Who is a God like our God, so eager to forgive?

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 3

Micah 7:18-20

On Sunday, the Holy Spirit highlighted for us God’s deep desire that the lost should be found, that the sinner should be saved. We learned about the importance of repentance, whereby God carries out His heartfelt purpose of granting forgiveness of sins and eternal life to the one who is brought to turn from his sins and to seek refuge in God’s promise of forgiveness through Christ.

In tonight’s Old Testament reading, Micah also wrote about God’s forgiveness. He stood in awe before God, even as his name implies. Micah in Hebrew is short for Micahiah, which means, “Who is like Yah? Who is like Yahweh? Who is like the LORD?” The answer is, no one. No one is like Him, in any way, but especially in His awesome determination to pardon those who have sinned against Him.

Who is a God like You, Micah asks. He’s spent most of his seven-chapter book railing against Israel for their rebellion against God and for their stubborn impenitence, foretelling (like Isaiah, his contemporary) the desolation that would come upon Jerusalem and her people. Most of the book is bad news for Israel. But, here and there, we see glimmers of light, of hope, in the coming of the Messiah, who would be born in Bethlehem—meaning that, after the destruction of Israel, after their captivity in a foreign land, they would most certainly return to their land, so that the Messiah could be born. And when He came, Israel would finally repent of their rebellion against God. Not all Israel, but a remnant within Israel, a small, leftover bunch of sinners, like the tax collectors and prostitutes, who would repent and turn to the Lord and to His Christ.

And what would the Lord do for this remnant? What did He wish to do for all Israel, and for all sinners everywhere? Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? Our God doesn’t ignore sin. He pardons it. He doesn’t condone wickedness. He “passes over” it. That is, instead of targeting people for the wicked things they’ve done, He targeted His Son on the cross, enabling Him to pass over the transgressions of those who believe in Jesus, who look to the Son of God in faith. Justice would require Him to punish us for our sins, but divine justice found another way to deal with them, by punishing Jesus, our Brother, in our place, and offering us a place of refuge under the cross of Christ, who shelters us from the punishment we deserved for our sins.

Again, this pardoning of iniquity, this passing over of transgression, is done for the remnant of His heritage. For that small, leftover portion of Israel who would actually receive their Messiah, like the tax collectors and sinners did. But that remnant also extends beyond the borders of Israel, to all who hear the Gospel and look to God for pardon through Christ, and through Him alone, not for any other reason, not through any other savior, but only in the name of Jesus, where God promises to be merciful.

He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy. Sometimes God allowed Israel to be oppressed for decades because of the hardness of their hearts. Sometimes He allowed them to go years without rain, because they just wouldn’t turn back to His Word and His teaching. But it’s not because He delighted in punishing them. On the contrary, what delights Him is to show mercy. And even after years of disobedience, years of rebellion and wickedness, years of impenitence, God’s desire is still to call sinners and to bring sinners to repentance, so that He can accomplish what He truly wants to accomplish, which is not punishment, but restoration.

He will again have compassion on us, and will tread our iniquities under foot. Micah, as a Spirit-inspired prophet, knew that Israel would again experience God’s compassion. He knew that the coming captivity in Babylon wouldn’t be forever, that the remnant of Israel would be brought to repentance in captivity. He knew that God would stomp on their iniquities and sins and rescue them from sin, death, and the devil. That promise is good, not only for Israel, but for all people, as long as the world endures. There will come a time when the promise of God’s compassion will expire, when Christ comes again in judgment. Until then, there is still time for sinners to repent. And when they do, God doesn’t keep a record of wrongs. He doesn’t keep digging up the past and throwing it in a sinner’s face. He will “tread our iniquities under foot.”

Or, to put it another way, You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. In other words, when God pardons, when God absolves, when God forgives, when you confess your sins in our Sunday service and I absolve you, that means that God casts your sins away from you and buries them so deep that no one can ever dredge them up again. They are forgiven, intentionally forgotten, and can never hurt you again. God chooses to see you as sinless and guiltless, as long as you stay close to Jesus, who bore your sins and your guilt.

You will give truth to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, which You have sworn to our fathers from days of old.

To give truth to Jacob means to be faithfulness to the promises God made to Jacob, to Israel. To give mercy to Abraham means to fulfill the merciful promise God made to accept Abraham’s children as His own and to give them an eternal inheritance. We sing about this same thing every time we sing Mary’s Magnificat. But this faithfulness and mercy go far beyond the nation of Israel or any sort of earthly inheritance. What God swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was to send the Messiah to their earthly children, and to count all believers in that Messiah as children of Abraham and heirs of an eternal inheritance in the new heavens and the new earth that God will create when the days of this earth are through. That means that you and I and all Christians are part of the fulfillment of this promise. We have been given as children to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as part of God’s faithfulness and mercy to them, even as many of their biological children have been cast out because of their stubborn refusal to repent.

