The Spit Healing of Jesus: The Mark Series part 25 (Mark 7:31-37)

so in today's passage we read about Jesus healing a deaf and mute man by putting his fingers in the man's ears and then taking some of his his spit it seems with his own fingers and putting it in the man's mouth on his tongue an interesting and strange to us thing that Jesus does but I think that the meaning of it is beautiful and it connects to the cross in a wonderful way and so I'm excited too I always love getting into passages in scripture where you look out any go wait what you know there's like the passages that make you do a second take and then you find these really interesting things so we're gonna get into some theology about the identity a mission of Christ as we go through this as well as a lot of apologetics tonight because this passage in mark 7 this is where a lot of critics will attack the text and say you know marks just wrong here like this is factually wrong that's not really what happened and so I want to respond to those things as we go through this because I want this mark series to be a resource to help people who've been impacted by sceptical teachings as they find it they go wait there's a answers I didn't know there were answers to these questions I thought well all we had was questions but no there are answers so here we are this is a the twenty fifth part of the mark series its marked chapter seven verse 31 all the way through verse 37 we're gonna read the passage and then we'll go through it slowly thoughtfully verse 31 says again he went out from the region of Tyre and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee within the region of Decapolis they brought to him one who was deaf and spoke with difficulty and they implored him to lay his hand on him Jesus took him aside from the crowd by himself and put his fingers into his ears and after spitting he touched his tongue with the saliva and looking up to heaven with a deep sigh he said to him f fathe that is be opened and his ears were opened and the impediment of his tongue was removed and he began speaking plainly and he gave them orders not to tell anyone but the more he ordered them the more widely they continued to proclaim it they were utterly astonished saying he's done all things well he makes even the Deaf to hear and the mute to speak okay there we go that's that I was starting to repass my notes but that's that's the section we're in today so it's the healing of this man very peculiar admittedly but intentionally I think so we can learn from it so let's start here verse 31 and let's work our way through again he went out from the region of Tyre and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee within the region of Decapolis now I want to mention this last week I think I mentioned that this trip to tyre and site into that area was on his way to Caesarea Philippi now Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is on his way to Caesarea Philippi like he's gonna get there but he's not going directly there he first he comes back down to the Sea of Galilee area I just want to offer that clarification so here he is goes down to see Galilee within the region of what's called the Decapolis in other words a capitalist polis means City deca means ten so it's a region called ten cities the ten cities as a capitalist according to the Tyndale Bible dictionary that region it says during the lifetime of Jesus the cities of the Decapolis which had become moderately prosperous trade centers were consolidated into a Roman alliance against a possible Jewish uprising so we get two things from that one it's like a Gentile area not entirely but predominantly or dominantly Gentile area the other thing you get is this is probably some friction between the groups because the Jews would look at the Decapolis area in Israel here near Galilee they would look at this even touching Galilee touching the Sea of Galilee on the southeastern shore of the Sea and they would look at this and they would see this as like this is the people the Romans will will militarize against us if we rebel that's how they would see these people so there would be some tension going on there in mark chapter 5 Jesus had already been in this location when He healed the demoniac remember that and he heals the demoniac cast out these these many demons out of this man they go into these pigs the pigs run into the water and they die the man he's sent into the Decapolis go and tell them what the Lord's done for you but the people of the region they came to Jesus and were like hey would you mind leaving but if he all right if he just left please just leave us alone because of maybe the destruction of the pigs and they were bothered by the economic cost of Jesus having been there that could have been part of it now that man though he was sent out as a messenger so mark 5:20 gives us a little bit of background context to the last time Jesus was there it says in mark 5:20 and he when away and began to proclaim into capitalist what great things Jesus had done for him and everyone was amazed so in other words he kept telling his story to all sorts of people over and over again Jesus when he comes back now they know about him they don't just know he no pigs died when he showed up they know more than that they know more of the story now why does this matter well I don't know if the man that jesus heals in this passage is a Gentile or not I don't see any way to figure that out he could have been Gentile he could have not been Gentile maybe it doesn't matter but the group that seems to be gathered seems to be a majority of Gentiles and that seems to matter to me because we had in the last passage we're covering the syrophoenician woman getting healed and mark Jesus is doing ministry to the Gentiles like to Jews but also to the Gentiles but it's a very mark gives us this careful framework so we don't misunderstand Jesus's ministry of the Gentiles it's in the context of the Jew first and the Gentile that's for the whole conversation about little dogs that we went over last week so in matthew 15 31 there's some support for this idea that the crowd gathered not only do we know this was a gentile region but there's some support in matthew that the crowd was gentile because when they respond to Jesus's miracles it says so the crowd marveled as they saw the mute speaking the crippled restored in the lame walking and the blind seeing and they glorified the God of Israel now you don't say of Jews they glorified the God of Israel that's just definitely not what you're saying about Jews this is something more you