This is a devotional with my thoughts added to verses from the Bible. I highly encourage you to dig into the word with your own thoughts. The Daily Devotion series is one way to do this. However, I know that sometimes we want to read other people’s ideas about Bible passages, so I am starting the Everyday series. I hope and pray that these posts will draw you nearer to Jesus.
DAY 1–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 7:31-37 Be Opened!
Then Jesus left the territory of Tyre and passed through Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the territory of the Decapolis. Some people brought him a deaf man who also had a speech impediment. They begged him to lay his hand on him. Jesus took him away from the crowd to be alone with him. Putting his fingers into the man’s ears, he touched the man’s tongue with saliva. Then he looked up to heaven, sighed, and told him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened!” The man’s hearing and speech were restored at once, and he began to talk normally. Jesus ordered the people not to tell anyone, but the more he kept ordering them, the more they kept spreading the news. Amazed beyond measure, they kept on saying, “He does everything well! He even makes deaf people hear and mute people talk!”
Jesus had previously been in the Gentile territory of Tyre. If He were going directly back to the Jewish territory of Galilee, He would not have gone north through Sidon since the Sea of Galilee is south of both Tyre and Sidon. He was taking the long way around to get home. From Sidon, He turned south toward the Sea of Galilee, but He and His disciples were on the east side of the sea in the Decapolis area. This is the area of modern Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan today. Why was Jesus taking such an extended trip through the Gentile areas? Was it because there were many Jews living in this area that Jesus needed to reach for His ministry to be complete? Was He training His disciples to be missionaries who would be traveling to non-Jewish areas? Was He taking a survey of the surrounding Gentiles? Were there some specific people He needed to reach? All of these possibilities could be true, but I tend to think that the primary reason was training His disciples. Everything else He had been doing during this time period seems to be about training them to take over after He left, so it makes sense that since He was going to be sending them out to be missionaries to the whole world that He would not neglect any aspect of their training.
More than one person cared enough about the deaf man to bring him to Jesus. If these friends had not loved the man enough to set him in Jesus’ path, he might never have been able to hear and speak. On our own, we cannot heal anyone physically, mentally, or spiritually. However, like the deaf man’s friends, we can bring them to Jesus. In fact, the greatest assistance that we can give anyone is to introduce them to Jesus through our words and actions. Jesus does not call us to be healers. He calls us to be witnesses who tell the world what we have seen and heard. Thus, we must first have a relationship with our Savior, and then we will have something to bear witness to.
Jesus healed in many different ways. With the Gentile woman’s daughter in the previous verses, He did not even come into contact with the demon-possessed girl to heal her. However, with the deaf and speech-impeded man, Jesus went as far as spitting and placing it on the man’s tongue! He also put His fingers in the man’s ears. Why was there so much physical contact in this case and not in the other? One possibility is that Jesus works with a person’s existing faith to heal. If this is so, maybe the Gentile woman had started out with great faith which increased as she gently argued with Jesus, so He could heal through the woman’s faith and connection to her daughter. With the deaf man, Jesus could not communicate through sound, so He formed a connection through touch. The man received touch on His tongue and ears, so He understood that Jesus was going to heal both of those areas. It was a kind of communication that allowed the man to believe in the healing.
Faith is the key that opens up many avenues to God. The Bible tells us that mountains move through a tiny amount of faith (Matthew 17:20). On the other hand, Jesus did not do many miracles in Nazareth because of the lack of faith there (Matthew 13:58). The encouraging detail in our present passage is that Jesus does not leave us alone to try to muster up enough faith for Him to act. He interacts with us in ways that build up our trust in Him. He has proven that He is worthy of our faith. His love for us permeates our entire existence. If you are struggling with faith, the key is not to try to gain it from your own strength of will. Instead, meditate on Jesus’ words and life. Look at Jesus walking down unfamiliar roads with His disciples. Watch Him spitting on His finger and touching a strange man’s tongue. Listen to the voice of Jesus calling out from the cross, “Father, forgive them.” Ask yourself why Jesus wanted you with Him forever. Jesus declared that if He were lifted up, He would draw us all to Him. Open your eyes and ears and see Him lifted up on the cross. Then you will have more than enough faith to deal with anything you encounter in your life.
