“THE BLIND AND THE LAME” 2 SAMUEL 5.1–12, Easter 3, May ‘19

1.                Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The message from God’s Word today is taken from 2 Samuel 5:1-12 (READ TEXT).  It’s entitled, “The Blind & the Lame,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                Pride has a terrible effect on the Christian life. It can take us to some horrible places.  The opposite of pride is humility. A number of pastoral interns in the same metropolitan area completed a self-evaluation exercise and showed it to their respective supervising pastors. One intern had assigned himself the highest possible rating, a “5,” in the category of humility. His supervisor looked at that item and asked him, “How does anyone give himself a 5 in humility?”

3.                In our text the proud Jebusite defenders of Jerusalem did somewhat the opposite. They were so proud that they used what they thought were disparaging terms to refer to themselves. This was really a boast. In the end they found that the disparaging terms really did apply to them after all.  So, it goes whenever we try to pat ourselves on the back. Pride goes before a fall.  Instead of speaking of ourselves in glowing terms, we should repent and hear in God-given faith the glowing terms in which he speaks to us. He speaks forgiveness, blessing, and life.

4.                At the beginning of this text David became king over all Israel. It was close to twenty years since David was anointed by Samuel. He had been waiting a long time for this moment.  When it came, David knew exactly what he was going to do. He made a military move on the city of Jerusalem, which lay in Jebusite hands. David wanted to start his reign over all Israel from a new capital city. Somewhat like Washington DC, Jerusalem was located more or less on the border between north and south. David could rule as king of a united Israel from there.

5.                But, Jerusalem commanded the high ground. It was a very difficult city to attack. The Jebusites inside boasted that even “the blind and the lame” could keep David and his soldiers out of the city. But David knew about an ancient water shaft, a tunnel that allowed access into the city. David’s men went up that shaft and attacked Jerusalem from within. They won an easy victory. The Jebusites turned out to be blind and lame in the face of David’s assault. As a result, Jerusalem now belonged to David.

6.                Of course, the Lord had done all these things for David. When the Lord was with David (v. 10), establishing him and his kingdom (v. 12), all of David’s enemies were blind and lame by comparison. David became great because the Lord was with him. According to God’s plan, everything was coming together for David. From here on, the story of David was not the account of his path to the throne, but rather the annals of his thirty-three years on the throne of Israel.  For a long, long time after David had taken Jerusalem, a saying made the rounds: “The blind and the lame shall not come into the house” (v. 8). David’s royal palace, was built in Jerusalem. The king permitted the conquered Jebusites to remain around Jerusalem, maybe because they  accepted David as their king and believed in the Lord as their God. All the same, they seem not to have been allowed inside David’s palace. The saying still called them “the blind and the lame.” These, of course, were the terms the Jebusites had applied to themselves before the battle.  Maybe, as a reminder of his victory, David kept these Jebusites—these “blind and lame ones”—out of his royal palace.

7.                About a thousand years later, on Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem as the crowd shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” He went to the temple and drove out the moneychangers. As he did, he quoted the words of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah: “My house shall be called a house of prayer” (Isaiah 56:7). Christ was asserting control over the temple.  Then, people came to him for healing in the temple. Matthew records that Jesus welcomed the blind and the lame into HIS house, and there he cured them (Matthew 21:9, 13, 14). Christ indeed showed himself to be “great David’s greater Son.”  There is more. Children who had followed Jesus into the temple from the streets were still crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” When the chief priests and scribes complained, Jesus told them that from the mouths of babies God brings perfect praise (Matthew 21:15–16). The greatest praise of God is to receive his blessings.

8.                This was a moment of grace, not only for the blind and lame people but also for the chief priests and scribes. Even though they could see and walk, the chief priests and scribes were blind and lame in a way. They were spiritually blind and lame. These chief priests and scribes had in effect taken over David’s city and in their pride they did not want to let it go. They would not be able to withstand God’s power less than forty years later when he would use the Romans to destroy the city. Yet on that day in the temple the Lord Jesus, taking his place as rightful owner, was offering them his love. He was offering it even to proud people, spiritually blind and lame as they were. 

9.                Part of the problem we Christians have with spiritual lameness and blindness is that we can lose track of how sinfully blind and lame our sinful nature is until we get a “wake up call” from God’s law. One Christian businessman got the point. In an article with the tongue-in-cheek title “The Art of Being a Big Shot,” he wrote:  “It’s appealing to me to feel that I am the master of my fate, that I run my own life, call my own shots, go it alone. But that feeling is my basic dishonesty. I can’t go it alone. I have to get help from other people, and I can’t ultimately rely on myself. I’m dependent on God for my next breath. . . . So, living independent of God is self-delusion. It is not just a matter of pride being an unfortunate little trait and humility being an attractive little virtue, . . . When I am conceited, I am lying to myself about what I am. I am pretending to be God, and not man. My pride is the idolatrous worship of myself. And that is the national religion of Hell!”

10.             This man is right. Be honest: you meet these kinds of thoughts within yourself, don’t you? So do I.  In the final analysis, we cannot be talked out of them. Reasoning is not the answer. Prideful attitudes can only be killed by the God who kills in order to make alive. Nothing is more fatal to my pride than to see Jesus my Lord dying for me on the cross. He died in judgment on my pride and also in order to forgive me for it. Everything I might try to stand on is yanked out from under me when he says, “Father, forgive them.” Everything he has to give me, he gives with that reality of forgiveness. So he gives to you too.

11.             Often in this world there are people who seek to “find God” in their own way, and by their own definitions of who God is. Where can God be found? We give thanks He is right here as we gather as His people around the Means of Grace. We hear today’s Gospel of Jesus once again revealing Himself to the disciples, and we give thanks that He continues to reveal Himself to us in the Means of Grace. His Holy Spirit gives us the faith to believe and the eyes to recognize Him as He comes to us still today—our risen Redeemer and Savior.  That’s why today on Confirmation Sunday is an opportunity for all of us, especially you Confirmands, to rejoice in and to reaffirm our Baptisms, the time when our God adopted us into His family.  We recognize that none of us have spiritually arrived.   But, we fully rejoice in the grace of God that claimed us as His sons and daughters in the water and Word of Baptism.  We fully rejoice that He gives us His Holy Spirit to keep us in the true faith as He works through the Word and the Sacraments.

12.             This is the Christ who went out of his way to care for the blind and the lame in the temple. He healed those who were blind and lame in their bodies, and he reached out in grace to those who were blind and lame in their souls. By his Word he reaches out to you in forgiveness and blessing. He gave it to David. You might say that without God David wasn’t David. He lived from God’s rich supply. Remember, for a long time David had faced threats and problems from Saul, from the Philistines and Amalekites, and even from people who should have been among his friends. But the threats did not make him bitter. Any of those reactions would have amounted to another form of pride. But he continued to grow. “David became greater and greater, for the LORD, the God of hosts, was with him” (2 Samuel 5:10).

13.             This is the David who wrote Psalm 23. The Lord was his Shepherd. He lacked nothing. The Lord made him lie down in green pastures and led him beside still waters. The spiritually blind need a guide. That is what the Lord was for David. He provided the Gospel that restored David’s soul.  This Good Shepherd led David in the tracks of righteousness. We, too, can follow Jesus’ footsteps because he walked perfectly before God as our Substitute.  This Shepherd was with David, comforting him even in death’s dark valley. The Lord anointed his head with oil until his cup overflowed. It wasn’t going to be David’s enemies that would pursue him all the days of his life, but rather the Lord’s goodness and mercy. So David would dwell in the house of the Lord forever. David simply wasn’t David apart from this good and gracious God.

14.             Wouldn’t you like that to be said about you: that without God you aren’t really you? Well, it’s true. The new you created in Baptism is the real you, for in Baptism you have been crucified with Christ and raised with him. You have been baptized into one with his body, the church. The fact is that without Christ, you aren’t you. He is your Good Shepherd, and you are his sheep. Part of the adventure of living in him is learning the many ways in which this great truth proves true.

15.             An actress by the name of Lilly Langtry was the toast of London toward the end of the nineteenth century. Her fame spread to America as well. Once she told a friend that the most celebrated human male in two hemispheres was one Fred Gebhard. Her friend asked why. “Because I loved him,” she replied.  Pride oozed from this response. In a much greater way it is true of us that we are who we are because the Lord loves us. He gives the alternative to our speaking in glowing terms about ourselves. Having judged our sin, he now speaks to us in glowing terms, terms of forgiveness and blessing and life. Great David’s greater Son, Jesus, loves even the blind and the lame. In his love, he died for you as the great Shepherd of the sheep, and God brought him back from the dead.  Amen.  Now the peace that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.  Amen.

“FORGIVENESS STRONGER THAN DEATH” 1 SAMUEL 24.1–20, April ‘19, Easter 2

1.                Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The message from God’s Word is taken from 1 Samuel 24:1-20 (READ TEXT).  It’s entitled, “Forgiveness Stronger than Death,” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                Christ brings nothing short of life from death. This news is too good to be stuffed into only one day. Every Sunday is a “little Easter,” and today is the second Sunday of the Easter season. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. He has defeated death!  Like sin, death makes for a separation. No wonder that in Eden the Lord predicted death as the big result of sin! Elsewhere he tells us that death is the wages of sin (Romans 6:23). The Bible says that “sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15). The devil is always promoting both, sin and death. It is especially appropriate in this Easter season for us to see that the Lord’s answer to sin and death is forgiveness, forgiveness stronger than death. 

3.                By the time of our text, David had come a long way since we last saw him fighting against Goliath. He became a soldier in King Saul’s army in addition to being Saul’s personal musician. He had married one of Saul’s daughters and struck up a close friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan. But King Saul had grown jealous of David and attempted to take his life. David fled. He had sought help from Samuel. He even tried to seek refuge from Saul with the countrymen of Goliath, the Philistines. On more than one occasion there had been a “close call” in which Saul nearly succeeded in his goal of killing David. 

4.                As this text begins, the tables seemed to have turned. Saul and a force 3000 strong had pursued David and his much smaller band of men to the region of Engedi, an oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea where there were many caves. Saul entered one of these caves to answer the “call of nature,” not realizing that David and his men were hiding in that very cave!  Saul was by himself and for the moment defenseless. Might we say he was caught with his pants down? This looked like too good an opportunity to pass up, as David’s men whispered to him. It seemed to them that the Lord was putting their enemy Saul into David’s hand, so they urged David to kill Saul outright. This one act would solve so many of their problems. The way would be opened up for David to become king.

5.                For his part, David knew that the Lord had anointed him through Samuel to be the next king. Then, too, there was no denying that Saul had been sinning by all his attempts to murder David up to and including the present moment. As David crawled toward Saul in the darkness of the cave, his temptation to do what his men wanted must have proven strong.  At the same time, though, David remembered that Saul also was the Lord’s anointed. He should not lift his hand against the Lord’s anointed. David was faced with two things God had said that seemed to conflict with one another. On one hand, David was the Lord’s anointed, yet on the other hand Saul was also the Lord’s anointed. These two facts did not quite add up.

6.                Despite the fact that David had very little time to “do the math,” he arrived at the right answer. He would not use one of these words from God to cancel out the other. Instead, David held onto both of the seemingly conflicting things and let the Lord work matters out. In this case, he was going to wait upon the Lord to work out the timing of his accession to the throne. David refused to take matters into his own hands by killing Saul.  Instead, David showed forgiveness. This forgiveness was stronger than death. Rather than stabbing Saul, David merely cut off a corner of his cloak. Then it bothered David that he had even cut off a piece of the king’s clothing.

7.                When Saul got up to leave, David followed. The king heard a voice calling from behind him. He turned. There was David, bowing. As they talked, David showed Saul the portion of cloth he had cut from the cloak. Saul realized that David had acted toward him in kindness even though he himself had been going all out to kill David. “You are more righteous than I,” Saul said (1 Samuel 24:17). The younger man could have killed the older king, but he didn’t. David had indeed shown forgiveness stronger than death.

8.                It always proves difficult to love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable. When we relate to other people, sometimes it seems we would rather avoid the entire subject of forgiveness even when it is desperately needed. Maybe we fear that we won’t find a good enough reason to forgive other people, or that they will not be able to come up with adequate reason to forgive us. Sin separates, and sometimes we sinners despair of finding a bridge to re-establish the connection anywhere in this world.  Hard as that can seem, though, how do you connect across the enforced separation of death? All our attempts at love cannot prevent it, and none of our loving intentions can bridge it. Therefore, when loved ones die, we can end up harboring great regrets over things we let go unsaid. Now we will not be able to get these words across to the one who has died. Sin separates, and death separates with a vengeance. Vengeance, of course, is the Lord’s. Separation from him looms as the ultimate horror, and he solemnly says the soul that sins shall die.

