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This Week's Sermon THE DAY OF PENTECOST 11 May 2008 "As the Scripture Has Said" John 7:37-39 LSB Series A Pastor Philip G. Meyer Soli Deo Gloria!

It's the Day of Pentecost and lots of wrong ideas are floating around Christendom about the Holy Spirit, who he is and what he does and how he does it. Many of them are simply phantom-like, supernatural, but so mysterious that the Holy Spirit cannot even be defined. It is important, then, on this Day of Pentecost, that we examine carefully what the Scriptures say of the Holy Spirit and his work. Our short Gospel reading helps us focus on all of this when Jesus said, "As the Scripture has Said."

The Day of Pentecost is all about the coming of the Holy Spirit just as Jesus had promised before his crucifixion. On the 50th day after his resurrection Pentecost happened. The word Pentecost means 50th, the fiftieth day after Jesus rose from the dead. Fifty days after Passover the Jews celebrated Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Weeks. It was the day when the first-fruits of the wheat harvest were presented to God. Today, in our congregation we are also presenting the first-fruits of our offerings for the 150th anniversary of our congregation. It is certainly fitting and appropriate that we are taking this special offering of our first-fruits today. While this was not the feast that Jesus was celebrating in our reading today-he was celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles in memory of Israel living in tents in the wilderness-this has been one of the appointed Gospel readings for Pentecost because our Lord was talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Forty-eight years ago Hermann Sasse, a prominent German Lutheran theologian, wrote a letter to Lutheran pastors lamenting the fact that modern Christians seek the Holy Spirit where he isn't found. It is a danger that has threatened the Christian Church throughout the ages. Sasse wrote:

"We seek the Holy Spirit where He is not to be found when we take it as self-evident that the way our church is developing is altogether due to the guidance of the Holy Spirit" [We Confess the Church, p. 20].

"As the Scripture Has Said." Consider that every week in the Nicene Creed you confess,
"And I believe in the Holy Spirit . . . who spoke by the prophets."
You also confess that he spoke through the Apostles and that the Bible is God's inspired and infallible Word, but one needs to ask: "Are we are preaching God's Word?" Is the Christian Church today preaching God's Word? Of course, all say that they are, but how can there be so many errors and contradictions, unless the Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of truth but the Spirit of error and compromise? Most preaching is said to be "Bible-based" but that seems to be much like watching a TV docudrama which carries this subheading, "based on a true story." Certain liberties are taken with the facts. What you see is what you get, a loose assembly of the truth which may no longer be the truth. You need to ask constantly, "Is what you preach God's Word, or are you just making stuff up and calling God's Word?" There can be no substitute for being a literate Christian.

The Holy Spirit is given in correct preaching. It's much like the water you drink, to use the analogy that Jesus presents in our Gospel today. What are you drinking? Is it Wabash River water that has been purified? Correct doctrine is not irrelevant. Water straight out of the Wabash River and water from your tap are both water, but the lack of purity in the former might kill you, or at least, make you quite sick. These are serious questions for us as Lutherans who boast of our confessional heritage, especially in the 150th year of this congregation's existence. Will you continue to demand that what you receive doctrinally is only of the highest purity, or will you settle for less? Will you be content to drink doctrine with dangerous things mixed in?

Not only must you have God's Word, you must ask yourself: "Do I believe it? Do I believe God will do what he says he will do?" One of the big problems in our Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod seems to be that we no longer trust God's Word. Article V of the Augsburg Confession states in part:

1 To obtain such faith God instituted the office of the ministry, that is, provided the Gospel and the sacraments. 2 Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit, who works faith, when and where he pleases, in those who hear the Gospel.¹

God the Holy Spirit-and we need to confess that he is true God with the Father and the Son, not merely some force!-deals with our world ONLY through means. Listen to the last part of Article V of the Augsburg Confession:

4 Condemned are the Anabaptists and others who teach that the Holy Spirit comes to us through our own preparations, thoughts, and works without the external word of the Gospel.²

3 In these matters, which concern the external, spoken Word, we must hold firmly to the conviction that God gives no one his Spirit or grace except through or with the external Word which comes before. . . . [All this is] the old devil and the old serpent [who] made enthusiasts of Adam and Eve. He led them from the external Word of God to spiritualizing and to their own imaginations, and he did this through other external words.³
9 In short, enthusiasm clings to Adam and his descendants from the beginning to the end of the world. It is a poison implanted and inoculated in man by the old dragon, and it is the source, strength, and power of all heresy, including that of the papacy and Mohammedanism. 10 Accordingly, we should and must constantly maintain that God will not deal with us except through his external Word and sacrament. Whatever is attributed to the Spirit apart from such Word and sacrament is of the devil.⁴

Again you must ask yourself: "Do I believe this? Do I trust God's Word to do what it says? Do I trust that God the Holy Spirit works through his Word and Sacrament to bring Christ to the world, to me?" Or will you add tradition to the mix? Will you add your own often misguided feelings and emotions? These are critical questions for Christianity in our day, a day which Martin Franzmann characterized as "these gray and latter days" [LSB 834.4].

"As the Scripture Has Said." God outside of Christ is a hidden God. One cannot know God as he wishes to be known. Unless one finds God in his Word and Sacrament one does not really find Christ, and without Christ one does not have God. One is lost with no hope of life eternal. In Word and Sacrament all of God can be found, just as you learned it from the Small Catechism:

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.
In the same way he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.

"The one true faith." Without the witness of God the Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament you and I could never know the truth about God. The Holy Spirit wants to be found in his Word. There-and only there-he reveals himself to you as God, true God. God the Holy Spirit witnesses to himself on the pages of Holy Scripture and in the Sacraments and nowhere else. He's not out there somewhere, like a phantom. He's not waiting to pounce on you and shake your body with jerky motions. He's not there to cause you to babble ecstatically in words that no one understands. But he is here in his intelligible Word and in the Sacraments which bring Christ to you. Where you find Christ you find God the Holy Spirit, and vice-versa.

The Holy Spirit's whole delight is not to glorify himself but to glorify Christ. There is no "Holy Spiritism" in Christianity. It is Christ, and Christ alone. His work is to bring Christ to you and to the whole world. His work is to apply Christ's saving work to you in Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion. And his work is to bring you in faith in Christ to your earthly end and to raise you from the dead on the Last Day to enjoy the glories and beauties of heaven forever with Christ and all those who have departed this life in the true faith.

Pentecost proclaims all this. It celebrates our Lord's giving of this Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament so that you may be sure of your salvation. All of this, as our Lord Jesus says here, is "As the Scripture Has Said."

¹Theodore G. Tappert, The Book of Concord : The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 31 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000, c1959).
²Theodore G. Tappert, The Book of Concord : The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 31 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000, c1959).
³Theodore G. Tappert, The Book of Concord : The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 312 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000, c1959).
⁴Theodore G. Tappert, The Book of Concord : The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 313 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000, c1959).