Trinity 12
Beloved. St. Paul tells us [Rm. 10.17] faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. That means that the only way we can come to faith and receive the forgiveness of sins and salvation and one day heaven is by God’s word coming to us—us hearing it. We can never come to faith and salvation apart from God’s holy word; we can never, left to ourselves and our own devices, come to know the true God, come to know that He, Jesus, is our Savior from sin, death, devil and hell. The glorious thing is that in and through the very word that we hear, the Holy Spirit is at work to create faith so that we believe the word and receive the gifts Jesus won for us and is offering/ giving us in that word. That’s why today’s Gospel account is such a vital account for us to ponder. Of course with every miracle of healing, Jesus was showing that He, the true God and almighty and eternal Creator, entered into His creation to heal and to restore it; to undo the work of the devil and sin. But in today’s Gospel account this was brought to the fore in a very dramatic way. A man who was deaf and had a speech impediment was brought to Jesus. This was a very special attack of the devil on this man because without the ability to hear, how could God’s word come to this man? How could this man come to know the true God and His Savior? This was the devil’s attack not only on this man personally, but also on the Kingdom of God. Luther comments: The kingdom of God is based upon the Word, which cannot otherwise be grasped or understood but through these two members, ears and tongue, and it reigns only through the Word and faith in the hearts of men. The ears take hold of the Word, and the heart believes it; but the tongue speaks and confesses as the heart believes. Therefore if the tongue and ears are removed, there is no noticeable difference between the kingdom of Christ and the world. And, of course, by His one divine word, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”), Jesus relieves this man from the devil’s attack; He undoes the devil’s worst that hinders the word of God from coming to him, lest he believe. Here is also a glorious promise to us that Jesus is looking out for His kingdom, the Church; that the devil will not prevail against Jesus and His Church. Jesus will so work it that His word goes out into the world to be heard so that the Holy Spirit can and will create faith in Jesus in the hearts of people so that they are spiritually healed and rescued out of the devil’s kingdom and brought into Jesus’ glorious kingdom, the Church.
But not only does Jesus heal/ open the ears of this man in the Gospel, but He also loosens the man’s tongue so that he can speak—the praises of God and included in that praise of God is telling others the Good News about Jesus. Again, this is connected with the growth of the Kingdom of God: the only way the Kingdom of God, the Church, grows is by the word—the word that is heard and spoken.
But, there is that curious line towards the end of the Gospel: Jesus gave the people strict orders to tell no one, but the more he did so, the more they kept proclaiming it. If His kingdom, the Church, is built/ extended by proclaiming the word, why would Jesus here forbid it? Was Jesus using “reverse psychology”—that is, by telling them not to tell, He really wants them to tell? Hardly! Nowhere else does Jesus work that way. And if He did, everything He said would then be suspect: where He says to tell maybe He wants us to do the opposite; where He says “This is My body…this is My blood” maybe He means the opposite. But here, Jesus gave the people strict orders to tell no one certainly because the people did not have a right and full knowledge of Him. They would certainly tell the people about the great miracle worker but not about the world’s Savior from sin and hell. Jesus did not want the wrong/ incomplete message about Him going out.
Although the people sinned—and sinned grievously—by going off halfcocked, blatantly disobeying Jesus, it is, though, in a sense “refreshing” in this day of apathy that affects so much of Christendom. Indifference to the word of God and the pure doctrine is gripping much of Christianity. In our day of so-called political correctness and of so-called tolerance where everything is to be tolerated except the holy Christian faith/ where freedom of religion means just within the four walls of your church but outside of those walls you have to act and believe “secular” like “everyone” else, we are suffering societal pressures to keep silence—or, if you will, to give ourselves a speech impediment; and to keep the word of God to ourselves and really in effect to make those around us—our family, friends, co-workers, neighbors—deaf, deaf to the word of God and by this stop the spread of our Lord’s kingdom, to deprive those around us from the gifts of forgiveness of sin and eternal life in heaven.
But, dear Christian, do not be afraid to live out your faith in your everyday life. Living out your Christian faith day in and day out in the world is to the glory of God and is a great blessing to those around us. That’s what St. Paul writes in our epistle: Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent by ourselves to claim that anything comes from us; rather, our competence is from God. He also made us competent as ministers of a new testament. Yes, we have the pressures of the world around us to keep quiet about our faith; yes, we have our own inner weaknesses and fear of speaking about our faith and living our lives as Christians and standing out for it; there’s that temptation to try to “blend in” and not to be the religious kook. To be sure, we also don’t want to be like the crowd in today’s Gospel going off halfcocked and doing more harm than good to our Lord’s cause. But don’t be afraid to live out your faith in everyday life.
