The Fifth Sunday of Easter & Saude Confirmation – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. John 16:5-15
In Christ Jesus, who spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, because He is the truth, dear fellow redeemed:
Do you remember what happened the first time you told your parents a lie… and got caught? You lied because you didn’t want to get in trouble. You wanted to get away with something that you know you shouldn’t have done. But it didn’t work. Your parents found out. I am confident they did not respond by saying, “It’s no big deal.” Or, “You almost got us that time!” Or, “We’re glad to see you pursuing your truth.” You had to face the consequences, not only for the wrong thing you did, but also and especially for lying about it.
We are taught from a very young age to tell the truth. We must be taught it because it does not come naturally to us. The problem is, hardly anyone these days seems to agree on what exactly is true. We hear often enough, “What is true for you is not necessarily what is true for me.” Or, “One person’s truth is just as valid as another’s.” This makes all truth relative, totally dependent on what each individual thinks is right and wrong. But no society can actually function like this. With no truth boundaries in place, we would destroy each other.
This is why some people look to the government to establish truth. But government officials are not perfect. Laws that encourage and reward harmful activity can be put in place, and good laws can be changed by bad actors. What about the visible Christian Church? Can that establish truth? Church officials are sinful too. And what one church might call true and good, another might call false and evil because they don’t agree about what God wants them to teach and do. Should it be each household or community determining what is true? That just puts us back to truth being relative, decided by what seems right to each individual or small group.
The problem with all these options is that they start with humanity. They start with what we can do to create a peaceful, well-ordered society. If we were capable of this, or even moderately good at it, wouldn’t we see a lot more peace and order in history and a lot less violence and trouble? Jesus makes it clear that we sinners are not going to be able to raise ourselves out of the continuous conflict and suffering of the world. We need someone to come from the outside in, someone who is not held back by the same weakness and sin that we are.
Jesus was a Person like this. He did not come from the world; He made the world. John 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (vv. 1,3). Then the evangelist writes, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The Son of God took on human flesh by being born of the virgin Mary. Because He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, He entered the world without sin. He was “full of grace and truth,” and He came to save the world (Joh. 3:17). He came to offer up His holy life as the payment for all sin, to make satisfaction for it by His death on the cross. Jesus spoke the words of today’s reading the night before He was crucified. He knew that He would suffer, that He would die, and that He would rise again on the third day. This is what His heavenly Father sent Him to do (Joh. 10:18).
After His work was complete, Jesus told the disciples that He must return to His Father. He would no longer be visibly present with them to teach them, answer their questions, and encourage them. This filled their hearts with sorrow. How could they go on without their Teacher and Lord? Jesus had the answer. He told them He would send the Holy Spirit to guide them into all the truth, to declare to them the things that were to come, and to take what was His and declare it to them.
When the disciples heard Jesus’ words before His death and resurrection, they could not make sense of any of it. After His resurrection, they began to understand Jesus’ purpose and plan for the salvation of the world. And then at Pentecost, ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven, it all became clear. God the Father and God the Son sent God the Holy Spirit to them just as Jesus had promised.
The Holy Spirit not only guided these chosen disciples to preach boldly in the name of Jesus, He also guided them to write histories and letters, so that others after them would hear the truth and would learn how to discern truth from error. We still have those Spirit-inspired writings today. They are collected in the New Testament of the Bible, along with the inspired words of the prophets in the Old Testament. We believe that the entire Bible is given to us by God. It was written down by men, but it contains no human opinions, no human errors, and no actual contradictions. It is the Word of God, which means it is true.
This is the truth that has gone out into the world and still goes out. It has changed the world and still changes it. But you might say, “If the Word of God is so powerful, if it is true, why isn’t the world a better place?” If you filled up on food at a recent meal, why do you keep more food in the cupboards and fridge? If a cut in your skin has healed, why do you keep bandages around? You know that just because you ate today and were in good shape today, that there will be hunger and other troubles tomorrow. We live in a fallen, sinful world, and each one of us is sinful.
One of the Holy Spirit’s duties is to expose the sinfulness of the world and of our own hearts. Jesus said that at the Spirit’s coming, “He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” The unbelieving world does not know how lost it is, how far it has fallen from the glory of God, and how deeply it is stuck in sin. It does not understand that its best deeds and greatest accomplishments are garbage compared to God’s goodness and righteousness. It does not see that if it continues to reject the salvation won by Jesus, it will be eternally condemned along with the devil.
That’s the truth, and it’s a hard truth. It is difficult to speak this message in the world because the world does not want to hear it. No one likes to be told that he or she has a major problem. Unbelievers do not want to hear that no matter how good they have tried to be toward their neighbors, or how much they have tried to make a positive difference in their communities, that none of it counts for their salvation with God. It isn’t good enough. Unless they repent, they cannot be saved. As long as they reject Jesus’ saving work, they are on the way to hell. No matter what our culture says today, not everyone who dies goes to “a better place.”
This sounds harsh. People who hear this wonder why we Christians think we are so much better than others. They can name a whole bunch of Christians who seem to be worse people than they are. It isn’t hard to find a sinful Christian. We do not speak to others about sin, righteousness, and judgment because we think we are so good. We speak the truth of God because we know we are just as sinful as everyone else, and we know that no one can be saved apart from the grace of God.
We speak the truth because we want others to have the forgiveness and comfort that we have. We want them to know that Jesus fulfilled the holy Law of God for them and died to pay for their sins and rose again to conquer their death. He did this for the whole world, for all people of all time. He did not leave anyone out or fail to pay for anyone’s sins. Every single wrong we have done, every single unkind word or action toward others, every single lie we have spoken or lived, Jesus suffered the wrath of God for it and shed His blood to wash it all away.
This is the truth. It is not my opinion. It is not make-believe. I can tell you with one-hundred-percent certainty that your sins are forgiven because Jesus paid for them. He commanded that this Gospel message be shared with the whole world (Mat. 28:18-20, Joh. 20:22-23). The Gospel “is the power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16). It is powerful because it is not man’s word; it is God’s Word. The Holy Spirit works through the Word to guide you into all truth, to point you to Jesus’ work for your salvation, to take what is His—His righteousness, His perfection, His life—and declare it and give it to you.
You breathe in the Spirit and power of God whenever you listen to His Word and receive His Sacraments in faith. And you breathe out these gifts to others when you speak the same promises and blessings of God to them. You believe, and so you also speak (2Co. 4:13). When you speak the truth, you do not need to worry about how it will be received. That burden is not on you. The Holy Spirit will do all the heavy-lifting. He will open ears, He will work repentance, He will plant faith in hearts—just as He has done for you.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from stained glass by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, c. 1660)
The Fifth Sunday of Easter & Saude Confirmation – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Judges 7:1-7, 16-21
In Christ Jesus, whose grace is sufficient for you, whose power is made perfect in weakness (2Co. 12:9), dear fellow redeemed:
The Israelites had become everyone’s doormat. They should hardly have been surprised. They lived on prime real estate in the land of Canaan—land that was the envy of all the nations around them. The only reason they had this land and the only reason they ever had peace is because the LORD God gave it to them. But as the generations passed, the Israelites did not give thanks to God or honor Him for these gifts. Instead they gave up the worship of the true God for the false gods of the nations around them. So God gave them up to their enemies.
That’s how we find Israel in today’s reading. They were currently under the thumb of the Midianites. Every time the Israelites’ crops matured, the Midianites and others “would come like locusts in number” and take whatever they wanted; “they laid waste to the land” (Jud. 6:5). The Israelites were completely impoverished. They had no way to defend themselves. And only now at rock bottom did they remember the LORD. They cried out for His mercy.
The LORD chose an unlikely savior for them. He visited a man named Gideon and told him he would deliver Israel. Gideon replied, “Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house” (Jud. 6:15). The first task the LORD gave him was to destroy his father’s altar to the god Baal and the monument next to it to the goddess Asherah. Gideon was so afraid to do this that he waited until the middle of night, so he wouldn’t have to face any opposition for his actions. Not exactly hero material.
