Peace Lutheran Church
Posts Tagged "Holy Spirit"
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
June 27, 2024
Text: 3rd Article and it’s meaning
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
What does this mean? 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. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ.
This is most certainly true.
Outline:
1. We are dead in sin
2. Holy Spirit through Word and Sacraments makes us alive again
3. With Holy Spirit in us, we can lead sanctified lives
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the Third Article and its meaning.
Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. If I were dead, could I do anything? No, I could do nothing but lay on the ground. Nothing you could do would make me alive, it would take an act of God. Today we get a chance to discuss how God makes us alive through the Third Person of the Trinty, the Holy Spirit. How can we believe in what Jesus has done for us? How does God make us alive? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. Dead in Sin
So what does the Holy Spirit do? In Lutheran circles we do not talk about the Holy Spirit as much or as glamorous as the Pentecostals or Reformed churches. If you go to one of their churches, it seems as though the Holy Spirit is doing great things, speaking in tongues, prophesying. Here? It does not seem like the Holy Spirit is active, at least not in the same extreme ways. So what does He do? Is He active?
Indeed, the Holy Spirit is active, always though the Word as He has promised to be and do. He has not promised to be in prophecies or tongues. Thus why we do not look for Him there. Rather, we look for Him where He has promised to be where the Word is proclaimed.
So what does the Holy Spirit do? The first thing He does is call. He calls us through the Gospel because we cannot believe by our own reason or strength. Holy Scripture often refers to original sin as being dead in sin. What can dead people do? Nothing, they can lie on the ground. That is all! That is us because of original sin inherited from Adam and Eve at the Fall. We are dead. We can do nothing good. In fact, we choose evil time and time again. Just look at the continued struggle that you have against the Devil, fallen world, and your sinful flesh. You sin greatly and daily in thought, word, and deed. You do not always honor the Word of God. You lie, cheat, steal. How often have you thought badly about those placed in authority over us? You do all of this because you are dead in your sins. There is nothing that you can to save yourself. You could sooner believe that the sky was neon green than you could believe the truth of the Gospel without the Spirit first calling you to faith.
2. Holy Spirit through Word and Sacraments makes us alive again
How are the dead ones to be made living? It is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit. We do not focus much upon the Holy Spirit because He never focuses on Himself. He always points you to Jesus Christ. He points you to what Jesus did for you on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins and salvation of your soul. He calls you through the Gospel and creates saving faith in you. “To this he called you through our gospel,” Paul writes, “so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:14; see also 1 Cor. 6:11; Eph. 4:4; Rev. 22:17). When the Holy Spirit calls, He does so through the Word. God always works through means. In the Word, read, preached, and physically applied in water, bread, and wine, the Holy Spirit creates and sustains faith. He takes your dead bodies and makes them alive by connecting them to Jesus’ death and resurrection from the dead. Even better, He does not leave us alone as individuals. Rather, He gathers us together into the Holy Church, the Body of Christ, that we might support, encourage, and mutually edify each other as we go throughout our earthly lives.
3. With Holy Spirit in us, we can lead sanctified lives
It is within the community of the church that the Holy Spirit acts in the lives of believers. Because He has justified us in Christ, He also sanctifies you. He makes you holy that you can do the good things that God has called you to do. As James writes, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27) God doesn’t just demand that you love and show compassion; instead, God creates a heart that loves and shows compassion. God helps you to mature into people who strive to do good in the world. Like a beautiful piece of art designed to bring joy, God turns His people into a masterpiece created to do good in the world (Ephesians 2:10). With the Holy Spirit living within you, you are empowered to do His will. As we state in the Formula of Concord (Th. D., II, para. 66, Triglot, p. 907) “This is to be understood in no other way than that the converted man does good to such an extent and so long as God by His Holy Spirit rules, guides, and leads him, and that as soon as God would withdraw His gracious hand from him, he could not for a moment persevere in obedience to God. But if this were understood thus, that the converted man cooperates with the Holy Ghost in the manner as when two horses together draw a wagon, this could in no way be conceded without prejudice to the divine truth.”
This working of God plays itself out in our everyday lives. We do not grumble over the actions of those in authority over us. Rather we graciously submit to them as to God, calling them to repentance when they err. We forgive when people sin against us, graciously forgiven as we have been forgiven. When others admonish us, we admit our faults and gladly seek to amend them. We put the best construction on everything that we hear concerning others always speaking well of them and putting everything in the best possible light.
Let us rejoice, that God has justified us by the working of His Son, Jesus Christ. He has given us of His Holy Spirit to sanctify us, and graciously keep us in the true faith, until life everlasting.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Feast of Pentecost
May 19, 2024
Text: Ezekiel 37:1-17
Sermon Outline
The Holy Spirit Works through Preaching to Bring Restoration.
I. The Spirit comes through preaching.
II. The Spirit brings restoration.
Sermon
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the Old Testament lesson of Ezekiel chapter thirty-seven verses one through fourteen.
Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Do you know what is under your skin and muscles, a whole bunch of bones that we call skeletons. What would you do if you saw a valley full of skeletons? The Old Testament text read to us on Pentecost is quite odd. What do dry bones have to do with the Holy Spirit? The key words in this text are spirit and prophesy. The word Spirit we will have a bit of fun with. Prophesy—well, that too. Okay, maybe not fun, but prophesy in our context means preaching. From those dry bones, we’re going to see how The Holy Spirit Works through Preaching to Bring Restoration. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
I.
