Preached at Clyro, 12th Sunday after Trinity, August 14, 1853.
“And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”—St. Mark vii. 37.
In the Epistle to-day St. Paul tells us that he was a minister of the New Testament, or of God’s new Covenant. At first we may not understand what that means; but he explains it to us himself. He says that the children of Israel in the old time had a law given them which was written on stones. It was a good law, a blessed law. God gave it to them. It declared His will to them. But, though it declared His will, it could not make them do His will. It was said on the stone that men were not to worship idols, or kill or steal. But they did worship idols, and kill, and steal. They did it though the law said it was death to do so. How was this? Could not God’s law, then, be obeyed? Was it only given to torment men and make them know what a bad state they were in, and what misery was in store for them?
So many men thought; at one time St. Paul himself thought so. He had tried hard to keep the law, he fancied he had kept it. But he found that he did not love it, that his mind was against it; that, if he did not break it, he wished to break it. He found that, though the law said “Thou shalt not covet,” he did covet; nay, it seemed to him as if he coveted more because he was forbidden to do it. He found, therefore, that his mind and God’s mind were at variance.
This made him very miserable. He saw that God’s law was good, very good, and yet he felt as if he must hate it. He honoured it, and yet he would have been glad if he had never heard of it. Then it was shown him that God does not merely give a law upon stones, but that He promises to write this law on our hearts, to put the love of it into them; to make our minds like His. This he learnt was God’s new covenant or Testament. This was what He promised He would do for men when His Son came into the world. And this He had done. For Jesus, the Son of God, loved His Father’s law, and delighted to do it. This law was in His heart. He fulfilled it altogether, and bore all that it laid upon Him.
And now that God has given His Son to take our flesh and to die for us, He deals with us as sons. He says, I will send the Spirit of my Son into your hearts, that you may be like Him. I make a New Testament or covenant with you in His blood. And it is this—You shall love the things which I love, and hate what I hate.
Now, St. Paul says that he was a preacher of this New Testament or covenant. He is very thankful, and proud of that office. He thinks it the most glorious that a man could have. For he says, I am not sent to tell men of what they must do, but to tell them how they can do it. I am not sent to say, you will die if you do not keep these commandments. But I am sent to say, God gives you His own life, His own Spirit, that you may be able to keep His commandments. I am a minister of Righteousness, not of condemnation; of the Spirit, not of the letter, of the law in the heart, not of the law on stones.
He might well rejoice and wonder that he had such a trust. And yet he knew also, and he tells us in this Epistle, that there were people to whom his Gospel was hid, who did not heed it at all. It is not, he says, that there is any veil over God’s countenance, Christ has taken that away. But it is that there is a veil over them, over their own hearts, and that they will not turn to God that this veil may be taken away. It is in vain I tell them of His love; of His sending His Son to make them one with Him; of His sending His Spirit to write His laws in them. They do not know what such words signify; they do not acknowledge there is anything in them that wants to be made right; they are content to be as they are.
Brethren, this same New Testament ministry exists in the world now. God sends His message to you as much as He did to the people of Corinth or Ephesus, to whom St. Paul preached. He tells you, every one of you, that he is your Father, and that He has sent His Son to die for you, and that He has reconciled you to Himself, and that His Spirit is ready to come and dwell with you, that His laws may be written in your hearts, and you may keep them. And you come here every Sunday because it is so, and you pray these prayers, and hear the Lessons and the Epistle and Gospel read, because it is so. All these are ministers to you of the New Testament. They tell you what God has done for you, and is doing for you; how He has taken the veil off His face, and is showing it to you in His Son—full of grace, and beauty, and love; and how He would make you after His own image, gracious and loving as He is.
But, if this is so, how comes it that so few people hear this Word? that it goes so little way with them? that it seems to be caught away and vanish almost as soon as it has been spoken? Oh! brethren! that we would ask ourselves how this comes to pass! Because, if we did, this great and terrible disease might be cured; this deafness might be taken away from us; we might be enabled to receive God’s words into our inmost souls, and His words might bring forth fruit there unto life eternal.
And that is the reason, I think, why this Gospel about Christ’s curing the deaf and dumb man is joined to the Epistle about the ministry of the New Testament. It says very plainly to those who feel how hard it is for them to take in the New Testament message, how dull, and deaf, and stupid, they are. Yes, but that need not continue. There is a Physician at hand. There is one who doeth all things well, who maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.
