John the Baptist, Preacher of Grace

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Nativity of John the Baptist

Malachi 4:4-6  +  Isaiah 40:1-5  +  Luke 1:57-80

The paraments in the church are white this morning, but otherwise, on this Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, there are no manger scenes, are there? No colorful lights adorning streets and houses; no trees with presents under them to remind us of the gift of John’s birth. In the same way, when John was born, there were no herald angels singing, no wise men bringing gifts from afar, no guiding star to lead anyone to his house.

And that’s the way it should be. John the Baptist was not the Christ, as he himself freely confessed. John was the forerunner sent by God to run ahead of Jesus and announce to the Jews that the Christ was right behind him. And once Christ appeared, several months after John appeared, John told his disciples, “He must increase, and I must decrease.” So it’s just as well that the Nativity of Christ gets a lot more attention. John would have wanted it that way.

But it’s also good and right to pause today on June 24th, six months before that greater Nativity celebration, and give thanks to God for John the Baptist, who was just six months older than Jesus, as the angel Gabriel had announced to Mary that her elderly relative, Elizabeth, the wife of the priest named Zacharias, was already six months pregnant when she herself heard the angel’s annunciation.

You may remember how that all happened, how Gabriel appeared to Zacharias while he was ministering in the Temple and announced to him that he and his wife, Elizabeth, even though they had been unable to have children and were now old, were going to have a son who would be the prophet of the Most High God and would prepare the way for the Messiah, the Christ, even as you heard today from the prophet Malachi, the last prophecy of the Old Testament pointing ahead to John the forerunner. But Zacharias didn’t believe the angel, and so the angel told him that he would be unable to speak until the child was born.

That’s where our Gospel picks up the story. The child was born, and then eight days later, it was time for him to be circumcised and given his name. The friends and relatives wanted to call the child “Zacharias,” after his father, but Elizabeth and Zacharias obeyed, instead, the angel’s words and gave him the name “John,” “Yo-hanan,” “The Lord—Yahweh—has been gracious.”

The people present for the celebration were amazed and asked, “What then will this child be?” But they already had their answer. His name is “John,” the one who proclaims the grace of the Lord, John the Baptist, Preacher of Grace.

Well, didn’t all the prophets preach grace, and the apostles, too? Of course they did. Grace is one of those attributes of God that make up the definition of who He is, a God whose love doesn’t depend at all on a person’s worthiness or goodness. It goes out to all, freely, unearned, because that’s who God is. As He said to Moses, The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.

John, when he grew up, certainly did preach about that other truth about God, too, that he will by no means clear the guilty, that He visits the iniquity—the sin—of the fathers on the children. John never minced words. He pulled the whole people of Israel together under sin and showed them their guilt and warned them about the coming wrath of God. “Repent!” was John’s message in the wilderness. Repent, for even if you are a good and decent person compared to your neighbor, you are guilty before God, and God will by no means clear the guilty, but visits their iniquity upon them.

But what did Zacharias sing in his Spirit-inspired song? ““Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of His servant David.” God’s wrath is being visited against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. But God has also visited and redeemed His people and provided the shelter from His wrath in the house of His servant David.

Now, John the Baptist was not from the house of David, but from the house of Levi—a priest. Zacharias was not singing about his own son, but about the baby who had been growing for three months now in the virgin Mary’s womb, the virgin Mary of the house of David who was almost certainly standing right there in front of Zacharias on that day.

So just as John’s father pointed to Jesus on the day his son was born, so his son would point to Jesus in his future ministry and preach how the grace of God had visited the Jews in the person of Jesus Christ. All of God’s goodness and promises were wrapped up in that one Person, wrapped up so tightly that there is no grace of God anywhere else. Only in His Son Jesus.

And so Zacharias’s song continued, That we should be saved from our enemies And from the hand of all who hate us, To perform the mercy promised to our fathers And to remember His holy covenant. This is what John would preach—that in Christ there is salvation from our enemies—salvation from sin, salvation from death, salvation from the devil. That in Christ God has shown mercy and continues to show mercy. That this mercy was promised long ago to the people of Israel, the holy covenant He made with them. Not the covenant of the Law, but the other covenant, the new covenant of grace and the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus was the bringer of that new covenant, that new testament in His blood. God continually and fully and freely forgives all the sins of the one who is part of this new covenant. And you enter this new covenant through faith in Christ, because by His blood Jesus has paid for the sins of the world. And so God invites all people to repent and find forgiveness of their sins in Jesus.

