He Has Done All Things Well
St. Mark 7:31-37
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Mark 7:37 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.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Deafness and speech impediments often go together. In fact, the compound word “deaf-mute” was coined because these two impediments are so often found in the same people, people like the man in today’s Gospel. From a strictly medical perspective, there is no reason that these two bodily malfunctions should go together. The physical ailment which makes a person deaf usually does not physically affect his mouth or the muscles that form words; neither does it usually affect the nerves or areas of the brain that control his mouth. But that is from a strictly medical point of view.
If you think about it, the reason why deafness and speech impediments go together should be obvious. A person who cannot accurately hear all the sounds that others make when they talk must rely on what he or she sees, namely only the lip movements, in order to have at least some idea how to talk. I can only imagine that during all the mask madness of the past couple of years many hearing-impaired folks had a harder time than usual for lack of seeing lips move. But lips are only part of the process.
Of course, these kinds of speech impediments can be treated using various kinds of speech therapy. But apart from these treatments most deaf persons are not able to learn how to talk “normally” on their own. The ears must function properly in order for the mouth to function best – not because they are physically related, but because they are two parts of communication. Those who cannot hear others speak will themselves have difficulty speaking.
The point is simply this: we must first hear before we can speak. And it is only when we hear rightly that we can speak rightly. This is true not only of ordinary speech, but it is especially true of God’s speaking to us and our speaking and confessing back to Him.
The deaf-mute in our text is a classic example of this phenomenon at work. He is deaf, but not fully mute; he can make sounds. The Greek word means “to speak with difficulty.” But this man cannot speak properly because he cannot hear others speak, and so he is unable to learn from them. His tongue is “bound” as if his powers of speech were tied up with ropes and cannot get free. It is as if his ability to speak were being held captive by the same bonds that shut his ears off from the outside world. A person who cannot hear is imprisoned in his own mind, and what comes out of his mouth does so only in a distorted, halting, and difficult fashion. It was in this bondage that the man existed.
All of us started out spiritually the same way that this man started out physically. All of us can hear, either with or without hearing aids; but spiritually, in and of our sinful nature, we are completely deaf. We were conceived and born incapable of hearing God’s call for us to come to Him and receive His gifts of everlasting life and salvation. We have been bound by the sin that is within us, the sin which we inherited from Adam and Eve. This sin binds and prevents us from rightly hearing God.
In fact, our sin situation is worse than that of the man in our text, for we add to the problem. Our Old Adam does not want to hear God. The Old Adam does not want to rely on anything outside of itself for eternal salvation. It is full of pride, it is arrogant, it wants to be its own god. It tries to earn eternal life through inventing good works and accomplishments that it can point to and say, “See, I don’t need God because I am good enough to earn my way. In fact, I can be just like God.”
And that, as you will recall, was the same temptation which Satan used on Adam and Eve: “You will be like God.” A person who is so preoccupied with good works that he cannot rightly hear the Gospel is, in effect, putting his spiritual hands over his spiritual ears and yelling really loud like a spoiled child; his pride does not want to admit that eternal life is a free gift, and that he can do nothing either to buy it or to earn it.
We are all that way by nature. How often have you helped someone or come up with a good idea for an activity or program or otherwise done something good and helpful, only to find yourself prideful and in need of being taken down a notch or two? No one can escape this kind of pride – the pride that causes us to focus on our own works instead of God’s works.
And even the idea that you “need to give glory to God for your good works” can become a trap for us. People can become proud of themselves because of their own goodness in giving glory to God: “Look at me! Look at how many things I am doing for God! Look how humble I am! Look how much glory I am giving to God!” It becomes a vicious circle from which we cannot break ourselves free. Any attempt on our part to break free from the bonds of our pride and self-centeredness will only make the situation worse.
A sinner cannot come to know or believe in God by his own free will any more than a deaf man can will himself to hear. And just as Jesus used His fingers and saliva to open a deaf man’s ears and loose his tongue, so He uses earthly means of the preached Word and Sacraments to open up dead hearts and loose tongues to confess sins and faith. Only God can break into our spiritual deafness. Only God can break into the prison of our own minds. Only God can break into our sinful nature – and He does so by His proclaimed Word, the word of Christ’s work for us.
For it was God in Christ who came to rescue us from ourselves and our sins. Jesus came to this earth to take upon Himself your human nature and to bear the full-bore punishment for all your sins. This He did when He was arrested and then crucified. There on the cross He suffered hellishly for your sins and died for them, thereby freeing you from having to face God’s eternal wrath and displeasure. This is the Gospel word which, when spoken into hearing ears, the Holy Spirit uses to create and sustain faith.
