That song brings back long ago memories. When I was a teenager, probably 14 or 15 years old, in a little town up in the mountains of Virginia, having started a few years before that, going with my mother to a Presbyterian church, a Southern Presbyterian church, and got involved in the youth fellowship group, the senior high fellowship group. And it was during those years, those formative years, that I was feeling the tug of the Lord in my life. And this was up, we were way, I say we lived so far back in the woods I had to walk toward town to go squirrel hunting. But it was a small community, but we had a lot of kids in this church in Hot Springs, Virginia. And there were springs, In communities all around Hot Springs, I had not planned on saying this, but I picked out this song and then all of a sudden this came back, so I just have to share it. People ask, where's Hot Springs? And we used to joke and say it's just a little below warm mattress. But there was hot springs, there was warm springs, there was sinking springs, there was Bolivar Springs, there were tinkling springs, and all these little springy towns had small churches, and we would get together about once a quarter. We would all go to one church and just have enough kids together to have a good time. And so our little group of five or six were to be the deputation team that was going to lead the study and the worship. Well, our youth leader thought that Freddie could sing. And she said, would you pick out a song? Maybe I shouldn't have gone there. You guys know me. I've said this a long time ago that God made me different. He put my bladder behind my eyeballs. But this is what we sang, and really this was where I was making my early commitment to go into the ministry. I came under the care of the presbytery when I was 17 years old. The young man that was preaching here last Sunday said he just came under the care of presbytery as a graduate of the cemetery. I didn't have a clue what that meant. But the first verse of this song expresses what my The call on my life has been for 70 years. I think it'd be a whole lot easier for you to read it than me to try to say it. So why don't we just at this moment look to the Lord in prayer, then I'll read our scripture for the day. O gracious Lord. Each one of us here has a story. And yet it's not our story that is upon our minds and hearts this morning, Lord. It is your story, the story of your grace, the story of your love, The story of how you left your home in glory and came to serve and to sacrifice and to suffer and to die to bear our sins upon the cross and to redeem us unto life everlasting. And Father May, as we turn to the scriptures now, we not only hear your story, and how you have dealt with the hurting and the brokenness of humanity. But may we hear you speak to us in our need, in our hurting, in our brokenness, in our journey, in our walk with you, and rejoice with those who rejoice this day. For there is much joy in the passage before us as there was in this passage from Isaiah. And we just ask now, Lord Jesus, that we will see and hear you speak to us through your Holy Spirit and through your word. Amen. We're continuing in the study of the Gospel of Mark, which your pastor Brent Engaged upon months ago, and we're just now getting to chapter 7 Just the Old Testament lesson that you that you stood for just a few moments ago There is a connection here in a way between the Old Testament and where we're studying today and The 35th chapter of Isaiah was sort of a turning point in Isaiah's prophecy. The first 34 chapters were chapters about judgment and God's pronouncement upon those who had abandoned him and his faithful ones who had left and they were being carried off into captivity and they were facing punishment and judgment. But when you get to this chapter here, there is the turn, there's a transition here. And he's beginning to, Isaiah is beginning to speak. Thus says the Lord that better days are coming, that he has not abandoned his people. And so as you read this, you see a sense of things are going to get better. And especially when he gets down to here and he says, the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the lame man shall root like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. And there's a word here about the ears of the deaf being unstopped in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew. It is used only once in the New Testament, and that is in the seventh chapter of Mark, which we'll be reading here in a few moments, where in the miracle of Jesus healing this deaf mute, It uses the same Greek word of what it means to be what he's talking here about being deafness, being unstopped. I can't hardly wait to hear what I got to say about it because the scripture is getting so exciting here. But let's read our text for this morning. Turn if you will to the seventh chapter of Mark's Gospel. Beginning with verse 31. When you start here in the middle where a sentence begins, and again, I'm going to