The Most Powerful Word

[Below, you can find live stream video of both of yesterday's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, as well as the text of the sermon shared during our worship. Have a good week!]





John 9:1-7, 13-17, 34-39

Our Gospel lesson for this morning begins with the disciples walking alongside Jesus and, seeing a blind man, asking Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:1)

This is a question that comes straight out of the human penchant for viewing everything from the perspective of the Law, or of judgment. We want to assure ourselves when we see the bad things others endure that such things couldn’t happen to us. Even when we know better, a part of us believes that someone in the afflicted person’s family tree must have committed a terrible sin. We want to be certain that our good behavior will exempt us from the horrors that can come to us in this fallen world.

Jesus’ response must have shocked the disciples.

For starters, He doesn’t accept the premise that the man or his parents are worse sinners than the rest of the human race.

Instead, He identifies the man’s affliction as a kind of opportunity. Jesus says, “This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3)

The blind man was no more and no less of a sinner than the disciples, or than you and me.

But, irrespective of his sin, this blind man becomes an object lesson of the one thing, the one Word, given by God in Christ, that is more powerful than the Law that condemns us to death for our sin.

Jesus approaches the man, makes mud from His saliva and the dirt of the ground, smears the mixture on the blind man’s eyes, and then tells the blind man, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam” (John 9:7)

You remember that back in Genesis, God gave life to Adam, the first man, by scooping up dirt and breathing life into it.

And when Adam fell into sin, God told Adam that death would be the result, “Dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19)

The mud on the blind man’s eyes reminded him and the disciples who saw it that this man and every human being Jesus encountered was a sinner bound for death, each of us subject to the condemnation of God’s holy Law.

But, overcoming the condemnation of the Law, Jesus gives a gift of grace that ignores what punishment the blind man–or the rest of us–deserve for our sin.

Christ gives the man a Word more powerful than the Law. It is a Word of promise, a good news or gospel word, that overcomes the condemnation of the Law. “Go over there to that spot you can’t see, to the pool, and wash the mud from your eyes.”

If I’d been the blind man, I’m afraid I would have argued with Jesus. “Are you out of your mind? What kind of a nut goes rubbing mud on a blind man’s eyes, then tells him to feel his way to a pool of water he can’t see in order to wash it off? What good will that do?”

These are similar to the questions we’re inclined to throw at God and at Christians when told that God saves us in the waters of Holy Baptism or that the bread and the wine of Holy Communion are also Christ’s body and blood. How can good things like forgiveness, new life, and the very presence of God come to us through water, bread, and wine, through ordinary stuff? They can happen because God’s Gospel Word of promise come to us through them!

Amazingly, the blind man heeds this word from Jesus to go to the pool at Siloam and when he splashes the water on his eyes, not only are his eyes clean, but–sinner though he is–he can see!

Anyone familiar with the promises of God, given in Old Testament times, should have remembered at that moment that God had foretold a Messiah Who would bring a Word that overcomes the condemnation of all who trust in Him.

Our first lesson for today contains one of those promises. God says, “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42:16)

To those of us bound by sin and unable to free ourselves, laid low by life, afraid that our sins will eternally alienate us from God, Jesus’ gift of sight to the blind man is a Word of promise to us all: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)

Friends, the God we know in Jesus hasn’t given up on us even when we’ve given up on ourselves.

Even when we think we’re hopeless cases, beyond the reach of God’s gracious love, beyond the reach of His forgiveness.

As long as we are on this earth, Jesus, through His Church, will keep speaking His saving Word of forgiveness, life, and promise to us.

This isn’t a Word we need to go looking for.

We needn’t wonder what we must do to merit it or earn it.

This Word comes to us in the Bible and the Word proclaimed and taught and shared and heard.

It is as close as the water in the Baptismal font and as near as the bread and the wine on the Lord’s Table.

Some of Jesus’ fellow Judeans and their religious leaders, as our Gospel lesson tells us, didn’t see Jesus as the One bringing the promised Word that overcomes sin and death. All they saw was an itinerant preacher from Nazareth who violated the Third Commandment–”Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy”--by working on the Sabbath: mixing His saliva with some dirt.

When the once-blind man insists that only someone from God–a prophet, at the very least–could have performed the unprecedented miracle of giving sight to eyes blinded from birth, he gets excommunicated. He’s no longer considered part of God’s people, no longer allowed to worship at the synagogue or make offerings at the temple.

