Lutheran Church in Lancaster PA
By dying, rising, and ascending, Jesus unleashed the power of the Holy Spirit into the world. Through these events, the Spirit could come and announce to us the truth of what has taken place. In Jesus’ death we see what our sins have done. In His resurrection, we see what He has done for us. In His ascension into heaven, we see that the devil has been put on notice and his days are numbered. We sit at Jesus’ feet and hear teaching. In this world this is where true joys are found, in Christ and in His death, resurrection, and ascension.
The service bulletin can be found here.
The sermon text is available here and can be read below:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[Jesus said,] “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth…but whatever He hears he will speak… He will glorify me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you. John 16:12-14
One of the colossal mistakes of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is how they began to use their eyes. God was a speaking God—coming to them through speech, creating the world through speech, and giving them His instructions for life by speech. But instead of operating with their ears, they made the colossal mistake of using their eyes. Silly Adam, silly Eve, the ear is the organ of faith.
Words are terribly important. By Words the heavens were made. The second person of the Trinity is the Word incarnate, the Speech of the Almighty Father. God made all there is by Words. Let there be, and there was. From trees down to our DNA, all of life is information, the words and speech of God.
God put two trees in the Garden. The strange things about these trees indeed was that they looked no different than any other trees. The funny thing was that the Tree of Life did not look nicer or better or more luxurious. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil looked just as delicious as all the other trees in the Garden. Yet they were separated from the rest of the trees specifically by what God said about them. How could you tell they were different? You couldn’t if you used your eyes, you could only see it if you used your ears. God said about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die, that death and separation from God would certainly come.
The devil came attacking this. He knows that by separating us from the Word of God we die and we return to the dust. Our life is breathed in in a special way. God breathed into our nostrils the breath of life. He spoke life and Word into us. We are words come alive. The Spirit of God is the Speaking of God and apart from that we have no life. Without God’s Word we lose our self, purpose, and identity.
Did God really say? That was the first question and temptation by the devil. The devil may look like a snake, but like a cheetah he went for the jugular. It was not so much about eating the fruit but turning from the Word and God. By separating the people from the Word, he separates them from God.
Adam and Eve at that point were in a moment of crisis. How do they determine truth?
God said one thing, the devil said another. God said bad, the devil said good, how does one make one’s mind up who is telling lies and who is telling the truth?
First of all, Adam gave up. He sat down on the job and let his wife figure it out. He gave up on his calling as the spiritual head of Eve to care for her. Originally, he loved her by speaking God’s Word to her. Adam was a speaking man. The first thing he did was bathe his wife in words. When he saw her for the first time he said,
This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.
You’d think Adam had to wait for years for his wife, but it was only a few hours, yet still he spoke about how he could hardly live life without her. By His confident love, Adam brought forth his wife into being, she saw love in Adam that was formed in her heart through his speaking. He named her as coming from her, extending from her, and wished her, though separate from him, to be connected to him. He taught her who she was and taught her about God. As God had told Adam about the trees, he exercised his love by showing her them. Don’t eat of this tree. His love was shown by speaking God’s Words guiding her into all truth. Eve knew it well. Don’t go near it or touch it. Her husband wanted her to live and not die.
But Adam gave up. The presence of conflict duped him into silence. It seems to me that Adam fell first, he gave up his role as relayer of the Word.
But Eve determined truth through a new way. She saw that the trees in the middle of the garden were good for food and pleasant to the eye. She explained the trees in the middle of the garden no different than the trees in the other part of the garden. She had eaten those, so now it would not hurt if she ate these. She used reason. She used her senses. She was not guided by the Word. She determined truth by her eyes. She went by what she saw and what made sense to her.
We sometimes fault Adam and Eve. If we were there it would have been different. But how did they know that there was not a better life out there, a better world or that God was not holding back?
They had perfection. But how did they know? They had to trust in the words of the one who gave them everything, just like us. They didn’t know. They had to believe. And they traded in a perfect world for the world you and I know very well.
But how often in your life do you use your eyes rather than your ears? How often do you men, set down your role of speaking God’s Word. How often do you judge life or the truth not on the basis of what God has said, but on the basis of how you see things, not what God says.
Luther once said that we need to take out our eyes and shove them in our ears. Going through life blind would be better. Our eyes are two blind guides sunk deep into our heads. We need to bypass our eyeballs and use our earballs. We need to hear to see. We live by words not by sight.
