I hope you will open your Bibles
and follow along with me this morning as I read from God's
Word. I will be looking at Mark, chapter
7. Mark, the Gospel of Mark, chapter
7. While you are turning there,
I will first read from Isaiah. Now, the prophecies of Scripture
speak of spiritual salvation. Just as the miracles of Christ
represent a greater miracle, the miracle of salvation. You
see, all of us are born blind, deaf, dumb, lame, dead in sin. And just as Christ healed the
blind, deaf, lame, and dumb, and raised the dead, the same
must be done for each of us spiritually. And only one can do that, Christ
Himself. And he does it one way. He does
it through his word, preaching the hearing of his word. I'm reading from Isaiah 29, verse
18, which says, In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the
book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and
out of darkness. That's a prophecy of the day
when Christ walked this earth, the day when He came and revealed
who He was, who the Father was. Now, in Mark chapter 7, we have
an example of a deaf man, a man without the sense of hearing. And in Mark chapter 8, we'll
look at that in a moment, we have an example of a blind man. Both were healed by the Lord
Jesus Christ. and both represent spiritual
healing and salvation. In Mark 7, I read this, beginning
with verse 31. It says, ìDeparting from the
coast of Tyre and Sidon, he came to the Sea of Galilee through
the midst of the coast of Decapolis. And they bring unto him one that
was deaf,î he could not hear, ìand had an impediment in his
speech.î And they besought Christ to put his hand upon him. Now,
they brought him to Christ. Now, if one is going to receive
spiritual hearing, he is going to have to be brought to Christ. He is going to have to hear Christ
speak. Christ said, My sheep shall hear
my voice. Christ's voice, the voice of
the Son of God, is his word. And Peter said, This is the word
which by the gospel is preached unto you. Yes, Paul said in 1
Corinthians 2, he said, God is chosen by the foolishness of
preaching to save them which believe. So every one of God's
deaf people, those people whom he purposes to save, they are
deaf by nature. They are brought to Christ by
the Holy Spirit of God. They are brought to Christ to
hear his voice. They are brought to hear the
gospel. This is what the scripture says over and over. How shall
they believe in him whom they have not heard? Yes, faith cometh
by hearing, hearing by the word of God. The gospel must be heard
by that deaf sinner. The gospel, not another, not
a perversion, but the gospel which Paul describes in Romans
1. God's gospel of Christ's power. God's gospel. Now, they brought
this man to Christ, and verse 32 says that he was deaf. He had an impediment of speech.
He was deaf. He couldn't hear. He had ears,
but he couldn't hear out of them. And that's us by nature. We have
ears, but we don't hear. We don't hear what God's Word
says to us. We don't hear what everything
around us says to us. We don't hear who God is. We
don't hear what We are, by nature, we don't hear who Christ is.
We are deaf by nature, deaf to the voice of the Son of God,
deaf to the preaching. I recall sitting under the sound
of God's Word for so many years and not hearing a word of it.
Oh, I heard it, and I could even argue for it, but I really didn't
hear it with the understanding, with my heart. So this man was
deaf, and they brought him to Christ. And it says he also had
a speech impediment. And those two are always connected.
Someone who is hard of hearing or does not hear usually has
a speech impediment. And so it is spiritually. All
men and women by nature, young people, who do not hear God's
Word, their speech is adversely affected. Those who do not hear
the truth They speak falsely, false opinions, false notions. One who has not heard of God's
holiness will speak of his own holiness. One who has not heard
of God's absolute sovereignty from Scripture will speak of
his own free will. One who has not heard of God's
immutable and eternal purpose ordered before the foundation
of the world God's predestinating power and purpose, one who has
not heard that from God's Word will speak of luck, chance, accident. One who has not heard of Christ's
imputed righteousness necessary, absolutely necessary for salvation
will speak of his own righteousness. Well, this man had a speech impediment,
and so do we by nature if we have not heard God's They besought
Christ, it says in verse 32, they beseech Him to put His hand
upon him. They needed Christ to put His
hand on that man. And so it is. It is not the laying
on of a man's hands, a soul winner, a preacher, but the Lord Himself
must lay hold of every sinner whom He purposes to save. what the Lord did to this man.
I want you to note this very carefully. In verse 33, Mark
chapter 7, it says, Christ took him. He laid hold on him, put
his hand on the man, on his shoulder, or took him by the arm, and it
says, He took him aside from the multitude. He took him away
from everyone else. And he was alone with this man.
Now, the Lord saves individuals. one-on-one. He takes everyone
whom he deals with away from the crowd, alone with himself. This is how salvation comes.
