Odd Methods of God (Part C)

I don't think anyone, again, asked him about his methods. What's up with the spitting, Lord? And when we come to chapter 8 and he spits on the guy's eyes, they're just going to be quiet and write about it. And, you know, Peter doesn't say, well, here's what it meant.

He just leaves it there for us. I close with this verse from Hebrews 11, talking about the faith. Faith is a substance of things hopeful, the evidence of things not seen. And then he goes on and says, by it, the elders obtained a good testimony. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Mark.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will continue his study called Odd Methods of God in Mark Chapter 7. Israel was the recipient of visions and revelations to share with the world. From the onset, God said to Abraham, I'm going to bless the world through you. The whole world is going to be blessed through you. In other words, God's intention was to reach everyone he could.

Long suffering, willing none should perish. Isaiah 49, Isaiah brings this back up. He says, indeed, he says, speaking about Messiah, it is too small a thing that you should be my servant, that is, Messiah, to rise, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore and preserve ones of Israel. I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth. This is being fulfilled in one of many places in the ministry of Christ, but it's being fulfilled right here because Isaiah is saying that when Messiah comes, it is not enough that he ministers to Israel and to the Jewish people. He is here for all who will come. That's what the prophecy is about. Jesus began his resurrected ministry, you could say, in Jerusalem, a place of the empty tomb. Opportunity for the skeptics. They walk down to the empty tomb.

If he is there, go get him. I mean, it's ridiculous to suggest that a platoon of Roman soldiers was overcome by the apostles. Have you seen those guys? They can't fish. Every time we see them fishing, they catch nothing.

Have you? I mean, they just. So we're supposed to believe they just took out this Roman platoon.

I don't think so. So he said to begin in Jerusalem, Luke 24, verse 47, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem because they had the oracles, the scriptures, the prophecies, they were the link, the tie-in to the Gentiles being reached. This was organized and it was not to be disorganized. They were to start in Jerusalem because the Jews come first in that sense. Romans chapter 1, Paul said, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. Then he says to the Jew first and also the Gentile. Not that there's a lesser brand of salvation because they don't get first as a people, but because there is order.

There is a system. It comes through the scriptures. Somebody had to hold these scriptures and they were the ones.

Verse 28, And she answered and said to him, Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs. Her faith gave birth to brilliance. This is what he was after. This is what he was pulling out of her. She knew he would not refuse her.

She knew he was capable of taking a miserable life and restoring it. And again, if she understood this, what was the excuse of the rabbis? She addressed him as commander of the universe when she called him Lord. We'll take it from Matthew chapter 15. And behold, a woman of Cain and came from that region and cried out to him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David.

My daughter is severely demon-possessed. And then she came and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help me. You see the desperation in Matthew's account? She came and worshiped him. There was a lot of faith flowing from this woman.

She said, Yes, Lord, even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from the master's table. There is enough of you and your power and your blessing and your love and your sovereignty to spread without anyone suffering. Jesus said that one human being has enough self-love to love everyone else and not lose any of their own self-love. You should love your neighbor as you love yourself. Problem is, when someone has too much self-love and no other love, that kind of esteemed self becomes very problematic. Well, the dogs were allowed to have what the children did not eat because there was enough, and that is the idea.

There was enough of his mercy to go around, even outside of Israel. And at this time in history, when we read these stories in the Bible, when we come to Christ in a similar situation, we say, Lord, help my daughter. She's severely demon-possessed. He said, No, she's just lazy. Oh, whatever, she's lazy.

Even if she is, we don't see him always act so quickly. He drags his feet, and mothers have gone to their graves not getting their prayers answered, but they've also gone to the throne of heaven, trusting him, believing in him, because that's what it's about. And when we get there, it will all come together.

I have a list of questions when I get to heaven that I'm not going to ask, because it is going to all be satisfied. And we know that by faith, and that faith comes from enough exposure to things he's revealed and made solid to us. And this again is the crime that lays upon those who reject and thumb their nose at him. Verse 29, Then he said to her, For this saying, Go your way, the demon has gone out of your daughter. In Scripture, the desperate parents come to him in the New Testament.

