We just finished our small church service here in our house. We have just a few adults and some teenagers coming. It's not much, but Jay's teaching is better than ever.
Mark 7: 31 - 37 tells the story of Jesus healing the deaf and dumb man. I believe that the stories of the gospel are explanatory of God's character. I especially love the stories of how He dealt with people because I think they transport us directly into the heart of God. Jay's teaching did that for me this morning. It also convicted me and gave me a serious reminder.
In memory of our old Bible studies where we discussed Jay's teaching, I thought I'd share some thoughts with you in response to the message this morning. You'll probably want to read the passage so that you can track with this blog today.
Background: Jesus is returning to Galilee; His own country, where He was aware that people were turning away from Him in their hearts. Their lips said the right things, but their hearts were far from Him. They seemed enthusiastic, but they're missing the heart of the matter.
As soon as He arrives, some people bring their friend to Him to be healed since he could not hear or speak. They beg Him to heal their friend. This miracle is unusual because the people thought of dumbness as the ultimate incapacity. If you could not speak, in their minds, you could not even pray for God to heal. They saw this as the ultimate straight jacket so at the end of the passage it is obvious that this miracle uniquely astonished them with Jesus' power. Nobody had caused a dumb man to speak before. This man could do nothing to bring himself out of his illness at all.
The isolation this man must have experienced was probably intense. He could see, but probably did not fully grasp all that was going on around him. Jesus takes him away from the multitude.
The multitude here was a circus. They wanted Jesus' handouts, but didn't much care for Him personally in any way. They were excited and amazed and enjoying the possibilities of what Jesus might do for them. At the end of the passage, Jesus tells them to keep quiet, probably in hope that they would take a moment to think about Him and realize who He was. He wanted a more intimate connection with these people, but they wouldn't stop. In their excitement about what He had done, they couldn't listen to Him. They couldn't contain themselves. They got busy publicizing the event and proclaiming the great thing Jesus had done, but they missed Jesus Himself. They missed the Big Event of their lives while they were right there with Him, and even while they enjoyed it. How amazing is that thought? It is truly necessary for us to take some time alone with God and allow our encounters to sink deeply into our hearts where we build a relationship with Him personally. That is what He longs for. Their sin was simply ignoring Him. They weren't hostile. They weren't even neutral or unresponsive. They just didn't care about Him.
...so He took the deaf and dumb man away from the multitude. That must have been some effort! This was a big multitude of excited people. They may have gone a few hours away, but in any event, it is obvious that Jesus wanted to get this guy away from the craziness and be alone with him.
Jesus always heals differently, because we are all different. We have different specifics in our lives and God is so unbelievable in that He meets us right where we are. Here is a man who had lived in isolation and probably didn't have much ability to figure out what in the world was happening to him that day. He could not tell Jesus what he wanted. He could not even walk in faith for himself because he may not have known why his friends brought him. This is why they believed that dumbness was the ultimate straight jacket.
Jesus has a very intimate encounter with this man. It says he "shoves" his fingers in his ears. It is not a "touch," but a jamming of the fingers. He then spit and touched his tongue. How much more intimate can you get than that? This healing is much more than a physical healing. It is Jesus trying to reach into this man's darkness and pull him out of it to intimacy with Himself.
In vs. 34 it says, "...looking up to heaven, he sighed..."
Why did Jesus sigh? We sigh because we're burdened. What was burdening Jesus that day? And why did He sigh just when he was about to bring this man out of darkness? Wouldn't He be smiling? ...Not if the most important thing to Him was a relationship with this man.
Nowhere in this passage do we see anyone actually interested in Jesus Himself. They wouldn't listen to Him. They wouldn't stop and think. They wouldn't spend time with Him. He already knew that their hearts weren't really with Him. They just wanted what He had and what they could get from Him. He sighed, but He still healed. He still wanted to give a blessing and to love the man who needed so much more than healing.
We don't know what happened to this guy later. There's no record of anything past this point, which suggests he probably just went on with life. He probably spoke about the great thing Jesus did for him until he died. But did he ever really make the intimate connection with Jesus that Jesus craved?
In the beginning of the story we see people imploring Jesus. He listens to them and does what they ask for. At the end of the story, we see Jesus "charging them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; and were beyond measure astonished, saying, 'He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak."
Wow, even while they were complimenting Him, they were disobeying! They justified this, I'm sure, by a feeling religious self-righteousness, like we do so often. They probably thought the best thing to do was to "publish" it for Jesus: get the word out, tell people about the great thing Jesus had done "well." But what Jesus really wanted was their hearts, which for some reason, they were not willing to give.
We are in danger of offending Jesus in the same way today. Our churches are full of TV cameras that "publish" the great things that are going on. We are very media driven, bug crowd driven, enthusiasm for good driven. But are driven to make an intimate connection with Him today?
We might be surprised by what He actually wants us to do. I believe He wanted them to quietly go home alone that day. I think we can see clearly that He probably would have liked to break up that crowd and pull each person away by themselves with Him. That is exactly what He still wants to do, and we are literally living in the midst of an ongoing crowd via our media. Can we wrench ourselves away and get alone with Him? I hope so.
I was convicted with the depth of this sin and how easy it is to convince myself that I'm actually serving Him, when I'm not listening to Him at all. That is a scary thought. And it's a very sad picture of how much distress we can bring to Jesus.
With all the "published" news of Jesus today there is not shortage of crowds like this one. They can be deceiving.
It's Sunday today. Can you take some time to be with Him? If you have trouble doing this, I'd love to talk about why. Let's encourage each other.
In Christ's deep love,
Monica
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