190623 Sermon on Luke 16:19-31 (Trinity 1), June 23, 2019

190623 Sermon on Luke 16:19-31 (Trinity 1), June 23, 2019

The nation of Israel was at the peak of its greatness at the very beginning of its history. God led them out of Egypt, distinct from every other people on the face of the earth. God was with them. No other nation could say that. He led them by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. They were baptized in the Red Sea, and fed and watered on their way to Mt. Sinai. When they reached the mountain God took up residence at its summit with magnificent sights and sounds. Fire, smoke, and trembling engulfed the mountain.

This is the moment of Israel’s greatness. There was never another time when the nation was in a better spot or more honored. They were below the mountain and the Lord had gathered them together like a hen gathers her chicks. God was theirs and they were God’s. They could look up and see God’s presence, as much as they were able, for God had to shield them from his presence somewhat, for no sinner can see God and live.

But here we encounter something astounding. We wouldn’t believe that it could be possible if it wasn’t right there in the Scriptures black on white. Here’s what happened: Moses had gone to the top of the mountain to be with God and to receive from him the covenant—the way God was to be with his people, and the way the people were to be with God. He was gone for forty days and forty nights.

While he was at the top of the mountain, the people came to Aaron, Moses’s brother, and asked him to make a statue for them, so that they could worship the Lord. They didn’t know what had happened to Moses. How could he survive without food or water for so long on that barren mountain? We’re on our own now, and so we better get busy. Aaron agreed to their request. He told them to give him their gold from their earrings and jewelry. He fashioned it into a calf and the people said, “Here, O Israel, is the god that has led you out of Egypt.” Aaron instituted some worship for God. He declared that the next day would be a feast day. And so they got up early the next day, made offerings of incense and peace offerings, and celebrated the good fortune that had come to them. It was springtime in their eyes. They rose up to eat and drink and play. They had gotten rid of Moses, who was kind of a stickler, and Aaron was proving himself to be a more flexible clergyperson. He let the people call the tune.

But these people had no idea how close they were to being wiped out completely by God because of their disobedience. God told Moses what had happened while he was still at the top of the mountain, and said he was going to kill them all, and make his chosen nation from Moses and his descendants instead. But Moses interceded for the people and begged God to be merciful to them and forgive their sins. And so God relented of the disaster he had planned for the Israelites and they were kept alive, but he did punish them severely for their sin.

What is so astounding about this situation is that you have such ideal conditions and yet such a disagreeable outcome. Mt. Sinai is a foreshadowing of heaven where God has gathered together those whom he has chosen to live with him and be blessed by him. God’s presence among this people was palpable. All they had to do was look up. Plus they had already received God’s commandments to guide them on their way. God did not make it a secret that the people should not construct and worship statues like the filthy pagan people do. He told them not to make any graven image. There is no way that they could have missed this teaching.

And yet they sinned.  How can this be explained? I don’t think it really can be explained. This is the mystery of iniquity, the mystery of sin. It is a great mystery. They knew God. God had rescued them over and over again just in the short while it took them to get to the mountain. They knew that he was serious. They knew his Law. They knew that God surely existed. And then they broke the first and greatest commandment: “You shall have no other gods.”

The willingness and eagerness to sin is something that we can only learn from the Scriptures. The most common understanding people have about our human nature is that it is pretty good. They know that we mess up from time to time, but there’s always an explanation for it. The boy or girl wasn’t raised right, or they didn’t have all the right information. And so a very large portion of our human endeavors is to try to get kids raised right and to educate them. There are public service announcements that teach us about this and that. It is assumed that if we only educate a person enough so that he or she has all the information that is needed, then the person will go the right way.

But apply this to the Israelites gathered below Mt. Sinai. What more could possibly be done for them so that they should know right from wrong? And they did it even though God was right there before their eyes on the mountain. This was an advantage that we don’t have. We so often foolishly believe in our hearts that there is no God and that our sins will not be seen by him, but the Israelites could see God’s glory hovering over their very camp. Why did they do it?