As we live out our faith in our everyday lives, it is to the glory of God. Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God. We are who we are as Christians because of God’s work on us and in us first. It is Jesus, by the work of the Holy Spirit, who gives us this confidence to live out our faith and not to be afraid in doing so. By Spirit worked faith we know that we are God’s dear children, heirs of heaven, forgiven our sin. We are bold; we are confident because we know that in Jesus things are right between us and God. And that we live out our lives in faith, confidently, means that we are relying on the Holy Spirit to guide and lead us and to strengthen us to live that life of faith and the works that flow from faith. This gives glory to God because it is a life lived relying on Him and a life by which others can see Him at work in us and on us. As we live out our faith, we are turning away from self and our wants and turning toward the Lord and making His will our will. This marks us as different; and as different, people will wonder why we are different. St. Peter [1 1 Pt. 3.15] teaches us: But give your hearts completely to Christ as Lord. And always be ready to answer anyone who asks you to explain the hope you have...As we point to Jesus and His work, God is glorified by others for the change He worked in us and by us for His grace and mercy toward us.
Look at the Lord’s grace and mercy to us. Our text: Not that we are competent by ourselves to claim that anything comes from us; rather, our competence is from God. Notice: the Lord comes to us first—without any of our merit or worthiness first. In the things of God, in spiritual things, we are not competent. Our natural powers do nothing to help us toward God. He comes to us first!
Here in our text St. Paul is talking about him being the great apostle; he is talking about his co-workers as preachers of Jesus. But this also applies to us in our various callings as we live out our lives of faith where the Lord has placed us and called us to serve Him. Dear Christian, it is a great privilege to be called to be a Christian; God is bestowing upon us His most gracious call and all His heavenly and spiritual gifts in Jesus. And this is His pure grace toward us! We did nothing to deserve it, to “make” God “have to” call us. And that is why it is such a great privilege to live out our faith, live a life of faith and good works/ in love of the Lord striving to live a life in accord with the holy Ten Commandments. How can we be afraid to live out our lives as Christians? Our faith is a gracious gift of God—the holy the almighty Creator of heaven and earth—to us.
As we live out our faith, what is really happening? Not that we are competent by ourselves to claim that anything comes from us; rather, our competence is from God. He also made us competent as ministers of a new testament. Just as God made St. Paul an apostle and his co-workers as preachers of Jesus competent, so also He makes us competent in the areas and places He has called us to live out our faith. We need not be afraid to live out our faith; we need not be paralyzed in fear that we won’t be able to—because why? St. Paul in our text: our competence is from God. He also made us competent as ministers of a new testament. He makes us competent in whatever area and wherever He has called us to serve Him. Every good work that we do, everything we do to the glory of God proceeds from the Holy Spirit in us. Every good thought that we have, has God as its author and the new self, the Christian, in us wants to/ delights in doing it. Elsewhere St. Paul writes [Ph. 2.13]: God…works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. Follow the leading and prompting of the Holy Spirit in you/ the desire to do good because that is God leading and strengthening you to live out your faith to His glory. Yes, it may also happen that by doing the Lord’s will and living out our faith, we will suffer as a result. But in our sufferings for the good/ living out our faith God is glorified.
We also notice something else in today’s Gospel: They brought a man to him who was deaf and had a speech impediment. They pleaded with Jesus to place his hand on him. Here was these peoples’ faith in action—they brought that deaf man to Jesus to heal him. And here is another reason why we dare not be afraid to live out our faith—because of the great blessing that others can receive. Only as we live out our faith can others come to know the true God and Jesus as their Savior. Since, as we heard from St. Paul before, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God how can others come to faith unless we tell them the good news about Jesus? Telling the good news about Jesus in simple ways to those around us is part and parcel of living out our faith. Part of telling that good news about Jesus is the daily day in and day out way we live our faith—as we go to church, as we make time for daily devotions, as we aren’t afraid to mention Jesus and our faith in our conversations, as in the midst of suffering and trial we are joyful in and relying on the Lord.
Dear Christian, we have a great treasure in the Gospel and our faith which believes and receives it. Look at the way that St Paul describes it in the epistle: the spirit gives life, the ministry that brought righteousness has even more glory, how much more glorious is that which is permanent. What truth and glory is ours in the Christian faith—and it is all ours by God’s grace through the gift of faith He gives us. We have life—a glorious eternal life that begins now when the Holy Spirit brings us to faith by the word that we hear, for most of us we heard that word in baptism, and that life will continue in heaven after we die an earthly death; we have a righteousness—the forgiveness of sin and the holy perfect righteousness of the sinless Son of God which He gives us and which our faith receives; and this is certain and sure. Dear Christian, let us not be afraid but boldly live out our lives as Christians to the glory of God. To do so is a great blessing for us and for others. INJ