The Festival of the Holy Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
In Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever, dear fellow redeemed:
The Apostles’ Creed
The word “creed” comes from the Latin word “credo,” which means “I believe.” That’s how the first two ecumenical creeds begin, with the words “I believe.” The creeds state what the Christian believes about God based on the teaching of the Bible.
While not all Christians today recite a creed when they gather for worship, the use of creeds dates back to the Old Testament era. Moses taught the people of Israel a basic creed about God which is recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” In the New Testament, the apostle Paul wrote creed-like details about the life of Christ in his First Letter to the Corinthians: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (15:3-4).
The structure for the Apostles’ Creed comes from the great commission which Jesus gave to His disciples after His resurrection. He said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mat. 28:19). As the apostles went about this work, they naturally had to explain who this Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were.
While there is no historical evidence that the apostles themselves wrote the creed we have, an early version of the creed was in use as early as the year 150. The creed is clearly based on the inspired writings of the apostles, which is why it is known as the “Apostles’ Creed.” It is also known as the “Baptismal Creed” due to its connection to Jesus’ trinitarian words, and because in the early Christian Church it was recited by adult catechumens before they were baptized.
The first article describes God the Father as “Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” “Almighty” means there is no limit to His power. He made everything out of nothing by the power of His Word. The universe did not come about from a big bang and an evolutionary process taking millions of years. It came about because “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
The second article describes the work of God the Son. Though He was certainly active in the creation of all things, the creed especially focuses on His incarnation, His taking on of human flesh in the virgin Mary’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Son of God became Man so that He could be crucified and die in our place for our sins, descend into hell to proclaim His victory over the devil, and rise from the dead in triumph. He ascended into heaven to the right hand of His Father to serve the members of His Church until His coming on the last day to judge the living and the dead.
The third article of the Apostles’ Creed describes the work of God the Holy Spirit. Through the powerful Word and Sacraments of God, the Holy Spirit calls sinners to repentance and faith. That’s what He did for each of us, making us members of the holy Christian Church through Holy Baptism. This Church of believers, invisible to our eyes but known by God, is the communion of saints, the gathering of Christ’s people who are joined to His body by faith, and who eat and drink His body and blood for the remission of their sins. The Holy Spirit continuously brings us this forgiveness, so that we are prepared for our earthly end and look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.
Please turn to page 94. Let us confess our holy faith in the words of the Apostles’ Creed. [then hymn #37 – “We All Believe in One True God”]
The Nicene Creed
The Nicene Creed is an expanded version of the Apostles’ Creed. The first draft of this creed was written in the year 325 at the Council of Nicaea, and it was finalized in 381. This creed was needed to settle a doctrinal controversy that was troubling the church. A theologian named Arius was promoting the teaching that the Son of God is not equal to the Father in power and glory, but that He is actually a special being created by the Father. Arius came up with catchy songs to spread his false teaching that “there was a time when he was not” (Arius’ slogan).
The controversy became so heated that the Roman emperor Constantine called an ecumenical council, meaning a council for the entire church. Arius and his followers came, as did the theologians who opposed them. One of these was the pastor Nicholas of Myra, whose practice of charitable giving inspired the later legend of “jolly old St. Nicholas.” Another attendee was a young pastor named Athanasius. He became a leader in the dispute against Arius and argued convincingly from the Scriptures that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God from eternity. This is why we use the word “triune” to describe God. The three Persons are one God.
The first article about God the Father is nearly the same as in the Apostles’ Creed, except that it adds that He is the “Maker… of all things visible and invisible.” This wording comes from Colossians 1:16 which says, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” The invisible part of God’s creation includes the holy angels which serve God and His people.
The second article of the Nicene Creed is the longest one. It clearly describes the Son as being one God with the Father. It says He is “begotten” of the Father. This is a term that shows how God the Father and God the Son have been from eternity. God the Son is always and forever begotten of God the Father. He is “begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made” (see Joh. 1:1-3, Heb. 1:2).
The Nicene Creed has traditionally been connected to and spoken at a service with Holy Communion, so that everyone clearly understands that the Son who gives His body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar is true God.
The third article about God the Holy Spirit is also expanded in the Nicene Creed. The Holy Spirit is described as the “Lord”—true God. His relation to the other Persons in the Godhead is not as one who is begotten, but one who “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” His work is to speak what He hears from the Father and the Son, to take what is theirs and give it to us (Joh. 16:13-15). He inspired the prophets to write the words of the Old Testament and the evangelists and apostles to write the words of the New Testament. He continues to work powerfully through the inspired Word to convert hearts to faith in Jesus.
