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Sermon for Trinity 12
2 Corinthians 3:4-11 + Mark 7:31-37
You heard again today of Jesus’ ministry to a deaf man, which was very much like His ministry to all kinds of people with sicknesses and ailments. He freely gave of His time and of His care. He showed kindness and compassion toward the one who was suffering. He found a way to communicate very simple truths to the deaf man, using signs that could be interpreted and understood. And, of course, He performed the actual miracle of opening the man’s closed ears and loosing his tied-up tongue. Truly the Lord Jesus did all things well during His earthly ministry.
And He still does all things well. But His earthly ministry of opening closed ears and loosing tied-up tongues has now been transformed into a ministry that He carries out indirectly instead of directly, a ministry that, while less miraculous and spectacular, is just as compassionate, just as sincere, and just as glorious. It’s still a ministry of preaching that transforms deaf ears into hearing ones, that transforms speechless tongues into bold, confessing tongues—a ministry that literally gives life to the dead, not just in one place, but throughout the world, in every place where this ministry is taking place. It’s about this ministry that the apostle Paul is speaking in today’s Epistle, which we’re going to walk through together this morning: the glorious ministry of the Spirit.
And we have such confidence toward God through Christ. What confidence is the apostle Paul talking about, and who is the “we”? The “we” is Paul and Timothy, who was with Paul as he wrote this letter. But he’s really talking about all the ministers whom Christ had sent out into the world to preach the Gospel. “We” have such confidence: confidence in what he describes in the first few verses of this chapter, in the fact that we ministers, whom God has sent to you, are enough to supply your spiritual needs. The Corinthians had started turning against Paul, listening to the lies of supposed ministers who came to them with their own letters of recommendation from somewhere, trying to persuade the Corinthian Christians to listen to them instead of Paul. They had turned the ministry into a business, marketing themselves and praising their own success, and were handling the word of God deceitfully. Did Paul need letters of recommendation in order for them to believe him? Did he need human credentials in order to be credible? Did he and Timothy need letters of recommendation from the Corinthians, so that they could convince people elsewhere that they were to be believed? No, Paul says, through Christ, who called us into this ministry, we are confident before God that we have all we need for the ministry, and that you have all you need, for salvation and for living a Christian life, in the ministry God provides through us.
Not that we are sufficient by ourselves, Paul writes, to think of anything as being from ourselves. Jesus was sufficient, Jesus was competent, Jesus was qualified as a minister all by Himself, because He was and is the sinless Son of God. And yet even Jesus, speaking humbly as a man, credited His Father in heaven with His message and with the power that accompanied it. I do nothing of Myself, he said, but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. How much less could sinful human ministers claim sufficiency or competence for themselves, as if we had any power or ability to save anyone or to transform anyone’s life, as if we were the source of the message we preach, as if we came up with the doctrines that we teach. No, Paul says, our sufficiency, our qualifications come from God. He has made us sufficient as ministers of a New Testament.
Remember when God first chose Moses to be His prophet and minister to Israel? Moses recognized his insufficiency for that task. Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? O Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. Do you remember God’s reply? It goes perfectly with today’s Gospel. Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say. God made Moses sufficient. Remember how inadequate the prophet Isaiah felt as God was calling him into the ministry. Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. But God took away his sin and guilt, and made him sufficient. Remember what the backgrounds were of Jesus’ 12 apostles. Most of them were fishermen. Most of them were nobody’s in Israel. But Jesus took them, and trained them, and had great patience with them. And then He called them to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth. And then He empowered them with His Spirit from on high, making them sufficient and competent to carry out that momentous task.
Ministers, Paul goes on, of a New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive. Moses was a minister of the first covenant or testament, which we now call the Old Testament, because Christ fulfilled that one and instituted a new one. That Old Testament, summarized in the Ten Commandments, was “of the letter.” It was literally written with letters on tablets made of stones. It consisted of written commandments which the children of Israel were to obey. It commanded many things; it revealed what things were good and right, and what things were bad and evil. But those letters written in stone had no power to produce obedience in anyone. Commanding someone to do something doesn’t make them able to do it. It doesn’t even make them willing to do it, except by threats and compulsion. Commanding someone to love someone, for example, doesn’t actually produce love, does it? Just as forbidding someone from eating, say, from a certain tree, doesn’t actually prevent them from eating, does it? God’s commandments define and demand love for God and love for our neighbor. But the letter can’t produce love in people who are not, by nature, loving.
