Redeemer Lutheran Church

I. The Text
Let’s take a closer look at the context of our Gospel lesson. Jesus is in the region of the Decapolis: this is Gentile territory. He’s just come from the region of Tyre and Sidon; and while He was there, He healed the demon-possessed daughter of a faithful, Canaanite, woman. The locations are part of what make these miracle accounts important. Jesus is healing Gentiles. He’s not just the Savior to the Jews, but He has come to be a blessing and salvation to all nations.

People have heard about Jesus; and believing the Word that they have heard, they bring a man who is deaf and mute to Him. The loss of any sense is terrible, but this is a dreadful combination. The man is isolated. He cannot hear the environment around him, much less those who try to talk to him; he cannot speak, even if he is in dire need of assistance. He’s alive, but he’s cut off from those around him.

This is the man they bring to Jesus, and they beg Jesus to lay His hands on him. In His wisdom, Jesus takes the man aside privately. He puts His fingers in the man’s ears. He spits, and He touches the man’s tongue with His spit. Then, looking up to heaven, He says to the man, “Ephphatha:” “be opened.” Just like that, the man is healed.

There are a few big things we learn about Jesus from this unusual miracle.

First off, the way He does it teaches that the healing comes from His person. The miracle comes from Him. In other words, Jesus doesn’t produce a secret potion or bag of herbs. He doesn’t wave a magic wand. He heals the man with Himself—with His own fingers, His own saliva and His own voice.

Second, this miracle gives you a physical demonstration of Jesus’ righteousness and power. Physical disabilities and illnesses are part of sin’s curse, and you really don’t have to try hard to become disabled or sick. In fact, you spend a lot of your waking hours trying to avoid it. You make sure you stay in your lane while driving, and keep a sharp eye to make sure that everybody else does, too. You look both ways before you cross the street. You wash your hands. You put on sunscreen. You exercise, watch your diet and try to get enough rest. You do all sorts of things to try to stay healthy, because perfect health doesn’t naturally happen in a sinful world. Death does, because the wages of sin is death.

Under normal circumstances, you have to be careful to take care of your senses. It’s very, very good advice not to put anything in your ears. In fact, the only time people usually put things in their ears is to keep from hearing the outside world—to block out the noise with ear plugs, iPods or their own fingers. Putting stuff in your ears tends to hurt them and keep you from hearing—that’s the way things go in a sinful world. But what happens when Jesus puts His fingers in the man’s ears? The opposite happens. Jesus’ fingers don’t add to the man’s deafness; instead, they cause the man to hear. Why is this the case? Because those fingers aren’t normal , sinful, dying flesh like everybody else around. These fingers are the sinless flesh of the righteous Son of God. God, who created all things to be good, touches the man to give him healing, to open his ears. The Son of God does all things well.

Under normal circumstances, sickness trumps health. If you put a sick person and a healthy person in a room together, the one who is sick is not going to catch the other’s health. Sweethearts don’t kiss each other when one of them is sick, because the sick one isn’t going to contract health from the well one. The one who is healthy is going to get sick. It you have a sterile surgical room at the hospital and release a bunch of germs inside, the sterility doesn’t kill the germs—the germs destroy the sterile condition. That’s how it goes in a sinful, dying world. In such a world, then, it is good advice not to go around letting strangers put their saliva in your mouth. Human saliva is not known for its purity or cleanliness, but contains a host of germs and the like. Saliva has a lot of potential to make you quite ill.

But Jesus is not just another sinful human being. He’s the righteous Son of God. He puts His saliva on the man’s tongue—not a doctor-approved treatment in our day and age, and He heals him. It’s not just an empty symbol that at least doesn’t sicken the man. By doing this, Jesus doesn’t just not hurt him: the opposite happens. He causes him to speak. He does all things well.

This is what the Son of God does. He comes to reverse the curse brought by the first Adam and the fall into sin. Sin brings deafness, so Jesus takes it away. Sin brings darkness, so Jesus makes blind eyes see. Sin brings all sorts of disabilities and pains, so Jesus makes the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy.

This leads us to our third point about this miracle: it’s a fulfillment of prophecy, as you heard in our Old Testament lesson. When the long-promised Messiah came, He would confirm His calling by performing miracles like these: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy” (Isaiah 35:5-6). So as Jesus performed these miracles, He was establishing His credentials. He was proving Himself to be the long-awaited Savior. That proof is for you, too: you hear in Isaiah that the Savior makes the deaf hear and the mute sing for joy. You hear Jesus doing exactly that in the Gospel lesson.

So, in our Gospel lesson, Jesus fulfills some of the prophecies of Isaiah 35; however, those are not the only prophecies He fulfills. There are others, including Isaiah 53:5: “But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed.” Being the Messiah is not all about the happy days of healing: it is most of all about the cross.

Jesus isn’t staying in the region of the Decapolis, but He’s gradually making His way to a hill outside Jerusalem called Calvary. On His way, He’s bearing the sins of the world. He’s bearing the world’s infirmities, too: He has taken the man’s deafness and muteness away, and He has taken it on Himself. It is part of the heavy load that He carries as the Redeemer. On the cross, He’ll fulfill the prophecy and be wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. It’s by His suffering of scourge and cross that we are healed. That day will not be happy or triumphant. On that day, He will not look much like the Messiah. But it is part of God’s plan.

