Let's come to God's Word now. Mark, chapter 7. If you have your Bibles with you, you can open them to Mark, chapter 7, or open your phone to Mark, chapter 7, whatever it is you do. Jesus heals a deaf man. Hear the word of God. Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue. Looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, Epaphratha, which is be opened, and his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measures, saying, he has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. Praise God for this reading of his word. Let's pray. O Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, your life-giving word. We pray now that you would inform our minds and shape our hearts, that we would glorify you more completely in its wake. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm preaching this morning to a Christian church. and preaching to Christians in this church. And that means you know the power of God. You know the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is also the power of God that made you what you are today, and you're grateful to God for that. But I also know that you know people who are not Christians, people who are strangers to Christ, who are dead in their sins, and you want them to have what you have. And some of you are bold in your witness, but some of you are discouraged in your witness. You are even despairing and fearful in your witness, and you're afraid to say anything or afraid to broach that subject for fear of the response or non-response on the other's part, more so the response. This is part of the old problem of walking by sight rather than by faith. And I think the problem, the modern world of the 21st century intensifies this problem. How is that? At one time, our natural means of affecting the world, our power to make the world do what we want was really poor. Even for basic things, things like planting and harvesting. People would plant and they would harvest but they wouldn't harvest much because there was blight and there was famine and planting and harvesting didn't reap that much. for the most part, and even basic things like birthing. Lots of people would die in childbirth. And things like nutrition and healing. What do you eat? Eating was hard to come by, and people didn't eat the right things. And healing, getting well from being sick, that was dicey. Maybe if I eat this wolf bane, or this root, or stand on one leg in this sacred puddle, I will get well. And it was really iffy. And that was our relationship to the world. And so people found it much easier to look to God and rest upon Him. But today, with science and technology being what they are, These means we have of making the world do what we want are amazing. And so we're inclined to underestimate what the power of God can do, because we rest so much on what the power of science and technology, the human power, can do. So we look at what The power of this world, and we look at people who are enthralled by the dazzling amazement of the things of this world and the power of media on their hearts, and we say, what can I say? If I call them to godliness, the power of the world and dazzling things in the world is so powerful, why would they come? And what can I say when the power of media is saying the opposite and things of this sort? Even though we came to Christ, oh, but that's different perhaps. This passage should encourage us. Here Jesus heals the body and turns the heart of a hopeless man. And we are reminded in this passage what God can do, what he does and how he does it. And we're reminded to trust in this God who has not changed. And this power here is greater than any power that we can work in this world. And he still exercises it. What do we see here? Look at the man's great need. He's deaf. He cannot hear. A bomb could go off behind his back and he would not hear it, he might feel it, but he can't hear it. He cannot hear the glory of God in his creation. And as a result, his speech is impeded. This is connected, of course, to the deafness. If you're completely deaf, you can't hear yourself talk and it affects how you talk. And if you're deaf from birth, you will never learn how to talk because you don't know what it sounds like. We learn speech from hearing. So, of course, he has these two limitations. And we call being deaf and being mute a deficiency. It's not just, well, you know, another way of doing things. It's a deficiency. It's a disability. It's a handicap. It's not the way things ought to be. We are supposed to be hearing. We are supposed to be speaking. If you're going to live the fullness of the human life, you should be hearing and you should be speaking. This is why we call them disabilities. And the poor man suffers as a result. He doesn't enjoy all the things that he could enjoy. He doesn't hear the wind in the trees. He doesn't hear music. He doesn't hear babies laughing. You could make a whole Spotify account of just babies laughing, and people would listen to it. Because who doesn't want to listen to babies laughing? He's never heard this. He'll never enjoy this. And he suffers socially and economically as a result of it. People these days can live quite, function in normal lives without hearing, without being able to speak because we compensate for these things. But at this time, it doesn't mention that he was suffering in this way, but he surely did. You couldn't speak, you couldn't hear. This put you on the periphery and you were much more dependent on the kindness of family and strangers. So it's no wonder he wanted to be restored. So this man's need, however, is a picture of the sinner's great need. People, the sinner, people who, are on their own, apart from God's grace, just as we come into this world. This man is deaf to God's creation. The sinner is deaf to God's voice, deaf to the gospel. 