The Spirit converts those who don’t push Him away

Sermon for Trinity 12

2 Corinthians 3:4-11  +  Mark 7:31-37

Tying together the Epistle and the Gospel that you heard this morning, I’d like you to think for a moment about the Old Testament ministry of the priests, referred to in the Epistle as the “ministry of the letter.” They ministered under the “covenant” or the “testament” of the Law, which was engraved with letters in stone at the time of Moses. The “terms” of that covenant were simple, though they weren’t easy to carry out. God, for His part, would keep Israel as His people, bless them, prosper them, defend them from enemies and from disease, and give them the land of Canaan forever, and they, for their part, would keep His Law, which included the moral laws of right and wrong, summarized in the Ten Commandments, and also the Civil law governing their society, as well as the Ceremonial Law, which outlined the ministry of the priests, the sacrifices, the design of the tabernacle with its furnishings, the rites and rituals they were to carry out, and the rules and restrictions surrounding clean and unclean. That covenant was given glory by God, glory in the shining face of Moses after he would talk with God at Mt. Sinai, but also glory in the priestly vestments, and the beautiful sanctuary, and the reverence with which the ministry was to be treated.

But, as Paul points out in the Epistle, it was a ministry of death, or a ministry characterized by death. Constant sacrifices, thousands and thousands of them every year. A constant outpouring of animal blood. But more than that, it was a ministry of death, because it couldn’t save anyone from death. It made wonderful promises for obedience, but terrible threats of punishment and death for disobedience. No one had the ability to keep the terms of the covenant. The terms of the covenant were, as St. Peter later once called them, “a yoke on our necks which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear.”

But embedded in the Old Testament—embedded in all the death, in all the blood, in the need for the priests to keep sacrificing over and over and over, embedded in the design of the tabernacle with its inner veil separating the people from the ark of the covenant (that is, the presence of God), embedded in the special ministry of the High Priest who alone could enter God’s presence and make atonement year after year—was a message that the first Testament was, by nature, inferior, that it was temporary, that it was only a shadow of what was to come. It carried within itself a picture of its own eventual replacement by something better, by something more glorious, by something that could give life. Embedded in the Old Testament was the prophecy of the New Testament and the ministry of the New Testament, which is referred to as the “ministry of the Spirit” in today’s Epistle.

The New Testament ministry was not about letters engraved in stone. And the terms of the covenant were much different. It was a ministry of the Spirit! Of the Word! Of promise! Of faith! Christ is the High Priest who performs this ministry, the service to God, in mankind’s place, and who then sends ministers to preach the terms of the covenant and to bring people into it. And in this new covenant or Testament, our part is not obeying the Law in order to be God’s people. Our part is repentance and faith, while God’s part is forgiving sins to all who believe.

But! We can’t come up with faith by our own reason or strength. It isn’t in our power to believe God’s promise or to come to Christ. No, by nature, we are like deaf people who can’t hear God’s promises, like people who can’t speak straight, who can’t call out to God for salvation or speak His praises.

What ever shall we do, then? How shall we “do our part” in the new covenant when we are, by nature, unable to do our part? Well, God has seen to that, too, and we learn a lesson about it in today’s Gospel, where we see Jesus carrying out His glorious New Testament ministry, when a man is brought to Him who can’t hear and who can’t speak and who can’t do anything to change his situation. But Jesus can! Today we learn about the glorious ministry of the New Testament through which God Himself converts those who don’t push Him away.

We’re told that the deaf man was brought by some people to Jesus for healing. That’s how it works in spiritual matters, too. Those who are dead in sins and trespasses don’t go seeking out Jesus, seeking out salvation from the true God. So the Christian invites. The Christian encourages. The Christian tells the unbeliever, “You have a serious problem, you know? Judgment is coming, and you’re not right with God. But come along with me! I know Someone who can help!” Many don’t accept that invitation, but sometimes God works in the lives of people to humble them, to frighten them, to make them aware that they aren’t all right as they are, and the invitation is accepted.

We see Jesus’ kindness and compassion toward this stranger who is brought to Him with ears and tongue that don’t work right. Those infirmities, like all infirmities, should scream loudly in our ears, “This world is not right. I’m not right. I’m not as I should be.” Where we see physical ailments, whether in others or in ourselves, we should learn the lesson that we all suffer from a serious spiritual ailment called sin. We all need saving. We all need God’s help.

Jesus’ method of healing this deaf man is like a little sermon in itself, with a very simple message that even a deaf man could comprehend, and with a deeper meaning for all of us to learn from.

Jesus took him aside from the crowd: He doesn’t see the man as an inconvenience, but as a person who has individual value before God.

He put His fingers in the man’s ears: I know your problem, but I’m here to help you with it. And since the Holy Spirit is called in Scripture the “Finger of God,” we should understand something deeper here. The only way for a person with non-working spiritual ears to be converted is by the work of the Holy Spirit. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit comes and works on hardened, deadened hearts through the Word about Christ that is preached. We can’t soften our own hearts or come to Jesus on our own. But the Spirit comes in the preaching of the Gospel and persuades us that, yes, we have a problem, but that Jesus is who He says He is, true God and true Man who came into the world to save sinners.

Jesus spit and touched the man’s tongue: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. The deaf man couldn’t hear a word Jesus spoke. But he could see well enough. He could see that spittle coming from Jesus’ mouth and understand that his salvation was coming from there. Your healing comes only from the mouth of Jesus, from the Word of Jesus, from the body of Jesus, who took on human flesh that He might bear the sins of mankind on the cross. He is the one who loosens your tongue so that you’re able to confess your sins, confess your faith in Him, and to praise God for His goodness and kindness.

Jesus looked up to heaven: A sign of prayer, because every good and perfect gift comes from above. Jesus looks to His Father for all things. The deaf man should know that his healing comes from God, not from himself. So we, too, should look to God for salvation through the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

Then Jesus sighed: a visible sign of compassion. And a sign of prayers answered. A sign of peace.

And then He spoke the word that’s so easy to lipread: Ephphatha, Be opened! Then at once the man was able to hear, understand, and speak a language he had never heard.

Now, what was the deaf man’s activity in all of this? There was no activity, no cooperation. He didn’t ask the Lord Jesus to come to his aid. He didn’t work along with Jesus. He was purely passive in this healing. The only way he wouldn’t have been healed…is if he had resisted the Lord’s work, if he had pushed Jesus away as He was trying to heal him, which he didn’t do.

So the Lord Jesus works on all people through His Holy Spirit. The Spirit is always working through the Word of God when it’s preached, working to convert unbelievers into believers, working to open man’s ears and heart to hear and believe the Word of God, to believe that the God of the Bible is the one true God, to believe that they are condemned sinners, to repent, and to believe in Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins. And the heart that believes then confesses that Jesus is Lord and worships his good and merciful God, proclaiming the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

In this work of conversion, turning an unbeliever into a believer, man is purely passive. God does the work. But if a person stubbornly resists His Holy Spirit and pushes Him away, then he will not be converted.

So hear the Word of God and take care how you hear, that you don’t stubbornly resist the Holy Spirit or push Him away. But receive His work. Repent and believe! And once you’ve been converted, then you are given new powers and new strength to work together with the Holy Spirit, still in the weakness of the flesh, but still able to do good and to want to do good things.

This is what makes the New Testament so much more glorious than the Old. The Old led to death, because no one could keep it, and there was no power in the Old Testament to enable people to keep it. But the New Testament, which was embedded in the Old, leads to life. Because it focuses not on man’s work, which is always imperfect, but on God’s work, which is always perfect. It points people to Christ Jesus for refuge, and He gives it. And it has the power to enable people to do what they couldn’t do on their own, to believe in the Lord Jesus, to receive the Holy Spirit, and then to walk in the new life that the Holy Spirit enables and empowers. Praise God for this glorious ministry of the New Testament! And as the Holy Spirit works on you through the Gospel to sanctify you in love, don’t resist Him by turning back to sin, by joining together with the godless world in depravity, by living in impenitence. But let Him do His powerful work in you. Hear and believe! Speak! And pursue the will of God in things! Amen.