{"id":3956,"date":"2021-08-07T18:14:02","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T18:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/?p=3956"},"modified":"2025-09-02T21:13:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T21:13:49","slug":"gods-word-and-our-confession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/2021\/08\/07\/gods-word-and-our-confession\/","title":{"rendered":"God\u2019s Word and our Confession"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity<\/strong>| <strong>August 26, 2012|<\/strong> <strong>St. Mark 7:31-37<\/strong>| <strong>Rolf D. Preus<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: God\u2019s Word and our Confession: Rolf Preus Trinity 12 Sermon 2012\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/4ua8YAOfZubQdHtKC1Cjxm?si=5b395a2f01284ebb&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Again, departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, He came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee.&nbsp; Then they brought to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on Him.&nbsp; And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched his tongue.&nbsp; Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, &#8220;Ephphatha,&#8221; that is, &#8220;Be opened.&#8221; Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly.&nbsp; Then He commanded them that they should tell no one; but the more He commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it.&nbsp; And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, &#8220;He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.&#8221; St. Mark 7:31-37<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The signs signify who Jesus is.&nbsp; \u201cHe has done all things well.\u201d&nbsp; Who has done all things well?&nbsp; Moses writes in Genesis 1, 21, \u201cThen God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.\u201d&nbsp; The God whose creation was good became a man.&nbsp; He assumed human flesh and blood, taking upon himself a created body and in that body he did all things well.&nbsp; God becomes man to do as a man the things that God alone can do.&nbsp; This is how he redeems mankind and raises us up to heaven.&nbsp; The signs we consider today signify Christ\u2019s true and essential deity, for only God can make the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus put his fingers in the man\u2019s ears, spat, touched the man\u2019s tongue, looked up to heaven, and sighed.&nbsp; He was using simple sign language.&nbsp; He was telling the man what he was going to do.&nbsp; Jesus put his fingers in the man\u2019s ears to tell him that he would give him the ability to hear.&nbsp; Jesus spat and touched the man\u2019s tongue to tell him that he would give him the ability to speak.&nbsp; Jesus looked up to heaven to tell him that the power by which he was doing what he was doing was divine power.&nbsp; Jesus sighed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then he spoke.&nbsp; Putting his fingers in the man\u2019s ears did not give him his hearing.&nbsp; Touching the man\u2019s tongue did not give him his speech.&nbsp; Looking up into heaven did not give Jesus the power to do what he did.&nbsp; Jesus, the eternal Word who was with God in the beginning, by whose word all things were made, spoke.&nbsp; He said: \u201cEphphatha!\u201d&nbsp; Be opened.&nbsp; He spoke and it was done.&nbsp; He who was deaf could hear clearly.&nbsp; He who was mute could speak plainly.&nbsp; It was a miracle.&nbsp; It was a sign.&nbsp; The sign signified not only who Jesus was and what Jesus could do.&nbsp; It signified how God wants to deal with us.&nbsp; God wants to deal with us through his word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Without God\u2019s word no one can know God.&nbsp; That\u2019s not to say that people don\u2019t know something about God from nature.&nbsp; From the natural world we know that there is a creator.&nbsp; How else could this world get here?&nbsp; How else could order prevail in the natural world?&nbsp; The creation points to its creator.&nbsp; From our consciences we know that there is a lawgiver.&nbsp; There could be no right or wrong if there were no God.&nbsp; There is no true morality without God.&nbsp; When the natural knowledge of God\u2019s law is suppressed all hell breaks loose on earth.&nbsp; Our consciences point to the existence of a God of justice who rewards the good and punishes the bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the knowledge of God that we have from nature and from conscience is not enough for us to know God as he is.&nbsp; To know God personally requires God to reveal himself to us.&nbsp; He reveals himself to us by what he says to us.&nbsp; Until he does, we cannot hear him and we cannot address him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The deaf mute was shut out.&nbsp; Have you ever been in a foreign country where everyone was speaking a foreign language you couldn\u2019t understand?