1 Corinthians 2.14, do you know that verse? It's always been a A memory verse of mine. The natural man does not accept the things which come from the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him, and he does not understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2.14. We don't hear God's voice when we are lost in sin. And the man cannot hear God's glory in his creation. So too the sinner cannot hear God's glory in his revelation. And we all come into the world this way. The world as it is is not the way it ought to be because worldlings are not as they ought to be. God created us in his image to be like him in his character and to act like him in his place. He created us in his image to be righteous and to be holy. He made us for himself to love him in worship and to love him in friendship, to listen to his voice and to praise him with our tongues. But this man cannot do these things physically and the sinner coming into this world cannot do these things spiritually. Life without God is hard. Life without God is even disastrous. Imagine having to eat without a basic knowledge of nutrition. This is a large part of the world through a large part of history. Oh, potatoes. That looks filling. Oh, they are filling. This is all I need. How well are you going to do only eating potatoes all the time just because they fill you? There's a few things you need to know about nutrition if you're going to thrive physically as a human being. And imagine more so if you had to not get sick That's a good idea, but you didn't have a basic knowledge of epidemiology, right? How disease and germs are spread. Again, Europe in the Middle Ages. Oh, Uncle Jack died. Well, just leave him there, right? And unawareness. You can get contagion, you can get sick from this. Or filthy water and drinking that. Or here's Aunt Sue, she has boils, her nose is running, she's sneezing all over the place. So? You're going to get sick. How are you going to thrive if you don't understand basic epidemiology? And this is the way the world was. You can't thrive without this basic knowledge. And this is essentially what it is to be godless. To live a secular life, people try and thrive. They try to be happy without a basic knowledge of God, the true and living God, and how to know him, and how to live as he created you to be. How can you possibly be happy? How can you possibly thrive? And not just ignorant of these things, openly hostile to these things. The natural man, what the Bible calls the natural man, somebody who comes in, as we come into the world, apart from God's grace, hears the law read, and it does not touch the conscience. Psalm 119 says, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. But the natural man hears the law and just hears other people's problems, or hears the way to live, life's little rule book. This is how I can live, okay. be a little happier, or how to live eternally, how to get to heaven, as though that's what the law was all about. Or the natural man hears the gospel and it doesn't warm the heart. It's not received as good news. There's no conviction of sin, no thrill at sin's remedy, no sorrow over sin, no joy of salvation. But remember in your witness, right? These are the people to whom you're witnessing dead in sin and transgression, dead to God, dead to the voice of God. And you're going to speak God's word? What hope is there? Especially when the alternatives, as I said, are so attractive and far more attractive in our day than they've ever been before and so widely available. But what is impossible with man is possible with God. Just keep telling yourself that. Oh, this person won't believe what is impossible. This is impossible this person is going to believe. But what is impossible with man is possible with God. People are naturally dead in sin, but God is rich in mercy. So we see here what Christ does for this man. See the Savior's great care for him. What Jesus does, however, is odd. Doesn't it seem odd to you? It departs from normal healing stories. Elsewhere, Jesus just speaks a word, like the Creator. You know, God created the world. He said, let there be light, and there was light. Let this happen, and it happened, and it was good. And so Jesus does the same thing, usually. He says, be clean, and the person is clean. He says, your daughter is well, and the daughter is well. But here, he doesn't do this. Here, he puts more work into it. Jesus shows in this his personal love for this sinner, because he has personal love for every sinner whom he brings to himself. He took the man aside. He took him aside. There's a crowd there. He takes him aside privately to deal with him. And this is not, so this is not just an opportunity to display God's power. I mean, Jesus always has love for the sinner he addresses, the sinner he heals. But it's also an opportunity to display the power of the kingdom of God that is breaking into the world. There are miracles that show the kingdom, but here he takes them aside. That issue is not there. And then he says, don't tell anyone. Of course he does, but private because he's focused, in this case, on the man and his benefit. And he chooses this particular method. He puts his fingers in the man's ears and he spits on the man's tongue because the man can't hear. If he just said, be clean, be well, be hearing. Well, the man can't hear that. So he might not know that it's Jesus who's doing this. So for the sake of his needs, so that the man will know that Jesus is doing this, that God is doing this, the Messiah is doing this, he uses these visible means as he heals him. And then he looks up to heaven to make it clear that it is God who is doing this through the Savior. And here he embodies a psalm. The psalms all point to Christ. We've got this new Trinity psalter hymnal, and the psalms are all at the front. And this is suitable for Christian worship because the psalms all point to Jesus. Some are particularly messianic, but they're all messianic. And here Jesus embodies Psalm 123. To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God till he has mercy upon us. And Jesus looks up to the heaven and speaks, be opened, he says. And he does so with a sigh. Jesus here is not just processing a request. You go to CVS or Duane Reade with your prescription, you hand it over to the pharmacist, the pharmacist processes your request, and that's fine. Jesus is more than this here. He sighs. His heart is engaged for this man. He is moved for this man. This is his love to this man. And this personal care is not only for the physical benefit, of this man, but his spiritual benefit, his concern is for the man's heart relationship with God. He reaches, as it were, through his ears to his heart. This is always the ultimate goal. This is why he wants the man to know that he is doing this, and God is doing this, and God is having mercy on him. Look to the Lord, he's saying. Otherwise, he could have just said, mm-hmm, be hearing, and moved on. There's another one. That's not the whole point. reaching through his ears to his heart is the supernatural work of Christ. We can do marvelous things these days with the body. We're kind of frustrated that we can't do more, despite all the marvelous things we do. But we can do things with hearing, and with sight, and with speech therapy, and so forth. But only Jesus can do this. Only Jesus can change the heart. And that's what he does. Jesus must work or nothing happens. And he employs these, Jesus employs these natural means to reach his heart. As I said, he could have fixed his ears with a word. But he aims at the man's heart, and he does this through these natural means. He could