have to run back to what goes on before, but let's start here with the again. Again, departing from the region of Tyre, And Sidon, he came through the midst of the region of Decapolis. I'm reading from the New King James, in case some of you are wondering where I am, if you have another translation. Came in the midst of the Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee. Then they brought to him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. And they begged him, Jesus, to put his hand on him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and he put his fingers in his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, Ephphatha, and that is, be opened. And immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed. There's that word that we had there in Isaiah. And he spoke plainly. Then he commanded them that they should tell no one. But the more he commanded them, and the more widely they proclaimed it, and they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. And may God add to our reading of his word understanding and faith and openness of heart and spirit. Amen. I don't know how many weeks we've been in Mark, but seven and a half chapters of Mark covers quite a bit of time in the life of Jesus and his disciples. Probably roughly two, maybe two years have transpired from Mark 1 to where we are now. And all of what we have read here in Mark take place, I want to give a little geographical background here because there is a big transition also in this passage of scripture. Up until now, Jesus has been spending all of his time in the region of Israel known as Galilee. Israel at that time was Galilee to the north, Samaria in the middle, and Judea below. Down in the south were the big cities like Jerusalem. Jesus has not yet gotten down there. He started out in the northern part of Judah when Martha introduces us to John baptizing in the Jordan and he baptized Jesus there and then Jesus went from there back up into Galilee to Nazareth. Well after he was baptized he went into the wilderness and was tempted. I'm just giving you a chronology here. And he was baptized, and then after his baptism in which he then goes, and he goes into Nazareth, he goes into the synagogue, and you know the story. He reads from the book of Isaiah, chapter 63, and he says, and after he reads it, he says, today this has been fulfilled in your hearing. that I had been sent to preach. And basically he's saying, I am the one whom God has promised as the Messiah. That got the Pharisees and the people in the synagogue upset. And right then and there, in the first public preaching that Jesus performed, they were ready to kill him. They thought they were going to take him outside the city and kill him. He got out. So the rest of his ministry for the next two years is around, up there in Galilee, around the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum. And that area was mostly agricultural, a lot of the cities, but most, it was also a lot featured around the Sea of Galilee. So, here in chapter 7, we're introduced to the fact that Jesus is no longer in Galilee. I don't know if you got curious last week when Justin was preaching about his being up in this town of Tyre, and he healed this Syrophoenician woman, a Gentile. Basically, Jesus, at that time, had gone to another region. Verse 24, it says, from there, that is, from there in Galilee, he went into Tyre on Sidon. And I want to propose to you this sudden shift, what precipitated this sudden shift in Jesus ministering from the Jews to the Gentiles. Go all the way back to verse 1 of chapter 7. Jesus is in Galilee preaching, teaching, healing. In chapter 7, verse 1, we have this verse which is kind of curious. Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes came together to him, having come from Jerusalem. Here's Jesus up in northernmost Galilee. Pharisees coming from Jerusalem over a hundred miles away. Knowing what you know about the Pharisees from your studies. So what's significant? What's going on at this time? The Roman appointed governor, Herod Antipas, has just recently beheaded John the Baptist. And he got so much acclaim from the Jews of a good thing that he has done, he began to think, hmm, maybe I can go for Jesus now. And here the Pharisees, they hated Jesus, they tried to do away with him from the beginning and they've been nipping at his heels all the time he's been ministering. And so the Romanian Galilee posed a very serious threat. So, he's right up there on the border, he crosses The border to the north and to the west of Israel enters Gentile territory in the city of Tyre. Now, that is where modern-day Lebanon is. The area, and it is outside of Herod's jurisdiction, it is under Syrian rule. Y'all having a good time with this history lesson? I get carried away with it. Verse 24 of chapter 7, if you still have your Bibles here. Back in the country, when we didn't have iPhones and iPads to read the Bible, we did this. We used to call this Baptist air conditioning. I