&nbsp; They look at you, say something, and laugh.&nbsp; You think they are laughing at you.&nbsp; But you don\u2019t know.&nbsp; You wonder.&nbsp; You suspect.&nbsp; You speculate.&nbsp; But you don\u2019t know.&nbsp; You never really know what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Imagine living that life your whole life even in your own country where you were born.&nbsp; Then you can understand a bit what being deaf and mute is like.&nbsp; The inability to hear and the inability to speak go together.&nbsp; You learn how to speak by listening to yourself.&nbsp; In recent years great advances have been made in teaching deaf people how to speak clearly, but it is a long and difficult task.&nbsp; What is amazing about Christ\u2019s miracle is that the deaf man could speak clearly immediately.&nbsp; Jesus not only gave him the ability to hear.&nbsp; He gave him a skill that is acquired over a long period of time and he did so instantaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The devil stops up our ears.&nbsp; He binds our tongues.&nbsp; But, unlike the deaf mute that Jesus miraculously healed, we don\u2019t know it.&nbsp; That\u2019s the universal human condition.&nbsp; People are deaf but they think they can hear.&nbsp; People are mute but they think they can speak.&nbsp; They don\u2019t understand a word God says and they don\u2019t know what they are talking about either.&nbsp; Such is our native spiritual condition.&nbsp; St. Paul writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The deaf mute knew he could not hear.&nbsp; He knew he could not speak.&nbsp; He knew that only Jesus could give him his hearing and enable him to speak plainly.&nbsp; Understanding your helplessness is necessary if you\u2019re going to be helped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is why most people remain spiritually blind and deaf.&nbsp; They don\u2019t know that their own notions about spirituality are contrary to God\u2019s notions.&nbsp; This is a bitter truth that we must confront or we will be swept away into the conceit that parades as true spirituality.&nbsp; Here is what we confessional Lutherans confess about our native spiritual abilities in the Formula of Concord:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That original sin in human nature is not only a total lack of good in spiritual, divine things, but that at the same time it replaces the lost image of God in man with a deep, wicked, abominable, bottomless, inscrutable, and inexpressible corruption of the entire nature in all its powers, especially of the highest and foremost powers of the soul in mind, heart, and will.&nbsp; (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article I, paragraph 11)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hearing, we do not hear.&nbsp; We hear the lies of men and think they are wisdom.&nbsp; We hear the truth of God and think it\u2019s a scandal.&nbsp; As St. Paul wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.&nbsp; Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Corinthians 1:22-25)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus sighed.&nbsp; Then he spoke.&nbsp; He sighed as one doing battle.&nbsp; For that\u2019s what\u2019s going on here.&nbsp; God is doing battle for his people.&nbsp; He sees them caught in a power they cannot overcome and he comes to deliver them from it.&nbsp; As little as a deaf man can choose to hear, so little can an unbeliever make himself into a believer.&nbsp; As little as a mute man can speak clearly, so little can an unbeliever confess the truth.&nbsp; Only God can bring us to faith.&nbsp; Only God can enable us to make the good confession.&nbsp; And he does so through his word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ephphatha!&nbsp; Be opened!&nbsp; And what happened?&nbsp; He could hear.&nbsp; He could speak.&nbsp; The crowd witnessed it.&nbsp; Jesus told them not to tell anyone, but they went ahead and preached it anyway.&nbsp; But Jesus would not send out his preachers to preach until he had finished the work he came to do.&nbsp; The word that delivered the deaf mute was a word of war against the devil and all the powers of hell.&nbsp; The fiercest battle in that war was fought on the cross where Jesus bore in his body the sin of the world and took away sin\u2019s curse.&nbsp; There, in Christ\u2019s crucifixion, is perfect healing for our bodies and souls.&nbsp; Christ\u2019s death destroyed our death.&nbsp; His resurrection from the dead is our absolution and guarantee of eternal life.&nbsp; The declaration of forgiveness that we hear, believe, and confess as God\u2019s truth comes to us from the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.&nbsp; In him we have victory over the devil and freedom from his power.&nbsp; That victory comes only through Jesus\u2019 word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The devil is a liar and the father of lies.&nbsp; He would murder us Christians if he could.