They're in Mark, chapter 5, and Luke 7, and Luke 9, and John 4, and here in Mark 7. And he does not ignore them. The Gentiles also came.

He did not ignore them either. Jesus honored her Gentile faith in him in front of Jewish witnesses, because it wasn't all about her. It was not all about her and her daughter, though they were very important, as important, but it was also to the bystanders. These odd methods, they had to see this.

Not only did he draw a confession from her, he was eroding Jewish exclusivism that was in them so that they could then be used to reach Gentiles too. And we are the fruit of such exhibitions of truth from our Lord. God's methods may appear odd, but they are sound.

They are spiritually invincible. And she did not have to become a Jew to benefit from the care of the Jewish Messiah. That is one of the great lessons further developing the theme that God's kingdom reaches all that will submit to it. This is the story of Nebuchadnezzar. It's the story of Job.

It's the story of Jethro. There are others that heard the truth and surrendered to it without becoming Jewish. He had already given a glimpse to his apostles of the church to come without Judaism. Matthew 7, verse 15, there is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him. That flew in the face of Jewish dietary law, and he just laid it out there and left it to be developed later on through a series of miracles and teachings from himself and men like the Apostle Paul. So ingrained was Judaism, clouding their understanding of reaching lost souls, that when Peter was, when God began to deal with Peter to send him to Gentiles, he gave him a vision three times. That's what it took, and it still didn't register. And in that vision he said, what God has called cleanse you must not call common.

Three times he had to repeat that. And again, Peter struggled to understand. I think even in America we have Christians who, they have a sense of family and what is good and who Jesus is, but they really don't have a burden for lost souls. They have a burden that maybe goes as far as the kitchen table, and that's about it. But they're really not into reaching lost souls. They're not into reaching, unless it just comes to them. And this is what Christ was faced with his apostles.

They had no burden for Gentiles. The Gentiles would never have been reached had Jesus not started with things like this. Do you think that Paul ever forgot this lesson? Do you think it never came up again with Peter? Well, Peter's telling the story to Mark decades later. To find out what God wants and then to go try to do it should consume our lives without making us what would be called fanatics, disconnected from reality.

We're supposed to be more connected with reality than anyone else, especially spiritual reality. Verse 30, and when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out and her daughter lying on the bed. She had no record of her questioning him. Off she went. How beneficial to this mother and the daughter to not only be freed from the demon, but to also have Christ preached and ministered to her the way he did.

She's going to tell this story to her daughter. I went and I sought him. I called him the son of David. It just didn't work and I kept asking him. I kept asking him, Lord, Lord.

Then he told me that I'm not going to give what goes to the children of the little puppies. And I then responded, and those two are going to talk about that a long time, not only educating the mother and the witnesses, but the subsequent readers of this story such as ourselves. And as it will be with the next miracle, he's going to where we come to when we get to verse 31 in just one moment, another odd miracle. I don't think any of the disciples, when he said this to her, wanted to interfere and say, what is going on? What's up with that, the puppies and dogs? Why didn't you just heal the demon?

They had to just stand there with these goofy looks on their faces that we get when we can't, when we're powerless. And verse 31 now, again departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon. He came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee. So now he comes again to the east side of Galilee where the Gentiles were now a dominant people.

Nothing else said about Tyre and Sidon as far as his works. And so he leaves one non-Jewish region to come into another non-Jewish region. No protest from the disciples. In fact, this is the same part of the world that he delivered the maniac, the demonic maniac, demoniac you could say, there and the pigs and that whole story. And let's just briefly review this because Jesus says something very interesting to this man. The man asked, can I go with you? And Jesus said, no.

