Summary 

God's attentive, lavish grace meets each person in their unique need. In Mark 7, Jesus encounters a Syrophoenician woman whose humble faith grasps what scribes and Pharisees miss: humanity is unworthy, yet God's table overflows with grace for all nations. Jesus then heals a deaf man privately, using sign language — fingers, spitting, touch — demonstrating intimate, particular care. Both encounters foreshadow Isaiah 35's messianic promise: deaf ears unstopped, mute tongues freed. True discipleship requires humility, persistence, and open ears. God pursues each person specifically, groaning toward the cross to bring universal healing and restoration.

Transcript

God, we think of these words in 1 Thessalonians. Admonish the idle, encourage the weak. Be patient, Lord. And some of us need admonishing, and some of us need patience, and some of us need encouragement. I pray, Lord, that this morning you would meet us where we are, that you'd encourage us, that you would admonish us, that you would challenge us, that.
That your kindness and your grace, your attentiveness would be evident in our lives. And then, Lord, having received such kindness and care, Lord, would we imitate you. Please, God, shape us by your good news. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.
So just around the time when Lily was being born, I attended a conference, actually, along with Jed, the previous pastor here, down outside of Atlanta, in Decatur. And among other things that were going on at this conference. It was a bunch of pastors. Was one of them this guy named Martin Bond was giving a talk, kind of a discussion that he was leading, gave a talk and then answered questions like, these things happen about parenting. And I remember thinking about it, of course, because partly I wasn't down there necessarily for that, but of course, in my mind with the idea of having a child, this was something I was eager to hear about.
And I had read books, and I continue to read some books on parenting. I like, you know, listen to lectures and stuff. But what Martin Bond said with me stuck, and here's what he was mostly talking about, is that parenting kind of shifts. Like, there's these different stages where parenting takes on certain sort of demands and sort of invites certain kinds of speech and actions and care for children, but that sort of shifts. What a child needs as a newborn is different than what they need as a teenager.
And I know, I know there's a lot of educators in here. And so most of you are like, yeah, no, duh, we know that because you are familiar with Bloom's taxonomy and the trivium and all of that. So you know that like a toddler, when they're toddling over to the stove, just needs to be told in some ways, hey, do not touch that. You will get burned. And a teenager sort of needs, in some ways, a dialogue over what should you wear when you are interviewing for your first job so that you will have the best chance of getting it.
Let's talk about that a little bit more together, that kind of thing. The first is part of Bloom's taxonomy's first stage, that knowledge stage, or the grammar phase of the trivium. It's just knowledge. Don't do that. This is what this Is.
But as they grow, there's sort of this exploring, not just the what's, but more of the whys. And all of this. Of course, when I first was sort of hearing this, just the stages and how much it all has to change and in some ways I was kind of going, yeah, this makes sense, was both really exciting with the prospect of having a child. And it's also very scary, but still very intimidating. There's this sort of, oh man, I get to explore, I have to care for somebody and be aware of their different dynamics and how they grow and change.
And I don't know if I can do that. So it's exciting and kind of scary because here's the thing, is that some of us are inclined towards one of the others of those, right? Some of us are inclined just towards the knowledge side of like, you know, the taxonomy. I'm just going to tell you what is true and if you only just listen and you know, then you'll be fine. And some of us are, you know, and that's just how you parent from like 1 through 30, 40, or some of you are still being parented by your parents like that, right?
And then others of you, even as like a 2 year old, you're like, well, what do you think? We're inclined towards something which both makes it exciting and also really kind of scary and hard because we have these own personal inclinations. So we hear Proverbs 22, 6 say, train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he's old, he will not departing it, depart from it. But knowing how to do that with, with wisdom and with care and with attentiveness is a whole different game, which is why it's exciting and scary and hard. And of course part of it is because they're all so unique.
Each person, each one of you is a unique person. And with your own personalities and own times where you kind of grow and change and events in your life that sort of shift to how you think and you act and all that.