Still, for all the impenitence of man, for all the wickedness that fills the world, God continues to send out His Word, for the moment. The Shepherd is still seeking the lost who may be found, because God is still eager to pardon, eager to add more children to Abraham’s family, eager to bring more sinners into fellowship with His beloved Son. We look at the world, and we may wish that God would just quit, quit putting up with all the wickedness, quit sending all the natural disasters, quit allowing men to get away with so much evil. We may wish that He had quit a long time ago and brought justice to the world. The day will come when He does quit, when He gives up on this world and brings an end to man’s time of grace. But you dare not begrudge the Lord His patience. Because it’s His patience with you that has kept the world going long enough for Him to find you when you were lost. And the fact that the world still turns means that God knows there are still more to find, more wicked people to call, more sinners who will believe in Jesus, more condemned people whom He will get to pardon. That’s why He keep the world turning, in spite of all the evil that’s done here and that happens here, all for the sake of the lost sheep who must still be found. Stand in awe of His grace, and of His determination to forgive. Yes, who is a God like our God, so eager to forgive? Amen.

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The vital role of entire-life repentance

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 3

1 Peter 5:6-11  +  Luke 15:1-10

It’s so good to be back with you again today after being gone for two weeks. Being away from worship—from the gathering of God’s people around Word and Sacrament—comes with certain challenges, even risks. I’ll use a campfire as an example. We built several fires during our stay up north. As you know, once you get a good fire going, with plenty of wood, it can burn for hours. But if you want to go to bed, it isn’t hard to put the fire out. You don’t even need to douse it with water. All you have to do is separate the burning logs and the glowing embers from one another, spread them out in the fire pit so that they’re no longer touching one another, fueling one another. Do that, and you can watch as the flames go out and the burning coals grow dimmer and dimmer, and soon the fire is extinguished. So it is with our faith. Where two or three are gathered together in My name, says the Lord Jesus, there I am in the midst of them. To be gathered in Jesus’ name means to be gathered together for sacred purposes: to worship Him, to hear His Word, to receive His Sacraments, to carry out His will, to pray, not as individuals, but as the gathered Church, coming together as the body of Christ, in the name of Christ, even if it’s only a few Christians at a time, like the (relatively) few of you who have gathered here today, like those of you who have gathered together in other places, with a few other Christians, to watch the service, to hear the Word, and add your prayers to ours. Church members are like fire embers. Together, by the power of the Holy Spirit, working through the Word, our faith will keep burning. Apart for too long, and what happens to the embers will happen to the members.

And so, together, we turn our thoughts to the Gospel, to the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, praying that the Holy Spirit will stoke the flames of faith in us as we meditate on Jesus’ words. Here in this Gospel we learn a vital lesson about one of the most basic teachings of the Christian faith: the vital role of repentance in the life of God’s people.

To whom did Jesus originally address these parables of the lost? Luke tells us: He spoke these parables to two groups of people who were gathering around Him. To the tax collectors and sinners, and, more directly, to the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling and murmuring among themselves, This man Jesus receives sinners and eats with them. Remember who the Pharisees and scribes were. They were “God’s people,” as were all the people of Israel, technically, members of the one and only true Church on earth, the one established by God Himself through Abraham and later through Moses. The Pharisees and scribes were what you might call the active members of the Church. They gathered regularly for worship. They knew the Word of God. And, outwardly, they obeyed the commandments, too.

On the other hand, the tax collectors and sinners in Israel were what we might call inactive members. They probably didn’t attend synagogue and most certainly weren’t living according to God’s commandments. Their sins were public and well-known, and people like the scribes and Pharisees thought that such sinners should be permanently shunned.

But Jesus didn’t do that. Instead, He preached in such a way that the tax collectors and sinners heard, not only about their sins against God, not only about God’s anger and the punishment they deserved because of their sins, but also about a God who was willing—even eager—to have them back in His house, a God who was willing to forgive them, wipe the slate clean, for free, about a God who had come searching for them, because He loved them and didn’t want to see them burn in hell. That message was drawing them to Jesus, bringing them to recognize that God was right (about everything) and they were wrong, bringing them to acknowledge their sins, to fear God’s wrath, to trust in Jesus for forgiveness and reconciliation with God, and to turn away from the sinful lives they had been living. In other words, the message of Jesus was bringing them to repentance.

