The Miracle We Need (1) (Mark 7.24-8.9)

We all know what it’s like to get sucked down a YouTube rabbit hole.

One of my favorite rabbit holes to get sucked into is videos of people seeing or hearing in a new way, for the first time: videos of babies getting fitted with their first pair of glasses, of people getting cochlear implants and hearing their loved ones’ voices for the first time, or color blind people receiving those glasses that finally allow them to see colors. I could watch them for hours.

We become blasé to these miracles of perception that exist all around us, “miracles” made possible through science, but the older I get, the more I become convinced that miracles of perception—real miracles of perception—are the most impressive kinds.

I believe this because I know people who have benefitted from other types of “miracles”, of recoveries from injuries or illness that shouldn’t have been possible, without really being changed by them. It happens all the time—people who have heard the gospel, who receive blessings that can only be explained by God’s hand at work, but who remain indifferent to God after they’ve received it.

A physical miracle can do someone temporary good, but in the end doesn’t change much. But a miracle of perception—a miracle that changes the way you see the world around you—is durable.

I’m saying this because we see three miracles in this text; they’re all different sorts of miracles, which we’ll get into. But I believe that in the end, when you take them together, everything we see in today’s passage is about perception: it’s about Christ changing our way of seeing ourselves and of seeing him.

All three miracles send their own separate message, but taken together give us a bigger message of where Christ is taking us.

We’ll start with the individual messages of the individual miracles.

1. The Grace of Christ is Not Normal. (7.24-30)

If you remember last week, the entire passage was about purity—the Pharisees asking a question about handwashing, Jesus responding that they’re hypocrites because they tweak the Law of Moses to fit their own purposes, and then telling his disciples that it’s not what goes into a person that makes them unclean, but what comes out of their hearts.

Mark gave a very brief commentary on Jesus’s teaching at the end of v. 19: “Thus he declared all foods clean.”

This was a massive departure from Jewish thought, as we saw last week, and the disciples would take years to understand it. But this is precisely the direction that Jesus goes now in v. 24. We read:

And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

Tyre and Sidon were firmly in Gentile territory. While it wasn’t at all unheard of for Jews to live in the same cities as Gentiles, there was still absolutely a barrier between them that came all the way from the Law of Moses. The people of God were commanded to stay separate from the other nations (in their marriages, in their daily lives) because these other nations were idolatrous nations, and if the Jews mingled with them they would be tempted to follow their false gods. (Which, if you’ve read the Old Testament, you know is exactly what happened on multiple occasions.)

So already this departure from Jewish territory into Gentile territory is a bit surprising: why is he going there?

Let’s keep reading. V. 24:

And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. 25 But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

So we can see the situation is complex. Jesus is a Jewish teacher, ministering to the Jews. But now here he is in Gentile territory. His reputation has preceded him, so this Syrophoenician woman comes to him saying her daughter is possessed by a demon, and she begs him to cast the demon out.

Notice right away that she adopts a posture of humility—she came and “fell down at his feet.” She knows perfectly well that she has no reason to expect him to answer her request.

But she’s desperate. This is her little girl, being tormented by a demon. We don’t have the details in this case, but we saw what a demon did to the man in chapter 5: he would cry out, cut himself with stones, had taken to living among the tombs, and no one could bind him or keep him from hurting himself.

It’s difficult to understand the intensity of this torment. When Zadie was two she began having night terrors. Night terrors are absolutely horrifying if you don’t know what’s happening. It’s a form of sleepwalking, except it’s violent. She was screaming in her bed, thrashing around, knocking into the bed and into the wall. Her eyes were open, she was saying things, but she wasn’t awake. When a kid has night terrors you can’t wake them up. All you can do is be there to keep them from hurting themselves until they finally calm down again.

Night terrors are quite common with little kids, and they go away on their own most of the time. But the first time it happened, we had no idea what was going on. It was terrifying; all we could do was pray that it would stop. (Thankfully, it did; it lasted a few months and now she sleeps great.)

That was only night terrors, and I felt so incredibly helpless. With a demon possession, it doesn’t go away after a few minutes. It’s constant, it’s brutal, and as a parent, this woman could do nothing to help.