But God doesn’t do that inviting silently or secretly. He doesn’t do that inviting with whispers in your ear or with trumpets sounding from heaven or with a burden on your heart. He calls people to faith in Jesus through the spoken word. That’s the task to which John was appointed from birth, to be a preacher of grace, the last of the Old Testament prophets who would herald the Christ who was right there at the door. That’s what Zacharias sang, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; For you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, To give knowledge of salvation to His people By the remission of their sins.

But again, God doesn’t just throw His grace, life and forgiveness up in the air, to be scattered on the wind for us to go chasing after, trying to find it, trying to catch it. God locates His grace, His life, His forgiveness in the spoken word, and in water that’s connected with that word. John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

What John started 2000 years ago is what every preacher of grace has been doing since—showing secure sinners their sins and pointing penitent sinners to Jesus as the location of God’s grace, and bringing Jesus to sinners, with all His grace, with all His forgiveness, in the spoken word and in Holy Baptism, and now, also in this Holy Supper of the forgiveness of sins, the Meal of the New Covenant.

Now pastors are the preachers of grace God sends to His people, to walk in the footsteps of John the Baptist and point people to Christ. John is the chief role model for every preacher, so it’s for good reason we bring him into our Divine Service each and every week. There’s the Baptist, pointing us again to our Baptism in the Invocation, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” John’s there in the Gloria where his own words are quoted, “Lord God, Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us!” He’s there directing us to Jesus’ body and blood on the altar as we sing his words again in the Agnus Dei, “O Christ, Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us!” Eleison! “Have mercy!” Or another translation would be, “Be gracious to us!” There’s John, the preacher of grace, one last time, every week, in the Benediction, “The Lord make His face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.”

The Lord has been gracious to us in sending His Son to redeem us and in sending John to be the forerunner of Jesus, who prepared the Jews to receive Him and still runs before Him in the words of Holy Scripture. The Lord has been gracious to us in sending preachers of grace to administer His grace to us continually from the day of our baptism to the day of our death. Hear the Word of God from the preachers of grace whom He sends. Like John the Baptist, we are nothing. Christ is everything. Don’t put your faith in us. Put your faith in Christ. Don’t expect us to pander to you, to entertain you or to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. If you find a preacher like that, run away as fast as you can. Instead, look to us to point you away from ourselves to Jesus…

…like John the Baptist did, whose birth was not heralded by angel choirs or wise men or guiding stars. Instead, everything about his birth—everything about his life—pointed away from himself toward Christ, who is the Dayspring from on high who has visited us; To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, To guide our feet into the way of peace. Amen.

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The sinner from God’s perspective

Posted on June 17, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 3

1 Peter 5:6-11  +  Luke 15:1-10

How do you see yourself in relation to God? Worthy? Unworthy? Loved? Unloved? In favor? Out of favor? Somewhere in between? How you see yourself will also have an effect on how you see other people in their relation to God. But I would suggest to you that the more important question is, how does God see you? And, how does God see the people around you? What is God’s perspective?

That’s what Jesus reveals to us in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees saw themselves as high up there on God’s list of favorites, and they saw the tax collectors and sinners who were coming to Jesus to hear Him as being permanently erased from God’s list of favorites. So Jesus reveals to us the sinner from God’s perspective.

It says that all the tax collectors (at that time, notorious liars, thieves and cheaters of their fellow Jews) and the sinners (well-known prostitutes, adulterers, and otherwise immoral people) drew near to Jesus. Why? To hear Him. To hear Him say what? What was His message to them? That’s an important question. Was He telling them, “It’s all right to cheat and steal and have sex outside of marriage”? “It doesn’t matter”? “God accepts you just as you are”? No. Jesus acknowledged their sinfulness and their lostness. But He likely didn’t dwell on it for all that long, because they knew that part well enough already. These were Israelites, after all. They knew the Ten Commandments. What’s more, John the Baptist recently had done his job of pointing out the sinfulness of everyone in Israel, including the tax collectors and the sinners. Not only that, but Jewish society at that time was very clear about these things. Open, public sins like prostitution, adultery and fornication were recognized as evil things, and cheating and stealing from your neighbor were understood to be inexcusable wrongs. These tax collectors and sinners weren’t pretending to be righteous or justified in their lifestyles. They knew they had ruined things with God.