But, as we learn in today’s Gospel, that same message of Jesus, and His willingness to receive sinners, through repentance, was what made the Pharisees and scribes so angry. Their goal wasn’t the repentance of sinners but the destruction of those whom they regarded as sinners. Their goal was to be praised, by God and man, for being such good Church members themselves—for being men who, in their minds, needed no repentance.

So Jesus told them, first, the parable of the lost sheep. Like a shepherd who cares for each one of his sheep, the Lord cares for each one of His members. The Jewish tax collectors and sinners, as Israelites, had been sheep in God’s sheepfold from an early age, practically from birth, but, like sheep, had gone astray. And God cared. So He sent His Son into the world to go looking for them. And when He found them, He didn’t condemn them. He converted them. He brought them to repentance. He forgave them, freely, without their having to do a thing to earn it. And He put them up on His shoulders and began to carry them home to His Father.

Or, in the analogy of the second parable of the lost coin, God saw His people as precious, valuable coins—all, by the way, of the same denomination. In other words, just as ten silver coins are all worth the same, so God views His people as all being worth the same. So when one goes lost, He doesn’t say to Himself, “Well, that one wasn’t worth very much anyway.” No, the worth of the one who goes astray is the same as the worth of all the rest. Nor does He say, “Well, too bad, I lost one coin, but at least I still have nine. I’ll be content with that.” No, He leaves behind the 99 sheep, He leaves behind the 9 silver coins, to go looking for the one sheep, or the one coin, that was lost.

And when the shepherd finds the sheep, when the woman finds the coin, when God finds the sinner and brings him to repentance, God rejoices. And those who love Him, His friends, both human and angelic, rejoice right along with Him.

What does it mean, then, when people like the Pharisees and scribes don’t rejoice along with Jesus when the sinners are brought to repentance? It means that they don’t love Him, which means that they don’t love God, which means that they themselves have gone astray. They themselves have been cut off from God’s kingdom. They themselves, although they are outwardly obedient to God’s commandments and worship God with their lips, are in a worse state than the repenting tax collectors and sinners, because while the sinners have been brought to repentance and are finding a place prepared for them in the kingdom of God, the scribes and Pharisees think they have no need of repentance, and, therefore, no need of Jesus, or of His Father in heaven. Having fallen away from faith in God, they are the ones who have truly become lost, who will spend eternity burning in hell, because of their impenitence.

One of the most profound and useful statements in Martin Luther’s 95 Theses was the very first one: When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. Repentance means a rethinking about one’s sins, no longer regarding them as good things or fun things or as “the right thing,” but now regarding them as terrible mistakes, as something you never should have done, and as something you intend to stop doing. It also means a rethinking about God, no longer regarding Him as an unjust tyrant, but as the One who deserves your worship and obedience, and, most importantly, as the One who has given His Son into death for your sins so that you might be reconciled to Him through faith alone in Christ alone. Such repentance needs to happen when a person has been separated from God through sin and impenitence. And it also needs to happen continually, throughout the entire life of believers, so that, each and every day, you turn away from sin in your heart, turn toward God for mercy and forgiveness, and recommit to changing your life into a holy one, with the mighty help of God the Holy Spirit.

Such repentance, such rethinking about sin and about God, comes about through the preaching of the Gospel. That’s what brought the tax collectors and sinners to recognize that they had ruined their lives and turned against their God and Creator. It brought them to see the truth, that God is good, so good that He would send His Son into the world to seek and to save what was lost, at great expense to Himself. Who wouldn’t want to be reconciled to a God like this? Who wouldn’t want to leave behind the slavery to sin, to flee for refuge to the Lord Jesus and find a Father’s welcome through Him? Who wouldn’t wish to spend all his days serving this God, listening to His Word, and keeping it?

Sadly, there are many. Most, even, who choose destruction and permanent alienation from this God, because, like the devil, they want to believe their own way and do things their own way. And most tragically of all, that number includes many who were once believing Christians, but who have now fallen into impenitence, even as they delude themselves, as the Pharisees and scribes did, into thinking they’re still on the path to eternal life.

You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it, too many times. People who were raised as Christians but then allow themselves to be dragged away into willful sin, whether it’s sleeping with someone you’re not married to, or speaking cruel, hurtful words that you refuse to take back, or holding onto a grudge instead of forgiving as you ought. As the writer to the Hebrews says, If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries… For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The LORD will judge His people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. That is, it is a fearful thing to stand before God’s judgment in impenitence, holding onto sin, refusing to take refuge in Jesus’ sacrifice. In repentance and faith, there is safety from God’s wrath. Without repentance, no one is safe, for there is no one on earth who needs no repentance.

