Text: Matt 9:1-8 (Gen 28:10-17, Eph 4:22-28)
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
According to the author of the Book of Hebrews, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” For it is an article of faith that there are things in God’s creation, “visible and invisible.” Indeed, the old saying “seeing is believing” is turned on its head in God’s kingdom!
What the tired, sweaty, sheep-herder Jacob saw in a “certain place” one night in 1966 BC was hardly a “gate of heaven.” He saw an empty field. He saw a rock that served for his pillow as he camped out under the stars. But what the Lord revealed to Him in faith was a ladder that bridged the divide between earth and heaven, between man and God, between sin and righteousness, between infernal death and eternal life.
The Lord spoke a promise to Jacob – the same promise He spoke to Jacob’s father Isaac and his father Abraham. It was a promise of an unseen descendant, living dormant in the flesh of Jacob like a seed, the same Seed of the woman promised to Eve. For promises are truly part of the unseen world. We don’t believe them because we see them, but rather, we believe them because we don’t. That’s what makes it a promise.
This promise came to Jacob in the form of a vision, of angels “ascending and descending,” of a promise that the single male offspring of promise would be a blessing to “all the families of the earth.” The promise included land and descendants, riches and a national identity, history and even a kingdom that would never end. But most important of all, God promised to be there, to be present for, and with, his people – in spite of their sins, and in fact, as the promise would play out, in forgiveness of their sins.
And then Jacob woke up. All he saw was an empty field and a rock. And yet, hear anew Jacob’s confession of the unseen, his confession of faith: “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” The angels and the vision of God were once more relegated to the unseen, and Jacob was left to accept the promise on faith.
Jacob’s descendants would build a Temple not far from Bethel, in Jerusalem, where sins were forgiven in accordance with this promise, through the shedding of sacrificial blood on the altar of the Temple.
The promise was fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. For in this offspring of Jacob, “all families of the earth” were blessed through His shedding of sacrificial blood in the Temple of His body, offered on the altar of the cross.
And though one cannot see sins forgiven, one can certainly see the effects of forgiveness. For the wages of sin is death, and sin is the source of unhappiness, and the cause of sickness. The work and ministry of Jesus in raising the dead, proclaiming the Good News, and healing the sick, all point to His unseen work in forgiving sins.
This is illustrated by our Lord’s double miracle of healing the paralytic and forgiving his sins. For the paralytic was brought on a stretcher to Jesus. To those of us blinded by sin, we only see a sick man and some desperate friends. But Jesus “saw their faith.” Faith is invisible to us, but visible to Jesus. He sees their faith, and He proclaims the healing word of forgiveness to the sin-struck and crippled man. “Take heart, my son,” Jesus says, “your sins are forgiven.” And unseen and unheard by the crowd was the unspoken muttering of the scribes: “This man is blaspheming.” But to our Lord, the invisible “evil in their hearts” is visible to Him from whom no secrets are hid.
“Why do you think evil in your hearts?” asks our Lord. “For which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?” Which seems the greater miracle to us whose world is largely visible: the unseen forgiveness of sins or the seen healing of the paralytic? But that we “may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” our Lord commands the man to pick up his stretcher and walk away. “And he rose and went home” from this place.
And “how awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
For wherever the Lord Jesus Christ is physically present, wherever His Word sounds forth, wherever sins are forgiven, and wherever faith abounds – that is the gate of heaven.
In this place and with our eyes, we see a rather humble building. We see lights that don’t work and air conditioners that can barely get the job done. We see distracted people – including the pastor – fumbles with the hymnal because they get lost sometimes. We see children ascending and descending from their seats, and there is not an angel in sight. The pews are sometimes as uncomfortable as a rock would be as a pillow. We see ourselves as we confess, being sinful “in thought, word, and deed.” We hear the law’s stern rebuke, at least when we’re paying attention at all.
And in this place, we also hear the pastor tell us: “your sins are forgiven.” And aside from a gesture tracing the cross in the air, there isn’t much to see with our eyes. In this place, we see water poured on a baby. We don’t see the Holy Spirit. In this place, we see bread and wine blessed and given out, and we eat and we drink. We do not see Jesus healing the sick and raising the dead.
And yet, in faith, we join Jacob in proclaiming: “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”
As unseen as it is, as much of an article of faith as it is, dear friends, it is what it is. We see it by faith, through the promise, in the Word, and by grace. We see it because Jesus tells us it is so. “I forgive you all your sins. This is my body. This is my blood. For the forgiveness of sins.”
And that we “may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,” the Son of Man gives authority to men on earth to forgive sins in His name and by His command. For that Word of forgiveness is a Word of promise, borne out in the sacrificial blood of Jesus, and though invisible to the eye, it is visible to the eyes of faith.
“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”
And though we may feel unworthy to enter that gate based on what our eyes see, we are made worthy based on what our ears have heard – the very Word of God.
Although we see through the glass darkly, and though we see the promise of God dimly in our own inadequacy, we cling to the promise of a putting away of the “old self,” which belongs to our “former manner of life,” a visible corruption through “deceitful desires.” In faith, we see the promise of being “renewed in the spirit of [our] minds” and the putting on of “the new self, created in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
We may not see it with our eyes, but the promise is there, dear brothers and sisters in Christ! The promise is there even as Christ is here with us, veiled under bread and wine, and delivered through something as ordinary as human speech.
Dear friends, listen anew to the promise, the Word, the proclamation that the Lord makes known to us yet again on this day: “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go…. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
For here in this place is a ladder that bridges the divide between earth and heaven, between man and God, between sin and righteousness, between infernal death and eternal life. It is a ladder shaped in the form and likeness of a cross, and bearing the Promise Made Flesh!
“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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