Special

Well, please do have a seat.

And, if you would like to turn in your bibles to Mark chapter 7, So if you have got a Bible, then, do make sure you can see back to verse 24. You'll need it either on a device or on a hard copy of the Bible, and we're gonna read from 24. This is god's living word to us this morning. Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it, and yet he could not keep his presence secret.

In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek born in Syrian Tunisia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. First, let the children eat all they want. He told her.

For it's not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs. Lord, she replied, even the dog seat the under the table, eat the children's crumbs. Then he told her, for such a reply, you may go. The demon has left your daughter. She went home and found her child lying on the bed and the demon gone.

Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through sidon down to the sea of galilee and into the region of the decapolis. There, some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him. After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. He spat and touched the man's tongue. He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, Ephatha, which means be opened.

At this, the man's ears were opened, and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak plainly. Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone, but the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. People were overwhelmed with amazement. He has done everything well, they said. He even makes the deaf hear, and the mute speak.

Well, let me add my welcome. My name's Pete Woodcock. 1 of the pastors here. A couple of things. It's good to welcome, Jim, sorry, Jim and Helen.

We used to work together, like, a hundred and 50 years ago. John Major was prime minister. Oh my goodness. We're in better days. I don't know.

Maybe not. Maybe not. We used to work together at Hook evangelical Church in the area. It's lovely to to have you both with us. Pastoring, in a in a Baptist church, and it's just lovely to have them with us.

Also, thank you for your prayers. This time last week, me and Andy Broins were on the Belarusian border. We were told it was gonna take 15 to 20 hours on that border on a very uncomfortable seat on a on a bus. But you were praying at that very time that we arrived at the border and it took 5 hours. Now that is a miracle.

You know, from to 5, it's amazing. And if you've seen a Belarusian border, that's amazing. So we were really overjoyed and and and felt, the presence of the lord with us there. And thank you for for your prayers there. David Glen, who used to be an elder of this church, and then we sent off to, last year to plant, help plant, hope church in Tollworth.

He does hearing tests and, he, does, you know, puts in, hearing aids. Now, that's his job. And he says genuinely gen this is absolutely true, he says. That you get, an elderly couple coming in, a man brought in by his wife who's clearly can't hear anymore. He's deaf.

And David Glen says he'll do a a hearing test on the man to find out, you know, what's wrong and what hearing aid he needs. And, obviously, according to his wife, he needs a major hearing aid. And then he finds out that there's nothing wrong with his hearing whatsoever. And when he tells the couple, the woman suddenly clicks, you see there's hearing and there's hearing. And just some people you turn off, over years.

1 of the phrases Jesus loved in the gospels, Matthew Mark, and Luke, particularly, is whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. In other words, there's hearing and there's hearing. The Bible has this. This is a big theme in the Bible. Let me give you some verses.

Just a few. Psalm a hundred and 35, they have ears, but kept here, nor is their breath in their mouth, Isaiah chapter 40. You have seen many things, but you pay no attention. You're here. They're open, but you do not listen.

Jeremiah chapter 6, verse 10, to whom can I speak and give warning? Who can I warn? Who will listen to me? There is a close so that you cannot hear. The word of the lord is offensive to them.

They find no pleasure in it. Here's Jesus in Matthew 13, but blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear, then the righteous will shine like the son in the kingdom of the father. Whoever has ears, let them hear. Here's Paul in a letter in the New Testament part of the Bible, to Timothy chapter 4. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine, sound teaching, Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

They will turn their ears away from truth and turn aside to myths. It's 1 more quote. It's in the book of acts. This is Stephen. The first Christian martyr is gonna be stoned to death for saying this stuff.

He says to the people in front of him, you stiff neck people. Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You're unclean, in other words. You are just like your ancestors. You always resist the Holy Spirit, and what do they do when they hear that word?

It says, at this, they covered their ears yelling at the top of their voices and rushed at him and killed him. There's hearing and there's hearing. Right now, the BBC, all the radio stations, are beaming their radio waves in this in this room. We have radio 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and all of the derivatives from there We have LBC radio, there's capital radio, there's smooth radio, whatever whatever radio. It's here now.

But we don't hear them because we're not tuned in. You can have hearing, and there's hearing, there's hearing, and there's hearing. The human ear is an amazing thing. It's just a remarkable organ when you look into it. From the outer ear, there's a 1 inch channel that leads to the middle ear.