mean, going from page to page, doing all this. I mean, that's the only way we could get cool off in church, was flipping pages in the Bible. So anyhow, turn to verse 24. And it says, he went into his entire This is where Justin was preaching last week. And this to me indicates why he wanted to be incognito. He entered a house, you see that, and wanted no one to know him. But he could not be hidden. People already knew about him and before long there's a multitude there and and we heard the story last week the Syrophoenician woman comes he has this this demon-possessed daughter that he wants So you heard the sermon if you didn't we've got it on on the on the website But so after this after this brief visit to Tyre we pick up the story in 31 where I was reading our text And he went from Tyre, now I don't know what translation you have, the proper translation is, he went from the region of Tyre and came through Sidon, and came to the region of the Decapolis of the Sea of Galilee. Now, if you read that you think, well, he stepped out of Tyre, went to Sidon, and the next day he was in the Decapolis. No. If he wanted to get to the Decapolis, which is to the south and east of the Sea of Galilee, He would have to go 20 miles north to side him before he went down there. So let me tell you what's taking place here. There's a huge geographic and chronological gap in this verse. He goes to Capernaum ministering and the Pharisees show up. Verse 24, he leaves Capernaum, goes up 50 miles to Tyre and dealing there with the Gentiles. And then he travels 20 miles north to Sinai. And in order to get from Sinai to the Decapolis and avoid getting back into Hebrew country, It would be a detour of about a hundred and fifty miles through Lebanon, over the sea, the Leontes River, up the mountains, Arturus the walking, his disciples. Then we would have to ascend the mountains of Lebanon, and then we would have to enter Decapolis from the east to come into Jordan. Best estimates, the journey lasted at least four months, maybe six. Some scholars say it could have been eight months. Now, before you think that this was a cowardly move on the part of Jesus, that he was sort of a renegade, an outlaw on the run, he leaves this time with his disciples. You know what's been going on every time he goes somewhere, he's teaching his disciples. This is the first generation of the preachers of the gospel. They were to be the ones who would set in motion the proclamation of salvation that is found only in him, and he needed to spend time with them. Christ will eventually, and what they will do, will eventually stretch and expand to the ends of the earth. So their private personal workings, this was a walking seminar. This was a break. They didn't take a seminar cruise on the Caribbean. They were in the wilderness of Arabia. You know, years later, Paul talks about when he's an apostle on the road to Damascus, and it was after that time that he, and he says this in his Gospels, he spent about 11 or 12 years alone in isolation somewhere in the wilderness in which he was being instructed by Jesus. That's Paul saying that. And so he was given the same instruction that Jesus was using this time with his disciples. Wouldn't you love to know what they experienced, what they heard in that time that they were with him? I think John probably had a lot of this in mind when John is writing the very last sentence to the Gospel of John, which he's telling, you know, the life and the narrative of Jesus. John ends his Gospel. He says in verse 24 of chapter 21, While there are also so many things that Jesus did, were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. I think John is saying there, man, we were filled in addition to what he is writing in the gospel and what the other gospel What an experience! So, let's get to this miracle. They come into this region, into the Greekapolis. They're still in Gentile territory. I'm going to jump down there to verse 33, because this fascinates me. He says, a multitude was waiting for him. You know, he heals this man, and it says, he took, when he gets, let's mute as you're ready. I'll get back to the first part of this. But it said when Jesus was confronted with this guy, what does the verse say? He took him aside from the multitude. Now, my inquiring mind wants to know, where did that multitude come from? He's been on a four, six, eight month hiatus. Hey, probably out of mind, out of sight, out of mind, I don't know. Something is going on here. When's the last time you heard the word Decapolis in the study of Mark? Let me refresh you. I get excited about this. Chapter 5, and Brett preached on this a couple of times. Chapter 4, chapter 5. Jesus is ministering in Capernaum, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, worn out, doing, I mean, 20 hours a day, you name it. He's tired and worn out. He says to his disciples, let's get in a boat and take a boat right across the lake. You know the story. Hurricane force winds come up. He's asleep in the boat. The