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.

Acts 1:1-11

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles He had chosen. After His suffering, He showed Himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while He was eating with them, He gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift My Father promised, which you have heard Me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

So when they met together, they asked Him, “Lord, are You at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid Him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.”

This is the Sunday on which we observe Jesus’ ascension. We referred to it when we confessed the Creed last Sunday. We said, [Jesus] ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From there He shall come to judge the living and the dead. We’re going to be looking quite a bit at the hymn we’ve just sung—#388. You might be interested in having that open during this time.

Hail the day that sees him rise to his throne above the skies!—our hymn begins. The disciples were looking intently up into the sky as He was going because it was a very unusual sight! Three of the disciples had seen the Transfiguration—that had demonstrated to them Christ’s glory (the same clearly present here). But forgive them if they needed to pause and take in this most unexpected moment. The angel’s question: Why do you stand here looking into the sky?—isn’t to say they shouldn’t have been surprised by it as much as to say, What’s the point of laboring over this thing you’ve seen? You’ve seen Him do other amazing things, too. It’s time to get on with the mission for which the Lord has trained you these three years.

The mission is to proclaim this King of Heaven Who has now ascended to His throne above the skies. His kingly entrance on Palm Sunday had been a foreshadowing of a sort. He wasn’t to be what many in the crowd thought Him to be. He wasn’t going to ascend to a throne in a worldly kingdom (My kingdom is not of this world, He would tell Pilate—John 18:36). He would ascend to a throne above the skies.

And the hymn writer reminds us in this first verse what a dramatic rise this has been. This heavenly king is the Lamb for sinners giv’n. John the Baptist had called Him the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). He is the one native to heaven, Who became by choice the sacrificial Lamb paying the price for all sinners (sent because God so loved the world—John 3:16). He stands in their place, convicted of their crimes, taking their punishment—taking your punishment, too.

The hymn writer quotes Psalm 24 in the beginning of the 2nd verse: Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in (Psalm 24:7). The disciples might have wondered for a moment just what they were seeing, with Jesus ascending up beyond the clouds. What they were seeing was the return of the King to His throne on high.

He had laid aside His godly glory for a time, using it only in certain moments out of compassion, and to demonstrate who He was. He had reclaimed His glory after rising from the dead. But still, for forty days He was appearing and disappearing from the disciples’ presence. He was preparing them to receive the Spirit—the gift My Father promised, which you have heard Me speak about, as He says in our text. He wasn’t yet fully exalted. His ascension to the Father’s right hand in the kingdom is that. That’s the glorious triumph that awaits. The heavenly kingdom takes this King of glory in, now that He has conquered death and sin. He has conquered it by living a life of complete obedience, and then by taking that flawless life, and offering it up as the payment for all other peoples’ flawed lives. His rising from death has been a defeating of death for all. So, He returns now to heaven, with His work accomplished.

But these disciples who witness this sight shouldn’t see it as their Lord abandoning them. When the hymn writer says, Yet He loves the earth He leaves, and, Still He calls mankind His own, he refers, probably, to Jesus’ glorious words, I go to prepare a place for you, and, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also (John 14:3). That word harbinger that comes up in the hymn, in verse 5 means that Jesus appears in His kingdom first, to be followed by all believers—by you and me. Those words about preparing a place for his disciples aren’t the words of someone who’s abandoning them. Those words are spoken by the most faithful of friends. His ascending from this world into His kingdom is for their eternal good.

Our Catechism talks about what Jesus does at the right hand of God in His kingdom. You might have wondered about that (what is He doing up there?). It says that He–also according to His human nature–rules in divine glory over all things for the benefit of His Church.

Included in that is that He is interceding for us, Paul writes (Romans 8:34). It’s hard to even imagine the significance of that, isn’t it? He’s pleading our case before the Father—His prevailing death He pleads—the hymn writer says. He’s reminding the Father that all sins are atoned for in His blood. That’s why Paul says, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). See, He shows the prints of love—prints, like scars from where the nails pierced His hands as He died for our sins, I think is what the hymn writer means by that statement.

