Written on the Heart (2 Corinthians 3:4-11)

Grace to you in peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Our text this morning is from our epistle reading.

We hear again these words.

The Apostle Paul writes, Now, if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?

For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.

Thus far the text.

The Gospel of Mark today, a man from the Decapolis cannot hear and can barely speak.

And his friends bring him to Jesus, and Jesus doesn't preach to him, he doesn't hand him a pamphlet, he takes him aside, away from the crowd, sticks his fingers in the man's ears, spits, touches his tongue, looks up to heaven and sighs.

And then one word in Aramaic, Ephitha, be opened.

And it happens.

His ears open, his tongue is loosed, and the man speaks plainly, mainly for the first time in his life.

It is a strange scene, but it's also a perfect picture of what Paul is talking about in our text this morning.

And this is about something even bigger than one man's healing in Galilee.

Because every one of us was born deaf to the voice of grace.

And every one of us was born with a tongue that could not rightly confess who God is or what he's done.

And Paul's about to tell us how that gets fixed.

And spoiler alert, it is not by trying harder to hear.

Paul had trouble in the church at Corinth.

Among other things, false teachers had shown up carrying letters of recommendation, the ancient version of a polished resume, references attached, credentials stamped.

Here's why you should listen to us.

And Paul did not bring one.

He didn't need to.

He tells the Corinthian Christians that they themselves are his letter of recommendation, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, a letter anybody could read just by watching how their lives had changed as a result of the message he proclaimed to them.

Paul had planted, Paul had watered, but God had given the growth.

And Paul isn't ashamed to admit this, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, he says.

In other words, if you're impressed with anything that is happening in this ministry, do not be impressed with Paul.

And then he compares his ministry to Moses.

And between them, it would seem, Moses has the more impressive LinkedIn profile.

Moses came down off Sinai with two tablets of stone, the law of God carved right into rock.

And Moses' face so bright with the glory of God that the people could not look at him.

And we should at least stop there and give Moses' ministry its due.

Moses' ministry was to deliver the law, and the Ten Commandments which God gave through Moses are the highest arrangement of moral law ever produced.

Jesus himself, Sermon on the Mount, only deepens them, teaching that it's not just the outward act but the heart behind that matters.

But there is a real grandeur to the law.

This is not something to wave off as insignificant or disposable.

But Paul still calls that glorious ministry a ministry of death, a ministry of condemnation.

How could a ministry that glorious ever deserve such a label?

Well, here's how.

If you tell somebody, don't steal, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't covet, you're telling them the truth.

But the command itself does not have the power to produce what it demands.

It only shows you your lack.

Ask anybody who's tried to keep a New Year's resolution by sheer willpower how that goes, and now raise the stakes to eternity.

You see, the law preached honestly does not make bad people good.

It makes people who already knew deep down that something was wrong with them know it with more precision.

And that's what he means here, Paul, when he says the letter kills.

Not because the law is bad, but because a mirror cannot fix what it shows you.

So Paul then asks a question that turns this whole passage on its head.

It's an argument from the lesser to the greater.

If the ministry that kills carried that much glory, how much more glory belongs to the ministry that saves?

If the ministry that condemns was that impressive, how much more does the ministry that hands out righteousness surpass it?

And Moses' glory was already fading even as the people stared at it.

However dazzling, it was still being brought to an end by something greater already on its way.

Moses himself talks about this.

He says, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers, it is to him you must listen.

And the point here is not that Moses was bad, Jesus is good.

He's saying something of God, the law given through Moses, got something even better.

Because the ministry of the Spirit is not a matter of telling you what to do from the outside, it gives you what it demands.

And it does that on the strength of a finished work.

Christ has already lived the righteousness the law required and died the death that it demanded.

And that righteousness, one, once and for all, on the cross, is placed on you like a robe, credited to you.

Even before it ever begins to change a single thing about the way you live.

And then the Spirit takes that same righteousness and writes it into your heart instead of chiseling it into stone outside of you.

And because it's tied to Christ, who does not fade, the glory of the ministry of righteousness does not fade either.

The law kills, the gospel makes alive.

The law reaches an end, the gospel is permanent.

That's the ministry Paul was called to deliver.

Where did Paul ever get the standing to carry a ministry like that?

Not from his own resume, though it was a good one.

Educated at the feet of the great teacher Gamaliel, a Pharisees, Pharisees zealous to a fault, but none of that qualified him.

God qualified him.

His apostleship was rooted, itself rooted in an act of grace.

And Paul, his whole life as an apostle long, never got over that.

Not just that God would forgive a persecutor of the church like him, but would then appoint that same man to be his ambassador.

Grace upon grace.

I think we all know unbelievers in the world who spend their whole lives building their own letter of recommendation to hand to God someday.

They make the right choices, they live a clean life, they build a reputation no one can really poke a hole in, hoping, fingers crossed, the sum of it will add up to enough on judgment day.

But even among us who know better, who know that the righteousness that counts before God isn't our own but Christ's, even among us, the letter of the law still does its proper work.

You've heard the commandments plainly enough, you know what's required.

And instead of that knowledge making you better, it has shown you over and over where you fall short and left you carrying a guilt.

Maybe even a low-simmering self-loathing.

Well, that's the letter.

Doing what the letter of the law does on its own.

And if that's all you have, you are still that deaf mute in the decapolis.

Ears sealed shut to any word of comfort, a tongue unable to get out a confession of faith.

But good news.

Christ still says, Ephitha, be opened.

He is still in the business of opening what sin has sealed shut.

Not with spit on his fingers, but as with Lucia a few minutes ago, with water joined to his word, with an absolution spoken plainly over you through the very ministry Paul's describing, still carried out today by ordinary men in an office that is not ordinary at all.

We just finished in our sermon him praying for this, that God would come down and dwell among us, healing our deafness and loosing our tongues.

And that's exactly what happens every time God's people gather together in his house in Jesus' name.

We entered God's house today, not with a self-written letter of recommendation.

Instead, we came the way every believer comes, marked by the Spirit of the living God who continues the work he started at Pentecost, turning people who could hear only the accusation of the letter of the law into living letters of Christ.

And having been baptized, having heard our sins forgiven, kneeling at this altar to receive Christ's body and blood, we carry before God not our own resume, but Christ's righteousness given to us, written into us by his own spirit.

And it does not fade.

The way Moses' glory faded, because the one who writes it does not fade.

Deaf ears opened, mute tongues loosed, sin not counted, death defanged.

As those whom Christ has opened, leave here today, sufficient, not in yourselves, but because God has made you so.

Amen.

In the peace that passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting.

Amen.