God loved the world in this remarkable way

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

Acts 10:42-48  +  John 3:16-21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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God’s Spirit brings us into the heavenly harvest

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

Acts 2:1-13  +  John 14:23-31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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God’s promise to justify and to sanctify

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Exaudi

Romans 8:29-39  +  Ezekiel 36:25-27

Israel’s return from captivity in Babylon is prophesied in Ezekiel chapter 36. God promises to return them to their land. But He promises to do much more for them than that. Here, in the three short verses before us, God’s plan is revealed—His plan to turn Israel, finally, into the people they were always meant to be. His plan to justify them, and to sanctify them, by His Son and by His Spirit.

The Son of God, the promised Messiah, is not specifically mentioned in Ezekiel’s words. But He’s there beneath verse 25, together with the Spirit of God: Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. The whole picture of sprinkling unclean people with clean water in order to cleanse them comes from the Law of Moses. That’s how a ceremonially unclean person was to be ceremonially cleansed. If, for example, a person touched a dead body, the Law considered that person ceremonially unclean until he was sprinkled with the water of purification. And if a person wasn’t sprinkled with that water and tried to approach God’s tabernacle in his unclean state, he was to be cut off from Israel, permanently excluded from the people of God.

If touching a dead body made a person ceremonially unclean before God, how much more did idolatry make a person truly unclean! There’s nothing morally, inherently wrong with touching a dead body. That was a ceremonial picture God used to teach Israel about uncleanness. The true uncleanness that makes a person unable to stand in God’s presence is sin, and idolatry is the chief sin from which all other sins flow. And the Israelites had been guilty of it in spades. So the people didn’t only need to be purified for ceremonial purposes. They needed the forgiveness of sins.

That forgiveness could only be purchased through a true atoning sacrifice. Not by the ceremonial sacrifices of animals, but by the actual sacrifice of Substitute that was worth the lives of every sinner. Only the sacrifice of the Son of God could actually atone for their sins.

And only the preaching of the Gospel and the purifying waters of Holy Baptism could apply the Christ’s atoning blood to those who needed God’s forgiveness. As the writer to the Hebrews says, Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. That pure water that actually cleanses our consciences is the water connected to God’s promise, He who believes and is baptized will be saved.

So Ezekiel’s words are a prophecy both of the sacrificial death of the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit’s working, through the Word and through the water of Baptism, to cleanse the Israelites—and all people! —of their idolatry, and of all their sins. It was a prophecy of justification, which would be brought about by the Son of God and by the Spirit of God. Not the justification of the whole nation of Israel, but of those in Israel who would be brought to faith in Christ Jesus. Not of believing Israelites only, but of all sinners who would hear and believe in God’s promise of justification through faith in the Lord Jesus.

That’s what the next verse is talking about: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Israel’s old heart, and your heart and my heart by nature, was made of stone. It didn’t listen to God’s word. It was determined to believe what it wanted to believe, to worship how it wanted to worship, and to pursue every sinful pleasure, every prideful thought. But God promised Israel that He would give them a new heart and a new spirit. Not magically, not by zapping it into them, but through the preaching of His Word, of His Law and His Gospel, He would bring them to repent of their idolatries and all their stubborn rebellion, and to become new people, with new desires, and with a new love—a love for the God who gave His only-begotten Son into death for their sins. In other words, He would create a new man within them.

And that new man who would be created would no longer walk according to the flesh, would no longer turn to idols for help, or ignore God’s word and God’s commandments, but would truly love the Lord, love His word, and be eager to walk according to His commandments, as we see in the third verse of tonight’s lesson: I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. What Ezekiel is describing here is what we usually refer to as sanctification, the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work of turning believers into people who lead holy lives, who walk according to God’s commandments. Sanctification always begins simultaneously with justification, and it must continue throughout a person’s life. If it doesn’t, if you don’t want to walk in God’s statutes, if you don’t struggle against the Old Man and his evil desires, if the Spirit of God is not working within you to keep God’s commandments, then you don’t have justifying faith, either. But if you, as Christians, no longer view sin as something desirable but as something detestable, because God Himself detests it, that’s the work of God’s Spirit within you. If you are determined to please God and not yourself, that’s the work of God’s Spirit within you. If you love the word of God and are eager to submit to it, that’s the work of God’s Spirit within you.

