Brethren, we have met to worship and adore the Lord our God. It's time for the Holy Manna radio broadcast with Brother Byron Chesney, pastor at Highland Baptist Church. For the next few minutes, Brother Byron will be bringing you some truths from God's Holy Word. So have your Bible ready and follow along with Brother Byron. I noticed in verse 32 that they did not specifically come and ask Jesus to heal the man. Did you notice that? They didn't say, Jesus, would you restore his hearing and his speech? No, it says they bring unto him one that was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. Now, of course, they have seen Jesus perform miracles before, and at times he does touch people and heal them. Jesus healed people in a lot of different ways. The Syrophoenician woman, he only spoke the words and said, your daughter is healed. He never went to see her. He never touched her. He didn't do anything like that. He didn't do what he's going to do with this death manning. He just said, she is healed. Your daughter is healed this very hour. She's healed. And so he healed people in different ways, touching them, speaking. Just whatever it took, Jesus could heal them. Typically, though, people would expect someone that's going to heal somebody to touch them. Now, we have a lot of phonies today, a lot of fakes, a lot of people like Mr. Benny Hinn on TV that claims that he heals people by slapping them with his jacket and all this other stuff. Friends, that's nothing but a bunch of hogwash and phony baloney. He's not healing anybody. Jesus can heal anybody at any time. I'm not saying that miracles are ended now, and I fully believe that people can be healed on the day we live in right now by the miracles of Jesus. I believe that with all my heart. But when you have people going around saying they can heal you themselves and hit you with a jacket and all this, why don't they go to the children's hospital and go down to each bed and heal every one of them? Bunch of phonies. They're gonna answer for that one day. They're gonna answer for it. But Jesus is the real deal. So they ask him to put his hands on their friend or family member so that he can be, his hearing will be restored and his speech will be cleared up. Look at verse 33. It says, and he took him aside from the multitude and put his fingers into his ears and he spit and touched his tongue. Now, you know, Jesus did a lot of things similar to this throughout the Gospels that seems kind of strange to us. And one point where he healed people that were blind, he spit on the ground and formed a mud ball and stuck mud balls in their eyes and healed them. And we always wonder, why in the world does he do certain things like that? Well, in the case of this man right here, remember, he can't hear. And so for Jesus to be able to relate to this man what he's about to do, this is a type of sign language Jesus is doing. And so when he puts his finger in his ear, he knows Jesus is going to do something to my ear. If he'd have grabbed him by the nose, he'd have said, Jesus is going to do something to my nose, right? So it's a type of sign language. They wouldn't have had the American sign language we have today, where they can spell it out on their hands. I can do my ABCs. That's about all I can do. But this man, Jesus is telling him. And notice it says he took him aside from the multitude. He whisked him away from all the crowd and all this. It doesn't go into any detail of exactly why he did that. We do know that by reading further down, he is going to tell them not to be broadcasting this event, don't be telling everybody about it, which does absolutely no good in this case. But perhaps this is also a sign of Jesus separating people. We know that we are commanded to be separate from the world. We're to be separate from the sinners. And so this is a sign, maybe, of Jesus. When Jesus gets involved, there is a separation between the person and the rest of the world. And so he's separating him from everybody. That's what 2 Corinthians 6, 17 says, Wherefore, come out from among them and be you separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I'll receive you. But he stuck his fingers in his ears so he would know it had something to do with his hearing. And so, listen friends, I believe a lot of us today need the Lord to stick his fingers right in our ears. I believe there's a lot of things going on in a lot of people's lives and they need to understand that Jesus can help them with it. And boy, you know, it'd be something. Can you imagine having a personal touch direct from Jesus himself? And this man is the only one recorded in all the Bible that Jesus does this way. And so this is very unique. And notice they don't give his name. A lot of times names are given to certain folks where Jesus has healed them and things. But this man is just, he's any man. He could be anybody. We can identify with this man. Put yourself in his place. It may not be deafness that is our problem. It may be some other problem. But it just goes to show that Jesus can do all. He does something else strange right there. He spit and then touched the man's tongue. It doesn't say he spit on his fingers and touched his tongue, but the way it's written, I believe that's what it's implying, that Jesus with his own saliva spit on his fingers and grabbed the man's tongue. So this is a type of an anointing that Jesus has done to him. Can you imagine being anointed by the very saliva of Jesus? I mean, you talk about this man, he really is set apart from everybody else. And so this, again, is another form of sign language that Jesus is using, showing him, I'm going to also make it to where you're able to speak. And so he does that. And look at verse 34. It says, and looking up to heaven, he sighed and saith unto him, a papatha. That is, be opened. And that's the Aramaic word there that Jesus would use. His native language was Aramaic. And then Mark interprets it for us. It's be opened. That's what that means. The Bible being the commentary on itself. But that word sighed right there, it's used a few times in the Bible and we find Jesus doing this. It means an inner groaning. That's what that word means. Our Lord is groaning over the problems of this man, his sickness, as he would all sin. I mean, can you imagine that Jesus came to this earth, perfect, spotless, unblemished, and be around people like us? And how, you know, Jesus must sigh when he sees us sin, when he sees us living in ways we shouldn't live, how he must sigh and groan. You may recall when Jesus came to the graveside of Lazarus and his his sisters were out there and they was telling Jesus He was too late. He took too much time. You're late. If you'd have came earlier, he'd still be alive and they were all upset and Jesus standing out there the Bible says he groaned in the spirit and and was troubled during all this because Mary and all of the rest of