Pentecost Service
Exordium
“I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to Him.” Those words that begin the explanation of the Catechism’s Third Article of the Creed indicate to us the importance of what we observe this morning.
Our own reason is corrupted. Our first parents sinned. We inherited their sinfulness. We aren’t in a position according to our nature to stand before God in the judgment with a clean conscience. We can’t face Him the way we are by nature; His perfect justice would overwhelm us. We wouldn’t be fit for His kingdom. Our eternal situation would have to be hell’s punishment.
God provided a solution to our problem. Christ lived perfectly for us, and died to pay our price. His Resurrection opens the door for a resurrection of our own, and an ascension of our own to God’s eternal kingdom. God definitely wants us. That isn’t the problem. He so loved us that He gathered up ours and all the world’s guilt and put it on His own Son in an exchange—His righteousness for our guilt!
But our corrupt hearts aren’t naturally interested in this salvation. That’s what it means that by our own reason or strength we can’t believe in Jesus or come to Him. By nature, we would convince ourselves that we don’t need God or His saving, that we aren’t really all that bad, or that we can figure out our own way of salvation (that’s what our own reason or strength comes up with).
The next line of the Third Article’s Explanation sets us up for the focus of our festival service this morning: “But the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified, and kept me in the true faith just as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.” God addressed the problem of our hard hearts that would ignore His salvation with the Holy Ghost’s work through the Word and Baptism. We can’t make ourselves believe in God’s love and mercy in Christ; but He can. He comes to us through the ministry of His Word that took on a new urgency on a special day of Pentecost. He teaches us of our need—showing us our sins, and then our Savior Who removed them. See that Savior today, Whom the Holy Ghost proclaims in Word and Sacrament.
We sing together our Exordium hymn: O Light of God’s Most Wondrous Love.
Sermon
Acts 2:1-13
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
We’re going to look a little bit at the hymn again, like we did last week. Our chief hymn was hymn #2—Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord (You can open that it you want to; it’s printed in the bulletin, of course). A couple of words in that first verse that stand out on this Festival of Pentecost: love, and unite. It’s written like a prayer. We’re asking the Holy Ghost to pour out God’s graces.
Whenever we hear that word grace, we’re reminded of why we gather in a place like this on a morning like this. It isn’t that there isn’t anything else to do. We’re here out of need, aren’t we? We need to be here (the word grace implies that). All of us are beneficiaries of undeserved love. We are receiving necessary things here.
God isn’t obligated to any of us. The so-called “Prodigal Son” in Jesus’ parable—as wrong as he was about many things was right in his assessment of his place before his father. He came to such a low point (having blown sinfully all of his early-gotten inheritance), that he determined to go back and say, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. (Luke 15:18-19).”’ Every person born in the natural way is in that same position before God. He requires absolute obedience (He requires that we be perfect like Him). But not one naturally born person is that.
The fact of all of these people gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost illustrates it. They have come from various places speaking various languages. We’re reminded of the Tower of Babel incident in the Old Testament, in which God confused the language of all the earth (Genesis 11). The people were wickedly plotting and scheming. God caused them to be unable to communicate with each other, and to be separated from each other. They divided themselves even further, battling against each other. So much suspicion and hatred exists between nations. It’s hard to imagine what could unify all of those people who live so differently from each other, speak so differently.
The Holy Ghost shows us in our text this morning. God’s love unites people. Thy fervent love to them impart, we ask the Holy Ghost in the hymn.
You might not even remember the time you became aware of God’s love. You might have been an infant held over a Baptismal font, sprinkled with water in the Triune God’s Name. You became aware of it so as to have faith while not even being able to communicate it in an intellectual sense. Or, it might have occurred to you later in life, having heard God’s powerful Word. In either case, you recognized that God loves you despite your sinfulness, because of Jesus. That’s what faith is: knowing (believing) that God loves you because Jesus has taken your guilt upon Himself, put His perfect life in place of your imperfect one—dying for you on a cross, so that you are forgiven. The Holy Ghost is the one Who worked through Baptism or through God’s Word to make you aware of God’s love. He poured out God’s graces upon you—on your mind and heart. He imparted God’s love to you.