Again, this is not a promise that every Israelite would be justified and sanctified. Those who didn’t want God’s Spirit dwelling in them would not be forced to become temples of the Holy Spirit, just as those who didn’t want to be baptized wouldn’t be forced into Baptism. What we have here in Ezekiel is a gracious Gospel promise that would be extended to Israel, and beyond Israel, in connection with the coming Christ. It’s a promise of spiritual deliverance of those who were once bound in sin, and of Spirit-worked godliness in those who formerly were ungodly and idolatrous.

And it’s important to notice who is in charge of all this. It’s not you, or I. It’s God who does it to you and for you. It’s God who justifies, on the basis of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. It’s God’s Spirit who converts unbelievers and changes them into believers, who takes sinners and turns them into saints. As for those who remain unconverted and unbelieving, they have only themselves to blame. Because, as Ezekiel prophesies in tonight’s reading. God offered purification and a new spirit to everyone, on the basis of Christ’s atonement, which would also be for everyone. Don’t let God’s promise pass you by! Embrace it, and rejoice in it, in God’s plan to justify you and to sanctify you, by His Son and by His Spirit. Amen.

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The testimony of the Spirit, the apostles, and all Christians

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Sunday after Ascension

1 Peter 4:7-11  +  John 15:26-16:4

On Thursday, we heard the promise Jesus made to His apostles just before He was taken up into heaven. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. The promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit was a promise that Jesus repeated over and over again to His apostles, beginning on Maundy Thursday, as you heard in the Gospel. So it was also with the instructions that Jesus gave to His disciples just before He ascended into heaven: And you will be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. That was also something that Jesus repeated on various occasions and in various ways. Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. Go and make disciples of all nations. The Spirit’s testimony was promised; the apostles’ testimony was foretold. The salvation of sinners, the entire building of the New Testament Church, hinged on that twofold testimony, a testimony that still goes out into the world today, through those who have believed the testimony of the Spirit and of the apostles. That’s you and I, isn’t it? But there is also a warning label attached to this testimony. So let’s dig into this testimony a little bit and receive the Lord’s teaching about it.

But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me.

One of our members recently asked why our lectionary seems to be jumping around John’s Gospel, out of order, during these weeks after Easter. The answer is that, the further away from Easter and the closer to Pentecost we get, the more the readings focus on the coming of the Holy Spirit. And that makes sense. Because, for as vitally important as Jesus’ resurrection is for our salvation, the work of the Holy Spirit is what brings the truth of Jesus’ resurrection to the world for this entire New Testament period. That’s why Jesus calls Him the “Spirit of truth.” He testifies to the truth. “He will testify about Me,” Jesus says. The Spirit’s testimony is the truth about Jesus. As the Spirit who proceeds from the Father, as the Spirit whom Jesus sends into the world, the Holy Spirit knows and has witnessed the whole truth about God, and about God’s plan of salvation, which centers on Jesus. And so, after Jesus’ ascension, the testimony of the Spirit would be God’s gift to the apostles, to the Church, and, by extension, to the world.

How would the Spirit of truth testify about Jesus? He would do it in three ways. First, He would testify through the signs and wonders that happened on the Day of Pentecost and that were seen here and there among the Christians of the first century. The miraculous ability to speak in foreign languages, special visions, prophecies about the future, healing miracles, things like that. The Spirit would be responsible for all those outward signs, testifying to the truth that the Gospel of Jesus, preached by the apostles, was true.

There is a second testimony of the Spirit, in the hearts and minds of the apostles, enabling them to teach (and to write!) about Jesus accurately. The Spirit of truth, who understands the truth about Jesus perfectly, guided the apostles into all truth, just as Jesus said He would do. He also emboldened them to preach the Gospel of Jesus with Spirit-worked courage and conviction—just as He had done, by the way, with the Old Testament prophets, as Peter writes: the Spirit of Christ who was in [the prophets] testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

Then there is the testimony of the Spirit in the hearts of the hearers of the Gospel as He works through the preaching of the Word, enabling the hearers to both believe and understand the Gospel of Jesus, that Jesus truly is the Christ, the Son of the living God, that He truly died as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, and that He is the one Mediator between God and Man, who reconciles sinners to God through faith in His name. As Paul writes, No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. And again, The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, enabling us to cry out to God as our dear Father.