Go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you and how he has had compassion on you. And he departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him and all were amazed. Did you catch that? Verse 31, he's in the region of Decapolis. Matthew, Mark chapter 5, telling the story that he proclaimed in Decapolis. Well, last time he was there, the people chased him away. How dare you kill out pigs to save a man? And they asked him to go and he left. But he didn't leave without a seed. He told this man, go proclaim it.

So now he comes back and everybody's waiting for him. What lessons are built into that for us? What is there for us to read about and understand that we can plant seeds for him to come along and do great things with what we were doing, what we were proclaiming? Verse 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.

Why? Because they had the demoniac, well no longer a demoniac, he's delivered. They had him proclaiming all these things about Christ. The people believed it. He comes and they're on it.

Hey, here's someone, we need you to help this poor man. And so he did his work well in preaching Christ. To see such things and to remain stiff-necked is to forfeit salvation. Makes perfect sense.

It's one of the most reasonable laws in the universe. This is the first of two miracles that Mark only records. We get the other one in chapter 8 where Jesus deals with a blind man in a similar way to dealing with this deaf-mute. Verse 33 now, and he took him aside from the multitude, put his fingers in his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Could you imagine standing there watching this?

What is that? I mean there are other times, he's walked on water. Sure, this is just a walk in the park. Why do you have to do all the trauma? Another method of God and caring for those in need, that's what it is. It's an odd method. His methods are not cookie-cut. Because of the invisible, invisible forces and conditions at work, we don't know what's always going on, but we submit to it. And when we submit, we begin to get it. Whether or not we get it, he's going to do what he does. Did he spit in a display of contempt towards what sin has done to man?

Some commentators believe, and even some translations believe, he actually spit on his hand and touched a man's tongue. Biohazard. We don't do that today.

You can go to jail for doing this. Imagine a doctor and touching your tongue. Malpractice. I mean I get sick of watching them spit in baseball.

How old are these guys? Well, was he teaching that what comes out of his mouth has healing for what comes out of our mouth? Because this man can't speak. But he's going to speak and the day will come soon when they will spit on Christ. When he gets to the blind man, he's going to spit on his eyes. It's like this is total, it's odd. But we don't hear of any of the disciples saying, what's up with that, Lord?

Can I do that? We don't find Paul going through Athens spitting on people to heal them. And so you come to these scriptures, verses, and you say, you know, I've got too much truth to waste it away on not understanding something like this. Verse 34.

Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, Ephrathah, that is, be opened, the Aramaic language, the vernacular of the people. Remember, again, Peter likely, somebody's telling the story, we believe it to be Peter. Someone was there. They remembered these things. They remembered the look on the woman's face when he said no, initially. And they remembered, you know, watching this whole thing unfold. Then they remember trekking across, all the way across to the east side of Galilee, and then having watched him spit and sigh.

What was that? It was emotional. It was a dramatic moment.

They knew what he could do by this time. And to see the Lord go, it's really groaned. It's going, ugh, at what sin has done. But he didn't need to say a word. At first, he looks up to heaven. What lessons are there for us? He looks up to heaven, then he spoke the word.

He looks to the throne of his father. And this sigh, perhaps due to the spiritual resistance in the unseen world, to release this man, because there were other healings where there was opposition in the act of deliverance. One young lad convulsed and rolled, the demon throwing him down in the process because they're arrogant and they're irreverent. When you see someone demonstrate irreverence towards Christ, you know there's demonic activity. I remember when I was irreverent towards Christ. It wasn't the Holy Spirit in me. It was the absence of the Holy Spirit. And had I continued on that line, I fear to even think about it. Was this groaning just a sort of letting mankind know that God hurts too when we hurt? I believe it's a combination of those things, verse 35 and more. Immediately, his ears were opened and the impediment of his tongue was loosed and he spoke plainly, without speech therapy.

So you would think the tongue muscles not developed. He's got to, you know, going out to work, you know, My Fair Lady, you know, Henry Higgins. He's just going to have to learn how to speak proper English.

