Here we have another spitting healing. Funny that you don't see too many people these days with "healing ministries" who make spitting part of their ministry!
Again we see the need for the person to be touched by Jesus. We also see Jesus taking the man outside the village. Sometimes Jesus healed someone in full view of a crowd, in particular when the Pharisees or some similar group were trying to trap Him. But at others Jesus took them away from the crowd. In Israel's history there were many times when God led them into the wilderness in order to deal with them.
I think this is the only incident in the gospels where someone is initially healed partially, and then completely healed. Jesus tells him not to tell anyone, not even to go into the village.
Jesus' instructions to people who get healed is very different from the one we have today. If someone is healed we would want them to broadcast the event in order to get people interested in knowing more about Jesus. So are we wrong to do this? Perhaps not, but there are things we can learn from Jesus' approach (surprise, surprise!). Jesus also told demons not to declare who He was, now clearly we are absolutely right to declare who Jesus is, and our failing is not doing this enough. However, we should remember that Jesus' emphasis, as we have seen, was on teaching. The healings etc backed up the teaching. The focus should always be on the truth of who Jesus is.
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