But then along comes Jesus, claiming to have been sent from God, announcing a message from God, showing the sinner from God’s perspective: God isn’t done with you. God still loves you. In fact, God loves all men. He wants all men to be saved. He wants all to be brought to repentance. He doesn’t expect you to earn His favor. In fact, He forbids you to try. No, God is willing to forgive you, to forgive everyone, freely, by grace, and I, Jesus, the Son of God, am the one for whose sake God the Father is willing to do it. That’s the message the tax collectors and the sinners were hearing from Jesus.

And after all that, all the Pharisees and scribes could do was to sneer at Jesus in disgust, This man receives sinners and eats with them! From their perspective, the sinners didn’t deserve to be forgiven. From their perspective, God should rejoice to be rid of them, and Jesus should spend His time with the worthy, praising them for how worthy they were, telling them how they, above other men, had indeed earned God’s favor.

So Jesus tells three parables (two of which we heard in our Gospel today) explaining lost things from God’s perspective. How does God see the sinner?

He knows and cares about each and every one. God sees the sinner as one of His sheep that has gone astray, that has left the flock and the pastures and the protection of its shepherd. It doesn’t matter how big or little, how public or private the sin is. As Isaiah says, All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way.

Hmm. “All we like sheep have gone astray.” “Each one.” That’s what God’s Word says. So in reality, there aren’t 99 “righteous” sheep who haven’t gone astray, who don’t need to repent. Everyone’s a sinner. Everyone needs to repent. The 99 in Jesus parable simply represent those who think they’re righteous, who think they’ve earned God’s favor, who think they don’t need to repent. Such were the Pharisees and scribes in our Gospel.

So what does the shepherd do? He leaves the 99 and goes after the one sinner, the sheep that has gone astray. And he doesn’t just go after him. Always keep Isaiah’s prophecy in view. It continues, we have turned, every one, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him—on the Christ! —the iniquity of us all. Not included in this parable but always in view in the Scriptures is the fact that Jesus didn’t just go looking for us all. He gave His life for us all. He bore the sins of us all and suffered for them all. The journey this Shepherd took to find His sheep wasn’t just difficult. It was deadly, as He knew it would be. But it was the only way to buy the sheep back from its wanderings, and it’s the only message that will bring the sheep to repentance. Your God cared about you, His sinful, rebellious sheep, enough to lay down His life for you. And now He sends out His Gospel to find you, to preach repentance and the remission of sins through faith in Christ Jesus.

And when He finds His sheep with the Gospel, when His sheep repents and believes the good news, He is like the shepherd who hefted the sheep onto his shoulders and rejoiced as he returned home and celebrated with all his friends and neighbors the success of his mission, the return of the one sheep to his fold. That’s how God sees the sinner. That’s God’s perspective.

The parable of the lost coin is similar to that of the lost sheep. It emphasizes the fact that there is value to the sinner in God’s eyes, and just as much value in the one who has gone lost as in those who haven’t (although all have, as we’ve already seen). The one silver coin that was lost is worth no more and no less than each of the other nine coins, whereas the Pharisees thought of themselves as far more valuable in God’s sight than the tax collectors and sinners. No, says Jesus. No one can earn a place of value in God’s sight. Everyone has already been assigned an equal value by God Himself. So when God finds a lost sinner and brings him or her to repentance, He sees all the effort He spent in searching as being worth it. He rejoices to get His coin back.

We should say a word here about what repentance is, if God is so joyful over the one sinner who repents. It’s neatly summarized for you on the back of your service folder today from our Augsburg Confession: Now, strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is, terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven. It comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror. Then good works are bound to follow, which are the fruit of repentance.

This is what God seeks in each and every human being. He sends out His terror-striking Word to all those who deny their sinfulness, like the Pharisees in our Gospel, and to all those who are indifferent or unconcerned about their sinfulness, so that both kinds of sinner are brought to shudder before God’s judgment seat. He also sends out His comforting Gospel of His willingness to forgive sins freely for Christ’s sake through faith to all those who are shuddering in terror. And when His Word has accomplished this goal, He forgives and justifies the believer and welcomes him and her into His home, where there is rejoicing every day over the one sinner who repents, even me, even you.