The primary means that He uses to bring people into the “one holy Christian and Apostolic Church” is Holy Baptism. Baptism is not a commitment we make to God or something that needs to be done multiple times like many Christians today teach. Along with the early Christian Church, we acknowledge in the Nicene Creed “one Baptism for the remission of sins.”
Please turn to page 95. Let us confess our holy faith in the words of the Nicene Creed. [then hymn #38 – “We All Believe in One True God” (Luther)]
The Athanasian Creed
The earliest evidence of the Athanasian Creed dates to the mid-400s. Since Athanasius died in the year 373, it is likely that this creed was named in honor of his work to defend the faith and was not written by Athanasius himself. It is significantly longer than the other two ecumenical creeds because it gives great detail about what can and cannot be said about the Triune God on the basis of the Bible. We only use it in church twice a year, but it is a wonderful instructional tool for study at home and for conversation with other Christians who may not be clear on this teaching.
At the very beginning of the creed, it might surprise us to see a reference to the “catholic faith.” The word “catholic” means “universal.” It does not mean the “Roman Catholic faith,” though the Roman Church also confesses the three ecumenical creeds as we do. The universal faith, “the true Christian faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the Persons nor dividing the substance.”
The end of the Athanasian Creed gives familiar language like the other two creeds about the Son of God. But then it says that at Christ’s coming, “all will rise again with their bodies and will give an account of their own works.” That wording comes from Hebrews 4:13 which says that “no creature is hidden from his sight… to whom we must give account.” But we do not need to fear the Day of Judgment since Jesus paid for all our sins and has filled our account with His righteous words and works.
Then the creed says, “And they that have done good will enter into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.” This is another reference from the Bible where Jesus says, “an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (Joh. 5:28-29). Jesus is not teaching us to trust our own good works to get to heaven. He is making a distinction between believers and unbelievers. Believers do good by the faith the Holy Spirit has worked in them, while unbelievers do evil because they rejected God’s grace. Believers are saved by faith in what Jesus has done; unbelievers are condemned by their own unbelief.
Please turn to page 29. Let us confess our holy faith in the words of the Athanasian Creed. [then hymn #43, vv. 1-4 – “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name”]
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 depicts Emperor Constantine and the bishops from the Council of Nicaea)
The Festival of the Holy Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 1 Samuel 17:32-50
In Christ Jesus, the seemingly overmatched Challenger who conquered our fierce and giant enemies without sword or spear, dear fellow redeemed:
“You shall have no other gods” (Exo. 20:3). This is the First Commandment recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. All the other Commandments follow after the first one. Because there is no other god than the LORD, we should respect His name (Second Commandment), listen to His Word (Third Commandment), honor the authorities He has placed over us (Fourth Commandment), and so on. That all makes good sense. But how can we know that the God we fear, love, and trust is actually the true God?
If you were standing on the battle line with the Israelites as they faced the Philistines, you might have guessed that the Philistines had stronger gods. For forty days, morning and evening, a great Philistine champion named Goliath stepped forward and challenged the Israelites to send someone to fight him one on one. Goliath said, “If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us” (1Sa. 17:9).
No one was willing to face him, not even the warrior-king Saul. Whenever Goliath stepped forward, the Israelites cowered in fear (vv. 11, 24). None of them believed they could defeat him. No matter how much Goliath ridiculed their God and appealed to his own gods, they would not take courage and fight him. They did not trust the LORD to deliver them from their enemies.
But then David came to visit his older brothers. David was too young to join the Israelite army, but his father sent him to bring food to his brothers and their commander. While he was there, he heard Goliath’s taunts and immediately responded, “who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” (v. 26). David’s bold statement was repeated to Saul, and David soon found himself standing before the king.
For all Saul’s military successes in the past, he was not willing to fight Goliath. He did not trust in the LORD to deliver Israel. What a contrast there was between the faithlessness and fear of this seasoned military man and the faith and courage of this young shepherd-boy! We older Christians experience something similar when we hear the clear confession and cheerful faith of Jesus’ little lambs and feel ashamed at our own doubts and weakness.
So young David went forward to meet fierce Goliath. David had nothing with him but a staff and five smooth stones for his sling, compared with Goliath’s heavy bronze armor, javelin, and spear with a shield-bearer in front of him. When Goliath saw David, he “cursed [him] by his gods,” and promised to “give his flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field.” David for his part replied, “I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand.”
