Sermon Tone Analysis

Title: Deaf Hearts

Text: Mark 7:31-37

Purpose: To consider how we might be blinded by our past, our culture, our family, our church, our education to our own pride

Date: 4~/14~/07-Benson

OS: 475 Balm in Gilead

CS: 567 Have Thine Own Way, Lord

 

Human birth takes about 9 months from conception and that is a good way to introduce the topic this morning because it was about that long before Jesus came back to the Decapolis.

He had left after being urged to do so because the people were afraid what else Jesus might do to their economy after sending the evil spirits into the 2000 swine that plummeted over the cliff and were destroyed.

But he left the seed of truth embedded in the hearts of these two wild uncontrollable demoniacs who were now free and pleaded with Jesus to take them with Him.

But He wisely left them uninstructed as they were to tell what God had done for them.

9 months later Jesus came back to a crowd of 4,000 who were drawn from every part of that region.

These uninstructed ones did so much more than Jesus was permitted because of the prejudice of those who were so afraid.

Among the crowd was a man who undoubtedly was embarrassed by his own speech and hearing impediment.

We are not told who it was who brought him to see Jesus.

It is almost as if he were unwilling because these friends are spoken of as bringing him to Jesus.

I wondered if it were not the two demoniacs who urged him to come and see Jesus.

Jesus did something very strange.

He took this man apart from the crowd as if He needed some privacy.

Why did He do this?

It may have been to convince this deaf and partly dumb man that he was worthy of Jesus’ focus on him by himself to let him know that he was valued highly and that his inability to speak had nothing to do with Jesus high value that he placed on him.

If you think about it you will see that this man could not have heard Jesus’ words so He communicated with him in a way that he could understand.

He put his fingers in his ears.

He could feel that.

Jesus spat on the ground.

He could see that.

Then he put his fingers on the man’s tongue indicated that something was going to happen to his hearing and his speaking.

But before Jesus uttered the words, “Be opened,” He sighed.

Not only can you hear sighs if you have the ability to hear but you can see sighs.

There is the lifting of the shoulders and the drawing in of ones breath and exhaling it heavily.

Mark is the only one who uses this word and he does it twice in close proximity suggesting that there must be some relationship.

Jesus wasn’t sighing because this was a particularly difficult miracle to perform but because of what it represented and that is the deaf hearts that would not respond to all the evidence of God’s mercy and love.

Not only did the disciples sometimes have a difficult time understanding Jesus but sometimes He is just as hard to for us to understand as well.

It would seem that if a miracle is performed that you would want it broadcast to convince the deaf hearts.

After all is not that what Jesus did with the demoniacs?

He told them to broadcast what He had done for them.

But here Jesus repeatedly told them not to tell.

That may have been another reason why He took the man off by himself so it would not be observed as closely as it would have been had he remained with the crowd.

In addition to that Jesus may have wanted to spend more time teaching than healing and if he broadcast what was done for him Jesus would not have had the opportunity to communicate all that he would have liked to.

The record doesn’t indicate everything that happened that day but I would be surprised that even with the failure of the deaf and dumb man who had been healed to head Jesus warning not to tell anyone that He still took the time to teach what He had already been teaching through His public ministry.

I am sure that the two demoniacs who knew so little about Jesus’ teaching were anxious to hear for themselves what Jesus taught and probably begged Him to do so.

I would be surprised if Jesus didn’t teach them the same things he spoke in His Sermon on the Mount where He spoke the beatitudes.

He may have even taught some of the same things he had taught in the synagogue at Capernaum after feeding the 5,000 where he pointed to himself as the bread of life.

We don’t know the content but it is hard to imagine that Jesus didn’t communicate to them the very heart of the gospel.

The record says that Jesus and His disciples were there with this crowd that had by the end of the three days had swollen to 4,000.

There are so many similarities between the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000 that some have thought that they were the same event.

But that cannot be the case.

Jesus was on the north side of the Sea of Galilee when he fed the 5,000.

The feeding of the 4,000 was in the southeast of the Sea of Galilee.

The people in Bethsaida were largely Jewish.

The population in the southeast were pagan and heathen.

This partially explains why the disciples were so slow to embrace the opportunity to respond to Jesus’ invitation to do something for this large group of hungry people who had brought enough bread for the first two days but by the third day they were without food.

Evidently some had come quite a ways to hear him and they would be famished by the time they got home.

It says that Jesus had compassion on them but evidently the disciples didn’t share those feelings.

