Don't Tell Anyone I Healed Your Voice
2025 Mark • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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It’s a story of healing: “people brought to Jesus a man who was deaf and could hardly talk.” Jesus put his fingers in the deaf ears, spit and touched the man’s tongue, and commanded his ears and mouth to be opened. Mark tells us:
At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
Every miracle is amazing! It’s a foretaste of the kingdom of God. It’s part of Jesus’ mission to bring healing to all creation; to restore Shalom! Healing and wholeness come from God.
The OT prophet Isaiah speaks of what it looks like when the Lord comes to save his people:
say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.” Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.
When God comes, health is restored and wrong is set straight.
It’s part of Mark’s victory announcement: Jesus has arrived! The Messiah and Son of God has come. The deaf man and his community experience healing; a taste of the kingdom of God.
If you know the 4 gospels in the NT: Mt, Mk, Lk, and Jn, Jesus’ acts of healing might not surprise you. Knowing the gospels, we get used to Jesus’ miracles. Healing is what Jesus does.
I wonder though: Are you surprised by Jesus’ command “not to tell anyone”? It comes up several times in Mark’s gospel:
Man with leprosy (Mk 1), Jairus’ daughter (Mk 5), and now deaf and mute man – all are told not to tell anyone.
4X Mark describes how demons were silenced when they announced Jesus’ identity as the son of God (Mk 1:34)
Even when Peter confessed that Jesus is the Messiah in ch 8 “Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him” (Mk 8:30)
Jesus’ repeated command not to tell any one his identity and about his miracles is found in Mark’s gospel more often than in Mt and Lk. Scholars refer to Jesus’ commands not to tell anyone as “the messianic secret.”
Jesus’ command to keep silent raises questions. Why secrecy?
Mark is telling these things publicly – publishing his gospel for everyone and anyone to hear what Jesus did.
If it was to keep Jesus’ healing strategy secret, Mark blew it. Mark spills the details: fingers in ears, spitting and touching the man’s tongue. Mark even records the Aramaic word Jesus spoke, “Ephphatha.” The Bible is not guarding trade secrets.
Based on the rest of the NT, and the fact Mark described these events in his gospel, we can conclude that Jesus’ command “do not tell” was only for a limited time. If Jesus’ disciples were to remain silent about Jesus’ miracles and teaching for all time, there’s no hope. If disciples can’t describe Jesus’ healings, there’s no gospel, no disciples, no church.
We get a hint about “why the secrecy” in another example. In Crosspoint’s daily Bible readings through Mark’s gospel, on Wednesday, we’ll read how Jesus was transfigured on a high mountain and his clothes became dazzling white. Mark writes,
Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
Yet 2 verses later, Mark writes:
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
Some scholars suspect the instructions after Jesus was transfigured reveal the reason Jesus wanted his identity kept secret. Don’t tell anyone UNTIL the Son of Man has risen.
The Messiah cannot be properly understood apart from his crucifixion and resurrection. Only after Jesus’ death and resurrection can we understand why this gospel is good news. Without the crucifixion and resurrection, you might get the wrong idea about Jesus’ mission as the Messiah ushering in the kingdom of God.
The Messiah is not just a miracle worker. A healing here and abundant food there is only the tip of the iceberg. The Messiah was not just coming to drive demons out, rescuing people one at a time. Jesus came to defeat sin and evil, to conquer hunger and physical and mental disabilities once for all.
You see, the rebellion of Adam & Eve knocked all of creation off kilter. After each of the days of creation, God looked over the world he called into existence and said, “It is good.” On the 6thday, when humankind was created and given responsibility to rule over creation as God’s caretakers and stewards, God said, “It is very good.”
All the goodness was frustrated by human rebellion. When Adam & Eve rebelled against God:
Human relationships were disrupted: right away Adam & Eve blamed others. Their son Cain became jealous of his brother Abel, killing him b/c God accepted Abel’s offering
That’s not all. The food-chain and environment were cursed as well. Death and brokenness came
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
That’s the reminder we have at the beginning of Lent. Some Christians have ashes put on their forehead on Ash Wed. When the ashes are smudged on their forehead, they’re reminded, “dust you are; to dust you will return.” Some of you have were vividly reminded of human mortality this week at funerals and deaths in your family. Death is a consequence of sin.
Jesus did not come into his own creation to deal with the consequences of sin bit-by-bit. He didn’t only come to give hearing to deaf people in Galilee 2000 years ago. He came to restore all creation forever.
It took a redo of Adam & Eve’s temptation. Where Adam & Eve gave in to Satan’s temptation – and where we are hard-wired to persist in our first parent’s rebellion against God – Jesus stands firm.
All through the gospel, Jesus resists temptation. Even when obeying God leads to the cross, Jesus obeys. He tells his heavenly Father, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
He's 100% human, but obedient and free from sin.
He’s 100% God, and able to bear the punishment for sin.
We’ll remember this on Good Friday: at the cross Jesus suffered the punishment for human rebellion.
We’ll celebrate on Easter Sunday, Jesus rose from the grave, victorious over sin and death!
By faith in Jesus, we receive all the benefits of Jesus’ victory. Because Jesus suffered and died in our place, we no longer face eternal far from God for the wrong we do. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the key to God’s forgiveness of our sin.
Now I wish I could say that once you become Christian, you be spared the consequences of sin. Until Jesus Christ returns to restore all creation, we only experience the beginning of renewal.
Like the LS, is not a full wedding feast, just a foretaste, so we don’t experience full restoration of creation until Jesus returns.
But we do experience the amazing results of Jesus’ victory. We experience the grace of God’s love, compassion, and forgiveness. Consider for a moment how amazing prayer is: the Creator and sustainer of the universe, the Lord God Almighty, stoops to hear your whispered prayers. He listens and seriously considers your needs, your hopes, and your preferences!
God the HS, helps us resist temptation. The same Spirit of God who gave Jesus courage and strength comes on you in power, to encourage and strengthen your obedience and your ability to worship God in word, thought, and deed. In one of the NT letters, it is described this way:
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
captive and obedient to Christ!
We have the assurance and confidence of being citizens of the eternal city, the new Jerusalem. This is not just a comfort in the face of death. I mean, it is comforting that Jesus is preparing a place for us after we die: a beautiful, wholesome, glorious city with God on the throne at its heart. It’s great comfort in the face of death.
But consider the Roman Empire. What is the phrase, “Membership has its privileges”? Being a citizen of the city of Rome gave privileges throughout the empire.
Through faith in Jesus, you have become a citizen of the kingdom of God. There’s a seat reserved for you at the wedding feast. A place is being prepared for you in God’s house. Being part of the kingdom of God is reassuring for the future, but also for today.
I heard on the radio this week: psychologists and counsellors are busy. They call it “Trump anxiety.” Canadians are worried about their jobs, their finances, their future. Maybe you are too.
The gospel of Mark offers this reassurance: you are a citizen of the kingdom of God.
That does not mean financial trouble or losing business, or losing your job doesn’t matter. It does put President Trump and his trade war into perspective.
In the gospel, we get a taste of the coming kingdom: healing, driving out impure spirits, and bringing Shalom. Already now, we have a taste of God’s kingdom.
When the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to Christians living in Rome, at the heart of the Roman Empire, facing job losses and financial ruin b/c of their faith in Jesus, he wrote them this:
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
If you are overwhelmed by worries about job security or finances at home, take time each evening with your spouse or family or a godly friend to share your anxieties in prayer. Remind each other that as citizens of the Kingdom of God, you are provided for and cared about.
Remind each other of daily blessings to shift your minds from anxiety to thanksgiving.