We might ask the same thing for all kinds of sins that we do. Here’s a public service announcement for you: “Nobody is ever blessed by committing sin. Nobody ever, without a single exception!” There, now you have this bit of knowledge. If we were able to defeat sin by our reason and abilities, then you should be able to stop sinning. But what the Bible reveals to us is that our sin is not a minor glitch on the surface. We are evil all the way down to the core. The evilness we have inherited with original sin is so bad and so strong that you even find the people of God falling into gross and shocking sins, like the Israelites do at Mt. Sinai.

But another aspect of our fallenness and sinfulness is that we are quite blind to this, our condition, until it is forcefully impressed upon us. The Israelites weren’t bothered by a bad conscience at the foot of Mt. Sinai. They were even worshipping the Lord according to their own lights. It is only when the hammer drops that they see the truth. Then they were in anguish.

I think this is what is so startling and captivating about our Gospel reading today too. This rich man was oblivious to his damnation until he woke up in the flames. The flames are so bad that he wishes that Lazarus could bring him, literally, one drop of water to cool his tongue. But the time of grace is over for him. He had despised the grace of God while he was living, and now what’s done is done. There’s no going back. Abraham says to him that simple, haunting word: “Remember.” “Remember how it was, and what you did, and how you did not listen when I called?”

Now it’s important that we do not make a monster out of this man, which we are prone to do, and for good reason. It is so that we can distance ourselves from him and therefore feel that we are safe from the fires of hell. Often this man is denounced as some kind of glutton or gourmand, who required grapes to be fed to him by scantily clad slaves. In fact there is nothing that is said about how he ate. Our translation says that he “feasted sumptuously every day,” but that is not what it says in the Greek. In the original all it says is that he “rejoiced brilliantly,” or “was filled with joyfulness.” A lot of times we do eat and drink at joyous occasions, so maybe that’s why the translators assume that he was stuffing his face, but there’s no reason to assume that. In fact, those who are most joyful and splendorous are the ones who, among other gifts, also have the gift of self-control.

So when we think of this man who is in hell we should think of someone who’s got it all together. He simply has a great life. He got up bright and cheerful every morning. He went to bed contented every night with what he had accomplished. Sure, he neglected poor Lazarus, but who doesn’t do that? If you help one poor person, then when is it going to stop? This happy man just put that out of mind and went on with his day.

What I’d like you to see is that this rich man is not some nasty oafish tycoon. He could just as well be you. The impulse in him where he looked out for himself and his own happiness is the very same one that exists in you. Just as this man thought that he was immune from the fires of hell because he didn’t think he was that bad of a man (and, in truth, there surely were many who were much worse than him outwardly), so also you think that God couldn’t possibly send you to hell. If he sent you to hell, then he’d have to send everybody to hell, and God can’t be like that, can he? He couldn’t wipe out the whole nation of Israel and make a nation out of Moses could he? He couldn’t wipe out the whole population of the earth and make his people from Noah and his three sons, could he? “Who ever heard of a God like that?” our reason says. That is why this man is caught so off guard when he dies, and that is why also so many of our friends, family, and neighbors will be caught off guard when they die too.

So what can be done? Our Gospel reading tells us. The rich man wants Lazarus to be sent back to his father’s house so that his brothers can be warned. He knows that they are living just like he lived. But Abraham tells him that they have Moses and the Prophets, let them hear them. That is, let them hear the Bible. But the rich man knows his brothers. They won’t listen to that. But if some ghost or specter should rattle some chains in the middle of the night, that might get their attention.

That is always how our reason thinks. Our reason thinks that God’s Word is no nearly enough. It has to be jazzed up with some razzle dazzle, otherwise the churches will be empty. And the fact is that if the razzle dazzle is good enough, then the place just might be full of bodies. But razzle dazzle doesn’t make anybody’s soul fear God and believe in Jesus Christ, the Savior of sinners. This is confirmed by what Jesus says through the character of Abraham, “If they will not listen to Moses and the Prophets, then they won’t listen even if someone should come back from the dead.” The unusualness of someone rising from the dead doesn’t help anything, because it doesn’t address the real problem. The real problem is that people are all too eager to pass off the words of Scripture as being weird or outdated or outmoded or irrational or defective or who knows whatever else. What God says is disbelieved. All the singing and dancing in the world won’t help if God is disbelieved.

