Easter 2

Good Shepherd

2004 Pass Rd, Biloxi, MS 39531

Draft Ezekiel 37:1–14; 1 Jn 5:4–10; Jn 20:19–31; Ps 33; antiphon: v. 6   –     4/12/26

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

Please open up your hymnals to page 326. What is Confession?

What sins should we confess?

Which are these?

What is the Office of the Keys?

Where is this written?

What do you believe according to these words?

The Gospel reading for today is, as you have clearly read, the foundation for our understanding of the Office of the Keys, the means by which God has given us the avenue of forgiveness when we sin. This will be relevant later.

If you look at the Old Testament reading you will see Ezekiel recording how he saw God raising up the dead of Israel. Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. In part, why does God say this, because the people have themselves lamented that Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off. This is, of course, what those Israelites who were taken into captivity to Babylon were saying. Thus the first meaning of God’s promise above is that He will restore the exiles to their homes, which He does as we read in Ezra and Nehemiah, and the history of Josephus. This is the primary interpretation and immediate application of God Word.

However, always remember when reading in the Old Testament that the ancient kingdom of Israel was a means to an end. What is that end? (Pause) Jesus was the end. God calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans in Genesis 11 not because Abraham was so special, but that God might make a great nation out of this man, that Abraham and his seed, his descendants, would be a light to all the nations. Isaiah records, I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth (49:6). Then when God uses Joshua to lead the people across the Jordan into the land of Canaan and there divides it among Abraham’s descendants through Jacob, was the point of given them this land that they might posses it and that is all? No. The land was a mere foretaste of the greater gift which God had in store for Israel, and it was His means of making a place where He might dwell among His people. But Israel was unfaithful. They were not the light to the nations as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been. They rather adopted the darkness and demon worship of their neighbors, bringing in child sacrifice, adultery, homosexuality, usury, and other evils. So God removed them from the land, putting the wicked among the Israelites to the sword, but preserving the faithful in Exile until He would return them to the land. Remember, through the descendants of Abraham the Christ is born, and in the promised land there God would be reconciled to His people through His own death on the cross, so He had to return Israel to the promised land. But neither the people of Israel nor the promised land were the end of God’s plan or the extent of His promised salvation.

We come, then, to the later and greater meaning of this promise in Ezekiel, that among that exceedingly vast army of dry bones are the bones of the dead Gentiles. How can that be since God Himself explicitly says, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel? The answer lies in what God has revealed to us in the New Testament. First, Jesus says in John 10, I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd (15–16). The other flock are the other nations of the world. Jesus does not desire a perpetual separation between the Jews and the rest of mankind, but that all would be one people, His people, together.

Then St. Paul explains in Galatians, a passage I have often read to you, Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith (3:6–9). Thus, when God speaks in the long term of the whole house of Israel, when He speaks of the salvation of man which is the greater fulfillment of the prophecy than the return of ancient Israel from Babylon, when He promises the restoration of life from death to those who are dead in their trespasses and sins which is the greater fulfillment of the prophecy than the mere restoration of plots of land to a living people, St. Paul would instruct us to understand that when God says the whole house of Israel, He means also you. The house composed of those who are by blood descendants of Abraham but also share the true faith in Christ with Abraham, and those who share no blood but share the faith of Abraham. This is how you should always understand the prophecies in the Old Testament about the saving of Israel.

Therefore, when we hear the prophecy of Ezekiel we should understand that it is the promised kingdom, not just the physical land of Israel, which God is giving to this army. And the giving of the breath has a deeper meaning than we see from the English. The word for Spirit in this chapter is the Hebrew, Ruach, which is the same word used of the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1:2, And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The coming promise then refers to God restoring to life those who are dead in their sins by giving them the Holy Spirit through the waters of Baptism. They have had their sins washed away and have received the clean heart and new spirit of which king David spoke (Ps 51:12). They, really, we, were as dead men, and God in the death and resurrection of Christ has made us alive and fully human again, our thoughts, words, and deeds purified, the Imago Dei, the Image of God restored, and the Spirit of God dwelling within us. With this forgiveness, righteousness, and salvation which Christ has won for us, we likewise have the new homes in the final promised land, the Kingdom of God.

Remember that we are sojourners in this world, so when God promises I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord, the greater fulfillment of this promise is the inheritance which previous generations looked for but did not see. The writer to the Hebrews says that all the saints of the Old Testament died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city (11:13–16). They all stood in that exceedingly great army with us, but they did not get to see in full clarity how God would accomplish his promises, how He would give them the right to the full inheritance beyond the mere land.

What then of all of us now? St. John offers you guidance for your lives as those who have been made alive from death, and clothed in Christ’s righteousness. Immediately before the assigned reading today he says, By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (2–5) He speaks of the life of the Christian, that we are to love one another and obey God’s Commandments. He speaks primarily of loving our fellow Christians; elsewhere in the Bible Jesus also says that we are to love our unbelieving neighbors and our enemies. But here in 1 John, the command is to be reconciled to each other within the church.

When your brother in the church sins against you, what must you do? Do not avoid him, as is the easy thing to do; do not despise him, as is the thing our hearts want to do; but go to him and forgive him. When you sin against your brother in the church, what must you do? Do not avoid him but seek him out at once, confess your sin to him, and for the sake of Christ who died for you God will forgive you as He promised, If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn 1:9).

What of when the guilt of sin, whether against a brother or not, what of when the guilt of sin remains a burden? That is where God’s gift of absolution comes. What did Jesus give the Disciples in the upper room? What before only God could do, the authority to forgive and to retain sins. This Office of the Keys God has entrusted to His church that His under-shepherds might use them for the sake of comforting and disciplining the whole house of Israel. When there is a sin which bothers you, burdens your conscience, makes you worry that you are truly saved, come to me, your pastor. God has given the pastor to you, not just to preach, not just to baptize, not just to administer the Lord’s Supper, but personally in the place of Christ to hear your confession and apply God’s Word to your wounds, to forgive you in the stead and by the command of Jesus. Through this key of loosing sins which God has given to His pastors, God removes the stain of your sin so that you become, as the name of this Sunday of the Church year says, “Quasimodogeniti” like newborn babes (1 Pt 2:2). When the devil would taunt you, when sin weighs you down, when you feel like crying out, Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off, God’s word of absolution comes and speaks, Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the Kingdom of God. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live … Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord. When God declares you forgiven, Do not disbelieve, but believe.

Now the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.