God is still with us

Posted on June 4, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-13  +  John 14:23-31

Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, 50 days after Easter Sunday. Let’s review the timeline for a moment. On the night before He died, in that upper room on Maundy Thursday, Jesus began to teach His disciples in earnest about what was coming next. He had already told them that He would suffer, that He would die, that He would rise from the dead on the third day. They didn’t understand what He was talking about. He told them that He was going to the Father, that He, Emmanuel, God with us, would no longer be with us in the same way as before. They didn’t understand what He was talking about. And then He promised them that, after His suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension, He would send them a gift: The Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

And it all happened, just as Jesus said, although His disciples didn’t understand any of it until after it happened. Jesus died on the cross; rose from the dead on Easter Sunday; appeared to His disciples on Easter and several other times over the next 40 days; then He ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Ten days later, Pentecost.

Jesus kept His promise to send His Spirit from heaven, and you heard in the Epistle how that took place. The Spirit descended on Jesus’ disciples, but you can’t see the Spirit. His name means “breath” or “wind.” How would they know He had been sent? Back at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove and lighted on Jesus alone. But now He is to be given to all the disciples. How would they know He had come?

Would they “feel” His presence in their hearts? Not a word about any such thing. Instead, they were given three signs. (1) The sound of the loud, rushing wind—a sign that the powerful Spirit of God was among them. (2) The tongues of fire on the heads of the disciples—a sign that the Spirit now dwells with believers, and a sign that He would use their tongues, their preaching, to kindle a fire on the earth, to spread the kingdom of Christ in the hearts of men. And (3) the sudden ability of the believers to speak the wonders of God in different languages—a sign that the Gospel was to be preached to all the peoples of the earth.

And what did the disciples do with this newly-arrived Spirit? They preached the Gospel of Jesus and they baptized those who believed it—3,000 people that day. Sins were forgiven. A new life was begun. And the Church continued to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus, being sanctified and renewed day by day. It says that the Christians continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. The Church continued to preach and to hear, to baptize, and to use the Sacrament of the Altar, and more and more people around the world heard the Gospel, repented and believed, and so the cycle has gone on and on for nearly 2,000 years. All of it was, all of it still is the Holy Spirit’s doing.

And again, all of it was exactly what Jesus promised in the Gospel.

If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.

If anyone loves Me… Where does such love come from? This love for Jesus, this devotion to Jesus is essentially the same thing as faith in Jesus, and you know where that comes from. “Faith comes from hearing.” Jesus’ disciples had heard the word about Jesus, and then they heard the word from Jesus Himself, that He was both God and Man, how He had been sent by God to save poor sinners from sin, death and the devil, reconciling them with God. His disciples had believed that from the beginning. They clung to Him in faith, even when they didn’t understand everything He told them. But when they saw the full extent of His love as He allowed Himself to be crucified for their sins, when they saw Him risen from the dead, when they heard His announcement of “Peace be with you” on Easter Sunday, then they had the greatest reason to trust in Him, to love Him, and they did. It was the Holy Spirit all along, pointing them to Jesus, drawing them to Jesus, working faith and love in their hearts.

If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. To keep the word of Jesus is to treasure it, to hold onto it, to believe it and to do it. It’s the natural product of faith. The one who loves Jesus will keep His word, will treasure it, will put it into practice. The one who doesn’t love Jesus won’t treasure His word, either.

There is another blessed result of loving and trusting in Jesus: and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. See what Jesus offers here? No matter what sins you have committed, no matter how wretched you have been, when you flee to Him in faith, when you love Him as the One who made atonement for your sins out of His great mercy and love for you, then you have the love of God the Father—only because of Christ, and because you now have Christ by faith.

And in His love, the Father does not remain distant. He’s not like some long-lost relative who loves you but never interacts with you. We will come to him and make Our home with him. Do you realize, that’s what Pentecost is? In pouring out His Spirit on His Church, Christ is here, too, and so is His Father—the Holy Trinity, dwelling in the hearts of believers, dwelling in the midst of His Church on earth, not far away, but very near. As St. Paul reminded the Corinthians, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?