The Word of God is like a light shining in a dark place. It is the only thing that brings light into our minds and into our souls. Without the Word of God it is impossible for us to know ourselves rightly—what we’re really like—as we’ve already heard today. Even the Israelites at Mt. Sinai thought that they were in smooth sailing when they were dancing around the calf. Likewise the rich man thought that life was good, that he was doing his part, and that there is nothing to fear when he died. All people, without exception, will believe this about themselves without the Word of God. And even we who have the Word of God are all to prone to think according to our Old Adam instead of what the Scriptures reveal about the mysterious power and evilness of sin.

Also without the Scriptures we cannot know anything of the one true God. This is the worse predicament of the two, for without what God reveals about himself in his promises towards us we will be terrified of God and hate him. We will think he’s mean. If we catch a good glimpse of what we are really like, we will never believe that it is possible that God should love wretched sinners like us and have mercy upon us unless the Bible told us so.

And so if I were you, I’d stay away from people who say that they don’t need to go to Church to be a Christian, or hear God’s Word, or be fed and sustained by the Sacrament, or any of these other divine helps that God’s provides us—I’d stay away from someone like that as though they were the devil himself. What possible good can someone like that do you, except to put you to sleep, so that you are surprised at your death and on Judgement Day by horrible flames and anguish. God has had mercy on you and revealed to you his Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Do not take this for granted or toss it to the wind. Cling to him, for there is no forgiveness or salvation outside of him.

190616 Sermon for Trinity Sunday, June 16, 2019

190616 Sermon for Trinity Sunday

The word “Trinity” or “triune” is two words put together into one.  “Tri” means three—as in triangle or tricycle.  “Une” is the other word, which means one—as in the card game Uno.  So “Tri-une” is an adjective that means “three-one-ness.”  The Triune God is the God who is three-one.  The Holy Trinity is another name for the one true God alongside other names like Elohim, Jahweh, the Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The word “Trinity” does not appear in the Scriptures. It is a word that was invented later by teachers who wanted to describe what the Bible says about God. Some people get unnecessarily upset by the absence of this word and think that it is wrong to use it.  But it is not wrong to make up new words in order to describe what the Bible teaches.

For example, another word that does not appear in the Bible is the word “sacrament,” which means “a holy thing.” Christians use the word to describe those things which Jesus instituted for the communication of forgiveness and salvation.  The sacrament of Baptism and the sacrament of the altar are both holy things that communicate God’s grace. The word “sacrament” is a way to speak about both at the same time. We are free to use it or not use it, but we should not say that it is wrong to use the word.

The same thing is true with the word “Trinity” or “Triune.” It is not absolutely necessary to use the word. We can use it or not use it. But we are not free to discard the thoughts that are behind the word, because the thoughts behind it are exactly what the Bible teaches. God being three in one and one in three is not an invention by any man. It is who God is. It is the way that he reveals himself to us in his word. Both his oneness, as well as the persons of the Trinity being distinct, is the way that the Bible speaks about God.

For his oneness, consider this passage in Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one.” This is a truth that is eternal. There are not many gods. There are not three gods. There is only one God. In our Old Testament reading where Isaiah sees the glory of the Lord in the Temple, he did not see many gods or three gods, but only one God.

Then, on the other hand, we have so very many passages that speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Think back on the past 5 or 6 weeks worth of Gospel readings that we have had. In these readings from John’s Gospel we’ve heard about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the relationships that exist between them. The Son will send the Holy Spirit, the comforter, when he has ascended into heaven. Jesus says that he will not ask the Father on our behalf, but you yourself will ask the Father, because the Father loves you because you believe that Jesus has been sent by him. Our Gospel reading today, perhaps the best known Bible passage that exists, distinguishes between the Father, who is often called simply God, and the Son who is Jesus: “God loved the world in this way, that he sent his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And then there are all the blessings and benedictions that are scattered throughout St. Paul’s epistles.  We use one of those regularly that goes like this: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”

And so we have two things that the Bible says about God. It says that God is one. It says that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or that there are three distinct persons. The words “Trinity” or “Triune” is nothing other than shorthand for what the Bible teaches: three/one; one/three.  It is false and blasphemous to say that there are more or other gods besides the One and Only true God. It is also false and blasphemous to deny what the Bible says about that one God—that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct—and yet, though they are distinct, there are not three gods, but one God.