When the hymn writer talks about us remaining with Him there, partners of [His] endless reign, we’re certainly reminded about Paul referring to believers as heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). There Thy face unclouded see—St. John said something in his first letter that these words certainly refer to: Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2).

If you imagine yourself among the disciples who were present on that day on which Jesus ascended into heaven, it should occur to you what Jesus would be wanting you to take away from that sight. In the text, when Jesus and His disciples have met together here for this last time, they ask Him, “Lord, are You at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Now, this at least seems to indicate an ongoing misunderstanding on their part as to what Jesus’ plan all along has been (even though He has told them several times that He is going to the Father). Their looking intently up into the sky could be explained by this confusion. It’s a reminder of the need that we have as ones who have inherited our parents’ sinful nature. Jesus had described the people of Jerusalem as harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36). It describes us too, according to that nature. We needed Jesus to be (in the hymn writer’s words) harbinger of human race. We needed Him to prepare our way, and to lead us to God’s eternal kingdom, because reaching it was impossible for us otherwise. We need Him still for us to intercede, pleading His prevailing death—making His righteousness to be what God sees in us rather than our sinfulness.

It is what He sees, you know. The sins that bother you; they have been removed in Christ. You’re forgiven for them. You need not dwell on them anymore. If you imagine yourself among the disciples who were present on that day, you don’t look intently up into the sky in confusion or uncertainty; you look there in anticipation of what you are to inherit on whatever day God has in mind. It is yours because your Savior is there, and has prepared it for you. He is working there continually for you, as the One Who calls you His own.

Let us pray [from Laache, p.148]: O Lord, You are seated at the right hand of majesty in heaven, to save us forever and to make us happy in Your kingdom. Be mindful of this even when we are not mindful of ourselves. Save us powerfully by Your might, and give us heavenly bliss, not for our sakes, but for your own sake. For the kingdom we are to inherit is Yours. Yours is the power to lead us into it. And Yours shall forever be all honor and glory, when we, Your redeemed, shall be happy in Your kingdom. Amen. Hear us, for the sake of Your eternal love and mercy. Amen.

Another Lesson This Week:

St. Mark 16:14-20

Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; He rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen Him after He had risen.

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In My name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was taken up into heaven and took His seat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed His word by the signs that accompanied it.

St. John 16:23-30

[Jesus said,] In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to
you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

“I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.”

We’re still in the Sixteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel (third straight week on this conversation between Jesus and His disciples).

First, we looked at the part in which He talked about the “little while” that they would weep, and lament, and sorrow in His absence (all other believers too, until He returns in glory). He was telling them that, like a mother’s rejoicing at the birth of her child following the pain, believers will rejoice endlessly when that day has come. Then, last week, we looked at His promise of sending the Spirit of truth, the one Who clarifies for them these three things: (1) sin’s significance, (2) where sinners truly find their righteousness (in Christ), and (3) the “innocent” verdict believers in Christ receive in the judgment.

In today’s section of that chapter, Jesus talks about one of the specific things His followers will be doing in this world while they await His return; He talks about prayer. They will pray for their comfort. They will pray as an expression of faith. They will pray in His Name.

For Their Comfort

You might notice the word Rogate on the cover of the bulletin. It means, pray! We might not think of it this way so much, but one of the fathers of the synod ours comes from—the Norwegian synod—talked in a sermon about us being commanded in the Second Commandment to pray. We usually think we break that commandment—You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain—by doing something we’re not supposed to do; using God’s name in a way that dishonors Him. From U.V. Koren’s perspective, though, we break it also by not doing a certain thing we’re supposed to be doing with God’s name, that is: praying.

Jesus certainly is presenting prayer in this text as something believers do. It’s a given to Him that they’ll have things to say to the heavenly Father in prayer.