Lily doesn't really need me to hold her hand as she crosses the sidewalk, even though I often want to.
In fact, sometimes when we do those sorts of things at the wrong time, they can actually harm sort of the dynamic and the relationship and the development, all that sort of stuff. Sometimes kids need sharp correction, right? Admonish the idol. That's what Paul says, right? And sometimes they just need a loving embrace.
And what I'm saying in all of this is this demands attentiveness and a curiosity Inquisitiveness and awareness.
And I think we see this attentiveness in Jesus in a way that makes us scratch our heads, but also something that's very lovely this morning in the passage that Melissa read for us. You'll remember maybe if you were here last week, that just last week we had this passage about defilement and purity and who's clean and all that kind of stuff. You remember it was about, like, hands and pots and dining couches and all that. Well, you might remember that Jesus spoke in one way to the scribes and the Pharisees. What did he tell them?
You actors, you hypocrites. Right. That's how it is. It's very harsh in a way to jar them, wake them up. And then when he was with the crowd in the next little section, they needed to hear.
There's nothing outside a person that by going into him, can defile him. But the things that come out of a person, that's what defile him and defiles him. And then when he's with his disciples, he says it actually sort of differently. In some ways, he's saying the same thing all throughout, you know, with the scribes of Pharisees quoting Isaiah. And then he kind of says it a little different to the crowd and then to his disciples.
He just says it plainly. It's from the heart that evil comes. And I think again, in this passage this morning, we see this kind of attentiveness of our Lord Jesus, his kindness, his gentleness. In a way, another way, we might question the gentleness, but his attentiveness towards what we need.
We see this love of God that we long to image, this kind of attentive love of God that we long to image as a church body, as we exist within a particular place that has certain kinds of ways of hearing, or as neighbors. Right, who are engaging with our neighbors. How do we engage with them? Well, in a way that they can actually hear and engage with us. Or how do you speak to your spouse so that you're not just speaking to them or past them, but with them.
All of that. So here, coming right off of this whole clean, unclean, defiled, undefiled conversation, Jesus goes to two areas that are full of the defiled folk, full of the unclean folk. He goes north and then he goes southeast. Just these areas that are dominated by the Gentiles and outside of the boundaries of Israel. And here in this section, we have two stories that I think make you scratch your head and you do that in sort of Two ways.
The first story, I think, makes you say this.
Did he actually say that? And then the second story makes you say this. Did he actually do that? Okay, So I just want to, like, address those questions sort of as my main points. Okay.
In a way, with talking about this attentiveness of God. So first, did Jesus really say that? Verse 24. And he. And from there he arose and went away to the ty.
The region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now, the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician, by birth. Let's stop there for a moment.
Part of what we're hearing is just how completely unclean this woman is.
Jesus, as I said, made his way outside of Israel. All of you study those maps in the back of your Bible, right? You won't remember where Tyre and Sidon is if you don't. Okay, here's the Mediterranean. Here's Israel.
Tyre and Sidon are right there, kind of right along the coast, just north. Okay. And Jesus has made his way out there. And why? Well, one of the things we've been hearing actually in chapter six and chapter seven is Jesus saying, let's go rest, get away.
And so he enters this house, he's receiving hospitality, maybe from a Gentile, very likely from where they're. Where they are. And it's like they just put their bags down. And it says, immediately this woman comes in. Immediately in comes this woman who's a Gentile, a Syrophoenician, who's been with her unclean daughter, who has an unclean daughter, which is to say that Mark is highlighting all the ways that she is unclean, that she's outside of the community, all the ways that it would be strange for this woman to come and to be this close to Jesus.
There's gender issues, there's racial issues, there's ethnic cultural issues. There's the whole clean unclean issue. All that is right there. The lady checks all of the boxes. She was on the wrong side of all of the barriers.