The fact that God is both one and three at the same time without giving up any of the oneness or any of the threeness, has frustrated human beings for a long time. We like to understand things so that we can pigeon hole them. We’d like to understand the nature of God so that we could put him in some category and be done with him. It’s like solving a math problem. Who would want to do the same math problem over and over again? Once you’ve come to your solution in math, you set it aside. That is what people would like to do with the nature of God too. They’d like to have him all figured out so that they could move onto things that are more to their liking.

Because of this impulse there have arisen countless people over the centuries who have believed that they have solved the problem of the Trinity. They solve it in various ways. Some solve it by denying his oneness. Most solve it by denying his threeness. Something that all these individuals over the centuries have in common with one another is a fondness for their own powers of reasoning. But in divine matters our reason cannot do anything other than lead us astray.

This is something that Luther taught so clearly and wonderfully. He enjoyed calling this power of reasoning, which the world holds in such high esteem, as the devil’s whore and other excellent insults. He did this out of a love for his Lord Jesus Christ whom he wanted more than anything else. It was not necessary for him to understand everything. He was satisfied with what the Holy Spirit revealed in the Bible about who God is and what his will towards us is.

But why is reason so troublesome and blind when it comes to divine matters? I am sure that I don’t understand everything about the answer to this question. Sin and pride and rebellion against God are quite mysterious, and I don’t pretend to understand these things very much. But I think I can say something about one of the lesser causes for reason’s ineptitude with divine things. It has to do with the way that our reason works.

The way that our reason works is that over the course of our life we are always taking in new information and categorizing it. From the moment we are born we do this, and we don’t quit doing it until we die. From the moment we are born we begin to learn that milk is sweet, and Mom comes when I cry. By playing with toys children begin to learn physics and what happens if you do this or do that. All the sophistication and learning that human being are able to accomplish is a matter of categorizing things correctly, putting things in their right boxes, putting together things that are alike.

One of the great problems that our reason has with the things that have to do with God, therefore, is that these things are absolutely unique. In that word “unique” you have that word “uno” again. When something is unique it means that it is the only one there is. We often misuse this word in our common speech. When we say something is unique what we really mean is that the thing is unusual or rare. When the word is used in its strict sense it means that there is only one.

Our reason doesn’t work very well with things that are unique. Our reason is always trying to put the thing in question together with other things so that we can understand what is going on. This is what often happens with the Trinity. And so you might have someone compare the trinity to a clover, with its threefold leaves. That’s not how God is. That’s actually an ancient heresy called modalism. Whenever we try to fit God’s oneness and threeness into some other category, we are letting our reason dictate who God is rather than letting the witness of the Scriptures speak. The Triune God is absolutely unique. There is nothing to which he can be compared. We cannot understand him. We can only worship him. And our reason doesn’t like that very much.

It would be bad enough if our reason would lead us astray so that we cannot know the one, true, triune God, but our reason’s troubles with divine revelation is across the board and even goes to the heart of our hope for salvation. Another great, divine, and absolutely unique being is the Son of God, Jesus Christ. He is true God, begotten from the Father from eternity, and true man, born of the Virgin Mary. He is one person, therefore, with two distinct natures—the divine and the human. Here we are dealing with a oneness and a twoness at the same time.

In order to make heads or tails of this, clever people have come up with all kinds of solutions over the centuries. Some have emphasized the twoness. They speak of the divine and human natures being joined together in Jesus Christ as being like two boards glued together. Others have emphasized the oneness. They speak of the divine and human natures being mixed together like you might put together water and Kool-Aid together. Now you don’t have water or powder anymore, but some third substance that combines the characteristics of both. Likewise it is imagined that Jesus, with his divine and human natures mixed together, is neither God nor man, but some third thing. The trouble here is that reason is trying its darnedest to stick Jesus, the Son of God, into some category that we can understand. But Jesus is unique. What we can know about him is only what the inspired Scriptures will teach us.

