Pentecost

John 14:23-31 - Pentecost - May 27, 2012 

Keeping Jesus’ Words

When you can’t understand another person’s language, there is very little from that person that you can learn.  Once you understand the language, the learning can begin.  But what do you learn?  A few years ago, Monica and I and our son James spent ten months in Germany.  I was there as a student of theology, but I spent most of my time trying to learn as much of the language as I could.  Although I was still very far from mastering the language, I do remember the first day in Germany that I was able to completely understand a long, compound German sentence.  For weeks I had been listening in the classroom, and concentrating so hard, trying to catch as many words as possible.  When I finally understood, I was so proud and excited at my progress, that with a big smile on my face, and sitting high in my chair, I could hardly contain my delight.  It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard, for no other reason than that I could finally understand it – I had figured it out! 

Here’s an English translation of what my professor said that made me so happy: “In my personal opinion, there’s nothing wrong with ordaining women as pastors.”  He continued, “Those passages in Scripture, where the Apostle Paul said that women cannot be pastors no longer apply to us today because Paul wasn’t aware of our contemporary situation.”  My professor was wrong.  What he said was contrary to the word of God.  And yet it made me happy simply to understand what he said.   Now, although there is satisfaction in figuring things out, there’s not much benefit to understanding something, if what you learn by it is not true.  But that’s life. Typically, we have to figure things out and come to understand them before we are able to determine whether or not they are reliable. 

But this isn’t the way it is with what the Holy Spirit teaches us.  Jesus calls him the Spirit of truth. We don’t master his words in order to gauge their reliability.  Rather, what the Holy Spirit teaches us in Scripture becomes our master because what he teaches us is itself reliable.  He is God.  The Holy Spirit convinces us through the gospel.  He creates faith in our hearts to believe what God tells us despite all the objections of our flesh, which is by nature inclined to place itself above God and his word.  Mankind has been doing this since the fall. 

It was for this reason that God confused the language of the earth at Babel when the sons of men tried to build a tower to heaven.  They all understood each other; but there was nothing they were saying that was worth understanding.  They weren’t speaking the word of God.  They weren’t recounting his promises to save sinners.  Instead, they spoke of their own glory.  They recounted their own accomplishments.  Having forgotten the holy name of God, they sought to make a name for themselves.  God taught a great lesson when he thwarted their efforts by confusing their speech:

We don’t raise ourselves up to God in order to figure him out.  Instead we assume a posture of humility.  We rely on what God teaches us despite the fact that it goes against our modern sensibilities, and despite our inability to fully understand why he says what he says.  We don’t learn about what is important by talking.  We learn by listening. 

Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he promised his disciples to send the Holy Spirit.  He fulfilled this promise to them on Pentecost, when, as the disciples were gathered, the Holy Spirit came down and filled them.  Tongues of fire rested upon their heads.  The curse of Babel was reversed as he gave them the ability to speak languages that they had never learned.  He confused man’s language when man had nothing useful to talk about.  But he restored what he had taken away once they had something worthwhile to teach.  People from every nation and tongue who were in Jerusalem were able to hear the gospel of God’s love in Christ preached to them in their own languages.  They didn’t have to strain their ears or spend a year abroad to sift through untrustworthy “personal opinions.”  No, each person understood and heard what was beneficial and true.  God’s name was hallowed as the word of God was taught in its truth and purity. 

The Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts to trust for our salvation in the merits of Christ alone who made full satisfaction for the sins of all sinners by bearing all sin.  That is the Spirit’s work, not ours.  We don’t have the ability or strength to believe in Jesus or call on his name apart from him who calls us by the gospel and enlightens us by his gifts.  The Holy Spirit teaches us to love Jesus by teaching us to cherish the word that he speaks. 

Many churches, that call themselves Pentecostal after the day of Pentecost, teach that we should expect something further from the Holy Spirit.  They say that the Holy Spirit enters us when we by our own choice accept Jesus into our hearts.  Of course, that’s not possible.  From this point, though, they teach that we should expect a similar experience as the one that occurred on that first Pentecost.  This is the big deal, they say.  They teach that we find true evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in our lives if only we are moved to such spiritual excitement that we begin to speak in tongues. 

But Jesus never promised that this would happen for us.  The gift of tongues that was given in those first days to certain people for a limited time was intended for a specific purpose.  It was not as a confirmation of their own salvation.  No, it was so that they could preach salvation to others.  Jesus never promised to give us any experience like this that would confirm or make more certain our own personal faith in him.  Instead Jesus gives us something much better than tongues.  He gives us his word; he gives us his Holy Spirit who bears witness in our hearts that we are sons of God through faith in Christ.  He does this by forgiving us our sins for Jesus’ sake.  He creates and sustains our trust in God for all good things by giving us in word and sacrament that which Jesus purchased for us: eternal life and peace with God.  That is what the Holy Spirit does. 