&nbsp; He marks us as his prey and plots to deceive us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice.&nbsp; He would uproot from our hearts the faith implanted by the Holy Spirit.&nbsp; He would do it if he could.&nbsp; He would do it through falsifying the word of God.&nbsp; This is why we listen to the truth and confess the truth and hold for dear life to the truth of Jesus\u2019 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>God\u2019s word opens our ears to hear and our tongues to confess.&nbsp; We believe what God teaches us in the Bible and we confess it.&nbsp; The Bible is God\u2019s word.&nbsp; It is perfectly true.&nbsp; It contains no errors.&nbsp; It is powerful.&nbsp; It does what it says.&nbsp; It gives what it promises.&nbsp; The grace it describes is the grace it gives.&nbsp; Its power is the power to enlighten us to the truth by which we are forgiven of our sins and rescued from the power of evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are entering into the political season where politicians vie for the support of the American voters.&nbsp; They want you to listen to them.&nbsp; They want you to support their policies.&nbsp; Wouldn\u2019t it be nice if we could go through a campaign season where every politician seeking power spoke only the truth?&nbsp; Where when one candidate argued his case against another he would always do so by telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?&nbsp; But among the rulers of this world the lie is often seen as more effective than the truth.&nbsp; So it has always been and so it will be until the end of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not so in the kingdom that Christ has established on this earth.&nbsp; Jesus rules by means of the truth.&nbsp; When we hear him we always hear the truth.&nbsp; He never calls on us to confess lies.&nbsp; He calls on us to confess only the truth.&nbsp; He opens our ears to the truth.&nbsp; He opens our lips to the truth.&nbsp; \u201cO Lord, open Thou my lips.&nbsp; And my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.&nbsp; Make haste, O God, to deliver me.&nbsp; Make haste to help me, O Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And he does.&nbsp; Christ exercises his ministry of righteousness here among us.&nbsp; It is the ministry of the Spirit.&nbsp; He sets us free by his gospel.&nbsp; That\u2019s why we seek it out and listen to it.&nbsp; That\u2019s why we confess it.&nbsp; If God chooses to deal with us through his word, his word is what we should be hearing and his word is what we should be confessing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So much communication and so little truth!&nbsp; Television, radio, internet, conversations at work, at school, around the dinner table \u2013 what is said that is so important?&nbsp; Who is doing what to whom?&nbsp; A drought, a fire, a war, a celebrity outrage, a political promise, a sports event \u2013 the list goes on, and in the end it all fades away into nothingness.&nbsp; As the preacher said, \u201cVanity, vanity, all is vanity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But our God\u2019s word stands forever!&nbsp; It\u2019s not the empty and passing knowledge of overpaid talking heads on television.&nbsp; It\u2019s the living word of the living God.&nbsp; He who speaks it is he who purchased its power.&nbsp; He sighed and opened the man\u2019s ears and tongue.&nbsp; He sighed and picked up his cross.&nbsp; There, as he suffered for us, he validated all of the words of promise God had ever spoken to his people.&nbsp; He faced all the evil they suffer.&nbsp; He suffered all the guilt of the sin they committed.&nbsp; He took it upon himself, and removed it from them forever.&nbsp; He who opened the deaf mute\u2019s ears and tongue opened heaven to us by winning forgiveness for us.&nbsp; He gives us this forgiveness in his word and nowhere else.&nbsp; This is why we hear it and confess it.&nbsp; Amen<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/TrinityTwelve2012.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity| August 26, 2012| St. Mark 7:31-37| Rolf D. Preus Again, departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, He came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee.&nbsp; Then they brought to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech,&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/2021\/08\/07\/gods-word-and-our-confession\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,4,72],"tags":[558,238,215],"class_list":["post-3956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-sermons","category-sermons-by-historical-lectionary","category-sermons-by-rolf-preus","category-trinity-12","tag-mark-7","tag-rolf-preus","tag-trinity-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3956"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6643,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions\/6643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christforus.org\/NewSite\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}