3rd Sunday after Epiphany + Matthew 8:1-13 + January 22, 2017
Order of Holy Communion - Pg. 15
Hymn # 16 Blessed Jesus, at Thy Word
Introit
Worship Him, all you His angels. Zion hears and is glad.
And the Daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments, O Lord. (Psalm 97:7b paraphrase, 8)
The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; Let the multitude of isles be glad!
He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.
Light is sown for the righteous, And gladness for the upright in heart.
Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous, And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name. (Psalm 97:1, 10b–12)
He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.
Light is sown for the righteous, And gladness for the upright in heart.
Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous, And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name. (Psalm 97:1, 10b–12)
Collect for the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany
Almighty
and Everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities, and in all
our dangers and necessities stretch forth the right hand of Thy majesty
to help and defend us; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who
liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world
without end. Amen.
Readings
Sermon on Matthew 8:1-13
Grace
and Peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1) Both
of the men that approach Jesus in the Gospel lesson have maladies that are far
worse than physical afflictions. The first man is a leper. Leprosy in the
Scriptures probably covered a wide array of skin diseases, but in every case it
is something communicable and deadly. The Lord instructs Moses and Aaron in Leviticus 13:2-3, “When a man has on the skin of his body a swelling, a
scab, or a bright spot, and it becomes on the skin of his body like a
leprous sore, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his
sons the priests. The priest shall examine the sore on the skin of the body;
and if the hair on the sore has turned white, and the sore appears to be deeper
than the skin of his body, it is a leprous sore. Then the priest shall
examine him, and pronounce him unclean.” With that
pronouncement of “unclean” the leper was to be segregated from everyday life.
He was to live outside the camp of Israel, or outside the city in what would
come to be known as a ‘leper colony.’ This separation was necessary so that the
leprosy was contained, lest it spread to more people and infect them. This
means that those deemed “unclean” by the Lord’s representatives was unable to
worship in the Tabernacle, unable to offer sacrifices to the Lord for the
atonement of sins, and unable to enjoy the fellowship of the Old Testament
church in her Divine Service. Being “unclean” was as much a spiritual condition
as it was a physical condition. “Uncleanness” is separation from everything,
the inability to touch or be touched by other humans, or by God in His holy
house.
2) The second man that approaches Jesus comes as a surrogate for a suffering
man. A centurion, a Roman captain, and probably a pagan, approaches Jesus in
Capernaum. He says, “Lord, my servant is
lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented.” (Matthew 8:6) At first glance this affliction seems purely
physical. The man is paralyzed, unable to move. He has been segregated from
others by being rigid in his bed. Like the Leper, this man is separated from
ordinary life by this physical disability. But this man is more than paralyzed.
He is “dreadfully tormented,” the
Centurion says. Torment is a spiritual condition. The Greek word St. Matthew
uses here for “tormented” is the same word which Demons often use when
confronted by Jesus in the Gospels. In Mark 5:7, Jesus confronts a demoniac and
the demon recognizes Jesus as the Only-Begotten Son of God and shrieks, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of
the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.” The
torment this demon was referring to was the torment of hell, the suffering of
God’s eternal wrath toward sin and rebellion. This is the fate of every demon
and their master, the Devil. St. John sees a picture of their eternal suffering
in Revelation 20:10, “The devil, who deceived them, was cast into
the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And
they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
The torment that awaits the Devil and his angels, and all those who reject the
Lord Jesus’ Christ, is a physical and spiritual torment. It is eternal
separation from God and an eternal enduring of the full wrath of God against
sinners.
3) So
this man, lying paralyzed on his bed, is “dreadfully
tormented.” He is struggling against not only his physical debilitation,
but an evil conscience. When we say “evil conscience” we mean that it feels as
if God is set against you. This man sees his paralysis as a judgment from God
for his sin. As he lays rigid in his bed his conscience convicts him of his
sinful actions. All men are born with a natural knowledge of God and part of
that natural knowledge of God reveals itself in the conscience. All men know
that there is a God and that God will judge our actions at some point according
to some standard of righteousness. The man’s conscience believes that this
paralysis is God’s judgment and a visible manifestation of God’s wrath. The
conscience that is not healed by the Gospel is continually thinks that God is
against him, and habitually running from any thoughts of God, because those
thoughts are only convicting and can only drag that soul further into the
depths of Hell. The one who suffers from an evil conscience is the one of whom
the proverb is spoken in Proverbs 28:1, “The wicked flee when no one
pursues.” This spiritual torment, the evil
conscience, is, as Luther commented in a Letter to Jerome Weller, “truly a
descent into Hell.”
