I think one of the things that
is remarkable as you keep reading the Scriptures and studying the
Scriptures is that the Jesus that's presented to us in the
Scriptures is a remarkable character. He does remarkable things and
it's just astounding when you see the things He's done and
the proof that He gives of His deity, the proof that He gives
of His particular and special care of his people, this long
walk that we've just talked about up to Tyre and Sidon. that when
He meets these people who come to Him with their self-righteousness,
they are just so blind. And their blindness is a reminder
that we are all blind. And over and over again in the
Scriptures, the Lord keeps saying to people, if you have ears to
hear, then hear. if you have ears to hear. And
so this miracle that's recorded out of many miracles of the Lord
Jesus is a special miracle. God the Holy Spirit has chosen
it as a special miracle to show us some important things and
to give us great hope, I think, that the hearing ear and the
seeing eye are from the Lord. He who created ears and created
eyes will give to his people spiritual ears to hear and spiritual
eyes to see the glory of the Lord Jesus. And that, in a sense,
is what this miracle is about. that God's people, having been
given God's eyes to see and God's ears to hear, go away and they
cannot help but proclaim that He has done all things well. So as we follow through this
story, I pray, as I said earlier, that the Lord Jesus, by His Spirit,
would cause us to be people like these people who are utterly
astonished The other reminder in these verses is that the apostles,
those people who were specially chosen by the Lord Jesus, are
continually taken aside by the Lord, and continually we are
reminded that God's people need God to come, sovereignly and
supernaturally come, and continually give us ears to hear. This is an instructive lesson
for the apostles as well, because we need lessons over and over
again. We need God to come continually to give us ears to hear. And
apart from his supernatural intervention, we would just end up like the
Pharisees, with a lot of knowledge about God, a lot of knowledge
about the Scriptures. But unless that knowledge is
an intimate heart relationship with the Lord Jesus, it will
be as damning to us as it was to the Pharisees. where their
knowledge became a source of pride rather than a reason for
humility. And here the Lord Jesus is Eden
Decapolis. He comes down to Decapolis, and
don't forget that, that it's the Lord Jesus who does the coming. He is the one who came from heaven,
and He is the one that when He has come from heaven, He goes,
He goes, He goes to people. He goes to select ones. The wonderful
thing about our Lord Jesus is He's doing exactly the same thing
today. He is continually going to His
people. and the region of Decapolis should
have been a source of great humility to the Jews. It was part of the
promised land that Abraham was given. It was part of David's
kingdom. It was part of Solomon's kingdom.
But here it is as Gentile territory, a Gentile territory that had
Jews living amongst it. But it's just another sign, isn't
it, that the Lord Jesus has a family which He has redeemed and He
will gather and they will come from every tribe and nation and
language. So the first thing is that the
Lord Jesus comes in verse 31. The second thing that we need
to see is that this man who is in great need is brought to the
Lord Jesus. These people no doubt by this
time had Jesus' reputation had grown amazingly. He'd healed
so many people. He'd performed so many miracles
that news of him had spread over all Israel and the surrounding
countries. But these people, these friends
of this man, maybe his family, they actually bring him to the
Lord Jesus. And what a wonderful privilege
and what an honor that we have is that we bring in prayer and
we bring in our activities, we bring people that we love and
care about to the Lord Jesus. That's what our conference is
about in a couple of weeks' time, isn't it? that Clay will come
and he will declare the wonders of the Lord Jesus, the wonders
of the gospel, the gospel that says that Jesus has done it all
and done it all well. The gospel that God says is his
power to deliver his people. and we don't know who's coming,
but we do know that the Gospel is coming. We do know that the
Lord Jesus will be held up before us as a glorious, sovereign,
Savior and God, a wonderful husband to His people, but also a God
who we can bring people to because He really does care. But we, like these people, need
to keep going back to Jesus. They implored Jesus. They pleaded
with Him. They kept asking Him. They didn't
give up. Just like the woman from Tyre,
the Syrophoenician woman, she kept pleading with the Lord.
And we can do the same. They just keep pleading. True
prayer keeps seeking the Lord and keeps seeking Him. And it
keeps waiting, but it seeks while it waits. And these men thought
that they knew the way Jesus would heal this man. They came
and they said to him, will you just lay your hands upon him? And as we see, they actually
made a big mistake in that. They dared to presume to tell
the Son of God how He would do His work. We must never do so. We must never presume to prescribe
to God how He will do His work, or even presume that He must
always work His wonders in the same way. Every child of God
experiences the same grace by the same means, but we all have
different experiences of grace. This man's experience was particular,
wasn't it? and he experienced grace and
power from God like no one else in the world. And such is the
testimony of every believer. God's children will particularly
experience God's work in their lives. in a special way, a special way
that's suited to their circumstances, in a special way which deals
with the sins of their hearts, in a special way that deals with
the particular sins that we cling to. God, when he comes to his
people, comes particularly and he comes specially. This man
is a good picture of all men by nature. In the natural state,
in our natural state, we are deaf. We are deaf to the voice
of God. We don't hear the thunderings
of Mount Sinai. We don't hear the thunderings
that God is holy and as a holy God, He must punish sin. We are deaf to those things,
just like a deaf adder is deaf. and we are deaf to the wonders
of the Gospel. We are deaf to both of them,
aren't we? We don't hear either. We don't
hear about God what He says by way of wrath and by way of condemnation,
but also we don't hear what He says by way of blessing. And so we not only cannot hear,
we cannot obey the precepts of God's law. We're not moved. Deaf people aren't moved by sound
around them. As much as we plead with people,
as much as we present the holiness of God to people, we are dealing
with people who are spiritually deaf. They have absolutely no
hearing whatsoever. and they despise. By nature they
despise the sweet sound. The things that we delight in
and rejoice in are things that they are deaf to. We hold up
the Lord Jesus and Him crucified, the Gospel of God, and they treat
it as an irksome thing. Don't bother me with that religion.
They are deaf. They are deaf to God's words.
They are deaf to God's servants. They are deaf. And they are not
only deaf, this man is a picture of the fact that not only do
they not hear, but they cannot speak. They cannot sing the songs
of God. They cannot worship God with
their praises. It's a strange language to them,
isn't it? We rejoice in often going to
Revelation and contemplating the songs that are sung in Heaven.
And we challenge people that we love that if they're going
to investigate churches, does that church sing the songs of
Heaven? Are our songs here and are the
songs being sung in Heaven, are they of the same harmony or are
they like my voice that you hear regularly? It's just out of tune
and hopelessly so. God's children sing the songs
of heaven here on earth because God has done a work in them.
And that's the picture of this man before us. Not only is he
deaf to the things of God, he's unable to speak the things of
God. And the Lord Jesus does a wonderful
thing in the healing of this man. He takes him away. He separates him from the crowd
and he separates him from the rest of the world. When the Lord
Jesus, through His Holy Spirit, is coming and going to do a work
in someone's life, He'll do it individually and He will do it
personally. He'll take you away from the
world and take you away from the things that you cling to.
And He will deal with you one on one. He's promised to do so. and he took this man away to
deal with him personally and privately. He took this man away
from the noise and even the religion of the world he was associated
with, and he takes people away to speak to their hearts. And then he does something which
is remarkable. He touches this man as if by
the finger of his grace. He actually puts his fingers
into the man's ears. We don't know other than the
fact that he did it. We're not told why, but we do
know that the Lord Jesus again and again, when he comes to people
who are in great need, he touches them, or brings them to touch
him. He touched the leper. We've got
to remember the religion of this, that day, saw these people as
being cursed by God. under God's wrath and condemnation
because their disease was not something natural. Diseases were
all supernatural. And so the Lord Jesus is again
showing His intimacy with this fellow. He's touched with the
feelings of our infirmity and He comes and He touches us. He
touched this man and He speaks and says, he looked up to heaven, the Lord
Jesus, because he wanted this man and he wanted those who were
witnessing this event to see that his power comes from God. And he sighs the Lord Jesus,
and it's interesting that in his sighing he actually is expressing,
I believe, the sense of his deep awareness of the pain and the
effects of the fall on his chosen and loved ones. The Bible says
he's touched with the feeling of our infirmities. In Hebrews
chapter 2, there's a beautiful description of our Lord Jesus
in verse 14. in verse 14 it says, Inasmuch
then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he himself
likewise shared in the same, that through death he might destroy
him who had the power of death, that is the devil, to release
those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject
to bondage. For indeed he does not give aid
to angels, but he does give aid to the seed of Abraham, God's
faith children. Therefore in all things he had
to be made like his brethren, that he might be a merciful and
faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation
for the sins of the people. He is made like His brethren
that He might be merciful and faithful. Again and again we
are reminded that there is nothing that comes into the lives of
the Lord's people which the Lord Jesus does not feel intimately
Himself. So often we think that He doesn't
hear, that he doesn't know, but the Lord Jesus is intimately
associated with the things that trouble his people, and he sighed. And then the Lord Jesus speaks.