It’s not that we all stray from God’s house or go lost every time we sin; there are many sins that we commit in ignorance or in weakness that do not extinguish faith or drive out the Holy Spirit. But can you imagine a day going by in which you can honestly say, “I’m more worthy of God’s favor than those sinners over there. Today I need no repentance”? God forbid that you ever fall into such blindness and into such pride! See yourself from God’s perspective. Always sinful and undeserving of His favor and eternal life. And yet always desired by Him, always precious to Him, and daily urged by Him to live in contrition and repentance, recognizing and mourning your sins, and at the same time trusting in His gracious promise to forgive you freely for Christ’s sake, into whom you have been baptized. And then struggling against sin and striving, with God’s help, to sin no more.

This is what God wants for you. This is what God wants for everyone. And this is why God calls people not only to be baptized, but to join themselves to a Christian congregation where they can keep coming to Jesus, as the tax collectors and sinners did, to hear His Word and His instruction, to receive His absolution, and also to receive regularly the seal and pledge of His mercy and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Christ’s very body and blood.

From God’s perspective, all of you here were worth seeking and finding and bringing to repentance, and all of you, as you repent and as you live daily in repentance, are a cause of great joy and celebration in heaven. Now live your lives from God’s perspective, not your own, and see both yourselves and your neighbor as God sees you: as sinners with whom our God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—yearns to spend eternity, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

 

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The real reckoning revealed in the next life

Posted on June 3, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 1

1 John 4:16-21  +  Luke 16:19-31

You see a rich man enjoying life. You see a poor man so sick and poor that he can’t work; he has to beg for his every meal. What does reason tell you about these two men? Reason concludes that God rewards the one whom He considers righteous. The rich man is prosperous. Therefore, God favors the rich man. God sends afflictions on the one whom He considers to be wicked. The poor man is afflicted. Therefore, God considers the poor man to be wicked. That’s the judgment of reason. Poverty and afflictions are a sign of God’s contempt. Riches and prosperity are a sign of God’s favor.

But reason’s reasoning is flawed, in several ways, but most of all, reason’s reasoning ignores this important truth: this earthly life is not the main venue for God’s rewards and punishments. The real reckoning is revealed in the next life.

That’s the point Jesus was driving home in His parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus. It’s not a simple warning for the rich to share with the poor, or else they’ll go to hell. Far from it! It’s a message to rich and poor. Don’t be deceived by appearances! Prosperity in this life is not necessarily a sign of God’s favor, and affliction in this life is not necessarily a sign of God’s contempt. Your lot in life here on earth, whether it lasts only a few months or whether it lasts a hundred plus years, is not all you get. It’s the proverbial drop in the bucket compared with the everlasting joys—or punishments—of the next life. Your lot in life here is not a reliable indicator of God’s favor or displeasure.

According to Jesus’ parable, the rich man was dressed in fine clothes and “fared sumptuously every day.” He received good things. Lazarus, on the other hand, spent his earthly life sick, poor and begging, yearning for the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. He received bad things.

But death took them both, as death always does, rich and poor, male and female, celebrities and nobodies, kings and peasants. And in this case, their situations were completely reversed. Poor Lazarus wasn’t poor anymore. His soul was at peace and he rested comfortably in God’s presence with all the saints, with all the righteous who had gone before him, most notably, Father Abraham. Here Lazarus received his good things. The rich man’s soul, on the other hand, was in torment and flame, far removed from God and His saints. As Lazarus had yearned for the rich man’s crumbs in this life, the rich man yearned for a drop of water from Lazarus in the next life. Here he received his bad things.

Now, knowing how things turned out, do you think Lazarus wished he could have gone back and traded places with the rich man? No, not for a second. His life on earth had been hard, but that was over now. He endured the hardships and made it through, and now there would never be any more pain or want to endure.

And knowing how things turned out, do you think the rich man in hell was able to look back at his wonderful life on earth and bask in the happy memories of good times past? A lot of people want to believe it will be that way. But no. The rich man realized too late that he had squandered his earthly life, and it was not worth it in the end. Hell is a worse punishment and torture than anyone on earth imagines it to be. We may speak metaphorically of people who are “going through hell” right now. But let me assure you, hell itself is still much, much worse, because for as much as it may seem like our present troubles have no end in sight, there will most certainly be an end to them. Not so with the torments of hell.

