Sermon for Trinity 12

2 Corinthians 3:4-11  +  Mark 7:31-37

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus healing a man’s inability to hear and to speak. We need to understand what an important miracle that was. When God wanted to bring the universe into existence, He spoke, and what He said happened. The universe didn’t have to have working ears. When God wants something to happen, He has the almighty power to speak and to make it happen, whether anyone is there to hear it or not. Here’s another example. When Jesus wanted to raise Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus didn’t need to have working ears. Jesus simply used His almighty power to make it happen. But when God wants to deal with people, to convict them of sin, to persuade them to trust in Him, to teach them, to guide them, to strengthen them, He doesn’t use His bare, almighty power. Instead, His Holy Spirit works on people’s hearts through the words that they hear. So you can see why today’s miracle was so important.

And it’s also important for us, because there is also a spiritual kind of deafness and speechlessness that affects unbelievers, but that also affects believers. God has a lesson for all kinds of deafness and speechlessness in our Scripture readings today. So he who has ears to hear, let him hear!

The deaf man in our Gospel had some friends who cared about him, who wanted him to be able to hear. So they brought him to the One who could help. They asked Him to place His hands on the man, to heal him that way. But Jesus does much more than that. He takes the man aside and communicates with him using signs, symbols, and actions that the man can receive through his working senses, in order to teach us all some key spiritual truths.

First, He puts His fingers in the man’s ears. Your ears can’t be healed from the inside, Jesus shows him. The finger of God has to enter into your ears. Faith in the heart comes by hearing the Gospel. And it’s no coincidence that Jesus elsewhere refers to the Holy Spirit as the “Finger of God,” because it’s the Holy Spirit who enters the ears through preaching to work faith in the heart.

Jesus spits and touches the man’s tongue. What does that teach us? Your bodily healing comes from the body of Jesus. So does your spiritual healing. Through His body and the word of His mouth, the man’s tongue would be healed. Through the suffering and death of Jesus’ body, and through the Word that goes out from His mouth, a sinner’s tongue is also healed, as the Spirit of Christ enters your ears through preaching and creates faith, by which He applies the bodily suffering and death of Jesus to you. He even places the body and blood of Jesus directly on your tongue in the Sacrament of the Altar, freeing your tongue now to give thanks to God, to praise God, and to confess Christ Jesus before men.

Jesus looks up to heaven and sighs. Sighing in Scripture is a symbol of the prayers we utter to God in our troubles and sorrows and sighings. Very simply, Jesus teaches the deaf man to look to God in faith in every trouble, to seek God’s mercy for the sake of Jesus, to cast all his sorrows onto the Lord, because the Lord cares for us.

And then Jesus speaks the word of healing which any lip-reading deaf person could easily discern, “Ephphatha!” Be opened! And the man’s ears were opened, and his tongue was loosed. And the people were amazed.

But here we note a problem with the ears of the people who were there. Jesus commanded them sternly not to tell anyone about this healing. They heard His command with their ears. And then they went on to ignore it, and to use their tongues to do the opposite of what Jesus commanded. Now, we may think their intentions were noble. After all, they were telling everyone how Jesus “does all things well,” which was true, and which was intended to praise Him. But this is like when King Saul offered a sacrifice to God which God expressly told him, through the prophet Samuel, not to offer. And because of his disobedience, God stripped the kingdom away from his family, teaching us that you can’t praise God by doing the opposite of what He says, no matter how good your intentions were. You praise Him by keeping His word. Period.

There are several lessons for us in this simple Gospel, in addition to the obvious one that’s present in every miracle, that Jesus has divine power, and that He is kind and good and merciful to all who seek help from Him.

First, as I already alluded to, we have here a beautiful picture of how God the Holy Spirit works on our natural spiritual deafness and speechlessness, on our natural inability to know God until He reveals Himself to us in His Word, our natural inability to believe the Word we hear, and our natural inability to call upon God in true faith, because of the sinful nature, the original sin with which we’re all born. But then the Finger of God, the Holy Spirit, enters through our ears through the Gospel. That’s why Paul, in today’s Epistle, refers to the New Testament ministry as the ministry “of the Spirit,” or the ministry that brings the Spirit. The Old Testament was written on stone tablets. It consisted in commandments and laws, and it brought condemnation and death to Old Testament Israel as the Law revealed their sins and their desperate need for a Savior. It does the same thing to us as it reveals our sins and our desperate need for a Savior. But the New Testament ministry proclaims the Gospel, that Christ suffered and died for our sins, that Christ is the propitiation for our sins, the thing that makes God the Father happy with us and that makes us acceptable to Him. The ministry that brings the Spirit proclaims faith in Christ, and then, as the Gospel enters our ears, the Spirit works the very faith that’s required for us to be reconciled to God. And then our tongues are also healed at the same time, to pray to God rightly, through faith in Christ, claiming only Christ as our Mediator and Advocate before God. Our tongues are freed to give thanks to God and to praise God and to confess Jesus Christ as Lord, as we said before. As Paul writes to the Romans, For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. All that is the work of God the Holy Spirit, the Finger of God, to open our ears and to loose our tongues.