might say of a Gentile audience so they glorified the God of Israel also affirming that they understood the Jewish context of Jesus he's not just some random miracle worker it's he's in this Jewish context so mark shows us that Jesus then is the savior of all people but that it comes in the context of him being the Jewish Messiah so that we understand the Old Testament is telling us who Jesus is from the beginning and that's super important especially nowadays when some people are trying to unhitch the Old Testament from the New Testament or from script from you know Christian mentality there are those who are campaigning for the idea that Christians should just discard any sort of sense of obligation to believe the Old Testament and this is obviously this is a fad because the Holy Spirit doesn't support these kind of ID is it's gonna come it's gonna go but it's gonna do harm along the way so here we go verse 32 they brought to him one who was deaf and spoke with difficulty and they implored him to lay his hand on him what I noticed in verse 32 is that this guy doesn't come on his own now he's physically capable in a sense right he can walk is not he's not lame he can walk he's deaf and mute but or at least he can he make noise but he can't make words properly he has speech impediments of some kind severe enough to hinder his communication but a group brings him anyways they brought him it says they implore Jesus to heal him so it's like some other group other than him it's a group effort now sometimes in Scripture it's individuals reaching out like the woman with the issue of blood Jesus if I just if I just touches and she's totally alone nobody's helping her and she's like if I just touch the edge of his garment I know I'll be healed other times it's like groups bringing people to Jesus and I think we can get inspiration from both of these whether it's you going through hard times in you need Christ it's like pursue him pursue him don't quit reach out to God and he will he will receive you he will be there for you but other times you might look at a friend who needs the Lord and you see in them no passion no need no sense that they need Jesus and so you do whatever you can to bring them to Christ you know to drive them to the Lord and so you can work on that I think that there's good application there bring people to God this is inspiration from them to us to bring people to the Lord don't forget in other words your evangelistic ministry to others and this is easy to do have you I mean I've noticed in my own heart right it's easy to just get in the routine of living life where evangelism becomes like you know once a year maybe you're filling out a Christmas card for somebody and you're like here's the chance and I I don't want to be that kind of like annoying broken record with people exactly I'm not suggesting that we do that but we don't want to forget that we have an evangelistic ministry to be light to bring others to Christ and to be thoughtfully caringly lovingly pursuing that in their lives that's good inspiration for us now there's there's a conflict here though if you take Mark five and the healing of the demoniac as the last time Jesus was in this area well his reputation was right they asked him to leave but now when he shows up it's totally different they're bringing people to him crowds are gathering so why don't they show up and just say Jesus please leave again I thought we told you last time we don't want your kind here instead they they want help from him and I think the difference is that it's the testimony of the man the man has had time to do his job and go around telling everyone what Jesus did for him so here's what's cool to me his testimony turned a bad reputation that Jesus has into a good reputation his testimony do you see the application that's there some people have a bad reputation of Christianity in their minds Christians are all hypocrites Christianity's there's Christianity that did it but if we can live a thorough and thoughtful Christian testimony before them we can become the thing where they go well I guess that can't be true because of you know Joe over here that I know who is like a solid Christian he's a different you know I once had a cousin tell me oh I'll say this at the risk of it being awkward he was like Mike and he didn't like a lot of the Christians he'd known from where he was grew up in the Midwest and he was like Mike you know you're you're like what a Christian should be and I was thankful he didn't know me well enough to find more of my flaws but home but no I was I was so encouraged by that I was so encouraged by that and that had more to do with character than anything else but we did talk openly about God it's not like we hid those issues so the testimony of a Christian of a believer can trump a bad reputation that's caused ultimately by the work of demons in this case the pigs that caused that bad reputation now I want to say this though it's not your job to make Christianity look good that's not what I'm saying you're not God's PR department PR departments by nature are deceptive that's why there is their job to make it look good your job is not to make Jesus look good your job is to demonstrate the goodness of Jesus and that's a very different task and you go about it in a different way because it's completely genuine there's nothing fabricated about it there's no masks in fact Christians ought to wear no masks Church should be the last place a mask is found because here we are in Christ we're expected to be these total failures who have complete grace and who live out the work of in our lives and so there's no reason to pretend anything there's just no purpose behind it so the one can come in and and be just be you demonstrating the work of God in your life and that is the testimony so we're not fake advertisers we're living examples we're representatives to the world and to each other and what God's done in us and we get this in a few passages of Scripture so Philippians chapter 2 it talks about this I want you to hear this verse thinking about the relationship between you being a witness and the way you live so we often think being a witness means telling people Jesus is the Lord and that's part of being a witness but I'm saying there's another si which is my actual character like me just living out the transformation God brings into my life the character change so Philippians 2:14 says do all things without grumbling or disputing here's a good New York New Year's verse for you do all things without grumbling or disputing so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent children of God above reproach in the midst of a curriculum crooked and perverse generation among whom you appear as lights in the world so you being a light you proving yourself to be a child of God in Philippians is related to you not grumbling and complaining that's interesting isn't it think about your godly Christian character as being part of your witness then in Ephesians 5 verses 8 through 10 s as this for you were formerly darkness but now you are light in the Lord walk as children of light for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord so I have these these motives of loving other people helping others representing Christ through godly you know behavior not a mask but just living out the life of Christ in this world and that that is how I'm light in the Lord so it's it's it's important it's important the preaching is is just as I should say the the preaching must be accompanied with godly character that's the idea my sharing of Christ verbally must be accompanied with my living with living for Christ consistently doesn't mean you're not going to fail but how you handle those failures hey man I'm sorry I should have done that that was wrong of me no not Christian of me that's that's a godly thing that's a good thing to be able to do it that way alright verse 33 verse 33 here in mark 7 it says Jesus took him aside from the crowd by himself and put his fingers into his ears and after spitting he touched his tongue with the saliva and looking up to heaven with a deep sigh he said to him f athough that is be opened and his ears were opened and the impediment of his tongue was removed and he began speaking plainly there's a few things we can we can actually a lot of things we're gonna talk about now let's well slow down and unpack all this very carefully first thing though is this is Jesus is wonderful I mean the point here the primary issue is Jesus is wonderful he he heals up by his power heals this Bly or this deaf and mute man and there's like a wonder in Christ and that's the that's the arrow that this miracle is pointing to his Jesus and his character and his goodness but there's a second thing I want to talk about is all these interesting elements of this miracle story I mean he takes him aside from the crowd by himself that's the first one that's interesting in and of itself isn't it now I don't think this means that none of the crowd could see what Jesus was doing they maybe they could maybe they couldn't we don't know where might be assuming too much we know he was by himself there was some aside from the crowd quality they might have been a hundred feet away going like I can't hear what's he doing what's he doing you know I don't know where the crowd was at this exact point how far off they were by himself doesn't necessarily mean the disciples weren't there because the disciples are almost like the default people that show up for almost everything in this evening the Gospels they're kind of always tagging along the twelve I mean but there we have privacy or a type of secrecy and later on Jesus mirrors this taking him by himself he mirrors this with the command don't tell anyone he tells the whole group who know about it don't tell anyone else about this thing we'll come back to that in a minute okay the next thing we is he puts his fingers in the man's ears and he touches the man's tongue with saliva so he must have put spit on his own fingers and then touched the man's tongue with it took his fingers and put him in the man's ears this is interesting this is very interesting I sort of like was excited about getting the chance to study this for lots of hours this way come like I want to know what's going on here understand it more deeply we see something like this happen again in mark chapter 8 we'll get there not not too far from now about 15 weeks from now we'll be in mark chapter 8 and in mark 8 he applies spit to somebody's eyes right he makes mud and puts it in the guy's eyes and that that heals the guy mark 8 so that's interesting with the Greeks they did have an idea of the medicinal value of spit so we talk about that a little bit and we'll we'll see if there's some connection here to Jesus which if there's a connection that's weak I'm gonna say that but let me walk through walk you through it there's a guy named Galan who's like he was the guy that wrote the Greek text on medicine he's a father of medicine they say although sometimes when they say the father of and therefore to someone the guys were actually kind of kooky in some ways and you'll you'll see Galan he actually said that spit had healing properties now he was born in the second century comes after the time of Christ but he said spit has healing properties and he mentions a few things he says that it can not only heal people but spit acts like poison to scorpions and snakes so that if you spit on a snake or scorpion they'll like dissolve father of medicine I mean you know in some ways he was probably great in some haze you're like wait what where did that even come from but he apparently thought there was some medicinal value now it's true that spit actually does have some additional value and I'm not making okay look I wasn't on weird websites this week I promise like it does have some additional value this is why your dog licks its wounds now if it's a giant wound a big wound it can actually not help it can be too much you know spits not miraculous not even in this text Jesus is miraculous not the spit we'll get to that in a minute but it does have some healing factor they even did a scientific study where they took a bunch of rabbits and they wounded them all I didn't do it don't get mad at me but then they applied human saliva to the wounds and they had a control group and they you know all this kind of thing and they showed that the ones with the saliva applied to them they healed more quickly but there's a risk with saliva that you will have bacteria in that would cause infection so there is healing you know value there but there's also the risk of greater and much worse infection because of a dirty mouth so I'm just I thought you would want to know that but Jesus isn't doing this Jesus isn't like here apply this call me in the morning kind of thing he's not applying the spit like it's a medicinal thing it's an instantaneous healing he commands healing like I don't know how many people are like here take this Advil and now pain be gone like they never do that because medicine doesn't work with commands you know that's not how it functions so Jesus isn't doing a medicine thing even