So imitate the tax collectors and sinners in today’s Gospel! Imitate them by recognizing, daily, that you have sinned against God and deserve only His wrath and punishment, but also imitate them by hearing the Word of Jesus and by being amazed at the love of God for sinners like you and me, that He would send His Son to go looking for you, to give His life into death for you, and to carry you back to Him with rejoicing. And, whatever you do, don’t imitate the Pharisees and scribes, who refused to repent because they foolishly believed they had no need of it. We all have need of it. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each one has turned to his own way. But the Lord has laid on Him, on Christ Jesus, our Savior, the iniquity of us all. May God, by His mighty Spirit, keep you in daily contrition and repentance, and in the forgiveness which He first gave to you in Holy Baptism, so that your entire life may be one of repentance, leading to life. Amen.

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Three Persons, one God, one way of salvation

Posted on June 15, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Romans 11:33-36  +  John 3:1-15

We celebrate today as Trinity Sunday. As you know, the word “Trinity” is not in the Bible. Therefore, some people argue, neither is the teaching about the Trinity in the Bible. Or, as other people argue, we believe in the doctrine about the Trinity even though the word Trinity isn’t in the Bible, and, therefore, we should also believe all sorts of other doctrines that aren’t in the Bible. Both arguments are flawed.

The word “trinity” itself is actually nothing special, nor was it invented by the Christian Church. It comes from a Latin word that simply means, “threeness,” just as the word “unity” means “oneness.” The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t as mysterious as people make it out to be. The Bible speaks, in very simple terms, about our God having a Threeness quality, and a Oneness quality—a threeness of Persons and a oneness of Essence or Being. God isn’t three Beings working together as one, nor is He one Being split into multiple parts. He’s one undivided essence. One God, not three Gods, with one mind, one will, one purpose. But there is also a threeness quality to this one God, a threeness of Persons, clearly revealed in Scripture, especially in the New Testament, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Both qualities of our God describe who He is, and so it’s vitally important that we know and confess both His oneness of essence and His threeness of Persons, always keeping both qualities in view.

The threeness or “trinity” of God is presented to us very simply today in the Gospel you heard from John chapter 3. Like the rest of the Bible, these verses don’t use the word “Trinity” even once. And yet, the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed there—specifically, how the three Persons of the Holy Threeness have an integral part in the salvation of sinners.

If you were here on Wednesday evening, you heard the verses that come right after today’s Gospel, John 3:16-21. Today you heard the context of those verses. Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, came to Jesus at night to have a quiet conversation with Him. Rabbi, he said, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing, unless God is with him. Now, Nicodemus wasn’t speaking for all the Jews, and certainly not for all the Pharisees, who concluded that the signs, the miracles, Jesus was performing proved that He was in league with Beelzebub, with the devil! But for his part, and speaking for at least a few others, Nicodemus drew the right conclusion from Jesus’ miracles. They proved that He had come from God.

But Nicodemus didn’t realize just how right he was, that Jesus had “come from God.” He thought that Jesus had come from God like the other prophets who were sent by God. The prophets “came from God” in the sense that, at some point in their life, God called them to speak to Israel on His behalf. But the Person of the Son of God wasn’t called at some point in His life. He existed already in the beginning with God the Father. He is the “only begotten” Son of the Father, born of the Father in eternity as light is born of the sun. He was in heaven with the Father, and then He literally came from the Father’s side, as a Man, into the world. As Jesus says later, No one has ascended into heaven, except for the one who came down from heaven, namely, the Son of Man.

But Jesus doesn’t spend any time explaining how He had come from God, or anything about His relationship with God except to state that He is the Son of God, and the Son of Man. What He focuses on is how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work to bring about man’s salvation. How can a person be saved? How can a person escape eternal condemnation? How can a person enter the kingdom of God?

Truly, truly I tell you, unless a person is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now, many people today are so ignorant of the truth, so far removed from the Christian religion, that they don’t even believe there is a kingdom of God, much less care to see it. But the truth is, seeing or entering the kingdom of God is the goal of human existence. It’s God’s ultimate purpose for mankind, after mankind was banished from the kingdom of God because of our sin, because of Adam and Eve’s choice to rebel against their Creator. To enter the kingdom of God is to be reconciled to God, to be accepted by Him again into His house, into His family, into His kingdom. To enter the kingdom of God is to escape from the devil’s kingdom and from everlasting death. Only two possibilities exist: either one is a subject of the devil’s kingdom, or of God’s kingdom.