But there is also an application here for those who already believe, for those whose ears have already been opened and whose tongues have already been loosed.

It is entirely possible for ears that have once been opened to become shut again, and for tongues that have been loosed to become tied up again. If your mouth is full of rocks, there’s no room left for nutritious food, is there? So, too, with the ears. If your ears are full of earthly things, then there’s no room for the heavenly Word of God to enter. What do you listen to all day? What fills your ears and penetrates your thoughts? The news, that sounds worse and worse every day? The complaints of those around you? The false teaching of false teachers? The “sounds” that come from your own heart? How does it affect you? It can be depressing, can’t it? To the point of obsession, even. Sometimes we fail to hear God’s Word at all, and that’s dangerous for our faith.

Or, you can have a case like we have in our Gospel, where the crowds were actually listening to the Word of Jesus, commanding them to tell no one of the miracle He had just done. But it went in one ear and out the other, didn’t it? They heard, but they didn’t process. They heard, but they didn’t obey. They seemed to have some degree of faith in Jesus. “He does all things well!”, they cried. But that faith was weak, threatened by their ongoing deafness to what He actually said, and their refusal to do what He said. That’s how destructive false doctrine takes root, because people are sometimes eager to listen, but they filter it through their own human reason or through false beliefs that are lodged in their hearts. People are sometimes eager to listen, but their itching ears crave preaching that agrees with what they already believe, that agrees with what they want to hear.

And then there’s the tongues of believers. Tongues that may still be quick to criticize, quick to complain, quick to demean, to mock, to ridicule, quick to tear down, but slow to pray, slow to praise, slow to give thanks, slow to confess Christ before the world, slow to build up your neighbor, slow to encourage, slow to defend your neighbor, slow to speak up against the wrong and for the right in this world.

So we, too, need the ongoing ministry of the Spirit, the ministry that brings the Spirit, the ministry of the Gospel. That’s why our service is filled with the Word of God. That’s why the sermon is preached. So hear with your ears! Repent and believe! And then, obey God’s commandments! Receive the body and blood of Christ in your mouth and then use your loosened tongue to call upon God through Christ, to thank, to praise, and to confess! Use your tongue to encourage one another, and to defend your neighbor! Speak up for what’s right! Speak against the wrong! And know that, in all of it, you have the powerful Spirit of God working on you and in you by His Word, and working through you as He dwells in your hearts by faith, giving you all the strength you need to believe and obey, to pray, to praise, and to confess Christ in the world. It may not seem like much to you, these simple acts of hearing and speaking. But they are the very instruments God will use to defeat the devil and to make His kingdom come. Amen.

Source: Sermons

Sermon for Trinity 12

2 Corinthians 3:4-11  +  Mark 7:31-37

We come to this Gospel every year of the healing of the deaf man with the speech impediment. And the simplicity of it could lead us to conclude, there’s not much here worth spending sermon time on year after year. Clearly this account teaches the same two basic things as every healing miracle recorded in the Gospels: first, that Jesus is the promised Christ, the Son of God, sent by God into the world, and, second, that Jesus, and therefore, our God, is not only all-powerful, but full of compassion—compassion for sinful human beings in our misery, as we live with the consequences of our sins, whether they’re specific consequences for specific sins, or, as in the case of the deaf man, the general consequences of being sinners in a world that remains under God’s curse.

Jesus’ identity as the Christ and His compassion for sinners in their misery is certainly on display in the account before us today. But there is more for us to notice and to learn, too. Let’s walk through the text together one more time and hear what the Holy Spirit is saying.

They brought to him a man who was deaf and had trouble speaking; and they urged him to put his hand on him. This deaf man had some people who cared about him enough to bring him to Jesus, since Jesus was the only One who could help with his infirmity. What might we learn from that? Well, who else can help our unbelieving friends with their sin? Who else but Jesus can heal the breech between the sinner and God and save a person from eternal death? No one, of course. And knowing that, as you do, take the example of these friends of the deaf man and do what you can to bring the people in your life to Jesus. You do that by bringing them to church with you, if they’ll come, or by bringing them with you to talk with the pastor, or by encouraging them to watch one of our services online. You also do that by living as such lights in the world, as such good examples of Christian people, filled with the hope and joy and peace of the Gospel, that the unbelievers around you come to recognize that you have something they need.

