07 February 2021

Seek the Lord Where He Is to Be Found

They brought to Christ Jesus the sick and the demon-possessed, and He healed many who were ill with various diseases.  He cast out the demons, He healed the lepers, He gave sight to the blind, He caused the lame to walk, He even raised the dead.  He healed many who were sick.

What is the weariness with which you suffer?  What are the frailties and failings of your mortal life, the weaknesses and infirmities of your flesh and blood?  Not only in your body, but in your heart and mind, as well, in your spirit and emotions.  For there is a connection between the fall into sin and the curse of death and all of the fears and frustrations that afflict you in this body and life.  And there is a connection, too, between your false beliefs, your lack of faith, and the demonic.

The demons are spiritual, but they are not faithful.  They haunt you with the fear of death and with the guilt and shame of your sin.  The devil likewise delights in hurting your body and causing you all manner of pain and grief, because he knows that your body and life are a good and gracious gift of God; and the devil knows how easily your heart and mind are turned toward creatures instead of your Creator — to revel in how much you have, or to despair because of how little you have.

What are your hurts and fears, your frailties and weaknesses?  What are your infirmities?  With what diseases are you afflicted?  Not only in your body — the bumps and bruises, aches and pains in your flesh, your bones and muscles — but in your heart and mind, as well, your spirit and soul.  Your whole being is under the curse and consequences of sin, and the devil and his demons attack you with assaults and accusations in every aspect of your life.

So, what are the worries and concerns that you haul around in the back of your mind all day long, which make it hard for you to enjoy your life and make it hard for you to go to sleep at night?  What disappointments?  What unrequited love?  What failed opportunities?  What deep regrets?  What shame and guilt do you harbor in your head, afraid to confess it, but it won’t just go away?

There are all these ways (and more) whereby your sin afflicts you.  Your body is dying, your mind is afraid, your heart is restless — until you rest in Christ Jesus — He is the One who can help you — because at the bottom of all your infirmities is sin.  Not that God is sitting up in heaven keeping score and zapping you for each infraction.  But sin does have its consequences, and it is never safe or harmless.  Your sins hurt both you and your neighbor in body and soul, and the Lord alone can heal you from the inside-out.  So it is in love that the Lord calls you to repentance.

He alone gets beneath the symptoms and provides the real remedy, which is the forgiveness of your sins.  But do you know Him?  Do you know this Lord Jesus Christ, the Nazarene?  According to the Law with its demands and condemnation?  Or according to His mercy and forgiveness, as the One who receives sinners and eats with them, who has compassion on lost and wandering sheep?

Do you go looking for Him to seek His help in time of need?  Or do you hide yourself away from Him and try to flee from His presence?  Do you love and trust in Him, or are you afraid of Him?

What is it that you want Jesus to do for you?  All of those people who brought their sick loved ones and their demon-possessed family members to Jesus, they knew what they wanted.  They wanted Him to help.  They wanted the blind to see and the lame to walk and lepers to be cleansed.  They wanted their sick and dying children to be given a new lease on life.  They wanted the demons that drove them crazy to be driven out and sent away.  What do you want the Lord Jesus to do for you?  And where and how do you go looking for Him, calling on His Name?  Or do you?

Tragically, many people go through their days and weeks and years supposing they can take care of themselves and make a life for themselves.  They figure they can provide for their own needs, they can make ends meet, they can plan and prepare for their future and achieve their own goals.  If they think about the Lord at all or call upon Him, it is only when everything falls apart and they get desperate, or as a bit of “insurance,” a “back-up plan,” when they have a little time to spare.  It simply does not cross their minds that the Lord is not a means to some other end but the Source and Substance, the Goal and greatest Treasure of their entire body and life, both now and forever.  To turn your back on Him is to refuse and reject the Life and Salvation for which you are created.

So, how is it with you?  Do you recognize and understand that your life in both body and soul, both now and forever, comes from and depends upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the Word-made-Flesh?  Even now, your every breath depends on Him.  Your food and drink, your clothing and shelter, your family and friends, your job, and your whole place and purpose in this world — it all comes from Him, it all depends on Him, and without Him you die.  And as that is true for this body and life on earth, so is it the case for the Resurrection and the Life everlasting.

Come to the House where Jesus is.  That is where you’ll find Him in the preaching of His Word.  Come to the House where Jesus is, and enter by the door of Holy Baptism — that’s how you get in.  If you are baptized, return to the significance of your Baptism.  Repent, and believe the Gospel.  Confess your sins and hear and receive the Lord’s Holy Absolution.  Likewise, if you have not been baptized, repent, and be baptized.  Hear and heed the Word of the Lord, and believe what He says.  And as you have heard, so also speak.  Confess and pray in the Name of the Lord Jesus.

You find Him in the House where His Word is preached, as you have heard exemplified in this Holy Gospel.  There is a transition that has taken place from the Synagogue to the House of the Apostles (here the home of Simon Peter, the Apostle).  That is where Jesus is to be found — in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship — in the apostolic preaching and ministry of the Gospel — in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.  That is where the Lord Jesus Christ gives you life.

As He did for Peter’s mother-in-law, so He does do for you.  He stretches out His hand and takes hold of you, in order to heal you.  He removes the burning fever of your sin, the fire in your heart, mind, body, and soul.  He casts out your demons, He heals your diseases, He raises you up to life.

