“He Has Done All Things Well!” Mark 7:31-37
Pastor Thomas Kock September 18, 2011
Grace, mercy, and peace are yours, from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The Word of God for our consideration today is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 7 (read text).
Is it true? “Is WHAT true?” The statement made at the end of our text: “He has done everything well,” Is it true? I wonder if that’s what the parents of this man in our text thought when their child was born? Since he’s not only deaf but also mute (the Greek reads a bit more strongly than the NIV’s translation), it would seem likely that he was born that way. Or at least, that he became deaf and mute fairly early in life. Do you think this man’s parents felt like praising God and saying, “He has done everything well!”? Or, might they have had different feel at that point?
What do YOU think? As you consider you life, the lives of those around you, or just life in general, does it seem to be true that “He has done everything well”? Or do we often feel differently?
I’m going to do something today that I hesitate to do, but decided that it might help us in our walk of faith. I’m going to tell you parts of my grandma’s story. I hope it will help us to wrestle with the statement made at the end of the text, bringing us to a greater appreciation of God’s gracious ruling.
My grandmother was born the middle of three girls. Her older sister had fairly severe vision problems (I vaguely remember her – she had these super thick, “coke-bottle” glasses), and the younger child was the baby. So, grandma ended up bearing the brunt of the workload. When chores were divvied up, the older sister would use her vision as an excuse, and the baby sister basically just refused to do things, then blamed my grandmother if her own work wasn’t done. “Ok, no big deal,” right? “Hard work isn’t a bad thing.”
Well, my great-grandmother seemed to have had some sort of mental illness, and she dealt with my grandmother very differently than the other girls. You’ve heard of the phenomenon that sometimes a family has a scapegoat? Grandmother was it. Anything bad which happened in the family was blamed on my grandmother. The sisters figured it out, and blamed grandmother for most anything. So, my great-grandmother would wait until my great-grandfather got home from the fields and would say to him, “Pound Florence.” And, he would. She would be beaten, fairly severely. And that wasn’t just when she was a little child, but continued through her high school years. In short, she was physically, mentally, and emotionally abused.
As she got to marrying age, one of the neighboring farmer families approached my great-grandparents about allowing Florence to marry their son. Grandma wasn’t interested, but my great-grandparents insisted that she accept letters from him. She wrote to him and told him that she didn’t want to marry him. He wrote back that it didn’t matter what she wanted, that she was to make him happy, and that she would serve him. (Yeah, grandpa was quite the romantic. J ) Her mom said to her, “Florence, you better not disappoint that boy!” Sure enough, she and my grandfather were married. Grandma cried at her wedding, and they weren’t tears of joy.
Grandpa was a very reserved man. My uncles tell the story of him taking them to grade school in the car. He never, ever spoke a word. (Hard to believe I’m his grandson, hey? J ) One time grandma was excited about something and wanted to talk about it. But grandpa said sternly, “My father was a man of few words!” End of conversation. One time after church grandma wanted to talk about the sermon, and grandfather said, “We do not speak of such things.” My grandmother was kind of an emotional wreck from her growing up years, and now you add to it a husband who is failing to love her the way that Jesus loved the Church, and you’ve got a recipe for a mess. And so grandma had a couple of nervous breakdowns, which were followed up by shock treatments. After her last one, grandpa made the statement that if she had another one, he would just put her into an institution and be done with that.
One particularly hurtful time came when grandma’s sister was on her deathbed. Grandma went to see her. My great-aunt turned her face away from my grandmother and refused to acknowledge her presence. My great-uncle said pleadingly, “Come on, honey. It’s Florence, your sister!” But my great-aunt refused to acknowledge her. Out into the hall grandma went, and again the tears flowed.
Now, please don’t get me wrong. There were blessings. They were hard workers, and were able to live a lower to middle-class lifestyle. They got to do some traveling around the United States. Certainly there were some blessings. But if we were to give an overall judgment of my grandmother’s life, we might say, “It was awful!”
But was it? Grandma told the story that after one episode of being beaten and yelled at, she fled the house and ran into the yard or the field and simply flopped to the ground, crying. She said she had this little voice in her head that said to her, “Florence, just keep reading your Bible.” God was guiding her thoughts, or so it would appear. And, grandma did exactly that. She kept on reading her Bible, all through her life. Oh, I won’t say to you that it turned her into a happy-go-lucky, joyous person. It didn’t.