It was harvest time again, so the Midianites were on the march. But this year wouldn’t be like the ones before it. The Midianites would not be taking whatever they wanted. The LORD prepared timid Gideon to stop them by giving him strength and courage. We are told that “the Spirit of the LORD clothed Gideon, and he sounded the trumpet, and [his countrymen] were called out to follow him” (6:34). Altogether 32,000 men showed up for battle. That sounds like a lot, but the camp of Midian had 135,000 men—more than four times as many! Just looking at the numbers, Israel wouldn’t stand a chance.
But that’s not how God saw it. He said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’” He told Gideon to send anyone home who was afraid. 22,000 left, leaving just 10,000 fighting men. “The people are still too many,” said the LORD. He devised a test to whittle down the number by how the men drank water. Of the 10,000, all but 300 knelt down to drink. The LORD chose the 300.
So it was 300 Israelites against 135,000 Midianites. No one would take those odds. Israel did not have superior armor or equipment. They had no weapon of mass destruction. But the Israelites did have one thing the Midianites did not—they had the LORD on their side. Would Gideon and his 300 trust the LORD to give them the victory?
God’s faithful people have often faced long odds. The prophet Elijah thought he was the only believer left in his day, but God had preserved 7,000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal (1Ki. 19:18). Shortly after Jesus’ resurrection, only a handful believed in Him. When persecution began against the Christians after Pentecost, their number was only at 5,000. Martin Luther had many more opponents than allies when he articulated the Bible’s teaching of salvation. And still today, our congregations are on the smaller side in our communities, and our church body hardly registers on anyone’s radar.
When we look at all that threatens us, all around us who would like to see the Church go under and go away, it is easy for us to wonder if our days are numbered. How can we as Christians stand in a society and culture that is moving further away from God’s Word and will? We are tempted to stop speaking the truth because we don’t want to face the consequences for it. We might stay silent because we don’t want to become targets of people’s criticism or ridicule or risk our good standing in the community. Like the Israelites who were “fearful and trembling” at the thought of facing the powerful Midianites in battle, we are afraid to face the world’s opposition to our faith. Do we even stand a chance?
But we must not forget who is on our side. In God’s holy Church, where something appears to be weak, that is often where He shows His strength. And where something has the appearance of strength, that is often where you find weakness. The first chapter of First Corinthians lays this out clearly: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1Co. 1:27-29).
Think of how God adds members to His holy Church. He does it through simple water and Word in the Sacrament of Baptism, and typically the ones brought to the font are little infants! How can helpless babies endure against the spiritual enemies arrayed against them? When our youth are confirmed, they renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways, and they promise to remain faithful to the pure teaching of the Bible until death. But how can they be so sure they will? They don’t know what life will throw at them and what challenges they will face in the future.
The devil, the unbelieving world, and our sinful flesh look disdainfully at us weak Christians and say, “They don’t stand a chance.” But they are forgetting something. Look at Gideon with his 300 facing an army of 135,000. The Israelites did have a plan for confusing the Midianites by dividing into three companies and then blowing their trumpets, breaking their jars, and holding their torches high in the dark of night. But that alone does not account for so few defeating so many.
Right after today’s reading it says, “When they blew the 300 trumpets, the LORD set every man’s sword against his comrade and against all the army” (7:22). It was the LORD who did this, the LORD who defeated the great Midianite army, the LORD who gave victory to Gideon and his fellow Israelites. The task seemed impossible, but not for God. He delights in making the seemingly impossible, the humanly impossible—possible. “For nothing will be impossible with God” (Luk. 1:37).
The angel Gabriel said those words to the virgin Mary the day the Christ was conceived in her womb. As He grew up, almost no one would have picked Jesus to be a Savior, just as they would not have picked Gideon to lead so many years before. And if the odds were stacked against Gideon, they were stacked even more against Jesus. Gideon had 300 men for his mission. Jesus had 12, and they deserted Him right when He was at His lowest point. The Jewish religious leaders carried out their scheme, the Roman soldiers flexed their muscles, and Jesus was nailed to a cross. Everyone who passed by agreed: He didn’t stand a chance.