And what is He doing here in our hearts? After bringing us to faith, the Holy Spirit now renews believers in the image of Christ on a daily basis, urging us to live in daily contrition and repentance, nudging us along to keep the word of Christ, to walk according to God’s commandments, to love God and to love our neighbor. All the while He holds up Christ crucified before our eyes, directing us to Him, to trust in Him, to love Him, to follow Him, and finally to face death itself still clinging to Him in faith. And therein lies the peace which Jesus bequeathed to His disciples in the Gospel: Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

What else is the Spirit doing? As He dwells in believers, as He dwells in the midst of the Christian Church, as He urges Christians to speak about Christ in our many vocations, He is also reaching out to those who aren’t yet Christians, holding Christ before their eyes, showing them the love of Christ crucified, in order to convert them and kindle faith in their hearts, too. And when He does, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come to them and make Their home with them, just as They have done with us. And so the pattern repeats, on and on, until the end of the age.

This is the benefit of Pentecost. This is what we celebrate today. The Holy Spirit has been given to us as a lasting gift, to keep us in the faith, firmly rooted in Christ Jesus, to renew us daily in love, and to work through our preaching to bring the love and the salvation of Christ to the rest of the world. Rejoice in Him and give thanks for Him, because, even though Jesus—Emmanuel, God with us—has ascended into heaven, God has now made His home with us by His Spirit. Amen.

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Confessing the apostles’ testimony

Posted on May 28, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Exaudi – Sunday after the Ascension

1 Peter 4:7-11  +  John 15:26-16:4

As we learned on Thursday at our Ascension service, Jesus ascended into heaven, not to be separated from His Church on earth, but to work more closely with His Church, to be present in every place where His Gospel is preached and His Sacraments are administered. Christ ascended to the right hand of God and reigns as King, building His kingdom, not with His own hands or with His own mouth, but through the testimony of His witnesses. As He told His eleven apostles on His Ascension Day, But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

He told them basically the same thing already on the night before He died—the words you heard in today’s Gospel from John 15 and 16: The Spirit will testify. You will testify. And you will suffer for it dearly and pay for it with your lives. It’s not a terribly uplifting prophecy, is it? And yet, here we are, some 2,000 years later, still confessing the apostles’ testimony, professing members of the one holy Christian and Apostolic Church. How could they testify, knowing how it would go for them? How can we confess their testimony after we’ve seen just how dangerous it is?

Let’s see what our Gospel has to say about it.

Jesus tells His disciples, But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.

He is the “Helper,” the Comforter, the “Spirit of truth” who proceeds from the Father. He would help them and guide them into all truth, teach them the truth, and help them to teach it to others.

He will “testify of Me,” Jesus says, and that gets to the heart of the Holy Spirit’s work. He wasn’t sent to fill the apostles with good feelings or with some nebulous “spirit-witness.” He was sent to “testify,” to bear witness to what He has seen—that’s what a witness does—to what He has seen with the Father, whom no human being has ever seen or can see. That’s why we need a witness. He was sent to testify of Jesus: to bear witness to His divinity, to His humanity, to the fact that all of history—past, present, and future—revolves around Him as the Savior sent from the Father to save poor sinners from sin, death, and hell. To testify that the Father truly is pleased with Jesus’ sacrifice and eager to forgive everyone who believes in Him. To testify that Jesus does indeed reign at the right hand of God. That is the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

And you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning.

Now, pay attention to this. Don’t fall into the common trap of reading every Bible passage and imagining that Jesus is speaking directly to you. Jesus says, “you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” That’s not you or I. We were not with Jesus from the beginning—the beginning of His preaching ministry. It only applies to the eleven apostles. They were the ones who were to go out and bear witness—to testify to what they had seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. Their testimony trumps all other testimony, because they were with Jesus from the beginning. They heard it all, saw it all, witnessed it all firsthand, including His suffering, death, and, mostly importantly, His resurrection.