First, how the Spirit comes through preaching.
Ezekiel has a problem in today’s text, and it is that big pile of bones. “There were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry” (v 2). Is what he was seeing real? At the very least, these bones were at one-point real living people—moms and dads, grandpas and grandmas, sons, and daughters. People with real stories, real triumphs, and real sorrows. It would seem as though all of that brought to nothing. Death is the great equalizer, no matter how we may try to avoid it. And that is real. The valley was full of dry, bleached white bones.
Now, this text has wordplay that is lost on us who speak English. Wordplay, games with words. Games are fun, right? The word Spirit, רוּחַ, ruach, in Hebrew occurs ten times in these fourteen verses. However, it is only translated as “Spirit” twice. The other times it is translated as “breath” or “wind.” For the sake of teaching, as I read this text to you, every time I come across the Hebrew word רוּחַ, I will read it as “Spirit.”
The Lord’s solution for Ezekiel problem is for him to preach to these bones. “Prophesy,” preach. We read verses 4–7: “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause [Spirit] to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put [Spirit] in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’ So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.” It is through prophecy, that is, the preaching of God’s Word, that the dry bones are put back together, with sinews and flesh.
You are gathered together here in this place on Pentecost, waiting for the Spirit of God to touch your life. The dry bones are all around us. Those bones made dry and brittle by the sorrows of this life, the sins that warp us, and the years wearing on us. “Then [God] said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off”’ ” (v 11). We are the dry bones.
The Lord’s advice to Ezekiel is the same as to us today. “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord” (v 4). We believe, teach, and confess, “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel” (AC V, Kolb-Wengert, 1–2).
How do you solve the aches and weariness of life? The dryness of trying to run this crazy race in this world. Keep on showing up to church to hear God’s Word. Bring your kids, even if they do not seem to be listening. If you do not get the sermon, listen to it again on YouTube or Facebook. Check out our website and download the sermon manuscript. Call the pastor and ask what he meant if you do not understand a certain segment of it. Why? Because the Spirit comes through preaching.
We see this same thing in the reading from the Book of Acts, the Feast of Pentecost. Once the Spirit comes with the sound of the rushing wind, the flames of fire, all those foreign languages, almost immediately Peter gets up and addresses the crowd. He preaches. He preaches to the dry bones of those who have not yet come to faith in Jesus.
II.
But why care about the Spirit? Look again at the amazing things happening in our Old Testament text. The coming of the Spirit brings restoration.
The message of Christianity is that God sent his Son, Jesus, to this earth to live a perfect life and redeem us. The world is broken. It is lost in sin and hopelessness. We die, we become frail and brittle like these dry bones, but Christ has died for our sins, and he rose again on the third day. Jesus Christ came to redeem the world, and his death and resurrection is a sneak peek as to what will happen to us. Jesus came to redeem the world, and we see what the redeemed creation looks like in the perfect, sinless, resurrected Son of Man.
But we care about the Holy Spirit because if Jesus Christ is the blueprint for restored creation, the Holy Spirit is the builder. The Holy Spirit is the one who delivers that life, that perfection, and that restoration. We see this play out in our Old Testament text, verses 8 through 10: “And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on [those bones], and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no [Spirit] in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the [Spirit]; prophesy, son of man, and say to the [Spirit], Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four [Spirit], O [Spirit], and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the [Spirit] came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”
Likewise, the Lord promises in verses 12 through 14: “Therefore prophesy, and say to them, thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
We are now living in the fulfillment of this promise. The Lord God has placed his Spirit in us, and we are living. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to dwell in the hearts of believers, so that we may be restored from dry bones to living, breathing creatures. That is, those who have been restored and made alive in Christ.
I am sure that you have friends who are on the fence about joining a church, or maybe they’re part of a church but they’re only nominally involved—only participating every once in a while. I think the devil tempts us to believe that being involved with the Church—participating in fellowship, worshiping here each week, attending Bible studies, doing family devotions in our homes—the devil tempts us to believe that these things will turn us from living creatures into dry bones. He says, ‘What is more boring than your local church?’
That is the temptation of young people. Even some adults! A Saturday night party, a weekend camping trip, Sunday morning brunch, Netflix, all of these are more entertaining and, in the eyes of the world, more fulfilling than what goes on here on Sunday and throughout the week.
But the Spirit is in the restoration business. Ezekiel must preach twice to the bones for them to become living again. So for us as well; it takes lifelong applications of the preached Word and Sacraments to have the Spirit work in us to restore us and finally put that meat back on our bones, so to speak. The result will eventually be that the Spirit raises us from our tombs; we will be dry bones no longer.
And so, we find that as the Spirit keeps on presenting this preached message of Jesus dying and rising for us, we are restored little by little every day. We find that our lives are restored bit by bit. Those relationships we thought we might lose are deepened as we grow closer to family—not only as biological family, but also as brothers and sisters in Christ. The hours we spend in prayer and study of God’s Word are given back to us as the Spirit is able to multiply our time and help redirect our priorities to the most needful things. The Spirit uses the preached Word to come to us and breathe into us new life. The final product being a life that has meaning, and a life that’s worth living.
“O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord” (v 4). Celebrate the Holy Spirit, the great restorer, who restored those dry bones, who enlivened the disciples at Pentecost, and is here present even now, making all things new.
The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen!