And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. (Mark 7:31-37)

And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the Sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.

Leaving the region of Tyre and going by way of Sidon, Jesus went toward the Sea of Galilee, crossing the region of Decapolis (Ten Cities). Once more the crowd began to follow Christ as He moved from one community to the next performing great miracles (cf. Matt. 15:29-31).

John Mark records one miracle in particular performed on a man who was deaf and dumb. If he spoke at all it was stammering. So the people brought him to Jesus and pleaded that the Lord put His hands upon the man. Perhaps the people had seen Christ touch others and they wanted this man to be touched as well.

But Jesus had His own way of doing things as all that come in contact with the ways of God discover. Jarius leaned this truth when he asked Christ to come and lay His hands on his daughter. But the Great Physician did something else. He touched the little child’s hand in a tender, personal way of love. Jesus lifted her up from the bed of affliction (Mark 5:23, 42). In ministering to people, the Lord sovereignly chooses His own methods. God’s people discover this lesson time and again.

In the 9th century B.C., the “commander of the army of the king of Syria” (2 Kgs. 5:1-27) contracted leprosy. He was a courageous general in the continuous conflicts of that era. But he was a leper.

One day in the providence of the Lord, a young girl who had been taken captive in one of the Syrian raids into Israel’s territory, was moved to make a heart felt spontaneous comment. She was in the presence of Naaman’s wife when she said, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy!”

The prophet was Elisha. When contacted Elisha told Naaman to go and wash seven times in the River Jordan. The commander was insulted for he knew that the clear waters of the rivers of Damascus were “better than all the waters of Israel” (2 Kgs. 5:12).

Prevailed upon by his servants to obey the prophetic voice, Naaman “dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” God used the muddy waters of the Jordan to effect a cure contrary to the thinking of man.  Naaman leaned that God chooses His own methods.

Sometimes the methods the Lord chooses are harsh and painful to the human heart but much good comes out of it. We find this in the case of Joseph, the son of Jacob. The father’s heart was broken when he was told that a hungry lion had killed his son. In reality jealous and wicked brothers had sold the young man into slavery. Only later would it be revealed that what they meant for evil God sovereingly meant for good (Gen. 50:15-21).

Dr. William Hendriksen reminds us that “We should never try to tell God what methods He should use in answering our petitions…just where He should place His hands! His own way is always best.”

So, the people of the Decapolis asked Jesus to put His hand upon the man who could not hear or speak well. In six actions the Lord Jesus honored the petition of the people and produced a miracle.

First, Christ took the man aside by himself, away from the crowd. Perhaps Jesus wanted the deaf stammerer to feel more at ease (cf. Mark 5:37; Luke 8:51) and to concentrate on His healer. We are reminded that at times healing only comes apart from the crowd. Distance must be put between even friends and family members sometimes for spiritual healing to take place alone with the Savior.

Second, Jesus put His fingers into the man’s ears. A careless reading might make this action seem silly, but the Lord was simply conveying to the man a message, “I am going to touch your ears. I am going to help you.”

Spiritually, the Bible teachers the ears of the natural man are deaf to the gospel. Matthew 13:15, “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”

Not only does the natural man not hear the gospel with spiritual understanding but he does not want to hear the gospel. When Stephen had finished proclaiming the message of divine redemption, the Bible says that the Jews of Jerusalem were cut to the heart and gnashed on him with their teeth. And when Stephen revealed a vision of the resurrected Christ the men “cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord” (Acts 7:51).

Non-religious spiritually deaf men killed the servant of the Savior. And so it is that God must grant spiritual ears to hear the gospel call to salvation. Christ must touch our ears if we are to hear anything from heaven.

Then third, the Lord looked up to heaven because heaven was the source of His strength. He was taking hold of His heavenly Father (Pss. 25:15; 121:1; 123:1,2; 141:8). And we are reminded to look up to heaven for our strength. We are not to look to the stars.

Nothing is sillier than astrology, and the idea that people born under a certain sign of the zodiac, will act in a certain way.

Nor are we as Christians to look to the angels or worship them as John was tempted to do in Revelation 19:10. And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

Neither are we to seek help from the spirit or the world of the occult.

