Sermon for the Sunday after Ascension – Easter 6
1 Peter 4:7-11 + John 15:26-16:4
For forty days the Paschal candle was lit during our services here, until it was extinguished this past Thursday when we celebrated Jesus’ ascension into heaven. As I said after the service, it seems a little strange, not having it lit anymore. Imagine how Jesus’ disciples felt, watching Jesus leave them, knowing that they wouldn’t see Him again for the rest of their earthly lives, and then waiting for the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, the Helper who would testify, and also waiting to testify themselves, as Jesus told them they must do—oh, and also waiting to be hated, persecuted, and killed for their testimony, as Jesus told them they would be.
But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me, Jesus says.
Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit after His ascension. He would send Him “from the Father,” because that’s how it works in the Holy Trinity. The Spirit proceeds from the Father, but also from the Son, as we confess in the Nicene Creed, in the sense that the Son is responsible for sending Him into the world from the Father. The Spirit’s work is to testify. But this is important: Notice what the content of His testimony is: “He will testify about Me.” The Spirit’s testimony is about Jesus. The Spirit bears witness to what He has seen and heard about Jesus, and, as a Person of the Holy Trinity, the Spirit knows Jesus perfectly. He has testified about Jesus throughout the Old Testament and throughout the New. When He spoke by the prophets in the Old Testament, the focus was always on the coming Christ. Now it’s on the Christ who has come. Any supposed testimony of the Holy Spirit that doesn’t focus on Jesus, or that doesn’t tell the truth about Jesus, isn’t coming from the Holy Spirit, but from an unholy spirit.
How would the Spirit of truth testify about Jesus? He would do it in three ways. First, through signs and wonders and various miracles, starting with the miracles of the Day of Pentecost which we’ll consider next week. It was about Jesus, because those signs were always connected to the apostles’ preaching about Jesus, the message that He was the promised Christ, that He suffered for our sins, that He was raised to life for our justification, that He has ascended on high to reign as King over all things at the Father’s right hand, that He will return one day for judgment. This outward testimony of the Spirit was important as the apostles began to spread the Gospel throughout the world. But it was temporary; that testimony has already been entered into evidence. It’s done.
There is another testimony of the Spirit, in the hearts of the apostles, enabling them to teach (and to write!) about Jesus correctly. He guided them into all truth, as Jesus said He would. He emboldened them to preach the Gospel of Jesus with new-found courage and conviction—just as He had done, by the way, with the Old Testament prophets, as Peter writes: the Spirit of Christ who was in [the prophets] testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.
Then there is the testimony of the Spirit in the hearts of the hearers of the Gospel as He works through the preaching of the Word, enabling the hearers to believe and understand the Gospel about Jesus. As Paul writes, No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. And again, The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, enabling us to cry out to God as our dear Father. In the hearts of those who believe the Gospel, the Spirit continues that testimony on a daily basis, urging you to know and to follow Jesus more and more.
But the Spirit doesn’t testify alone, separately from the preached Word. His testimony is always connected with that preaching. Jesus goes on in our Gospel, And you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning. These words aren’t spoken to all people. They’re spoken to the apostles who were literally “with Jesus from the beginning.” Theirs is the eyewitness testimony, the testimony on which the Church is founded, together with that of the Old Testament prophets. And, just like the Old Testament prophets, the apostles recorded for us the very words that the Holy Spirit gave them and has faithfully preserved for us in the holy Bible.
You and I cannot offer that kind of testimony. We were not eyewitnesses to everything Jesus said and did, or to His death, or to His resurrection. We can testify only to the faith that each of us has in that testimony. We can and should tell the world that we have been convinced that the apostles’ testimony is true, that Christ is risen, that Christ is King, and the Christ is returning. But when we invite people to church, we’re not inviting them to come and hear our testimony. We’re holding out to them the testimony of others—of the Holy Spirit, and of the apostles (and prophets). And that testimony is not without power. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
But, it comes at a cost for those who testify and for those who hold out their testimony—a cost that Jesus Himself willingly paid, a cost that He was not about to hide from His apostles. In fact, the persecution of God’s faithful people is actually part of God’s plan for this time in between Jesus’ ascension and His coming at the end of the age, a plan which Jesus revealed ahead of time.
They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is coming, when whoever kills you will think he is rendering service to God. They will do these things because they have not known the Father nor Me.
The Spirit of God who testified in the Old Testament about the coming Christ is the same Spirit who would testify about Christ after He came. That means that the Old Testament Church is really the same Church as the New Testament Church. But, as Jesus predicts here, most of the Jewish people would depart from the true Church by rejecting Him and His apostles after Him, proving that they never really knew God the Father rightly, that their version of the Jewish religion was a sham. And they would keep up the sham. They would keep their synagogues and their temple even after Christ’s resurrection and ascension. They would hold onto the customs and rituals and traditions of the Old Testament. But their Christ-less religion would not tolerate the preachers whom Christ would send out. The synagogues in Israel and in every nation should have naturally turned into Christian churches when the Spirit and the apostles testified there, but instead, the Christ-less Jews would excommunicate the Christian Jews from the synagogues. And they would go further than that. They would persecute and execute the apostles and many who believed the testimony of the apostles, thinking they were serving God as they did it. That’s why, in the book of Revelation, Jesus refers to them as “synagogues of Satan.” Because they weren’t serving God by rejecting Christ or by persecuting His witnesses. Jesus says, They have not known the Father nor Me. They were serving Satan instead.
Now, you and I can’t be put out of the synagogues. We didn’t grow up attending one like the apostles did. (Like Jesus Himself did!) But the testimony about Jesus that we believe, the testimony about Jesus that we hold out to the world still draws hatred from Jews and Gentiles alike.
Are you prepared to be hated? Seriously prepared? Are you ready to say no to your boss when he demands that you speak or act contrary to the word of Christ? Are you ready to lose your job? To lose your possessions? To lose your reputation? To lose your freedom? To lose your life? If not, then you should stop calling Jesus your Lord and your King, because you can’t be His disciple if any of those things come before Him. If you are unwilling to be persecuted and to lose all things for the testimony of Christ, then you have already denied Him before men, and will be denied by Him before His Father in heaven.
Or, are you prepared to lose all those things, but you struggle against the weakness of your flesh that fights so hard to avoid suffering like that? Then be assured that you will have help on the day of decision, when you must give a testimony of your own, knowing it may come at a great cost. The Helper, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit of God Himself lives within every believer, and will be your strength and your help in the day of trouble. Oh, you may still lose it all for Jesus’ sake. But in losing your life for His sake, you will find it! And you will gain far more than you ever gave up.
Who would willingly do such a thing, knowing the consequences that will follow? Only those who believe that Jesus rose from the dead and lives and reigns forever at the Father’s right hand. Only those who believe that heaven is our home and that even death can’t rob us of our eternal life with Christ our Savior, who suffered the loss of everything for us, that we might be saved from sin and death. Only those who know that the consequences of not holding out the testimony about Jesus are far worse than the consequences of holding out that testimony. Because if we don’t hold it out, who will? And if no one does, who can be saved?
It’s a lot to ask, a lot to expect. But you are not alone. You have a divine Helper to guide you, to strengthen you, to comfort you through it all, to testify along with us and to shore up our confession. The Helper has come, and He is still here. And next week we’ll celebrate the day of His coming. May the Helper, the Spirit of truth, grant you all the help you need, to believe in the testimony about the Lord Jesus and to hold it out to the world, with the boldness and confidence of those who truly believe it. Amen.