In our text, Jesus employed unique measures to help the man who couldn’t hear or speak rightly. First, the people brought the man to Jesus, petitioning that He should lay His hands on him. Then Jesus took the man aside to Himself; the man and Jesus are now alone, removed from the excitement and distraction of the crowd. You can almost see the man watching Jesus in anticipation that He will do something for him.
Then, in a way, Jesus used sign language; He put His fingers into the man’s ears, the very seat of his ailment. He also spit and then touched the man’s tongue. Then, looking up to heaven, Jesus sighed and said, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” Unusual steps indeed, as the Lord Jesus performed this particular miracle.
Did you notice something interesting about what Jesus did in today’s Gospel? It’s not the fingers in the ears; it’s not the spittle; it’s not the sighing or the looking up to heaven. Jesus spoke the word of healing: “Be opened.” He spoke to the deaf man while he was still deaf! The man could not possibly hear the word that Jesus spoke because, up to the moment it was spoken, the man was still deaf! Yes, Jesus made use of some of the other senses – He touched the man with His hands and with His saliva – but finally the whole action of healing was centered in that one spoken word, “Be opened.” It was the Word of Jesus that penetrated the ears of the deaf-mute. He heard its almighty sound.
Think about it… In the context of Holy Scripture this is not all that strange. When God said, “Let there be light,” there was no light before that; in fact, there was nothing before that. The power for the light to shine was not in the light but in the word of God’s command. The same thing is true of the other “Let there be’s” of the Creation account.
Likewise with the deaf man. The power to “Be opened” was not in the deaf man, but in the Word which Jesus spoke, a word by which He, the Creator of heaven and earth, restored the man’s hearing to the way it was supposed to be.
In his 1533 sermon on this text, Martin Luther said, “God hereby shows us that if we are to be loosed from the devil’s bonds and possess ready tongues and good ears, this can happen only through the external Word and preaching, through external means. We must, first of all, hear the Word and not neglect our Baptism or the Sacrament of the Altar; and the Holy Spirit will then be present to free the ears and tongue.”
Further, said Luther, “Without the Word, God does not reveal Himself in your heart. To see and to know Him can happen only through the external Word and Sacraments. The Holy Spirit works in no other way. This is what God taught at the time He spoke from heaven, ‘This is My beloved Son; listen to Him’.”
This also teaches us that we must always be on our guard against modern-day fanatical spirits who despise the external Word and Sacraments, those who wait until God speaks to them in their heart, those who claim a “new word from the Lord.” But Jesus says, “No. Here is My finger, the external Word, which must sound forth into the ears.” If people will not hear the Word of God – even through sign-language – then they will not and cannot be saved.
You, dear fellow redeemed, are healed of your spiritual deafness in the same way as was the man Jesus healed. The Word which was spoken to you in Holy Baptism was spoken to you when you were spiritually deaf and unable to hear and respond to such a word. Your heavenly Father sent His only-begotten Son Jesus into human flesh to bear all your sins in His own body on the tree of the cross. Jesus paid for all your sins, even the ones you have yet to commit. He took the hellish punishment that your sins deserved because you could not.
Then Christ rose from the dead, defeating death and the grave forever for you and in your place. And by your Baptism you are connected not only with Christ’s death to sin, but also His resurrection to life again. On the cross Jesus procured forgiveness of sins for all people of all time, but God then delivers that forgiveness to you only through His preached Gospel and the Sacraments of Holy Baptism (which is “the Word of God in and with the water”,) Holy Absolution – the Word of forgiveness spoken by your pastor “as from God Himself,” and Holy Supper which is the Word of God as well as the Body and blood of Christ in, with, and under the bread and the wine for forgiveness, life, and salvation.
And that squares well with what happened not only in Creation but also in today’s text; it was the Word and command of God which carried the power to fulfill that word. It was not anything within the creature to whom that Word was spoken. The ability to reason, the ability to think, and the ability to feel emotion are not what makes these things work. It is simply and profoundly and ONLY the Word of God.
Deafness and speech impediments go together. The same thing is true spiritually. We must be able to hear God’s Word rightly before we can speak it rightly. Before we can praise Him rightly we must first hear Him rightly. Before we can confess our sins, He must tell us that we are sinners. Before we can confess our faith, He must grant us that faith by the Gospel.
All worship, all good works, all charity – everything it means to live out our callings and vocations in life as Christians in this world – everything must flow first from hearing Him rightly and receiving what He has to give us. Restored by His Word of forgiveness and nourished by His Word of Absolution and by His body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar, we are able to speak what we have heard.
God bless you as you do exactly that, to His glory and for the good of your neighbor.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