The rich man learned from Abraham that there was no possibility of him receiving any help from anyone or of eventually being able to cross over from Hades to Paradise. As the writer to the Hebrews says, it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. Or as Abraham put it, Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us. So his thoughts turned to his brothers, who were still alive on earth. What could be done for them? How could they avoid this place of torment? Maybe sending Lazarus back to them from the dead? No, says Abraham. They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’

Hear Moses and the prophets, the Bible, the Word of God. That’s what the rich man’s brothers needed. That’s what you need. That’s what everyone needs. To hear the Law of God recorded in the Holy Scriptures, and to let it have its effect. Moses is the one who reveals how sin entered the world through Adam, and that all men born of Adam are born in sin and subject to sin’s curse, which includes all manner of sickness, suffering, poverty, and finally death, all of which is not necessarily a direct punishment from God, but the general curse under which all sinners live in this cursed world. So the poverty and sickness of Lazarus wasn’t a good indicator at all of whether or not God accepted him.

As for the riches of the rich man, here’s what Moses had to say: You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD destroys before you, so you shall perish, because you would not be obedient to the voice of the LORD your God. God does give wealth to some people. But He also requires those people to hear His voice and to obey His commandments, and that, the rich man never found time to do. He was too busy enjoying his life to care about God, or to care about that beggar at his gates, even enough to send him the crumbs that fell from his table.

So hear Moses and the prophets as they reveal your sin. And then hear Moses and the prophets as they call you to repent and look to God for mercy, not because you deserve it, but because of Christ alone. As the Psalm says, O Israel, hope in the LORD; For with the LORD there is mercy, And with Him is abundant redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. That redemption is wrapped up in Christ, the Redeemer. Abraham knew that, one of the richest men alive at his time, and righteous in God’s sight, not because of his goodness, not because of his obedience, but through faith alone in God’s promise to forgive sins for the sake of the coming Christ. Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Whether you’re rich or poor, prosperous or afflicted, it’s this same message of sin, repentance, and God’s forgiveness through Christ that you all need to hear and believe, because what you’re suffering here or the life you’re enjoying here on earth will soon be over. And the good things here and the bad things here won’t matter at all anymore. The real reckoning will be revealed in the next life.

So for now, if you’re impoverished or sick or otherwise miserable in this life, take heart! Don’t despair, don’t give up, don’t imagine that God is displeased with you because of how difficult things are, or that you’re alone in your suffering. Lazarus appeared to have been abandoned by God, but in reality, God was there with him, ready to bear him home to Abraham’s bosom at just the right time. To endure hardship for Christ’s sake, without giving into despair, is a blessed thing, a precious good work that has God’s own seal of approval. It’s what Jesus did, after all.

We can make an application here to suicide. People commit suicide because their life is hard, in one way or another. It’s not what they want it to be. Even Christians can be tempted to end the suffering here, thinking that even hell itself must be better than what they’re suffering now, or that God will understand if they choose to cut their life short and will bring them safely into Paradise anyway. But those are both lies from the devil. Learn the lesson of Lazarus. Lazarus suffered until his last breath, when the Lord Himself, in His own time, chose finally to end his earthly suffering and send His angels to collect Lazarus’ soul.

So, if you’re suffering in this life, keep hearing God’s Word and receiving His Sacraments, and you have God’s promise to sustain you in faith by His Spirit, to help you persevere until the end, to enable you to bear the cross with patience, until the suffering is past and the comfort of the next life is revealed.

Or, maybe you don’t suffer, not really—I mean, everyone suffers some things in this sin-stricken world. Or maybe it’s just that you’re not suffering right now, but fare sumptuously every day, like the rich man did, or as I daresay most Americans do, including most of us. What will you do with this time when you have all you need and more? You could focus on enjoying life, like the rich man did, and maintaining this lifestyle, while ignoring both God and man. But then you would end up like the rich man in the parable, regretting it all in the end.

Instead, if you have a moment of comfort, a moment of peace, a moment of prosperity, a moment of leisure where you’re not scrambling just to survive, use it. Use this time wisely. Use it to hear God’s Word, His Law and His Gospel. Walk in the new obedience of the children of God. Walk with the Holy Spirit and set aside your passions, your desires, your selfish goals and devote your life—every moment—to God’s service within your own vocation. Turn your gaze outward. Turn toward your neighbor in need, and especially your brother in Christ, who sits at your gate, yearning for just a little help, for even the leftovers of the prosperity with which you have been entrusted.

