Sermon Tone Analysis

The thing that strikes me about this evening’s text is that there isn’t much in it that’s new.

In the earlier chapters of Mark, Jesus had already healed many different kinds of diseases and afflictions — leprosy, paralysis, physical deformities, hemorrhages and so on.

Therefore, the fact that he can heal a man who was both deaf and mute should be no surprise.

Mark had also shown that Jesus could heal in many different ways — sometimes he simply spoke the word and the illness departed, and other times he touched the sick.

So, the manner in which he healed the man in our text comes as no surprise either.

Mark had even recorded instances in which Jesus instructed the person whom he healed not to publicize the matter.

Sometimes they obeyed, and sometimes not.

So, as far as the basic story goes, it seems that there is very little to grab our attention.

We might even wonder why Mark recorded this incident at all.

But let’s not jump to any conclusions.

Although the individual details of this miracle resemble many of Jesus’ other miracles, the combination of circumstances that surround it are noteworthy and unique.

One thing that stands out about this incident, for example, is that Mark is the only gospel writer who included it in his record of Christ’s life.

Since each of the gospel writers wrote to present Christ in a particular light, we have to assume that this story somehow supports Mark’s purpose.

And since Jesus did many more miracles than those that have been preserved for us in the New Testa­ment, we must conclude that Mark chose this one and not the others because it made his point in a way that the others did not.

But the question remains, What is the point of this story?

What does the Lord want us to learn from it?

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The Nature of Jesus’ Ministry

Our text begins with Jesus returning to Galilee from the suburbs of Tyre and Sidon, a Gentile territory where he had gone to conceal himself.

Verse 24 says that he /entered into an house, and would have no man know it/.

He wanted privacy for two reasons.

On the one hand, the crowds were thronging him, hoping that he would be their “bread and fish” king.

And on the other hand, the Pharisees had come up to Jerusalem in search of a reason to accuse Jesus, which they quickly found when they observed some of his disciples eating with unwashed hands.

His work had become very taxing.

Jesus needed a break.

We all need to get away once in a while.

There are times when it seems like we’re just spinning our tires in the mud.

When this happens, a few days in the mountains reading John Grisham novels helps us relax so that we can refocus on our work.

But while our Lord’s example may justify the concept of “vacation,” that’s not the main point here.

Rather, Mark included this detail to highlight the extent of the suffering and loneliness that Jesus endured for us.

Isaiah had prophesied many years earlier that the Messiah would be /despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief/ (Isa.

53:3).

Mark wrote his gospel to assure us that Jesus Christ is the mighty, miracle-working servant of God, whose ministry was filled with strenuous activity.

Altogether, Mark recorded no less than seventeen distinct miracles of Jesus.

Although Jesus had gone to Tyre and Sidon to take a break, Mark reported in the incident preceding our text that it didn’t actually work out that way.

A Syro-phoenecian woman had come to him, begging him to cast a demon out of her daughter.

Jesus did so, then used the occasion to demonstrate that God’s gracious covenant now reaches beyond the geographical boundaries of the Jews.

Thus, even in his so-called respite, our Lord faithfully carried out the work that his Father had given him to do.

Jesus then traveled through an area known as Decapolis (or the region of ten cities) on his way to the Sea of Galilee.

If you were to look at a map, you would find that Tyre and Sidon were situated about 20 miles northwest of the Sea of Galilee, while Decapolis lay to the southeast.

The Sea of Galilee was between these two places.

This means that Jesus purposely went out of his way to go through Decapolis.

This gets even more puzzling when we realize that Decapolis was predominately a Gentile territory in the first century.

So, why did Jesus take this out-of-the-way route?

There were at least two reasons for this.

The obvious reason was simply to avoid the Galilean crowds that had thronged him there earlier.

By returning to the Sea of Galilee by the back way, he was able to avoid them temporarily.

It’s also possible that Jesus wanted to minister to the people of Decapolis.

You might recall that some of his earliest followers had come from this region.

Matthew 4:25 says, /And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan/.