4) We
see these same maladies at work in our flesh, do we not? The ritual impurity
and uncleanness of the Old Testament is a picture of the unrighteousness of the
human heart and actions which flow from the heart. Jesus says that we are by
nature sinful and unclean in Matthew
15:18-19, “The things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a
man ‘unclean’. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery,
sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” This means that even the best of our works
are unrighteous before God, as Isaiah says in his sixty-fourth chapter, (v.6),
“All of us have become like one who is
unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” How easily we give the members of our body over to be enslaved by sin, so
that our members become “instruments of unrighteousness.” The answer for such
spiritual uncleanliness isn’t a more rigorous self-discipline or the injection
of more pious platitudes throughout the day. In the Old Testament there was
only one way to remove the ritual impurity. Hebrews 9:13 says, “The
blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are
ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean.” That blood cleansed them outwardly, ritually. The author of Hebrews goes
on in the next verse to say, “How much
more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered
himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to
death, so that we may serve the living God!” Our spiritual uncleanliness,
the stain of unrighteousness that resides on our hearts can only be cleansed by
the blood of Jesus, which earns the atonement for all of our sins and the
sinfulness of our hearts.
5) The “dreadful torment” of the
Centurion’s servant is a picture of what the Devil does to Christians when they
do fall into sin. He torments them with an evil conscience and accuses you day
and night for what you have done, or for what you have failed to do. One of his
weapons against you in the evil conscience, which can only see God as your
adversary. The Devil wants you to think that the Lord is out to get you and
looking for reasons to punish you for your sins. When the Devil has his hooks
in you, everything that happens to you is seen as wrath from God. This
conscience cannot truly pray, because this conscience thinks of God as enemy.
No one asks their enemies for relief. The soul that lives in the Hell of an
evil conscience is downtrodden by Satan and stands accused day and night before
the throne of God. This causes a spiritual paralysis, making us unable to pray,
unable to fear, and unable to trust the Gospel, that God is merciful to us in
Jesus Christ and desires to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.
6) In
contrast to these spiritual maladies stands faith. Faith hears the Gospel and
believes that it is ‘for me.’ Faith apprehends Christ by His Word. Faith hears
the promises of Christ and the promises about Christ grabs hold of them,
saying, “Jesus is mine and all His gifts are mine.” The Leper comes to Jesus in
faith. “Lord, if you are willing, you
can make me clean.” The Leper approaches Jesus with this word because He
believes, against all earthly odds, that Jesus IS willing to cleanse His
spiritual malady. He certainly believes that Jesus CAN heal him. But he
believes that Jesus WANTS to heal him. The leper’s faith is rewarded, too. “I am willing. Be cleansed.” And by this
Jesus teaches all of us that He wants to forgive your sins. He wants to cleanse
you from your unrighteousness. He desires to absolve your sins when you repent
of them and mourn over them in Godly sorrow. He is willing now just as He was
willing then. In contrast to the torment of the centurion’s servant stands the
faith of the centurion. He will not even allow Jesus under His roof because He
understands how authority works. Speak the word and it will be accomplished.
The faith of the centurion believes that Jesus is willing and is able to
perform such a great work of releasing his servant from the physical, and
spiritual paralysis. Faith in the Gospel is the only thing that can drive out
our guilty, ashamed, and evil consciences. The Gospel is the only Word can calm
the “dreadful torment” that rages in our hearts and minds when the Devil
attacks us with our sins, present and long past.
7) In the Gospel Jesus gives Himself to you, so that you might know that He is
FOR YOU and not against you. He shows this to you, and gives you faith to
believe that Gospel, by absolving you and removing your sins. They can no
longer torment you. They are gone. The temptations which well up from the
depths of your own heart no longer need to frighten you, for Christ speaks His
Gospel to you in order to strengthen you, so that you do not so easily give
your members to be slaves of unrighteousness and impurity. The Gospel, heard,
read, pondered, and meditated upon, gives you Jesus, your God and Lord who is
FOR YOU and not against you. And to fortify this faith in your heart all the more,
He gives you His very body and very blood in His Sacrament, given and shed FOR
YOU for the forgiveness of all of your sins. He wants to show you over and over
again that “He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) He gives you this faith
through the Gospel preached and in the Sacrament so that you might be healed
today, and every day, all the way up to your dying day, through faith in Christ
Jesus, which believes, no matter what the world or your conscience might say,
that He is a God for you and not against you. “Lord, if you are willing, you
can make me clean.” “I am willing.” Go in peace. Amen.
May the peace of God which
surpasses all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
our Lord. Amen.