The middle ear has the 3 tiniest bones in the body, the anvil, the hammer, and the stirrup, and they amplify the sound that they receive 22 times. That sound then passes into the inner ear. The inner ear is like a sort of snail shaped organ called the cochula. And in the cochula, a thousands of microscopic cells that are a bit like hairs and each 1 is tuned to a different sort of sound. It's amazing.

Then electronical impulses from those sort of hair like things, go down, a, the to the brain via 30000 circuits of 1 nerve. It's extraordinary. The hearing is amazing. It it it's it's only the size of a sort of walnut. It's a it's an amazing thing.

And it has a massive range. You can hear a pin drop, and you can hear something a hundred thousand times louder than a pin drop. What a range? The loss of hearing is a tragedy, isn't it? The loss of hearing is a tragedy, and even more so if the ear doesn't listen to its maker.

How extraordinary is that? 1 of the distinctive things about the god of the Bible, the god who reels, reveals himself in the Bible, is that he is a speaking god. He speaks What he said, ever knew, always fresh from the inscripturated word. He's a speaking god. He's unlike the false gods.

He's always reminding us of that. They're deaf and they're dumb. But god speaks. And if god speaks, then it's utterly vital we listen, isn't it? It's extraordinary that we wouldn't listen to god.

A deliberate deafness is a great sin, but also a great folly. Over the ancient, nation of Israel, in the Old Testament, over their epitaph, why they know more? God said this. The Lord spoke to them through his prophets, generation after generation, and they refused to listen. Jesus tells a story.

Oh, perhaps, in the story, perhaps the, owner of a vineyard, he'll he'll send his son. Perhaps they'll listen to his son. Now they killed him. There are millions of people that either don't or won't listen. But god is not dead, and god is not silent, but people's ears are.

That brings us into this encounter that Jesus has with this deaf man in March chapter 7, so open that up. Let's just have a look quickly where Jesus is because it's a beautiful place where he is. Because he's in gentle territory. He's in a foreign land. Yeah?

And people would have seen that he's amongst the unclean people. Look, look what it says in verse 31. Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through sidon down to the sea of Galile and into the region of the decapolis. So Jesus leaves 1 gentile non Jewish area and moves to another gentile non Jewish area. The the the capitalists, 10 cities, that means, and that's, as I say, primarily a gentile area.

Obviously, there are Jews there, but it's primarily a gentile area. So here he is amongst what would be considered by the religious elite, the unclean. And he's gone out of his way to be there. He has to go out of his way to be there. Now Jesus had already been to 1 of these 10 cities before.

You can read the story in, in March chapter 5, and he'd met a sort of naked, screaming, self harming wreck of a man that lived in a graveyard with the demons. And Jesus had an encounter with this man, and he left this man in his right mind and clothed and wanting to be a follower of Jesus. And yet that city wanted to close down Jesus. They were more of afraid of the good that Jesus did than the evil this man was doing. And they asked Jesus to leave.

He'd made a man who was demon possessed and cutting himself and self harming and scary into a sane man dressed, but they'd rather have the insane 1. They'd rather have the demon possessed bloke. They asked Jesus to lead. In fact, they begged him. It's the same way we're gonna see in a minute.

They begged Jesus to leave. They closed their ears to the healing word of Jesus. But now Jesus is back. He's back in town or at least 1 of the towns, verse 32. There's some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged.

There's the same word. They begged Jesus to place his hands on them. So first point, we see where Jesus is. Now some people brought to him a man who is deaf. Look at the man.

He's isolated. Isn't he? To be deaf, he's quite an isolated situation to be in. You don't know what's really going on around you. You see a crowd.

It's hard to interpret what they're doing. Are they friendly? Are their words friendly? But not only is he isolated in the sense that he's deaf. He can't speak.

He can't speak correctly. So if he tried to communicate, what what are you saying? It would come out sort of like a croak. It's pretty bad. Here's a song from 1 of my favorite bands.

And it gives us that sense of isolation. Listen to these words. There's a silence surrounding me. I can't seem to think straight. I'll sit in the corner.

And no 1 will bother me. I think I should speak now. I can't seem to speak now. My words won't come out right. I feel like I'm drowning.

I feel weak now, but I can't show my weakness. I sometimes wonder. Where do I go from here? Sitting in the corner, silent, isolated. Not daring to speak because you'll be laughed at.

But notice that this deaf man seemed to have some friends. They called some people. I love that. It's they're just some people. You know?

We we don't know their names. You know, for 2000 years, this story has been told. We don't know their names. They're just some people. And I love that because we tend to think that god works through the big named people, don't we?