But how can this be, since you are a sinner?  You are sinful and unclean, deserving of nothing but punishment.  How is it, then, that Jesus saves you?  It is not by an exercise of His raw power.  He does not set aside the Law, nor does He simply overlook your sins and ignore them.  In order to save you from your sins and all their deadly consequences, He must actually deal with them and remove them from your heart, mind, body, and soul.  To leave you in your sins, to leave your sins in you, would be to consign you to death and damnation, separated from divine Life and Salvation.  But, no, to save you from your sins, from death and damnation, He takes them all upon Himself.

The One who does not grow weary and faint has submitted Himself to become weary and faint on your behalf.  He has taken your tiredness upon Himself.  He has borne your sins and griefs and sorrows, your infirmities, and all of your diseases in His own Body to the Cross.  Thus has He borne them all away by His death and buried them forever in His own tomb.

In the evening He has done it.  In the evening when He was handed over to His voluntary suffering and death, He took up the sins of the whole world and dealt with them in Himself.  He took up all your sins and dealt with them; and not only your sins, but all the grief they cause, all the sickness, all the death, the fear, and the shame.  He took it all and made it His own, and He dealt with it once and for all.  He put it all to death in His own death, He buried it in His own burial.  And by this means He has shut up the spirits who know God according to His Law but do not know His mercy.  He has shut them up by forgiving all your sins, by atoning for them and reconciling you to God.

The demons no longer have anything to say.  They only know God’s power and the judgment and condemnation of His Law.  They cannot comprehend that God’s almighty power is made perfect in the voluntary weakness of Christ Jesus, in His divine grace, mercy, and forgiveness for sinners.  Jesus shuts those demons up.  They know who He is, and yet they do not really know Him at all.

That which is “spiritual” apart from Christ Jesus and the preaching of His Gospel is not holy and divine but demonic and deadly.  The demons are “spiritual,” but they are evil, Satanic, and deadly.  They know only sin and death, accusation and fear, but not the forgiveness and mercy of the Lord.  So Christ Jesus shuts them up.  Anointed by the Holy Spirit for your salvation, He comes to you and quiets your troubled spirit.  With His forgiveness of your sins He gives you peace and rest.

In the evening He laid down His life for the sins of the world.  And in the morning He rises for your justification.  He rises from the dead, and He raises you up with Himself by the Gospel.  So also, in His Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father, He has brought you into the presence of God in His own Body of flesh and blood like yours, crucified and risen from the dead forever.

He has not gone away from you.  He has not left you alone.  He has not forsaken you.  Though you may cast about, wondering where He has gone — though everyone may be looking for Him — He is not hiding from you.  He has gone to the Right Hand of the Father, where He ever lives to make intercession for you.  There He prays for you unceasingly.  When your own prayers falter, bear in mind that the incarnate Son of God, your merciful and great High Priest, is always praying for you.

But the fact that He is there for you at the Right Hand of God does not mean that He is not here for you in this body and life on earth.  By no means!  His being there means that you have a place with God the Father and the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus.  But even now the same Lord Jesus Christ is here with you in His Church on earth, in the preaching of His Holy Gospel.

Have you not heard what He has said to you this morning?  It is for this purpose that He comes, that He should preach His Gospel in every place, in every town and city.  And so also in this place, in this House of Christ.  Where He preaches His Word, there He is.  And with His preaching He still casts out demons, He still heals the sick, He still raises the dead.  He does all of this for you.

He causes His Word to be preached in such a way that even the great Apostle St. Paul really has no choice in the matter.  “Woe is me,” he says, “if I do not preach.”  He must.  It is a stewardship.  He is commissioned by God to preach, because preaching is not just a good and worthwhile thing to do, it is a necessary thing to do.  It’s not incidental to the life of the Church, nor is it incidental to your life.  It is the very presence of Christ Jesus as your Savior, the One who forgives your sins.  He causes His Word to be preached, and by this preaching of His Word He gives you His Life.

So, you then, hear and heed the preaching of Christ Jesus in His House — and pray according to His Word.  Pray as He prays, as He has taught you to pray, because He joins your prayer to His own praying.  “Our Father who art in heaven.”  How is it that you can call God your dear Father and know yourself to be His dear child?  It is because you are joined to Christ, the beloved Son.

As the Lord Jesus prays, you pray.  And serve Him by faith, serve Him in love.  Serve His Body.  As Peter’s mother-in-law got up from her sickness and fever to wait upon Jesus and His disciples, to serve them in love — having been given new life, she lived in love for the Lord who saved her — you do the same.  Hear the preaching of the Gospel, pray in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and serve His Body, the Church, with your own body of flesh and blood.  That is how a Christian lives.

Here within His Church the preaching and catechesis of His Word call you daily to repentance and to faith by daily and richly forgiving you all your sins, thereby remedying the problem at its root.  And the Flesh of Christ Jesus, crucified and risen from the dead, heals you of all of your diseases in both your body and your soul.  Here He does take hold of you.  He takes hold of your flesh with His own Flesh.  His Flesh has become weak, but His Flesh has been glorified in His Resurrection.  And with that Flesh He takes hold of your frail flesh, in order to enliven it with His Holy Spirit.  He touches your lips and tongue with His Body and Blood.  And not for nothing does He do this.  He does it to feed you with Life in and with Himself.  He cools your fever, removes your infirmity, raises you up from death to Life in His Body, and brings you into the presence of God the Father.

And the Peace of Christ, which surpasses your human understanding, keeps your heart and mind there with God, in and with Himself, unto the Resurrection of your body and the Life everlasting.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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