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

More Power to Share

Five mornings a week, I try to begin my days with a Quiet Time in which God speaks to me through His Word and I ask Him to help me to respond. Here are what God seemed to be telling me today.

Look: “Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah.” (Acts 9:22, NIV)

Saul, once the persecutor of the Church, encountered the risen and ascended Jesus on the road to Damascus. He was heading to that city with papers from the temple authorities in Jerusalem authorizing him to move toward the excommunication of any his fellow Jews who confessed faith in Jesus as the Messiah/Christ. But rendered blind and helpless by his meeting with Jesus, Saul came to be a believer in Christ. Under the nurturing hand of Ananias and other church leaders in Damascus, Saul began receiving what amounted to catechetical training and, in no time, was preaching of the Gospel of new life through faith in Jesus Christ.

He meets with skepticism at the synagogue. “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?” people ask (Acts 9:21). This reminds me of the skepticism Jesus was met with at His hometown synagogue in Nazareth in Luke 4:22: “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” Skeptics always want to cut the things of God--whether it’s God enfleshed like Jesus or Saul, a former enemy of Christ who proclaims Christ, like Saul. People do this in order to elude the lordship of Jesus.

But in verse 22, we’re told that in the face of skepticism, “Saul grew more and more powerful.” This rendering is OK, but it hardly does justice to how Luke, in the Greek in which he wrote Acts, expresses things. A more literal rendering is: “Saul however, was all the more empowered.” Σαῦλος δὲ μᾶλλον ἐνεδυναμοῦτο. That last word, transliterated into English as enedunamouto, carries the meaning of was empowered. The danger of the NIV translation is that it makes it seem that as Paul spoke, he gained greater confidence in himself and became more powerful.

But that’s not what that verb implies at all! What Luke is saying is that Saul was being filled with power from an outside source. Saul had nothing to do with the power that was enabling him to prove that Jesus is the Messiah. That was and to this day, is the work of the Holy Spirit in believers willing to share Christ and His Gospel with others.

We see how the power of a Christian’s witness grows as they make themselves available to share Christ in two separate incidents recounted in the Gospel of John.

In John 4, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman by a well outside the village of Sychar. After Jesus tells her everything about herself, she runs into the village and speaks to people she had earlier been avoiding. She starts simply by inviting these people who had been gossiping and ignoring her to come and see a man who told her everything about herself. She ends by broaching the possibility that Jesus may be Messiah.

In John 9, Jesus heals a man born blind. The religious authorities are in an uproar and ask the now-healed man to tell them what happened. As the veracity of his story is challenged and as his own fearful parents leave him to fend for himself, the blind man becomes increasingly bold in proclaiming Who the Man Who healed him must be.

In each instance, the two who dared to say a good word about Jesus in the face of skepticism and opposition, even threats in the case of the once-blind man, grew bolder in their proclamation. They became more powerful.

I think more is going on here than the growing certainty that comes to us when we repeatedly rehearse something. That verb, enedunamouto, tells me that the more we lean on the truth of God’s Word about Christ, the more we share it, the more the Holy Spirit empowers us to share that Gospel word.

In Acts 1, the risen Jesus, just before He ascends to heaven, tells the apostles to wait in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spirit to to come to them before sharing the Gospel. They do, the Spirit descends at Pentecost, and they proclaim the Gospel. And the more they proclaim it, the more power--power to convince others, power to sustain the proclaimer, power to confound skeptics (Acts 9:23)--comes to those who proclaim or share the Gospel.

Listen: Here, Lord, I feel that You’re telling me not to give up on proclaiming the Gospel. I need to proclaim the Gospel, not myself. I need to do so boldly and lovingly and not give up on doing so. I need to encourage the Church to do the same thing. As we do, You will give our witness more power: more power to convict and convince (John 16:7-11), more clarity, more ability to confound those who are skeptical, critical, or even enemies of Your Gospel.

Respond: Today, I make myself available to share Your Gospel with others. Help me to do it with boldness and humility (Acts 4:29). In Jesus’ name.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Aiming Toward, "MIssion Accomplished!"

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]


John 17:1-11
Please pull out the Celebrate insert from your bulletin and look at today’s Gospel lesson, John 17:1-11. Keep it handy.

In this lesson, Jesus does an extraordinary thing: He lets us listen in on His personal prayer to God the Father.