But the Spirit’s testimony is always, always connected to the testimony of man’s preaching. As Jesus says in our Gospel, And you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning. Peter’s preaching, His eyewitness testimony, was the main event of Pentecost. The preaching of the Gospel of Christ was the main event at the house of Cornelius, too, where Peter preached, and then the Holy Spirit testified with miraculous signs, showing that Christ’s salvation was also for the Gentiles.

But notice, these words aren’t spoken directly to all people, or to all Christians. They’re spoken to the apostles who were, as Jesus says, “with Me from the beginning.” The apostles were the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life, of His teaching, of His demeanor, of His attitude, of His suffering, death, and resurrection. Theirs and theirs alone is the eyewitness testimony. The rest of the Church is built on that initial, first-century testimony.

You and I are not called by Jesus to “testify” in the same sense, to the same things, because we aren’t eyewitnesses of those things. What we are witnesses of, the testimony we can provide, is the testimony we have received from the Spirit, through the apostles. We can testify to the faith that has been given in that testimony. We can and should tell the world that we have been convinced that the apostles’ testimony is true, and that Jesus is risen, and reigning, and returning. That’s a testimony we give in the world with our words. And it’s also a testimony we give with how we live our lives. But when we invite people to church, when we invite people to know the Lord Jesus, we’re not inviting them to come and hear our personal testimony. We’re inviting them to come and hear the testimony of the Holy Spirit, through the testimony of the apostles (and prophets), because, by the work of the Holy Spirit, we have been convinced that this testimony is true.

But as the apostles were about to go out and testify before the world, Jesus wasn’t about to deceive them. He told them plainly what would happen as the result of their testimony. And what He told them wasn’t pleasant.

They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is coming, when whoever kills you will think he is rendering service to God. They will do these things because they have not known the Father nor Me.

Jesus knew that the majority of the Jews would not believe the Spirit’s testimony, or the testimony of the apostles. He knew that the Sanhedrin would haul them off to prison and beat them. He knew that Stephen would be stoned to death by the Jews, that James would be put to death by Herod’s sword, and that His apostles, and His Christians in general, would face opposition and persecution by the hands of both Jews and Gentiles. And maybe the most bitter pill to swallow was the fact that they would do it in the name of “service to God.” They would think that God wanted them to put these Christians to death. Why? Because even though they claimed to believe in the God of Israel, their actual god was a false god. Because, as Jesus says, They have not known the Father, nor Me.

And yet, the apostles, knowing the hardships and the suffering that lay ahead of them, still waited for the promised Holy Spirit after Jesus ascended into heaven, still testified in Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria, still went into all the world and preached the Gospel to every creature, because they had the testimony of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus is Lord, and that, even though they would die for that testimony, they would receive a greater prize in eternal life.

Now, you and I won’t be put out of any synagogue, because we don’t attend a Jewish synagogue. But the testimony about Jesus that we believe, the testimony about Jesus that we confess in the world, with our words and with how we live our lives, still draws hatred from Jews and Gentiles alike (if we’re doing it right!), and sometimes even from those who claim to be Christians. What’s popular in the eyes of the world, what seems nice in the eyes of the world, is almost always the wrong way, the wrong thing. So prepare to suffer.

Maybe you remember one of the confirmation questions that our confirmands are always asked to answer: Do you intend to continue steadfast in the confession of this Church, and suffer all, even death, rather than turn away from it? That’s a serious question, and it deserves a serious answer. As Jesus says often in the Gospels, He who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.

