“Jesus Has Done Everything Well”                                                              Mark 7:31-37

St. John’s – East Moline                                                                                Sep. 24, 2006

Intro.:   Some days I feel as if I can’t do anything right?  (You can let me know after today’s sermon if this is one of those days.)   I guess I shouldn’t be too discouraged though, because even though there are many people who can do a lot of things better than me, overall we are all a bunch of mess-ups.  If we weren’t we would still be living in a beautiful garden, eating sweet fruit from the tree of life with grandpa Adam and grandma Eve.  But that is not the case…

I.  We Have Not And Do Not Do Things Well.

A.   What God originally did with this world, He did well.  He created the heavens and the earth to be flawless.  Each day he would look at what He created and observe that it was good, and finally after it was all done He declared, “It is very good!”  And it was; it was holy and perfect and brought Him great joy.

     He also created us, man and woman, to be free and enjoy peace.  He created us, body and soul, to live in absolute harmony with Him, with one another, and with all creation.   He created us in His own image to be righteous, to know Him and His love, to share His pure thoughts, and to dwell with Him forever.  He certainly did all things well.  Sadly, we abused the freedom He had given us, and did not do so well.  

B.   Through the sin of the first man and woman, and through our own sin, things have gone horribly wrong.  In St. Paul’s letter to the Romans he reminds us that because of our sin, the whole creation has been subjected to frustration and continuing decay, and groans under the weight of our sin. 

    Because we have not done well at loving God above everything else, nor at loving one another as we do ourselves, we suffer the physical and spiritual consequences of our sin.  We have grown weak and fearful, hiding from God in our shame, and afraid of the creation which God placed under our care. 

    We are held in physical bondage by eyes that go blind, ears that grow deaf, legs that turn lame, and tongues that become twisted.  We live in a world that has become a dangerous wilderness and a deadly desert. 

     But worse yet, we also suffer the spiritual bondage of sin, which bars us from doing the good we know we should be doing, and turns our hearts and minds against all that is good and all that God wants for us.  The result of sin is that condemnation and death has come to us all.  We have ruined this world and we have ruined our own lives because we have not and do not do the things God has commanded us well.

C.   But in our Old Testament lesson God offered the promise that He would restore all things.  Through Isaiah He invited God’s people to be strong and fearless because He would come to save them.  He would come to reverse the curse of sin, and break our bondage, so that the blind would see, the deaf hear, the lame leap like deer, and the mute shout for joy.  The world which had been subjected to decay would be restored and made like new.  God promised that when He came He would do all things well again. 

Transition:  We know that He has fulfilled this promise through His Son Jesus Christ.  St. Paul notes in Romans chapter 5 how Jesus has reversed the curse of death brought upon us by sin through His righteousness so that we may be declared holy and live.  Paul goes on in chapter 8 to explain how our Savior has set in motion the events that will liberate all of creation from its bondage to decay.  For all of us, and for all the days of our lives when nothing has gone right, and we have not done well in God’s eyes… 

II.  Jesus Has Done Everything Well.

A.  In our Gospel our Lord did everything well for the man who lived with the constant reminder of what sin in the world and His own sin had done to God’s good creation.  In the eyes of the people around Him this was a man that could not do much of anything well, He was deaf and could hardly speak.  In the original Greek it speaks of this as a bondage, from which the man needed to be released, and Jesus, God in the flesh, was just the promised One who would do it. 

     What must have been going through the mind of the man as he was brought before Jesus?  Who did He think Jesus was and what did He really expect to receive?  And what about the crowds; apart from the man’s friends, did they really care about the man, or was this just another chance to see the miracle worker in action? 

     No matter, Jesus had compassion on this man who had been prevented from hearing God’s Word of life and from singing God’s praises, so He took the man aside, away from the hoopla of the crowd.  He took him away from all the distractions so that He could focus on the man and the man could focus on Him.  First Jesus showed the man what He was going to do for him with a sort of sign language.  He put his fingers in the man’s ears, visibly expelled something from His mouth by spitting, and then touched the man’s tongue.  Then the real source and instrument of Christ’s healing power were revealed as He looked up to heaven and said, “Ephphatha” be opened or unbound!  His power was from heaven and the means of bestowing grace was His Word.        

