And he cannot hear the story of God’s way with the world, nor respond with songs of joy and gladness, humbled and lifted by the revelation of divine love.
We were made to know and praise the living God. Such praise is truly good; it is both pleasant and fitting (Ps. 147:1). And it changes us, as it catches us up into the very life of God. It witnesses to and deepens the sense of spiritual ‘taste’, the awakened delight in the Lord. We hear his Word, we open our mouths in communion with Jesus, the lover of our souls. This is life as God intended it to be.
But sin mutes us, each one of us. Where we were made for the praise and worship of the living God, sin instead turns the tongue into a raging fire that recklessly throws off sparks into the dry tinder of others' lives and then warms itself in the flames of destruction. You don't have to look far on social and other media to see the wreckage. Sin mutes us and it stops-up our ears, makes us tone deaf to the music of the winsome words of our Maker, unable to hear or heed his call to come to him from the far country we’ve chosen.
The man is brought to Jesus and he is healed in the most touching way. Taken aside from the crowd (he isn’t a trophy), in simple sign language he is shown what the Lord is doing for him. At Jesus’ word, his ears are opened, his tongue was loosed “and he began to speak plainly”. It’s such a transformation - and one that has the largest frame of reference.
For this is not an isolated miracle, solely for the man’s benefit. There is here a direct line back to a gloriously radiant passage in Isaiah that speaks of return from the exile of sin. In chapter 35, Isaiah portrays the wilderness rejoicing and blossoming; the glory and splendour of God will be seen there as he comes to rescue his people, bringing them back along a highway of holiness (holy because it is his way, tracing his path). And what will be a sign and a seal of that liberating reality? “The mute tongue [will] shout for joy.”
The term Isaiah uses, via its Greek counterpart, is the same one used in Mark 7, its only occurrence in the whole New Testament. This is not a miracle with merely local significance. This is a powerful, deliberate and stunning pointer to Jesus as the Messiah who looses not simply the tongue but the sin-captive soul into the joyous praise of God. In Jesus we begin to learn to speak anew, to speak plainly; speaking truth in love, speaking with the clarity of a cleansed heart.
He is our Saviour - the one whose own tongue clung to the roof of his mouth in the dryness of raging thirst. He is the one who, for our sake, suffered such slander, such desperate attacks upon himself. He looses our tongues and opens our ears to hear and respond to the overtures of grace, that we might at last speak plainly - of God and to him, and in relationships of attentive truthfulness.
Like the crowd in Mark 7, we have every reason to be “overwhelmed with amazement” and to declare that “he does everything well”.
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Lord, I was blind! I could not see
For this is not an isolated miracle, solely for the man’s benefit. There is here a direct line back to a gloriously radiant passage in Isaiah that speaks of return from the exile of sin. In chapter 35, Isaiah portrays the wilderness rejoicing and blossoming; the glory and splendour of God will be seen there as he comes to rescue his people, bringing them back along a highway of holiness (holy because it is his way, tracing his path). And what will be a sign and a seal of that liberating reality? “The mute tongue [will] shout for joy.”
The term Isaiah uses, via its Greek counterpart, is the same one used in Mark 7, its only occurrence in the whole New Testament. This is not a miracle with merely local significance. This is a powerful, deliberate and stunning pointer to Jesus as the Messiah who looses not simply the tongue but the sin-captive soul into the joyous praise of God. In Jesus we begin to learn to speak anew, to speak plainly; speaking truth in love, speaking with the clarity of a cleansed heart.
He is our Saviour - the one whose own tongue clung to the roof of his mouth in the dryness of raging thirst. He is the one who, for our sake, suffered such slander, such desperate attacks upon himself. He looses our tongues and opens our ears to hear and respond to the overtures of grace, that we might at last speak plainly - of God and to him, and in relationships of attentive truthfulness.
Like the crowd in Mark 7, we have every reason to be “overwhelmed with amazement” and to declare that “he does everything well”.
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Lord, I was blind! I could not see
In Thy marred visage any grace;
But now the beauty of Thy face
In radiant vision dawns on me.
Lord, I was deaf! I could not hear
The thrilling music of Thy voice;
But now I hear Thee and rejoice,
And all Thine uttered words are dear.
Lord, I was dumb! I could not speak
The grace and glory of Thy Name;
But now, as touched with living flame,
My lips Thine eager praises wake.
Lord, I was dead! I could not stir
My lifeless soul to come to Thee;
But now, since Thou hast quickened me,
I rise from sin's dark sepulchre.
Lord, Thou hast made the blind to see,
The deaf to hear, the dumb to speak,
The dead to live; and lo, I break
The chains of my captivity!
(William Tidd Matson, 1833-99)