Back when some of us got thrown out of a Lutheran church body for standing for what we believed to be right and true and of God, we got letters from our former bishops. Mine said that I was no longer considered a pastor, no longer able to preside over the Sacraments, no longer able to preach in the church body of which I’d been a pastor for nearly thirty years. (They didn’t know that I was already on the roster of the North American Lutheran Church.) A colleague who got a similar letter remarked, “I’ve been thrown out of better places.”

Maybe the blind man, thrown out of the people of God had similar sentiments, that he was better off not being part of a group that refused the clear teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures and refused to acknowledge a mighty work of God when even a blind man could see it for what it was!

After the man’s excommunication, Jesus approaches him and asks, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (John 9:35)

This was no idle question on Jesus’ part.

Seven centuries before His birth at Bethlehem, God the Son, Jesus the Messiah, appeared in a vision to the prophet Daniel. “In my vision at night,” Daniel writes in the Old Testament book that bears his name, “I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days [that is, He approached God the Father] and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14)

“Son of Man” was among Jesus’ most common names for Himself.

In our lesson, Jesus is asking the formerly blind man if he believes in the Son of Man.

His mind, will, and heart laid open by the Word of God that already gave him sight, the man asks Jesus, “Who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

When Jesus tells him, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you,” John says, “The man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him.” (John 9:36-38)

It didn’t matter if his parents rejected him as they did in a part of John 9 we didn’t read this morning.

It didn’t matter that the synagogue had thrown him out.

It didn’t really matter if this man was sighted or blind.

That’s because the man now knew he had life with God, that he was made right with God–justified before God–by grace through faith in Jesus.

Jesus had spoken His gracious Word, a Word more powerful than the Law, and by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, he believed and so had life with God that would never be taken from him.

The Lord, Who would be crucified to bear our sins and raised to give us eternity with God, the One Who has authority, glory, and power, had spoken His forgiving Word to this once-blind man and he knew he would live in Jesus’ kingdom forever!

In today’s Gospel lesson, friends, Jesus is speaking this same Word to you!

We are saved by grace through faith in Christ.

And “faith,” the apostle Paul says famously, “comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)

The greatest miracle in today’s Gospel lesson then isn’t Jesus giving the blind man sight.

The greatest miracle happens when Jesus tells the once blind man that He is the Son of Man, the Savior of sinners, and the blind man, by Christ’s Word, believed.

The Gospel Word about Jesus gives us faith in Christ and sets us free from the condemnation of the Law that we all deserve!

My seminary professor and mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, told us about a man who approached him in a state of some agitation after a service at which Pastor Schein preached. “All you did was retell the Gospel lesson!” the man complained. It was as if the man wanted something more than or different from Jesus. He wanted to hear something like five ways to become a better person or, how to be nice. (It seems that many people today would prefer to belong to the church of nice rather than the Church of Christ.) “All you did was retell the Gospel lesson!” the man said. To which Pastor Schein replied, “Exactly.”

Listen, friends, the only Word we have or need is the story of the God Who came to rescue you and me from sin, death, and darkness in Jesus Christ, the Savior Who died on a cross for you and rose from the dead for you. It’s a Word to which we need not and must not add or subtract.

By the power of that Word, the once blind man trusted the Savior Who forgives sinners and gives everlasting life with God to all who believe.

By His Gospel Word, Jesus saves sinners even today to live with God forever!

By the power of His Word, you can repent for sin and trust in Him again today.

When the Word about the crucified and risen Jesus gives you faith in Jesus, you have eternal life with God. No matter what! Amen

The Sermon of the Ashes

[Below is the live stream video of the Ash Wednesday worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, along with the message shared during the service.]



Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Tonight, friends, Jesus tells us not to engage in religious activity that calls attention to us.

Also tonight, we have received the mark of the cross on our foreheads which, if we stop by a store or a filling station on the way home, will be noticed by everyone who sees us.

Are we violating the very commands Jesus gives us in tonight’s Gospel lesson? Let’s talk about that.

The Imposition of Ashes isn’t you being a religious show-off. It’s something else altogether.

As good Lutherans, you know that every sermon, in order for it to be faithful to God, must include both Law and Gospel.

Law and Gospel are the two ways speaks to us in His Word.

It’s God’s Law that convicts us of our sin, showing us that, from the moment we’re conceived, despite God’s good will for us, we are in rebellion against God and we are indifferent to others. This means that we deserve death, condemnation, and everlasting separation from God and from others.