But why did Jesus on the cross talk like He wasn’t losing? “Father, forgive them,” He said. “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise.” “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit.” His enemies must have been perplexed. He talked like someone who was in control, who was not suffering against His will. This is because Jesus was no regular man hanging on the cross. He was the Son of God in the flesh! He predicted very clearly leading up to His crucifixion, “I lay down my life that I may take it up again” (Joh. 10:17). He did lay down His life on the cross, and He did take it up again on the third day when He left His tomb empty. No one could stop Him. No one could keep Him from doing what He came to do.
This is why you have great courage, even as your enemies surround you and you seem hopelessly overmatched and outnumbered. The crucified and risen Lord is on your side. He paid for each of your sins and rose again for your justification, for the declaration of your righteousness and innocence before God. Jesus won it all for you. And He gives His victory over sin and death to you right now. He gives it to you by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Gospel for today, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all the truth… for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you” (Joh. 16:13,14).
This is how you are able to stand against your many and formidable enemies. On your own, relying on your own strength, you would be crushed. But with Jesus contending for you, you cannot lose. At your Baptism, you “put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27); you were joined to Him. In Holy Communion, He gives you His own body and blood to eat and drink for your forgiveness and life. He is the one who fortifies you and fights for you.
With your confidence and trust in Him and not in yourself, you can look disdainfully at all your spiritual enemies—your sinful flesh that would betray you, the devil who would destroy you, death which would swallow you up—you can look at them in the courage of the Holy Spirit and say, “They Don’t Stand a Chance.”
As true as God’s own Word is true,
Not earth or hell with all their crew
Against us shall prevail.
A jest and byword are they grown;
God is with us, we are His own;
Our vict’ry cannot fail. (Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #375, v. 3)
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from stained glass window at Saude Lutheran Church)
The Fifth Sunday of Easter – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. John 16:5-15
In Christ Jesus, whose Father willed your salvation from eternity, who won your salvation by His death and resurrection, and whose saving work is brought to you today by the power of the Holy Spirit, dear fellow redeemed:
When Jesus spoke the words of today’s reading, everything was so clouded for His disciples, so unclear. Even though Jesus had plainly told them what was coming, they did not understand. They were filled with sorrow, preoccupied with their own thoughts which were not God’s thoughts. But later, after Jesus died, rose again, and ascended into heaven, they did understand. They were guided into “all the truth” by “the Spirit of truth.” But how did they know the Spirit was speaking to them? How did they know what was true? And how can we be sure today that we have the truth?
We know very well that the world in which we live does not support the idea of objective truth. Many people consider truth to be relative: “You have your truth, and I have my truth, and everyone’s truth is equally valid.” That all sounds very nice until one person’s truth is totally opposed to another person’s truth. Then both truths cannot be equal. Both truths cannot be valid.
We would think that at least among Christians, we could agree about what is true. But sadly, that is not the case. Even basic questions like, “Is the Bible the Word of God?” or “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?” are not answered the same way by all Christians, and not even by all Lutherans. Some of them believe that the Holy Spirit is working not so much through the Bible, but that He is working directly in our minds and hearts and through our culture to lead us to new truths and new teachings.
What does Jesus have to say about all this? We’ll start at the end of today’s reading, where Jesus says, “All that the Father has is Mine.” That is a bold statement! The disciples of Jesus still did not grasp His eternal connection to the Father as His only Son. Earlier in the evening, Philip blurted out, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (Joh. 14:8). And Jesus replied, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” (vv. 9-10).
Jesus was teaching them and us that He is one God with the Father. Everything that God the Father has, the Son has. Jesus listed some of these things as He prayed to His Father that same evening. He said that His Father had given Him “authority over all flesh” (Joh. 17:2). He had given Him His words (v. 8), His name (v. 11), His glory (v. 22), and His love (v. 26). These are the gifts that God the Father gave God the Son.
But those gifts did not remain with the Son. They were shared with sinners, including you and me. This happens by the work of the third Person of the Holy Trinity, God the Holy Spirit. But before the Holy Spirit imparts the gifts of God, He must prepare us to receive them. That work of preparation is hard on us, because the Holy Spirit reveals our need for salvation by pointing out our sins, imperfections, and misplaced priorities.