We we love a name, don't we? You know, if you're you're involved in any, you know, Jim is, if you're involved in inviting anyone to conferences, gotta have a name, you know, and the Jews gotta have an American name. You gotta have someone who's written a book. You know, they're the ones that we wanna listen to, but these are just some people, then, you know, who are they? God knows their name, but we don't.

They're just some people. They're unnamed. But they changed this man's life because they brought him to Jesus. I just love that, and it's worth just stopping there, isn't it? Here we are.

We're just some people, aren't we? I mean, we forget each other's names. I I forget my kids' names. I forget Anne's name sometimes, which doesn't matter so much because she's going deaf. So I can be and, whatever.

But, some people They had compassion and love for this man, who's clearly an outcast to, in in many ways, isolated, they brought him to Jesus. Romans chapter 10, everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be safe. That's how easy Christianity is. You just have to call help lord save me lord, and you'll be saved. Yeah?

And then Paul goes on and says, But how then can they call on 1 that they do not believe in? And how can they believe in the 1 whom they have not heard? They need to hear this. And how can they hear without someone preaching to them, and how can they anyone preach unless they are sent as it is written how beautiful of the feet of those who bring good news? These some people had beautiful feet.

We know that about them. They may have been ugly in every other way, but they had beautiful feet because these some people brought the deaf man to Jesus so that he could hear. The word of the lord. And we can do that. You know, September, we got a new start.

We've still got this area to reach. But that brings me to my third point. Just look at what I've called Jesus bedside manner. Now if you're from another country, you may not understand that. But, you know, when a a a doctor deals with a patient, he he deals with it very kindly.

And here's Jesus dealing with this patient very kindly. Jesus bed side manner. So this man is brought to Jesus in front of a crowd. It's like getting him up here. Yeah.

But much bigger crowd. And that's pretty embarrassing. You're isolated. You're not sure what's going on. You're not even sure of the motives of some people that are bringing you to this man, Jesus, which you've never heard.

The crowd are looking at you. You can't speak. And if you do, they'll they'll mock you. And so what does Jesus do? Do you see see his bedside manner?

He takes him aside. Look at verse 33. He took him aside away from the crowd. It's it's the exact opposite of those healing people, isn't it? That have to show off the healing.

It's the exact opposite to those healers. He takes him away from the crowd. He takes him aside. He knows this man needs some privacy. People with disabilities that they often have a rough time in this country, don't they?

I mean, imagine trying to be disabled going on the tube through London in a crowd. When we were on the Belarusian border, we'd been 8 hours waiting to to get in. And finally, we were let off the coach. I tried to get off the coach to go to the toilet, but it was nope. Like that.

And I said, well, where do I go then? Because I'm Western. I tried to argue, and it was then, well, anyway. So I just had to cross my legs, which is very hard these days, and I had a hip operation. But anyway, there I am waiting for 8 hours.

And, it you come you come finally, to this little tiny sort of wooden hut thing where there's a a very large Belarusian man ready to stamp your thing. Once you hear the You think, okay. Something's happened. Boom. They love that.

Then you have to go to a woman to be interrogated. Why are you coming to Belarus? It's a very welcoming place. There were 4 deaf people on the coach. And they were very they were really deaf.

They were all, doing the the sign language. And I'll get you in a minute to do some. Yes. And, they were doing sign language. And the security didn't like that because that meant they could talk to each other without them knowing what was going on.

The woman, I I said, I'll go in go in front of me, and there was a man, a young bloke looking angrily bored, if you can know what I mean, leaning up against this wooden hut thing, with an alsatian dog or a German shepherd dog, whatever you wanna call it off the leash, pretty angry looking dog. No leash. The the deaf woman went through. She couldn't communicate. The 2 security guards laughed at them.

It was very funny, isn't it? They can't speak. In the end, the woman tried to speak, and because she croaked. The dog then thought it was making a barking noise and jumped on her. The security laughed.

It was very, very hard not to do something. I was everything in me was to say, okay. Right. I've had enough of you lot, but I knew they wouldn't do much, and I couldn't speak a language anyway. That's how deaf people are treated.

It's hard, isn't it? But not with Jesus. He takes them to a side. He takes them away from the crowd. He's not some superior person in a security guard to put them down.

He's loving and kind. And then look at him. Not really does he take them aside, he signs. He does sign language. Jesus acts out what's going on.

It's it's a sign language, isn't it? Jesus placed his fingers on the man's ears to indicate I'm going to that's what I'm going to do for you. It's a sign language. And then he spits some saliva on his fingers and touched the man. This is personal.

