The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Jesse Jacobsen

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Time-stamp: <Sat May 7 23:20:33 2005>

Ezekiel 36:25--27



``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. 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. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.''

Cleansed by Water and the Spirit

When you come to church, what do you expect to find here? It might surprise you to find that your expectations are different from those of a great many people. Christianity has bloomed in the United States, but it's not old-world Christianity. This new-style American faith was already here when most of the Lutherans arrived from Europe. But how different could it be? Don't we all expect the same things when we come to Church? Don't we all come to learn how to become right with God?

No, we don't. I don't. I come to church to learn how God has reconciled me to Himself. That's what Church is all about: what God does for you.

How do I know this? When He gave the Third Commandment, God said, ``Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God.'' The Sabbath was Saturday, but the meaning of the Sabbath is not the day of the week. The meaning is in the word ``Sabbath,'' or ``rest.'' The six days we live among our neighbors, it's time for us to work, because God serves our neighbors through what we do. But when the Lord's Day comes, it's time for us to rest, because on that day, God does the work. He tells us how He has reconciled sinners to himself through the blood of Jesus Christ. He did it, and we simply receive it, on the Lord's Day every week. We don't have to learn how to get right with God. We come to learn from Him how He already made it right.

God the Holy Spirit does this, and the prophet Ezekiel describes it. So I invite you to do nothing. Let the Spirit perform His work in you, which He will do through His Word. Our theme: We are cleansed by water and the Spirit. God does this for His own sake. So we are born anew as His people.

God does this for His own sake

Americans are known as doers of deeds. And since the early 1800's, American-style Christianity has been about getting you to do what God is looking for. That was the point of the week-long tent revivals in the 1800s, and it's the point of their present-day televised counterparts. Today, an entire stadium is filled with people for a worship service. Thousands of people listen to upbeat, contemporary entertainment. Speakers tell how Jesus turned their lives around. Someone may even tell the people who Jesus is, and what He has done. Then it all comes together in one moment of truth, the purpose behind the whole thing. The worshippers are asked to do their part. Invite Jesus into your life, and you, too, can experience His life-changing power.

You know the kind of event I'm talking about. They're well-received. A lot of Lutherans even like watching them on TV. We should rejoice, because any time the Gospel is taught and heard at all, God works through it. It may be misleading, but the apostle Paul wrote about worse in his day, ``Some indeed preach Christ even from envy and strife, and some also from good will: ... What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.''

But this American-style Christianity can truly mislead poor souls. It resonates with a lot of people, even Lutherans. You see, we all want to be doers of deeds, so a message that ends up saying ``Now here's what you have to do'' appeals to us. But when we come to church here on the Lord's Day with the purpose of doing something, we have an adjustment to make. This adjustment is even harder for those who are unaquainted with Lutheran worship and doctrine.

You see, our worship is shaped by our doctrine, just as it influences our doctrine. One summary of Lutheran doctrine is found in what we call the ``three solas:'' sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura, or grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone. We are saved by God's grace alone, through faith alone in His Word, which we find only in holy scripture. This kind of doctrine and worship is taught right in the Bible, yet unfortunately, many Christians have missed it. Sometimes we miss it too.

Grace alone. That means nothing we can do influences our salvation. In fact, we can only hinder our salvation, even when we think we are helping it. But the Holy Spirit speaks to us through His Word, and this makes us righteous. How? Because He speaks the Gospel, telling us that Jesus Christ lived perfectly in our place and died for our sins. It's true. These are all acts of God: Jesus' life, His death, and the work of the Holy Spirit. God acts, and we simply receive His gifts. That's grace alone.

Faith alone. That means God's Word is necessary. The message of the Gospel is what we believe. That message carries with it the power of the Holy Spirit. When Lutherans talk about the Word of God, we are talking about the Holy Spirit and His work to save us. So God sends ministers to carry His Word, and through them God tells us amazing things without giving any visible proof. In fact, our experience often contradicts the Gospel, and we are tempted to think that God doesn't really love us. But the Spirit works faith through His Word, and we simply recieve the forgiveness of sins and eternal life as a gift, even though we can't see them yet. That's faith alone.

Scripture alone. That means we are not free to change the Gospel by addition or subtraction. God's message is God's message, and it is written in the Bible. That's His Word, and it's the only thing on earth that we can rely upon for the hope of eternal life. That's scripture alone.

All of this is pretty revolutionary to mainstream American Christianity, and it probably seems extremist and narrow-minded when we put it into action. But if God told me that I would be saved by climbing a tree and picking the highest leaf, I'd start climbing now --- even without understanding the connection. Instead, God tells us to hear His Word and learn from it. Jesus told Nicodemus, ``Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.'' And the prophet Ezekiel wrote the same thing, where God says ``Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean;'' And ``I will put My Spirit within you.''