He had to pry their fingers open from their grasp of the bread they hoarded for themselves.

One reason they were so slow to catch on is that their prejudice was deeply ingrained in the very fiber of their hearts.

Those of us who have grown up in the fifties might have some appreciation for this as we reflect back on how white people actually treated their black neighbors in the market place.

Those feelings don’t disappear very easily now nor did they back then.

Jesus had attempted to break through to them when He engaged a Samaritan woman in conversation at Jacob’s well in Sychar.

They were so surprised that they even asked Him why he was speaking with her once they got back from getting the food Jesus sent them to purchase.

It must have been with reluctance that they consented to go to the Decapolis originally when Jesus healed those two demoniacs.

They must have been relieved themselves not to have had to stay among the Gentiles and were even relieved that these two men were not permitted to get in their boat and leave with them.

Undoubtedly they accepted Jesus’ healing of the Roman Centurion’s servant since he had undertaken the task of building the Jewish synagogue in Capernaum.

There must have been some sense in which he proved himself worthy of Jesus’ attention.

They must have had a hard time understanding Jesus.

Sometime He engaged the non Jew in conversation and other times He appeared not to have any interest in the non Jew like the woman who lived in the area of Tyre and Sidon which was strictly a heathen territory.

When Jesus sent them on their initial mission he said that they should not go to the Samaritans or to the Gentiles but only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Is it any wonder they were so slow in wanting to respond to this woman when Jesus said that he was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel?

That their prejudice was still in tact is evidenced when they urged Jesus to send her away since they were so annoyed at her.

But Jesus’ compassion could not be hid from this woman in spite of the disciples’ prejudice.

Now they were back in the Decapolis after coming there immediately from witnessing Jesus’ compassion as it had been expressed to this woman whose daughter had been severely demon possessed just as those two demoniacs had been possessed nine months earlier.

While they were blown away by the interest that they saw when they returned they were not prepared to open their heart or their pocket books or their lunch pails to these non Jews.

Jesus had to as it were pry their greedy little fingers from their own food.

Jesus confessed his own compassion for the crowd.

Apparently they had brought enough food for two days and part of the third but by now they had run out.

The crowd may not have been aware of their own hunger.

If you think about it, it is clear that they were overwhelmed by what they had seen and heard.

In Matthew’s account it says that the crowd was amazed at all that they had seen.

Although that is not the same Greek word used in Matthew 7:28 after the Sermon on the Mount it is a similar word and conveys a similar if not the same idea that these crowds were overwhelmed by what they had heard and seen.

Since this crowd wasn’t composed of Jews Jesus was not in danger of being taken by them and made the king of Israel.

But it does say that they glorified the God of Israel which shows how unprejudiced they were.

It was interesting to find out that there was a significant amount of difference between the two miracles.

In the feeding of the 5,000 there were 12 basketfuls of bread left over.

In the feeding of the 4,000 there were 7.

But the word used for basket in the feeding of the 5,000 was different than the word for basket in the feeding of the 4,000.

In the 5,000 the word was a lunch pale size basket.

In the 4,000 the word was hamper size basket.

So there was an enormous difference in what was left over.

By the time there is need for food a little later all the disciples had was one loaf of bread.

Evidently they had distributed the leftovers among the crowd.

After Jesus dismissed the crowd it says that Jesus and His disciples got in a boat and headed over to Magdala where Jesus had one of the shortest conversations that is recorded.

Let me just set the stage by describing the Pharisees.

When you realize their background you may realize more than you have in the past why they had so much influence with the Jews in Palestine.

They were the successors of the Chasidim or pious ones who actively supported the early Maccabees in their struggle against the Seleucids who were the ruling element at that time.

They tried to maintain the national purity by rejecting all attempts to introduce Hellenistic practices among the Jews.

In the first century before Christ they actively opposed the worldy rule of the Maccabean rulers and as a result there was a bloody persecution of these zealous religionists and the death of many prominent Pharisees.

In spite of the persecution of the Pharisees their influence over the people grew.

By the time Herod the Great ascended the throne it became apparent to him that he should not persecute them because he knew that they had a great influence over the people even though there were only about 6,000 Pharisees.

This conservative segment of the Jewish religion held their Bible in high esteem.

They clung to the whole of scripture while the Sadducees only regarded the first five books of Moses as authoritative.

Those who made up the Sadducees were the liberals who were people of means and attempted to court the favor of those who ruled Judea from Rome.