And I do think it's just interesting just to stop for a moment to think like all of us in some ways actually fit the unclean barriers. Just. I mean, we're dominated by Gentiles. We wouldn't sort of fit within this kind of world too. We would have been the people of Tyre and Sidon, likely excluded from fellowship With God and with God's people.
The woman would have known these dynamics.
She wasn't far outside of Jewish land. She was just outside of Jewish land. And she was just outside of Jewish land, in fact, enough that she would have been hearing what was happening right around Galilee and Nazareth, which was just on the northern side of Israel. And she actually had a sense that maybe this man, this was the son of God who could really heal her child. She knew these different dynamics.
What do we read next? It says, and she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. What she does is she comes and she prostrates herself. That's the word. She falls down.
Posture of humility and a posture of begging. And actually when it says she begged, it is this ongoing begging. She begs and she begs and she begs and she begs. He pleads with Jesus, just pleading with God. In fact, this, if you look at the Matthew version of this, there's actually a comment that says, so the disciples tried to get Jesus to send her away.
You know, hey Jesus, we are finally getting some rest here. And immediately this woman comes in. She just won't stop. Could you, could you please send her out?
But she's persistent. And why?
Because she's a mom parent. And you mothers and you parents know that when your child is in need, you will do anything to care for them. You don't mind getting on your knees, you don't mind begging. I mean, so many of you, I guarantee, as I have had times to be on my knees before the Lord and say, lord have compassion. Or do you see us in our need?
So that part makes sense to us, right? We get the idea of a mother whose child is in harm, who goes to whatever ends needed to find a cure. Maybe you wonder at the whole demon possessed part. Maybe like we are post enlightenment folk. I don't know about that.
But don't you wonder like, I mean, so much of the world believes in the supernatural and many people have said that actually one of the devil's greatest tricks is to get you to believe that he doesn't exist. But anyway, we might wonder at that, but we get the idea of this loving mother because so many of us have pleaded on our own children's behalf and in their pain. But then we have the part that I think makes very little sense to us and makes us go, did Jesus really say that? He gives the little parable and he said to her, let the children be fed first, for it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the Dogs.
I mean, are any of you being like, what did he say? That you're probably thinking, that is not how I would expect Jesus to interact with a woman who is pleading on her child's behalf.
Maybe if you brought a friend this morning, you're thinking, that is not the passage that I was hoping that they would interact with Jesus around.
I mean, isn't there part of you, there's part of me that really wishes that what it says after she is begging and she's on her knees, that Jesus got down with her, he held her hand, and he looked her right in the eye and said, I understand your daughter is in pain.
But he gives her this parable.
That's not. You know, he doesn't do that. Instead, he calls her a dog, Right? That's what happens. And actually, it was a practice.
It was a Jewish practice to call Gentiles dogs. And, you know, you may know this, all of you. Maybe you have your Greek Bible out and you're looking at it, and you're like, well, this is a diminutive form of a dog. And so it's a puppy. It's still a dog, right?
It is still a dog. It may be a little puppy dog. Still a dog. And dogs were unclean. You know, the ancient world didn't have our, like, obsession with canines, right, where they get to live.
And, you know, we give them sort of our own food all the time, and we just love them and we snuggle them and all that kind of stuff. They were most often wild animals. In fact, do you remember children, you probably know the story of David and Goliath better than the adults because it's one of the ones that children get taught a lot, which is awesome. But when Goliath comes and he sees David, what does he first say? Anyone remember says, am I a dog?
Am I a dog? Right. That was kind of the idea of how they thought of dogs. Dogs were unclean.
And that is actually exactly partly why Mark is putting this story right here. Dogs were unclean. Almost the epitome of what was unclean, right? After this whole dialogue with the Scribes and Pharisees about cleanliness.
Here's the thing. This woman comes to Jesus, she hears him, and she actually gets it.
I mean, isn't it kind of wild that the woman doesn't make a protest? How dare you? You can't talk to me that way. She actually has this sense of, you know what? Actually, I. I am unworthy.