That’s what drove her to Jesus. She had no idea he was the Messiah, probably didn’t even know what the Messiah was. All she knew was what she had heard about him, that he was able to heal people. And she was desperate enough to go to this Jewish healer and ask for help. Despair, hopelessness, hitting rock bottom, can be a great catalyst for a miracle, because you literally have no other recourse—you’ll take absolutely anything you can get.

Now, watch how Jesus responds:

27 And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Some have suggested that when Jesus said “dogs”, he’s using an almost cute term—that’s why the Segond 21 translates it as “little dogs”. They’re trying to make it sound less offensive to modern ears, the way we call kids “ma puce”. This translation is possible, but it changes nothing: it’s still a derogatory term. This is the way Jews referred to Gentiles: as dogs.

It’s a shocking thing to hear Jesus say—but why are we shocked? We were speaking about this while preparing it for our community group Bible studies, and Mariya suggested it’s because we have a sense of entitlement. I think she’s right. We’re shocked that Jesus would say this because we couldn’t imagine Jesus saying this to anyone.

But he’s saying it for a reason. Jesus is laying out the harsh truth of the situation up to this point. Or rather, he’s laying out the perception they all had of the situation. This is just the way it was: the Jews and the Gentiles did not mix. Jesus is the Messiah promised by God to the Jews, to “the children,” as he puts it. So it’s not normal that the Jewish Messiah would stoop to help a Gentile—someone who didn’t believe in the Jewish God.

In our study group, Joe asked this very good question: “How would you react if someone shared the good news of the gospel, and then said, ‘But it’s not for you’?”

That’s essentially what all Gentiles should be hearing. If we are not Jewish, then ordinarily at least, Jesus isn’t our Messiah—he’s theirs. It’s not normal for him to save us; it’s not normal for him to help us.

Now most Gentiles would probably take what he says as an insult, as a rejection. And maybe the woman does too; maybe she hears the word “dog” and recognizes it for the derogatory term it is.

But she’s desperate. So she makes a bold statement—a final, last-gasp attempt to save her daughter. She says (v. 28):

28 But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

Desperation and hopelessness drive us to humility. Rather than being offended, she agrees with him. “No,” she’s saying, “it’s not normal that you should do anything for me. But you can. And I’m asking you to do whatever you will.”

Whether this woman knew it or not, she touched on a great biblical truth, that is spread throughout the entire Bible: God made a promise to Abraham, thousands of years earlier, that he would make his descendants into a great nation, and that this nation would bless all the peoples of the earth. God would come to Abraham’s descendants, the Jews, first, and he would give them to feast; but the rest of the world would also benefit from this family.

And here we see exactly that: the Messiah of the Jews, descended from Abraham, extending that blessing to the nations.

V. 29:

29 And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” 30 And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

Of course, Jesus had every intention of healing this woman’s daughter from the beginning. He said what he said to make it clear to whoever was around to hear that his grace to this woman is not normal…but that he would give it anyway.

And that is the first lesson here. The grace of Christ is not normal, no matter who we are. We have sinned against our Creator; we have rejected him and desired to be our own gods. And yet, he came to save us from ourselves.

This woman understood that Jesus’s help was not normal—and yet she came. She asked. And she received his grace.

That’s the message of the first miracle. The message of the second miracle is just as interesting.

2. A Miracle of Perception Is a Different Kind of Miracle. (7.31-37)

V. 31:

31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.

So he’s traveled from Tyre and Sidon to another region, the Decapolis, which was still out of Jewish territory—it was a more mixed region, but its population was not comprised of mainly Jews. V. 32:

32 And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. 34 And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

This miracle is really interesting. It’s the first miracle of only two we see in the gospel of Mark that require any kind of effort on Jesus’s part. Normally, he just says a word or touches someone, and they’re healed. This time, he does more than that.

He puts his fingers in the deaf man’s ears, then spits, takes some of his saliva, and touches the man’s tongue with it. And then he speaks: “Be opened,” he says, and the man can hear, and his speech impediment is healed.

I’ve heard a lot of people read into the different things Jesus does here—I once even saw a pastor spit on a person who was sick, believing that there was some kind of power in saliva. (It didn’t work.)

I think it’s actually far simpler than that. I think Jesus goes through extra steps here (and later on, in chapter 8, when he heals a blind man) simply to show that this is a different kind of miracle. He’s not healing a cripple, or a skin disease, or a blood infection. I think Jesus was perfectly capable of simply saying a word and healing this man. But he’s setting this, and the healing of the blind man in chapter 8, apart.