But the Holy Spirit does more, doesn’t he?  The Holy Spirit sanctifies us, doesn’t he?  Christians are called to a life of love and service to God and others, aren’t they?  We experience the Holy Spirit working in our lives, don’t we?  Of course we experience the Holy Spirit!  He who gives us new life by faith also sanctifies our life by filling us with love.  He changes the way we feel and think and behave.  But what he does within us in this life on earth is never complete.  As long as we remain living in these mortal bodies we remain sinners with sinful desires.  No matter how much progress in our spiritual life that we might ever think we see, we will never find in our own love and behavior assurance that we have peace with God.  Our love is incomplete.  But God’s love for us is perfect.  And our confidence rests on that which is certain. 

Our faith will never rely on what we, through spiritual exercise, may become capable of.  We never graduate from trusting in Jesus.  The Holy Spirit does not tell us to look inside of ourselves to have peace with God, and he never will.  Inside of us we find our own sin.  We find what makes God angry.  We find the problem—and that is all that we will ever find in this life.  When we examine our own experiences we don’t encounter proof that the Holy Spirit is living in us and making us fit for heaven; we encounter our own weaknesses and failures to live the life that God has called us to live.  Spiritual strength that consists of the ability to look inside of ourselves for strength and guidance is a spirituality that is hostile to God, because the Holy Spirit always does the opposite; he directs our attention outside of us.  He points us to Jesus. 

We don’t measure our spiritual health by measuring our moral progress.  That’s what the folks at Babel did.  Rather we find our spiritual nourishment in the clear words of Jesus – “Come unto Me;” “He who believes and is baptized;” “This is my body;”—because it is here that he gives us peace with God.  “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”  The peace that Jesus promises is not a peace that he gathered an army to win.  It is not a peace that he built a city and a mighty tower to protect.  It is not the kind of peace that the world can give because this peace with our God was not acquired in the way that the world acquires peace. 

Instead it is the peace that only Jesus can give, because only Jesus laid down all arms and humbly submitted himself to the very sinners whose guilt he bore.  Only Jesus who had every right to point to himself and inside of himself and say there is righteousness, there is eternal life, there is all the strength I need, nonetheless for our sake this Jesus emptied and humbled himself before God.  He pointed to his Father and said, “I go to him who is greater than I.  By myself I am equal to him.  But look at all the sin I bear that makes me a worm and no man. I do this for you.  I show my perfect life of obedience to God and then I go to the cross in the place of those who were disobedient.”  On the cross, Jesus confronted his Father’s wrath against all sinners, and endured every last threat the law ever spoke against us.  We will never find the perfect life inside our hearts.  But in the life of Jesus our Savior we find not only the blameless life that God demands from us, we find also the spotless life that God our Father graciously reckons to us. 

That professor of mine in Germany was wrong when he said that there are portions of Scripture that no longer apply to us.  All Scripture most certainly does apply to us.  It is the voice of God.  It does not speak to us only insofar as we are able to master its words.  It speaks to us because the Spirit of God seeks to master our hearts and save us.  He does this by teaching us all things as Jesus sent him to do.  And everything he tells us is beneficial.  He teaches us the truth about ourselves unto repentance, and he teaches us the truth about Jesus unto everlasting life. 

And he is most certainly familiar with our contemporary situation.  Not only is he acquainted with what goes on in the world today, he is aware of what goes on within each one of our hearts.  He is more aware of the sin in our hearts than we are.  “Who can understand his errors?” we pray, “Cleanse me from my secret faults.”  And he does.  He does, because the Holy Spirit cares about every little thing that litters our lives – our struggles, our regrets, our shame, our weakness, our cancer, our sickness, our doubts, our lusts that won’t let up.  Our problems that find their source deep within us matter deeply to him, and he teaches us who made these problems his own. 

He directs our hearts to Jesus who has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows – he purifies us as he bears witness to the blood that cleanses us from all unrighteousness.  He points us to where he washed us once in the waters of Baptism where we were sanctified and made God’s own dear children.  He guides us to the Sacrament of the Altar where Jesus himself forgives us all our sins by giving us the very body and blood that took them away.  He points us to every word that proceeds from his mouth, because by the word of Jesus that we keep and cherish, we are convinced that no other word from God can possibly do us harm.  The peace with God that Jesus gives us is not ours to doubt; it is ours to believe; it is ours to rejoice in, because we do not rely on that which we can figure out, but upon that which surpasses all understanding. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.