But what made David so sure? How did he know that by the power of his God, he would defeat Goliath with his gods? Our culture today says that there is no way to be certain that one person’s god is any better than another person’s god. Or it is commonly said that all of us really worship the same god, though we may refer to him (or it) by different names and follow different religious books. The problem is that people think of gods in human terms, as though we humans have made up the idea of gods to help ourselves cope or to hold on to some kind of hope.
Any Christian who reads his Bible cannot say that all religions worship the same God. The consistent teaching of the Bible is that the true God is to be distinguished from the gods of all other peoples and nations. The Athanasian Creed, which we recite every year on this Sunday, very clearly states what the Bible teaches about God: “[W]e worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the Persons nor dividing the substance…. [W]e are forbidden by the true Christian faith to say that there are three gods or three lords…. Whoever will be saved is compelled thus to think of the Holy Trinity” (ELH, pp. 29-30).
The God revealed in the Bible is one God but three distinct Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He is not like any other gods. He does not operate like other gods. He is not limited in any way like other gods are. The gods created by man’s imagination will naturally have limitations and imperfections. The God who made all things, including us, does not have such limitations and imperfections. He is all-powerful, all-wise, all-holy, present everywhere. He cannot be weakened or defeated. There may be men and demons who pretend to be gods, but the LORD our God is the only true God.
Now if that is really the case, then why does it seem like we Christians are not always on the winning side of things? Our churches which teach the pure Word of God are often smaller than other churches that openly compromise His Word. Our culture is becoming more and more secular, and Christianity in our country does not appear to have the impact it once did. Churches are closing. Moral standards are disintegrating. Lawlessness is increasing, and the love of many grows cold (Mat. 24:12).
We in the church may feel like we face a whole army of Goliaths as we look around us in the world. This makes us cower in fear, go silent, and take whatever measures we think are necessary to stay good with the world. At the heart of our fear and our failure to speak the truth is our lack of faith in the true God. We have doubts—what if God does not keep us safe from our enemies? What if we lose everything we value in this life? What if God is not as powerful or as loving as He says He is?
I suspect the Israelite soldiers were not very optimistic when they saw a boy with a sling make his way toward Goliath. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were preparing to make a run for it instead of preparing to fight. The disciples of Jesus ended up the same way. They made a show of their willingness to fight to the death for Him, but in the end, they ran away scared. The disciples were not ready to die.
But Jesus was. Jesus, with a crown of thorns on His head and a cross on His shoulders, looked no more prepared to do battle against sin, devil, and death than David looked prepared to fight Goliath. Jesus looked weak, pathetic, powerless to do anything against His enemies. The people mocking Jesus at the cross cursed Him in the name of their gods and eagerly anticipated “[giving] his flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field.”
On Good Friday, no one thought that Jesus was winning. No one understood that He was making satisfaction for all sin and destroying the kingdom of the devil. No one anticipated His victorious resurrection that coming Sunday. They were looking at Jesus all wrong. They were judging by outward appearances. What they needed was faith in His Word. Jesus told them that all this would happen, and He told them why. He said He would suffer, die, and rise again for the salvation of all sinners.
Like David facing Goliath, Jesus did not flinch; He faced sin, devil, and death head on. “For the battle is the LORD’s,” He said, “and He will give you into our hand.” He put His trust in His heavenly Father, and His trust was not disappointed. His Father accepted His sacrifice on behalf of all sinners and raised Him from the dead on the third day.
This means you are forgiven for all the times you cowered in fear when the enemies of the LORD ridiculed His Word and His people. You are forgiven for sitting in silence instead of speaking the truth. You are forgiven for your compromises, weaknesses, and doubts. Jesus shed His blood for all these sins. But that does not mean we should be comfortable and content with our fears, silence, and doubts.
Just like the Israelites took courage when they saw what David did to Goliath, we take courage when we see what Jesus did to our great enemies. After David killed Goliath and chopped off his head, the Philistine army fled, and the Israelites pursued them all the way to their city gates. We wield a different kind of weapon and wear a different kind of armor. By faith in our conquering Lord Jesus, we are clothed in His truth, righteousness, peace, and salvation, and we carry with us His powerful Word.
This is how the LORD conquers. This is how the LORD saves. “The LORD Saves Not with Sword and Spear.” He saved you by offering up His holy body and blood in your place and rising from the dead in victory. He brings this salvation to you through His Word and Sacraments. These means of grace may look like nothing to the world. Your enemies may laugh at you and ridicule you and call you out in the name of their gods for believing what you believe. But they will not prevail. Jesus is here with His powerful gifts of grace to strengthen and keep you in the saving faith, and to prepare you to face your terrible enemies in the power of His name.