DAY 2–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 8:1-10 A Second Feast
In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.” And his disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” And he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. And there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.
The crowd must have been prepared with food when they came; however, after three days they had used up their food. It was time to send them away, but Jesus did not want them to leave His presence in hunger forgetting their lessons and experiences because of the physical hardship of the trip home. Jesus was teaching His disciples to take care of the followers that they won for God. He was giving the example that they were not to just take care of the crowds’ spiritual needs, but they were also to care for their followers in all ways.
Oftentimes, it is difficult for a church to achieve the correct balance between taking care of physical and spiritual needs. Some churches go to the extreme of only helping physically without giving spiritual food. They will feed the hungry with spaghetti and garlic bread, but neglect to speak of Jesus’ death on the cross because of our sin. Other churches preach, preach, preach, yet they leave repentant sinners to die in poverty. By example, Jesus showed us that we are to care for both the spiritual and physical needs of the people we interact with.
When asked for a solution to feeding the crowd, the disciples once again expressed their doubts as to how to accomplish the task that Jesus had set before them. They should have known by that time that if Jesus said He wanted to feed the crowd, He could do it. Today, we are the same, so we should not judge the disciples too harshly. How often do we see the task that God has set before us as too overwhelming even though Jesus has led us through many difficulties in the past? When we are discouraged or anxious in these situations, our heartfelt prayer to God should be an affirmation of trust in Him, and an emphatic plea for His help so that we are able to trust Him, or as the father of the demon-possessed child in Mark 9 said, “I believe. Help my unbelief!”
Regardless of whether we are working as a church or reflecting on our own individual lives, we must remember that Jesus will provide for us whether it is through prior planning or serendipitous circumstances. He will always take care of you and me. Jesus has compassion on us as much as on the multitude. He feels for us as much as He feels for others. Sometimes, it is easier to believe that Jesus loves others than that Jesus loves ME. However, He does love each of us. We can always count on Jesus interacting in our lives with love and good intentions. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,” says Yahweh, “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future. You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You shall seek me, and find me, when you search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:11-13).
DAY 3–Remember to pray before you begin.
Mark 8:11-13 Jesus sighs
The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” And he left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side.
The disciples and Jesus were now on the side of the lake near Magdala. They had just come from the Gentile area across the lake after feeding the 4,000. Jesus had already performed a great many miracles including the miracle of creating enough food for 4,000 plus people using only seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. In addition, He had repeatedly demonstrated His wisdom and knowledge of the scriptures. However, the Pharisees still refused to accept His miracles and teachings. They demanded another sign from heaven. Maybe they were looking for a specific sign like when Elijah called fire down from heaven. Do we do the same thing today? God has given abundant evidence both large and small that He cares for us and is acting in our lives, yet we become frustrated when He seems to be silent. We call to Him to give us a sign so that we can know we are on the right path. However, all too often we are ignoring the signs that He has already given or the words of scripture that apply to the situation. We want God to answer us in the way that we want and ignore all the other ways that He has communicated with us already.
What does it sound like to sigh deeply in your spirit? The meaning is clear. God is looking at us and wondering what more He can do to reach us. The sigh is His sorrow over our hardheadedness that keeps us separated from Him and intertwined with death. Instead of repenting from our sins, too many humans choose to die rather than admit they are wrong. The sigh is God’s yearning to give His heart to us when we will not accept it. But what would that have sounded like when Jesus did it?
The irony is that that even though Jesus told the questioners that their generation would receive no sign, the reality is that they were given plenty of signs which they rejected. Jesus was telling them that He would not jump through hoops for them since it would accomplish nothing. The wonder is that God is willing to jump through hoops for us if it will bring us back to Him. He condescends to abase Himself for us all the time while we in our arrogance refuse to bend our stiff necks to even look at Him.
Humans are greedy, always taking from others and then expecting more. Selfishness transforms us into bottomless pits who are never filled. We grasp this and that as our own and jealously defend it while trampling on the real treasure that is in front of us. This is true in both the physical and emotional world. It is true of ideas and beliefs also. It is true of familiar lifestyles that we latch onto with all our might rather than letting go and allowing God to lead us to something new and better. Our priority should be to release our hold on our cherished ideas and familiar securities. Instead, we need to pray that the Spirit will teach us how to follow the Lamb wherever He goes.