He speaks to reveal with a deep sigh, and said, Ephatha. And Mark translates it for us
from the Aramaic that the Lord Jesus spoke, and it is just,
Be opened. And again, the Lord Jesus is
showing us that by a Word, He created this universe. By the
power of His being and Word, He sustains this universe. And
by a Word, He can change anything in this universe for the good
of His people and according to His own character. His words
are powerful, powerful. words. And it's wonderful, isn't
it, the first words that this man hears, and hears clearly
are the words of the Lord Jesus. I love the pictures of the blind
men. The first thing that those born blind see when the Lord
opens their eyes is that they see the Lord Jesus before them,
don't they? One of the wonders of Christians
dying is that the instant we leave here, we will be confronted
with our Heavenly Husband, and it will be a great and warm welcome
that we receive. We'll see His face just as this
man heard Him speak. And of course, like all of the
Lord Jesus' miracles, when He speaks, immediately it happens. Nothing ultimately stands in
the way of God's Word. Nothing stands in the way of
God's Word. And this man then was able to
speak plainly. Whatever was impeding his tongue
was just removed. And instead of having to learn
to speak as people who have had these problems do these days,
he just spoke plainly, just simple words from God about the reality
of who the Lord Jesus is. And the Lord Jesus then does
something interesting in a place where he'd now become extraordinarily
famous into a land in which he wanted to have his name proclaimed. The Lord Jesus tells these people
and gives them orders not to tell anyone. It's extraordinary,
isn't it, that the Lord Jesus is in a land which was the land
that God had promised to the Jews. And the Jews were chosen
by God to be a light on a hill to proclaim the wonders of who
the Lord Jesus is. And continually we have in the
Gospels stories of these Pharisees who came from Jerusalem that
great mountain which God had designed to be a hill that proclaimed
His wonders and proclaimed His grace, was now a place of darkness
rather than a place of light. And these Gentiles are told by
God, told by the Lord Jesus not to proclaim it, but like the
leper before them, and like all people when they meet with laws,
we will do the opposite. In fact, according to Romans
7, in a sense what the Lord Jesus is doing is, even though He orders
them, the result of ordering them is to have Him even more
widely proclaimed. When we meet with laws, when
we meet with rules, we will do the opposite every single time,
and God does know that that's the case. which is why a relationship with
God is based on spiritual realities, not fleshly commands. It's based
on love, it's based on relationship. But they proclaimed some wonderful
things, some things that we should be amazed about. They proclaimed
that He has done all things well. the Greek tense of those verbs
is that he has done it perfectly and he is continuing to do it
perfectly, all things well. And we need to look back on our
own lives and look back on what the scripture says about God's
people, that He has done all things well. As far back as time
has been, He's done all things well. In eternity before this
world began, the Lord Jesus had done all things well. In fact, Hebrews 4 tells us that
His works were finished before the foundation of the world. He has done all things well in
eternity. In eternity the Lord Jesus took
responsibility for the salvation, the sanctification, for the glorification
of every one of God's children that the Father gave him. He's
done all things well, and God the Father entrusted Him with
the work of doing absolutely everything necessary to get all
of God's children into heaven. He will present His people holy,
spotless, blameless, beyond accusation before the Father on that great
day. He has done all things well in eternity. The Lord Jesus came
to this earth and He did all things well. In fact, those who
killed Him testified after examining Him and examining Him to see
if there's any fault in Him. All they can say is that He has
done all things well. Herod, I mean Pontius Pilate
said there is no fault in him. He's done all things well. The
Pharisees with the aid of Judas and the high priest in the Sanhedrin
can only find one fault with him, that he claims to be God. He's done all things well. His
robe of righteousness, that the Lord Jesus spent that time here
