Jesus Heals Deaf Man and Feeds the 4,000

Matthew 15:29-39, Mark 7:31-8:10

Welcome to Youth Bible Study! Don’t forget to come next Saturday evening to come to
the 1st Christmas party of the year at our house… here are some fliers about it. Next
Sunday will be small group Sunday, but we will be still hanging out and celebrating the
coming of Christmas next Saturday…

Tonight we’re going to be looking at Mark 7 and just a little bit at Matthew 15, so put your
finger in both of those passages… If you’ll remember Jesus has recently shifted in His
ministry to seeking privacy with His disciples, and yet even as he sought privacy with
His disciples, this Gentile woman came to Him and begged Him for mercy on her
demon-possessed daughter.

Even as Jesus sought to get away with His disciples, and even as his purpose to a
Gentile region wasn’t primarily as a missionary journey, He had mercy on this Gentile
woman even though the obvious result of such a miracle would be that He would lose
the privacy that He was seeking to gain… and it is this context that we’re going to be
looking at Mark 7. We’re going to start in Mark 7:31 and read to the end of the chapter,
then read Matthew 15:29-31, and then return to read the first part of Mark 8. Read Mark
7:31-37, Matthew 15:29-31, and Mark 8:1-10.

So notice where Jesus is right now. (Have a map!) Jesus was up in the region of Tyre
and Sidon, which He originally had gone to in order to seek the privacy of a house, and
had instead ended up having mercy on the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter. And
now, the passage we’re looking at tonight, Jesus is already leaving the area! The
reason, probably, is because Jesus has lost the privacy that He was seeking and is
probably trying to find privacy again by going to the Gentile region of the Decapolis.
Remember that Jesus has been to the Decapolis at least once before when He went to
the region of Gadara and healed the demoniac. Decapolis meant “10 cities” and was a
Rome away from Rome, a very Gentile area…. The people sent Jesus away then, and
perhaps Jesus expects to be shunned in a similar manner now.

1. Jesus is patient in His compassion to the broken

But somehow, it is not described exactly how, Jesus is recognized, and a man is
brought to Him who is not only deaf, but also has a speech impediment, and the people
who bring this man beg Jesus to heal Him. And Jesus, out of compassion for the man,
had mercy on the man and healed Him, even though He knew the result would be
contrary to His desire for privacy with the disciples. Notice in vs. 33 it says that “Jesus
takes the man aside from the crowd privately.”
And Jesus heals this man in a very unique way, not as if it were magic and that there
was a specific sequence of things that Jesus needed to do in order to heal the man…
because Jesus could heal the man anyway He wanted! But it seems that Jesus heals
the man in the way that He does because the man is deaf… He puts his fingers into the
ears of the man and puts his saliva on the man’s tongue as if to say… the reason why
you are being healed is because of Me! It is my body that brings you healing… And
then Jesus looks up to heaven and sighs, which was a very visible picture of prayer that
a deaf man could understand, but ultimately, Jesus simply says the Aramaic word
“Ephphatha” which means “be completely opened!”

The man didn’t hear what Jesus said because he was deaf, but his dysfunctional ears
and tongue, Jesus’ very creation that had been twisted and deformed by a sinful world,
heard the command of their Creator and were healed. And not only were the man’s
ears opened, but his tongue was released, and he was completely healed.

And now look at vs. 36, Jesus plainly tells “them”, being those who had brought the deaf
man to Him in the first place… to tell no one of this miracle. And yet the more He did so,
the more they proclaimed what had happened to the man and Jesus’ intention for
privacy flies out the window...

But Jesus is patient in His compassion to the broken! Even as Jesus intended for
people not to know who He is or where He was in this Gentile region, this miracle is
probably the spark that starts a wildfire of people who swarm to Jesus seeking His
compassion and mercy… remember, the last time Jesus was in the Decapolis people
begged Him to go away… now they are surrounding Him by the thousands… and this is
what is happening in Matthew 15:29-31… a distinctly Gentile group who wonder at the
glory of the God of Israel… and they say of Jesus, “He has done all things well, He even
makes the deaf hear and the mute speak…”

And even though Jesus had been rejected by people in this area before, and even
though His intention in the Decapolis was not a missionary journey but to seek privacy,
Jesus remains patient and has compassion on these Gentiles, who although they don’t
deserve the mercy of God, are getting a taste of His glory for the first time here.

2. Jesus is patient in His teaching of the disciples

We will be looking at the next passage in Mark 8 because it demonstrates not only the
patience of Jesus in His compassion to the broken Gentiles who are all around Him, but
it shows the patience of Jesus through His teaching of the disciples.

Here Jesus is in the middle of this huge revival and group of people who are being
healed by Jesus and presumably hearing His teaching, and this goes on for several
days, so that on the 3rd day, Jesus calls His disciples to Himself and says: I have
 compassion towards these thousands of people, and some of them have really come a
long way and they haven’t eaten anything for three days… and if I send them home now,
they will faint with hunger!

If that isn’t a leading statement… I don’t know what is… what should we do guys, what
should we do? Does this sound familiar at all guys? Have we ever run into anything like
this before? What should we do?

And the disciples strike out like they have never struck out before: “How can we
feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” AHHHHH!!! How did you
guys miss this one… I am the bread of life… don’t you remember… I fed 5,000 people a
few months ago with only 5 loaves and 2 fishes, don’t you think I could do it again if I
wanted?

Jesus is patient with the crowds in His compassion towards them even as He seeks the
opportunity for more private training of His disciples, but then His disciples strike out on
one of the most obvious questions He could have asked… and He is patient with them
too.

And so Jesus feeds the 4,000 men, as well as all the women and children who are
assembled, with 7 loaves and a few small fish, and replicates one of His most amazing
miracles once again, out of compassion upon the people and patiently as a teaching
opportunity for His disciples. Although the numbers are different, this is in many ways
the same miracle that Jesus performs only probably a few months earlier. Something
kind of interesting, although it seems like there are less leftovers that from when Jesus
feeds the 5,000, there are actually probably far more… the word for basket in this
passage means “large hampers” while the word for basket in the feeding of the 5,000
means “wicker lunch baskets.” To give you an idea of the difference, the same work for
basket in this passage is also used in Acts 9:25, when people are trying to kill Paul, so
his disciples lowered him over the city wall in a basket… it was the kind of basket that
could hold a man!

3. Jesus is patient towards you

This is not in our passage tonight, but I believe that it is the obvious and necessary
application of it. Jesus was patient towards the broken Gentile people who swarmed to
Him and begged Him for mercy, and He was patient towards his dense disciples who
didn’t even get that He could feed the 4,000 people just as He had before… and Jesus
is alive in heaven right now being patient with you, and interceding for you.

You can turn here if you want, but let me read this to you: 2 Peter 3:8-13. The reason
why you are alive and not in hell is because Jesus is patient with you! Jesus is patient
with you, not wishing that you would perish, but that you would repent… but that
patience will not last forever, one day the terrible day of judgment is coming, and there
will be no more patience… only destruction of the heavens and the earth and every
person who is not in God’s family. So, vs. 11… if Jesus came to this earth to show us
what God is like, and He is patient towards who just in the same way as He is patient to
the broken people around Him, and the dense disciples who didn’t seem to get
anything… in what way should you live? Peter says: live lives of holiness and godliness.
Live your life wholly for God, taking Jesus seriously, not wasting your life, but living it
entirely for His glory… which you can do by God’s grace because of His patience and
compassion towards you.