Rich or poor, carefree or weighted down with cares, train your reason to submit to God’s Word and don’t assume God’s approval or disapproval based on how much or how little you have or you suffer in this life. God’s approval comes for Christ’s sake alone and through faith alone in Him. That reckoning takes place right here in this life, and it will most surely be revealed in the next. Amen.

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The Threeness of God is part His saving name

Posted on May 27, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Festival of the Holy Trinity

Ezekiel 18:30-32  +  Romans 11:33-36  +  John 3:1-15

We confessed those striking words again today from the Athanasian Creed: Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish eternally. And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. To be ignorant of the true God or to deny the true God is to perish eternally. But to know Him is eternal life, as Jesus once prayed to His Father in heaven: And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. And as you heard last week on Pentecost in Joel’s prophecy, cited by the Apostle Peter: And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.

God’s name is more than just what we call Him. His name is who He is, everything He’s revealed about Himself. The name of the Lord, then, includes His oneness. You know how many gods the ancient Greeks and Romans worshiped, or how many gods the other pagans around the world have worshiped. A god of this and a god of that. A god for every occasion. A god to represent every desire—and every evil—of man. In contrast, Moses declared to the people of Israel: Hear, O Israel! The LORD our God, the LORD is one…You shall fear the LORD your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name. You shall not go after other gods. The one God made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. There are not three Gods or two Gods or many Gods. There is one God. You have to know that to know Him.

But there is also a unique Threeness—a Trinity—to the one God, revealed obscurely in the Old Testament, revealed clearly in the New (as clearly as we need it to be). The one God who created all things, who revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, is three distinct Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You have to know that to know Him. The Threeness of God is part of His saving name.

See how Jesus reveals God to us in His Threeness in today’s Gospel from John 3.

The Pharisee and ruler of the Jews, Nicodemus, eventually became a believer in Jesus, but he wasn’t yet. So he came to Jesus by cover of night and said, Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him. Nicodemus recognized that Jesus “came from God.” He had no idea just how right he was. As John’s Gospel tells us in chapter 1, Jesus was the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father from eternity. God of God. Light of Light. Very God of very God, as we confess in the Nicene Creed. He literally came from God the Father in eternity, and He also came from God the Father into the world through the virgin’s womb. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. Where does the Father direct our attention? He points us to His Son. And where does the Son point? Back to the Father.

What does Jesus say in response to Nicodemus? “Yes! Good job! You’re right, I have come from God the Father. I’m the second Person of the Holy Trinity!” No. He doesn’t congratulate Nicodemus or offer a detailed explanation of the Trinity. He puts salvation itself on the line.

Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

The first birth, the one from our parents, counts for nothing toward a person’s salvation—toward entering the kingdom of God. The first birth, from our mothers, brings us into the world with the same sin and sinful corruption of our body and soul as our mothers and fathers were born with, back to our sin-corrupted father Adam and our sin-corrupted mother Eve. No one is born with true knowledge of God, true love for God, true trust in God, true fear of God.

Now, it’s true, everyone is born with a reflection of the knowledge of God. We call it the natural knowledge of God or natural law. Human beings know by nature that God exists, for as much as our arrogant age of pseudo-science tries to deny it. We have a general knowledge of right and wrong. We know by nature and from nature that God is good, wise, powerful and just, and that He punishes sinners, even after this earthly life is done. But that natural knowledge doesn’t make us love Him or trust in Him, nor does it reveal how we can enter the kingdom of God.

No, on the contrary, we are all born wanting to earn our own way into heaven, wanting to be God, to play God, to tell God what’s right and wrong, or to look for a God who agrees with us about what is right and wrong. That must be the true God, the one who agrees with me.

But no, the true God is the one who insists that you’re not good enough as you are, because we’re all born in sin. The true God insists that you start over from scratch, that who you are by nature must be completely put to death, and that a new man, a new person must arise from the ashes, being born again.

But being born isn’t something to strive for, isn’t something you do for yourself. You can’t remake yourself. You can’t change who you are. Someone else has to give birth to you. And Jesus explains how that happens and who it is who does it.

Unless one 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.

The Father pointed us to His Son, to know the Father by listening to Jesus. Where does Jesus point? He points to the Spirit. The Spirit—the same Holy Spirit referred to in the Old Testament, the same Holy Spirit whose coming we celebrated last Sunday—He is the only one who brings people into the kingdom of God, and He does it through rebirth, otherwise known as “regeneration.”