In Jesus’ conversation with His disciples in our text, He makes clear to them that, He won’t be in their presence anymore in the same way. They won’t be able to come to Him with their needs and concerns like they did in the boat when the waves were tossing them about and they thought they were going to perish, or like in the wilderness, when a hungry crowd was looking to them to provide food. Instead, they will go to the Father in prayer. They will flee for refuge to His infinite mercy, seeking and imploring His grace, as we say in one version of the Confession of Sins. They will be doing it by praying. Though not with Jesus like they’ve known, they will still have audience with God in this way. They can take comfort in having been invited by Him to address to Him their concerns.

That same U.V. Koren we mentioned earlier—in that same sermon, talks about believers having a longing to pray to God. “You never ask people for things you don’t want to have”—he says. We pray because we have needs.

You certainly recognize all sorts of needs that you have. If you’re a parent, you need wisdom in dealing with your children. You need understanding. You need patience. You need forgiveness for the times you think, and say, and do the wrong things. You need peace of mind because so many things worry you about their lives. You want them to be protected from all kinds of harm and danger. You want them to prosper mentally, physically, emotionally. You want them to be people of faith, who fear the true God. And you feel in so many moments in this, helpless, clumsy, incompetent. Jesus tells His disciples in our text (and He tells you) that the Father waits to hear your concerns—this One for Whom nothing is too large, nothing impossible.

As An Expression of Faith

“You never ask people for things you don’t want to have.”—Koren follows it with this: “You don’t ask people from whom you don’t expect anything.” Prayer is an expression of our faith. We pray because we believe, not only that we have needs that even with our best efforts still go unmet, but also that in God our needs are met. There wouldn’t be any point in praying otherwise. We pray because we believe Jesus when He says the Father hears our prayers. We believe Him when He says that we will receive from Him to our joy.

And yet, often our praying amounts more to something we are getting around to doing rather than something we have very faithfully done. We have been “pray-ers” in theory, but not so very often in practice. And it’s important for us to consider what that says about us as believers. Is God the One Who helps us in our need; or must our help come from elsewhere (maybe from ourselves)? The world says you must believe in yourself, you must dig down deep and come up with whatever it is that can solve your problems. God isn’t in the equation for the world.

It isn’t the same for us, is it? That’s not what we believe. That’s certainly not what Jesus is saying in our text. We ask of the Father in our need. If prayer is an expression of faith, then it has to be said—doesn’t it?—that to not pray is to act like an unbeliever. It’s to have had the One Who can truly help inviting us to come to Him for that help, and to have said, “I don’t need it; I don’t want it.”

In His Name

You might have noticed that in our text, Jesus says, in My name a number of times. People wonder sometimes, Why do we do that; why do we say, “In Jesus’ name” at the end of our prayers? It comes from this text.

The answer has to do with what Jesus is preparing in our text to do for His disciples (and for us). In a sense, He has already been doing it: He has been living perfectly in their place in this world—sinless. His work will be complete a short time after our text, when He is betrayed into the hands of sinners, unjustly convicted and sentenced to death, crucified, and entombed. Then, He will have positioned Himself (according to eternal plan) to represent us before the Father. He has made us able to invoke His name before the Father, Who then sees us as never having sinned—Him having been made guilty and punished for all of ours.

We don’t belong before the Father otherwise. Other than in Jesus’ name we have no business there. I wouldn’t want to find out what happens were I to stand before the perfect God in my own name. That name is corrupted. It is soiled. It is wholly unfit to stand before Him. There would be no mercy applied to my name, only just punishment for sins.

But I go before Him in Jesus’ Name. We talked about sins we have as parents (children have a whole list of their own). We talked about the sin that we have of neglecting prayer—ignoring so much of the time God’s invitation to address Him as the One who hears and Who helps. Jesus had no such sins, see. He was a perfect child of His parents, and of His heavenly Father—continually going before Him in prayer in every sort of circumstance. We not only see glimpses of it in Scripture, but knowing Him, we know that how ever many times He did it, it was the perfect amount. He did for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves.