What will the result be if Christians don’t testify to the truth about Jesus, both with our words and with our lives? Well, some Christians will always be out there providing that testimony. You can be sure of that. The Holy Spirit will see to it that the Gospel is never completely silenced in the world. But when other Christians fail to testify, or testify to one thing with their words, but to a different thing with their behavior, then the world, and even other Christians, will be exposed to conflicting testimonies, and that’s always harmful. It’s tragic how many young people have been raised by Christians who only give lip-service to the truth of Christ, but whose lives conflict with what their lips confess, leaving the young Christian susceptible to the false doctrine of those who seem to be more “genuine,” but whose teachings actually lead away from the Lord Jesus. So guard your testimony, both for your own sake and for the sake of those whose lives you touch. Daily repentance, faith in the Lord Jesus, who has rescued you from sin, death, and the devil, and lives that honor Him. Hearing the Word and receiving the Sacraments. Being the same Christians at home and in society that you profess to be here in church. Let these things be your daily concern, your ongoing testimony, if indeed you have received the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

And what will be the result when Christians do give such a testimony? God will be glorified, the name of Jesus will be exalted, and the Church of Christ will be built. And you will suffer, but only for a little while. May the Helper, the Spirit of truth, grant you all the help you need, to believe in the testimony about the Lord Jesus and to confess Him before the world, no matter what the earthly consequences may be. Amen.

 

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Celebrating Christ’s mission accomplished and work ongoing

Posted on May 29, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Festival of the Ascension

Acts 1:1-11  +  Mark 16:14-20

Today’s festival is one of the major festivals of Christ in the whole Church year. It ranks right up there with Christmas and Easter in importance. And yet, believe it or not, I still run into Christians, even Lutherans, who don’t know much about the Festival of the Ascension. So let’s make sure that everyone here, and everyone watching or listening, never (or never again) falls into that category!

As we learn in today’s reading from Acts 1, Jesus appeared on and off to His disciples over the course of 40 days after His resurrection on Easter Sunday. Twice that we know of in Jerusalem, twice that we know of in Galilee, and probably on several occasions we don’t about. He gave them final instructions about the kingdom of God, and about the coming of the Holy Spirit, telling them to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit should come upon them with power. And then He met with them one last time, on the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem, where Luke tells us that He lifted up His hands and blessed them, and as He was doing that, He was lifted up into the sky, He “ascended” into heaven until a cloud hid Him from their sight. And then, He was “gone.” Gone, in the sense that they never saw Him again. No one on earth ever saw Him again, except for the first martyr Stephen, who was allowed to see Jesus standing at the Father’s right hand before he died, and the apostle Paul, who was called and trained by Jesus directly.

Now, why is that something to celebrate, Jesus being “gone”? Well, as we heard Jesus say a couple of Sundays ago, it was to the Church’s advantage that He went away, because from heaven He would send them the Holy Spirit, who would accompany all the disciples of Jesus everyone in the world at once, whereas, when Jesus walked the earth, He only walked in one place at a time. The Spirit’s work is what would build the Church over the next 2,000 years.

But we celebrate the Spirit’s arrival on the Day of Pentecost, ten days from now. That’s not mainly what we celebrate today. Today we celebrate two things, mainly. We celebrate our  King’s victorious return to His heavenly Father after accomplishing His earthly mission. And we celebrate the beginning of the reign of Christ the King at the right hand of the Father.

That first thing, the King’s victorious return to His heavenly Father, is relatively simple. It doesn’t require too much commentary. Repeatedly Jesus tells His disciples that He was sent by God the Father, that He came from God the Father and would return to God the Father, that He had come down from heaven and would eventually return there. What does that mean?

Well, you and I don’t start out in heaven and then come down to inhabit our bodies. We don’t start with God and then return to God. The rest of us start to exist when we’re conceived. But th eternal Son of God was in heaven prior to His incarnation as a human being. He existed with a divine nature only, like the Father and like the Holy Spirit, without human flesh and blood, without a human nature at all. He “came down” from heaven by means of the incarnation, when He was conceived and took on a human nature in Mary’s womb, a human nature that coexists with His divine nature in one undivided Person, as the One who is both God and Man. That’s how He came down. And then, as both God and Man, He returned to the Father at His ascension. And He returned, not in defeat, but in victory, not in humility, but in glory. Because He had accomplished His mission, the mission which God had planned before the creation of the world, the mission on which the Father had sent Him some 34 years earlier. Jesus had led a perfectly holy, righteous, and sinless life. He had loved God and man without fail. He had tirelessly preached and ministered to the people of Israel, and to a few non-Israelites. He had suffered and died for the sins of mankind and had risen again. The mission was finished successfully. The reason for His coming down to earth was accomplished. Mission accomplished. Time to return to the Father.