The apostles did, indeed, testify by preaching throughout the world. But their testimony would be useless to us if they hadn’t written it down. Because, you know what they call it in a court of law if you heard someone say something about what someone else said? They call it ‘hearsay.’ It doesn’t count.

But the apostles did, in fact, write down, under the Spirit’s inspiration, the things that you and I were to know. That testimony does count. It does hold weight. It’s why the New Testament Church so thoroughly investigated whether or not a book was written by an apostle or under the direct supervision of an apostle, because they were the ones whom Jesus chose and sent out to be His witnesses and who had the promise of the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit, just as the prophets of the Old Testament had.

The reliability of the inspired Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, is something that we may take for granted here, but we shouldn’t. It’s rare and becoming rarer to believe it. From Genesis to Revelation, we have the only firsthand witness that God has left for us, the testimony that trumps all other testimony, the truth that must be believed, or else we make God out to be a liar, because the Holy Spirit was the one who inspired this witness.

That’s the pleasant side of the apostles’ testimony, the fact that they did go out and testify and wrote down for all future generations the truth about Jesus. Then there’s the unpleasant side of Jesus’ prophecy:

These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me. But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them.

It would not go well for the apostles on earth. They would be excommunicated by the Jews and killed and suffer everything in between. Not because the apostles were too mean or foolish in the way they presented the Gospel, but for one reason alone: They have not known the Father nor Me.

The apostles were warned ahead of time. This is what it would mean to be Jesus’ witnesses. And they did it anyway. That itself is a testimony and the reason why we call them “martyrs.” Their preaching and their willingness to face excommunication and torture and death are testimonies to the truth of the Gospel, to the reality of Jesus’ resurrection and to the sure hope of this not being all there is, the hope of an inheritance in heaven that far surpasses any earthly gain they could hope to see.

Now, here we are nearly 2,000 years later. We are not witnesses like the apostles were, but we still have the testimony of the Holy Spirit and of the apostles. Next week we’ll celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. He was poured out and now remains with us until Christ comes again, inextricably connected to the Word He inspired in those apostles, linked to the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. Here the Spirit abides and testifies: Yes, you were made God’s child through Holy Baptism, yes He loves you, yes He’ll make all things work together for your good. Yes, the Holy Scriptures are reliable. That’s the Spirit’s testimony.

But since we weren’t there with Jesus in person, we are not properly called “witnesses,” and we do not, properly speaking, offer “testimony” to the world. In all the New Testament, Christians are not called upon to “testify” about Jesus. What we are called to do is to “confess.” We confess who Jesus is and what He has said. We confess the apostles’ testimony

If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”

Even so, there will be consequences for confessing the apostles’ testimony. We know that. The apostles were martyred, put to death for their testimony about Jesus. Many since then have been targeted and killed, not even for preaching the Gospel, but simply for their confession as baptized Christians. Just this week another 22 Christians were slaughtered by ISIS in Egypt, just for being known as Christians.

The persecution will continue, and grow worse. Jesus has told us ahead of time. But it’ll be OK. That’s what Jesus wanted His apostles to believe, and what He wants us to believe, too. It’ll be OK. Jesus was OK after He suffered, and you will be, too. The persecution of Christians will result in praise for the Holy Trinity and in a life that is far better than this one for all who remain faithful until death. As the Psalmist wrote, The LORD is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? The Lord Christ reigns at the right hand of God. We will confess the apostles’ testimony, whether that means loss of income, loss of friends, loss of job, loss of home, loss of freedom or loss of life. Because we have the promise of the Lord Jesus that all we lose here will be replaced by incomparably more when we join Him at God’s right hand.

Until then, we have His Spirit and all the help we will ever need. That’s what we’ll celebrate next Sunday at Pentecost, the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise—His promise to send the Helper, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. The apostles couldn’t have accomplished anything without His help and wouldn’t have dared. But with His divine help, they could and did. And so will we, by the grace of God. Amen.