It's like a kiss. I'm I'm gonna touch this. It's complete compassion and love to an extremely disabled person communicating him in to to him in a way that he understands. No mocking Jesus hasn't said a word verbally yet, but he's tender and compassionate, and he knows exactly the area that this man's needs are. Exact area where this man's been struggling all his life.

And he touches them. I see the problem he's saying to the man. I see I see it. I understand, and I'm with you. First surgery, after he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers in his ears and spat and touched the man's tongue.

Then Jesus looks up to heaven, verse 34. Look, he looked up to heaven. Another sign to the man. Looking up. He's showing the man that, actually, this is god alone that can do this.

This isn't magic. This is god's work. This is the grace of god. This is you need god in your life to work. Still Jesus hasn't spoken yet.

Now if you read the Old Testament, there's a deeper meaning to Jesus touching the ear. The first priests right back, in the old testament in the book of leviticus, had Moses put his finger in blood and touched the ear of the first priests because if you're gonna go into the presence of god as a priest, if you're going to go in the presence of god, everything needs to be touched by blood, everything needs to be saved. And your ears need to be touched by the blood of the lamb. And that's obviously pointing forward to what Jesus will do on the cross. So then we have he signs to this to this man, and he looks up to heaven.

But look at the third thing he does. He sighs. Look at verse 34. He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh. Maybe, like a death man's sigh, like a croak, like a groan.

The word means groan. He's sighing. What's that all about? Well, I'm sure there's loads of things here, but certainly grief over what sin does into the world. The man's not deaf because he's particularly done a particular sin, but it's just the world that we're in.

It's a symptom of a cursed world. It's a symptom of a fallen broken world. And all of creation we are told in the Bible is groaning. Paul says in Romans 8, we know that the whole of creation has been groaning as in childbirth. Now there's hope in the groan There's birth and new life coming from the groan, but it's still a groan.

And Jesus sees the condition of the fallen reality. The very thing god made, the ear to hear the voice of god is broken. Is fallen, is blocked up with sin. It needs redemption. It needs blood.

So Jesus looks and groans the terrible, terrible things, the consequences of sin. When we're in Belarus as an artist there, and a Belarusian artist, and he really is 1 of my favorite, favorite artists, and We went to gang because we had to do tourist things to show that we were tourists and not there to preach the Bible. And, but this is this this man became a Christian, became a follower of Christ. When you're taken round by by the the woman who want has to take you around. They they they tried to downplay the whole Christian thing, but I knew it so I kept asking.

And, it's it's interesting, but he's got a picture, and it's 1 of the most moving pictures I can think of. And it's Adam and Eve in their old age, and they're nod. They're full of arthritis, and their faces are worn and haggard. And they're in the field picking potatoes. It's such amazing understanding of what happened at the curse.

When men and women fell from god and disobeyed him, and that even tilling the ground is gonna hurt you, and that your body is gonna know death. And Jesus saw that. He groans, but there's a compassionate groan here as well. Here's this man in isolation and loneliness and frustration. And Jesus has sympathy for him.

We're gonna start a series sometime. I'm not sure when it is, on Hebrews, but you'll find that Jesus is the great high priest who has sympathy, who has understanding about what we go through in this world. So here's Jesus. He's emotionally not detached, but attached to this man. He understands the suffering, and he feels deeply.

And then it's a sigh of intercession or a a sigh of prayer. In Romans chapter 8, we're told to spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. There's times when you don't know what words to say, and even Jesus didn't seem to know what words to say. There's times when you see the suffering and what sin has done, and you groan. And but that is a prayer.

Oh, what do I say? What on earth? Has the world come to? And so he sighs, and he groans, and it shows us that he's not distant and far away from this suffering man. He takes him aside.

He signs to him, and he sighs. But now he speaks first 34. Look, He looked up to heaven, and with a deep sigh, he said, What a word? Can you say it? Have a go.

A? Yeah? Here, here's easier. Be opened. Can you say that?

Actually, come come up here, Karen. Come on. Stop mucking about. Karen can sign. Yeah?

So can you do the sign of be open? What is it? Right. Can that can we all do that? Yeah?

And as we do it, say, Afata. Ready? Come on. That's it. So Jesus doesn't sign here.

Thank you. Give me a second. Jesus doesn't sign. Jesus says he speaks. He speaks.

Now, what does he speak to? The deaf man? Well, no, he's deaf. He speaks to his ears. Be open.