And when He did, He received the glory He deserved. Glory as the Son of God, and also as the Son of Man. On the night before He night, Jesus prayed, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. That was His glory as the Son of God. But after accomplishing His mission to provide redemption for fallen man, He received glory also as the Son of Man, to whom saints and angels sing: Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!

And so we join our voices today in glorifying Christ the King, who accomplished His earthly mission to earn mankind’s salvation as the Son of Man, and who has now returned home victorious.

The King’s earthly mission was accomplished, but His heavenly work goes on. And so today we also celebrate the beginning of Christ’s work that He carries out at the right hand of God.

You heard in today’s Gospel that the Lord Jesus was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. That’s a fulfillment of Psalm 110, which begins: The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” It’s also a fulfillment of what Jesus said to the Jewish Sanhedrin as they were about to sentence Him to death: I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.

What does it mean that Jesus sits at the Father’s right hand?

It isn’t a literal location relative to the Father’s literal location. There are those who claim (mainly the Calvinists and Reformed) that Jesus is physically located in a single place in heaven, from which He cannot move, and from which He certainly cannot cause His true body and blood to be present with the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. But they teach falsely. Yes, Jesus has a physical body. But the Father doesn’t! So how can Jesus sit at the right hand of the Father who has no physical hands? How can Jesus be restricted to a location next to the Father who has no physical location? No, to sit at the right hand of God means something else.

Sitting at the right hand of God means that Jesus has been exalted to the highest place, as both God and Man. It means that He has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. As Peter writes, Jesus has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to Him. Yes, it means that He has come into His kingdom and has begun His reign as King, with all things in the universe placed under His feet, under His rule.

And what does that reign include?

Jesus once promised His disciples, On this rock—on this confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God—I will build My Church. But that building only began to take place after His ascension. From the right hand of the Father, as part of His reign over all things, Jesus is building His Church.

He does that building through the office of the ministry. Jesus Himself is the Chief Minister, the High Priest over God’s Temple. As it says in the book of Hebrews, We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man. He Himself is working through earthly ministers whom He has sent and continues to send, as Peter said, God has exalted Him to His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Through the preaching of Peter, through the preaching of all genuine ministers, through the Sacraments that Jesus instituted before His ascension, Jesus is the one, at the right hand of God, giving repentance and forgiveness, working through His Spirit to bring people to repent of their sins and to trust in Him who was delivered up for our sins and raised for our justification.

And as people are brought to faith, the Lord Jesus, sitting at the Father’s right hand, also justifies and intercedes for believers, pleading with the Father on our behalf. Paul writes, It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.

What else? Paul writes that the Father seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. So Jesus reigns as King. He reigns over all things, even over all “principality and power and might and dominion,” that is, the demonic forces of evil in the spirit-realm. He reigns over every government, over every institution, over every individual, over every germ, over every cell in our bodies, over nature, over gravity. He reigns invisibly. He reigns behind the scenes, until He returns to the earth. But we know for certain that every decision this King makes, whether we can see it or not, is for the good of His Church, as the head of a body makes decisions that are good for its own body.

Finally, remember what Jesus said to His disciples on the night before He died. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. At the right hand of the Father, Jesus is preparing a place for every member of His holy Church, so that our home is ready when He returns in the same way His disciples saw Him go, visibly, coming down from heaven once again, for that final judgment that will mean eternal joy and peace for all who have believed in His name.

That, my Christian friends, is what Jesus’ ascension means for us today. It’s a celebration of Christ’s mission accomplished and also the beginning of His ongoing work, His work whose focus is our salvation. That’s what it’s about. And that’s why we celebrate it, and will continue to celebrate it, on the Thursday that always falls on the 40th day after Easter. Amen.

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