And Jesus took him aside from the crowd by himself and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit and touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened!” There we see the compassion of Jesus and His willingness to help anyone who is brought to Him. There’s no charge, no fee, no demand. All that’s necessary is already there. A needy person who recognizes his need and who looks to Jesus for help. So it is whenever sinners are brought to Jesus for spiritual healing. There has to be a recognition of need on the sinner’s part, an acknowledgment that you’re not “doing just fine” before God. You haven’t lived according to His commandments, not really. You haven’t worshiped Him as He ought to be worshiped, nor have you loved your neighbor as He commands you to love. You regret having sinned against God. You know you deserve only His wrath and punishment. But you’ve heard that Jesus can help, that He wants to help, and so you look to Him for the help He’s promised. We call that repentance and faith. That’s all it takes for Jesus to work the healing of the forgiveness of sins.

For the deaf man, Jesus went through some visual steps to heal him personally, placing His fingers in the man’s ears, visibly spitting and touching the man’s tongue, looking up to heaven, sighing, and speaking that word that any lip-reader of Aramaic could easily understand: Ephphatha! Be opened! —all motions and signs that communicated to the deaf man that Jesus was the One sent from heaven to have mercy, not just on those sinful men out there, but on this very man who has Jesus’s fingers in his ears and on his tongue. So God has sent His ministers out into the world to preach the Gospel, not just to a general audience out there, but to individuals, to baptize individuals, and to pronounce forgiveness to individuals, and to give individual Christians the body and blood of the Lord to eat and to drink in His Sacrament. The ministry of the Spirit is carried out personally, even as Jesus performed this healing miracle personally.

And immediately his ears were opened and the bond on his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly…And the people were utterly astounded, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf to hear and the speechless to speak.” And there it is, one more piece of evidence that this Jesus, who was traveling all over the land of Israel, was the promised Christ, the Son of God, one more divinely given indicator that they should, therefore, listen to Him, take His words seriously, believe Him, believe in Him, and do what He said.

The same goes for you who have believed in Jesus. He went on to do far greater things than healing people’s deafness, using far greater sign language than He did with the deaf man. He gave Himself up to those who hated Him, allowing Himself to be tortured, unjustly condemned, and hung on a cross. He went willingly to His death and then rose from the dead. And, as if that weren’t enough, He sent and continues to send His Holy Spirit to give power to the Gospel when it’s preached, so that people actually believe it and are made children of God by it. Recognize that listening to Jesus and believing what He says is a far greater miracle than the healing of deaf ears, a miracle performed by God the Holy Spirit.

Look at the world we live in! Being a Christian in the western part of the world became “normal” for many centuries. If you lived in Europe, if you lived in the United States, you were almost expected to be a Christian. Believing and quoting from the Bible was considered normal. Going to church every Sunday was considered normal. Living according to God’s commandments was considered normal. Not that everyone did, of course, but there was nothing striking or strange about being a Christian. That’s not the case anymore. Now to do any of those things makes you the strange ones, and in some cases, can even make you enemies of the state. So if anyone actually believes the Gospel and is ready to lay down life and limb to live according to it, then recognize that for the miracle it is. It’s God who has opened that person’s ears and heart to believe with the heart and to confess with the mouth.

Likewise, if it seems impossible that anyone in this world of ours should come to faith in Jesus, should recognize the demonic lies that fill our society and turn away from them to the truth of the Christian Gospel, know that nothing is impossible with God. Faith may be rare in these last days, but the Gospel is still the power of God for salvation to all who believe.

So don’t take the miracle of faith for granted, for yourselves or for others. If you allow your own ideas, your beliefs, your earthly goals to drown out God’s Word, then you will lose the gift of hearing that God has miraculously given you. And you can’t confess clearly the righteousness of God with your mouth if you aren’t living according to the righteousness of God with your life. You need to keep hearing the Word of God, keep praying, keep reading and studying and gathering around Word and Sacrament as often as you can, because the miracle of faith is not a “once given always there” kind of miracle. Faith requires sustenance, and God will provide what your faith needs, but you need to use the gifts He provides. And even as faith has enabled your tongues to sing God’s praises here in church, so let your tongues keep speaking His praises when you step out from these doors. Let your hands and your arms and your feet and your legs also behave in a way that’s consistent with what your mouth confesses. Then the world will be amazed at what the Gospel of Christ was able to accomplish with someone like you or me.

You’ve come here again (or tuned in here from afar again) this morning because you believed that Jesus could help you. He can. And He will. Let your ears be opened to hear His Word! Let your tongues be loosed to sing His praise and to confess Him as Lord! Let the healing of the forgiveness of sins be yours! And let it produce the ongoing healing of sanctification in your lives! Amen.

Source: Sermons