You are created to hear do what you were meant to do, be opened. The same god that turned darkness into light with a word, the same god that breathed life into adam and eve that used to be dust The same god comes to this man and says to the ears, do your job. Be opened, a fatthefer. That's what he says. And look at verse 35.

At this, the man's ears were opened. His tongue was loosed, and he began to speak plainly. Perfect hearing. Suddenly you can hear the crowd. It may have been a little scary at first.

Suddenly you can hear Jesus. Suddenly you can hear the birds singing. Suddenly can hear his wife. Suddenly, all kinds of things are are happening. A whole new world there.

And then verse 35, he began to speak plainly. That's the word for Orthodox. Orthodox dentist. It's the word for straightening. He now speaks straight.

You could understand him. He's not gonna croak anymore. He's not gonna speak like a deaf man that's never heard anymore. He's going to speak plainly. His tongue is free.

He's now free from the isolation that that he was blocked in. You see that? Suddenly, he's not isolated from people. Suddenly, there's a response. All the world of isolation and misunderstanding and miscommunication Now he's gone.

He can speak plainly. He can say what he means, and he can hear what you mean. It's extraordinary what happened. And Jesus doesn't just heal, you know, like, pull out a plug of wax from the ears. He's getting all of the cochlear and all of those those, nerves, endings all together into the brain.

This is a massive miracle. And I want to say this is the Christian experience. Not physically, but spiritually. From looking out at the world and thinking, what is it about? Before you become a Christian, it's like looking at a film or a TV show with no sound.

And and you see sort of things and you get certain things right, but you get a lot wrong. Or it might be like looking at the world with tinnitus. There's a lot of sound. People are shouting at you. And it's confusing, and it doesn't seem to fit with what you what what you see and and what the noise in your ears are.

But for the Christian, the tinnitus is taken away. For the Christian, the sound is turned up, you hear god's explanation, and it changes everything. And that brings me now to my my fourth point then. Have you had your ears and mouth opened? Have you had an Afhefer moment?

Have you? You had it in fact for the moment? You've heard about god? You've heard about Jesus. You've been coming along here, and you know quite a lot now.

But have you heard the voice of Jesus? In your ear? Have you really heard? In Psalm 40, verse 6, there's an interesting sentence. It starts off like this, sacrifices and offerings you did not desire.

But my ears, you have opened burnt offerings and sin offerings, you did not require. So he's he's talking to god and saying, all of the things, all the burnt offerings and all of that, they actually mean nothing, really. They're just dutiful things if there's no hearing and no speaking. See, imagine a relationship. If the if the husband does all the dutiful things, it's everything, but he never speaks to his wife, and he never listens to her.

There's no relationship. It's not real. And that and that becomes a problem. 1 of the big problems in Belarus is that we were learning, we spent 2 hours talking about marriage. 1 of the big problems is that the blokes don't talk.

And 1 of the reasons they don't talk is it's dangerous speaking in Belarus. If you le loose tongue in Belarus, you're in big trouble. You gotta be careful. That's why Andy Bruce was so scared walking around museums with me. Because I was saying, oh, look, look, look, there's Starling there.

Let's have a photo with him, and it's, you know, and we in fact, we were told off because we were laughing in a museum, and we do not laugh in the museum. I'm English. I do. So, you know, you gotta be careful. But here, it's saying, look, you can bring sacrifices.

You can do all the right things, but god doesn't want that. He wants you to hear him, and he wants you to talk to him. So it says, but my ears have been opened. Now the original Hebrew means you have dug my ears ears that you've dug in into me. Now that's not a bloke's name.

That's digging a hole. Yeah. It's like you're a blockhead, or you're just granite. And god has dug a hole into the granite head so that you can hear his word. And then in that psalm, When you hear, it says, here I am.

I I've come to you. I'd I desire your will. Have you had that moment? Have you asked god to dig a hole in your head? Have you?

Have you asked god to bore a hole so that you could hear the voice of Jesus? Is there so much noise in your life? So much tinnitus. You just can't hear. You you see Christians.

You understand certain things. You see some beauty, but you can't connect it because you're not hearing properly. And perhaps you're like this man that's mute. You've never asked for a hole in the head. And it's hard to speak.

How do you speak to god? I can't seem to speak now. My words won't come out right. I feel like I'm drowning, but simply ask humbly, if ever, Touch my lips. In the old testament, there was a little boy in bed.