It’s God’s Gospel that comes to us through the crucified and risen Jesus assuring us that, despite our sins, we are justified, made eternally right with God, because, by the power of God’s Spirit-borne Word, we believe Jesus Christ gave His sinless life to cover even our sins on a cross for us.

Paul summarizes the Gospel about Jesus Christ when he says in Romans: “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

Because on this side of our own death and resurrection, when Jesus will call believers in Him from the dead to live with Him forever, we who have been made saints by God’s grace through faith in Christ will keep needing to hear God’s Law and Gospel again and again. As Martin Luther noted, “We need to hear the Gospel all the time because we forget it all the time.” And, as we forget that Gospel, we slip back into a reliance on our good deeds or personal goodness to save us. That course is the way to death.

We don’t receive ashes on our foreheads tonight in order to impress people.

Given current attitudes toward Christian faith, people who see us are more likely to think we’re weirdos than to be impressed with our spirituality or our devotion to Christ.

The ashes are meant to be a sermon to and for those of us who receive them and not for anyone who may see us wearing them.

But what is the content of this sermon in ashes?

After Adam had fallen into sin in the garden of Eden, God told him, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19, ESV)

This is the Law and God spoke it to us again tonight. Like Adam, we have failed to keep God’s Law or live with righteousness. We know this because of the Ten Commandments, the distillation of all of God’s moral law for us, which we constantly fail to obey.

And you never get so old or so advanced in the faith as to not need to be catechized again. So, let me do it for you once again tonight.

God says, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Yet, we’re constantly worshiping other things: youth, health, success, and so on, chasing after them as though they were the end-all and be-all, as they could justify our existences.

God says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Yet, even while using God’s name to pray for our needs and the needs of others, as well as to praise and thank God, we use His name as a punchline or to curse or swear or mislead others.

God says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” a command all about gladly receiving the Word of God. But our Bibles often grow dusty. And we look at our watches on Super Bowl Sundays, wanting to be sure that the service won’t eat into our pre-pre-pre-game viewing.

God says, “Honor your father and your mother,” meaning to honor those in authority, yet we tend to believe that anyone in authority over us is a liar, a thief, an incompetent, or all of the above. Because we want to be God, we’re always sure we could do better than anyone else that God places in authority over us.

God says, “You shall not kill (or murder),” which Jesus says includes not just killing people physically, but also not killing them in psyche or spirit by denigrating them, berating them, or labeling them. We violate this command all the time, it seems!

God says, “You shall not commit adultery,” yet our brains are often a maelstrom of lustful thoughts.

God says, “You shall not steal,” yet we justify conniving to get something for nothing because, after all, “it’s a dog-eat-dog world.”

God says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” yet gossip is our favorite indoor sport.

God says, “You shall not covet,” yet our envy of others’ success, possessions, status, or achievements ruins our moods and our relationships with them and with God. I’ve seen more families destroyed by greed and resentment than by dishonoring parents, adultery, and theft combined!

When the world preaches a cheap gospel, telling us that God doesn’t really care if we heed His commands to love God or love our neighbor or to honor the will of God, the ash on our foreheads is a sermon from God telling us: This is who you are, a dust-bound sinner who can’t keep My Law and because you cannot keep My Law, you deserve damnation.

But there is Gospel–good news–in these ashes too!

The mark on your foreheads is meant to be in the form of the cross.

This is the part of the sermon meant to tell you that while there is nothing you can do to set yourself free of the death sentence you deserve for sin, Jesus Christ, God the Son, has already acted to set you free from that condemnation. Now and for all eternity!

As you’ve heard me say a zillion times before and I will keep saying it as long as I have breath in my body, when Jesus Christ said, “It is finished,” He meant it!

And He meant it for you.

Jesus took the punishment He didn’t deserve to spare us the punishment we do deserve.

Peter, a man who knew what it meant to be caught by God dead-to-rights in his sin and unrighteousness, declares, “Christ…suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18)

And the apostle Paul who knew the power of the crucified Christ to save enemies of God and to save sinners from condemnation and to make them righteous in the eyes of God, says: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” (Romans 5:8-9)

And Jesus, Who would soon be going to His cross to win everlasting life for us, told His grieving friend Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die…” (John 11:25-26) That is what the cross means for us!

That smudgy cross on your forehead is the Gospel Word–the Good News Word–from God to you.

The psalmist wrote centuries before Jesus’ birth: “As a father has compassion on his children…[God] remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:13-14)

What a promise! God grades us on a curve…the Christ curve…the grace curve.