Why? Because these are miracles of perception. Hearing, seeing, speaking.

Essentially, he’s using these miracles as living parables. Think of how many times in the gospels we see Jesus teaching, and then he ends his teaching by saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”. His point is that not everyone does have ears to hear. Not everyone does have eyes to see. We need something more for that to happen.

We need a miracle of perception.

And here we see Mark paying particular attention to the reaction of the people who see this miracle. Jesus tells everyone not to talk about it, but (v. 36): the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.

Mark has mentioned multiple times that when Jesus performed miracles, people would often respond with amazement or surprise. They’d look at one another and say “Who is this man, who can command demons and heal diseases and calm the storm?”

But this is the very first time that Mark reports a reaction that more closely resembles worship.

V. 37:

And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

That may not be the first time anyone has said this about Jesus, but it’s the first time Mark mentions it, and I think he mentions it because he wants us to see that this kind of miracle, besides just being amazing, is good. We see Jesus performing this miracle in a different way than the others, and people responding to him by saying, “He has done all things well!”

We’ll come back to this in a few minutes—I think this miracle is sort of the hinge on which this passage turns—but before we do, let’s look at the next one.

3. The Grace of Christ Is Extended to All. (8.1-9)

In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, 2 “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. 3 And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.” 4 And his disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” 5 And he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” 6 And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd. 7 And they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. 8 And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. 9 And there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away.

This particular miracle is really interesting, because it’s been done before. The events of the beginning of chapter 8 are almost identical to the events in chapter 6, verses 30 to 44, when Jesus feeds the crowds there. Lots of people gathered in a desolate place, they’re hungry, and Jesus has compassion on the crowd (it’s mentioned in both texts). He takes a few loaves of bread and a few fish and multiplies them to feed the entire crowd, with food left over. The same thing as we see here.

There are, however, a few significant differences between the two events.

First is the location—in chapter 6, Jesus and the disciples were still on the other side of the sea of Galilee, firmly in Jewish territory. Now they’re in the Decapolis, and this crowd is filled with Gentiles.

Second is the disciples’ reaction to the need. In chapter 6, when Jesus mentions that the crowds are hungry, the disciples start brainstorming where to go buy food. This time, that doesn’t happen. Jesus mentions their need, and they respond by asking in v. 4, “How is this possible? How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?”

At first glance, you’d think it’s sort of a dumb question, because Jesus just multiplied food for the crowd in Galilee not long before—they know perfectly well how it’s possible. So why would they ask the question?

Mark doesn’t tell us, but I would be willing to bet that they’re asking the question, not because they can’t conceive of how Jesus could feed the crowd, but rather because they couldn’t imagine Jesus doing it here. It’s one thing to feed thousands of Jews, but Jews don’t eat with Gentiles; Jews don’t serve Gentiles food; it’s not just a miracle that’s required, but a rewiring of the disciples’ entire way of seeing these people.

The final difference is quantity—especially quantity of leftovers. In both passages, we start with a small amount of food, Jesus multiplies the food to feed thousands of people, and there is a lot of food left over.

I know we saw this a few weeks ago in chapter 6, but it’s significant, so I’m going to say it again. In chapter 6, there were twelve baskets of food left over. What does the number twelve remind you of? Of course, if you know the story of Exodus, it will remind you of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Here in chapter 8, there are seven baskets of food left over. Seven, in the Bible, is the number of completeness, of wholeness. 

Seven baskets here, twelve baskets there. And there’s a reason: God knew exactly what he was doing when he planned out how much food there would be left over. Again—he’s making a living parable.

In the first miracle, as we’ve seen, Jesus is in Jewish territory—he’s preaching to Jews, and he’s feeding Jews. Twelve baskets, twelve tribes of Israel. In this second miracle, Jesus is in Gentile territory—he’s preaching to non-Jews, and he’s feeding non-Jews. And this time, seven baskets are left: completeness.

First he comes to Israel, and feeds his people. Then he goes out into the rest of the world, and feeds them in the same exact way. Jesus didn’t come just to save the Jews; he came to save all his people. People from all nations, all tribes and tongues.

Think back to what the Syrophenician woman said earlier. Jesus said,

“Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

And Jesus approves.