In doing so, He united you with Himself. We use that word reconcile sometimes in talking about this. Through Christ’s blood, He brought you back together with Himself. Also, He united you with other people. This love that you share with them unites you. All of those different people on that first New Testament Pentecost—those ones divided from each other by place and by language and culture became united in Christian faith. You, here, this morning are united in that same faith. You have been expressing that unity as you have confessed together the words of the liturgy—the hymns, the Creed, the prayers. You will express it further in the Supper, when you receive together what Christ gives there—His true body and blood along with bread and wine. You need those things; and you’re gathered here together, united in His love—united in faith, to receive them from the Lord.
The second verse of the hymn emphasizes Jesus’ words from our Gospel lesson: the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
A few words in the second verse stand out in this regard: Word, Teach, and faith. This holy Light, Guide Divine (as the hymn writer calls him) is the the One through Whom we can believe in Jesus Christ our Lord, and come to Him. His power to do this is certainly on display in our text (the blowing of a violent wind from heaven, tongues of fire resting on each of those who were gathered). And the clearest demonstration of the Holy Ghost as teacher, as presenter of Christ is His use of Jesus’ apostles to preach His Word. Suddenly, they have power to communicate without the barrier of language. Everything they’re saying is being understood, though these who are present couldn’t speak to each other so as to be understood (at least in the languages of their homes). The Holy Ghost has made God’s Word available in this way.
But it’s more than that. That Word is a special word. It’s the Word that the Holy Ghost uses to perform an otherwise impossible task—getting sinners who naturally fight God to humble themselves before Him and receive from Him the mercy that He wants more than anything to give them. You’re here this morning because the Holy Ghost worked that miracle in your heart through the Word. He taught you to know your God aright, and call Him Father with delight. This is the faith that makes forgiveness yours, that brings you from eternal punishment and death to eternal life.
The hymn writer reminds us of the end of the Pentecost text when he says,
From ev’ry error keep us free. Let none but Christ our Master be. St. Luke records: Some, however, made fun of [the evangelizing apostles] and said, “They have had too much wine.”
The Holy Ghost works powerfully through God’s Word whenever it is preached. It always has the potential to bring blessing to its hearers. But it must find willing hearers if this is to be the case. Jesus talked about the seed of His Word being sown in places in which it could not bear fruit (Matthew 13). What a sad thing it is when God gathers His people together that He might pour out His necessary blessings to them, and His potent Word doesn’t find willing ears to hear it. Not a single one of us is without guilt in this; whether we got bored or distracted, interested in other things. Maybe it was that we had a problem with the speaker of the message, or with someone else who was hearing it with us. Maybe we had allowed other things in this world to become more important to us than God’s Word, and closed our ears to it. Maybe, for a time, we even became scoffers like those in the text who considered the Spirit-filled message of God’s Word to be nothing more important than the babbling of drunkards.
In the third verse the hymn writer makes it our prayer that the Holy Ghost impart to us strength in our weakness. His strengthening of us comes in the form of Him continually putting Christ before us. He’s the One Who did for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. His perfect hearing of God’s Word removes from the record forever your neglect of it. When He said, He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Matthew 11:15), it wasn’t just words; it was what He was accomplishing for you as part of His perfect obedience. So then, when He took your punishment for sins, dying in your place, it truly made the payment. It bought your forgiveness. It made you able to say with confidence in the hymn: Through life and death to Thee, our Lord, ascend. In your guilt over neglecting God’s Word and over every other sin, see Christ as your solution.
See it because the Holy Ghost is showing it to you by means of God’s Word. Sent by Christ after His ascension, the Holy Ghost on Pentecost prepared Christ’s followers to proclaim Him to the world in an outpouring of God’s graces. That Word is powerful on your lips too, when the Holy Ghost gives you opportunity to share it with someone who might, through hearing and believing, be united with God and His people in His love. Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.
This Week’s Other Lesson:
St. John 14:23-31
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.
“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.