Faith Comes from Hearing

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

Jesus is going around the region of Tyre. So He's in the Decapolis. This is an area of the Gentiles. It's northwest of the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Tiberias, the Lake of Gennesaret; it's got a couple different names. And He's going amongst this area of Gentiles, so not Jewish people, but Gentiles. And we see this amazing thing in Mark's Gospel. We see Gentiles believing, believing to the point that they bring Him a man. And we've seen this pattern a couple of times, and you'll see this pattern a couple more times in the Gospels, where believers who know who Jesus is, who know He's casting out demons, that He's healing the sick, that He's raising the dead, will bring Him people, right? Famously, the paralytic, where they cut a hole in the roof and lower him down. Well, here they bring Jesus a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. In other words, this man is cursed by God because of some sort of sin. Maybe it was a sin he committed early in his life. Maybe it was a sin he committed in the womb. Or maybe it was a sin his parents committed. We don't know. All we know is that he is deaf and has a speech impediment, and is therefore cursed by God, because bad things happened to you if you were a really bad sinner. And when these bad things happened to you — when you had a physical defect, if you will, whether an illness, or deafness, or a speech impediment — you weren't allowed into the congregation of the people.

So this man is most likely a Gentile, and the people are considering him cursed by God. And yet they bring this man to God Himself, and they beg Him to lay hands on him, which is scandalous, because Jesus is at least recognized as a rabbi, as a teacher. And if you are a rabbi, that means you're clean, and the last thing you're going to do is something that makes you ritually unclean, like touch a Gentile, touch somebody under the curse of God. And yet they are literally begging Jesus to lay hands on this man. And Jesus takes him away to a quiet place, He basically grabs his hand and takes him off somewhere, maybe a private room, or around the corner, whatever it is.

And He sticks His fingers in the man's ears, He gives him a dry willy, which is just kind of…I don't know about you guys, I don't like that. Even when my kids were babies, and they would grab on my beard that would be okay, but when their fingers went in my ear, it was like, "Oh, no, no, no—pull my beard hair out all you want, just don't stick your fingers in my ears, please." But Jesus does that. He sticks His fingers in, and then He spits on His fingers and touches the man's tongue. I mean, you've just got all sorts of levels of "gross" going on here, like, can we get more gross? This isn't a pattern for healing, by the way. We don't stick fingers in people's ears. We don't spit on our fingers and touch their tongues. But He does this, and He sighs, and He says, "Ephphatha", that is, "Be opened." Be opened. And the man can hear, and he can speak plainly. In other words, whatever curse he was under is gone. So this Gentile, unclean man comes to Jesus. Jesus touches him, and instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the man becomes clean. The man becomes one under God's mercy.

And then Jesus does something strange, He does this a lot in Mark's Gospel. He says, "Don't tell people about this."

But what do the people do?

They tell everyone. You know what? We're really good at this—we all do this, we don't listen to God. We don't. But in this case, I'm going to tell you something—it's okay, because they have witnessed God's grace and mercy. And when you witness God's grace and mercy, you can't help but tell other people about it. The grace and mercy that saved you, that made you a beloved child of God, your baptism you tell people about your faith. You tell people about Jesus, because it has changed you to your core. You are given a hope. Faith, hope, and love—these three things remain.

And you are given a hope. And it's not a hope like, "I hope the Cowboys finally win the Super Bowl, it's been since the mid-'90s.” Or, that billion-dollar jackpot a couple weeks ago. Unless you were the person who bought the ticket in Illinois, you didn't win it. It's not a hope like that. It's a sure and certain hope. It's a guarantee. It's a pledge given to you in your baptism, the deposit. The Holy Spirit resides in you, and you, by faith, can cling to Jesus. And Jesus has come to you, and He has touched your ears and said, "Be opened, so that you hear the Gospel." He has touched your tongue and said, "Be opened, so that you can proclaim God's word, both in its law and its Gospel."

You know right from wrong. You know hope. You know love, love of the Father, who sent His Son to die for you and take away the sin of the world. Love of being washed by that Lamb who has saved you to everlasting life. This is your hope. And your ears are going to be filled with a whole bunch of sinful things. And I've got to be honest if, you're anything like me, your tongue is going to say a whole lot of sinful things as well. I've had some pretty blue-collar jobs in my life. I have some choice phrases when I stub a toe. Or, what's really fun, when I accidentally stab myself. Anybody out there doing yard work or mechanic work, you know that feeling very well. And then kids come along, and your tongue gets bitten quite a bit.

We say wrong things, we hear wrong things, and yet the word of God still dwells in us richly. And God still uses us sinners to hear His word and proclaim His grace and His mercy out into the world, to proclaim His forgiveness, so that all might have the same hope and joy that we have.

And that joy isn't just "I'm happy all the time." Joy is that assurance, even in the midst of the darkest of nights, that though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear nothing. Even though we sit at the casket of our beloved, we have the hope of the resurrection and the joy of life everlasting. We know that this world is on a ticking clock, and there is an expiration date, and that the Lord will return and make things greater, and we will have life everlasting with God in the new creation, the creation where all your ears hear is the glory of God, and all your tongue speaks is to the glory of God, because Jesus has placed His hands upon you again in your baptism, through the preaching of the word and the Holy Spirit coming into your hearts. He has changed you.

And we can't keep that bottled up. We can't keep that contained. Think about what makes you happy, do you tell nobody about it? How long did you wait to call friends and family at the birth of a child or grandchild? Was it years, months, days, or hours and minutes? When your team won the Super Bowl did you celebrate a week later, or when it happened? And now, in this day and age of social media, when your team wins, do you wait to post your joy and your happiness, or do you tell everybody immediately? If those temporal things make us happy, give us joy, how much greater is the joy of everlasting life in Christ's name? How much greater is the forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus Christ?

When I say it changes you, I mean it changes you. It changes how you speak. It changes how you think. It changes how you act. And people notice. People notice. I have lost count of the number of people who knew I'm a Christian before I ever mentioned that I'm a pastor. And it has nothing to do with the clothes I wear. They just say, "I knew, I knew there was something. I knew there was something." And I can tell you this: you have that same effect on the people around you. You parent differently. You work differently. You manage differently. You retire differently.

You give your money, your hard-earned money that you have worked for and given your blood, sweat, and tears for some of you for 40-plus years, some of you are still working, and what happens? You recognize there's a mission that God has, and it comes through this church, and this church has to pay the bills. We want the word of God proclaimed here, and we want to do the work of God here, and that requires giving. Think about that, do you gladly write a check to the IRS every year? No.

I've never had somebody come to me and say, "Pastor, I hate giving to church." Now, they might come to me and say, "Pastor, our finances have changed, we can't give as much." And I say, "Well, guess what—I understand, and thank you for what you gave before."

But I've never had anybody tell me that they begrudgingly give to the church, because eternity is tied to this place. The message goes out from here through your mouths. May it always continue to do so.

In Christ's name, Amen.