This is likely why Jesus tells the crowds to be quiet about this healing: they don’t have the full story yet. They know about the miracles, but not about the cross. Telling the half-story is likely to lead people astray. If they think that the Savior is all about—and only about— working miracles and healings, they’re going to look at Him on the cross and say, “That doesn’t fit—I guess He wasn’t the Savior after all.” But the cross is Jesus’ victory over sin and death: without the cross, none of the other miracles can happen. It is, in fact, on the cross that it can be said of Jesus most of all: “He has done all things well.”

II. Some Application
“O Lord, open Thou my lips; and my mouth shall declare Your praise.”
When I hear today’s Gospel lesson, I can’t but help think of the start to the services of Matins and Vespers, from Psalm 51:15: “O Lord, open Thou my lips; and my mouth shall declare Your praise.”

The miracle of our Gospel lesson is the literal demonstration of the psalm. The deaf-mute cannot hear or speak. He cannot hear the Word of God and he cannot speak praises of God. But Jesus opens the man’s lips.

Jesus speaks His Word—“Ephphatha”—and touches the man. He opens his ears to hear the Word. He opens the man’s mouth so that the man can speak plainly. You can bet that some of his first words are going to be words of praise to the One who does all things well.

You have the same hope of miraculous healing, because the same Jesus is your Savior. Do not forget the reasons for Jesus’ miracles: as we already mentioned, one reason was to establish His credentials, to fulfill prophecy and prove He was the Savior. But there is another reason: it was to give you a foretaste of what lies ahead. In other words, the Lord will heal you of all your diseases and infirmities—on the Last Day, if not before.

You and I are especially attracted to instant miracles, when and where we want them to happen, so a word of caution is appropriate. The Lord works according to His holy will and wisdom, and His thoughts are not our thoughts; nor are His ways our ways. When Isaiah declared, “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,” in our Old Testament lesson, the “Then” was still a long way away—centuries, in fact. But it did come to pass. The delay did not mean that God was unfaithful: He kept His promise.

Likewise, the man in our Gospel lesson was not healed the same day he became deaf and mute. For all we know, he had been born that way. He had a long wait, and difficult life, before Jesus healed Him. But Jesus did heal him.

The Lord heals in His time, according to His plan. This is important, because some have looked at the miracles of the New Testament and said, “As soon as people came to Jesus for healing, He healed them. Therefore, if you come to Jesus in prayer for healing, He will heal you right away; and if He doesn’t, you must not have enough faith.” This is simply false; it is a lie that slanders God and endangers faith. The Lord doesn’t promise to heal you when you want, but when He wills for your good. That may be in this life. It may be on the Last Day, when you are raised from the dead. But it will happen, for Jesus has died to make it so. He has borne all your sicknesses and infirmities to the cross to make it so.

He has also borne your sins to the cross, that you might have faith and life in Him. Healing and forgiveness are both brought about by the cross, and this is another reason to rejoice in our Gospel lesson. Even if you were born with fully functional ears and tongue, you were still born deaf and mute before God. You were born in sin. You were born unable to hear His Word and keep it. You were born unable to sing and speak His praise.

This is what David is getting at in Psalm 51 when he cries out, “O Lord, open Thou my lips; and my mouth shall declare Your praise.” David wasn’t mourning the loss of hearing and speech: he was grieving his sin. He’d committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed. He’d done great damage to his faith; and if he was to recover, it would have to be the Lord’s doing. The Lord would have to grant forgiveness—which He did. God used the mouth of Nathan the prophet to say, “The Lord has taken away your sin.” In other words to David’s ears: “You are forgiven.” And to David’s mouth, “Ephphatha: be opened – declare God’s praise!”

The Lord has done the same to you. In the waters of Holy Baptism, He cleaned out your ears with His Word. He gave you faith—ears to hear His Word. By opening your ears, He also opened your mouth: for by giving you faith, He gave you the joy of declaring His praise. This forgiveness—this healing from sin—is a far greater miracle than the one in our text: if you are forgiven, you have the promise of eternal healing. But if you are healthy in body but have no faith, only death and destruction await.

So the same Lord, who spoke to the deaf-mute and healed him, has also spoken His healing, life-giving Word to you. Furthermore, the same Lord, who put His fingers in that man’s ears and touched his tongue, gives you His same body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins. Salvation is yours because of Jesus’ person and work—because He consented to have His blood shed and His body nailed to the cross for you; and because He still works to deliver His Word, body and blood to you now.

The warning for you is simple. Don’t stick your fingers in your ears when He speaks. Don’t keep your mouth shut when it is given to you to pray and praise. The devil will always work hard to keep you from hearing Jesus’ Word. He’ll afflict you with all sorts of daydreams and distracting thoughts during the sermon or persuade you that this text doesn’t really apply. He will fill your day with all sorts of busy things just when you intend to read the Scriptures or when you bow your head to pray. The devil will fill your mind with all sorts of things to talk about to keep you from speaking God’s Word. The reason for the devil’s temptations is simple: if you don’t hear God’s Word, your ears will close again. If you neglect God’s Word, you will fail to declare His praise.

So repent. Repent of the neglect of God’s Word, or the times you plug your ears because you don’t want to hear that you need to turn from sin or wait for deliverance. Repent of failing to declare His praise, for the Lord uses your mouth to speak His life-giving Word to others. Repent, and rejoice: the Savior is still with you. He still speaks to open your ears. He still speaks so that you might repeat His promises. He still gives you His own body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins. Only He can keep your ears open and your tongue speaking plainly His Word. He does so even now as He speaks His “Ephphatha” to you and says, “I forgive you for all of your sins.” In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.