There’s a great scene in the movie, Jesus of Nazareth. Simon Peter is portrayed of being very critical of Levi, Matthew, the tax collector. And in this telling of Jesus’ story, Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son, the tale of the notorious sinner who comes back to the father. After telling it, Jesus looks at Peter, who begins to weep. Peter says, “Forgive me, Master. I’m just a stupid man.” He may as well have said, “I’m just dust.”

God never forgets that about us. He was the One Who formed you from dust. He is the One Who chose to give you life. And He’s the One Who chose to take on dust for Himself and go to a cross to save you from yourself. The cross on your forehead is a proclamation of the Gospel from Jesus’ cross for you!

Jesus Christ, God the Son, died and rose to set sinners free from condemnation and separation from God. We don’t have to do it with our little religious works that we try to tout during Lent. Things like, “I’m going to give up chocolate.” God doesn’t care if you give up chocolate!

God wants you! He wants you! And He saved you! The call of Lent is to turn as He calls you to follow Him and receive life from Him.

So, when the world, the devil, and our sinful selves want to preach only Law to us, damning us, discouraging us, miring us in hopelessness and futility, setting us off on some spiritual self-improvement program designed to prove ourselves worthy of God’s favor, an effort that will always fail, we can say with confidence and hope, “But Jesus Christ died for me. Jesus has done everything needed to make me righteous, to give me life, to make me commendable in the eyes of God. Because of Jesus and because I take refuge in Him alone as my God and Savior, when God looks at me, He doesn’t see my sins, failings, and unrighteousness; He sees only the sinless Jesus Who graciously covers me in His righteousness!”

This dust will live forever with God not because of anything I do or ever will do, but solely, completely, totally because of what Jesus has already done for me at the cross and the empty tomb! I have been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. And I will be made holy, righteous, and acceptable to God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone!

The ashes preach Law and Gospel to us. And the Gospel of salvation of new and everlasting life in Christ will have the final word over the lives and eternal destinies of all who acknowledge their sin and take trusting refuge in Jesus Christ! 

Ann and I bought our gravesites a few years ago. Our ashes will be buried at Sunset Cemetery, just west of Columbus. The thing I love about that is that the day I am raised, I am going to see all the people from the west side of Columbus I knew and loved and shared faith in Jesus with. And then I’m going to look you all up. And we will party for all eternity.

I pray that the sermon preached by the ashes on your forehead is one you hear tonight and always! Amen

Repentance: Changing Our Way of Thinking

[This is the text I prepared for this evening's Ash Wednesday worship at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. But it's not exactly what I preached.]

Psalm 51
You know, sometimes we forget that the Word of God in the Bible arose from specific historical circumstances or specific encounters between God and real life human beings, like you and me.

Take, for example, Psalm 51, which we read responsively a short time ago. It was written by Israel’s King David, later in his reign, sometime after 1003 BC. And it arose from a specific situation.

Open a Bible to 2 Samuel 12. David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his most loyal soldiers, Uriah. Bathsheba became pregnant. David tried to make it look as though Uriah was the father. But that didn't work. So, David made arrangements for Uriah to get isolated and exposed to enemy fire and killed in battle. The king God refers to as “a man after My own heart,” was guilty of adultery and murder!

In 2 Samuel, God sends the prophet Nathan to confront David for his sins. Nathan does it by telling David the story of a poor man who owned a ewe lamb. This ewe lamb was so beloved that both the poor man and his family see the lamb as another one of the children. When a rich man down the road has visitors, he decides that as a good host, he has to throw a big dinner for them. But he doesn’t want to use any of his own flock for the main course. So, he steals the poor man’s ewe lamb and serves it up at dinner.

Look at David’s reaction in 2 Samuel 12:5-6. “So David’s anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb because he did this thing and because he had no pity.”

The king had spoken and rendered his verdict. But there was a question: Who was the man who had done this awful thing?

Nathan gives the answer in verse 7, telling King David: “You are the man!"

He goes on: "'Thus says the Lord God of Israel: “I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping [This, by the way, doesn’t mean that God had given David permission to take these women as his wives. It means that God had given David control over that which his predecessor, in that patriarchal society, had control.]...and [I] gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more! Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? You have killed Uriah...you have taken his wife to be your wife...”’”