Jesus ties that rebirthing or regeneration to water. Not just plain water, but the water that is connected to God’s command and included in God’s Word, the water of Holy Baptism that is applied in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit to those who have heard the Word of God and wish to be buried with Christ through Baptism into death. As Paul writes to Titus in chapter 3: But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. There again you see God in His perfect Threeness—”God our Savior,” that is, God the Father, “saved us through the washing of regeneration of the Holy Spirit, whom He,” the Father, “poured out on us through Jesus Christ our Savior.” The Threeness of God is part of His saving name.

But, aren’t we saved by faith alone? Yes we are. But where does faith come from? From hearing the message, the message that God the Father is willing to forgive sins for Christ’s sake, through the Spirit’s work of Baptism, which unites us to the death of God’s Son, who died for our sins. So faith clings to the promise which God Himself has attached to Holy Baptism.

The Spirit gives new birth. The Spirit gives life. But where does the Spirit point? He points to the Son. As Jesus told Nicodemus, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

Go back and read Numbers 21 if you don’t remember the account of the bronze serpent. Moses put a bronze serpent up on a pole so that the snake-bitten and dying Israelites could look up at it and be miraculously healed of the venom that was killing them. So God the Father sent His Son into human flesh so that He could be lifted up on the cross, so that all of us, dying in our sins, might look to Him in faith and be saved. The Holy Spirit is the one working in that message to actually turn our eyes to Christ so that we trust in Him and receive forgiveness and eternal life from Him. Again, the Threeness of God is part of His saving name.

How can God be one and three at the same time? How can each distinct Person of the Godhead be God, without there being three Gods? Put such questions aside and focus on how the one God reveals His Threeness to us in the Holy Scriptures. The Father sent the Son and points the world to Him as the One who bore our sins and suffered for us and won us a place in His kingdom. The Son, in turn, points the world to the Father who sent Him and who desires all men to be saved. Jesus also points to the Spirit as the Sanctifier who gives us new birth and entrance into the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit points the world back to the Son and works faith and preserves us in the faith by Word and Sacrament. Know God in His Oneness. But know Him also in His Threeness. It’s part of His saving name. And knowing Him, never stop calling upon His name for deliverance from every evil and from every trouble. For whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. Amen.

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The age of the Spirit continues

Posted on May 20, 2018 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Pentecost

Joel 2:28-32  +  Acts 2:1-13  +  John 14:23-31

Today is Pentecost, ten days after the Ascension, 50 days after Easter, the Feast of the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit like? How are we to know Him? He is clearly a Person, a Person who is just as divine as the Father and the Son. After all, Jesus commanded His disciples to baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a divine Person, but He’s not described in the Bible with any human figure or with any comparison to human relationships, like Father or Son. That makes it hard to picture the Holy Spirit. We simply use the dove when we want to depict Him, since that’s how He chose to appear at Jesus’ Baptism. But the word “Spirit” means breath or wind, which are both unseen things. You don’t see a person’s breath; what you see is a person breathing in and out, and, of course, the result of the breath—that a person stays alive. You don’t see the wind; what you see is how the wind carries the dust or the smoke or the clouds or the rain, or how it bends the trees or how it rustles the leaves. The wind is invisible. But you can see its signs and its effects.

So it is with the Holy Spirit. So He made His presence known on the Day of Pentecost. He Himself remained invisible. But He revealed Himself with signs and effects that proclaimed to the world that the prophecy you heard today from the prophet Joel was being fulfilled, that a new and final age of the world was now at hand, the age of the Holy Spirit, whose signs indicate both His presence and the manner of His work.

The first sign of the Holy Spirit’s coming was a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where the disciples were sitting. The sound of a blowing wind, a sign of Jesus fulfilling His promise to send the Helper from on high, breathing the gift of His Spirit onto His disciples, even as He breathed on His disciples on the eve of His resurrection and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit!”

The second sign: there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. The tongues “as of fire” rested, not on everyone in Jerusalem, but on each of Jesus’ disciples, a sign that this ever-present Spirit sent by Jesus was to be found specifically in His Church, among believers. Tongues of fire, because the Holy Spirit would spread throughout the world as fire spreads, but He would spread through the tongues—through the Word, through the speech, through the preaching—of Christians.