Jesus had also been in this area in the recent past.

According to Mark 5, after he healed the Gadarene demoniac, there was a renewed interest in his ministry among the people from Decapolis.

In this case, Jesus instructed the demoniac after he had been healed to tell all his friends what he had done for him.

This man went out /and began to publish in Decapolis/ (Gadara being one of the cities of the Decapolis) /how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel/ (Mark 5:20).

The healing of the demoniac was another illustration of the lesson that Jesus taught the Syro-phoenecian woman, viz., that the blessings of the gospel were meant for the Gentiles as well as the Jews, since God had promised Abraham that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through his seed.

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Deaf and Mute

When Jesus finally arrived back at Galilee, it didn’t take too long before the people found him again.

This time they brought /one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech/.

We really don’t know much about this deaf man.

Mark didn’t even tell us where he came from.

Verse 32 says that /they/ brought him to Jesus, but who are /they/?

The last geographical region mentioned in the previous verse was Decapolis.

It’s possible that they might have come from there.

Perhaps this man’s friends had heard Jesus preach while he was passing through their land and decided to bring him to him.

Although there are some grammatical points in the text that support this, it’s hard to imagine why these men wouldn’t have taken their friend to see Jesus while he was still in their area.

In any case, since the miracle took place in near the sea, it seems far more likely that the man and his friends were from Galilee.

Nor did Mark tell us the exact nature of the deaf man’s affliction.

Our text says that he was deaf and had a speech impediment.

He couldn’t hear at all and he had difficulty speaking plainly.

The fact that he could speak even less difficulty probably indicates that he had not been born deaf, in which case he would not have been able to say anything.

Perhaps he had lost his hearing when he was relatively young, i.e., before he learned to speak well.

But that’s all that Mark says.

The only thing we know for certain is that this man was deaf and more or less mute when he met the Lord.

Some commentators account for this man’s condition by claiming that he was demon-possessed.

Mark 9:17 tells about a man whose son had a deaf and dumb spirit.

The assumption is that the man in our text was afflicted with the same kind of demon.

But the only reason for asserting this is the statement in verse 35 that Jesus loosed the man’s tongue when he healed him.

If his tongue was bound, they say, it must have been bound by a demon.

However, our text doesn’t say this.

In fact, there is no mention of demons in this passage at all.

This, plus the fact that not all hearing and speech difficulties can be attributed to demonic activity, makes it almost certain that this man’s problem was nothing more than a physical defect of some sort.

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Jesus Healed the Man

When this man’s friends brought him to Jesus, they begged him to put his hand on him.

In the Bible, the laying on of hands can be either a good thing or a bad thing.

It was bad when Haman wanted to lay hands on Mordecai for refusing to honor him (Esth.

3:6), but it was good when Jesus laid his hands on the little children to bless them (Matt.

19:15).

The men who brought their deaf friend to Jesus wanted his blessing.

They believed that he could heal their friend simply by touching him.

The truth, of course, is that Jesus didn’t have to do even that much to help the man.

Had he merely willed his healing, his hearing and speech would have returned immediately.

Or Jesus could have just spoken the command, as he had done with the centurion’s servant, and his affliction would have fled away at once.

But they asked Jesus to touch their friend.

Perhaps they asked for this because they had seen Jesus heal many others by touching them.

He had restored Jairus’ daughter to life simply by touching her hands and commanding her to arise (Mark 5:35–43).

On another occasion, he healed a woman who had had a certain infirmity for eighteen years merely by touching her (Luke 13:13).

In fact, Luke 4:40 seems to indicate that this was his general practice.

It says, /Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them/.

This shows that the men who brought their friend to Jesus paid attention to what was going on.

At the very least, they paid attention to the Biblical practice of laying hands on someone and what it meant.

But their request might also indicate that they had been particularly careful to observe what Jesus in particular was doing.

We might say that they were tuned in to God’s ways.

As much as we can, we should all strive to be tuned in to God’s ways as he has declared them in Scripture.