if they thought it was somehow medicinal now it's possible that he's using his saliva as a way of giving them like a something to to comprehend oh this is like a healing thing he's healing the guy maybe there's something going on there maybe kind of weak though now on the Jewish side that's the Greek side of the Jewish side there's an interesting story in the Talmud about spit would you like to hear it here it is it says and this is from the babylonian talmud bava batra 126 be for those of you who want to look it up I'll read it to you a man once came before rabbi Chianina and testified to him I am sure that this man is the firstborn chenine asked how is it that you're certain of this the man said because when sick people came to his father he would tell them go to my son Sheikh chat he is first born and his spittle heals there is a tradition that the spittle of the first born of a father heals interesting and random I don't I wonder how this came about you know you've got to wonder now this was written of course after the time of Christ this is it but it's interesting and if there is any kind of connection to Jesus in the Jewish mentality if healing spit says I'm the firstborn and Jesus was going around calling himself the Son of God then there may be a connection there theologically to Jesus healing somebody in that fashion he might be connecting to their understanding to show him who he is however Jesus is the healer not to spit the spit is incidental it might be a an object lesson it may be some tool that you know he's using for a purpose now let's talk a little bit about the phrase FF a-- F fathe is Aramaic and some have accused here the Gospel of Mark of of having Jesus using magic words now there were those who used magic words at the time but their magic words are usually gibberish the tradition is they're gibberish they say words that don't mean anything right abracadabra we see this some of this today too they take nonsense words and they use them Kraig keener he studied this and says some scholars point out that magicians often spoke unintelligible phrases during healings here however Jesus speaks Aramaic which would have been known to most people Jewish or Gentile in Syria Palestine they don't speak in common languages in other words and Jesus is speaking in a common language it's just Mark's habit to often remember short statements of Jesus in the original Aramaic he does this when he says little girl arise or or he's on the cross and he remembers something in Aramaic that Jesus says it's not anything to do with magic I say this because some some people like when a mock the text of Scripture by associating it with magic or something like that so some others would also add to this and they'd say Jesus is Sai when he sais it's because this is a difficult miracle and I've read this in commentaries and I was like and I just want you guys to be armed with this it's okay when you're reading a commentary or hearing a teacher and you say the point they just made I don't know where they got it but it certainly isn't obvious in the passage and you just set it aside this is a good skill set it aside I have to vilify the guy you just be like I just have no idea where you keep where you got that from I'm not obligated to believe it because it's not clear in Scripture that that's what's being said it's an especially difficult miracle because it because the guy's deaf and mute or impediment eyes whatever the word I don't know so they this is like an extra difficult miracle except we've read earlier where Jesus raises a dead girl to life and he just goes hey little girl get up okay and so we see nothing with Jesus in the scriptures having a more difficult time with certain miracles versus others when he's encounter with a boy who has a demon and nobody else can heal nobody else can cast not even the disciples who've been given Authority they can't cast this demon out Jesus is like get out like it's not even hard so it's reading into the text to say such things so why then why why the sigh I think there's there's an answer that puts all of it together why fingers in the ears why spin on the tongue why the sigh why the phrase because I think because the man is deaf and dumb the man is deaf and dumb and I want you to imagine what he was experiencing he comes to Jesus he doesn't know what Jesus is saying how does he know Jesus is even trying to help him what does he knows going on Jesus is meeting the guy where he's at he sees Jesus look up in other words hey he's helping me get God's help he even this is okay he's helping me access god that's that's what I see when I see him looking up he sees Jesus eye and speak and he's like okay something's happening but he's doing something here because he's it's all visual for him there's nothing audible for him to experience he feels Jesus's fingers in his ears I want you to imagine this for a second imagine it was you your deafness would make you very self-conscious especially in that culture nobody is touching your ears lest they what catch it somehow or catch the uncleanness of it somehow he puts his finger in your ears he touches most intimately the very like embarrassing and hurtful and hard problem of your life and just touches it he's touching my infirmity the guy might think isn't he worried about touching quite hears people don't touch my ears people avoid my ears once they find out I'm deaf maybe he was nervous maybe he felt self-conscious even embarrassed about his own infirmities and weaknesses here before Jesus and Jesus is touching he sees Jesus take his own saliva and put it on the man's tongue do you see that he's now touching the other impediment the other issue in his life and he's doing it in the most intimate possible way in other words Jesus is putting himself in the closest possible contact with this man's infirmities this is a picture of the cross this is a picture of Jesus taking our sin our infirmities our weaknesses in our embarrassment to the cross and bearing it for us I think that that's what this pictures I think this is about the cross and that makes me love this I think it's beautiful and amazing and it's when you when you view it from the perspective of the man who is deaf and mute it just seems like it clicks to me now let me take an aside this is more apologetic stuff that was some cool theology I think but this is some apologetic stuff is this man is a story of Jesus like pagans stories this is what I got from the Oxford biblical studies calm article on this passage okay the Oxford biblical studies calm article and already you know because you