Our reason is also troublesome all the way down to our hope of being redeemed and going to heaven, rather than being punished in hell. The fact that God has loved us even though we have been and are sinners, is also unique. There is nothing else like it. What we know about people who break the law is that they will be punished. This idea is so strong and certain to our reason that everybody is busy lying to themselves and to God about their righteousness. We tell ourselves that we are pretty good people, that we try, that we aren’t as bad as others. When we mess up we promise to God that we won’t do it again, but then what happens? Why do we do this? It is because we operate with our reason—hoping that God will accept us by our making ourselves loveable—rather than believing that God is the justifier of the ungodly in Jesus Christ. The truth is that we all deserve to go to hell. Our lying and excuses only makes it worse and more pathetic. And so give up on justifying yourself and receive the justification and righteousness that God gives you in Jesus Christ.

That God should love and justify sinners in Jesus Christ is absolutely unique. It is totally unexpected. What comes naturally to us is to expect God to be like the policeman who is going to cart us off to jail. But who he really is is revealed to us in the Scriptures. He is the heavenly Father who sacrifices his dearest treasure, his Son Jesus, so that you are forgiven of every sin and cleansed from every stain by the blood of Jesus. And so that you may know of Jesus, believe in him as your Lord, and through faith receive the salvation Jesus has worked for you, the Father and the Son has sent the Holy Spirit in the word of the Gospel. When and where it pleases him he works faith in those who hear the Gospel.

And so we might return to the Trinity on this Trinity Sunday and say that the entire Trinity and Godhead is geared towards you in love. Who would ever imagine that God should care so much about you—especially when you are who you are and have done what you have done? And yet that is what God reveals about himself and his will towards us in his Word. The Trinity, that is to say, God, is not some idea of thing for you to figure out as though you were god and could understand things better than him. Be satisfied to be a creature and to receive in faith what God gives to us. It is not as though God is stingy in what he gives to us. I think it would be fair to even go to the lengths of saying that he even gives us his very own self.

190609 Sermon for Pentecost, May 10, 2019

190609 Sermon for Pentecost, May 10, 2019

The book of Joel is about one thing—the Day of the Lord.  The Day of the Lord is the day when God simultaneously judges and vindicates. He judges and punishes sinners. He vindicates and rewards those who are right. The Day of the Lord is when things come to an end and are sorted. The time of harvest is here. The angels are sent out to gather the wheat into the barn, but the weeds are bundled together and thrown into the unquenchable fire. “Time’s up!”

This is the tone of the prophecy that the Lord gave to Joel. The Day of the Lord is the stuff of nightmares for every sinner. Joel was given to see the beloved homeland overtaken by hordes of evil enemies sent by none other than God himself. The enemies are so thick that they swarm and move as one mass going over hill and dale. And they are coming for one purpose: to destroy everything. Not one stone will be left upon another.

The Day of the Lord, as in the final Day of the Lord, has not yet come, and yet it is always coming. It has not yet come in its final action when the powers of the heaven will be shaken, the sun, moon, and stars will do unusual things, and God will roll up this creation like a scroll.  That day has not yet come, and yet it is always coming. It comes with the end of each one of our lives. That is the day of reckoning. That is when we will be judged or vindicated—our fate is then sealed. The time for repentance is over. The only thing left is to await the Day of Judgment and the fullness of our bodily existence in heaven or in hell.

And so we cannot pass off the Day of the Lord as overblown and dramatic and only something that involves other people as though it is about some characters in a work of fiction. That is not true. Each of us will experience stupendous things. The fullness of the Last Day might come while we are still living. No one knows the day nor the hour when the Lord Jesus will return. But even if our lives are cut short before that day, we will still experience it.

