The Life of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels
WANDERINGS IN DECAPOLIS
The Life of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels
WANDERINGS IN DECAPOLIS
Lesson Plan:
1. Travels of Jesus in Syria and Decapolis (v 31)
2. The Story of the Deaf and Dumb Man (vs 32-37)
3. An Acted Parable for Modern Ears (Matt. 13:9; Ezek. 12:2)
4. Feeding of the Four Thousand (8:1-10)
Lesson Setting:
Time: Summer of A.D. 29, directly after the Syophenician story of the last lesson.
Place: Decapolis, a region southeast of the Sea of Galilee, near which lake these events took
place.
Place in the Life of Christ: Soon after the crisis in Jesus’ life cause by the murder of John the
Baptist, which led Him to avoid remaining long at a time in Southern Galilee where many of His
mighty works and much of His teaching had been done.
Research Thoughts: Trace on a map the travels of Jesus at this time. Where is Decapolis? Meaning of the name. Why did Jesus avoid Galilee? Different ways of hearing. What keeps us from hearing God’s voice? What not to hear. How not to hear. What to hear. How to hear.
Scripture Reading: Mark 7:31
1. Travels of Jesus in Syria and Decapolis
v 31 ... “And again departing,” after healing the Syrophenician woman’s daughter “from the coasts,” borders, “of Tyre and Sidon.” The R.V., using a different Greek text, reads “and came through Sidon” ... “unto the sea of Galilee.” Jesus went northward to Sidon, thence eastward through southern Syria, crossing the Jordan, thence southward till He came to Decapolis and that part of the district which bordered on the southeast shore of the Sea of Galilee. The exact route is not given. Some think that He took the great road from Sidon to Damascus, and thence southward to Decapolis.
v 31 ... “Through the midst of the coasts,” borders, “of Decapolis.” Decapolis: The word means ‘Ten cities.’ It was a league of ten Greek cities in Palestine, east of the upper Jordan and the southern part of the Sea of Galilee. From the days of Alexander the Great there were Greek cities in Palestine. They formed a federation of these Greek cities in the midst of a Semitic population in order to preserve the Greek civilization and culture at the time, B.C. 62 or 3, when Pompey brought them under the Roman government, which conferred upon them municipal freedom, the right of coinage and a league for defense against common foes. Civilization: In Christ’s time the Greek civilization and commerce of this region were at their zenith. “The modern traveler wandering over the ruins of temples, theaters and baths at Gerasa, Philadelphia and Gadara (cities of Decapolis) is impressed with the glories of the Grecian life in Palestine during the period of our Lord’s ministry” (Hastings’ Dictionary of the Gospels). Population: The population was a composite one, of Greeks, Syrians, Jews and Romans. The expression “And they glorified the God of Israel,” with which Matthew closes his account of Jesus’ work here, seems to imply that the multitude were foreign to the race and the religion of the Jews. Work: Jesus’ work in Decapolis is described by Matthew (15:29-31). At first Jesus went up into a mountain and sat there with His twelve disciples. Sitting was the usual position of a teacher, implying that He was instructing and conversing with the twelve. While thus engaged, great multitudes gathered around Him, having learned that the wonderful healer and teacher was there; for they came “having with them the lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and they cast them down at his feet; “And he healed them, insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb speaking, the maimed whole, and the lame walking, and the blind seeing: and they glorified the God of Israel.”
Scripture Reading: Mark 7:32-37
2. The Story of the Deaf and Mute Man
Among those that were brought to Jesus for healing was “one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech” (v 32). He was not absolutely mute, but was unable to utter intelligible sounds as contrasted with ...
v 35 ... “he spake plain.” He was practically mute. Most dumbness is the simple and direct result of deafness. Hence in our Deaf and Mute Schools many deaf people can be taught to speak, and of these, those who can learn to read what others are saying by watching their lips, can carry on an intelligible conversation. But in this case it is implied by the word ‘impediment,’ “the sting of his tongue”, and by the signs Jesus used in the cure, that there was some physical defect in his organs of speech in addition to the deafness. Note: The vivid, delightful manner in which this cure is related by Mark. It cannot be improved upon. How He Was Brought To Jesus? He was brought by friends who loved him, and were interested in him. We cannot help feeling that there was something especially engaging about the young man, his circumstances, or abilities. His friends ...