have to believe what it says because it says Oxford well and their article on the word f athough they say it's an Aramaic command be opened utter by Jesus after he had put his fingers into the into the ear and spat and touched the tongue of a deaf and dumb man and healed him and here's what it says a method recorded of other charismatic healers in Hellenistic society and of the Emperor Vespasian's so this is obviously like people do this all the time it's a method you put your fingers in their ears and you touch you know your their tongue that was a method you would even think f athough is part of the method too because the way the article is written it seems to be that way now there's no there's no footnotes there's no references to any sources in this particular article so but I can imagine how it would affect a Christian who might be bothered thinking that I'm not seeing God himself in the flesh Healing someone I'm seeing someone write a story modeled after pagan healers or something like that there's two problems that I'll mention with this first what Jesus did was not a method Jesus didn't have healing methods and if you study the healings of Jesus you'll see it's not a method because he doesn't repeat it he doesn't do it twice he just does this stuff he heals people in a variety of ways he could heal remotely as we is that a method - are they gonna say that's a method when do you he healed him long distance method oh that was herbal burgle he / he did that to her in ancient Palestine there no these aren't methods they're lessons Jesus is healing in particular ways to teach lessons about himself so they're not methods the second issue is this was not a common thing I wonder who ever authored this little entry on Oxford local studies calm I wonder how common they thought this was or how much of it they thought was common which part was common the spit the fingers in the ears the saying of F athough which part was common I don't know but there's no references so we can't see so I dug deeper so dig deeper it's been way too many hours on this topic today this week I should say Gundry in his commentary on mark he says that this action only has one parallel that is mentioned by our posh who did a did a study of this and he says others parallels but he only mentioned one and the only one he mentioned was Epidaurus Epidaurus is an ancient work we're talking three hundred years before Christ that this this work exists and it talked about various like miracles stories and supposedly it's a parallel you know it's not exactly a parallel it's a very loose parallel will see these parallels that are like loose turd we call it parallel amania some of us do where they just try to find any parallel to Jesus so like that's the same thing and it's often very different when you get to the details so I found an article written by a guy named Michael watch sakowski sorry Mike if I pronounced your name wrong and he compared Epidaurus to the Gospels and said quote now so he did a just a comparison of Epidaurus that story which is the only story mentioned by one guy who says there are parallels in ancient times he compared that story to the Gospels here's what he got he says an influence of Epidaurus on the Gospels is not possible to trace any relationship there's no relationship any similarities are not establishing a relationship because it's too dissimilar and he gives a number of reasons he he says there's no vocabulary connection no vocabulary connection in fact I'll put and I'll put the article in the video description for anybody who's interested you can click it and check it out no vocabulary connection between the two works Epidaurus and then the Gospels there's no forum connection speaking of like the the the I think the method that Jesus is doing like the order in which is not a method but the order in which Jesus does these actions there's no connection actually the scheme itself seems to be different the contexts are different and the sources are different he actually names this specifically says that Epidaurus is based not on eyewitness testimony like the Gospels Epidaurus is a work based upon votives tablets and reliefs like in other words people unconnected to the original stories looked at pictures and then wrote stories about them there's just no parallel here between them and the Gospels this is why he says at least among scholars comparisons between their Gospels and Epidaurus is quote not popular and yeah now this oxford article it did mention Vespasian's did you notice that it mentioned Vesta the Emperor Vespasian's did a healing like Jesus let me read to you from Tacitus he's the ancient Roman historian who wrote about best Bayesian he wrote the passage that were referring to in his history's book 481 chapter 81 it says one of the common people of Alexandria well-known for his loss of sight threw himself before Vespasian's knees praying him with groans to cure his blindness being so directed by the god Serapis whom this most superstitious of nations worships before all others and he besought the emperor to deign to moisten his cheeks and eyes with his spittle so he does ask him to put spit on his face another whose hand was useless prompted by the same God begged Caesar to step and trample on it so he pleased Caesar stomp on my hands which I have seen there are some healers who honored healers who actually are violent to people in the name of healing them and I think that that is obviously stupid anyhow the station regret it's like you know Tacitus writes the whole story he's on your first Vespasian's like no I'm not doing this this is ridiculous I'm for my spit on you and he's like I'm not gonna do it then eventually he does like a like a like a risk/reward analysis and he's like well if it works I'll get a lot of acclaim if it doesn't work I'll just say that guy was crazy so they decides to do it and the guy supposedly gets his sight back supposedly it works and the guy other guy gets his hand healed here's the problem the implication that kind of floats around is that the Gospels are copying from these other sources which they're not for a large number of reasons but in this case Vespasian's ruled from 69 to 79 ad that was long after the death of Christ Tacitus who wrote about this wrote from about 100 to 110 AD that's the window in which he wrote this particular work as long after the Gospels were written so we have after the time of Christ after the Gospels were written we have the first you know the only real recorded account that seems like it has any similarity and it this is after Christianity is already