WHY DID JESUS SIGH?

There are little details in the Bible that are easy to read right past. One of them is found in the Gospel of Mark. Twice Mark tells us that Jesus sighed.

That may not seem very important at first. We know Jesus spoke, prayed, wept, became angry, showed compassion, and rejoiced. But why would the Holy Spirit make sure we knew that Jesus sighed?

The first time is in Mark 7. Some people brought a man to Jesus who was deaf and had difficulty speaking. Jesus took the man away from the crowd, put His fingers into the man’s ears, touched his tongue, and then Mark tells us:

“And looking up to heaven with a deep sigh, He said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ that is, ‘Be opened!’” Mark 7:34

Jesus healed him immediately.

But before the healing, Jesus sighed.

The man’s deafness was not a problem for Jesus. He did not sigh because the healing was difficult. Christ had already healed diseases, cast out demons, and even raised the dead. There was no question about whether He had the power to heal this man.

That sigh seems to show us something about the heart of Jesus.

Jesus was standing face to face with one of the results of living in a fallen world. God did not create mankind for disease, suffering, pain, and death. Sin entered the world, and suffering came with it. Jesus saw more than a medical problem standing in front of Him. He saw a man who had lived with the effects of a broken world.

Jesus cared.

Sometimes we picture Jesus almost as though He moved from miracle to miracle without being personally affected by the people He met. Scripture paints a different picture. He had compassion on people. He wept with those who grieved. He cared about the hungry. He noticed the sick, the rejected, and the helpless.

The sigh in Mark 7 gives us a small glimpse into that compassion.

But there is another sigh in the very next chapter, and this one comes for a different reason.

The Pharisees approached Jesus and began arguing with Him. They demanded a sign from heaven to test Him. By this point they had already seen and heard plenty. Jesus had healed the sick, cleansed lepers, cast out demons, fed thousands, and performed miracles before crowds of people.

Yet they wanted another sign.

Mark tells us:

“Sighing deeply in His spirit, He said, ‘Why does this generation seek for a sign? Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.’” Mark 8:12

Again Jesus sighed, but this time the problem was not physical suffering. It was unbelief.

That should make us think.

In Mark 7, Jesus sighed as He stood before a suffering man. In Mark 8, He sighed as He stood before hardhearted men who refused to believe what was already in front of them.

One sigh came in the presence of human suffering. The other came in the presence of stubborn unbelief.

The Pharisees did not need more evidence. Their problem was not that God had failed to show them enough. Their problem was that they had already decided what they were willing to believe.

People can still do that today.

Someone may say, “If God would just prove Himself to me, then I would believe.” But sometimes the real issue is not a lack of evidence. The real issue is that the person does not want to surrender to what the evidence demands.

Jesus warned about this kind of unbelief many times. A person can see the truth, hear the truth, and still refuse the truth.

There is something else worth seeing in these two passages. Jesus was not cold toward either situation. Human suffering touched Him, and unbelief grieved Him.

The same Jesus who sighed over the deaf man is the Jesus who knows our suffering today. Hebrews tells us that we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. He understands pain in a way we sometimes forget.

But the second sigh should also cause us to examine ourselves. We can become so accustomed to hearing God’s Word that we stop responding to it. We can keep asking God for another sign, another answer, another confirmation, while ignoring what He has already clearly said.

Sometimes we do not need God to show us something new.

We need to believe and obey what He has already shown us.

Two sighs. Two very different situations. One reveals the compassion of Christ toward human suffering. The other reveals His grief over stubborn unbelief.

Neither detail was put in Scripture by accident.

Sometimes even a sigh tells us something about the heart of Jesus.

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“What I write is not for everyone, but what I write is meant for someone.” – Dean Butler

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