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The Spirit is needed here

Posted on May 14, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Cantate – Easter 4

James 1:16-21  +  John 16:5-15

We’re still within the 40 days after Easter, recalling the time during which Jesus still made several personal appearances to His disciples. On the 40th day (Thursday May 25th) we’ll celebrate the Ascension, and on the 50th day (Sunday June 4th) we’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Today’s Gospel helps us to understand both of those important events.

On the night before He died, Jesus told His disciples that He was going away. And the very thought of that made His eleven disciples very sad. Why did Jesus have to go away? They didn’t even know what He meant by “going away.” We do. Why did He have to ascend into heaven, so that we can’t see Him here anymore, so that we can’t ask Him questions and hear His responses, so that we can’t see His miracles or see His face? The simple answer is, He went away, because He was no longer needed here. I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.

The Son of God was needed here on earth, in human flesh, living a human life, in order to die a human death. He was needed here to reveal the depth of the Father’s love for poor sinners by becoming the sacrifice for sins, the Substitute who paid the penalty for all people’s sins with His own blood, with His own death. He was needed here to earn a righteous verdict and the forgiveness of sins for all sinners. He was needed here to rise from the dead and to show His disciples the proof of His victory over sin, death and the devil in His risen and glorified body, to show us the life that awaits all who believe when He comes again in glory.

All of that is done. All of that was accomplished nearly 2,000 years ago. What’s needed now, during this entire New Testament period, is for the blood of Christ and all that He earned by it to be applied to sinners for their justification. What’s needed now is for sinners around the world to be forgiven by the God who gave His Son into death for their sins, for sinners to be brought into the household of God’s Holy Church, adopted into His family for the sake of Christ, and made coheirs together with Christ of an eternal heavenly inheritance. That’s what needs to happen for the rest of this earthly age.

And all of that happens by faith in Christ Jesus. And faith happens—faith is created, faith is strengthened, faith is preserved—only by the work of the Holy Spirit of God.

It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.

The Holy Spirit’s proper work is explained in this name that Jesus gives Him: Helper, also translated as Comforter, sometimes just transliterated from the Greek word, Paraclete. The proper work of the Holy Spirit is to help sinners by bringing them to faith in Christ Jesus, urging them, convincing them to flee in faith to Christ and there to receive the forgiveness of sins. His proper work is to comfort sinners with the knowledge of God’s love in Christ Jesus and with the assurance that all who trust in Him are safe from the guilt of sin, from the accusations of the devil, and from the fate of eternal death.

But before He can get to that work for which He is named, He has other important work to do. Sometimes we call it His “foreign work,” or His “alien work” (from the Latin), because His proper work and His ultimate goal is to help and comfort. But before He can comfort, He first has to convict.

And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

How does the Spirit convict or rebuke the world? He does it through the preaching of the Law. The apostles were sent out by Jesus and empowered by His Spirit to expose sin, to tell the world what sin is and to accuse the world of it. The only way to escape the guilt and condemnation of sin is to flee in faith to Christ Jesus; where there is faith in Christ, there is Christ, and where Christ is, all guilt and condemnation are gone. But where sinners remain in unbelief, there they remain guilty of every misdeed, every harsh word, every wicked thought. They are rebuked, convicted of sin.

And of righteousness, because Jesus, the only Righteous One, has gone to the Father. And yet men, in unbelief, will still claim to be righteous without him. They hate the Word of God. They despise the commandments of God. They reject Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior of the world, but they still pretend that they are righteous, that they are good.

I’ll give you a few examples from the public square. They defend a woman’s right to choose…to kill her unborn child. See how righteous they are! They promote LGBT acceptance and “safe” sex and the freedom of little children to decide their gender. See how righteous they are! They teach evolution; they rail against the Biblical teaching of creation; they brand Christians as science deniers and would gladly disallow Christian parents to teach their children anything except for the lie of evolution, all in their “righteous” pursuit of “truth.” But the Holy Spirit continues to rebuke them, to convict them of their self-made righteousness. It’s worse than worthless before God, because the righteousness that counts before God is wrapped up in Christ, and Him they do not wish to know.