Here we see him extending that approval to this entire crowd—he fed the Jews first, multiplying their bread and filling them up, and now he does it for the Gentiles. But it’s not “crumbs” he gives them; just like with the Jews, he gives them an abundant feast. The same feast as the Jews got—everyone filled to bursting, with plenty left over.

The message is simple: the grace that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, came to give to the Jews, isn’t just for the Jews—it is for all peoples, all nations, all tribes. No one is excluded on the basis of who they are or where they come from.

The Miracle We Need

So we’ve seen these three miracles now; each is unique, and each has its own particular message they communicate. You could preach one sermon on each of these miracles, and you’d come out with three different messages.

But Mark tells his story with intentionality; he puts them together for a reason. So what is that reason? What do we see here?

We see, first, that the grace of Christ is not normal—it’s not normal that God would show his grace to those who were not his people (like us), it’s not normal that God would show his grace to his own people who reject him. His grace is not normal.

And yet, his grace is abundantly offered—not just to the Jews, but to all peoples.

What does his grace consist of? It consists, of course, of everything Christ came to do: to be punished for our sin in our place, to give us his perfect life, to forgive us for our sin, to declare us righteous, to give us eternal life. He came to save us from our sin, and that is his grace.

But for us to access any of that—for us to realize our need for a Savior, and turn to him—he needs to give us another grace, and it is this grace that is highlighted in this text.

This grace, offered to all peoples, is a miracle of perception. This grace, offered to all peoples, is not material blessing, but changed eyes, changed ears, changed hearts. The ability to desire God’s presence, to see God’s glory, to hear God’s voice, to proclaim God’s kingdom.

That’s what we see here. He gives the grace to see ourselves differently—to know that we, like the Syrophoenician woman, are undeserving of his grace. He gives us the grace to see him differently—to know that, despite how undeserving we are, he gives us grace, and he gives it abundantly.

I remember one of the first times this ever happened to me. I had grown up in church, so I’d heard the gospel and stories from the Bible all my life; I’d heard thousands of sermons. But I didn’t care; I was disinterested. I did a very good job pretending, but I didn’t actually believe any of it.

Then when I was nineteen I got a job at a local printing company. My particular job was printing things on t-shirts: company t-shirts, event t-shirts, and so on. The company was small, so the owner had set up the t-shirt printing material in his father’s barn, in the middle of the forest about ten miles out of town. And that’s where I’d spend my workdays—all by myself in this barn, in the woods.

I had a little CD player out there so I could listen to things, and one beautiful summer day I put on the only thing I had in my car. It was a Christian musician I kind of liked, so I put it on and it played on a loop all day. And I don’t quite know how it happened, but during one particular song that put particular emphasis on the gospel, this thought came unbidden: You can’t say you don’t believe this is true. You can try, but it’d be a lie. You believe this. You know you do.

I kept trying to work for a while, but I couldn’t: I had to take a break and go outside. I looked up at the trees, at the sky, at the sun shining, and I knew it was true. I couldn’t say for sure exactly what I believed, but I couldn’t truthfully say I didn’t believe God had sent his Son.

It took a couple years to bring me to a full conviction of the truth of the gospel, but on that day, Jesus started the process. He opened my ears, made it so that when he spoke to me through the gospel, I heard him. I had no more choice in the matter than the deaf man after Jesus healed him; he couldn’t choose to be deaf again, and of course, who would want to?

This is what God does—sometimes all at once, sometimes incrementally. He opens our ears to hear his voice, he opens our eyes to see him. And what do we hear him say?

We hear him say, “You don’t deserve my grace. You have sinned against me, and deserve condemnation. But I came anyway. I died anyway. Yes, even for you.”

So what do we do with that? Very often, we feel like we need to wait for this monumental event. But we can learn so much from the Syrophoenician woman. She never had a revelation from heaven—she didn’t hear God telling her to come to Jesus. She saw her need, and she had nowhere else to go.

And that was enough. That was a miracle.

Some of us, whether we’re Christians or not, need to come to the realization that nothing in this world will satisfy our deepest need. This will happen over and over in our Christian lives, because we need a constant reminder of who we are and of who he is. We need to feel the weight of our sin, the weight of our need. We need to fall at his feet and beg him to give us eyes to see, ears to hear. And we need to realize that when we do, he is waiting—not with crumbs, but with a feast.