And the only way to see the kingdom of God, Jesus says, is to be born again. Born a second time. That’s because, your first birth wasn’t good enough. You aren’t good enough just as you are. Apologists for homosexuality like to point out that they’re “born that way.” Well, that’s the problem—a problem that all people share. The way you were born is unacceptable. Why? Because “flesh gives birth to flesh.” And that flesh, that sinful nature that we’ve inherited from our parents, and they from theirs, isn’t clean, isn’t pretty, isn’t innocent, isn’t even neutral. It’s wicked, twisted, and corrupt. By nature, everyone hates the true God—the One who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No, Jesus says, you have to be remade, become an entirely new person in order to see the kingdom of God. And that new life can’t come from you, as little as a tiny baby can give life or give birth to him or herself.

Nicodemus didn’t understand that Jesus was talking about a spiritual rebirth. He thought Jesus was talking nonsense, as if a person had to go back into his mother’s womb and be born again. But Jesus explains: Truly, truly I tell you, unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Those who have been born of the flesh have to be born again of the Spirit. “Water and the Spirit,” a reference to one of the primary tools the Holy Spirit uses to give that new life and new birth, Holy Baptism, which is, as St. Paul calls it, a washing of rebirth and renewal in the Holy Spirit, the washing of water by the Word. The Person of the Holy Spirit is the one who works faith in our hearts through the Word, as it’s preached by itself, and as it’s connected to water in Holy Baptism. The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. Yes, the Spirit gives life through the Word, but Jesus connects that word with water, emphasizing the great gift that the Holy Spirit gives in Baptism. Baptism comes with the promise of rebirth, the forgiveness of sins, being clothed with Christ, the promise of resurrection to a new, spiritual life now, and the promise of a future resurrection to life everlasting.

But what is it exactly that the Spirit draws us to, turns the eyes of our hearts to, brings us to trust in? To what does Baptism connect us? Jesus explains that to Nicodemus: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. This is why God the Father sent God the Son into the world. This is what God the Holy Spirit was teaching Israel all along in the Old Testament Scriptures and what He now preaches to our hearts through the Word of the Gospel: Just as Moses long ago made a bronze serpent and lifted it up on a pole, at God’s command, so that the Israelites who had been bitten by venomous snakes (as a punishment for their grumbling against God) might look up at it and be mercifully healed by God from the venom that was killing them, so Jesus, the Son of Man, had to be lifted up on a cross, so that all those who were destined for eternal death might look to Him in faith and be saved—look to Him, no longer hanging on a cross, but preached in the world as the One who was crucified, who gave His life on the cross, preached in the world as the One whose death on the cross we are connected to, in the eyes of God, through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, where the name of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is placed on the baptized, where the one who once was lost in Satan’s kingdom is rescued and given entrance into the kingdom of God by a new spiritual birth.

And that’s the goal of our one God, who is three Persons. That’s what the whole history of the world has been about. It’s why the world hasn’t been destroyed yet, in spite of people’s multiple attempts to bring the wrath of God down upon themselves with their godless behavior and their endless idolatry, with their refusal to believe the Word and to amend their sinful lives. God the Father knows that He has children who have yet to be born, and to be born again of water and Spirit, sinners who will become His children, by the work of God the Spirit, who will bring them to the knowledge of God the Son, that they may not perish but have everlasting life. And there we see the Trinity in all its simplicity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit diligently carrying out the plan of our salvation.

Don’t try to comprehend the Holy Trinity. Instead, believe what the Scriptures have revealed about our God, and rejoice that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have granted you the blessing of Baptism, the blessing of faith, and the new birth into His kingdom. And just as God’s goal and purpose for mankind is our eternal salvation, so let it also be the goal of your life, to enter, and then to remain in His kingdom until Christ comes again, living in love as holy children of God within His kingdom even now, and urging the lost to enter His kingdom, too, to know and believe in the one true God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To Him be the glory, both now and forever. Amen.

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God loved the world in this remarkable way

Posted on June 11, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Pentecost

Acts 10:42-48  +  John 3:16-21

Most people who believe in a god at all believe that God “loves” people. But ask them, how does He love them? What does it mean that He loves them? What does it look like? Most will describe a god who cares so deeply about people that He just wants them to be happy. God “loves” people by approving of them, just as they are. He would never condemn anyone for being their “true self.” He would never command people to obey Him, and He would never make any laws in the first place that conflicted with their own ideas of right and wrong. No, they think, God loves all people just as they are, and His only standard, His only law, is that people are supposed to be free to do whatever they want, whatever makes them happy. And, of course, in the end, He welcomes everyone into heaven.