So, when we look back upon the pitifulness of our prayer lives, and upon all of the other ways in which we have fallen short before God, and have earned His wrath and punishment, we don’t despair because our names are attached through Baptism, through faith to a Name that stands before God righteous and having salvation. It’s the Name that has made us righteous through an exchange; He took our sins upon Himself so that we could have His righteousness. We ask the Father in His name, and we receive. We receive to the extent that our joy is full. We anticipate the inheritance of God’s kingdom. The Father loves us for Christ’s sake. He loves you. He forgives you your sins. He forgives you in Jesus’ Name. God be praised. Amen.

Other Lessons from this week:

Jeremiah 29:11-14

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

James 1:22-27

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. 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.

St. John 16:5-15

[Jesus said,] “Now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for 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. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

Our text is all about the importance of knowing the difference between what’s really true and what isn’t. That’s a timely topic, isn’t it?

Jesus will be gone from His disciples soon—in terms of their ability to interact this way with Him. But it’s a good thing, He says here. It’s good because in His place, another will come to them (they won’t be able to interact with Him like this either, but…it’s still a good thing). It’s good because the Helper, or the one Jesus goes on to call the Spirit of truth, Who’s coming, has a specific duty toward them that is to their advantage. The timing works such that He gets sent by Jesus once Jesus has accomplished His work (the dying for people’s sins, the rising from death, the ascending into heaven and so forth).

We confess in the meaning to the Third Article of the Creed, why this person is so important to them.

“I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.

The gifts of the Father that we talk about this morning (you might have seen those words on the cover of the bulletin) are the Spirit of truth (Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, the third person of the Triune God), and the Word of God that He uses to bring us to faith, and to keep that faith alive unto eternal life (also the Sacraments that are powered by that Spirit and Word).

Sin, righteousness, and judgment are the things Jesus says will be the Spirit’s points of focus as He guides people into all the truth—Sin, righteousness, and judgment.

Sin

We don’t like very much to hear about sin. When we confess in the Third Article’s Meaning, that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe, we’re referring to our fallen nature. We’re referring to our having inherited sinfulness from our first parents.

• We don’t want to be told what to do and not do.

• We don’t want to be made to feel guilty for having done anything wrong.

• We don’t want there to be a certain way that we have to be according to God.

• We don’t want to be held accountable for keeping God’s laws as presented in the Bible.

• Certainly, when we see the world getting more and more okay with things that go against God’s laws (things we might secretly like), then we don’t want to be pulled back and told, yes, but God’s laws still apply like they always did.

What a drag!—our sinful nature thinks. We don’t like very much to hear about sin.

The Spirit of truth is the one God has sent to stand on that Word, and say to the world what Jesus said, …until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished (Matthew 5:18). When people are in a burning building, it doesn’t matter if the people inside say, Yeah, but I don’t want the building to be burning; it doesn’t matter if they say, Yeah, but I don’t believe the building is burning. They need to get out if they want to survive. The Spirit of truth, on the one hand, convicts us of sin. He confronts us with God’s Law that exposes us, exposes our guilt. He convinces us that our guilt needs to have a solution; we can’t just decide we don’t mind having guilt. That won’t end well for us; hell is the end for that.

If the Spirit’s work bears the desired fruit in us, we have come to recognize our guilt, and to want nothing more than to have a solution that will remove it from us, remove the just punishment for that guilt. The Spirit of truth convicts us in regard to sin.

Righteousness

Righteousness is the next point of focus for the Spirit of truth. How do sinners become righteous, become what they need to be in order to escape guilt’s penalty?  The first thing the Spirit has to address is something that comes along with our sinful nature; that is, the thought that we can save ourselves.

Fewer and fewer today believe there even is a God to whom they are accountable. They see themselves as perfectly good people, and don’t give a thought to any sort of punishment waiting in their future. The Spirit is busy convicting them of sin, like we were talking about earlier. He works to rid them of this delusion before it’s too late.