He was a servant of the priest, Levi. It says at that time, the word of the lord was very rare. No 1 had heard god speak for a long time. He was in bed. And the lord spoke to him.

Samuel, Samuel, get up. Samuel got up, woke up, thought it was Eli, the priest, and went to him and said, yes, my lord. What do you want me to do? And he said, I didn't know. Get it back to bed.

He goes back to bed. Samuel, Samuel. Samuel wakes up, gets up, goes to Eli. Yes. My lord, you called me.

I didn't call you. Go back to bed. Third time, Samuel. Samuel wakes up. Must be Eli.

He goes to wake Eli up. You've just woken me up again. Then Eli finally got through to him. This must be the Lord speaking. Next time, Samuel, you hear your name.

Say lord. What do you want? It says in the text, Samuel did not yet know the lord the word of the lord had not yet been revealed to him. The fourth time, Samuel, Samuel, speak lord, your servants listening. Have you heard your name called?

Perhaps you have, but you've got it muddled. There's things that are right. But god's calling you by name. Whatever your name is, Samuel, Samuel. Have you ever croaked out?

Speak lord your servants listening? You do that and you'll hear the lord. We had wonderful testimonies, as as Tom was saying on on Wednesday, and I really recommend going to hear these testimonies. But, you know, we we we heard of James and Jenny, and they both decided to read the Bible, but not just read the Bible, they decided to pray a prayer saying, lord, if you're there, speak. And they said it was amazing because suddenly the Bible came a like it was another book.

Paul calls Christians called once. Have you heard your name? Peter. Peter. You know, I've said it many times.

I think last time I preached, that my favorite song is, I heard the voice of Jesus say, come. Peter, come. Me. Yeah. It'd be an extraordinary thing, wouldn't it?

To hear the call and so would disrespect god you turn a deaf ear. Jesus says to people, For this people's heart has become callused. They hardly hear with their ears, and they've closed their eyes. For Jesus to say that is very sad because he loves to say a Faketha. He wanted to say be open, but these people closed their ears.

Or perhaps years ago, you did open your ears to Jesus, but you've stopped listening. You've stopped praising him with your mouth. You're spiritually stagnant, and you no longer hear god. You just don't hear him. You're going through the motions, sacrifices, and offerings you're bringing, but actually it's like your ears are blocked up.

Back to the old testament, there's a man called Elijah. He'd just done a massive thing for god or Mount Carmor, but he's depressed. And he goes to a cave and he's on his own, trying to find himself. And there's an earthquake. But that's not god speaking.

Great big phenomena happened, but that's not god speaking. And then fire comes, but that's not god speaking. And then he hears a gentle whisper. The words are a voice without breath. Try and try and say something without breath.

Weird, isn't it? It's a gentle whisper. There's god. In the gentle whisper, and it says Elijah heard the voice of god. Are you just looking for huge phenomena in your life?

Asking for huge things, but you're missing the whisper. Ask him. A Faffeta. Ask him for open ears. Have you done that?

Lastly, just look at the response of this healing. First 36, Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. That was only for a time because, obviously, we've got this now, and I'm telling you lot about it, and it's all in the Bible. That was so that people wouldn't just see the miracle and not hear the word. They'd see the phenomena.

They'd hear the they'd see the massive miracle that's happened, but they would not hear that spiritually they need to hear the word. But then look at verse 37. The people were overwhelmed with amazement. He has done everything well, they said. He even makes the deaf and the mute speak.

What a wonderful savior. He does everything well. Everything well, they want it. I mean, that's a line. We could have another sermon on that.

Couldn't we? Should we start again? Let's sing a song and go back to that. He's done everything well. That's who he is.

A Faffeta. If you had that moment, why not ask now? We'll have a few minutes quiet. Why not ask? Father, we, thank you for this amazing miracle.

We thank you for the, the tenderness and the kindness of the lord Jesus. Who was willing to, take this man aside and love him and heal him and change his whole life. And we thank you for what these things mean to us spiritually that you are the god and the savior who opens the eyes of the blind who unstops the deaf ears, who enables lips to praise you. And we thank you for, the miracles that you have done in our lives that we have been by your grace, enabled to hear and to praise. And we pray that you would help us not to, grow deaf to your word all over again and to to not lose a love of praising you.

We're sorry for how dull we can become. And we pray that you would, open our ears and our mouths are fresh this morning and send us from this place praising you. And perhaps there are people here who for the first time have, heard you speaking. And have been given that spiritual hearing. And, we do, pray that that would be true this morning in Jesus' name.

Oh, man.