Of course, you know and I know that such people believe in a false god, in an idol of their own making, crafted in their own image. The true God is indeed a God of love, a God who loves more deeply and more fully than anyone can fathom. But He defines love much differently than the world does.

In John 3:16 ff., Jesus tells us plainly, simply, directly what God’s love looks like. “God so loved the world.” That phrase doesn’t mean “He loved the world so much.” It means, “He loved the world so, in such a way, in the following way.” In other words, Jesus is about to tell Nicodemus, with whom He’s speaking here in John 3, in what way God loved the world. Here it is. Ready? He gave His only-begotten Son. Now, that’s not the end of that sentence; it’s not the complete answer, but it’s the first part of it. God loved the world—the fallen world, the sinful, corrupt, selfish, me-centered, devil-serving, headed-to-hell, already-condemned world, including you and me—in such a way that He gave His only-begotten Son. You know how much is packed into that saying. The Father planned all of human history so that His Son, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, might be “given” to us sinful men as a man like us, “given” to our race forever, in order to seek and to save that which was lost. More than that, the Father gave His beloved Son specifically and intentionally to suffer and to die on a cross for us. God loved the world in that way.

But the sentence goes on with the purpose of that giving. God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only-begotten Son so that, for the following purpose, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God the Creator, the One against whom all mankind had rebelled, had placed a judgment of death upon our race after Adam and Eve’s sin, because their sinful, corrupt, self-centered, self-idolizing condition passes down to all their children. But that same God chose, of His own freewill, out of His own indescribable love, to sacrifice His beloved Son on the cross, by the hands of those who hated Him, so that all the sinners in the world could escape from that death sentence and live eternally with Him, by believing in His beloved, only-begotten Son. That’s the “condition” for spending eternity with Him. You have to believe in Jesus; you have to want Jesus for a Savior; you have to want to be saved through Him alone.

Of course, we’re so far gone by nature, we couldn’t even believe in Jesus on our own. And so the God who sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved, also sends His Holy Spirit into the world, to call sinners by the preaching of the Gospel, to persuade sinners, to enable sinners to believe in His Son. He wants us to believe. He enables us to believe. But He doesn’t force anyone or compel anyone to believe. He enables us to believe, while still allowing us not to.

For the one who believes in Christ Jesus, the sentence of condemnation and death is removed here and now. He who believes in Him is not condemned. For the believer, the guilty verdict is changed to innocent in the courtroom that matters most, the one that determines where a person spends eternity. The brand of “sinner” is changed to “saint.” The sentence of death is changed to life. And the status of enemy of God is changed to child of God.

For the unbeliever, nothing actually changes. Do you hear that? Nothing changes. He who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. The unbeliever is already condemned. Condemned on the basis of the sins he has already committed and the sinful, godless condition in which he was born. Condemned, because he refused the path of justification that God provided for him, and laid out for him, and invited him to. The mind of the unbeliever is so arrogant that they despise justification by faith alone in Christ, and then still have the audacity to accuse God of being unjust for not saving them in some other way, in the way of their own choosing.

And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. This is the condemnation. In other words, this demonstrates God’s righteousness in condemning them. God sent His Son, who is the Light, who is Truth, who is Goodness, who is Love personified, into the world to save the world. And most men preferred darkness, preferred ignorance, preferred lies, preferred that which is twisted and ugly and evil to that which is righteous and beautiful and good. They preferred the false freedom that the devil offers to the true freedom of God. Their condemnation is clearly deserved.

For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. Think of the tax collectors and sinners. While they were determined to live in sin, they avoided and hid from God’s Word and the ministry of it. But God’s Word moved them to acknowledge the truth, to reconsider their sinful choices, and then Jesus invited them to come to Him for forgiveness, and they came, and repented, and believed, and then, as believers, they stopped living in sin and started living according to the truth. Believers are not afraid to have the light of Christ shining on us, because our past sins have been cleansed by Christ and our present life is not one of practicing sin, living in sin, clinging to sin, but of daily contrition and repentance, if we are genuinely believers in Christ.

On the other hand, consider the Pharisees. They were happy to have the people of Israel view their works. But when Jesus came and exposed their hypocrisy and the lack of mercy underlying their works, they hid from Him, and even hated Him. They refused to acknowledge the truth, that they were sinners and that Christ was the Savior sent to save them.