And we aren’t. And that’s the problem. And that’s why the covenant written with letters and engraved on stones ended up killing people. It’s why Paul calls it a ministry of death, a ministry of condemnation. Because the Law didn’t only come with commands to obey. It also came with punishment for disobedience. It sentences sinners to death. And the faithful ministry of the Law preaches the sinner’s death and eternal condemnation. It doesn’t turn people into sinners, but reveals them to be sinners. It kills all hope a person has of saving himself or herself.
But that’s why a new covenant was established, because the old one was never intended to last. The Law was, as Paul describes it to the Galatians, a schoolmaster to lead people to Christ. As Paul wrote to the Romans, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. He gave His body up on the cross and shed His blood as the old covenant’s price of atonement for sin—not His own sin, but the sins of the world. And in doing that, He gained the right to institute the New Covenant in His blood, a covenant that doesn’t consist of commands written down with letters on stone, but a covenant of God’s promise to forgive sins to all who seek Him through His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, a covenant that, when believed, actually does produce love and works of love.
And yet it wasn’t enough for Jesus to institute the New Testament. He also had to institute the ministry of it, the preaching of it, the administration of it. Paul calls it a ministry of righteousness—not a series of commands to be obeyed in order for sinners to make themselves righteous, but the ministry of preaching Christ, the Righteous one. Not the ministry of making people righteous in themselves, but the ministry of demonstrating that righteousness had already been earned for all people by Christ, the ministry of calling sinners to repentance and faith in Christ, the ministry of applying the righteousness of Christ to penitent sinners who believe, the ministry of guiding those who are righteous by faith to love God and to their neighbor.
Now, Paul goes on, if the ministry of death (which was engraved with letters on stones) came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses due to the glory of his face (which was fading away), how could the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? For if the ministry of condemnation was glorious, then the ministry of righteousness abounds much more in glory.
Even the Old Testament ministry that brought death was a glorious ministry. Paul refers to the shining face of Moses, as described in the book of Exodus, where Moses’ face would actually glow with a bright light after he would go into the Tent of Meeting and receive God’s Word directly from God. He would come out and speak to the people with a glowing face, but then he would put a veil on his face after he was done speaking. Why? Because the glory of his face only lasted a little while, and he didn’t want the people to see the glory gradually fading away. It would seem like the words he spoke were losing their force. So he veiled his face.
But the truth is that the ministry of Moses, along with the Old Covenant itself, was intended to fade away. It was glorious for a while, but it would eventually be replaced with something far more glorious—with the New Testament in the blood of Christ, and with the ministry that proclaims Christ crucified, not only to the nation of Israel, but to all nations, to all the world.
For even that which was once glorious is not counted as glorious in comparison with this surpassing glory. For if that which faded away was glorious, then that which lasts must be far more glorious.
Through this ministry, established by Christ, you, too, have access to Christ like the deaf man in the Gospel did. Not to approach Him for physical healing, but for spiritual healing, for guidance and strength and comfort, and, when necessary, for a strong dose of truth, and for the warnings to you need to avoid dangerous doctrines and practices, and temptations that surround you in this life. Through this ministry, established by Christ, the Spirit of God works among you and within you, to open your ears to His Word, and to keep them open, to loose your tongue to confess His name, and to keep it loose. Through this ministry, established by Christ and placed right here in your midst, Jesus makes Himself available to you, throughout your entire earthly life, until the end, when even this more glorious ministry of the Spirit will be replaced with something far more glorious still, with the direct ministry of Christ, who will live among His people visibly and tangibly, like a true shepherd dwelling among His sheep—a far better shepherd than anything you’ll experience here, and yet a shepherd who has seen fit to use the ministry of earthly shepherds to care for His precious sheep. For that, let us give thanks and praise to God the Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, for seeing to our care until He comes back in person, through the glorious ministry of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