In the end, every one of the world’s Goliaths will have fallen on their faces in defeat, and every little David, preserved in the faith by the Word of the LORD, will have the victory.
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 “Jesus in Prison” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)
The Festival of the Holy Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Romans 11:33-36
In Christ Jesus, who has revealed the Father’s love for us by becoming one with us and who has now sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, dear fellow redeemed:
In the spring of 1955, a pathologist performed a regular autopsy on a man who had recently died. But then he did something that crossed an ethical boundary. Though there had been no injury to the man’s brain or any cause to believe that something had gone wrong with it, the pathologist removed it from his skull! He was motivated by the fact that this wasn’t just another person on his table. This was Albert Einstein, a man regarded as one of the great thinkers of the 20th century.
His brain was dissected and put into slides for purposes of research and study. The hope was that some secrets of Einstein’s genius might be uncovered and used to increase human capacity for knowledge and mental capability. More recently, scientists have been experimenting with putting digital chips in the brain that could enhance memory retention or even be used to download information into the brain.
We would all like to be smarter and stronger, getting better and better. But even if we could, even if we made major strides forward from a human perspective, we would still be “know-nothings” compared to God. The apostle Paul speaks of “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments,” he says, “and how inscrutable—how incomprehensible—His ways!”
The only reason we are able to know anything significant about God is because of what He has revealed to us about Himself. For example, human thinking could never figure out and cannot comprehend that God is Triune—one God in three Persons. Non-Christians such as the Muslims accuse us of having three gods. But that is not the case. We worship “one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity,” as we just confessed in the Athanasian Creed.
The Triune God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere, which we remember with the three omni words: omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God is eternal, holy, wise, and loving. He created all things that exist—the world and everything in it with all its beauty and complexity and the world’s place in the vast and ordered universe.
The evidence of creation alone is enough to show us the unfathomable depth of God. Specialists can spend their entire lives focusing on one tiny part of God’s creation and still learn or understand only a little fraction of it. In the whole scheme and scope of the universe, you and I are just small specks, temporary placeholders on a timeline that stretches behind us for thousands of years and will stretch beyond us for an unknown amount of time.
And yet, though we are certainly little more than fragments of dust in the history of the world, we are known and loved by our Creator God. We know this because He has told us so. This is how He described His approach to the human race, that He is “the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exo. 34:6-7a).
The crown of His creation—mankind—rebelled against Him and did the one thing He commanded them not to do. But instead of pouring out His anger on them and wiping them off the face of His perfect earth, He made them a promise. He would send a Savior to free them from the grip of sin, death, and devil. That promise was kept when God the Father sent His Son to become one with mankind.
In the incarnate Son of God, we clearly see the mercy and grace of God. God could have condemned us. He could make us pay for our sins. But instead, He chose in His love to redeem us. The Son perfectly obeyed the will of His Father and suffered and died in our place for all our sins. This also is beyond our comprehension. How could sins be paid for that hadn’t even been committed yet, like our sins? And how could the Son die, but not the Father or the Holy Spirit, since these three Persons are one God?
We don’t need to make logical sense out of all this before we accept it as true. Just because something may not jive with our reason doesn’t mean it can’t be true. In fact, accepting only the things that fit our thinking makes us closed-minded, not open-minded. God wants to expand our understanding to include truths that are over and above anything the world can know. We were reminded last Sunday how He did this.
On Pentecost, God the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples, so that their message of Christ crucified would reach the ears and hearts of sinners “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Act. 1:8). In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit” (1Co. 2:12-13a).
The Holy Spirit continues to work through the inspired Word of the Bible, so that sinners are brought to faith and grow in the wisdom and knowledge of God. But even we believers have plenty more to learn. It is easy to forget this. After all, we are baptized, and we have been confirmed. We regularly attend church, and we know way more about the Bible than most of our Christian friends. Our faith is strong! But it doesn’t take much for us to question God.
Where is He, we wonder, when we need help and are hurting? Isn’t He all-powerful and able to change our situation? Or when we were unknowingly heading toward trouble, why didn’t He redirect our steps? Isn’t He all-knowing? Or when we were worried and had doubts, why didn’t He make His presence more obviously known, so we could be certain He is in control? Isn’t He present everywhere?