For you, who believe there’s a God to whom you’re accountable, the Spirit’s work is aimed more at your tendency to compare yourself to other people, and think God certainly isn’t going to bother me about anything when others around are so much worse. The Spirit’s convicting of you is teaching you how you’re wrong about righteousness when your fallen nature is thinking in this way, and about what it really means to be that—to be righteous. He might point you to the words of the Psalmist: Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you (143:2). Or Isaiah: We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment (64:6). Jesus addressed this when someone asked what good he must do to have eternal life. He said, There is only one who is good (Matthew 19:17). Of course, that one is God Himself. Only a person who has God’s righteousness as his own escapes the just punishment for sins, attains eternal life.

God’s righteousness is available for you to have as your own through faith in the Christ. Believing that God has made you righteous in Him gives you ownership of that righteousness. Believing that His sacrifice on the cross was for you—so that you can be righteous before God makes the righteousness your own. Jesus doesn’t have any false notion of saving Himself like you have; He doesn’t need any saving. He has taken the guilt of your sin of self-righteousness on Himself, being punished for it so that you are given His true righteousness in exchange. That means you’re forgiven of that and every other sin. You are made fit for God’s eternal kingdom because of what Christ has done for you. The Spirit of truth convicts us in regard to righteousness.

Judgment

The Spirit of truth has one more topic to address: judgment. That can be a word that makes us uneasy. We envision charges being read, a guilty suspect waiting for the judge’s verdict, the judge preparing to hand the verdict down. Do you ever worry about this? Do you think about the sins of your youth (or of more recent days)? There are things I would imagine that all of us think about (unless I’m different from all of you, because I certainly have things).

And the devil likes that we have those things. He likes that we revisit them in our minds, regretting them anew from time to time. His hope is that you think, God is certainly very good; but He can’t be so good that He would let that slide. And the devil wants you to think, these are good Christian people who are gathered here this morning. I don’t belong here. I don’t measure up to this.

The Spirit’s work is in a very tender area now. He puts Christ before your eyes. Look what He has done for you! He stood waiting for the judge’s verdict (this innocent One did!). What was given as the list of sins for which He must die are those sins of yours—the ones you revisit, the ones you regret anew over and over again. They’re already taken care of. He wanted to do it. He died for them. He rose again to life, defeating death and sin. You won’t have them read as your sins again in the Judgment; they’ve already been read and done away with. Read as your verdict will be the word innocent. You are that through faith in Christ. Let that be the end of your uneasiness. God’s mercy is yours in Christ. You know the difference between what’s really true and what isn’t; the Spirit of truth has told you. You are a sinner. Christ is your righteousness. You are thereby innocent in the judgment. God be praised. Amen.

Isaiah 12:1-6

You will say in that day: “I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: “Give thanks to the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

James 1:16-21

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every
person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

St. John 16:16-23

[Jesus said], “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” So some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?” So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.” Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.

“When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.”

You will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice—Jesus says to His disciples in our text. He has just washed their feet on Maundy Thursday. He hasn’t yet been arrested. Soon, He will be gone from them (at least so as they have known). 

And that’s just the latest of the troubling news He has given them. Before this, He’s been saying that the world will hate them on His account (John 15:18). They’ll put them out of the synagogues. They’ll even think killing them is offering a service to God (16:1-2). 

Maybe this portrayal of the world as hostile to Jesus’ followers is surprising to you. You might think, Oh, that’s a little dramatic, isn’t it? Maybe you don’t feel like you’ve experienced that sort of hostility as a result of being Jesus’ follower. St. Peter might have seen Jesus as being a little dramatic in this way. In an account from Matthew’s Gospel Jesus starts telling Peter and the others of all that’ll be happening to Him shortly in Jerusalem—the suffering, and the killing, and the rising from death. And Peter takes Him aside and says, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (16:22). Could Jesus really cause that level of offense? Could He really get people riled up that badly?

It does seem strange. The message that we believe doesn’t seem like it should be so offensive. 

• God created people.

• They sinned and separated themselves from Him to their harm.

• He loved them so much that He laid down His life in order that they might be with Him eternally.

• He isn’t going to require that they pay the cost for sinning; He has paid it with His own blood instead.