God cleanses us by water and the Spirit. God does this. We contribute nothing. We are passive. We can see this clearly in holy Baptism. God's Word, united with the water and fully empowered by the Holy Spirit, actually cleanses away our sin. That's grace alone. So why does God do all this for us? He says it through Ezekiel just before our text. ``I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name's sake.'' So it's all God's work, from start to finish. Even His great, self-sacrificing love for us is all in Him. So again, I invite you to do nothing. God has already done it, for His own name's sake.

So we are born anew as His people

Through his prophet, God said to Israel, ``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.'' This has to be one of may favorite passages. This is what God does to give us Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit enters, and our dead, cold, hard hearts of stone are put to death, so that a true heart can live there. It's a frightful experience: passing through death to a better life. But that's exactly what is needed to enter heaven. Like Jesus said, ``Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.''

American-style Christianity often places a heavy emphasis on being born again. What does that mean? From what Jesus and Ezekiel say, it's a gift from the Holy Spirit, involving water and God's Word. I don't know what others mean, but the Bible narrows it down for us: we are born again through holy Baptism.

Now, I know how outrageous that sounds. Americans are the doers of deeds. But in Baptism, we don't do anything. We are acted upon. But remember, ``By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.'' Sola gratia: grace alone. God is the doer of this deed, and we are passive. In fact, it's similar to our natural birth, in which the child doesn't do the real labor --- only the mom. It's the same way with the second birth. We are brought forth by the power of the Holy Spirit in His Word.

I know that I've been describing a big, fundamental shift away from what most of our Christian neighbors consider to be right. But it may not seem like such a big shift to you. You may think there's not such a large step from ``Grace alone'' to ``Grace plus''. On the other hand, you may think that Christians everywhere believe exactly what the Bible says, in spite of what they say, or the way they worship. On the other hand again, many people today think that it's enough to agree that Jesus is God's Son, who died and rose in our place to save us, and everything else is in the realm of personal opinion.

These are things worth our time and effort to study, because our certainty of life in heaven is at stake. Unfortunately, we get distracted and spiritually sluggish, so that it sometimes takes a wakeup call from God to make us realize that these things are of the greatest importance. But it's just possible that the next wakeup call we hear will be Jesus returning to raise the dead for judgment.

Does God want us to rely upon Him alone? Or can we spice it up with something of our own, even if it's just for luck? Because it's boring to be passive, while it's exciting to be active. We want to be the doers of deeds! But God says, ``not on My Sabbath.'' Hear what the apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians who wanted to add their own contribution to salvation: ``O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?''

Jesus has been crucified. The deed is complete, and God has done it. Now, He gives us a heart of flesh and a new birth as His children. He has justified us, washed us, and sanctified us. He has even given us the promise of glory to come.

Only now, at this late stage, after we rely upon ``grace alone,'' do we hear about anything we do. Now we hear about the deeds of faith that James wrote about, saying ``Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.'' But still they don't come from us, but rather from the Spirit of God within us, as Ezekiel wrote, ``I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.'' These works do not justify us before God or contribute to our salvation in any way. The only sense in which they justify is by revealing the faith within, which God credits to the Christian as righteousness.

This is what it means to be a baptized child of God. All week long we work as Christians in the world, because that's how God serves our neigbors. But when the Sabbath comes, we stop working, and wait for God to give us Jesus through Word and Sacrament. On the Sabbath, we are passive, and God acts to forgive us our sins and renew us in the power of our Baptism. Now, this happens every Sunday, but not only on Sunday. We should have personal time with God's Word daily. You can come to Wednesday Vespers. You can receive God's absolution privately. But Sunday is when God provides us with the full meal. It's the Lord's Day, so He comes to serve and bless us.

It's amazing, isn't it? What an awesome thing, and a humbling thing. Jesus is here for you right now. He has put me here to teach you, not because I'm so smart or eloquent or good-looking. In fact, it's not me at all. Jesus has bound me to teach the doctrine of His Word, the doctrine of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ. I'm not so important, but that message is more precious than all the riches in the world. That's no overstatement. With the gospel, you have a better and more lasting treasure than kings and princes. It was purchased once with the body and blood of God's Son, but now He's made it a gift, and given it to you. He even provides that body and blood for Christians to eat and drink as the personal seal of His grace.

You are forgiven, cleansed by water and the Spirit. So we are born anew as His people. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Listen online at www.grace-els.org.

This document was translated from LATEX by HEVEA.