Through Nathan, God was telling David, “I gave you blessings you never could have earned or deserved. I did these things for you out of pure divine and fatherly love and mercy. But instead of gratitude, instead of trying to follow the way of life I revealed long ago in the Ten Commandments, you decided to go your own way. Why?”

You know, every time a Christian deliberately flouts the will of God, I’m sure God asks the same question: “I went to the cross for you, endured the beating, the punches, the spitting, the insults, the nails, the thorns plaited into a mocking crown, and a slow agonizing death...all for you. I took the punishment for sin you deserved. I rose from death to open eternity up to you. I did all these things to give you a new life freed from the power of sin and death. I set you free to become the person I made you to be. And I want to spend eternity showering blessings on you. So, why would you block Me from your life by deliberately doing anything that I have shown you is the way of death? Why?"

Having been confronted for his sins, David might have reacted in a number of ways.

As king, he could have simply ordered Nathan’s death. It wouldn't have been the first time David had ordered the murder of an innocent man, after all. But David didn’t do that.

Or, he might have made excuses, like the ones I've heard people make in counseling sessions through the years:

“My wife hasn’t been fulfilling my needs.”

Or, “You must understand, Nathan: Bathsheba and I really love each other.”

Or, “If I hadn’t ordered Uriah’s death, the poor old devil would have died of a broken heart anyway knowing that his wife loved me and not him.”

But David didn’t make excuses either.

Or, after hearing Nathan out, David might have set up a commission to discern, given the ways the world had changed and grown more complex since God gave the Ten Commandments, whether sin and murder might not be sins any more. “If our consciences are bound to a different idea,” David might have said, “it could be that now, when we know so much more than God did hundreds of years ago, adultery and murder are OK.”

But David didn’t lash out at Nathan, didn’t make excuses, or appoint a commission to cover the truth with lies.

Look at how David did react, in verse 13: “I have sinned against the Lord."

That's it.

Here, David is exemplifying what the Bible--both the Old and the New Testament in their different languages--calls repentance.

In the Greek of the New Testament, the most common word for repent is metanoia. It means to have a change of mind.

The person who repents--or lives the lifestyle Martin Luther called, “daily repentance and renewal”--is saying, “I got off track. I was thinking my way. I was following my own sinful nature--the nature that David mentions in Psalm 51:5, when he confesses, ‘I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.’ But now, aware of the sins I’ve committed by following that way, I’m asking God to change my mind, to change the way I’ve been thinking. I’m asking God to help me think His way, not mine.”

This is what Paul is talking about in Philippians 2:5 when he exhorts followers of Jesus: “Let this mind be in you which also was in Christ Jesus.”

God wants us to take on the mind of Jesus: a mind that doesn’t look out just for what I want in this moment, but that wants what God wants, even when what God wants isn’t pleasant for me.

To repent is to confess that when God and I disagree about anything, God is always right and I am always wrong.

After David said plainly, “I have sinned against the Lord,” Nathan told David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.”

This all reminds me of what Paul says in Romans 6:23: “...the wages of sin is death [death is what we sinners deserve], but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Only the God we meet in the crucified and risen Jesus can set us free from death--separation from God--and hell.


And that can only happen when we repent and trust in Christ, relying on Christ alone to give our lives meaning.

On this Ash Wednesday, as we remember that we are creatures of God formed from the dust and that we will return to dust again one day, we also remember this: If we will change our minds, turning to Christ and to the way of God, rather than to the ways we prefer, this dust will rise again.

We can live each day knowing that while God will never force Himself on us, if we will keep turning to Christ--living, as the New Testament puts it, "in Christ"--nothing will ever separate us from Him.

And we can trust the promise that Jesus made to the sister of His friend, Lazarus: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me, will never die" (John 11:25).

Had David steeped himself in God’s Word, remained in fellowship with other believers, or been praying the day he first set eyes on Bathsheba--in other words, if he had allowed God to reign over his thoughts--the terrible chain of events that followed never would have taken place.

That’s one lesson we can learn from David’s experience: Life with God belongs to those who seek live life God's way and not our own.

But there’s another lesson, a lesson about God’s grace and goodness: If, when we have sinned, we can forgo our tendency to block out the truths of God we don’t like and instead, let God change our minds, acknowledge our sins, and trust in God to do the right thing--even when it means consequences we don’t like--our relationship with God can be restored.

Life with God belongs to all who repent for sin and trust in Christ. May repentance and renewal be our way of life not just on Ash Wednesday or during Lent, but every day we live on earth. Amen.