Paul writes, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?” Are we on God’s level? Can we see things like He does? When you have been around someone who acted like he or she knew everything, you know how irritating that is. It might be the brand new employee who on the first day of the job points out all the things the long-time employees should be doing better. Or the person who has hardly watched a sport, let alone played it, yet who thinks he knows more than the professionals.
Pretty annoying. Pretty laughable. It’s like us trying to tell God what He should be doing better. What do we know about upholding the universe and everything in it? We can’t even keep our own life and behavior under control most of the time! The Lord invites us to cry out to Him and even complain. But we have no right to criticize Him. He is never wrong. He is never unjust. Everything He does is good and right and true, even if we can’t perceive the good.
Another error we make is thinking God owes us something. Paul quoted this from the book of Job: “Or who has given a gift to Him that he might be repaid?” Many people think they deserve payment from God because of what they have done for Him. “I have made sacrifices for you, God. I have served you my whole life. I have always tried to do what was right.” But how good is a work that is done for a reward?
This is the way the apostle Peter was thinking when he said to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Mat. 19:27). At another point, the mother of James and John led her sons to Jesus and said, “Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom” (Mat. 20:21). Jesus’ response in these cases was, “many who are first will be last, and the last first” (19:30), and “whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave” (20:26-27).
Then He added, “even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (v. 28). If we think God owes us anything, we should recall what He has already freely given us. He has given us our very existence, including the body we have, the air we breathe, and the food and possessions we enjoy. He has also redeemed our soul, so that we will spend eternity with Him in heaven and not with the damned in hell.
He has had mercy on us when we did not deserve it. Jesus willingly took our place and shed His holy blood to wash away our sins. He paid for our sins of pride, our thinking that we are pretty good, that we have a better plan, or that we can see more clearly than He can. Our wisdom and knowledge are so small compared to His. Paul writes, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.”
“From Him” tells us that God is the Source of all things. Through Him” says that God is the Giver of all that is good. “To Him” means that God is the Goal, the blessed Focus of all that we are and have and do. We can dissect the brains of geniuses and try to enhance our thinking with microchips, but we will never come close to the understanding that the Holy Spirit imparts to us through His Word.
Through the Word, we humbly learn how God Is Merciful to the Know-Nothings like us, and how He leads us more and more, deeper and deeper, into His “riches and wisdom and knowledge.” “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phi. 4:7).
To Him be glory forever. Amen.
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(picture from “Jesus Traveling” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)
The Festival of the Holy Trinity – Vicar Anderson farewell sermon
Text: St. John 3:1-15
In Christ Jesus, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit are one God, one Lord, who in the confession of the only true God, we worship the Trinity in person and the Unity in substance, of majesty co-equal, dear fellow redeemed:
In the last ten years, I have mostly moved once a year. First it was to college. After nine months, I packed everything up and brought it home. Then I moved for Seminary, then to Iowa, and later this month, to my first call to serve as pastor in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Packing and unpacking, packing, and unpacking. My wife and I are working to make sure everything is secured in boxes. Our text for today is teaching how some have tried to pack up God. The world and maybe we have wondered, how can we have a triune God who is also one true God? Is that even possible? Should packing God into a box even be done? The answer is that we do not want to try and pack God into a box. It is not possible. Yet how do we reason with God being triune? Our God is holy, perfect, and righteous. Jesus in our text explains how God is triune. The trinity is active in your life for your good. Jesus teaches you and Nicodemus how this is possible.
Nicodemus points out how they believe that Jesus was sent from God. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” The Pharisees reveal that there is a God. They understand that God does exist. As they believe that God exists, they refuse to believe that Jesus came down from heaven to die for them. They don’t believe that Jesus is God in the flesh. They pack God into a box with their lack of understanding of the Scriptures.
As Nicodemus reveals that Jesus is a prophet, he doesn’t understand what Jesus is telling him. ‘Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’ It is easy to understand why after hearing this, Nicodemus needs clarification. Jesus gives Nicodemus an explanation that His teaching is about heavenly things, but Nicodemus should know this as He is the teacher of Israel.
The reason that Nicodemus is having a hard time with this is because He has the wrong understanding about God’s Law. The Pharisees believed they were saved by their works. They had created their own laws, so it looked as though they were following God’s Law. This belief skewed their judgement, causing them to be upset about Jesus and His work as the Son of Man.
