Pentecost
Jesse Jacobsen
--- Time-stamp: "Sat May 14 16:43:49 2005"
Joel 2:28--32
``And it shall come to pass afterward
That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
Your young men shall see visions.
And also on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days.
``And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth:
Blood and fire and pillars of smoke.
The sun shall be turned into darkness,
And the moon into blood,
Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD.
And it shall come to pass
That whoever calls on the name of the LORD
Shall be saved.
For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance,
As the LORD has said,
Among the remnant whom the LORD calls.''
We Rely Upon the Holy Spirit
You should know that I haven't had enough opportunity to write a sermon
this week. That might come as a surprise to you, not really knowing
what else a pastor has to do. Well, there are many things that compete
for my time, and at any given point, I'm only doing about half of them.
I feel guilty about the other half, but it's a fact of life that I can't
change. One of the little secrets here is that our Church records have
needed a lot of work for about 20 years. Well, I made some progress
this week! But it left me with insufficient time for today's sermon and
several other things.
So what should I talk about this morning? I could end right now, and we
could go home early. Or, I could say a prayer and then teach whatever
comes to mind, trusting that the Holy Ghost will give me the right
words. He did that for Peter at Pentecost. We could rely upon the Holy
Spirit.
If what our text says is true, then God the Holy Spirit has been
poured out upon His Church. He's able to inspire my words directly this
morning. But is that really what Joel prophesied in our text?
Does the Spirit work through pastors to preach God's Word, or doesn't
He? Yes He does, but not always in an obvious way. At one point, the
Father spoke to Jesus out of thin air, but many witnesses thought it was
only thunder. They didn't recognize that the Father was speaking. In
the same way, the Spirit who has been poured out upon us often works in
ways we can't detect. This seems a little different from the prophecy
of Joel, but it's really not so different. Joel was describing the
beginning and end of this age.
``We rely upon the Holy Spirit.'' Because this is His age, and because
the next Age is coming.
Because this is His Age
Joel was writing not so long after the kingdoms of David and Solomon. I
described his situation on Ash Wednesday this year. Swarms of locusts,
or grasshoppers, had filled the sky. They blocked out the sunlight, and
covered everything. They devoured all food from the ground. An
attacking army could not have done more harm. On Ash Wednesday, we
heard how Joel told the people of Judah that this disaster was a call to
repentance.
It's easy to think of great tragedies in our time. God calls upon us to
repent too, remembering that we are descended from Adam and Eve. He
reveals to us a deep corruption in our hearts, so deep that we could not
have discovered it. It makes us resist the work of the Holy Spirit. It
makes us not want to repent or change the error of our ways. It makes
us want to have the last word against God. So God calls us to
repentance. But our text comes after that. It's a prophecy for
those who repent, about what God would do in an age to come.
``And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My
Spirit on all flesh.'' When was this going to happen? Well, the sermon
that Peter gave on Pentecost was partly an explanation of the miracles
of that special day. For his explanation, Peter quoted these same
verses from Joel. This means that Joel's prophecy came true on
Pentecost. The fire, the speaking in tongues, and the boldness of the
Christians to preach and prophesy all started on that day. Some of
these things continued afterward.
As we sit here on Pentecost of 2005, we may not see such evidence of the
Holy Spirit's presence. Yet we live in the age that began on that
Pentecost long ago. It's the age of the Holy Spirit, when He has been
poured out upon the Church to build her, strengthen her, and work with
her.
So why don't we see the dramatic evidence of Pentecost in our time?
Maybe we do see the evidence, but don't recognize it. We may not be
looking in the right places, or for the right things.
At the time of the apostles, the Holy Spirit was teaching something that
was a dramatic change for God's Church. Previously, the Church (with
only a few exceptions) was the people of Israel who believed the
promises. When Jesus came, that began to change. Jesus fed 4,000
people in Gentile lands. He praised certain gentiles for their faith.
He taught the Gospel of forgiveness to Samaritans. All of that was
revolutionary for God's Church. When He was predicting His departure,
He said to His disciples, ``the Spirit of truth ... will
guide you into all truth.'' So when the Spirit came to do this, a new
age had come: the age of the Holy Spirit. The Church was new again.
What is the Spirit's job? He didn't come just to impress us, or to
perform tricks. He came to bestow faith in Jesus Christ, and in this
way to provide eternal life. Generally speaking, He has done three
things to accomplish this. First, He performed certain miracles through
the Apostles, to establish their authority and the truth of their
Gospel. Second, He gave the apostles the very words He wanted them to
teach and write. That's where the New Testament came from. And third,
He creates faith wherever His Word is taught, in those who hear the
Gospel.
From the start, the Holy Spirit has been the power behind God's Word to
accomplish God's purpose. He still does that. But
the Church has adjusted to this age, and the apostles are gone. Today,
miraculous signs like at the first Pentecost are no longer required.
Now this age has reached a kind of maturity, and the mighty power of the
Holy Spirit works in hidden fashion under cover of God's Word and
sacraments. Now, when I preach Christ crucified, it's really the Spirit
preaching through me --- even when I have worked on the sermon for many
hours beforehand. I rely upon the Holy Spirit, because this is His age.
