FBCWest 660 | Jesus Does All Things Well
Recorded On: 05/25/2025
Bulletin
SCRIPTURE READING –
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate
Praise and Worship
“Battle Belongs”
“God So Loved”
“Egypt”
Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“Jesus Does All Things Well”
PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection
“What an Awesome God”
Acknowledgements and Announcements
Sermon Notes
Mark 7:31 Jesus travels through Tyre, Sidon and the Decapolis
Mark 7:32 They bring to Jesus a deaf man who also has difficulty speaking
Mark 7:33 & 34 Jesus takes him away from the multitude. Jesus then puts His fingers in the man’s ears and puts His saliva on the man’s tongue and said “Be opened”
Mark 7:35 The man hears and is able to speak plainly
Mark 7:36 Jesus orders them not to tell anyone, but the more He orders them, the more they continue to proclaim
Mark 7:37 They say that He has done all things well and makes even the deaf to hear ant the mute to speak
Scritpures
Transcript of Service
Unfortunately, a lot of people, I don't know the statistics, but it seems like a lot of people are just content with plenty good enough. Plenty good enough at their work, plenty good enough in their relationships, just plenty good enough.
When Jesus was asked to do something, the response of the people after he did it was more than plenty good enough. I encourage you to see what the reaction was
(Music)
with a man and a woman in the garden.
One who knows when your heart is troubled and how to fix it, and can.
He is an awesome God.
So we've come to worship him, to adore him and to learn more about him. So if you have your Bibles and you should, turn to the Gospel of Mark, chapter seven, starting with verse 31, or 30, I guess, 31.
And it says this, "And again, he went out from the region of Tyre and came through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee within the region of the Decropolis." Now Jesus is continuing his ministry in the more Gentile areas, and it seems in the region of Decopolis more whereas a larger Greek influence area, not necessarily all the people there are Greek, but they are influenced, for instance, the Sadducees were very much influenced by Greek culture. And so there's this, and so Jesus is still continuing to be outside of Israel proper, because again, he's attempting to teach his disciples and get some time with them, but thus far it has not worked out as well.
And they being a crowd, "Brought to him one who was deaf and spoke with difficulty, and they implored him to lay his hands on him."
So the first thing is that most, a lot of commentators will talk about, well, the guy was deaf and because he was deaf, therefore as a result had difficulty speaking.
I disagree with that assessment for a couple of reasons. One, we used to have a deaf ministry here, and there were a number of people in our deaf ministry who were born deaf, but because of reading lips and speech therapy, they could speak and you could understand it. Now some of the tone mentions and some of the pitches were a little different because they couldn't hear what they were saying, but they could speak.
Most gonna see it a little bit that Jesus completes the healing in both situations. So I don't think the deafness is entirely a result of his having difficulty in speech. I think it's two different maladies, but they bring this man to Jesus, expecting him to lay his hands because that's what they're expecting because they think, well, that's how Jesus heals.
But if you take a look how Jesus had healed, he had healed in a number of different ways.
He spoke to the people present, or he even healed people who weren't even in the same vicinity.
Jesus didn't necessarily have to touch you to heal, but that's kind of what they were expecting. Now I don't mean to be critical, but I want you to just think about it. All too often in our prayer life, we tend to set the boundaries of how God should intervene.
So I'm gonna give you two examples. One, it's a joke, but if you saw all the flooding in the Southeast this year, it could not be a joke. And the second one is an actual situation.
And so this man was in a valley and the floods came and the water was rising and rising and rising, and he got up on the roof and he goes, "God saved me." It was in a few moments after that, a jet ski comes by, the guy goes hop on, he goes, "No, no, God's gonna save me."
So the floodwaters keep going up and up, and then a motorboat comes by. That goes, "Get in the boat." He goes, "No, no, God's gonna save me."
And finally, when the water's almost reached the peak of the house, a helicopter comes in, says, "Climb on the ladder." He goes, "No, God's gonna save me." And guess what? The man drowns. When he's in heaven, he complains to God saying, "Well, I believed in you that you could save me." And God goes, "I sent you a jet ski, a motorboat, and a helicopter." But you see, he was expecting how God would do the answer to prayer in his expected way.