    Through the power of His Word Jesus made the man like new.  He released the man from his bondage, restoring his hearing, and enabling him to speak clearly for all to hear.  Now the man could hear Jesus teach about the kingdom of God, and about the grace and mercy which had come to all people through the Son of Man.  He could hear Jesus speak about the forgiveness of sins, the new and eternal life, and the resurrection.  And for the first time the man could praise God with plain speech for all that had been done for him.  In the original language it does not just say that the man spoke, but that spoke without ceasing.

    Jesus had truly given the man and the whole crowd something to talk about.  By what He did for this one man He demonstrated His work of reversing the effects of sin upon the world, of making everything new and of delivering creation from its frustration and bondage because of sin. He gave the man and all the people something to talk about.  But the crowds, and perhaps even the man himself, were not yet able to connect all the dots.  There were already so many misconceptions about Jesus, who He was, and why He was among us, that He commanded them not to tell anyone about what had happened.  Without seeing the full picture of the cross and resurrection the people saw Jesus as only a miracle worker, bread king, and spectacle of amusement.  But the more He told them to be quiet the more they talked about Him.  They did not yet understand what it all meant, that it was a fulfillment of God’s promise through Isaiah, but in astonishment they said, “He has done all things well!  He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak!”       

B.  My dear family in Christ, I declare to you today that Jesus went on to do all things well for us and continues to do everything well for us and for our salvation. 

     Out of love for you and me, God fulfilled His promise of coming to us through His Son, to reverse the devastation sin brought upon us.  While the sin of one man subjected the whole world to the bondage of death and decay, so the obedience of the one man, Jesus Christ, has set us free to live new and holy lives.  Just as by a tree sin entered the world and Satan overcame us, so by the tree of the cross, God become man has taken away the sin of the world, and has overcome Satan; crushing his head, that is his power over us forever.  By His resurrection on the 8^th day, became the first-fruit of a new creation, of which we are all a part. 

   Here, today, Jesus takes us away from all the distractions and demonstrates His compassion for us.  He takes us away from the misguided crowds who are looking for a miracle worker and bread king, and away from the social, economic, and political pressures in our life that remind us that we have not done things well.  He brings us here where He gives His attention to us and we give our attention to Him.  To all of us who know our sin, and know that we have not done all things well, He comes.  To all of us who have ears to hear which are open to take in all the trash of the world, yet refuse to listen to His Word and whose tongues work well enough to curse, slander, and deceive, but fail to sing His praises, He comes.  To all of us whose feel the frustration, decay and death our sins have brought upon us, He comes.  He comes to deliver us from our bondage to sin, to recreate us in His image, and to give us new and eternal lives.  The signs we have been given are the cross, the cleansing waters, and the bread and wine through which He offers us His very body and blood.

     Here, he takes us aside and makes us knew by the power of His Word.  The Word in baptism through which the old sinful self is drowned and crucified with Christ, and a new person is created in us by the Holy Spirit to rise with Christ to a newness of life.  Here through the Word we read, speak and sing our flesh is put away and we are created anew, to grow evermore in the likeness of Christ our Lord.  Here as we receive the body and blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ, we are forgiven and renewed in faith and strength for holy living.  And this is only the beginning, the day is coming when we will all hear the voice of Christ, and we will all be changed!  These bodies will be made new and perfect to live with Him in a new heaven and new earth that will be the home of everlasting righteousness.    

    Jesus has certainly given us something to talk about, and it is not just about temporal miracles.  It’s not about Jesus the bread king of the crowds, who will give us what we want when we want it.  It’s not about Jesus the performer who will jump through our hoops for us!  It’s about Jesus, God’s Son, who lived, died and rose again to make us a new creation through faith.  It’s about Jesus, the One who comes to us by the Holy Spirit, to renew and perfect us by His grace each and every day!  It’s about Jesus, who will come again to deliver us and establish us in a new heaven and a new earth!  It’s about Jesus, who had done all things well, for us!  Amen.