And the Spirit rebukes the world and convicts it of judgment, because the unbelieving world refuses to believe that Christ is the Judge and that Christ will come for judgment. They’re more afraid of meteorites and asteroids and global warming than they are of the judgment of God. But there is the Holy Spirit, wherever Christian preachers preach the Law, announcing the already-pronounced judgment against Satan, the ruler of this world, and the impending judgment that they, too, will surely face. For this, the Spirit is needed here.

So Christians can take great comfort in the fact that the Holy Spirit is constantly at work rebuking sin, wherever the Word of God is preached. We can also take comfort that the Holy Spirit brings some of those sinners in the world—like you and me—to repent of our sins and to believe in Christ Jesus. He washes away sins in Holy Baptism and there He clothes us with the true righteousness, with the righteousness of Christ. Now we are safe, as long as we remain in Christ.

And it’s the Holy Spirit’s work to see to it that we do. Jesus told His apostles: I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth… He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.

For the apostles, that meant that the Holy Spirit would guide them both to understand the truth of Christ and to record it for us in the inspired books and letters of the New Testament. For us, it means that we have the testimony of the Holy Spirit preserved for us in the Scriptures, together with His continual working through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, to keep convicting, to keep helping and comforting, to keep teaching and guiding His beloved Christian Church all the way up to the end of the age. For this, the Spirit is needed here.

I think we sometimes get the idea that, if only Jesus were here in person, making appearances around the world, then people would listen. Then we would have real and lasting comfort. But it’s not true. We don’t need Jesus sitting down in one home at a time, in one church at a time, preaching and teaching in one place at a time around the world, as He did long ago. What we need is His Holy Spirit, filling the world all at once with the powerful preaching of Law and Gospel, convicting sinners everywhere of sin and righteousness and judgment, comforting Christians everywhere with the peace of Christ and the forgiveness of sins, teaching the truth from every Christian pulpit, washing away sins through every Christian Baptism, and bringing the body and blood of Christ to every Christian altar. This is why we will celebrate the Ascension of Christ and the Day of Pentecost, because the Spirit is needed here, and the ascended Christ has given us exactly what we need. Amen.

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Doing good for a little while

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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1 Peter 2:11-20  +  John 16:16-23

We’re going to focus on the Epistle today, but as always, we’ll consider it in light of the Gospel.

In the Gospel, Jesus was talking to His disciples on Maundy Thursday evening about that “little while” that they didn’t yet understand. A little while of not seeing Him, and then seeing Him again. A little while of sorrow, followed by an unending time of joy. A little while between Friday and Sunday.

There’s another “little while” of which the Scriptures speak: this little while between Christ’s Ascension and His return. What does Jesus say at the end of Revelation? Behold, I am coming soon!

And within that little while, while Christ reigns at the right hand of God, there are still other little whiles of sorrow and suffering, of which St. Peter writes in chapter 1 of his first epistle: In this—in the permanent inheritance of heaven for which you wait—you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials.

All of these “little whiles,” these temporary situations, are assumed by St. Peter as he writes to the scattered Christians, reminding them that they are “sojourners and pilgrims.” Strangers in a foreign land. Temporary residents. People who are wandering through someone else’s territory, outside of their own country, not living in their permanent home. Even if you have a home of your own and are living in the country of your birth, Peter reminds you that you’re still just passing through. You are citizens of heaven, not by birth, but by rebirth.

And that should have an effect on how you live here in your temporary home.

Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts. What are these fleshly lusts? They are the desires that come from and that appeal to our sinful flesh—the flesh that will be destroyed after this little while is over, to be replaced, for Christians, by a resurrected body and a sinless soul. Fleshly lusts certainly include sexual lust and all the sins that flow from it. They include insatiable pleasure-seeking of any kind, whether in drink or in drug or in leisure or in game. They also include greed: the lust for money, the lust for influence and popularity, the lust for nice things and a nice earthly life, the lust for other people to treat you how you want to be treated, the lust for all the things we don’t have.