on this earth stitching for His bride is a robe which is perfect
in every way because He has done all things well. And when He
bore all of the sins of all of His people on the cross, He did
all things well. It was done perfectly. There were no sins of any of
God's children left unpunished. Not one blemish will be on that
robe of righteousness that's stitched for His children. Forgiveness
is perfect and complete. And even now, as much as our
flesh doesn't want to accept it, as much as we will struggle
with things around us, we need to say what God says, that the
Lord Jesus is doing, has done, all things well for us right
now. And when we look to what might
come before us in the future, we need to keep saying, He will
do all things well. He cannot help, as God of this
universe, help but do absolutely perfect things for all of His
children. He will do all things well. And
one day, that great day, when all things are resolved, and
all of history is wrapped up, and all of the purposes of God
are seen by all the world to have been perfect. We will all
say, like the hosts of heaven say now, He has done all things
well. There's one further thing that
they say at the end of that verse in 37, is that He's a God who not only
does all things well, but He's a God who makes. He makes the deaf to hear and
the mute to speak. I have some verses from Isaiah
which show us again, as we've said so often, that the Lord
Jesus in His activities just lived fulfilling the Old Testament
promises. He makes the deaf to hear. In
Isaiah 32, 4, the eyes of those who see will not be dim, and
the ears of those who hear will listen, and the heart of the
rash will understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers,
which are reference to this man, will be ready to speak plainly. verse 35 chapter of Isaiah verse
5. The eyes of the blind shall be
opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the
lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb sing for
waters shall burst forth in the wilderness. In the wilderness
of life without God, when God comes, waters will burst forth
where there was no water of life. There will be water of life,
and streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become
a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water." That's just
wonderful descriptions, isn't it, of the completeness of God's
activity in saving His people. That's why continually the scriptures
are saying, hear you deaf, Isaiah 42, 18, and look you blind that
you may see. So God makes, on the back of
your outline I have a great description of five stark contrasts
between the religions of this world, whatever they might be,
and the religion, the true religion that God brings with His Spirit
in the lives of His people. The Lord our God, the true God,
makes His worshippers, It must be a creative act of God for
people to worship one who is holy. The worshippers of idols
make their gods. They are continually crafting
new ones and adjusting them. The true God is known only by
self-revelation. only by the revelation of truth
and grace in Christ, which is exactly what's happened to this
man, whereas all idols are dependent upon human teachers. The third
one, He who is truly God prompts the work of all His servants.
He's the one who brought these men to praise. He makes the deaf to hear and
the mute to speak. Those who were mute before now
sing the praises of their Redeemer. The true God commands His position
by the might of His own power and grace, whereas breathless
idols are manipulated by the hands of men. The true God performs
His own mighty deeds and commands His worshippers to be still,
whereas the idols of men are still while their worshippers
busy themselves with their religious commotion. Our God sits on a
throne in heaven, but our God is doing amazing things, doing
all things well in the lives of all of his people. And may
God cause us, like these men here, to be utterly astonished,
to be amazingly amazed at what God is doing. And the only way
to be amazingly amazed is to be looking around to see that
God must do anything that is going to be spiritually good.
It must come from Him. He must get all the glory for
beginning it, for continuing it, and at the end all the glory
must go back to Him. He's a great God. The wonderful thing is that He's
continuing to do this same work, opening deaf ears, opening blind
eyes, and He's causing His people to praise Him. Let's pray.