But it did keep her focused. It kept her focused on the truth that God is love, on the truth that there really is forgiveness, even for horrible sins which were committed, even for the sins which were committed against her. It kept her focused on the truth that God really does rule all things for the good of His people, even when it doesn’t look that way to our eyes. It kept on reminding her that God does all things well, whether we understand it or not.
And that’s a truth which we can see played out in our text. As alluded to earlier, do you think that this man’s parents were saying, “He has done all things well” when their son was born deaf/mute or became deaf/mute early in life? I’m guessing maybe not!
But what happened because of it? Because this man was deaf/mute, he had a chance to meet Jesus in an amazing way! The crowds brought him to Jesus, hoping that Jesus would heal him. Jesus first of all takes the man aside. Why so? Perhaps in order to give assurance to the man, and perhaps also to get his focus. The man was deaf/mute! Did he understand why the crowd was hustling him along to meet this guy whom he’d never met? Probably not! Might that have been a bit intimidating? I’m guessing! So Jesus pulls him off to the side.
Jesus then goes into a little bit of play-acting. We might even say He was playing charades with the man. Jesus touches the man’s ears. He spits, then touches the man’s tongue. He looked up to heaven and with a big sigh said, “Ephatha!” (That means, “Be opened!”) And, that’s exactly what happened! The man’s ears were opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak plainly! And since Jesus had pulled the man aside, and had gone through all the actions to indicate what He was going to do, the man knew clearly from where the healing had come. It had come from Jesus!
Now, do you think you might meet this man in heaven? We’re not told, but I think it’s a reasonable guess to think that this man became a believer in Jesus!
But what if he HADN’T been deaf/mute? Would he have met Jesus? Would he have met Jesus in such a spectacular - and personal - manner? Humanly speaking, we don’t know. Would this man have ended up in heaven? Again, we don’t know. But what we DO know is that this man DID meet Jesus, he met him in a spectacular manner, and I think we’re making a reasonable guess when we guess that this man ended up in heaven. Was God doing everything well? Every step of the way!
And so God was doing with my grandmother. At the very end, she had to go into a nursing home. My aunt’s pastor visited her. He visited her for the final time on Sunday morning (the church’s other pastor was preaching, so he was able to make a visit on a late Sunday morning). He reminded my grandmother about Jesus and His love for her. He assured her that her sins were forgiven, that Jesus had died and risen for her. He sang a couple of hymns to her, with my mom and aunt singing along. And as that was going on, grandma went to heaven. Was God doing everything well? He sure was. But what about all those challenges in her life? Those challenges drove her into the Word, kept her connected to her Savior. God had done everything well.
And God gave us grandkids some little reminders of it, as well. Right after my grandmother died, the pastor, my mom and my aunt sang part of the hymn, “I am Jesus’ Little Lamb.” My cousin Brad is a member of one of our Florida churches. The closing hymn that day? Yep: “I Am Jesus’ Little Lamb.”
And then one which applied to me. During the funeral, I found out that grandma’s favorite hymn was “Day by Day.” I was preaching in Morristown that day. The closing hymn? Yep, “Day by Day.” And in God’s wonderful economy, we were probably singing that hymn about the same time as Grandma went to heaven. Was God ruling all things for good? Was God doing all things well? Of course.
And so He is doing in your life and mine. Oh, it may take us through some really difficult days. It may take us through some challenging times. Oh, there may be times when we have no idea HOW God is ruling all things for our good, WHY what He is doing is right for us and for all.
But remember, God’s desire for you and for me is often quite different than what we desire. We desire to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. But, that stuff is just earthly. God’s desire for us is far greater than that. He desires us to know that our sins are forgiven. God’s desire for you and me is to take us to heaven! God’s desire is eternal. And He’ll rule and guide things in our lives with that ultimate goal – heaven – in mind.
And when we get there? We will be thankful and grateful! Indeed, as we enter those wonderful “pearly gates” and enter our eternal rest, we will with joy acknowledge, “He has done all things well!” Amen.