raising in popularity in Rome there would have been political reasons to have an a Roman Emperor do a miracle that looked a lot like one of the stories of Jesus so if there's any borrowing I would think it's the other way around people love saying the Bible's copying but a careful examination shows often shows it's always not the Bible is completely unique Jesus stands alone it's teaching as Christian theology it's not parroting something from some other source now there are sometimes similar ideas or concepts in Scripture and in other works but that's not the same as copying generally when scripture says something that relates to something outside scripture it's often trying to show that it's wrong that this other thing is wrong and the Scriptures trying to sort of fix people's viewpoints on those issues now let's talk a little bit more about this as a method again this is not really a method but Jesus does you spit twice in Scripture in two different healing moments he uses it here and then healing a the eyes of a blind man in chapter 8 but but it's not a method because of the variety and the lack of reproduction notice that the Apostles never try to reproduce the miracles of Jesus they don't pick one of them and try to copy the same method but yet we see this in some of them hyper charismatic now I'm charismatic I believe God heals today but there are within the group of charismatic so that there's those who are we would maybe say hyper or maybe excited I don't know you know they're they're my brothers and sisters in Christ I just think that there's some things that go on there that we all kind of go you should do that and they will sometimes try to learn methods for miracles oh when it's this kind of issue you have to do ABCD and then you can get you can get to the healing but the disciples never do this they never even try to copy something Jesus did I mean if anybody's methods can be copied to be Jesus well if it wasn't method maybe they would but it really seems like it wasn't so there's a couple lessons um that we can get out of this one of the reasons why Jesus may have done the fingers other than showing em he's healing to spit all that kind of stuff it could be something to help that person's faith to help that person's faith and I want to be careful when I say this but I do think there's like some legit legit a'mma see to this that you know when you hold hands when you're praying with people this may really bother you but it might also be something where you like you're just even more focused and more intense and more serious about your prayer because you're holding hands maybe when you go and you lay hands on someone to pray for healing it's not like me laying on hands effects the healing but perhaps this helps bring up my seriousness and my focus in my faith in that moment that may be the case and it might be the case that this is happening here just like the woman with the flow of blood when she sees Jesus and she's like if I just touch the corner of his robe I'll be healed I I feel like if she had thought if if I could just get him to look at me on that I know I'll be healed then when she'd Ecology and he looked at her she probably would've been healed in two I think I had to do with where her faith was not with the action she was taking so it's not a method but it is related to faith if that makes sense the Centurion tells Jesus Jesus is on his way to heal the man's servant and he tells Jesus no no don't don't even come to my house you say the word and he'll be healed and she's like oh okay word you know so the guy gets healed and the point is that it's about faith and these actions may have been to help faith but then this leads us to the question very practically in our lives should I just make up random things so that people can have a point to have faith on if you want to be healed of such-and-such stand up on your chair if you were to be healed of such and such high-five your neighbors like do I just make up random things I think we need the leading of the Holy Spirit in these things and I need not be just trying to make stuff happen I think it really needs to be the leading of the Spirit if this is the case if this worked all the time that'd be fine but often what happens is someone goes around trying their their their methods they've discovered on person after person after person after person before they rack up what they think is a confirmation and I'm like I don't really see Jesus ever doing that Jesus tried to heal many three of them more healed so we know that you know it's we're good let's copy that you know what I don't see Jesus ever failing to heal and we should be aware of that because it's not about method ultimately the big lesson is this is about the person of Jesus it's his fingers it's his saliva right it's his garment it's his word Jesus is the source of the healings later when the Apostles healed they did it in one way very different than Jesus Jesus would just heal people they would heal in Jesus name it's all about Jesus every miracles meant to point us to Christ point us to who he is so I'm very suspicious of some of the methods we see nowadays so the stories of Jesus and him healing people they are not a handbook of miracle methods for us to try to duplicate they're showing us who Jesus is and what our relationship with him is they're not an expectation that when you go out and preach you should be expected to do a bunch of healings every time we don't see that even in the book of Acts right instead they were pointing us to Christ Jesus here another layer of symbolism that might be in the passage is Jesus son stops our ears to hear the gospel and he gives us his words to speak to the world I think that's kind of cool too alright verse 36 it says and he gave them orders not to tell anyone but the more he ordered them the more widely they continued to proclaim it so this is to them he's obviously not just talking to the man he's speaking to a group of people in other words a group of people knew that this man was healed maybe he let the man tell a certain number of people and then had hey c'mere c'mere c'mere what you know I just want you to keep to yourselves maybe was to the man's friends maybe they saw heard the guy you know and then enough people found he's like okay now I want you to hold it off don't tell more people than that that could have been how it worked out you obviously can't hide anything I've ever hide this fully because the guy can talk everywhere he goes they'll be like hey how's it going Fred you know and he's saying hi to his buddy and the guys like