But God sent His Son. And He died for you. He died for all of you here you use your eyes rather than your ears. You are in the prison house of eyes and what you see. Every form of science is a form of something where eyes are used. Ecology says we are destroying the world. We may be destroying the world, but we forget the second part. God says I will take care of you. Evolution says material processes formed the world. God says man was made in His image and life has purpose is not random chance, and is upheld by Him. The doctor says my health is getting worse. God says day by day I am being renewed. You look in the mirror and say ugly. God says my beautiful bride. Which do you believe? It is a chronic problem that you view your life on the basis of what you think.
Jesus said that He would send the Spirit. The Spirit would convict us of three things. The point is that He would bring faith back. Not only do we get right and wrong wrong, we also use wrong judgment about the Gospel, not believing it could be true.
We treat forgiven sinners as if they are creatures of hell. We treat our redeemed brothers and sisters washed in the blood of Jesus according to how they live. We give them the eye treatment rather than the ear treatment. We are harsh to them and blind to our own sin. We raise up their sin, lower ours and damn them to perdition. We point the finger. They are the problem! Instead of seeing them through Jesus, we treat them as the creatures of hell we see them as. We sit on our haunches like Adam and live by sight not by faith.
God approached Adam and he blamed Eve. He took this greatest gift God had given, and said that life would be better without her. God said it was not good for man to be alone and Adam said it would have been good if I was alone! Well now he was. Alone, just him and the devil. After saying all those things, there was no way Eve would want anything to do with him ever again.
But God sends His Spirit who swoops in today. He wants you to come back to a new sort of living.
Would be it that we all had blind walking sticks today. We would be much better off. It was the blind who showed such great sight in Scripture. Jesus, master have mercy on us! They said, as they heard that He came by. They heard what He did. They never saw it. And they believed. It was the blind who truly saw and the seeing that were truly blind. Jesus said to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Blessed are the blind, Jesus says.
But God did something for them. God came down. And He covered them with sheep skin. God covered up what they had done. He gave them something else to look at. Instead of seeing all their nakedness and sin they would see wooly white as even underneath was stained red. They saw each other by what God did for them as he tore off their worthless garments of their own works and dressed them in garments of skin. He would redeem them, He would save sorry them from the ruin they thrust the world in. God would save them. He would one day send his Son for them.
And King Adam regained His speech. He looked at the woman and said. Did you here that? You are the mother of all living! You shall be called Eve.
You might have well called Adam crazy. Adam she is a creature of death. Don’t you see. Well, you will! She will give birth to an ugly child name Cain who will kill your own boy. Creature of life? You should call her “mother of all the dead.”
But Adam, you see, looked forward on a different shore and saw Calvary, and there he saw one of woman’s seed, unstained, unlike us. He saw there by faith the One who would be born of sinful woman. The One who lived by faith not by sight as he looked at the world, the truly blindest one to have ever lived (Is 42:19). Adam clung to that promise and covered his wife with his words and told her not to look at all the spots and wrinkles and blemishes, but to look to Jesus who was coming. He bathed her in forgiveness and spoke not what he saw but what he heard. He became blind, and then truly began to see.
Jesus looked down on the cross to a troubled world. People yelling and screaming and making a commotion. It’s hard to know how He loved such a world. But He saw them not on the basis of who they were but on what God was doing for them. How could He love that? He saw them all in wooly sheep skin, covered with His own blood. Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing. The world is troubled. People treat each other on the basis of what they see. They do not know that life is more than what they see. Eyes closed to heavenly realities, the real realities are hidden for them.
Jesus speech rings out. It was a new word that was coming. God came to speak wonderful things to His deaf people. He is not here He is risen, the angels said. Peace be with you, Jesus said to His own disciples. God breathed His Spirit again. Jesus was alive.
God gave His Word for people to go forth in His name. A holy people and church that lived not by the eyes but by the ears. A company of speakers sent out to remind the world and teach the world what truth is, that it is not always as they see it. To show people new realities of forgiveness despite what they see, and life though all they see is the corpse.
The Spirit comes to show us the truth in regard to things like our sin, what sin is, what it isn’t. The Spirit comes to show us though what Christ did for sinners. What we need to live by. And while it feels like all it is our condemnation, the Spirit comes to show us that the devil is condemned, heaven is opened, and we are God’s.
The constant need for the preaching of the Spirit, and the ministry of the word is because all of this is tremendously hard. It is impossible. That is why we need the Spirit. Every day. Constantly to show us truth. So that we see with our ears and live by faith.
We now live on the basis of the Gospel. All we see is broken ugly people. Let’s treat them like the beautiful people they are. Christ died for them and redeemed them. We live not as we live according to our eyes, but as we live the new life according to the ears.
May God grant us this ability that we judge on the basis of what God says, and each other by the basis of what God says about us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus.
~ Pastor Christopher Seifferlein