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, 10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: God is a jealous God. He has given to the world His only begotten Son and the command to hear Him. (Rev. 14:9, 10)

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. (1 Tim. 2:5)

Fourth, the Bible says that Jesus sighed. Sighs are very significant for they express the depths of human emotion. Someone once said of the preaching of George Whitefield that they would give the world if they could say, “Oh— “, like the great evangelist. He said so much with just a gesture. The sigh of Christ was full of meaning for it was a sympathetic sigh. Jesus identified Himself with the terrible condition of the man and took pity upon Him. The Bible tells us that Christ was touched by the feelings of our infirmities. The sorrows of the sick were His sorrows as well. Sometimes we wonder

“Does Jesus care when my way is dark
With a nameless dread and fear?
As the day light fades into deep night shades,
Does He care enough to be near?
Oh yes, He cares, I know He cares,
His heart is touched with my grief;
When the days are weary,
The long nights dreary,
I know my Savior cares.”

Jesus sighs with us in our infirmities and then He sighs at the many temptations we face. Because the Lord was tempted forty days and forty nights by Satan during one season of spiritual testing (Luke 4:2) He knew the many temptations the man would be subject to after his speech was restored. James reminds us how unruly the tongue can be.

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison (Jas. 3:5-8).

In the fifth action Jesus spoke and said “Ephphatha.” For the non-Jewish community Mark translates this Aramaic word to mean “be opened.” The mouth of the man and the ears of the man were to be opened.

Spiritually that is what salvation does to a soul. It opens up the inner ears of the heart to hear the spiritual words of truth, grace, and glory. John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:” Salvation loosens the tongue to praise God, to sing the songs of Zion, to bear testimony to what God has done and to witness to a waiting world.

At the command of Christ, the body obeyed. The tongue of the man was released and he started to speak distinctly. His ears were opened completely. This happened as Christ commanded. What ever it was that prevented the tongue from functioning properly came loose. Peter, who witnessed all of this never, forgot. Years later he told John Mark who recorded it for the entire world to know.

In a sixth action, Jesus commanded those in general who witnessed the miracle to tell no one. In the presence of so many people the prohibition seems strange and a pause must be made to consider why the Lord did not seek publicity.

Part of the answer may be that the day of His crucifixion was fast approaching. But it was not to be hastened.

If helping people incited the religious leaders to new levels of jealousy, then publicity was not to be encouraged. Good works were not to cease but neither would the meek and mild Christ taunt His enemies by flaunting His power. As this was the mind set of Christ so it is to be the mind set of every Christian for the command comes, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: (Phil. 2:5).

It is within the human heart to provoke others to anger.

Children know what to say to outrage their parents or other children. At an early age the sinful soul learns how to articulate words that wound.

Parents know how to tease and torment their children, which is why the Bible prohibits provoking children. Ephesians 6:4, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

In society at large people know how to try and taunt the patience of others. While there are ten thousand topics to talk about, for some reason people enjoy returning to those themes that agitate and aggravate one another. There is no reason for this other than a perverse love for sin and the power to produce an effect in someone else.

There was another reason for the prohibition against unnecessary publicity and that was the emphasis upon the spiritual. While men are impressed with miracles, God is not. He is more concerned with matters that ultimately touch the soul. In a quiet way Christ was pressing the point that He did not come into the world to be the Thaumaturgist (Miracle Worker) but the Savior of the Soul.

Unfortunately, the people in the Decapolis did not obey the Lord in the matter of keeping silent. The more the lord charged them the greater was their intensity and frequency in the act of disobedience. The obstinacy and perversity of the sinful nature is thus revealed. Such has the nature of man always been. Mark Twain commented on the “swimming pools which were forbidden us and therefore much frequented.”

While the zeal and admiration is understandable in proclaiming what Christ had performed in the healing of the man, it is also inexcusable. Defiant and persistent disobedience to a specific and repeated order takes away all excuses. Jesus said in John 15:14, “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” And in John 8:31-32, speaking to those Jews which believed on him Christ said, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Though the people were disobedient to the plain command of Christ they were at least respectful in their astonishment saying “He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak” (Mark 7:37).

With these words the people acknowledged the Messiah was present in their midst, for of Him the prophet Isaiah had written, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert” (Isaiah 35:5,6) In context, not only does God see that all of His creative acts are good (cf. Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,25,31) but so does man. The people of the Decapolis said that Christ did all things well because they saw the touch of the Masters hand.

From the narrative consider….

the importance of faith in God and in His Son Jesus Christ. It was because the people believed in the ability of Christ to heal that they brought bodies for Him to heal (Mark 7:31).

the importance of intercessory prayer. James 5:16, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

the importance of seeing that the Lord does all things well. Bishop J. C. Ryle comments that “‘Our Lord hath done all things well’ In first bringing us out of darkness into marvelous light, in humbling us and teaching us our weakness, guilt, and folly, in stripping us of our idols, and choosing all our portions, in placing us where we are, and giving us what we have, how well everything has been done! How great the mercy that we have not had our own way!”

And it all because of the touch of the Master’s hand.