A realized situation.
A tornado hit through a rural countryside.
And as the tornado was coming, the son heard it and ran down the hall, tackled his mother into the bathtub. At the very instant, the tornado hit the house. And they were being lifted up out of the tub,
and the gentleman, the son goes,
"Jesus, have mercy on us."
His prayer was five words.
Now let's face it, when we're in some critical times, you know, we've got a long time to pray.
Five words.
That's why, well, I don't necessarily want you to decide to buy the app. I like the statement of, "You should be prayed up."
So when situations like that happen, you don't need a lengthy prayer. It's just whatever. But notice he goes, "Jesus, have mercy on us."
Immediately after that prayer, they landed back on the ground safely. He had some cuts and bruises. And his father was some 30 feet away from the house that had been still degraded. They were safe.
Because Jesus had mercy on them, but he gave God the opportunity to do mercy in a number of different ways.
God's mercy could have said, "I'm having mercy. I'm bringing you home."
I'm gonna give you mercy because I'm gonna put you in a hospital where you're gonna be able to witness somebody and that'll be good.
But he allowed God to answer the prayer requests the way God saw fit. So my encouragement for when we pray is not to set parameters on God how he answers.
Because God is smarter than us.
He sees in the future further than us.
So let him answer our prayer requests in the way that he sees fit.
So what happens is Jesus took him aside being the deaf man from the crowd by himself.
Now, I think the reason Jesus did this is because of man's death.
You got a crowd and all kinds of commotion. So he's gonna be distracted and not sure what's going on. So Jesus is gonna deal with him one on one.
Which is what Jesus does to you and me. He deals with us one on one.
And so he took the man by himself and put his fingers into his ears.
I think that's kind of an odd way of healing.
Except if you read between Isaiah 29 and Isaiah 35, you're gonna see a lot of ways that God
prophesies that his Messiah will cause the mute to speak. Those who have difficulty speaking and can't be understood to speak intelligently and to the deaf, their ears be unclawed. But I think it's funny because usually
most of you are too young, but I'm old enough to know that there used to be this little statue of three monkeys.
It was the speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil.
But it said Jesus puts his fingers in his ears not to stop the word, but to allow the word to enter.
So he puts his fingers into his ears. And after spitting, he touched his tongue with a saliva.
The crowd had said, put your hands on him. Jesus now puts it in his ear wealth and takes Jesus' saliva and puts it on his tongue so that the man will know who is healing him,
the Son of God. It's not the words, it's not the language, it's Jesus.
And looking up to heaven with a deep sigh,
he said to him, bethathah, that is be open.
Mark tells us this because that's an Aramaic word and he's writing in Greek and most readers may not understand the Aramaic word, so he translated it for them and he says be open.
And his ears were opened and the impediment of his tongue was removed, he began speaking plainly.
Now again, I want you to see how God heals.
God doesn't heal in a series of 10 events.
Doesn't say, okay, come, I'm gonna do this and then come back next Thursday and we'll do something else and the next Friday we'll do something else and maybe you ought to bring an offering.
Jesus heals the man's needs immediately and permanently. He doesn't need time, just as he didn't need time to create the universe, he doesn't need time to affect these miracles and so he allows the man to now hear and the sad thing is the Sadducees and the Pharisees could hear but they couldn't understand because they refused to take the son of God's message.
This man now is able to hear the word of God himself and what does the Romans say? How do we come to faith? By hearing the word of God and so he's allowed to do that and now he's allowed to communicate properly so that if he has questions of the Torah and other things that he can ask those questions and communicate and be a part of his community.
He gave them orders not to tell anyone
but the more he ordered them, the more widely they continue to proclaim it. I always find this and this is not the first time it happens, it seems that every time Jesus tells people not to do something, they do it but then when he tells us to do something, we don't. Well, what do you mean? We're to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, in the Aromo-Tos part of the world. Well, I don't have all the equipment to do that. I haven't gone to four spiritual laws class, whatever. We're always having an excuse not to do what Jesus told to do and yet when Jesus tells them don't talk about this, they continue all the more to talk about it and let's face it, so would you and I because it's not every day a man who is deaf and here,
not every day will a man's speech is impenant to speak plainly because these are the types of things that the Messiah does.
