Sermons 2024

Video

Text: Isaiah 29:11-19
Outline:
1.    Unreadable scroll, Deaf and Blind due to Sin, can hide from God/be own authority
2.    In JC, God opens our deaf and blind hearts to turn towards Him in repentance and faith.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation is the Old Testament Lesson of Isaiah chapter twenty-nine verses eleven though nineteen.

Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Let’s practice our reading this morning. Can you read this newspaper with me? You might be able to pick out a few words and know what they mean, but I am guessing that most of the words and topics are unfamiliar to you. You could read but you could not understand what you are reading. Isaiah uses a similar illustration in our text for today. He tells the people to read a scroll that is sealed, they cannot! Isaiah does this to point out how God gives wisdom and repentance. How does God give wisdom? How does He open our blind eyes and deaf ears? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

1.    Unreadable scroll, Deaf and Blind due to Sin, can hide from God/be own authority

The Lord today passes judgment upon Jerusalem by use of the Assyrian army. He does not do this on a whim. Rather, He does this as a call for them to repent. The Lord says, ““Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men,”  The people have fallen away from the Lord their God. They meet in the temple in Jerusalem. They go through the motions of worshiping Him but their hearts are far from Him. We would say today that they are talking the talk but not walking the walk. Their sin has so blinded them that they believe they are safe and secure. The people sin in the dark and think that no one sees them. They have blind eyes, deaf ears, and unrepentant hearts. They go through the motions of worshiping God, but their hearts are turned to sin. They do not want to listen to God, His prophets, or heed His word. Thus, why God passes judgment upon them and makes it so that the judgment is unreadable to them.

God’s judgment is also one that we deserve as well. Have our hearts changed?  Unless God works in us, we too have eyes blind to His people, ears deaf to His Holy Word, hearts bent on our own sinful desires. We fall into the same trap of security, thinking that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it. Satan tempts us constantly, “Go ahead, it’s only a little sin, what is the worst that can happen? You are alone. There’s no one around.” “Eve, it’s only a little bite, you can be like God.” So we live in sin, blind and deaf to what God says. Deaf to God’s word, we try to make ourselves the authorities rather than God Himself. We think that as clay, we can determine what the potter desires to make us. Blind, we do not always see what is right and true, even if it is staring at us right in front of our faces. We follow the ways of the world, letting ourselves be influenced by what we read or post on the internet, Facebook or Twitter. Letting our friends or peers decide how we should act, holding ourselves to men’s standards, instead of the word of God. Many today read or receive God’s word like an illiterate man “reads” the newspaper. They can pick out a few words here and there, and they can certainly look at the pictures. They can sit with an open newspaper, enjoy themselves to some degree, and appear to be reading. But the true content of what is written has no impact on them. 

We ask questions like what role do the Ten Commandments and the Word of God have in my life? Do I appreciate the benefits of Holy Baptism and the relationship the Holy Spirit has established between God and me? These questions, actions, thoughts, behaviors, and many more things, remind me that I continue to sin, that on my own, I am blind, deaf, illiterate, and stand in need of the Lord’s forgiveness.

2.    In JC, God opens our deaf and blind hearts to turn towards Him in repentance and faith.

In the midst of our darkness, our blindness, our deafness, the Lord comes to us with mercy and grace. The words of our text comfort us with words of promise. The Lord promises to do wonderful things. He defined wonderful things as things which confound man’s wisdom: but it will mean the deaf hear, the blind see. It will mean fresh joy in the Lord because of the Holy One of Israel. And those who believe will hear His Word and rejoice in it.

The promise of peace and the opening of eyes in our text have been and will be fulfilled by the work of the Holy Spirit through the means of grace. The “sealed book” of our text has been replaced by the “open book” with the message of God’s love revealed in Christ’s suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and anticipated return. It is laid open, never to be closed again, open for everyone of all nations, tribes, languages, and peoples to come and read.

As one who was spiritually “blind” at birth I, as well as you, have experienced the Holy Spirit at work in me through the means of grace (through God’s Word and Sacraments). “I was blind and now I see.” The Holy Spirit has opened my “deaf” ears to hear—and to believe—that I as a sinner have been tied in to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He has enlightened my blind eyes, bringing me from the kingdom of darkness to His dear beloved Son through His death and resurrection, cleansing me from all sin and taking upon Himself my judgement and dying my death. 

The promise of “peace” and source of “joy” are renewed by the very presence of our Lord in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. He absolves us of all of our sins and does increase our faith until we depart in peace. By the work of the Holy Spirit through Word and Sacraments I believe, as we confess in the creeds, that Jesus Christ will return to claim me and all believers. He will raise the dead to life everlasting. We will live forever in His presence, “life without end.”

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.