Date: October 8, 2006
A Private Holy Moment
Mark 7: 24-37
I want to concentrate this morning on the second part of this Scripture, the part where Jesus comes to this fellow with the speech impediment and, once again with the use of simple things, brings healing and wholeness to the man. I want us to take special notice of three things concerning this passage, three things that Jesus did in dealing with this man and with his need.
First, the people brought the man to Jesus and begged him to lay His hand upon him to bring the needed healing.
Second, Jesus took him to a private place away from the crowd.
Finally, Jesus put His fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. The man was healed!
I want us to see these three things this morning because this is very much the way that Jesus still ministers to any and all of us.
Usually when we are in need of His help or healing in some part of our lives, be it physical or spiritual, we do not recognize the ailment, infirmity, or even that shortcoming that we have not been able to face and admit to ourselves. Therefore, we do not recognize or accept our need for healing.
Perhaps the man in the passage this morning had been deaf and mute for so long that he just accepted it as his lot in life, never dreaming that he could one day be free of his affliction. His friends had seen the miracles of Jesus, and they could cling to a fragile thread of hope, a hope that Jesus could do this thing for their friend as He had done for so many others.
It is many times the people around us, those who know us best, who love us most, and who can see that something is wrong or different in our lives, who can most readily see that the hand of the Master is needed to bring healing and wholeness once again. Is that not why we continue to pray for loved ones, even when there seems to be little or no hope for their recovery? How many times have we witnessed answers to those prayers? A lot of times! How many times in Scripture have we read of the impossible happening and the improbable being an everyday occurrence? Was it not the faith of a few good friends who brought the paralytic to Jesus, sought His touch, and witnessed the miracle when Jesus said, “Take up your bed and walk.”? Was it not the faith of a mother who by her persistence in seeking out Jesus realized and celebrated the freeing of her demon possessed daughter? Was it not the faith of Jairus who said to Jesus, “Master, if you would just speak it, I know that my little girl would live,” and, at that very moment, the child although miles away awoke from her death sleep? Was it not the faith of Mary and Martha who continued to seek Jesus even when their brother, Lazarus, had been in the tomb for four days? Did they not see the glory of God as a result of their faith?
The people brought the man to Jesus and begged him to lay His hand upon him. Notice they did not come to see “IF” Jesus could heal him, they came in faith begging for the touch that they knew would heal.
We pray for one another when there is sickness and injury, and that is a blessed thing, but we must not forget to place ourselves in His hands as well. We often think that God does not have time for us, but God is at all times and in all places hearing and responding to all prayers. As impossible as that may seem in our pragmatic way of looking at things, Scripture reminds us repeatedly that it is true, and it is important for us to remember that your prayers and mine are just as precious in His sight as any others.
Sometimes we think that we are not worthy to ask or to receive His help because of our past, because of our failures, or even because of our lack of commitment to Him. Again we need to be reminded of numerous times in God’s word that:
His grace is not dependant on our perfect-ness.
His compassion is not determined by our degree of devotion.
The measure of His love for us is not a reflection of the measure of our love for Him!
He died for us when we were still sinners, and so, by God’s standards, we are worthy, not by our own effort, but by His sacrifice.
Further, Jesus took this man aside in private, away from the crowd. What a telling verse that is! You see, when we finally come to the end of ourselves, when we come to the realization that we cannot help ourselves any more, that all of our best efforts, all of our selfish motives, all of our grand designs to make things better fail miserably, when we understand that we simply cannot do it ourselves and that we need God in some way, when we come to that point, and we acknowledge the fact that our efforts have all failed, that there is no other place to turn, no other resource to tap into, when we finally come face to face with the reality of our own failure (everyone of us has had or will have that moment), when we arrive at the pivotal moment of our lives, it is a sacred, Holy moment, and it is a private moment! It is a time for you and Jesus to be alone and together, face to face, and heart to heart. It is a time when all the other considerations, all other influences, all of your reasons, excuses, and rationalizations crumble into nothingness, and there is left only you and Him. In that time you experience your past sin and present grace, your old weakness and new strength, your feeble body and the mighty, mighty spirit of God, and in that moment of surrender and release, there is healing, forgiveness, and new life.
He put His fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven He sighed and said to him, “Be opened.” Immediately the man’s ears were opened and his tongue released and he spoke plainly.
You see, whenever Jesus touches us in any way, it is indeed, in and of itself, a miracle. When He touches your life simply by His presence and influence in it, it is a miraculous event by which He makes a change in us in some way.
Just as surely as the deaf man’s ears were opened and his mouth was made to speak, there were changes made, not just in his speech and hearing, but in his life, in his future, and, most certainly, in his faith. Whenever we witness or are on the receiving end of a miracle, we are indeed touched by Jesus. In the Scripture story preceding this reading a little girl is freed from the demon within her. She is not physically touched by Jesus himself, but by the miracle performed in her behalf and because of the faith of her mother. Yes, she was most certainly touched by the Son of God in a most profound and far reaching way. So, we can conclude that Jesus did and still does respond to the prayers and needs of His people, that He is, as He said He would be, always with us even until the end of the age. We can conclude that we are worthy of His love and grace simply because of His love and grace. We can conclude that healing and wholeness, whether it happens on a lonely hillside or in a crowded auditorium, always comes in a private moment, and is a holy time with the Savior. Even though we struggle and fight to avoid this inevitable encounter with our Lord, when it finally comes, as it always does, it is a blessing beyond all blessings because it is the realization of the freedom and peace that was promised from the beginning of time.
We can conclude that when Jesus touches us with His healing hands, we have participated in the realization of a sacred moment and in the witnessing of a miracle of God, a miracle that reaches, not only our physical wounds, our bodily diseases, or our most difficult sins, but it is a miracle that touches and heals our whole selves indeed even our souls. It is a miracle that makes us better than we were, stronger than we were, and greater than we can be because we have been touched and healed and made whole again by the Holy One of God, just as surely as those in the Gospel stories who were touched and healed by our Lord Jesus in days long ago.
In Holy moments throughout the ages, God has healed and continues to heal because He loves His creation, and there is a glimpse of that love hidden in this passage this morning. It is the one final thing that I want you to notice and take with you this morning, something for you to think about this week. It is just two words that tell how Jesus reacted to the man in this passage. The words are, “He sighed.” Jesus sighed as He was preparing to put right what went wrong in this man’s life. He paused and He sighed. We might have expected him to explain to the man what was about to happen or to have a prayer with him in preparation of a miracle. We might have even expected Him to give a brief sermon about healing, but Jesus did none of those things. He simply sighed and then proceeded to heal a lifelong affliction. Now there are sighs of relief, sighs of anger, sighs of expectancy, and even sighs of joy, but this sigh that Jesus released seems to be a mixture of frustration and maybe even sadness, lying somewhere between a fit of anger and a burst of tears, perhaps in recognition of pain that was never intended, or of hopelessness that was never anticipated.
You see we were never intended to be separated from our Creator, and so we sigh, longing for home. This world was never intended to be inhabited by evil, and so we sigh yearning for the beautiful perfect garden of God’s creation. When Jesus looked into the eyes of Satan’s victim, the only appropriate thing to do was to sigh as if to say it was never intended to be this way. These ears were not made to be deaf. This tongue was not made to stumble. Perhaps the sigh that Jesus utters is a sigh of comfort that we might know that in the agony of Jesus lies our hope because He did sigh feeling the burden of what was not intended. If He had chalked it all up to the inevitable, or washed His hands of the whole mess, what hope would we have? But He did not! That Holy sigh still assures us that God still groans for His people. He sighs for the day when all things will be as they were intended. When there will be no more need for healings, or miracles, no cause for forgiveness, no need for grace, because there will be no stopped up ears or stumbling tongues, there will be no blind eyes or weakened limbs, no feeble minds or darkened spirits, no disobedient hearts or sinful natures in the lives of God’s children.
One day when all things are accomplished the creation that God intended will be once again. Our prayers for ourselves and for one another concerning our needs and our failures will be changed to prayers of praise and thanksgiving sung in the very halls of Heaven in the company of all the saints.
That precious and holy moment in the presence of Christ that we now both dread and cherish, will not only be an everyday occurrence, but will be a way of life, eternal life.
The touch of our Savior will be the warm embrace of His all encompassing arms, of our eternally grateful grasp as we cling to hands that bear the marks of His love for us.
When all things are accomplished, the only sigh we will hear will be sighs of joy, and the people of God saying, “Thanks be to God! Amen and amen.”
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Portions adapted from God Came Near by Max Lucado
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