But he doesn't have to go through any of that because there was no English. Anyway, verse 36, and he commanded them that they should tell no one, but the more he commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it. Yeah, how could you suppress this kind of stuff? On the surface, Jesus appears to be suppressing his own ministry. Have you ever met a Christian that was indiscriminate and sharing their faith and they needed to shut up? They were casting problems. Nobody wants to hear your mouth.

In fact, people are paying us money to shut you up for them. Okay, not really, but that would be it. Never mind. So, I don't know if you've met them, but I have, and they do more damage than they do good. They're not led by the Spirit. They're led by some sort of self-satisfaction that there I preach the Gospel, I must be brave for Christ or something like that, but without leading. Well, these people, a little differently, they're just excited over what was happening. And Christ is teaching us how to be careful with what God has done.

Yes, he did the miracles, but I don't want you going around blabbing this right now. Whereas he told the man before, I want you to go proclaim it because he knows the intricacies. Some things make no sense to us because we lack sense in that area. Some just lack sense.

I hope, you know, I hope it's not us, right? Well, we must submit to odd methods of God, whether we see through them or not, and that's what such a great work of the Holy Spirit is when he tells us, don't say anything, and you just know you've got what to say, but he stops you. He knows best. There have been a few times in the pulpit that I've sensed the Holy Spirit say, don't say that, and I say it anyway, and then you don't laugh.

Nothing has been tragic except on the ride home, just knowing it wasn't him, it was me, but it seemed like the right thing to say at the time, and knowing that it was him telling me, don't. And so now, so often, I hear him, don't say that. Maybe there's a pet sin that I'd like to go after that one of you are doing, and I just want to, you know, hammer this thing, and he says no, and so it comes out some other sermon when he says go, but it comes out softer with more effectiveness, and if that's true for me, it should be true for you too.

Why should you get the breaks and not me? Anyway, having been touched by Christ, these people did have something to shout about, to witness, and they were doing it, yet, as noble as that is, it was still disobedient, because his word was don't do it, and they did it anyway, and I think that's one of the lessons for us, the odd methods of Christ. We read this story and we say, okay, there are times when we're supposed to just not broadcast as we would like to. May we not allow our emotions to supersede his will. Then at verse 37, and they were astonished beyond measure, saying he has done all things well.

He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. How many times have, in my life, I've submitted to this verse, he has done all things well, when in my flesh I don't agree, but I submit. That is the mark of a believer, because an unbeliever won't do that, and if you're wrestling with when am I saved, am I not saved, get that settled so you can be moving forward in strength. You accept the Lord Jesus Christ as he reveals himself. You believe he died for your sins and rose again and sits at the right hand of the Father, is returning again with the saints. You're saved, and don't let anybody come and take that from you, and don't have that salvation with guilt. You know, a Christian can ask God for a new job, he gives it to them, then they feel guilty for getting the job. That's not right.

Don't do that. Rejoice in the Lord. Again, I say rejoice. Rejoicing in Christ is not for amateurs. You know that Christian is a new Christian, just all bubbly and everything, you want to slap him?

You give him time. They're going to want to slap other people that have come along bubbly and everything, once they find out that this Christian life is knocked down, dragged out at times. Well, I don't think anyone, again, asked him about his methods. What's up with the spitting, Lord? And when we come to chapter 8 and he spits on the guy's eyes, they're just going to be quiet and write about it. And, you know, Peter doesn't say, well, here's what it meant.

He just leaves it there for us. I close with this verse from Hebrews 11, talking about the faith. Faith is a substance of things hopeful, the evidence of things not seen. And then he goes on and says, by it, the elders obtained a good testimony. It's by trusting God that we admire men like Abraham and Jeremiah and Peter and Paul. We look at those who trust God and we want to learn ourselves how we're going to trust Him.

It's worth it. And not only do we want to do it ourselves, we want to lead others into it also. So the odd methods of God are not something that chases us away from our faith.

Nothing can do that. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.