the people were weeping over Lazarus being gone. And so Jesus often, you would see him, this is again his humanity showing. He is 100% God but he was also 100% man. And so this is part of Jesus' humanity and he sighs, he groans. And I'm sure as he looks down from the right hand of the Father today, he must sigh and groan over the way we live our wicked lives these days, how this world lives, how it must be a groaning to him. Then Jesus uttered those words there in Aramaic, apapatha, which is be open. And that's all it took for Jesus was to speak the words to this man. He didn't have to go through all the other things. He didn't have to spit on his fingers and touch his tongue and put his finger in his ear. All he had to do was come up to him and said, be healed, and he could have been healed. He could have just walked by him and said, that guy's going to be healed, and he could have been healed. But yet we see that this is the method he chose. Look at verse 35. It says, And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. And he charged 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 has done all things well. He maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak." So this man is healed by the miraculous power of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus, you notice what he says, he says that they should tell no man. Now wait a minute, I thought that the purpose was to tell people about Jesus, wasn't that the purpose? That is true, but however, the reason that Jesus would have done this at this point in his ministry, there would be a few reasons. One, the miracle that he just performed would of course overshadow his true reason for being there. And that's the way it always worked out. Every time he went to do a miracle, the miracle was more in front than anything else. More in front than even his teaching. The truths that he would tell them about the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. They thought more about the miracles. They saw the power that he had. And they wanted that power. They wanted the miracles. They wanted him to set up a throne there, set up his earthly kingdom right then. And would have forced him to do so. And so he told these, don't be going telling anybody. And also it would have caused, again, the Pharisees and the scribes to get all riled up. Every time that Jesus did something like this, word got back to those religious nuts, and the first thing they did was come to him and start trying to find something else wrong, and so that was going to cause them to get all riled up. But thirdly, it would cause people to want to force him to be their king immediately, which would defeat a lot of the purposes here. And they want him to be the king for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't for the reasons of being the savior of the world, but it was to help them, to fill their bellies, to heal them when they were sick, to put on some kind of show when they wanted the show. And so that's not what he was going to do. You see, because of these miracles, that's why many people were following him. Even though they loved the miracles, they never quite grasped the real truth of exactly who Jesus was and what his purpose was. And we saw that demonstrated just a few weeks ago. We studied it where he fed the multitude of 5,000. After that happened, we're told this over in John 6, 14 through 15. It said, then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, this is of a truth, that prophet that should come into the world, And it says, when Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone. And so Jesus understood their thoughts as well. He knew their intentions. He knew that if he continued on and the word got out and more people heard about it, then the more trouble it's going to cause. Listen, this story of Jesus healing this deaf man, we know it has many different applications to it. Certainly, of course, the great miracle. We can't deny that that is the main thought behind this passage of scriptures, the miracle that he performed and the sign of his Messiahship. But it also shows us, as we've already mentioned, his love and compassion for those that needed it. He said he didn't come here to save the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance. So he came here to save that which was lost. Seek and save that which was lost, is what he said. It also shows how there is only one who can help us when we can't help ourselves. And that's one of the things you find throughout all the scripture. People that are unable to help themselves, even though they went to every doctor, they spent every penny they've had, they've consulted all the so-called experts and professionals, the only person that could ever heal them or help them was the Lord Jesus. He's the only one that can help you and heal you of your sin sickness. You can consult books and read bestsellers and watch documentaries and research on the internet. You can do all those things trying to get an answer for what's bothering you. But it's only Jesus, the only one that can help you. Fourthly, I believe that the greatest thing that this teaches us, if you look at this from a high level and look down on it and see what truth is there, this shows us our need to bring people to Jesus. Did you notice what happened here? Jesus told them not to go and tell anybody. And what did the Bible said? They told it more and more. This made them tell it more and more. Isn't it curious how Jesus tells us to go and tell everybody and we tell less and less. What does that say about us? Our commission, our great commission that the Lord Jesus gave us, it's His commission, is to go into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature. And so even that person there, for example, the people that I work with, the atheists, the agnostic, so-called agnostics, even the Catholics. I believe there are some Catholics that are saved, I really do. I believe some of them really receive Christ as their Savior, but I believe a lot of them are banking on a priest or they're banking on some kind of ritual they've done, and they're not saved. And so anybody that we can reach, your friends, your family, especially your family, you should start in your family. That's where the commission begins, is at home and then into your neighborhood and your community and then further on out. That's the way it goes. That's the way Jesus did. He started at home and then he branched out and then finally into all the world. And so we need to be better at this. Jesus says, you go and tell. And we need to say, yes, I will. We pray that this has been a blessing to you. If you feel led to help us with the cost of the broadcast, our address is Highland Baptist Church, 6014 Beyblade Road, Knoxville, Tennessee 37924. Until next time, may the Lord richly bless you. Everyone comes down, brethren prayin', holy manna will be showered all around.