v 32 ... “beseech him to put,” lay, “his hand upon him,” being assured that if Jesus did this the cure would follow. Jesus’ Method of Cure:
v 33 ... “And he took him aside from the multitude.” Why? We are not told. Perhaps to secure privacy and prevent popular excitement. Perhaps to prevent the external miracle from eclipsing the more glorious miracle of grace. Perhaps another reason is implied in the command of Jesus that that he should tell no man (v 36) [which see]. Perhaps most of all to bring the man into closest touch and nearness to the heart of Jesus, away from all that could distract his thoughts from the spiritual blessings Jesus would bring to him. Our quietest times are our growing times. Jesus then ...
v 33 ... “put His fingers into his ears, and He spat, and touched his tongue.” Jesus thus spoke to the man in the language of the deaf and mute, the language of signs. The man could see, but could not hear even if Jesus spoke. So Jesus shows by putting a finger of each hand into the deaf man’s ears – as if boring through any obstacle within – that the hearing comes from Jesus, Himself; and by touching His own tongue with His finger and carrying to the tongue of the other, that the power of speech is the gift of the Son of God. It is true that deaf and mute folks can tell very interesting stories simply by the language of signs. One who travels extensively, has no doubt run into people who scarcely know a word of the other’s language, yet become quite well acquainted; answering questions, defining words, and all by signs; almost as good as using spoken words.
v 34 ... “And looking up to heaven.” Another expression of the sign language, showing the afflicted man that the healing power was the gift of God, that Jesus belonged to heaven and would lead His patient to God and to the heavenly life. The faith of a deaf man needed all the support that visible signs could give him. For he had had almost no human help in his knowledge of God and religion.
v 34 ... “He sighed” in pity and compassion for the sorrows and burdens of men, made vivid by the case before Him. So He groaned over the grave of Lazarus. It is the special case of need, physical or spiritual, which makes the world’s sadness real to us. The deaf man could understand this.
v 34 ... “And saith unto him, Eph-pah-tha,” an Aramaic word of the language familiar to the common people of Palestine, meaning “Be opened.”
v 35 ... “And straightway his ears were opened,” etc. The cure was complete “he spake plain.” Jesus ...
v 36 ... “charged them that they should tell no man.” Doubtless, for the same reasons that made Him give the same charge to the ruler at Capernaum whose daughter was raised from the dead (Mk. 5:43). Jesus would have been so overwhelmed with healing work that He could not have done the work essential to His mission. Hence having quietly withdrawn the deaf man from the crowds before the healing, He now sends him quietly away in another direction with the command not to tell anyone till Jesus has left the vicinity.
v 36 ... “But ... so much the more a great deal they published it.” They did not understand the reasons why Jesus laid this command on them. Out from the lips of the multitude there swelled a hymn of praise such as is not recorded elsewhere ...
v 37 ... “He hath done all things well,” which has remained a fit expression of the Healer’s glory.
Scripture Reading: Matthew 13:9; Ezekiel 12:2
3. An Acted Parable for Modern Ears
Matthew 13:9 ... “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear”
Ezekiel 12:2 ... “They have ears to hear, and hear not”
Physical Deafness Is A Real Calamity: To live amid all the infinite variety of sounds with which our air is filled, amid heavenly harmonies, all the powers and varieties of music, the songs of birds, the music of spheres, the voices of friends, the hundreds of thousands of words each with its own meaning – and not hear a sound or echo of it all, to dwell ever in vast, ever-during, solitary stillness and unbroken silence, to live in a world that is mute. But spiritual deafness is worse than that. The whole wide universe is full of the voices of God that may fill our spirit with celestial music. All nature is uttering its voices of instruction. “The heavens declare the glory of God.” “Day unto day uttereth speech.” “Wisdom crieth aloud in the street.” “A thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a whisper thereof, in thoughts from the visions of the night.” God’s providence is continually speaking to us, so are history and experience, and “the still small voice” of conscience amid the earthquake and storm of life. “Yet still there whispers the small voice within, Heard through Gain’s silence, and o’er Glory’s din; Man’s conscience is the oracle of God” (Bryon). The luring voices of hope, the warning voices of sorrow, the echoes from our own past, the cries of the heart, the siren voices of the tempter, the harsh voices of the consequences of sin – all these and more are echoed and re-echoed in the Word of God, and the life and love of Jesus, reinforced and made mighty by the Spirit of God speaking to our inmost souls.