Why should anyone be so offended at that?

And you might be thinking, all this talk about weeping, and lamenting, and being sorrowful; are things really all that bad? Jesus had responded to Peter’s rebuke of Him with a rebuke of His own: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16:23).  

In a way, Jesus was saying to him, you’re trying to make this less serious than it is. Things really are all that bad. In fact, they’re so bad, that solving them will take God dying for you.

That idea of trying to make things less serious than they really are; that’s a temptation that’s common to all of us. On this Mother’s Day, we recall our tendency to spin our disobedience into something that, by the time we’re done with it, sounds like it might be something resembling a certain form of obedience. I might not have done exactly as you asked, Mom; but what I did actually brought about the result I think you were looking for anyway (which is my happiness). So, no harm actually done…right? You’re welcome!

Our sinful nature is forever engaged in this sort of negotiation with God. He says in the conscience and in His Word that our absolute corruption required payment in the form of His innocent Son’s death—things can’t be any worse; our sinful nature says, well, it seems that way on the surface, maybe; but actually, when you really think about it, I’m able to be a pretty good person. It really isn’t as bad as all that. And as long as the sinful nature is winning that battle, we are able to look at the big picture of this world without all of the weeping, and lamenting, and being sorrowful. And that can be really appealing to us. We can just kind of ignore the price of our sins and the battle that continues between us and the devil for the duration of this fallen world.

But just as empty and worthless is our spin to our mothers about our disobedience actually being the cause of goodness, so is our imagination of a goodness in us that makes Christ’s sacrifice unnecessary (so is our imagination of us in a world free of the corruption that caused His death, free of the corruption that brings the world’s hatred upon faithful followers of that Savior). If the world isn’t hating us, then Jesus didn’t know what He was talking about in our text with all of the weeping, and lamenting, and being sorrowful. As those who know Christ, who know our sins that brought about His sacrifice on the cross (our school kids talk about this every day as they recite blessed are the poor in spirit in their chapel liturgy); as those who know the ongoing power of our sin that threatens to separate us from Him forever, we live in this world as ones who most ardently anticipate the next world. In our best moments (the Spirit-led ones) we aren’t thinking up ways to spin our unrighteousness into actually being some sort of righteousness; rather, in our despair, we're clinging to Christ’s righteousness that brings God’s forgiveness, and that promises to us a resurrection to glory with Him eternally.

And Jesus describes this anticipation in a way that couldn’t be more apropos for Mother’s Day. He compares the believer’s anticipation of His kingdom to a mother giving birth to her beloved child. The corruption that sin has brought on this world is present in the proceedings. It’s there in the pain of labor. She has sorrow because her hour has come—Jesus says. God had foretold this pain that comes as the result of sin. To Eve he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16). 

But the pain isn’t to be forever. When she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world—Jesus says in our text. And He compares that to what His disciples will experience, and really what all believers will experience in this world. You haven’t really helped yourself in those moments in which you imagined that things are less serious than they really are, in those moments in which you imagined that sin hasn’t really brought weeping, and lamenting, and sorrowing, that somehow you can spin your unrighteousness into righteousness. All of that sort of thinking is empty and worthless. It comes from the nature that is utterly corrupted. 

The believer’s sorrow is turned into true joy in the One Who says in the text, I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. This is the one Who never needs unrighteousness to be massaged into righteousness, to be spun into righteousness. He already has it. So when He is considered by God to be your righteousness, nothing more is needed. It could never be said of you, that you were wholly obedient to your mother; but the Bible does say it of Him (Luke 2:51). His blood has bought your forgiveness. You are forgiven in Him.

A little while we wait in this world. We have joys here; there’s no question about it. Many of us are blessed to recall joy that God has brought to us through the loving service of our mothers. He has been kind to us through their kindness. He has provided for our needs through their provision that was too often unthanked. Our mothers represent to us the love and caring that Jesus is expressing to His disciples in our text. They remind us of His great love for us. They remind us of what is expressed in our Old Testament lesson: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

We wait quietly a little while for the salvation of the Lord. As those forgiven in Christ’s blood, we anticipate the end of our weeping, and lamenting, and sorrowing that give way to eternal rejoicing at His side. Amen.