She gets what the scribes and the Pharisees fail to get, she understands, she's heard Jesus and she has this real true sense that she actually is utterly in need and totally unworthy of Jesus grace.
So she says, let the children be fed first.
It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. In some ways it's like this, that she knew family life. She's there as a mother. She knew ancient family life. She knew that around the household table, the father would feed the children first and you know, the parents would eat and feed the children.
And then afterwards, if there was some leftover, some of the pets would, would receive some food.
And maybe she actually knew even she was again, like I said, just outside of the land of Israel. Maybe she knew the great story of Israel, of the father's commitment to his world, of his calling Abraham long ago and saying, I'm going to bless you, and through you all of the nations will be blessed. And maybe she knew actually that even as the story goes on in Israel's story, so often what Israel is actually doing is saying, this blessing is just for us. It's our blessing, we're going to keep it. But she maybe knew that actually the father's love was intended to expand beyond the initial family.
His table was so laden with overabundant grace that it was intended to spill to all peoples of the earth. And she says, can I have some of it now? I understand that you're here for the children of God Israel, but the story's for everybody. Can I have a taste now? Can you give me of the table?
Now Jesus is saying, you know, that he has come, that the Father sent him to feed the family, to feed Israel. And yet she understands the story. She understands it better than all of the other people that had just been. He'd just been talking to the scribes, the teachers of the law, the Pharisees, the ones who live the law, the whole crowds of northern Israel that gathered around to hear Jesus teaching. Jesus owned disciples who constantly don't get it.
She understood.
Consider this woman, consider how she doesn't protest. She understands actually the unworthiness of people to receive God's grace. She understands the story and she pleads on behalf of the one whose table is more than abundant to feed all.
I think we like this woman for her persistence. I think we like her for the love of her daughter.
But I think initially we're kind of not sure about her because she doesn't, you know, stand up for her rights about being talked to this way. But it's actually because of this that we see the goodness of God. She says, yes, I am unworthy. And it's because she sees herself as unworthy that Jesus actually says, you get it?
Yes, Lord. She says, yes, Lord, I understand. That's the first thing she says. But God's grace is big enough. His table is full of grace, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.
She gets it. She gets what I think so few of us get. She gets what so few understand in the Gospels. You know, here's what happens. Here's what we do, right?
We either don't want to come to Jesus in, you know, we're like, we don't know if we can come to him because our sin is so bad that we might as well just not go to him. We kind of. Which is sort of this inferiority complex, right? We're totally, totally unworthy that we might not even. We shouldn't even go to him.
Or we come with this superiority complex, which is to say, you can't tell me that I'm that bad. Don't talk to me me that way, you know, And Jesus is saying, no, come to me, but come to me in humility. And that's exactly what this woman does. It's exactly what this woman does. Now let me get back to the attentiveness of God.
Why do I think that God is so attentive here? And why do I think this is actually seemingly exactly what this woman needs?
This woman is the only example in the Gospels where somebody seems to understand the parable immediately. Isn't that kind of wild? Jesus is always taking, you know, his disciples aside who are like, what is that? What are you talking about? Grain falling into dirt and growing and bearing fruit.
Some of you are like, I understand that one right away. The disciples never get it. And the gospel writers seem to write in such a way and seem to say it again and again that we just assume nobody understands them right away. This woman does. Which is to say, on some level, there was an attentiveness to Jesus in the dynamic that he said.
I know that as I speak to her in this way, as harsh as it sounds, she's going to get it. Jesus spoke to her.
Paul says, admonish the idol, correct them.
And Jesus gives us this parable that to us makes us scratch our heads and go, I don't really like how he talks. And yet she gets it right on. Speaks to her the attentiveness of God. And as he speaks to her and as she understands it, we See this beauty of somebody humbly coming to God and begging for his lavish grace and receiving it.
Second, I think the next passage, it doesn't invite us to say, did he really say that? But instead, did he really do that? And again, I think as we consider what he really did, we actually see this attentive love of God.
