“NEITHER THE PREACHER NOR THE HEARER SHOULD

DOUBT THE GRACE AND ACTIVITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT”

Prayer: Gracious Lord, guard us from judging from what we see, feel or experience about the effect or effectiveness of Your Word among people in our lives. Help us to believe and trust that when the Word is preached and heard, as You promise people will believe this Word and agree with it. Produce a firm faith in us, and also in others. Grant that Your kingdom of grace may come to us, be extended to others, and that we all may be gathered into Your kingdom, to sit with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as You promise. Amen!

(Adapted from Formula of Concord II:55, Small Catechism: Lord’s Prayer, 2nd Petition)

Sermon Text: Matthew 8:1-13.

In the name of Jesus, who gathers us by faith into His kingdom and rescues us from the outer darkness by the Holy Spirit’s work, dear fellow redeemed:

Naaman was a leper and a soldier – and an unbelieving heathen. He was from Syria, outside Israel, so a Gentile. Outside God’s eternal kingdom. But he didn’t care. Not until he contracted leprosy, which eats the skin away.

Even then all he wanted was his body to be healed. He was only worried about surface things. He couldn’t be made to care about God. He reacted to the preacher’s word with irritation and superiority. If he were a prospect for our evangelism, we’d think, “There’s a hopeless case. We’ll never persuade him.”

But what happened? A miracle. It wasn’t only Naaman’s leprosy that was healed – in a way that’s clearly a preview of Baptism – but the real miracle is faith. Naaman becomes a different person, he believes and even confesses his faith openly: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.” It wasn’t by human persuasion but by the power of God’s Word.

Today’s gospel is about removing doubts about the miracle God’s Word does: the miracle of faith. The Holy Spirit works this faith in our hearts, but we find reasons to doubt it. Maybe at times you have doubts about your faith. Maybe you have fears about your children or loved ones falling away. Then Jesus’ words about the outer darkness terrify you. Maybe you have doubts about the evangelism that we do, you see all the people who don’t care about God, and you think, “He/She’s a hopeless case. We’ll never persuade them.”

In this gospel Jesus is saying to you, “Take heart! Trust the Word.” There’s a great statement about this in our Lutheran Confessions, it’s today’s theme:

“NEITHER THE PREACHER NOR THE HEARER SHOULD DOUBT

THE GRACE AND ACTIVITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT”

At first glance this Bible account may not seem to be about the Holy Spirit. But it’s not just about Jesus healing the sick. There’s His compassion and His willing heart. And then it’s all about faith in His Word. Well, the work particular to the Holy Spirit is that He sanctifies, makes us holy, by creating faith, giving faith in Jesus, whose blood makes you clean from all sin.

Each of these miracles pictures something about this truth, that when God’s Word is spoken and heard, the Holy Spirit gives faith that saves.

In the case of the man with leprosy, we need to see that leprosy is a way that God powerfully pictures our sin. Leprosy was a disease that took over a body, getting worse and worse. It ate away at the skin, but started on the inside where no one could see. Like leprosy, our sin isn’t only on the outside, in what we do outwardly. Sin starts on the inside where you can’t see it. The devil stirs up your sinful nature to do and say things you know are against God’s will. Not only do we see sin pictured in this leper, we see death. He’s a walking death. We hear that “the wages of sin is death,”now we see it.

This is why you can’t get faith on your own. You would never believe on your own, you’d never do what God wants on your own, your own will is stubborn, but like the leper you’re helpless to “get well” in this way, you have no strength or ability to believe on your own. You’re born dead in sin, spiritually dead, and a dead person isn’t able to get up and come get faith.

But in the miracle Jesus has good news for this situation. This is the first thing that happened after the Sermon on the Mount. So the leper heard Jesus say, “Blessed are those hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled,” and, “Do not worry, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things,” and, “Your Father who is in heaven will give good things to those who ask Him!”

