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“Recover your sight; your faith has saved you.”

᛭ INI ᛭

Final week of following Jesus down from the mountain. We’ve been moving from Epiphany to Lent, Transfiguration to Calvary. We’re about 50 days out from Easter, only 3 days till the valley of Lent. It’s Jesus’ final trip to Jerusalem. That’s what Jesus is talking about today!

“We’re going up to Jerusalem, and everything that’s written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.”

We’ve been having good prep for Lent and looked at Sola Gratia (By grace alone) and Sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone). One more to go: Sola Fide (By Faith Alone).

(2. The Text Retold.)

No parable today. Blind guy gets his sight, but before we’re told about the Apostles. Jesus tells them clearly what’s going to happen: “I’m going to Jerusalem to suffer, die, and rise on the third day.” But “seeing they didn’t see, and hearing they didn’t understand.” This is the 3rd time Jesus told them what but they wouldn’t get it until after He’d risen.

Only the blind guy saw Jesus for who He was! Physically blind, he could see spiritually, that is, He trusted in Jesus. He believed in who Jesus was: “The Son of David,” who’d come to have mercy on him. Jesus gave him physical sight to match his clear spiritual sight. He saw with eyes of faith. He trusted in Jesus alone. He saw clearly by faith because faith isn’t about seeing. It’s about hearing!

With ears to hear, he got eyes to see, and with eyes to see he follows Jesus! With listening ears and seeing eyes he tags along with Jesus first to Jericho, and then he’s part of the mob of people praising and following Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

(1. The Text Preached)

What does all this have to do with faith and hearing and seeing? Well, first, sinful thinking turns faith in Jesus into something that actually isn’t faith. Faith wrongly becomes something that we control and define. Faith becomes all about us. (That’s not true faith…)

First off, faith isn’t just a set of religious ideas. Faith is NOT a worldview. Faith is NOT that you’ve personally accepted or rejected the various teachings of the Lutheran Church. It’s NOT deciding what from the Bible does and doesn’t fit what you think about God. Faith is NOT that you agree with, I don’t know, whatever percentage of teachings you happen to agree with. Faith is NOT just ideas that you take or leave—like they don’t matter… Faith is not this sort of impersonal, disembodied, lifeless thing.

It’s NOT some emotion. Faith isn’t a feeling of “getting something” out of church or the Bible or Sermon or Communion. Faith isn’t our personal ideas or emotions. All of those things puts faith in your hands! Now, individual people do have faith. It’s not just an idea or an experience or an emotion. Faith isn’t something “you do.”

Notice, that none of those things have anything to do with Jesus! A Christianity that’s just ideas or experiences but where Christ is absent isn’t true Christianity. So also, faith that discusses itself but and not Christ is not faith. When there is no Christ, there is no true faith. When there is no true faith, there is no Christ. Without Christ faith will be in the wrong thing…

Faith isn’t right answers or passing questioning or getting confirmed, and yet true faith “cherishes all that Jesus commands…” (Mt 28) Faith isn’t experiences, and yet faith is “being born of water and the Spirit” (Jn 3) and “remaining in Jesus’ Word” (Jn 8) and consuming “His flesh and blood. (Jn 6)” Faith isn’t an emotion, and yet a boldness and confidence in Christ, which is living in fervent love toward one another. After all, “faith without works is dead.” See all 10 Commandments and 1 Corinthians 13 about that.

The blind guy had faith not because of what he had or did or could experience. He was a blind beggar. It’s because he could hear! That’s because

FAITH IS HAVING LIVING EARS TOWARD JESUS!

He didn’t believe in Jesus after he could see. He believed in Jesus before that! He’d heard about Jesus, and from that he believed who Jesus was. He didn’t believe because Jesus lined up with what he already thought but because he’d heard what Jesus was doing and from that he trusted that Jesus was the promised Savior, “the Son of David.”

His living ears listened to the preaching about Jesus and to the Jesus’ own words. In fact, the message gave him living ears! The Word alone creates faith! “Faith comes by hearing.” (Rom 10) With living ears, He got living eyes and also a living mouth: He praised God. He also got living feet, feet that actually walked and followed Jesus.

See how physical faith becomes! It’s a living active thing! It’s like that blind guy! It’s being fully alive, not just because you’ve got the right ideas and preferences bouncing around in your noggin. It’s HAVING LIVING EARS TOWARD JESUS! After that, you’ll get living eyes and mouths and feet and hands, too! You’ll be actively listening to Jesus, following Him, and even loving those around you.

Now, there are many blind guides around. They’re “unwilling to see [that] faith must have something that it believes, that means, [it holds on to something] [2 Timothy 1:13; Titus 1:9] and [stands on something]. [1 Corinthians 2:5].” (Large Catechism IV § 29) Faith stands on the message of Christ, the message that only He saves you. He died for all your sins, even how we distort what faith actually is! He rose which means you’re innocent! Faith holds on to that message and in that way trusts, holds on to, Jesus.

But just like salvation had to do with that guys physical body—he literally saw! So also faith in Jesus is tied to your body. You’re not just a brain. You’re not just a spirit trapped in a body. So faith is tied to physical things. Jesus ties His Word to physical things. “He who has ears to hear!” FAITH IS HAVING LIVING EARS TOWARD JESUS!

The Lord ties His Word of forgiveness to things like water or bread and wine. It’s why His Gospel message and His absolution are tied to the men He sends out. (It’s also why he’s put you wherever you find yourself in your daily life, too!) (He had His Word written down…) Jesus is clear: Baptism gives you salvation, forgiveness and the Holy Spirit, preaching about His dying and rising for you saves you (1 Cor 15), Absolution delivers forgiveness, and Communion is His body and blood for you for the forgiveness of sins. Faith believes all those things and gets those benefits. And the Small Catechism, which properly teaches the Bible, says that only faith gets you ready for Communion. (The Bible also teaches Closed Communion…)

“So faith clings to the water and believes that in Baptism, there is pure salvation and life” (LC IV § 29)—same with Absolution and Communion! “This isn’t because of the water,” or the pastor or the bread and wine “but because of God’s Word.” To believe this is to believe “in God as the One who has given and planted His Word [Mark 4:14]” (LC IV § 29) into these things. It’s an outward thing, “so that it may be grasped by our senses and understood, and by them be brought into the heart. For indeed, the entire Gospel is an outward, verbal preaching [Romans 10:17; 1 Corinthians 1:21].”(LC IV § 30) And because FAITH IS HAVING LIVING EARS TOWARD JESUS, that means “wherever He speaks, no matter what direction or by whatever means He speaks, faith looks there. It holds to that thing.” (LC IV § 30) “Therefore, it makes sense that whoever rejects Baptism,” or Absolution or Communion or Preaching and His Word, “rejects God’s Word, faith, and Christ, who directs us to and binds us to” (LC IV § 30) these things.

(Conclusion.)

Faith alone saves because Jesus saves. Faith clings only to Him. And He delivers the salvation He accomplished at Calvary in physical ways. Faith clings to those, too, not because they fit with our thinking, experience, or feeling, but because Jesus says something about Baptism and Absolution and Preaching and God’s Word and Communion. And the Bible and Small Catechism’s are very clear that only get something out of Baptism or Absolution or a faithful Sermon or Communion by faith alone, by trusting what Jesus says. After all, FAITH, just like that blind guy, IS HAVING LIVING EARS TOWARD JESUS!

᛭ INI ᛭