Fire represented many things in the Old Testament. The presence of God in the burning bush that Moses saw. The pillar of fire that accompanied the Israelites throughout their desert wanderings. The fire of burning lamps to give them light. And the fire of the altar of sacrifice in the Temple, where animals were offered up to God to atone for the sins of the people, making them acceptable to God.

So fire is a fitting sign of the Holy Spirit. The presence of God, who accompanies His Church throughout these desert wanderings below until we reach the Promised land. The light that enlightens our minds to see—to believe in Christ. The fire of sacrifice—now no longer making atonement for sins, because Jesus was the once-for-all sacrifice that reconciles sinners with God, but it’s the Holy Spirit who gives us new birth in Holy Baptism, who brings us to faith, who connects us to Jesus’ sacrifice by faith, and who now spurs us on to lead holy lives, to do works of love that are pleasing and acceptable to God, as Paul wrote to the Roman Christians, I beseech you, brethren… that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

This twofold work—the work of bringing us to faith and the work of spurring us on to lead holy lives and to do works of love—is called Sanctification. And if you remember Luther’s explanation of the Third Article of the Creed, that’s the very work that’s ascribed especially to the Holy Spirit. He is the Sanctifier. And both faith and love are symbolized by His holy fire.

The third sign of the Spirit’s coming: And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. If you recall, it was God who divided the tongues of men in the first place, way back at the Tower of Babel, about 150 years after the world-wide Flood. At that time, God divided mankind up into nations and scattered the nations throughout the world. At that time, God let the nations to go, each in its own godless way, each to create its own idols and false gods to worship. At that time, God chose Abraham and His descendants, the people of Israel, to be the one nation on earth where He revealed Himself, making a covenant with Israel to be their God and to forgive their sins through the ministry of the priesthood and of the Temple. All who wanted to know the true God and to become part of His holy, chosen people, had to find Him and worship Him in the nation of Israel.

But now, on the Day of Pentecost, the Word of God was suddenly being proclaimed in all the languages of all the people who were present there that day, visiting Jerusalem from all the surrounding nations. No longer would salvation be tied to a single nation or a single race. No longer would God’s focus be on the city of Jerusalem. But His Word was to go out into all the world, to every nation, tribe, language and people. The call is universal: Repent and believe the good news about Jesus, the Savior of the world! And the promise is universal: He who believes and is baptized shall be saved!

This universal Gospel was prophesied in the Old Testament, not only by Joel, but also by Isaiah and Micah: Now it shall come to pass in the latter days That the mountain of the LORD’s house Shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And peoples shall flow to it. Many nations shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths.” For out of Zion the law shall go forth, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

What the Jews missed about this prophecy—what many Christians seem confused about today, too—is that, when God poured out His Spirit in the latter days, there was to be a transition from the earthly Jerusalem to a spiritual Jerusalem. The word of the Lord did go out from earthly Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost in every language, calling sinners from every nation into the Church of Christ, which is the spiritual Jerusalem. The sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit—His work of bringing to faith, preserving in the faith, and spurring us on to works of love—is being done wherever the Word of Christ is preached throughout the world, so that we who call on the name of the Lord in New Mexico are also citizens of Jerusalem, that is, the one holy Christian (or catholic) and apostolic Church.

The last days are here. They’ve been here for almost 2,000 years. The Spirit is now poured out from heaven on His Church and will move like wildfire through the whole earth. The Spirit will be the power behind the preaching of the Word of Christ, spreading the fire of faith and love. The Spirit’s call and promise are universal: Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall 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.

From the Day of Pentecost until Christ returns at the Last Day, this is the age of the Holy Spirit. This is the age of the building of the Church. We don’t see the Spirit, but we see the signs of His presence. The Word of Christ is still being preached in the world and in our midst. There are still people hearing it and confessing it. There are works of love being done on a daily basis by Christians here and throughout the world. There is barely a place on earth where the name of Jesus is not known.

But this age is drawing to a close. The world has heard the tongues of Christian preachers. The elect have believed, but most have not. It’s almost time for Christ to return and for the age of the Holy Spirit to be brought to completion. So let’s make the most of this age while it lasts. Preaching. Hearing. Believing. Confessing. Praying. Speaking. Leading holy lives every day. And loving. In all these things, even though you can’t see Him, you see the signs and effects of the Spirit’s work, and you know He’s there, calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying the whole Christian Church on earth, and preserving it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. Amen.

 

 

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