This concept of the Trinity, a Son of Man, how do we understand it? How do we explain that God is one God in three persons? By us believing that God is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, we have alienated ourselves from the rest of the world and their beliefs. We are told that if we just believe in “a god”, we will easily fit in with everyone else. Why can’t we just have “a god”? If we have “a god”, or we try to remove the Trinity from the one true God then this is what we have, “for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness” (Psalm 96:13). This is God boxed up into our glorious, most holy judge. He will come and judge the world in righteousness and faithfulness.
Our righteousness and faithfulness do not compare to what God wants. Jesus tells us, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). We cannot appease God and be perfect for Him. And since we can’t be perfect, we deserve His holy wrath and punishment. Like the Pharisees and the world, we can strive as much as we can and change God’s laws to be born again on our own, but it never works out. Jesus then tells Nicodemus that the prophets have been ignored.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” Here Jesus is telling Nicodemus that what Jesus and the prophets have spoken in Scripture will happen even if the world won’t receive it. He has tried to explain it in an earthly way, but Nicodemus still lacked understanding. As this cuts us to the heart, Jesus tells Nicodemus, He tells us what their testimony is all about.
The prophets prophesied that a Savior would come. That Savior cannot be just anyone. “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” Jesus confirms to Nicodemus that what the Pharisees think is true. Jesus has come from God. He is true God and the Son of Man. Our text ends with Jesus saying, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
Jesus teaches that this can only happen with the work of the triune God, and this is how He is active. God the Father has mercy on all of mankind. He sends the Son of Man to suffer and die for all people. How is Nicodemus born again? It is not based on his works. He is born again by the work of the Holy Spirit who brings the work of the Son of Man to him as “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So, it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” It’s not Nicodemus work, it’s not our work. It is the Trinity active in your life.
God is righteous and merciful. He is so merciful that He did the unthinkable for you. Like Nicodemus, we can’t fathom that God would be so merciful that He would send His one and only Son. Jesus points out that the Father is looking out for you. He blesses you beyond all measure. He provides for your earthly needs, and He does the unthinkable by providing for your spiritual needs. He sent His Son to earth and born of flesh and blood. The Son of Man, felt your pains, sufferings, and temptations. He suffered this earthly life perfectly for you. He loved you so much, that He put your sins on His back that the Father’s perfect righteousness and holy judgement came down on Him that He was judged guilty of death even though He was innocent.
Jesus like that serpent, was raised up on the cross, becoming a curse for you. So that He would not have to judge you guilty of what you deserved. Jesus died and rose from the dead for your future. Your eternal future is eternal life in heaven not because of anything that you could do, but because of the death of your Savior.
To have eternal life, God can’t be packed into a box as just “a god”. We wouldn’t be able to be in His presence. Our triune God, not only rules over you, but He takes care of and comes directly to you in the Word and Sacraments. He comes to you in the Word as the Word is Christ. He speaks directly to you, He knows that you have sinned and because of your repentance, He forgives your sins. In baptism, you were baptized with the name of the triune God into the death of Christ. You were marked with the sign of the cross the mark of your Savior. The water and the Word washes away sins and drowned your old Adam. In Holy Communion Christ commands, you to come often to receive His holy body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins. Physical comfort of your Savior with you. These gifts that the Father has mercifully given you because of the life of His perfect Son come to you through these means by the work of the Holy Spirit.
Your baptism, going to communion, and hearing the Word of God preached to you strengthens your faith. You can be certain of your new life in Christ because this is not you’re doing. The work of the Holy Spirit brings you faith in Christ. Every good work that you do is because of the Holy Spirit. This is your new life, and the Trinity is constantly at work for your good. And when the problems of this life get you to again question like Nicodemus, “How can these things be?” The Holy Spirit works faith, you confess your sins, and He once again brings you comfort and assurance that you have been forgiven by Christ, giving you the blessing of eternal life.
This text is not quite the same as packing up belongings and moving them across the country. We see the opposite, that God cannot be contained. If God was contained into a supreme being, there would be no benefit for us. We would see how we cannot achieve what He wants from us. The Holy Trinity is active in our lives. God the Father blesses us, God the Son redeems us, and we receive all of this through the work of God the Holy Spirit. Three distinct persons, one true God. We will never be able to unpack this information because like Nicodemus, we are sinners. But as we confess our sins, the Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts giving us new life, and like Nicodemus we hear forgiveness in the Son of Man being raised up like that serpent on a pole. The next verse brings us comfort until the end of time. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Amen.
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 “Christ and Nicodemus” by Fritz von Uhde, c. 1886)
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)