Now, I don't know about you, but there are things in my personal prayer time that I want to keep strictly between God and me. I don't want anybody listening in.

But Jesus has no secrets. The Word made flesh, is an open book.

The entire Bible, in fact, reveals that God has always been an open book. The New Testament book of Romans reminds us that, “…what can be known about God is plain…, because God has shown it…”

We see God's openness in other ways. The Bible affirms, for example, that God’s law—His will and His commands for humanity—has always been written on our hearts, giving all of us a strong hint, long before we even hear the Name of Jesus, that there is a God Who made and cares about us.

But more than that, God has taken the time and effort and sacrifice to live out His love for us and make it possible for all who turn from sin and believe in Him to live with Him eternally. God has lived His love for us out loud for everyone to see!

In the prologue to his account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, John the Evangelist says, “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

John goes on to say of Jesus, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, Who is close to the Father’s heart, Who has made Him known.”

Jesus has no secrets. Jesus is in the disclosing business.

So, what exactly does He disclose to us in today’s Gospel lesson?

First: He discloses a heart filled with celebration.

One of my nephews, Andrew, is graduating from high school. There’s going to be a celebration later today. The unspoken theme will be: mission accomplished. That's the theme of all graduation parties!

(And sometimes, their theme is "Shwew!")

In His prayer in today's Gospel lesson, Jesus takes a victory lap. He exults in His accomplishment on earth even before He goes to the cross or is raised from the dead.

Jesus knows that He already is what He was sent into the world to be: “the way, and the truth, and the life,” the only way for human beings to know God and the only way to the life that the life-giving God of the universe gives to those who repent and trust in Christ.

Look at what Jesus says He has already accomplished at the moment He utters His prayer.

• In verse 6: “I have made Your Name known to those whom You gave me…” 
• In verse 7: “Now they know that everything You have given me is from You…” 
• In verse 8: “for the words that You gave to me I have given to them, and [they] know in truth that I came from you…”

Jesus’ earthly life had a mission. He came to make God known. All that he said and did was bent to that purpose.

In this prayer, Jesus rejoices in the strength that God the Father and God the Holy Spirit had given Him to accomplish it all and He prays, in essence, “Father, mission accomplished!”

As He prays, Jesus knows, of course, that He has one thing left to do on this earth, one more definitive act disclosing Who He is and Who God is.

He must die.

He must give His life for those given to Him by the Father.

This is the ultimate thing that Jesus discloses to all who are open to the truth. Martin Luther said that if we want to know what God is like, we only need to look to Jesus on the cross.

And that’s why with jubilation, Jesus, God on earth, intent on doing God’s would, on the Friday we call Good, having fully disclosed the heart, mind, and will of God, decide on the cross the moment at which He would breathe His last, call out to the Father, “It is finished,” (“My mission is accomplished.”)  and then give His life to God.

The Father wouldn’t let this be the end for Jesus, though. The sinless Savior Who offered His perfect life as the perfect sacrifice for our sin could not remain dead. He had to be raised up so that all people would know about their chance to turn to Him (turning away from their sin), entrust their lives to Him, and live with God eternally.

So, in this prayer, Jesus celebrates what He accomplishes for the glory of the Father and for our eternal good.

And then: Jesus discloses a request to the Father.

In verse 5, Jesus asks, “Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had in Your presence before the world existed…”

The glory of God was displayed in Jesus in many ways. It was seen when...

• He fed 5000 people with a few scraps of bread and some fish
• He turned water into wine
• He raised His dead friend Lazarus from the grave
• He gave sight to a blind man
• He empowered a paralyzed man to walk again.

The glory of God was seen in Jesus too, when at the waters of the Jordan River, where He was baptized, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, the Voice from heaven said, "This is My Son; listen to Him!"

And yet the glory of God disclosed in Jesus on all those occasions and others we might name, were mere hints, dim reflections, brief tastes of the glory Jesus once enjoyed as God the Son in the halls of heaven before the creation of this world!

Now, in this prayer, having accomplished all that He had set out to do in taking on human flesh, Jesus asks the Father to give that glory back to Him again.

The Father will do just that when He raises Jesus from the dead on the first Easter Sunday and so, makes the Name of Jesus the Name to which eventually, every knee will bow and every tongue confess, “that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.” 