Because the next Age is coming
The age from Creation to Jesus' birth was a long one. It was at least
4,000 years, and probably a little longer. That was the age Joel the
prophet lived in. Our age is also a long time. Joel's prophecy, these
five verses, show only a quick glance of our age. Five verses to cover
2,000 years and maybe more. So from Joel's point of view, what happened
at the first Pentecost and what will happen at the End are side by side.
We know that the End is coming, as surely as the Holy Spirit came on
Pentecost. This is the second reason we rely upon the Holy Spirit: the
next age is coming.
Here are the signs that Joel prophesied: ``And I will show
wonders in the heavens and in the earth: Blood and fire and pillars of
smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood,
Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD.'' This day
is imminent. That means it can come at any moment.
Those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb look forward
to that day with joy. That's when this age will end, and the Holy
Spirit's work through Word and Sacrament will be fulfilled. But on
earth, those white robes tend to get dirty. Our stains are the evil
thoughts we dare to think and the wicked words we dare to speak, and the
sinful deeds we dare to do.
Yes, even those who have heard the Gospel and believed it have this
weakness. It can be easy to overlook. Something as simple as using
God's name thoughtlessly is still wrong. When we hold His Word and
Sacraments in slight regard, thinking that other things are more
precious, then we are despising the work of the Holy Spirit. Word and
Sacraments are the way He saves us. In fact, by providing the Lord's
Supper, Baptism, and the preaching of the Gospel, this is how God pours
out His Spirit upon us today. So when we look for the Spirit elsewhere,
like in the emotions of our own hearts, or the ideas of our own
imagination, we have crossed the line and broken the Law.
So we must repent. As Joel called Judah to repent, so I now call this
congregation to repent. Repent, and cast your hope upon the mercy of
God, which is found only in Jesus Christ. This repentance is a daily
exercise of faith, an act of worship that must be repeated as long as we
live. Repent, and do not neglect God's Word and Sacraments. The Last
Day is around the corner, and you can't know when it will be here. So
receive God's absolution today; receive our Lord's body and blood, and
so call upon His name for forgiveness.
He says, ``And it shall come to pass That whoever calls on the
name of the LORD Shall be saved.'' Good news! But at the same time,
Jesus warned, ``Not everyone who says to Me, `Lord, Lord,' shall
enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in
heaven.'' He wasn't talking about living a perfect life, because none
of us can do that. No, the will of the Father is that we believe the
doctrine of Jesus Christ crucified. To be saved, we must call upon His
name in worship, trusting that everything the Bible has taught us is
true.
But how much of His doctrine must we believe? Must we have it all
right? Or can we boil it down to a few bullet points? You see the
danger. We always prefer the bottom line. I could say, ``You need only
believe that we have one God in three persons, and that Jesus Christ is
your Savior.'' But if I say that, then every one of us will became lazy
and forget that the Bible has taught much more about our salvation. We'll
begin to think that it doesn't matter what we believe about Baptism, or
the Lord's Supper, or the Word of God, or the Holy Spirit. All of these
things are part of the saving doctrine of Jesus Christ. Ignoring God's
Word on one point can easily lead to a total loss of faith. So
if you want to call upon the name of Jesus Christ, you must accept
everything that the Bible has taught. Yet in God's generosity,
even the person who believes that we have one God in three persons, and
that Jesus is his Savior and yet for some reason does not believe the
rest --- even that person will be saved.
Even so, there are not many who are saved, and fewer as the End
approaches. God calls them a remnant. The truth of this hit me one day
when I had been reading things written by certain pastors and teachers
in mainline Christian Churches. They contradicted the Gospel. They
taught a different message. These were teachers in ``Christian'' Churches.
You can't assume anything, even when you hear names like ``Jesus,'' or
``Christian,'' or ``Lutheran.'' If you want to be part of God's remnant,
then you be vigilant. Study God's Word. Seek those who teach
it, and avoid those who teach contrary doctrines. This is how to find
the Holy Spirit today.
Above all, know that all your sins are forgiven in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Listen online at www.grace-els.org.
Exordium
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ, today is Pentecost! This is the day
when the Holy Spirit came with His gifts to the apostles and others
assembled together, with the result that 3,000 souls were added to the
Church in Jerusalem on that one day. That's not just a number thrown
out to impress you either. There were no partly-convinced Christians
among them. The next verse, Acts 2:42, described these members of the
infant Church: ``they continued steadfastly in the apostles'
doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.''
These Christians were united in the teaching of Jesus Christ, and they
lived this faith together by worshipping in Word and Sacrament.
But don't be jealous of that Church, because it's still here today, and
everyone today is a part of it who continues ``in the apostles' doctrine
and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.'' You are a
part of that pentecostal Church, if you have repented and been baptized
into Christ Jesus.
We have been separated from the present evil age, though we continue to
live here. We have been called out to share a communion based upon the
Gift of God to fallen man: the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our
sins. We have been chosen to partake in that sacrifice through faith in
the Gospel message, and God now sees that faith as righteousness worthy
of eternal life. Like the early Church in their joyful gatherings, we
have come together this morning to hear that Gospel and to be joined
together with our Lord by eating and drinking His body and blood, the
very price He paid for our freedom.
Separated from the world, and joined in Christ. This is the one, holy
Church that was born anew on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has not left
us, but still works the miracle of faith through Word and Sacrament.
Many things have changed, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today,
and forever. Therefore let us rise and sing out our exordium hymn,
number 399, ``O Light of God's Most Wondrous Love.''
This document was translated from LATEX by
HEVEA.