He comes to Jesus with faith that the Holy Spirit gave him, through the Word Jesus preached. His faith brings Him close to Jesus, when previously he stayed far away from anyone, and he says: “If you are willing, You can make me clean.” Jesus agrees and says, “I am willing,” and then the miracle, when He says, “Be clean,” is confirmation of the faith that the Spirit gave this man.

In the case of the Roman officer, he’s similar to the leper in that he’s on the outside, he’s a Gentile. You might guess that he doesn’t care about God. Except that he has a servant boy he cares about, who’s very sick, “tormented terribly.” The officer had heard of Jesus’ power to heal the sick. This man existed in a world of human power and giving orders that were absolutely obeyed, so he actually ends up teaching us something about the Word of God.

When Jesus wanted to come heal the boy, the officer said: “Only speak a word and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

Did you hear that? “Speak a word, and he will be healed.” No doubting! The centurion compares Jesus’ miracle-working with his own vocation. He orders soldiers and even this servant boy to do something, and they do it. He’s saying: “Jesus, You’re going to order this sickness to go away, and it’s going to say, ‘Yes, Sir!’ because it is under Your authority and has to do what You say.” We are made to picture it as Jesus ordering a sickness to go away and it obeys. This is the faith which Jesus calls “great,” just as great as Abraham’s faith.

The centurion uses the word authority – “I also am a man under authority having soldiers under me” – and applies it not just to himself, but to Jesus. This is what He believes about Jesus’ word. He believes in the authority Jesus puts into His Word, so that whatever His Word says is done right away. And we see that’s exactly what happens, “immediately.”

So now to apply this, let’s go back to the issue of our own doubts and fears. Because you don’t see or feel the Holy Spirit working, you doubt. Jesus gives us very certain promises about the Word giving faith. But the devil gets in the way, he intercepts that promise, to put something else in front of us.

So you might see that your sadness makes you struggle to believe. You might focus on your fears or “what if’s” about your faith or a loved one’s. You might see lower church attendance. You might see the world getting worse for Christians. We pastors aren’t any better at this. We get discouraged based on what we see or experience. This is why our confession says: “Neither the preacher nor the hearer should doubt this [work] of the Holy Spirit.”

When you’re doubting in this way, or listening to fears that you might not be saved or your children or other loved ones won’t, or that the church won’t survive, or think our mission and evangelism efforts won’t work or do any good, you’re rejecting God’s Word and its power, resisting His promise that His Word will bear fruit, produce faith, and that His Church will not perish.

Jesus does something about your doubt. He says: “Fear not!” He shows you these miracles where “immediately” His Word sent the sickness away. So despite what our fears and doubts say, they don’t make what He says untrue. It’s still true: when His Word is spoken, “faith comes”through that (Rom 10:17). Your fears and doubts can’t undo His promises.

Weak faith is still saving faith. Even if you stay away too long, resist Him and take too long to come to the cross, He promises His grace, He’s the father in the prodigal son story who only has a big hug for you, His Word does nothing but the miracle of faith. He does it for you, your loved ones, for His Church, our congregation and our mission efforts. So our Confessions, after saying neither preacher nor hearer should doubt, then says: “They should be certain that when God’s Word is preached purely and truly, and people listen attentively and seriously meditate on it, God is certainly present with His grace.”

Just like Jesus told the sickness to go away and it did, when you hear the Word, the Holy Spirit is telling something to go away: your doubt, your unbelief, your pessimism, your ego, your fears, and ultimately all your sin. It all goes away, by His authority. Just as nobody who saw those miracles could doubt what Jesus’ word had just done, we are to see by faith and know that when His Word is spoken, then it’s done – the miracle of faith happens again.

This is how He also takes away fear that you or your loved ones will end up in outer darkness. Jesus says, “Many will come from the east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” We emphasize that many shall come, because of this Gentile centurion. But put the emphasis on another word. Notice that He says “many shall come.” He’s saying you “shall come” and sit at the feast of salvation. Amen!