Why abstain from such things? Because, as Peter says, they war against the soul. The fleshly lusts that still live in Christians battle against the holy desires that come from God’s Holy Spirit dwelling in you. While the Spirit desires the things that glorify God and that serve our neighbor, the flesh desires only the things that serve the self. And so there’s a war going on inside every Christian. And to indulge the fleshly lusts is to lose a little battle during this little while, to give a little ground in the war between the Spirit of God and the evil spirit called the devil. As Peter will say later on in his first epistle, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Whatever the fleshly lust is, it’s got the devil’s army behind it, coming after you.

Why else should we abstain from fleshly lusts? Because they’re dying things. Christ suffered for such things and freed you from their guilt and from their control. You died to those things in Holy Baptism. How can you live in them any longer? You’ve been raised from spiritual death through faith in the risen Lord Jesus. You have a permanent home waiting for you after this little while is over—the home of righteousness, of peace and joy and kindness and love. Why would you dabble in the devil’s deeds as you make your way to that heavenly home?

And why else abstain from fleshly lusts? St. Peter writes, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. God calls on you, His chosen people, His cherished possession, redeemed by the blood of Christ, to live honorable lives as you live among the “Gentiles,” which means here, among the unbelievers of the world. Because, even though they may indulge their fleshly lusts here for a little while, even though they may rejoice in such things for a little while, even though you may suffer here for a little while, Christ will return, and the world’s temporary rejoicing will turn to permanent sorrow, while the temporary sorrow of God’s people will turn to everlasting joy. So give the world something to remember you by as they pass from this little while of rejoicing to the eternity of regret in hell. Force the world to admit on the Last Day that, in spite of their treatment of you, you behaved righteously. You behaved like God’s children. And they will give glory to God as a result.

That’s exactly what Jesus said back in the sermon on the mount: You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

What are to be the outstanding good works of Christians that unbelievers are to witness? It seems like the main thing, maybe the only thing people think of today is the work Christians do in helping the poor and the sick, works of extraordinary charity. Those are fine things. But what specifically does Peter talk about when it comes to the good works that men should see Christians doing?

He writes: Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men—as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.

Submission to every human authority under which we live. Showing nothing but honor and respect for kings, presidents, governors, judges, lawmakers, policemen. Civil obedience. Being law-abiding citizens. Honoring—respecting—all people, no matter their skin-color, social status, moral worthiness or religion. Showing special love for fellow “the brotherhood,” that is, for fellow Christians. Fearing God, not just in your heart, but in the sight of men, which clearly includes regularly gathering together for the worship of God, setting aside time for catechism instruction, Bible study, etc., so that the world can see that God is more important to you than anything else. Honoring the king, no matter how good or bad he may be.

That can be hard, and yet it’s very simple, isn’t it? These are the everyday good works that Christians are to be about. That means, it’s to be expected that Christians will not be the ones out there in the world rioting, protesting, striking, fighting, yelling, screaming, threatening, whining, cheating or lying, just as it’s to be expected that unbelievers will be engaged in all those things. Not all of them, of course. But certainly Christians should never be found among them.

St. Peter even applies this willing submission to the lowest form of human authority, a house-master who has house-servants. See how God honors even the lowest forms of service! During this “little while,” there is no job, no task, no career that is more God-pleasing or less God-pleasing. (Obviously we’re not talking about shady or immoral professions.) But from president to policeman to house-master, from citizen to neighbor to house-servant, every task for a Christian is equally pleasing to God and has the potential to glorify God on the day of His visitation, as we use this little while, not to serve ourselves, but to serve the One who died for us and rose again.

But what if you suffer in your vocation? What if people mistreat you, even as you seek to honor all men and abide by the laws of the land? Well, that’s bound to happen. But it’s only for a little while, and it will finally result in glory for God and in praise from God for those who suffer for the sake of Christ. As Peter says, For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully. For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.