what happens like I can't tell you you know I mean maybe maybe that's what he did well he didn't do we know for sure he actually went just told let me tell you all about it but but you couldn't hide it completely so this is this is not a don't let anyone know anything that happened it's more like a restricting of the data of the information getting out too far too fast that was the idea why is this we've mentioned several reasons already it would avoid an early crucifixion of Jesus it would keep the crowd from rioting and fighting the Romans which they're prone to do at that time and it would avoid a mob like situation where Jesus can't even minister because everyone's crowding him and not listening to him they want to fix me heal me but not listening to his teachings that could be the case as well but here's another possibility when jesus heals a man and then says don't tell people about this it's like Jesus is saying what I'm doing is more than this healing this healing is not the full story about Who I am so it's more than that the healing is a testimony to Jesus but his great work is yet to come and it's the cross and it's after the cross where everyone's to go out and tell everyone everything in other words Jesus is saying you can't interpret these miracles properly without the cross you can't interpret what I am who what I'm doing how I'll save and help people without the cross the cross is the crux of the matter pun intended so Jesus didn't what his miracles proclaimed yet here they are in the gospel so it was just a not yet issue was not yet first get the context of the cross and then tell everybody verse 37 they were utterly astonished saying he has done all things well he makes even the Deaf to hear and the mute to speak don't miss the point here the miracles again they attest to who Christ is and there's some interesting Old Testament significance of this so the word that's used in in mark here to refer to him being mute this guy being mute it's not exactly the word mute it's it's a different word that means something similar it was like he couldn't speak well different translations handle that word differently but it's only used twice in the whole Bible it's used in mark in this passage and it's used in Isaiah 35 the only two places it's used now we've already seen if you've been with me in the Mark series that mark constantly ties the glorious identity of Christ to the Old Testament using these kinds of you know references these sort of ways of communicating like when he walks on water and how that had this incredible Old Testament significance Isaiah 35 6 is the passage and Isaiah 35 five ways in as well that's basically Isaiah 35 6 talks about the healing of the mute same greek word only using one other time that it's something that happens in the Messianic era so when they're like he even heals the mute and the Jewish mindset that's like saying he's doing the Messianic stuff right this is confirming the title in the person of Christ but there's another connection because Isaiah 35 verse 5 it says this then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the Deaf will be unstopped now that word unstopped is a similar it's it's Hebrew instead of Aramaic but it's a similar word as f fossa meaning it means open up so here we have two connections from Mark to Isaiah 35 which is a messianic prediction passage so Jesus's can his work is connected to the Messiah that's the idea okay now I want to connect us to an Old Testament or CME a New Testament apologetic issue and has to do with the geography of mark this passage in mark is one of the highly ridiculed passages by skeptics by those who or I would say our Bible critics I brush and put it that way they're critics of the inspiration of Scripture by God many of them and it's it has to do with mark 731 so let's read the verse again and notice the geography of it right he went from the region of tyre went out from tyre and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee within the within the region of the Decapolis now the objection goes like this according to mark Jesus went from tyre through Sidon to Galilee in other words it has Jesus go North in order to go south Galilee is south of the tire area southeast tire is to go from there to sign you gotta go north so he went like north 22 miles to then go down south and they say that just doesn't make any sense Dennis 9 him in his work the Gospel of Mark on page 40 says the Evangelist was not directly acquainted with Palestine when he says the Evangelist he means mark the author of the gospel they often called him at the evangelists gospel evangel Viet so he says he didn't know Palestine mark didn't know what he's talking about he's just wrong theme Perkins another commentator he says the geographical route used to bring Jesus back to the Sea of Galilee from tyre makes no sense on the map it doesn't make any sense Kurt neater what neat neater Wimmer sorry I have a weird last name - Kurt don't be offended he considers it futile to reconstruct an actual historical journey from the geographical details given it's like there's no point in trying to say this it happened this way marks gives us geographical nonsense in other words Frederick grant he says from 731 he concludes that the author of Mark's Gospel was quote certainly unfamiliar with the geography and topography of northern Palestine so you now you give it I mean like they go to town to discount mark and his knowledge of the things he's talking about in in this passage because of this verse now there's one of the thing they'll offer is further support other than just the location tyre up deciding down to Galilee they say that Matthew knows mark is wrong Matthew no Matthew the author Matthew knows that mark is wrong and this is why Matthew omits Sidon from his story when he talks about the same thing in Matthew 15 so he doesn't mention Sidon because he knows this sounds silly go on up deciding to come down to Galilee so he just skips it let me give you two different answers that I think are either one is sufficient to respond to all this it's more smoke than fire let's put it that way first off there's the topography answer this is something dr. Tim McGrew suggests he says that if you wanted to walk in a straight line from tyre to Galilee I'll reverse my head here because not literally but tires of Galilee there we go so here's tire on the coast here's the Costa Mediterranean Sea and everything here's Galilee down here if you want to go straight from tyre to Galilee that there's a problem you can go in a straight line sure but Mountain Marin is in