disciples are scared out of their wits. And they holler out to him, Lord, don't you care that we're perishing? And what does Jesus do? He says, oh, you little faith. And then with a word, he says, he speaks to the wind, he says, peace, be still. And it was immediate, immediate, the sea was like glass. And they said, what manner of man is this? So they continue on, the boat touches down on the shore of Decapolis, the Gemessir. And there they find a man who is running through the tombs. He's a demon-possessed man. There are caves on the side of that mountain that was used as the local cemetery. And that's where this guy was living. And he comes running down to Jesus and he says, Do not bother me, Jesus. I know who you are. And Jesus casts out. He says, What is your name? And he says, My name is Legion. And he casts out. The demons from that man, and a thousand, into a thousand pigs, and they go and drown themselves down in the ocean, down in the lake. Now, you know what happened next? The businessmen from town, the owners of those pigs, you know it's Gentile territory, because I mean a thousand pigs. And they're more upset with Jesus having their pig farm decimated than they are rejoicing over the fact that one of their fellow townsmen is not a normal human being. And what do they do? They say, Jesus, you take your boys and get out of town. Well, before he does this, this man who was a former demoniac begs Jesus, please let me go with you. He didn't want to go back to that town where people could be like that. And what did Jesus say? In verse 20, Jesus, in verse 19, he says, no, you can't go with me. He says, go home and tell your friends the great things that the Lord has done for you and has had compassion on you. Verse 20 is what gives us the clearest of why this multitude showed up the day of our scripture. Verse 20 says, and he departed. Verse 20, chapter 5, this is key. He departed and began to publish to the Decapolis the great things that Jesus had done for him. And they all did marvel. Imagine that. The first Gentile evangelist. Who is a former demoniac? You think there's no hope for you? Let's dig into the miracle. And here's what we're going to do. I'm not even halfway there. So we're going to look at this man's affliction. Then we'll follow the steps of how the Lord goes about healing this man. And then we're going to look at, was the surgery a success? Not like a doctor came out to the waiting room at the end of it and said, the surgery was a success, but the patient died. I mean, I performed a good surgery. Well, was this a success? And then we're going to look at the rehab, the prescription that tells this guy about, you know, after the surgery's performed. And then finally, and I told Shirley this, You have to remember when a speaker says finally does not mean immediately. Okay? So finally we're going to look at, you know, the response of the multitude and what is our response. And then we're going to spend time together and have the Lord's supper. So let me just do this. They brought him one who was deaf and had a speech impediment and they begged him to put his hand on. Now, we're not going to spend a lot of time on this. I think most of us have some understanding or concept or visualization of what it would be like to be deaf and to be mute. Can you really... It's hard. Here's an experiment. Go home sometime today if you're not watching soccer. Or just go home anyhow and do this, or at some time. Turn on the foreign language television station. And turn off the volume. It's called the mute button. And don't cheat, and turn on the closed caption. And spend an hour or two watching a sitcom, a drama, a panel discussion. And here you are, total silence. I wish you could be in a soundproof room where you couldn't hear the fan or the air conditioner. I mean just total dead silence. And here you're watching people interacting. You see mouths moving, gestures, things going on. What is your comprehension of what is being said, what is going on? You don't even know what the mouth movement is about. What does that mean? You see, in Israel, deaf-mutes were categorized as insane because the rabbi said, we have no way of knowing what they understand. And they excommunicated them from the presence in the temple. They were even on the outside, beyond the realm of the women and the Gentiles, the Pharisees. So they bring this man to Jesus. And here's the steps in which Jesus deals with this gentleman. Firstly, I think this man here says Jesus took him by himself from the crowd. He took him from the multitude by himself. What does that tell you? Tells me a lot. Here is this man perhaps for whom all his life No one really singled him out for anything special. He was just an object. He said his friends brought him and the text really mean when they said they brought him to Jesus. The word there is they literally flung him at Jesus. Do something to this man. And see, Jesus took him aside and to me that means, you know, I could just see He couldn't talk