have otherwise. He could have just said, be hearing and be loving. And he could have changed the man like that. But he uses these natural means. And you know that he does this for you as well. And he has done this for you as well. Think of the personal care. that God has used in bringing you to himself and deepening you in Christ. He placed you in a particular family, a covenant family, with parents who love you and love you in a spiritual way, who directed you to Christ, who brought you to church, who had family devotions with you at home, who prayed with you at your bedside, who spoke the Word of God and spoke to you in the manner of the Word of God in the course of the day. Concrete steps, labor over many years. These are concrete ways, natural means God used to bring you to himself. And he placed unexpected people in your life, unexpected events to bring your attention to him, to awaken you to himself, and things of this sort. I don't know if I've, I've probably told you this, I've been talking to you for the last 13, 12 or 13 years, but I don't remember, and you probably don't either. I remember when I was in Italy on a school trip, and there was this monk at a holy site, and he told us that, you know, you should honor your father and mother. And this was years before I was actually converted, but the Spirit of God was moving in my heart. And I thought, oh dear, I should honor my father and my mother. Why did I respond in that way? That was the Holy Spirit working in my heart in a nascent, beginning way. And he just threw this into my life. My parents could never have said, oh Lord, put a monk in his life. And there was a kid at work at the movie cinema when I was a teenager. And we got talking about things and I gave him a Bible. And I forget why, but I gave him a Bible. And he said, wow, a Bible. And some other kids in the change room said, what's that? He said, this guy just gave me a Bible. And they said, why? And he was really excited. And everyone else thought he was weird. But I don't know what happened to that guy. I just gave him a Bible. And who knows what happened? But the Lord knows what happened. The Lord had something in mind there. And his parents couldn't have said, oh, Lord, somebody give him a Bible. The Lord just sent that, a natural means to bring him, I assume, to himself. And he has applied over the course of your life various comforts. And he has applied various discomforts. to awaken you to various things, to himself, awaken you to yourself, comforts and discomforts both. And he has used these things. Maybe it's great illness. Maybe it's stubbing your toe. Maybe it's just the general comfort with which he's comforted you in this first world life. Maybe it's a kind word when you were suffering from someone. But he does these things to awaken you and to move you and bring you to himself. It's your heart that he has ultimate concern for and he uses these natural means. And of course there is the effectual word that he spoke to you. He brought his word to you and even that he brought by natural means. The preacher, your parents, reading the Bible. Instagram, I don't know, something like this. He uses natural means to bring his effectual word, his spiritual word, his life-giving word to you. And so, Brothers and sisters, Jesus still opens the ears of people's hearts. He opened your heart. He opened my heart. He can open any heart. So there's no need to be fearful, although we are. There's no need to be discouraged and to be concerned about consequences for our relationship, though I think we probably all feel that. Think of yourself in this position. You are in possession of the natural means for addressing people's physical needs, of course, but also their spiritual needs, to speaking to their hearts. And just as Jesus put his fingers in this man's ears and spat on his tongue, I don't recommend you do that. But you have other means that you can employ. Pay attention to those means that God uses to bring his word to people. Pay attention to those natural means that God uses to open people's eyes, to unstop their ears, to unsettle, to disturb their hearts, and awaken their hearts to their need and God's provision. And make yourself one of those means. Employ those means. Make yourself the means. Be that family. Some of you have families. Some of you expect to have families one day. I suspect you're thinking about it now. What kind of dad am I going to be? What kind of mom am I going to be? What did my mom and dad do right? Maybe at times you think, what did my mom and dad do wrong? I know my kids did and do and they have good reason to. Be that family that God uses and be that unexpected person to drop the word of life on someone in passing, even if it's somebody on the train or on the subway. Just speak, we're told, speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. And in the Old Testament, it said, when you get up, when you walk along the path, when you go out, speak to your children about these things. We can speak to other people about these things as well. It's like breathing. When you have a disease, you don't want to breathe on people. But when you have the word of life, breathe freely. expectorate the Word of God and be these means boldly. Be these means in faith. speaking boldly, giving Christ boldly means giving in faith because this is where faith hits the road. I don't know if this person will believe. Well, if you have faith in the God who brought you to faith, you will speak boldly and in faith because God has told you what he did and what he still does. Brothers and sisters, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what you do. did in us, raised us from the dead. You gave life to these bones. You gave hearing to these ears. You unstopped our ears so that we could hear your word, the word of life, the gospel of life, the good news. And you cleared our minds and opened our hearts to receive these things. You did these things. Nature did not do these things. Genes did not do these things. We did not do these things ourselves. It was Your work and Your gracious work. We did not deserve it. Father, we pray that as we have received, so too will we give. And as we received supernaturally, we pray that we would believe that You can still do these supernatural things even through us. are you who are in us than he who is in the world and you are greater in any of these people whom we know. You can be greater in them. than Satan who has them in his grip. Father, we pray that as we speak, as we live, as we love, we would have these things foremost in our minds and that our love and faith would overflow to those you've put in our lives and who need you so much. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.