What has changed? People still love to pat themselves on the back and think of themselves as good people, as “loving” people. But when God’s Word exposes them as sinners, when God’s Word exposes their “love” as a lie, they hide from Christ and remain in the darkness. They’ll talk all about God’s love, until it’s proclaimed to them that God loves them in such a way that He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to suffer and die for their sins, so that they might turn away from their sins, and from all their idols and false saviors, and believe in Christ alone for salvation. When that message is proclaimed in the world, then it becomes clear who the ones are who truly know and appreciate the love of God. They are the ones who repent and believe in Jesus. In them—in you who believe! — the Holy Spirit’s work has had its intended effect, and God’s purpose in sending His Son into the world has been fulfilled. In them—in you who believe! — the Holy Spirit continues His work of guiding you away from sin and toward the works that are fitting for saints, because you have been born of God and have come to know that God loved the world in this remarkable way, that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Amen.

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God’s Spirit brings us into the heavenly harvest

Posted on June 8, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-13  +  John 14:23-31

On the day of His resurrection, which we celebrated 50 days ago, the Lord Jesus appeared to His apostles, breathed on them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit!” By breathing on them, He was picturing for them what would happen on the Day of Pentecost, when He fulfilled that promise that He had repeated to them many times between Maundy Thursday and the day of His ascension, that from the right hand of God He would send the Holy Spirit down upon them, to dwell with them, to dwell with the Holy Christian Church on earth, until the end of time. Today we celebrate the fulfillment of that promise!

It’s no accident that the giving of the Holy Spirit happened in connection with the Day of Pentecost, just as it was no accident that Jesus died and rose again in connection with the Passover. Both of those festivals were major Old Testament feasts. The Passover pointed to the redemption of Israel through the blood of the Lamb. Pentecost, on the other hand, also known as the Feast of Weeks, pointed to the harvest that was made possible by the Passover Lamb.

Let me explain. The Feast of Weeks was originally a sacred harvest festival, one of the mandated feasts of the Old Testament, for which all the men of Israel were to travel to Jerusalem to present their offerings to the Lord seven weeks after Passover ended, giving thanks to Him for the harvest that He enabled the Israelites to reap in the Promised Land of Canaan. Their journey to the Promised Land began with the Passover in Egypt and the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, after which they were led by the Angel of the LORD through the wilderness to the Promised Land, which they conquered by God’s power alone, and where they enjoyed the bountiful harvest—the bountiful, blessed life—that God gave them there, for as long as they remained faithful to His covenant. The Feast of Weeks, then, was a celebration of that bountiful, blessed life in the Promised Land—a life that was purchased for them with the blood of the Lamb.

Jesus, the true Passover Lamb, was slain to redeem Israel, and all people, from slavery to sin, death, and the devil. But this Passover Lamb rose from the dead and ascended to the true Promised Land of heaven. It has already been “conquered.” And there, a blessed harvest awaits all the faithful, the bountiful, blessed, eternal inheritance that God has in store for His Holy Christian Church. The guarantee of it, and also the One by whose help the Christian Church will be built, and by whose help Christians will be preserved in the true faith unto life everlasting, is the Holy Spirit of God, who was poured out on the Church on the Day of Pentecost, 50 days after Easter, in connection with the Feast of Weeks.

The Feast of Weeks had brought Jews from all over the Roman Empire back to Jerusalem. Those who remained faithful to the God of Israel gathered in their synagogues every Sabbath Day, wherever they lived, but made that special journey to Jerusalem three times a year, even those Jews who lived in other countries and spoke the languages of those countries. Meanwhile, Jesus had told His apostles to stay in Jerusalem until they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so they did. They waited, not knowing exactly how or when the Spirit would come. The events of today’s Epistle reading explain how it happened. There were three signs of His coming.

The first was the sound of a mighty, rushing wind, like the sound of Jesus breathing on His disciples on Easter Sunday, but on a much grander scale. Unlike Jesus, who came as a man, whom everyone could see with their eyes and touch with their hands and hear with their ears, you can’t see the Holy Spirit or sense Him with any of your five senses. The word “Spirit,” as you may recall, means “breath” or “wind.” Jesus had once said to Nicodemus, The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. Like the wind which you can’t see, but you can see its effect on the things around you, so it is with the Holy Spirit. His presence can’t be seen or felt except by the effect He has on things around you. In order to make it clear that He had indeed come upon Jesus’ disciples, as promised, the Spirit made His presence known by the sound of a mighty, rushing wind.