9.                Can we really believe in a forgiveness stronger than death?  There is One who has defeated death, the crucified and risen Christ. Any lasting forgiveness stronger than death has to come from him, and it does.  Christ beat death at its own game. Yes, in our sins God’s law has us dead to rights.  But, there is help in the fact that the Man Jesus Christ has come and has assumed and borne our sin and death, which we had justly deserved, and that he now steps forth in our behalf, confronts the Law, sin, and death and says: “I am of the same flesh and blood; these are My brothers and sisters. What they did, I did; and I paid for it. Law, if you want to condemn them, condemn Me. Sin, if you want to bite and kill them, bite Me. Death, if you want to consume and devour, devour Me.” (AE 28:210)

10.             This is what Christ our Lord says. He has defeated death and all his other enemies. For they failed to accomplish what they had intended to do. For through the very event by which they expected to kill him and to win the victory, he emerged again and said to the Law, sin, and death: “Do you not know that I am your Lord and God? What right do you have to accuse and to slay your Lord? Therefore you shall do this no more; but rather I will accuse and condemn you and dispatch you so thoroughly that you will henceforth have no claim on anyone who believes in Me.” (AE 28:211).

11.             When Christ rose from the dead and showed himself alive to his disciples, he came right through the wall of their locked room and said, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19). Jesus gave them his peace, the peace that comes from his victory.  A bit later he “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld’ ” (John 20:22–23). Here you have it: a word of forgiveness, stronger than death! This word comes from the risen Christ. It is accompanied by his Holy Spirit. This word packs all the power that raised Christ from the dead, all the power that made the world in the first place.

12.             This forgiving word brings about what it says. It gives forgiveness that endures, now and forever. It proves stronger than death, for it takes away death’s power to kill us and, behind that, the law’s power to accuse us. It bridges the separation between God and sinful people, totally from God’s side. For it brings us Christ the Mediator and his forgiveness, which is stronger even than death.  We need this forgiveness otherwise nothing looms on the horizon but death. When we look around ourselves, we see a world of sin and death. We see sin in ourselves, too, and God’s law finds that sin unfailingly. Is there an adequate basis for us to be forgiven before God? His law has us dead to rights. Unpleasant as this condemning word is, we dare not minimize it, for it is God’s.

13.             Yet God has another word for us, too, the word of forgiveness from none other than the risen Christ. “By this we shall . . . reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart” (1 John 3:19–20). Like David, we let the Lord work matters out. Anything we might try to add would turn into a disaster!  Jesus worked out the matter of our forgiveness and salvation in his life and death. So it was finished. Then he was raised from the dead. “What the Son had given the Father on Calvary, the Father now in the garden of the tomb gave to the world.”3

14.             When Christ rose, the treasure of his atoning work was offered to everyone in the word of forgiveness that is stronger than death. It is offered to you right now.  Christ’s forgiveness becomes the basis for us to forgive others. For my neighbor’s sin is no longer his, for me to hate him. Nor is it mine to hold against him. God has placed that sin on the shoulders of the Lamb of God, who carried it away with the rest of the sin of the world.  In confirmation class you have learned that you need God’s forgiveness within the Church all the years of your life for we daily struggle with sin all the years of our lives.

15.             That’s why confirmation is not graduation! You’ve heard me say it. Today simply begins another part of your journey, or your pilgrimage, that our Lord has set before you. For that journey, that pilgrimage, you’ll need strength. When you go on a hike, you might walk ten miles the first day, but without rest and food, the second day will bring only eight or nine miles. So it is with faith. It needs to be fed. If it’s not, it will weaken to the point of death.

16.             That strength, that endurance for the pilgrimage, is yours in the receiving of God’s gifts to you. It began at your Baptism, when he washed away your sins. That faith is strengthened as that spiritual food is poured into your ears through the spoken and sung Word proclaiming Jesus and his life and salvation; it’s yours as you hear those comforting words of his Absolution. Your sins are forgiven in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That strength will soon be yours as our Lord pours and places into your mouth his very body and blood, given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of sin.

17.             In the text David showed his faith. He had not yet been enthroned as king. He was hardly experiencing the kingship at this point. To the contrary, he was on the run from Saul. Still, David already was the king by God’s anointing. At this point, he could participate in this reality only by faith. So also, you and I participate in the reality of Christ’s forgiveness, and everything else that it brings, by faith. In faith, we say with the apostle, “If God is for us, who can be against us? . . . It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?” (Romans 8:31, 33–34). In the risen Lord Jesus Christ we have forgiveness stronger than death. In him, nothing can separate us from God’s love.  Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.  Amen.