I have told you before that the stories of Christ in the Gospel, whether they be of His healing the man at the Pool of Bethesda, or of His promising to draw men to Him on His Cross, or of His being shown to the Jews as their King, are all written for us. I have said that He is just as much among us as He was among the Jews in the city of Jerusalem, and that these words are to tell us what He is doing for some, and would be doing for us all.
First, then, I say that it is Christ who enables any one of us to hear any of the common sounds that enter into our ears as we walk out on an August day like this. If you have heard the singing of the birds or the running of the stream, or the voices of children as you came to church, then recollect it was Christ who caused you to hear them. He fills the earth and air with all melodies, and He gives to men the power of taking them in. By giving back hearing to this man who had lost it, He declared this; He said, I am the giver of hearing; the power comes from me. Think how wonderful that is. I suppose none of us have thought of it seriously till we have been reminded by seeing deaf people, or by becoming more or less deaf ourselves, what the blessing of sounds is; what it is to have them shut out.
But I say again: if this trial comes to any one of you in any degree, and then the power of hearing has been restored to you again, be sure that that was as much Christ’s blessing to you, as it was His to the man we have read of this morning, over whom He sighed and said, “Ephphatha, be opened.” It is not less His because you do not see Him before you, or because these words are not spoken. Whatever any physician does for you, is done by His power; it is His work. Be sure you confess that it is; and then you will love all that act as His servants to your bodies or your spirits, for His sake.
And now, then, I come back to what I spoke of before. I say that there is another kind of deafness besides that which cannot take in sounds. We may hear sounds, and yet the words that are within the sounds may never reach us. They may float about us, and seem as if they were coming unto us. And then we may feel just the same as if they had never been uttered; as far as we are concerned, we might as well have been a hundred miles away. But if they are words of health and life, words that come from the good God; words that are to make us right and true men; words that are to make all that is past fresh and new to us; and what is now going on around us good and not evil; and what is to be hereafter through all ages blessed; it is a very sad thing, is it not, that they should be all lost upon us? A very sad thing that we cannot stop them, and hold them fast; a very sad thing that a man should have to remember some other day, on a death-bed, They were proclaimed to me; I was told they were intended for me, but I did not mind them; and now it seems as if I and they had nothing to do with each other any more. But must it be so; shall it be so with any of us? What, when it is written, “He maketh the deaf to hear!” When we can say, Lord Thou hast sent us these words; they are Thine. Thou didst come from heaven, and live and die on earth, that they might be ours. And Thou who dost give the ear to hear, and the heart to understand—and Thou who dost desire that we should hear and should understand—wilt not Thou heal us; wilt not Thou help us? Thou didst not care more for that poor deaf man, on the coast of Tyre and Sidon, than Thou dost care for me. Thou didst not die for him more than for me. And my ears are even more stopped, and stopped in a worse way than his were. Oh, once more say Ephphatha! be opened, to me and to all who have not received the good news of Thy New Testament into their hearts.
It is said, moreover, that the string of this man’s tongue was loosed, for like most people who are born deaf, he was dumb also. So Christ declared Himself to be the Lord of speech as well as of hearing. He does not only fill the world with sweet sounds, and give us the power to enjoy them, He also enables us to tell what we enjoy, and what we have seen and heard, and what is going on within us, to our fellow-men. Mighty power of speech! who can tell what that is? Why, what treasures of silver and gold are like that treasure? The greatest gift which the richest man in the world has, is that which the poorest has likewise. Words can do more than all the money and all the swords in the universe; money and swords are only their servants. But what mischief can they do as well as good! What curses can they spread abroad! How they can make neighbourhoods miserable; how they can overturn whole countries! Oh, what need have we of some one to rule over our tongues, to guide them, and to make them sources of health and not of pain!
Dear brethren, Christ is the master of them; He is called the Word in Holy Scripture; it is He who alone can command our words, so that they shall be good as He would have them be; so that they shall be mighty for His purpose. May He ever command yours and mine. And may the words of His New Testament break through all barriers that hinder them from entering into us, and be to us instruments of God’s righteousness, of God’s own Spirit.