And so they're saying, now again, Jesus is going to the more Gentile region because he's trying to train his disciples and have a little more freedom and if he were to do these things in Judea and in Jerusalem, they would wanna just like when he fed the 5,000, wanna make him king.
He doesn't want that by the Gentiles either. So he's telling them, let me alone so that I might minister that I might do but they continue to proclaim it.
And they were utterly astonished saying, now they were utterly astonished by what he did but I want you to notice what they said, saying he has done all things well.
He makes even the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.
He does all things well.
Which is such a contrast unfortunately to most of us
who do plenty good enough.
We do plenty good enough at our work. We do plenty good enough in our relationships. We even do plenty good enough in the things that we love to do and offer excuses. Well, you know, I'm not, again, I'm not saying you need to be perfect but what I'm saying is
you should be working on getting better at what God has called you to do.
So that you do it well, not plenty good enough.
And God does all things well. And let me recount a few things that God does all things well. When he created the universe, he stayed. It was, it was good.
And then on the final day of creation, it was very good. When Jesus was baptized, the Lord said, behold my son in whom I am well pleased. Not just he did a plenty good job. I am well pleased.
The people acknowledge in Jesus' ministry that he did this thing well.
I want you to think about what he's done in your life.
If you're a believer in Jesus, you've been forgiven.
That's pretty impressive just in and of itself. But he doesn't just say forgiven.
He justifies us. We are innocent.
There is no guilt in us. Yes, we are sinners, but because of the sacrifice of Christ, we are justified. We are innocent.
We have become righteous.
We have come from being sinners and enemies of God to children of God.
We're going to be taken from flesh that gets sick
and hurts and dies to a body that would be resurrected and be like his that will never die.
Never hunger, never thirst. He will change us. He does all things well.
What an awesome God that we have, that he does these things. So I want to kind of follow up with last,
with kind of what I talked about in the beginning. In Ephesians chapter three verse 20 and 21, this is this. 20 and 21, this is this. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,
according to the power that works within us.
That's why I said, don't limit God on what you ask. Say, God, what is it that you want? What is it that will glorify you? What is it that will give glory to you and accomplish my needs? Whatever that may be, Lord, you do it.
You do it in such a way that I haven't even thought about.
But all too often we say, well, God, you should do it this way and that way and the other way. And quite frankly, if we were that bright, we wouldn't need God's help to begin with
because it was our decisions that mess us up.
So whatever we might ask, God can do more. Whatever we might think, God can do more. And not only that he can do that, notice that it's all according to the power that works within us, not at some future day now.
To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And ever, I agree, amen.
Why do we have church?
So that we can come to praise him, yes.
That we might come to learn more about him, yes.
But that families might come together
to strengthen each other. So that when there's difficulty in a family's life, other families can assist and support them and encourage them because this faith is not just about you and me.
It is about future generations.
That's why I think one of the things we Christians could adopt and you can do it according to the way you kind of imagine. But the awesome thing about Passover's Seder and with our Jewish friends is that when they celebrate the Seder, they don't celebrate it that it happened several thousand years ago.
It's as if it happened today and they teach their children what it means to do these things. And we should in our households have such faith that we acknowledge that it's not, well, grandfathers like this verse or whatever. No, no, what is this family like? What is this family doing? What is the sons and daughters of this family doing?
Are we encouraging them and teaching them so that when they go out into the world and find love,
they find love with other fellow believers.
I used to tell my kids,
it's really hard to find a new car on a used car lot.
So be careful where you look for a spouse.
But those are the types of things that family needs to do to understand it's just not about us.
That is why it is my desire that if Jesus doesn't come again for another 500 years, and obviously I won't be here, that this church will still be here and being awesome.
Because it's not about you, it's not about me. It's about Him declaring His glory forever and ever and ever. And all God's people said.