So Jesus, he leaves Tyre and Sidon and he goes down to the area, the Decapolis. And you all been studying your maps, you know that he goes back down around the Sea of Galilee and around the Sea of Galilee to the southeast part of the Sea of Galilee. Remember that? He might remember. So it's actually a pretty big journey.
And he's been trying to get rest, and he tries to get rest up there. Doesn't get it. And then he goes to this other gentile area. Maybe that we don't have a good sense of this because of other stories. Maybe he'll get some there.
And of course, it's not what happens. Instead, it seems so a bunch of people come to him in the area of the Decapolis.
And what happens, I think, is this story that makes us kind of go, again, what is going on? Some people, it says they, a group of people bring to Jesus a deaf man and a man who has a speech impediment. And he. And he heals that man. But how he heals him, I think sounds to us a little bit hocus pocusy, right?
Like he's in some deep dark cavern uttering incantations.
Listen again. Verses 33 and 34. Jesus takes this man aside, taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears and after spitting, touched his tongue and looked up to heaven and sighed and said, haphaza. Doesn't that kind of make you go like, what is happening here?
Wet willies and spitting and tongue touching and ha faza, that is, be opened. Why didn't Mark just say. And he said, be open.
But consider this with me. Consider these movements with me. Jesus takes them away, right? There's this crowd. All these people brought him to Jesus.
He takes him away from the group of people. And why would he do that?
Jesus does other healings in big crowds. Think of the woman with the hemorrhage, right? And she touches the hem of Jesus garment. And it's there in the context of all these people that Jesus actually calls her out. Then he heals her.
But he heals in large crowds often. But he takes this man aside and it says specifically privately. Well, think of it. This man had spent largely his life probably as a spectacle. Can't hear maybe.
He's always doing this, you know, and people are always looking at him and going, oh, man. Like that guy. And he's got a speech impediment. If he can say things, he can't say them. Well, I mean, truthfully, he'd probably been laughed at a lot, right?
He'd been made a spectacle of. And Jesus says, you know, in this moment, in the moment of your healing, you do not need people looking at you. He's caring for him intimately.
But then what? Right? Jesus puts his fingers in the man's ears, right? Is this like my boys doing wet willies to each other or something? Right?
No. Why is he doing that? Why does he spit on the ground and touch the man's tongue?
Is he some sort of miracle worker? Right? Just doing the gestures of the miracle man.
That can't be. It's not like he needs to do that. We just heard that he healed this Syrophoenician woman's daughter of her unclean spirit. He didn't see her. She went home and found that her daughter was well.
It's not like he needs to do these things now. This is sign language. Think. What did we know about the man? He is deaf and he has a speech impediment.
And Jesus takes him over, right? And he says, ears, your tongue.
Let's pray to God together, because his kindness is for you in your particular need. Ears and your tongue be opened.
Jesus really did that because he was attentive to the need and the particularity of that man bringing God's grace to that very man.
Jesus really do that? Yes, he really did that. And it seems as though he's almost always really doing that. He's speaking in a way to that woman in her need, can see the wild grace of God, that that man in his need can see the lavish kindness of Jesus. It's attentive.
Jesus didn't need to do these things, but he did them for them. He did them for us.
There's a couple details in this passage that I think are worth noting. One is that it says that he sighs as he does this.
That word can mean moan or groan.
Touching the man he's seeing, his state, maybe his long life lived, not being able to hear and speak and all that that has meant for him, all of the pain that is associated with that. And he associates with him. His heart breaks for the pain of the world. He weeps with those who weep.
But I also think, of course, this groan is present because he actually knows that to heal us demands not just the prayer to the Father be opened, but Jesus knows that he is going to actually have to die to heal the world will mean his own death. It's almost this foreshadowing groan of what is to come.
His heart is so forced that he will go to the cross for us. He will groan upon the cross.
He's attentive to this man. He's attentive to this woman. His heart is weeping with them, groaning with them, and groaning with us and weeping with us.
