jesus is truly the Son of God. And it also shows us our Savior’s care and compassion in a way few other parts of the Bible do.

But it can still be hard to apply personally. It is hard to know that God loves each of us as he loved this man because that’s not often how we see people treat each other in our world. I remember overhearing a customer belittle a waiter over something at a restaurant. There was a problem with the food, but that didn’t justify the tone they used to speak to this poor kid. It’s a bad result of something called “Social Categorization”. And everyone does it to a greater or lesser extent. Some people we really love, we consider them our family or close friends, others are acquaintances like neighbors and coworkers and we treat them pretty well too, but some people, those whom we only interact with to get something done or receive a service, are categorized almost like products that we pay for, like that poor waiter at the restaurant. It’s easy to forget that every person we interact with is an individual soul, created by God and loved by God, with real hopes and cares, real value just like us. The cashier at the grocery store, the worker in the drive through, the opposing fans at a Badgers game: these are real people. Sitting behind the post on Facebook or the comment on Youtube is a living, breathing, individual. Even that celebrity or politician, even the mistreated actress on a bad website: these are individual souls loved by God. What would it mean to treat them as such?

It’s sadly ironic because we live in a country which is defined by individualism but we seldom feel cared for as individuals. We are so busy that we rush past each other. And it breaks my heart, especially when I see it with kids, like that young confirmand, because in a time abounding with social media and all these ways to connect, people are starving for actual love and attention. Some of this is even linked to an increase in suicide and depression, which are statistically higher now than any time in recent decades. But the worst case scenario is what happens when we assume God works the same way. If we assume that God, just like the advertisers, says he really cares about us but doesn’t actually know us. If, based on how we are treated by others, we think that God must not really be true to his Word when he says he really loves us. When our sinful human heart plugs our ears, we grow deaf, not physically, but spiritually and are unable to understand the love of God for individual souls. That deafness will lead to confusion, isolation, to a mute tongue which cannot speak his praise, and eventually unbelief. This is why we need to see Jesus treat this man differently than others did. This is why Mark lets us see the details.

This miracle appears only in Mark. Matthew tells us that Jesus had been healing many people that day, but Mark zooms in and shows us this one in particular. I appreciate this approach because hidden in the details is so much more. If we could understand like God does, exactly what is going on inside someone’s head and heart, we would know the specific reasons behind the variations in Jesus’ miracles. We can’t begin to comprehend the mind of the Almighty, but if we could, we would know why some were healed in the crowd that day, while this man was restored in private. We would understand why for this man Ephphatha was spoken, while for another woman just a brush of Jesus’ cloak was enough; why for this man healing was instantaneous while another was asked to wash in the pool of Siloam; why some are told to speak of Jesus’ power and some are told to keep silent. And yet what we do know, is that the wisdom of God operates in each case for the best of that individual. Behind the touch, and the sigh, behind the care and the sensitivity, there is the assurance that God knows and loves every person as an individual, even you and me.

David wrote it so beautifully in Psalm 139, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

It may sometimes seem too wonderful to believe, but God is in the details. He knows you. He knit you together in your mother’s womb and before you even were born he loved you enough to lay his life down, not just for the world but for you. You were on his mind when he hung on that cross. God has that capacity! You are the person he thought of on Easter morning when he stepped out of the tomb. You are the one he cannot wait to see in glory eternal. My friends, Jesus does love you. (Whether or not you’re able to hear it.) He loves you individually and uniquely just as you are. He knows what you are going through and he cares. He cares about your thoughts, your fears, your hopes, your pains, your joys. Not just the big things, but the little things as well. Every moment of each day he is with you. You have his full care and concentration. Believe it! God is in the details.

There are two applications that I’d like to highlight which flow from this truth:

#1. If you believe that God is in the details you will understand the significance of details. When I think about those people that I love and respect the most, it is not because of the big things, it was because of the daily details of their love. I think about the patience of my mother’s care, the way she washed my clothes and taught me the value of humility. It wasn’t the big things, it was traveling to games, going over homework, the love of consistent discipline, the kindness of her cooking. There is a significance in details! God is in the details and is therefore in the details of our lives that we model, most clearly, his consistent and genuine love for others. And it is in the details that the Holy Spirit displays the sincerity of his work in our hearts. 

#2. If you believe that God is in the details you will see the meaning in suffering. If our God is who he says he is, the Almighty Sovereign-Creator of Heaven and Earth- the All-Sufficient Lord, then he is in control of all the details in the world, both the good ones and the bad ones. And we know, as the Apostle says, that in all things God works for the good of those who love him! Though God does not create sin, he does work through it for our eternal good. Think about this: If this man in Mark wasn’t a deaf-mute, would he have gotten to meet Jesus? God allows suffering and affliction for a reason! I mean, finally, if God can use the death of his own Son on the cross to bring about the salvation of the world, then he certainly has meaningful reasons for the difficulties in your life as well. If he can turn the conglomeration of all the Devil’s best schemes–betrayal, desertion, denial, false accusations, physical torture, even death itself, seeing his own Son die a wretched death–and turn that into the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, what can’t he use to bring about his good purpose? Dear brothers and sister, no matter what happens to you God has allowed it to happen for a good purpose. He is seeking to teach you, to test you, to strengthen you and ultimately to draw you closer to himself.  God is in the details and your suffering has meaning.

My friends, I pray the Holy Spirit speaks an Ephphatha to you today. May your ears may be opened to hear that “Jesus loves you” and may your tongue may be set free to proclaim it.

Amen.