(It turns out that even those who reject Jesus and will tragically, live with the consequence of their rejection of “the only Son of God” will also, in the end, acknowledge the glory of God seen in Jesus.)

If there is one thing more than any other that Christ’s Church needs today, it’s a renewed sense of the glory of God! 

I’ve mentioned before the woman who approached me after worship one Sunday in a former congregation. She was upset with the words of Psalm 111:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...” (The same words appear also in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10.)

She affected that voice that some people use when trying to show their piety and said, “I don’t think that we should be afraid of God.” Look, Jesus says that we are His friends when we keep or strive to honor His commandments. He promises to stick closer to us than a brother.

But Jesus, God in the flesh, is not our buddy, not our rabbit’s foot, nor our ATM, nor our good luck charm.

He will be there to judge us at the end of history.

Paraphrasing Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable, Jesus brought us into this world and He can take us out.

He is God almighty.

He alone deserves all our allegiance, honor, loyalty, and thankfulness because, through His “amazing grace,” He saves all who trust in Him from sin and its consequence, death.

We must understand that the God disclosed in Jesus Christ is not a salesperson with whom we can negotiate a price, but the Lord of the universe and that to have Him and the eternity only He can give, we must bow, we must surrender to Him.

It's when we understand this that we’ll be on the road to the wisdom that leads to life.

In this prayer in today's Gospel lesson, Jesus, Who laid His glory by for His time on earth, is reclaiming that glory.

But here’s the really astounding thing.

It’s a theme of the New Testament that the life of Jesus is replicated, reenacted, in baptized believers in Him. All who are baptized and live in daily repentance and renewal can say with the New Testament, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ Who lives in me.” 

This is what Luther was getting at when he said that whenever the devil came knocking at his heart's door with temptations, announcing that he was looking for Martin Luther, Jesus went to the door in his place and said, "Martin Luther used to live here. But now I live here. Now, go away and don't come back any more!"

It was because of Christ living in him, that the first century preacher Paul, before his death, could write to the young pastor Timothy with the same sense of fulfillment and jubilation we see in Jesus’ prayer in our Gospel lesson on the brink of His death.

Listen closely to Paul's words (this is from The Message translation):

I’m about to die, my life an offering on God’s altar. This is the only race worth running. I’ve run hard right to the finish, believed all the way. All that’s left now is the shouting—God’s applause! Depend on it, [God is] an honest judge. He’ll do right not only by me, but by everyone eager for His coming.

In his wonderful book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, Pastor David Platt talks about how many American Christians think that Jesus’ call and command for radical discipleship, including the call to love all the world and to carry the good news of Jesus to all the nations applies to other people, not us.

In taking this attitude, millions of Christians turn a deaf ear to the needs of 4.5 billion people who may die today without ever hearing the Good News of new life through faith in Jesus Christ.

And in thinking that Jesus’ call only applies to some spiritual elites, we also deny ourselves the very sense of fulfillment and the enjoyment of God’s glory that Jesus exults in in today’s Gospel lesson and that He wants us to have!

We, each of us, need to consider how we can restructure our personal lives to fulfill the mission Christ has given to each of us, so that we too can exult in the sense of fulfillment from a life spent in giving God glory.

We may not be able to go to foreign countries in pursuing God’s intentions for our lives.

But each of us is called to fulfill the whole mission of Christ’s Church in our own individual lives. Our sponsorship, through World Vision of three year old Toiba in Kenya, involvement with CHAP, the 30 Hour Famine, the PPSST Food Drive, the upcoming local mission trip, Friend Day in November, upcoming servanthood evangelism events, and above all, our personal willingness to share Christ with the spiritually disconnected, are all ways in which we can lead the life of purpose that gives God glory that Jesus Christ wants each of us to experience.

We need to encourage one another in living out our Christ-given mission to the whole world. It’s to help us fulfill this single mission that Jesus prays in verse 11: “Holy Father, protect them in Your Name that You have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

When I come to the end of this life, I want to be able to pray with the same sense of jubilation and fulfillment we see in Jesus in our Gospel lesson.

I want to be able to look back on a life in which I loved God, loved the world, and took my part in making some disciples of the world’s 4.5-billion unreached people.

I want to be able to say, “Mission accomplished.”

How about you?

If it’s your desire to fulfill God’s purposes for your life, ask Christ to live fully in you…and then go wherever He leads you. Amen