God Bends Over Backwards

# 480 - Today's Living Word comes from: Mr 7:32 “Then they brought to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on him. 33 And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched his tongue.”

A deaf man with a speech impediment is brought to Jesus for healing. Jesus then does some things that seem strange to us. He takes this man aside privately for some one on one ministry. This was important because He wanted this deaf man to understand fully what was going to take place and how it was going to be done.

Much is made about the methodology of Jesus here, but I like what the Lutheran commentator Lenski has to say about it. He maintains that all Jesus was doing here with the fingers in the ears and the spitting and the touching of the tongue was communicating with the man in a way that he would understand what was going on.

In touching his ears Jesus was letting the man know that He knew of his hearing problem and in spitting He drew attention to the function of the mouth and then touched the mans tongue indicating that He knew of that problem as well. This was nothing but sign language. It was only meant to connect the man's need directly to Jesus, not to connect some healing ritual and formula to be used for the healing of the deaf.

There is a lesson for us here and it's simple. God bends over backwards in His attempt to connect our need to Jesus. He speaks to us through nature. He speaks to us through His Word. He spoke to us through the prophets, and He spoke to us through Jesus. On rare occasions He even spoke directly to the people. “This is My Son in whom I am well pleased.” (Mt 3:17)

God wants to get through to you. He wants to get through to me. He wants to get through to those people who have not yet come to repentance. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. (Rom 10:17) Even if that hearing is via sign language.

I'm Duane Matz and that's Today's Living Word.