In one of Jesus’ more unique healings, he pulls the deaf and speech-impaired man aside and, placing his fingers in the man’s ears, and touching his tongue, looks up to heaven and sighs before saying “Be opened.” The man’s senses were completely restored, which is the important thing. But what did all this mean? What were Jesus’ actions meant to communicate, and what do they mean for us today?

<p>In one of Jesus’ more unique healings, he pulls the deaf and speech-impaired man aside and, placing his fingers in the man’s ears, and touching his tongue, looks up to heaven and sighs before saying “Be opened.” The man’s senses were completely restored, which is the important thing. But what did all this mean? What were Jesus’ actions meant to communicate, and what do they mean for us today?</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

Chester Clark

Be Opened

I love looking at the way He went out of His way to meet people who would exercise faith in Him.

Today we're looking again at a story, a story with a lot of lessons for us to learn, a story of Jesus doing amazing things.

A few weeks ago we looked at the story of him raising the paralytic out of his stretcher and people said, we've never seen anything like this.

Today, they said, he has done all things well.

They were astonished beyond measure, it says.

He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.

Father in heaven, today as we open your word, we just want to ask that once again your spirit would rest upon us, Lord, not because of anything we've done, but because we need it, and because of your grace, and because of Jesus, we ask it.

If you look at the story here, Matthew chapter 7, I trust you're there and your Bible's with me.

If we look at this story together, we notice that there was a...

He's gone north away from the Sea of Galilee and he's gone into the region of Tyre and Sidon, that's north on the coast still of the Mediterranean and north of the land of Israel.

There he meets a Siaphanesian woman with that interchange about the dogs, remember, yea Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master's table, but now he's departing, verse 31, Mark chapter 7 and verse 31, notice with me it says, again departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, he came through the midst of the region of Acapulis to the Sea of Galilee." Now this is a very fascinating passage because the revised version actually says that this should be translated just a little bit differently.

It says that it should be translated as returning from the region of Tyre, he went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee.

So if we had a map, and here's 1 that you might be able to see a little bit of here this morning.

We have a map, we can see that right here is the Sea of Galilee, that little body of water.

He's gone up here to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

There's Tyre and there's Sidon right there.

And this is where he's met the Syrophoenician woman and he's healed her daughter.

But the Bible says that the revised version translated and scholars I think tend to agree that this is a better translation.

He leaves the region of Tyre and goes through Sidon.

So you see that he's going the opposite direction of where his destination is, isn't he?

He's going to go through Sidon and then cut back to the east and make across this river, 1 of the major rivers of Syria, and come back through the center of Decapolis, it says Decapolis is all the way down here, so he's gonna come down here and then make his way back to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

It's a very, very interesting trip that Jesus would take.

I suppose he had lessons along the way to teach to his disciples, don't you think?

I suppose there were villages along the way that he wanted to share the gospel of the kingdom with.

Now, but we must not be under any illusions.

Jerusalem's all the way down here, folks.

I mean, Galilee's already Gentile territory.

And he's gone all the way up here to the very far north of this map to the region of Sidon.

He's passed through Sidon, he's made his circuit through all the way down through coming back down to towards the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee.

So Jesus has made this circular route on his way back to his familiar territory.

And along the way, the Bible says he came through the midst of the region of Decapolis.

Decapolis is just the region of 10 cities.

The Latin prefix, deca, would be 10, and opolis is cities, right?

And so the 10 cities, and here he's coming back to the Sea of Galilee, and it says, verse 32, Then they brought to him 1 who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to put his hand on him.

So he took him aside from the multitude and put his fingers in his ears and he spit and touched his tongue and then looking up to heaven he sighed and said to him, Ephatha, that is, be opened.

And then our scripture for today, immediately his ears were opened and the impediment of his tongue was loosed and he spoke plainly." We're going to take this miracle and just break it down into its respective parts, all right?

Just phrase by phrase, we're going to look at these verses and see what we can learn, what we might be able to learn from each of these phrases.

Sometimes we read quickly over the Bible passage, don't we?

Sometimes we skip without really thinking too much about what the Bible is really saying, but we notice the first phrase here in verse 32.

We know that in many of the stories of Jesus' healing, that there is more than just the infirmed involved, right?

There is somebody else involved, somebody who brings them to Jesus, Someone who helps them come.

We saw it in the story of the paralytic, right?

We saw it, how the 4 friends carried him and then they tore up the tiles of the roof and they let him down.

Those friends brought their friend to Jesus.

And this is axiomatic, friends, that the kingdom of God is increased, not through sterile means, but through us being involved with people, through us making friends for Jesus and then bringing them to Jesus.

I say that Christians ought to be the friendliest people in the world.

Christians ought to be looking at every single person they see and thinking, what could I do to win their friendship?

What could I do to earn their confidence?

Not so they can have another friend on Facebook.

Not so they can have somebody to help them out in their business transactions or I'll scratch my back if you'll scratch, I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine, but because they want to use their friendships to bring them to Jesus.

Oh, I think, this is a rebuke to me because I tend to be 1 of those shy people that Julie was talking about.

I know that may surprise some of you because you see me in this persona.

When I first started preaching, when I first felt the call to preach, I was very distressed because I did not want to be in front of people.

You know, it's 1 of the greatest fears, the phobias that people have, is being in front of other people and having to say, having to open your mouth and say something.

And I remember some of my first sermons when I was taking a homiletics class in college and I would be out, I would be out in the field, literally I'd go out where nobody could hear me, way out in a field and I would preach to a bunch of cows.

And no conversions, but I would practice and practice and practice because I was afraid of sitting even in front of a small group of people in my homiletics class.

And I'm afraid and sometimes I'd just as soon be in a good book.

I just as soon go home and find a good book and sit in my chair and read something.

I just as soon be by myself working with my hands somewhere, but God doesn't always call us along the lines of our comfort zones.

Sometimes God calls us to get out of our comfort zones.

Now it's not that leaving your comfort zone isn't the rewarding part.

What's rewarding is you see what God does with you and through you and in you when you get out of your comfort zone.

And so I want to be 1 who makes friends for Jesus.

And so here you find that they brought to him, they brought to him 1 who was deaf and had a speech impediment.

Now this would suggest to us that he probably was not deaf from birth.

You know that most people who are deaf from birth can't speak at all, right?

Now there's some discussion over the language that is used here in the original Greek, but it seems pretty clear because not only here does it refer to it as a speech impediment, but also it says that after he was healed, he began to speak plainly, you notice.

And that sort of makes a pretty strong inference that before he was trying to speak, he had some sense of communication.

He had at 1 time been able to hear and learned to speak, but after those ears had been closed for so long, the voice forgot how to form those sounds and he was not very easily understood.

The Bible says they begged him to do something with this man.

Now this is very interesting, very interesting.

It's not common for Jesus to take a person who is needing healing apart from the multitude.

But this is something that Jesus wanted to do.

I think it's partly because Jesus wanted to arrest the man's attention and to excite his expectations.

Perhaps this deaf man, perhaps he didn't really know what was going on when he came to Jesus.

He didn't really know what was happening.

They didn't have in those days, they didn't have the Lindas and the Sherrys with the sign language skills to be able to communicate to the deaf.

I don't suppose they had a sign language at all.

And so this man may well not have understood at all what was going on.

Jesus takes him aside because he wants to know something, he wants the man to know that something is about to happen.

There is some interest that this man from Galilee is taking in me.

There is some interest that he has in especially focusing on my needs.

I want you to know friends that salvation is a personal matter.

Now I am 1 who believes that we are born again into a family.

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Be Opened

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