He takes us outside of the camp, Paul said in Hebrews. When the
disciples on that Mount of Transfiguration awoke, it says they saw Jesus
only. And so it will be if God deals
with you or with me. He will take us apart, aside
from all the multitude, and deal with us one on one. And it says
here in verse 33 that the first thing He did was He put His fingers
into His ears. Now, man by nature shuts his
own ears to what God's Word says and listens to what man says,
but when God begins to work on a spiritually deaf person. God first stops that person's
ears to what man is saying in order to hear what He is saying. You know, there is so much noise
and confusion and clamor of religion today. What a man or woman or
young person needs is to have his ears stopped to all this
confusion of religion, all these voices of so many preachers and
get along with God's Word and hear Him speak. Well, verse 33
goes on to say that Christ spit and touched His tongue. I believe
He spit in His mouth and touched His tongue with His finger and
put those fingers into that man's ear. Now, what this represents
is What opened this man's ears came from the mouth of the Son
of God. That represents the Word of God,
from the very mouth of God. Yea, God has spoken unto us once,
yea, twice. That is, through the prophets
and now through His Son, the Apostle. God's Word is what opens
the ears of deaf sinners. If a man is going to hear God,
he must have his ears closed first to what is going on around
him, and then opened by the Word of God. And he had his ears opened. Verse 34 and 35 say this, And
Christ looked up to heaven, and sighed, and said unto him, Epithet,
that is, be opened. And straight away, right away,
this man's ears were opened, and his tongue was loosed, and
he spoke plain. This man's ears were opened.
What was it he first heard? He first heard Christ speak.
He first heard from the Son of God. And it says his tongue was
loosed. He was able to speak plainly,
it said. His tongue was loosed. What do
you think the first thing he said was? I believe he probably
said, Salvation is of the Lord. He began to speak plainly. If someone were to ask him about
salvation, he would say, Christ is salvation. He would speak
of grace. He would speak of mercy. He would
not speak of man's will. He would speak of God's will.
He would not speak of his own righteousness. He would speak
of Christ's righteousness. He would not speak of man's worth.
He would speak of Christ's worth. He would not speak of man's works.
He would speak of Christ's work. He would not speak of man in
any way, shape, form, or fashion. He would not speak of himself.
But he would give all glory to the Lord who opened his ear and
loosed his tongue. And so it is with everyone whom
God saves spiritually, opening their deaf ears and loosening
their tongue that is impeded. Well, in chapter 8 is a very
similar story of a blind man being healed, similar because
all spiritually deaf are also spiritually blind, and it takes
the same person, same power, to open the eyes as well as the
ears. See, all who do not hear God's
Word do not see who God is, do not see who they are, do not
see their need of Christ and salvation. In Mark chapter 8,
I read, beginning with verse 22, "...he cometh to Bethsaida,
and they bring a blind man to him, and besought him to touch
him." Again, this man needed to be brought to Christ. Only
Christ could heal him. He's blind. and only the Lord,
the maker of the eyes, can open them. Verse 23 says, And Christ
took the blind man by the hand and led him out of town. Again, Christ took this man away
from the multitude, away from everyone else, and got alone
with him. You may hear of all these huge
crusades going on in town and so forth. What we need, perhaps,
to do Instead of getting in the midst of this huge crowd of religion,
is get alone. Get out of town. Get away from
the hoopla and the Hollywood that's going on. Away from the
extravaganza of religion and all the entertainment. Go out
somewhere and alone with God. And perhaps find you a little
place, a little country church where there's a man who is preaching
God's Word, who is more interested in God's glory than his own,
more interested in the name of Christ than his own, more interested
in you knowing Christ than himself, more interested in meeting you
in glory than meeting you at the back door, more interested
in who God is and who Christ is and the truth than your favor
and your approval. Well, Christ took him outside
of town and it says, In verse 23, He took the blind man by
the hand and led him out of town when he spit on his eyes and
put his hands on him. He asked him if he saw anything.
Again, it came from the very mouth of Christ. God uses His
Word to open the eyes as well as the ears. And this process
of salvation, this spiritual new birth is a gradual one. Our Lord asked this man if he
saw anything. And he looked up, it says in
verse 24, and said, I see men walking as trees. I see men as
trees walking. Now, we don't see very clearly
when God first begins to reveal the truth to us, but we do see
this. We see man is dead and salvation is of the Lord. We
see man is sinful, but God is holy. We see man's works don't
say, but only Christ can say. And it says in verse 25, After
he put his hands on his eyes, Christ made him look up, and
he was restored and saw every man clearly. Just as that deaf
man with the impediment of speech began to speak clearly, this
blind man eventually began to see things very clearly. He began
to see who God really is, who Christ really is, what salvation
really is, and what man really is. Well, I hope there's a deaf
or a blind person in the audience this morning. And perhaps the
Lord has opened your ears to hear some things you've never
heard before, and your eyes to see what you've never seen. Until
next Sunday, good day.