On the day of Pentecost the disciples were speaking about the Day of the Lord. The first words out of St. Peter’s mouth when he stands up to address the crowd in a more public way were from the book of Joel, and the book of Joel is “the Day of the Lord” from one end to the other of it. The other disciples were no doubt speaking about similar things. That is because they were speaking about the great deeds and promises that are revealed in Jesus Christ. The wages of sin is death. The wrath of God against all unrighteousness whatsoever cannot be overcome except in one way only—only the sacrifice of Jesus, true God and true man, is able to set things right and achieve reconciliation between God and sinners. This is what Jesus did by his perfect life of fulfilling the Law that we have not kept, and dying and being damned with the punishment that we deserve because of our misdeeds.

When the Day of the Lord comes—and it comes for every single person—those who have taken refuge in the death and resurrection of Jesus will be welcomed with a perfect love from God and they will be restored to the creatures that God originally created them to be. They will be without sin, filled with love, and ever increasing in love. But those who by their unbelief set aside the work of reconciliation that Jesus has worked between God and sinners will remain unforgiven and unclean.  When things are sorted they will go where they belong, which is in hell. Hell is the place where all of us belong according to what we have done, but because of what Jesus has done for us we have a righteousness before God that is not from the Law—it is not based on us or what we have done—but upon perfect Jesus. That is a superabundant righteousness that far surpasses our imagination, to say nothing of whatever righteousness we could possibly achieve by good living.

And so it is no mere coincidence that St. Peter opens his sermon on Pentecost by an extensive quotation from Joel. He knows that the Day of the Lord, the Day of Judgment is right here. New and glorious revelations from God have been made concerning this awesome and terrible Day. What has been revealed is that the Messiah, whom the people of God have been waiting for from the beginning, from the fall into sin, to set them free from death and decomposition and turning into dust. What horrible sorrow and disgust and fear Adam and Eve must have experienced with that first death and all the ugly things that go along with it! It is only by long association with death that we become calloused to it and cannot understand the tragedy that it truly is.

But now Jesus, resurrected from the dead, has brought life and immortality to light. The wrath of God against us evil creatures has turned away. Just as Jesus rose from the dead full of vitality, so also all those who die trusting in him will rise with purified bodies and will be blessed with an experience of life that we have never known. The only life that we have known is weighed down with sin and its consequences of disease, sadness, and death. But that is all over with with the resurrection from the dead and the Day of the Lord.

One of my favorite passages in all of Scripture is Micah’s prophesy concerning this Day. It is the Old Testament reading for the second Sunday in Advent, and so we hear it every year. The Lord says to Micah that that Day is coming, burning like an oven. All the evil doers will be like stubble who will be burned and their ashes will cling to the feet of the righteous. But that same heat will be enlivening and healing to those whom God has chosen for salvation. It will be like the warm sun of spring with healing in its wings. Then we shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. Calves are so happy when they are finally done with the musty old barn they’ve been cooped up in all winter long, and instead of dried out, tasteless hay, they now have fresh sweet grass to eat. When calves are turned out to pasture they romp and leap and run, just for the fun of it. They are feeling the strength and vitality of life and are rejoicing in it. That is how it will be for those whom God has chosen for salvation. We will finally be out of this death-house of a fallen creation and be basking in the hot sun of God’s love for us. We will be happy and rejoicing.

But how can any of us know if we will be among those who are happy and rejoicing?  How can we know whether God has chosen us for salvation? This question has not always been handled very well, and so it is understandable that people shy away from it. Many have tried to pry into the mind of God and to figure out his secret councils: whom he has chosen; whom he has not chosen? They think that this is predestination. But whom God has chosen for salvation is not a secret. We do not need to go up into heaven or down into the depths. He sets it before us with his Word. God from the beginning has made known whom he has chosen by telling them that he has chosen them. That’s what he said to Adam and Eve, to Noah, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so on down through the centuries of history. This is also the most important element to Pentecost.

At Pentecost God, through the preaching of Peter and the testimony of all the disciples, made known to the people that God had chosen them for salvation. This is surprising, given the makeup of that crowd. Included in that crowd were a great many people who were either directly involved in the crucifixion of Jesus or who went along with it by their inaction. They had committed the worst sin imaginable—they had murdered the perfect and sinless Son of God. But when they are cut to the heart and ask St. Peter what they should do, he says that they should repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of all their sins. He even urges the goodness of the Lord upon them so that they are not shy and bashful in the face of their terrible crimes. He tells them that it is for them and for their children, for those who are near and those who are far off. Whoever hears and believes the words that come from God about reconciliation in Jesus have been chosen by him for salvation. The greatness of Pentecost is the delivery of God’s chosenness to those who hear the Word of salvation in Jesus.