Jesus says that the Holy Spirit comes to “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” The Holy Spirit through the holy Law condemns the world for its rejection of Jesus, for trusting its own ideas about righteousness which are nothing but filthy rags (Isa. 64:6), and for following the desires of the devil who wants us to focus only on ourselves and only on this life.
The Holy Spirit must perform major surgery on us to break our dependence on the pleasures and promises of the world and to cut out the sin embedded deep in our hearts. Most surgery is painful, but its purpose is to bring about healing and strength. A patient can’t get better if the root problem is not addressed, if the infection is not eliminated, if the cancer is not removed.
The Holy Spirit shows us through the holy Law how deeply sin has infected us and how dire our situation is. But we don’t like to think we are really that bad off. Whatever spiritual weaknesses and problems we have, we think we can fix them. We can avoid the temptations that caused us to fall in the past. We can do better. It’s like trying to run on a broken leg.
So we fall into the same old sins, and we fall for new ones too. We are not capable of healing ourselves. If we were doing so well, God the Father would not have sent His Son to take on our flesh, keep the Law for us, and die on the cross to atone for sin. And God the Holy Spirit would not have come first of all to “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”
This is why we confess every week at the beginning of the divine service “that we are by nature sinful and unclean, and that we have sinned against [God] by thought, word and deed” (Rite 1, p. 41), that each one of us is “a poor, miserable sinner” (Rite 2, p. 61). That is not very flattering language! And it is completely accurate.
But the Holy Spirit’s work is not only to convict us, not only to reveal our sins. In fact, that is not even His primary work. His main work is to comfort us. Now He does not comfort us by telling us things like, “Everything’s going to work out just the way you want,” or “God loves you just the way you are.” He comforts us by planting the perfect promises of God right in our sinful hearts.
Jesus said, “He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come.” “The things that are to come” means all that Jesus would accomplish by His death and resurrection. The disciples did not know that by morning, their great Teacher and Lord would be beaten beyond recognition and nailed to a cross. They did not know that this was necessary for the salvation of sinners. And they did not know that on the third day He would rise from the dead in victory.
His saving work is why Jesus said, “it is to your advantage that I go away.” His “going away” meant that the work was finished. His work to save you was complete. Because He gave Himself as the sacrificial Lamb on the cross, your sins are all washed away. And because He rose from the dead in triumph, death can no longer overpower you.
You know this and you believe it, because the Holy Spirit has declared it to you through the holy Word of God. Jesus said, “He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you.” Here we can see the perfect unity of the Holy Trinity. The Father has given all things to the Son, and the Son has given all things to the Holy Spirit to give to you. The Father’s authority, the Father’s words, the Father’s name, the Father’s glory, the Father’s love—all of it comes to you through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.
With the authority bestowed on Him at His resurrection, Jesus commissioned the apostles to go and make disciples of all nations by baptizing them and teaching them all that He had taught them (Mat. 28:18-20). That is how you became a disciple. You were baptized into God’s name by the power of His Word and were brought into His holy family. Everything Jesus did for you became yours. You were given a share of His glory and became a recipient of the divine love that the Father has for His Son, because the Holy Spirit made you a member of Jesus’ holy body.
The Holy Spirit continues to bring you the rich blessings of God. The Holy Spirit does all His work through the Word, and always through the Word. That is where He is active. If anyone claims to receive a message from the Spirit outside of the Bible, a message that contradicts the Bible, that message is not from God. You have the truth, because you have the pure Word of God.
By the Spirit’s work through the Word, you know that you deserve to be punished eternally in hell because of your sins, and you also know that your sins are all forgiven through the blood of God’s Son. You know that your best works cannot earn you any favor with God, and you know that by faith in His Son, you now stand perfectly righteous before Him. You know that you have let the devil lead the way far too often and have fallen for his lies again and again, and you know that Jesus has destroyed Satan’s evil plans and brought you into His own kingdom of light.
The Spirit of truth has taught you all these things by the Word. None of them are new, and they never go out of style. In three weeks, we will celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the birthday of the Christian Church. We welcome His coming by continuing to hear the Word, read it, meditate on it, and hold it tight as the greatest treasure we have.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from stained glass by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, c. 1660)