Powers of Hearing Limited: Sound is produced by vibrations of the air. The limits of hearing are different in different people. The range of hearing musical notes is such that the best ear covers about eleven octaves; but an auditory range limited to six or seven octaves is not uncommon. If the vibrations number less than sixteen a second we are conscious only of separate shocks, but not of a musical tone. “If they exceed 38,000 a second the consciousness of sound ceases altogether. The sounds available in music are produced by vibrations comprised between the limits of 40 and 4,000 a second” (Tyndall). Some ears are sensitive to certain sounds but deaf to others. Nothing is more surprising than to see two people, neither of them deaf, one complaining of the penetrating shrillness of a sound, while the other maintains there is no sound at all. In his Glaciers of the Alps, Tyndall states that he was crossing the Wengern Alp with a friend. “The grass at each side of the path swarmed with insects, which to me rent the air with their shrill chirruping. My friend heard nothing of this, the insect-music lying quite beyond his limit of audition.” Now this fact of limits to the range of hearing is equally true of our spiritual hearing amid the vast universe of spiritual voices. Some spiritual ears are dulled, and hear only voices of business or selfishness, or sensual pleasures. Others, like saints and prophets, are keen to hear the stillest small voice of God, and notes of heavenly music, and a multitude of voices speaking to every part of the soul.
How Does Our Spiritual Hearing Become Dull? – (a) By letting the noises of this world, the absorption of sensual pleasures, drown all the melodies of worship, love, goodness, righteousness, patriotism, and all that touches the higher qualities of the soul. Illustration: A dying, despairing man, addressing one under whose ministry he had sat for twenty years, said, “I have never heard a single sermon!” The minister, who had known him for years as a constant hearer, looked astonished, fancied that he was raving. But not so. The man was in his sad and sober senses. “I attended church,” he explained; “but as soon as you began the sermon, I would always begin a review of last week’s trading, and during your sermon I anticipated and arranged my business for the next.” “Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, With such accursed instruments as these, Thou drownest Nature’s sweet and kindly voices, And jarrest the celestial harmonies?” (Longfellow, Arsenal at Springford). (b) Whoever disregards the voice of God to his soul, God’s invitations and warnings and ideals, and calls to the best life, will learn in time not even to hear them; as disregarding the alarm bell will soon cause the sleeper to fail to notice it at all. (c) Disobedience to God’s commands hardens the heart, so that one becomes confused as to what is right or wrong. Harden your heart to the appeals for help from your brother and soon they will no longer appeal to you, and the rumble of excuses will take their place. How many of God’s commands are actually unheard and unnoticed, in the roar of custom, fashion, the ordinary movement of the world.
How We May Increase Our Power of Hearing? – By being careful to listen to the voices of God, and obey them. As we seek to listen we find a larger range, we hear new voices from Nature, from experience, from the higher regions of the spirit, from art and literature, from love and service. Our ears become more delicate, our range higher, the variety greater, all beckoning us on. Note: This is the way to grow – to grow larger, broader, higher, and better. It is the way to perfection. It is the way to heaven. It is the way to become acquainted with God. The more voices of God one hears the fuller must be his knowledge of Him. Note: Hearing is the way to speaking. Those born deaf are mute. The more we listen to God, and all His creation physical and spiritual singing sweet fragments of the songs above, the more we can tell others of these better things. What Christians need most of all is to hear more and more clearly the thousand voices of God. Overtones: The quality of tone of any instrument and of the human voice depends not merely on its fundamental note, but on what are called “overtones.” It is not possible to sound a string as a whole without a coexistence with it of various smaller vibrations of different higher tones. It is this union of high and low tones that enables us to distinguish one musical instrument from another. A clarinet and a violin, for example, though tuned to the same fundamental note, are not compounded; the auxiliary tones of the one are different from those of the other. It is these auxiliary vibrations which give the quality to the human voice. If these are harmonious the voice is sweet and attractive; if they are discordant the voice is hoarse or rough. Now we, as listeners to the spiritual voices all around us, make our characters according to the kind of voices we hear. Those whose main character is right, tuned to the fundamental Key of Love, may yet by overtones of temper, narrowness, pride, coarseness, spoil the natural sweetness of their lives. So sometimes those who are fundamentally wrong, selfish at heart, often give forth sweeter overtones. It is our business to see to it that our piety, our devotion to God and to right causes are not made disagreeable by wrong overtones, but that we shut out all discords, and live the music of heaven.