But there is another detail here that is worth noting because it's actually mentioned twice, and that's when this man was deaf. You notice this at the end of our story, actually, it repeats this and it doesn't repeat, Sorry, it doesn't repeat specifically his speech impediment, but it does say that he's mute, right? But it says this word deaf twice. And so verse 37. And they.
That's all the people around were astonished beyond measure, saying, he has done all things well.
He meets that woman well, meets this man well. And then it says, he's done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute blind. And that word that we have repeated there, deaf, is only found in this passage in Mark and in one passage in the Greek Old Testament, what's known as the Septuagint, and that is in Isaiah 35 that we had read for us. And that passage talks about the coming Messiah and how when the Messiah came, when God comes, he would come with vengeance and with the recompense of God, but also when he comes, that the eyes of the blind would be open, the ears of the deaf would be unstopped.
The deaf, that's that word that we only find there in Mark 7, the New Testament, and that the. And that he would unstop the tongues of the mute, that they would shout for joy.
This passage is talking not just about this woman, right? That woman was just a foretaste. She was having, you know, the crumbs that would be given to the life of the world, the nations. This man, his healing is. Is just a foretaste of what God says he's going to do broadly.
And so my question this morning to you is, is, do you hear him?
You feel his touch?
Do you know, his beating heart?
I mean, this passage does say, this passage says a lot to us about, like, you know, parenting stuff. How can we be attentive to the children that we are supposed to raise and the knowledge and admonition of the Lord how do we care for our neighbors and our friends, like with. With their particular needs? We speak so that our spouses and us can actually be one flesh as we are intended to be. All that kind of stuff.
That's all true. That's all a right application of this passage. But I think the true application is in some ways thinking of how Jesus interacts with Mary and Martha. Isn't it wild that both of them say the same thing to Jesus? Jesus, if you had been here, and to one, he almost scolds her, and the other, he gently encourages her.
I want you to ask, can you hear Jesus? Do you need to hear him in some ways with the intensity that he speaks to that woman?
You need to hear him with the gentleness, the loving touch that he touches this man's ears and tongues. Praise with him. You hear him.
God has come for his people. That's part of what we hear in this passage, the fulfillment of Isaiah 35 right here. And part of the message of the Bible is, he has also come for you. You specifically, with your own history, with your own sort of ability to hear him sometimes and not other times. He's coming for you.
How do you need to hear him? Do you have ears to hear him? You have a heart that is open to him, Maybe. Do you have friends to say, hey, you need to go to Jesus. He will heal you when you kind of don't want to show up, right?
And you don't want to be there. He's come for you. He comes with a sigh, bending towards the cross because he has come for the healing of the world. I pray that we have ears to hear and hearts to receive. Let's pray.
Lord God, thank you for just the strangeness of your word. Thank you. That the Bible doesn't come to us a lot of times as we expect in Lord Jesus, that you don't either. That you say things that jar us and you do things that make us sort of look a little slant at you. And yet, Lord, I pray that in doing these things you would open our ears, Lord.
That you would unstop us, God. That we would be those who desire to run to you, prostrate, fall down, beg of you. And that we would be those who are humble, Lord, to receive whatever you give us, the words you give us, God. I pray that we would be those who are brought maybe by our friends when we are weary, maybe by our friends when we feel like we can't even hear you, and that you would take us aside and that you would speak to us Lord God, but would you come for us this morning? Lord, I pray that each person here this morning, please, God, would hear from you now and that their lives, that our lives, that my life would be changed.
God, that we would hear your sigh, not just for this man, but upon the cross for us.
Be a changed people, a renewed people. People who were once unclean, truly unclean and outside of the community of faith, and yet brought in because of the perfect blood of our spotless lamb.
God, do this in your attentive grace. Speak to us right now, please. Give us the open ears as you gave this man long ago. Give us the receptive heart as this woman received words from you. And do this for our good and your glory.
In Jesus name, amen.

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