This delivery of salvation by God’s own word and sacraments is something that continues on to the present day and the present hour. It was not a coincidence that all those people from hither and yon were in the presence of the apostles and disciples to experience the pouring out of the Spirit of God by the preaching of Jesus. It is no coincidence that you are here today. God has brought it about. And he wishes for you to believe that this testimony I have given you from the Bible is yours. Although you are filthy and belong in hell, because God has inexplicably loved you and sent his Son to ransom you, you will not go to hell. God is not angry with you, but for the sake of Jesus is even well pleased with you like a dear father towards his dear children. By your hearing this, you can be assured that it is for you—God has picked you—for God is not a liar.

Now it is possible for the glad tidings of great joy that is for all the people to be disbelieved. This is a great mystery tied up with the unimaginable evil that resides in every human heart. Why should God’s truth be opposed? And yet it is. Even on that Pentecost day there were those who despised the excitement that God’s children had for the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord and they said that the people were drunk. The high and mighty have very little regard for God’s promises. They believe that the building of the tower of Babel holds out much more promise for blessing, for progress. “When did hearing and believing do anything, or put bread on the table, or cure cancer?” they scoff. “Believe in the power of Man,” they say, “as for this God of yours, we don’t know what to make of him. He seems to have forgotten about coming and we do not know where he is.”

The truth of God’s Word can be blocked with unbelief in many other ways too. We won’t get into them all, because they are legion. The devil is an exceedingly good liar, and if we were to be forsaken by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit there isn’t a single one of us who could remain believing. We walk in danger all the way, as the hymn-writer puts it, and so do not let yourself be caught off guard.

But none of this changes the facts that have already been laid out for you today. It is only by lies and deception that you can be overcome. The facts speak for you. The facts are these: Jesus died for you—for the sins you committed yesterday and the sins you sadly might commit today and tomorrow. Jesus rose for you and so you also will rise. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to make known to you God’s eternal council concerning you. He does this through Christians who become testifiers and preachers so that the authoritative word of God, of forgiveness and salvation, could be made known to all the earth beginning at Jerusalem. There is a direct line from Pentecost to you today. Those who heard the Gospel at Pentecost preached it to others—to those whom God put into their path. Those who believed also spoke, and so they also told others what they had learned of Jesus. This preaching of the Gospel has gone out far and wide on down the centuries until it could fill up your ears this morning—so that you may know that you have been chosen by God for salvation in Jesus Christ.

I’m sure that over the years that you have known me you’ve heard me say this several times, but I’m going to say it again: Pentecost is the third great Christian festival of the Church Year. Everybody knows about the other two—Christmas and Easter—and knows something of the importance of them. Attendance is pretty good for those services since Christians know that these were crucial events that God worked for their salvation. But Pentecost tends to get lost in the shuffle and it’s just one of those Sundays during the summer. That is not how it should be. Pentecost is just as important as these other festivals, for without Pentecost Christmas and Easter wouldn’t benefit you. Jesus and his righteousness can only be received by faith, and the only way that we can believe is by the power of the Holy Spirit working in the Word. And so without the preaching of the Gospel that began that day you would remain in your unbelief and hostility towards God. But God has made it so that you should hear of him and his love towards you in Christ by the pouring out of his Holy Spirit.

And so on this day we might ask God to work up in us the fire of his love—that he should take away our apathy and coldness and fear, and that he give us strong conviction, boldness, and courage. God is not stingy with his gifts. You just might be surprised at what he might decide to do through you for the furtherance of his Kingdom.

Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord,
with all your graces now outpoured
on each believer’s mind and heart;
Your fervent love to them impart.
Lord by the brightness of Your light
In holy faith Your Church unite;
From ev’ry land and ev’ry tongue
This to Your praise, O Lord, our God be sung:
Alleluia, alleluia!