to him and so I'm sure to take him aside. There was this kind of taking aside with his arm on his shoulder Removing him to where there is this one-on-one intimate time with this man face to face Isn't this the way of our Lord? He shows compassion. He shows kindness. He's just not another face in the crowd, not another body to be healed. He's a unique individual, and he's going to spend time with Jesus. And then, I think Jesus, you know, this man had never been to the, you know, the Decapolis School for the Deaf and the Blind. He didn't, you know, he didn't learn sign language and everybody always communicated to him with visual signs and pointing and things. And so what does Jesus do? He puts his fingers in his ears. Nothing happens, but I think what Jesus is communicating, I know the problem. You know, the Pharisees and the people around you wouldn't even touch you because you're unclean, you have this affliction because you're cursed, because you're a sinner. Jesus says, you know, I know. And Jesus spits on the ground, gets some moisture, and touches the man's tongue. He said, probably Jesus is almost like Jesus stuck out his tongue, and the man stuck out his tongue. And he touched it. They said, you know what? I'm going to fix that. And then, verse 34, the next name The Scripture says, looking to heaven, touch his tongue. What is this communicating to that man? This is another sign that he's saying to that man, what's about to happen to you is not coming from me. It's from my Father in heaven. What's going to happen to you is coming from a source beyond either one of us. It is from my heavenly Father. And he looks to heaven and then he sighs. Okay, everybody, another experiment. Hold your breath and then give me a sigh. What happened? What does that communicate? The man could see this visible expression of sympathy. Releasing from within, he's showing this man a strong emotion of tenderness, compassion. And so it's sign language. Jesus gives him his first lesson about God. God is powerful. God is compassionate. God cares. But something else. What just happened when you sighed? You expelled breath. I might be stretching a point here, but the breath of God, when Jesus sighed, because the very next day, look, in Genesis 2, 7, we know in the creation story, God made man, he formed him from the dust of the ground and he molded him And but what? Then God breathed into Adam. And he became a living soul. Because immediately he saw it and he says, If Papa be opened, Immediately, the scripture says, immediately was the success, was the operation of success, immediately was Israel opened and there was impediment, the bond, the desmos, the bond in the Greek, the desmos it is, that is a word that is used to chain and bond something together, to chain a slave. The bond was broken. And his tongue was bent and he began to speak plainly. The King James weakens it when it translated, the string of his tongue was untied. I think that's where the expression tongue tied came from. But in an instant, He could hear perfectly, and he could speak plainly. Can you fathom that? Take a moment, let it sink in. To hear is one thing, to be able to know and understand what is being said, language that you have never even heard in your life. You're hearing now words that you understand and that you speak a language that you've never even heard spoken before. All these years this man had a larynx, a voice box. He could not even hear his own groans. He couldn't hear his grunts. He's all you. If you talk about a speech impediment, that's what they meant. He has the facility of a language, you know that? He was able to speak plainly. In the Greek word it is orthos, from which we get orthopedics. You break a bone, you go to an orthopedist and he gets that which was broken, fixed. He fixes it and you've got correct alignment again. He fixed it correctly, perfectly. Staggering, the instantaneous result. He opened immediately. You know, this is the way he does things, isn't it? On the sea, he's still... You know, we have hurricanes around here, you know, when a hurricane goes, you still have storm surge, you still have waves breaking, and eventually, when the storm moves off, there might be a calm, and the weather report say, a slight chop today. The sea was glass. To the demon-possessed men, he says to the demons, come out! And immediately they go and they possess a herd of pigs and they drown themselves. Immediately! He stands at the grave in the open grave of a dear friend in Bethany, and Lazarus has been dead four days, and he prays, and he stands at the grave and he shouts, Lazarus, come out! And Lazarus walked out of the grave, a live man, instantly. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was of God, and the Word was with God, And in the beginning also in Genesis 1 verse 3, verse 1, the earth was without form and void and darkness covered the face of the earth. And God said, Light be! That's the real translation of the Hebrew. Light be! And light was. And over and over again, he spoke. And it was. And at the end, the scripture says, and that was day one. It wasn't day 1,450,002. It was day one. And then God said, it was good. It was good. It was good. See, that's the conclusion of the people when they saw this. It was good. Why did he tell them not to speak, not to tell anyone? And the scripture says, the more he told them, the more they talked. But this happens over and over again in the scriptures. Time and time again. Jesus heals a demon. Go and tell no one. Jesus heals a blind man. Don't go and tell anyone. He heals a leper. Don't talk about it. You couldn't hold back if this happened. If you were there and this happened, you'd be talking about it. So what's behind all this? You're all so good hanging in here this long. We're getting close to the end, but not immediately. Jesus was with his disciples in the 9th chapter of Luke, verse 18. He says, praying alone, and then the disciples draw near to them, and he asked them the question, Who do you think I am? Who do you say I am? And they answered, some think you're Elijah, come back from the dead, you might be John the Baptist, you're one of the prophets. He says, but who do you say I am? And Peter, under the inspiration and with the conviction of the Holy Spirit, says, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And they all agreed and they affirmed that he's the Christ of God, but then he warned them, don't tell anybody. What? And he could see their questioning. Why not do it? In verse 22, Jesus says, this is the reason why. The Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and the chief scribes, be killed and raised on the third day. So what has not yet happened in all these healings? Jesus had not gone to the cross. He had not been resurrected. That's the end of the story. That's the story you tell. It is not about your miracles. It is not about your healing. It is not about getting your financial needs met when you say all of the formulas that God tells you to do on the television. That is not the story. The story is about Jesus Christ crucified. buried and resurrected. And after His resurrection, He appears to His disciples before He ascends into heaven, and now He tells them, go and tell. I commission you all authority that was given me from in heaven. Go and tell. Make disciples of all nations. And telling them and teaching them all the things that I have communicated unto you. Well, maybe if you come to the house tonight for our Sunday night, I'll give you the last couple of pages of thoughts. But here's the point. A miracle to this man. What is... And the response of these people, He does everything. He does everything well. It is well with my soul. In your experience, in your walk, oh yeah, you and I, Jesus walked this lonesome valley. We talk about the valley and the shadow of death that I'm going through. Oh no. We all have our trials. You know, what is it? You know, Shirley and I, I tell people I'm a surviving septuagenarian, and no sooner got over that than I came down immediately with octogenarianism, and there's only about a 10% survival rate. So, you know, what's your problem? And all that goes along with it, the aches and the pains. The brokenness. Families getting injured and hurting and hurting one another. You know, kids disappointing us or kids achieving and we see them coming back. We say, you know, if you just give it enough time. We know that in all things God works. He does all things well. He works everything for the good of those He loves, according to His purpose, so that we will be conformed to His image. So where's the chain? What's the bondage? What is it that you and I are dealing with that we can just take from the assurance of the script? He does all things well. Is it going to take some friends to throw you at the feet of Jesus? Let me tell you something, folks. If you do not know Him, there are friends, there are family that are throwing you at the feet of Jesus nearly every day in prayer. He's ready to reach out and touch you, to minister to you, to release you. In just a moment we're going to come to the Lord's table and I'll say a few things about that when we get there. But this is, how well does he do something? This is the visible demonstration that we have. This is His body which is broken for you. This is the emblem of His blood that was shed for you. This is the assurance. This is His signed language. Not just sticking fingers in ears and touching your tongue, but this is His signed language communicated. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be like crimson. They shall be as well. I bore all your sins in my body upon the cross. And now you are... You can speak a whole new language. The language of praise and thanksgiving. Let us come and pray. O Heavenly Father, we do come before you now. We seek your face. We have seen you. We have beheld your glory. We know what you would have us do. Oh, true, lovely source of true delight. We adore you. And we thank you in our Savior's name. Amen.