God, as always, is very honest with His people. He doesn’t depict the Christian life as easy, but as a constant struggle against our fleshly desires. He never paints a picture of a fair and just world for us Christians, where we do what’s right and people praise us for it. Quite the opposite. Christians can expect to be mistreated for doing good, and there’s no point in complaining about how unfairly Christians are treated in our society or elsewhere. On the contrary, rather than complain, let us do good all the more, and with a joyful heart. Because Jesus, our Savior, is risen from the dead. Your sins are forgiven freely, for His sake, by faith. Sin, death and hell are conquered. And this little while of sorrow will soon be replaced with an eternity of joy for all who persevere and remain faithful until the end. In the words of Jesus, Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you. Amen.

 

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The Good Shepherd and His shepherds

Posted on April 30, 2017 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Misericordias Domini – Easter 2

1 Peter 2:21-25  +  John 10:11-16

Just as April 22nd—a week ago yesterday—marked the tenth anniversary of my installation as Emmanuel’s pastor, yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of the first sermon I preached here, and, like today, it also happened to be “Good Shepherd” Sunday. That’s appropriate, don’t you think?, since the word “pastor” means “shepherd.” In fact, the pastoral office, the ministry of pastors, is a key part of the shepherding that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was referring to in our Gospel from John 10. He is the Good Shepherd. But much of the shepherding that the Good Shepherd does is done through shepherds, through pastors, whom He has called to represent Him in the world.

Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. The Old Testament was full of such hirelings—wicked shepherds who led God’s people astray with false doctrine. And there were plenty of them around, too, at the time of Jesus—the unbelieving priests, Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees.

That’s why so many of the Old Testament prophets pointed the people ahead to the coming of the Christ, the Son of David, who would be a faithful shepherd, a good shepherd, a shepherd who truly loved God’s people and cared for them, a shepherd who is the LORD and who is here on earth, actually, physically leading, guiding, feeding and protecting God’s people. That’s exactly what Jesus spent His ministry doing: leading people in the way of the truth, guiding them away from sin, toward repentance and faith in Him, feeding the people with the true Word of God and with the forgiveness of sins, and protecting them from the devil by coming between the sheep and the wolf, by laying down His life for the sheep as the atoning sacrifice for their sins.

Now, think about that. This was more than just a willingness to sacrifice Himself for the sheep. It was a determination to sacrifice Himself. A soldier, for example, may be willing to give his life for his country, but he doesn’t join the military for the purpose of knowingly laying down his life. He hopes he never has to. A fireman may be willing to sacrifice himself to save someone in a burning home. But he hopes he never has to make that sacrifice, and, thankfully, most don’t. But Jesus is the good shepherd, because He was not only willing to die, but knew for sure, from the beginning, even from eternity, that He would be laying down His life for the sheep. It’s why He became a shepherd in the first place. That’s love! That’s devotion!

And that love and devotion, that once-for-all sacrifice for sin belong to Jesus alone; the shepherds of Jesus are not the Good Shepherd and don’t ever pretend to be. But the love of Christ, the death of Christ must still be preached and applied by faith to those who hear. Without that preaching and the faith that comes by it, the sheep are still in danger. The wolf can still enter and scatter and destroy. So the Good Shepherd, risen from the dead, now “gives some to be pastors and teachers,” as Paul writes to the Ephesians. Now He comes through the preaching of His shepherds, and still stands against the wolf. He teaches His sheep through the Gospel, He converts sinners by His Spirit, and, through His shepherds, He warns His sheep of the danger of the wolf: of the danger of the countless false doctrines that surround them, of the devil’s tricks and temptations, of the insidious nature of their own sinful flesh. That’s Jesus, leading, guiding, feeding and protecting His people through the pastors who faithfully carry out their God-given ministry.