the way tires at sea level Mount Marin is three-quarters of a mile high and the Sea of Galilee is actually below sea level by 700 feet it's the lowest freshwater body of water on the planet Earth actually and so it's below sea level so the path would be tire at sea level Mount Mary and three-quarters of a mile high sea galley 700 feet below sea level this could be a problem right because people don't have teleporters that to just go places they have to like we're gonna have like our kinda roads or vehicles they're traveling so his solution is you you find Jesus going up to Sidon to have an easier path to walk down to tyre actually mean to Galilee the Sea of Galilee one advantage Tim and group points out is that this would put Jesus and His disciples along along a river on their journey down to Galilee so that they would have fresh water access to fresh water which is we think it's not that big of a deal especially since most of us we don't drink water we just drink coffee but but but no I mean water is pretty precious and important and you can't always carry enough with you so traveling along a route that has fresh water is actually very important so that's that's what Tim McGrew suggests there's an actual pass there and it would give them water to drink and this may be supported by the idea that Jesus it doesn't say he went to tyre does it it says he went to the region of Tyre he could have been much further north and tyre he didn't have to go twenty-two miles to go to site and he could have been halfway there in the region of tyre for all I know now there's another option a second option and that is that Jesus had a reason to vit site visit Sidon because every one of these guys just assumes that are criticizing mark here they just assume them Jesus had no reason to go to Sidon except as a shortcut to get to Galilee and then of course it seems silly to them as a shortcut to get to Galilee you go to Sidon but where does mark say that but just says Jesus he's in the area of Tyre he goes to Galilee but he goes through Sidon that's it it'd be geographically weird if Sidon was in Ireland right but but not if it's something you can actually walk to in Palestine and you can get down into the Sea of Galilee I don't understand the objection to be honest it's it seems like we're making much ado about nothing in this in this particular case they just assumed that Sidon supposed to be the quickest way and it may well be that the topography is the reason I don't maybe that is exactly the solution but I'm I think what we can learn from this is that sometimes critics they too quickly dismiss Scripture and they assume something about the text and then they make fun of the text for the thing they assumed about it so in a sense they're making fun of themselves I don't know all right last question why did Matthew omit Sidon because to me that's that I think it's people wait Matthew omit they do this all the time they look that's why Matthew cut that out of his account Matthew has all kinds of things that Mark shares that he doesn't share it's like all the time in Matthew if you have a story in mark in Matthew Mark gives more details that's just the general rule of thumb so then you can start making up reasons why but it's just Matthew's normal routine he just doesn't offer as many details as Mark but but in mark 7 and in Matthew 15 we have additional reasons to think why Matthew shortened the story mark gives seven verses to this story Matthew gives three why didn't he include Seidman cuz he has three verses the guy's got like two sentences he for the whole story so he doesn't include as many details as Mark that's natural however in Matthew he does mention Sidon and this is where I feel like the critic isn't doing their homework and there should be held accountable for that like come on in Matthew 15 21 just before this passage it says Jesus went away from there and withdrew into the district of Tyre and Sidon so he does put a mention side and he just mentions it early along kind of heading up this section in Matthew instead of explaining it in detail like Mark does later on in other words fail so so there we go that's the apologetic stuff and for for this series that I'm teaching I really to cover apologetics in the Gospel of Mark a lot as we go through because not only do you hopefully find it encouraging and equipping to hear an objection and then an answer like that but also because I know there's someone who's gonna watch this who's been influenced and affected and impacted by critical commentators or teachers and when they get this content my hope is that it restores their trust in faith in God's Word because they realize that it's reliable that we can trust what God has given us I mean there's some security that we we really need in our hearts of just resting in the truthfulness of the scriptures so here in this passage my conclusion is we see Jesus when he puts his fingers in this guy's ears I think of the intimacy of that he's connecting with our embarrassing weaknesses and this is like the Incarnation itself from beginning to end Jesus is connecting with our embarrassing our weaknesses our nakedness and our shame and he's coming into contact with it that he might remove it remove it through his own self through his own work that we'd be restored to God I think that is absolutely beautiful let's pray Lord we thank you for your word your word that stands the test of time and the critical analysis your word that gives us the theology and the good the goodness of the truth of Christ that we need so badly in our lives Lord tonight may we may we be a people who recognize the intimacy through which Christ took our sin you didn't just forgive us from a distance you took our sin upon yourself you died in our place and we are we are not standing here even just ashamed sinners forever but rather the the guilt and even the shame is taken away in Christ so that we can rejoice in Christ and we can have fellowship and communion in the joy of the forgiveness of our sins of our salvation of our free and total redemption being restored to you we love you we bless your holy name in Jesus name [Music]

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 29,266

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Keywords: mike winger, the mark series part 25, geography in the gospel of Mark, gospel of mark, mark 7:31, ephphatha, Jesus heals the deaf and mute man, theology and apologetics, Bible study, why did Jesus use spit to heal, Mark 7

Id: 35_3uD7XbVc

Length: 51min 0sec (3060 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2020