Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (1889)

Praise God, this is our office. For this purpose we are created and reborn; we are
in the true faith, so also God has loosened our tongue for His praise. From where
perhaps does it come that the thanking and praising of God among Christians joyfully
and fervently proceeds so little? Thanking derives from thinking. This is also stirred by
the fact that Christians do not always and lively enough remember the physical and
spiritual blessings of God that He has bestowed on them and still bestows, as well as of
the great salvation that He will do in them once in eternity. O, if that would be the case,
then it would be widely exercised better.
1
Now today we want to remember these
blessings of God on the basis of our Sunday Gospel, and God help that we by His grace
make the confession of these people ever more into our confession: He has done all
things well! The subject, etc.

The joyful confession of believing Christians: He has done all things well! They have
every reason, so to speak

1. already with regard to the bodily blessings of God that befell them;
a. those of creation; . even these belong to Christ; for He is true God with the
Father and with the Holy Spirit
2
; He proves Himself here through the miracle
3
as the
almighty Creator, to Whom all power is given, when He speaks, it thus happens, etc. .
these benefits are great and glorious; . all the works of the Lord in nature, in creatures
besides us
4
; all of nature is a book in whose pages it is written: God is love, wisdom; He
has done all things well! . in particular the benefits that happen to us; He has created
us to be reasonable creatures, given us body and soul, eyes and ears, etc., and
wonderfully made us
5
; examines the plight of the deaf-mute
6
; the Lord takes him in
particular
7
in order to show us the power of the devil and what we all would deserve
for the sake of sin; it is God's unmerited goodness and mercy, when we have healthy
limbs, good hearing, sight, etc.; the benefit was so great, yes, still greater, that we hear,
read, see, etc. from childhood,

1
Psalm 103:1-5; Psalm 106:1-2; Psalm 146:1-2; KELG 349:12, 14.
2
John 1:3; Hebrews 1:2, 10.
3
Mark 7:34-35.
4
Genesis 1:31; Psalm 104:24; Romans 1:20.
5
Psalm 139.
6
Mark 7:32.
7
Mark 7:33.
b. those of providence; . even these benefits come from Christ
8
; . even they are
great and glorious, that Christians must confess that the Lord has made everything etc.
. in good days: you were as small and poor, God has blessed you, honored you, made
you rich and wealthy, you can serve your neighbor as employer; or you still have house
and home, clothing and food, etc.; O, has not the Lord made all things well with you? .
in evil days: poverty, shame, bitter experience, cases of illness and deaths, deafness, etc.;
will you say: the Lord has made it evil? Consider Romans 8:28; Psalm 118:71; break
through it and say: the Lord has done all things well!

2. even more in memories of what the Lord has done for their souls; for
a. far greater and more terrible than any physical misery is spiritual misery; we
have an image of this in the deaf-mute
9
; men are by nature . deaf, deaf toward God's
Word; . toward the Law that reveals our sickness of sin, the thunder of Sinai etc.; .
against the Gospel
10
; likewise mute; indeed exceedingly wrong, ready and willing to
abuse the name of God, cursing, swearing, backbiting, defending fools, etc.
11
; mute to
praise of God, glory, confession
12
; yes, all powers of men are corrupt, he is by nature
dead through sins and transgressions;
b. far greater and praiseworthy is therefore the salvation that the Lord does in
the soul; an image of the same if the healing of the deaf-mute, whom the Lord indeed
also healed the soul; . the Lord took him from the people in particular, looked up to
heaven and sighed
13
; as the Lord leads even today especially, the misery of the sinner
laments it, He pursues him with forgiveness and seeks him
14
; . He put His finger in his
ear, etc.
15
; the Lord does this spiritually through His Word; through it the Lord opens
ears and hearts
16
; He stirs and loosens the tongue; . and said: Ephphatha, that is, be
opened; and straightaway it did, etc.
17
; thus the Lord tears the bonds and shackles of
human sin through His divine Word in the conversion of men etc.;
c. this great salvation has happened to all believing Christians; . the Lord has
also taken them as "special", performed many miracles, in misfortune, illness, etc. in
order to save their souls; . the divine Ephphatha! is not sounded in vain: their ears, yes,

8
Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3.
9
Mark 7:32.
10
Psalm 58:5; Acts 7:51; 2 Timothy 4:4.
11
James 2:8-9; Romans 3:13-14.
12
Psalm 51:17.
13
Mark 7:33-34;
14
TLH 385:2.
15
Mark 7:33.
16
Acts 16:14.
17
Mark 7:34-35.
their hearts are opened by and for God's Word, their tongues loosed for confession,
praise of God etc.; O blessed salvation that the Lord has done on their souls!

3. but above all first in blessed eternity;
a. Ephphatha! will soon sound over our graves, and they will open; and once
again (Gerhard - Harmony, p. 1559) to the angels: Ephphatha! and they will open the
gates of heaven and lead in the elect;
b. for - in the blessed eternity - they are extolled above all; the Lord has made
everything well; for now . all fetters of the body, blindness, deafness, weakness, drop
from the body and from us etc.; now complete freedom from all disease of sin, now the
heavenly Physician lays on His hand and completes the cure etc.; . now complete
knowledge of the wonderful guidance of God in this life
18
; with shouting sounds from
the lips of the blessed ones: He has done all things, all things well!
A.G.G.

18
John 13:7.