The second sign was the appearance of tongues as of fire, resting upon each of Jesus’ disciples. Years earlier, John the Baptist had promised that the Christ would baptize His disciples “with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” This was it. Not the kind of fire that burns or devours. But the kind of fire that purifies, the kind of fire that spreads, the kind of fire that makes a person zealous for the kingdom of God and courageous to persevere in the midst of trials.

The third sign of Pentecost was the sudden ability of the disciples to say things in other tongues, not the gibberish that Pentecostals brag about, but the very languages of the Jews and Jewish converts who were born in other countries, but who were present in Jerusalem at that time. As we learn later, from Paul’s epistles, this wasn’t an ability to actually communicate in those languages, like when you learn a new language. It was, instead, the outpouring of God’s praises in someone else’s language. The speakers didn’t even understand what they were saying. And the point of this sign is obvious. The Gospel is intended for everyone, for every nation, tribe, language, and people. Long ago, at the Tower of Babel, God confused the languages of men to divide them, to separate them into nations, that they might each go their own way, because, when they had worked together, they had only defied God and increased in wickedness. So He separated them and focused only on one nation, on the nation of Israel, to have mercy on them, to reveal Himself to them, to send the Christ to them.

But that focus is done now. Now that Christ has come and given His life as a ransom for many, now, as of the Day of Pentecost, God will turn His attention to all nations and have His Gospel proclaimed to them in every language. No longer would there be a dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. Now God would call everyone, everywhere, to repentance before the Day of Judgment, during this New Testament period, during this time of grace that is swiftly coming to its close.

And so, with the fire of Spirit-worked courage, with the fire of the Spirit’s enlightenment, with speech that was given to him by the Holy Spirit, the apostle Peter stood up and began to preach to the crowds of Jerusalem that had gathered around the disciples, attracted by the strange noises they were hearing and the strange sights they were seeing. The signs were not the purpose of Pentecost. The preaching was.

Peter went on to explain to the people what the signs meant, that they were the fulfillment of God’s promise to pour out His Spirit upon His sons and daughters in the last days. But it was Jesus Himself, Peter said, who had poured out the Spirit, from the right hand of God—the same Jesus who had lived and walked among them in the land of Israel, the same Jesus who had tirelessly taught the people, doing good and performing miraculous signs, the same Jesus whom they, through their leaders, had crucified and put to death, but whom God the Father had now raised from the dead and exalted to His right hand, declaring Him to be both Lord and Christ.

Now, Peter’s words, all by themselves, had no possibility of convincing those crowds in Jerusalem of anything. His words, by themselves, had no power to reach down into the hearts of the hearers, so that they were cut to the heart, believed what Peter said, and were made sorrowful and afraid. But the Holy Spirit was present there, working through His preaching, entering into the hearts of the hearers and working there repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus. Men, brothers, what shall we do? Repent, Peter said, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And about 3,000 of them did repent and believe and were baptized on that same day. Their sins were forgiven, and they entered Christ’s Holy Christian Church.

But Peter promised more than that. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call. The call to repent, the invitation to be baptized, the promise of the forgiveness of sins and of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, goes out to all nations, to all people everywhere. It isn’t a promise that the visible signs of the Holy Spirit will accompany everyone who is called. It’s a promise that the Spirit will dwell in the heart of every believer, that He will comfort, guide, encourage, strengthen, and embolden every believer, that He will testify with our spirit that we who believe in Christ Jesus are, indeed, children of God, and that our Savior, the Lord Jesus, will surely return for us, because even now He’s placed His Spirit within us.

Like the wind, you can’t see the Spirit dwelling in and among us. But you can see the effects of the Spirit, as you can see the effects of the wind! Where the Word of God is purely taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered, there is the Holy Spirit. Where there is genuine repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus, where there is a desire to hear and submit to His word, there is the Holy Spirit. Where there is boldness to confess the Lord Jesus, where there is love for God and works of love for one’s neighbor, there is the Holy Spirit, working invisibly, but powerfully, to gather the harvest into the Christian Church and to guard the harvest there until Christ comes to claim it, and to bring us in the great heavenly harvest that awaits—that truly bountiful, blessed, eternal life.

So rejoice today in this harvest festival, in the gift of the Holy Spirit, who still dwells among us after all this time. Rejoice in the Holy Spirit, and the faith and love that He has worked in each believer here. And pray in the Spirit that the Lord will bless the work of His Spirit among us, as His word is preached, as His Sacraments are administered, and as each Spirit-filled believer walks with the Spirit throughout this life, in unity around the Word of God, with zeal to live each day for the glory of God, and with joy in knowing that God Himself dwells with us, because He has given us of His Holy Spirit, who has made His home with us, just as Jesus promised. Amen.

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