Jesus says, I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. When Jesus says that He “knows” His sheep, the word here isn’t the word for simply knowing who someone is, as an acquaintance. It’s much deeper than that, more intimate than that. I know My sheep, Jesus says. I know everything about them. I know who they are, how they are, how they think, how they sin, what they want, and, much more importantly, what they need. As perfectly as the Father knows His beloved Son and the Son knows the Father, Jesus knows all His sheep.

And “I lay down My life for the sheep.” Even knowing you perfectly, with all your faults, your weaknesses, your open or your secret idolatries, your public offenses against your neighbor and your private sins, Jesus, who knew you, laid down His life for you, because He still loved you and wanted you to be saved from your sins and to spend eternity with Him.

But how is the Good Shepherd known by His sheep? You didn’t know Him automatically when you were born, nor did He ever speak directly to your heart from heaven. You know Him only because He has taught you who He is, what His voice sounds like. He has taught you that through the Word. He has taught you to recognize Him as your good and gracious Lord who laid down His life for you and who is always merciful to those who seek mercy from Him and through Him. And so the shepherds of Jesus have spoken and continue to speak, but it’s the voice of Jesus that is heard.

But if shepherds are to speak for Jesus, so that you hear His voice, that means, they must be called by Jesus to speak for Him, and once called, they must actually speak like Jesus, faithfully proclaiming His truth from the Holy Scriptures and faithfully caring for those entrusted to their care.

Now, as St. Paul writes, For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? Who is sufficient to proclaim Christ rightly, to shepherd His flock faithfully, as genuine representatives of the Good Shepherd? Paul also answers that question: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. So, in all the shepherding done by the shepherds of Jesus, it’s still Jesus doing the shepherding, making His ministers adequate for the tasks He wants to accomplish among His sheep, serving His sheep, exactly when and where He knows they need to be served, because He knows them and sends His shepherds to tend to their needs, so that, even though they see their pastor standing there, they should hear the voice of their Good Shepherd.

Finally in our Gospel, Jesus says, And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. As Paul writes to Pastor Timothy, God our Savior desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all. He wants all men to be saved. He died for all, so that all might come to the knowledge of the truth, so that all might repent of their sins and believe in Him and be eternally saved.

Of course, He knows that not all will believe; some will stubbornly resist His Spirit, to their own destruction. But He also knows each and every person, each and every soul whom His Spirit will bring to faith and preserve in faith until the end. He knows who they are, where they are, when they have been born or when they will be. Even before they’re born, He knows them. They were chosen in Him in eternity. And He Himself, the Good Shepherd, must go out to bring them in, to convert them from unbelief to faith and to bring them safely into the fold of His Church.

But as you know, Jesus is not walking around out there preaching and teaching and calling out to the world, bringing in His sheep without means. The verse I quoted above from 1 Timothy goes on, For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time, for which I (Paul) was appointed a preacher and an apostle. This is how the Good Shepherd goes out seeking and bringing in His sheep. He goes around the world, He stays in this city or in that, sometimes for a matter of days, sometimes for ten years, sometimes for longer, through this apostle and through that one, through this pastor, through this bishop, and then through that one, calling out through His shepherds, sending out His voice into the world, teaching, tending, preaching, mending, baptizing, giving to eat of His body and to drink of His blood, that His sheep may be brought in and led to good pasture, tended and mended through Word and Sacrament until the Good Shepherd comes again to raise His sheep from the dead and to lead His holy Christian Church into the pastures of eternal life.

Whether it’s through me for another ten years or through someone else, whether it’s through Bishop Heiser or another bishop in the future, know for certain that Christ, the Good Shepherd, will continue to speak, to lead, to guide, to feed and to protect His precious flock, purchased with His own blood. As I told a member recently, any good and right and useful ministry that you’ve received from me, whether here from the pulpit or in your home or at the deathbed of a loved one—that was really Jesus ministering to you, taking care of His sheep, seeing to it that you had His Word applied and His love expressed to you as needed. Anything false, anything foolish or useless, well, that was me getting in the way. May God prevent all such offenses in all His shepherds, and may you hear clearly the voice of your Good Shepherd whenever any of His pastors speaks in His name. Amen.

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