Scripture Reading: Mark 8:1-10
4. Feeding of the Four Thousand
The crowds continued to throng Jesus for three days, in great numbers. By this time they had eaten all the food they had brought with them. Jesus therefore “called His disciples” (v 1) together in consultation; and said ...
v 2 ... “I have compassion on the multitude ... If I send them away fasting to their own houses (home) they will faint by the way: for divers (some) of them come from far.” Then follows the story of this miracle which is so similar to the feeding of the five thousand that there is no need of comment beyond what is said in connection with that miracle, except upon the few different details. The two are so similar that some imagine that they are varying accounts of the same event. But Professor Gould, in the International Critical Commentary on Mark, well says that “if the real object of miracles was to meet some human need, then the recurrence of like conditions would lead to a recurrence of the miracle. And in the life of Jesus, with its frequent resort to solitary places, and the disposition of the multitude to follow him wherever he went, the emergency of a hungry crowd in a place where supplies were not to be obtained would be certain to recur.” In this case there were seven loaves, instead of five. They were what remained of the apostles’ own supply of food, not brought by a little boy. The giving of these to the multitudes, was the giving away of all they had to live on; and they themselves might have to faint by the way. To give these to the people required both faith and warm hearts filled with compassion. In this miracle a different word is used for baskets from that used for the baskets in which the fragments were gathered from the five thousand.
v 8 ... “Baskets” here, ‘spuri’das’, used in both accounts of this miracle, is said to denote baskets of coiled or plaited materials, cords or reeds. Sometimes baskets of this sort were of considerable size. It was in a basket of this kind that Saul made his escape over the wall of Damascus (2 Cor. 11:33). Large provision baskets or hampers. In all four accounts of the feeding of the five thousand, the word ‘Kophi’nous’ is used. These were hand baskets of various sizes. After this Jesus and His disciples entered into a boat, and sailed west to some part of Dalmanutha, on the west coast of the Sea of Galilee, several miles southwest of Capernaum and below Magdala toward Tiberias, about the center of the western coast of the sea. The exact place is unknown.
Compassion on Those In Need: Those thronging faces were particularly eloquent, for so many of them were suffering faces. There were the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others, all cast down at Jesus’ feet. All Eastern crowds are full of sad sights, and it is only in our happy Christian lands that one can look upon a great throng and one’s heart not be wrung. Christ, as always, “had compassion on them (Matt. 14:14), and healed them. All the healing, teaching, and feeding of that memorable day sprang from that pity in the heart of Christ.
Conclusion: As the disciples of Jesus, we should feel such compassion for all that are in need, whether near us or in other lands. One of the proofs that we are in Christ, faithfully serving Him, lies in this question: What is being done for the suffering, hungry, and those in distant lands who are in need of the bread of life? Our Small Resources; Our Great Task: You have only seven loaves, it is true; but take these seven and feed the multitude. You will find they are enough. You are only a weak, harassed, tempted, unheroic soul, set in the midst of very trying and uncongenial circumstances, it is true; but take just what you have and are, and believe resolutely that it is sufficient for these great things. Giving Seven Loaves of Spiritual Bread; Receiving Seven Baskets Full; More to Give: As the widow’s oil increased, not in the vessel but by pouring out; and as the barley bread multiplied, not in the whole loaf, but by breaking and distributing; and as the grain bringeth increase, not when it lieth on a heap in the garner, but by scattering upon the land, so are spiritual graces best improved by distributing them abroad.