Lamentations 3:18-26

My endurance has perished;  so has my hope from the LORD.” Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the Salvation of the LORD.

1 Peter 2:11-20 

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. 

Palm Sunday/Matthew 21:1-9 

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.” This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,

“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

Presumably, many of the Good Friday “Crucify Him!—shouters” are also these Palm Sunday “Hosanna to the Son of David!—shouters”. It seems astonishing, doesn’t it?—that in five days they will go from, We love this guy!—to, We gotta to kill this guy!—even shouting out things like, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25)! How could it happen?

We’re going to look at 

1. What they thought they knew about Jesus, and then:

2. What they came later to think they knew about Jesus, and then, finally:

3. What all people really need to know about Jesus.

What they thought they knew about Jesus

Hosanna to the Son of David!—is a very specific greeting. When Mary learned she would be the Savior’s mother, the angel said to her, And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32b-33). Saying his father David meant He was from David’s ancestral line. It was a reference to prophecies like from Jeremiah (23:5-6):

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’ (Jeremiah 23:5-6). 

Jeremiah’s words, at least in one sense, were a prophecy of the Messiah, of God’s anointed Savior that He was sending for sinners. What the people thought they knew about Jesus, was that He was this one Whom Old Testament prophets had talked about; He was this Righteous Branch, this king, this Savior. 

They thought they knew this about Him because of what He was doing. The prophet Isaiah had said that when this anointed individual came, he would bring good news—joyful news of freedom from captivity for those who were brokenhearted (who knew they were on the outs with God because of their sins, is what he meant). The Psalmist had talked about Him providing justice for the oppressed, feeding the hungry, opening the eyes of the blind (146). They had seen Jesus doing these things, including unimaginable miraculous signs (He’d brought Lazarus back from the dead recently—John 11:42-44). Certainly this was the one they’d been waiting for, they thought. In fact, St. John records a couple of instances of people saying that sort of thing: “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world” (6:14)!—and, “This really is the prophet” (7:40)!

On Palm Sunday, they were sort of following the script of our Old Testament lesson. As this king was coming, righteous, having salvation, they were rejoicing greatly, they were shouting aloud in praise of Him. 

And as long as He would fulfill their expectations…they would be set to go on praising Him. Their praise was based on what they thought they knew about Jesus.

What they came later to think they knew about Jesus

For many of the people, evidently, what they’d imagined Jesus to be, and what He turned out to be were two different things. For one thing, they’d imagined a king who would have a kingdom like David’s kingdom. Like Jeremiah’s prophecy had said, he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. 

Those words have the sound of the kind of kingdom that would be in this world (though, Jesus would say to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world”—John 18:36). If words like Jeremiah’s had become detached in their minds from God’s promise to Adam and Eve, and to Abraham, and so on, of Him sending a savior from sin, then it’s imaginable that people had attached a worldly sort of interpretation to the Messiah’s kingdom, come to think of Him as having a kingdom of this world. 

There’s a hint of this sort of expectation in the account of the feeding of the 5,000, that we looked at a few weeks ago—in the crowd that saw the miracle, and then determined to take Jesus, and make Him king by force (John 6:15). Also, it was implied in some of the things the disciples said, like at the ascension: 

…they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” His disciple Thomas had said to Him another time, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” At least to some extent, even the disciples evidently imagined a king who would have a kingdom like David’s kingdom, here on earth.

Also, quite frankly, they’d imagined a winner. On this day in Jerusalem, riding in kingly fashion (as King Solomon had once done—on a donkey, no less—1 Kings 1:38), put together with everything else, they could see it; Jesus had that appearance. They couldn’t wait to see what might come next. Would there be a battle of some sort? Who knew? They certainly expected Jesus would overcome, though, whatever was to happen (of course, He would overcome; but it wouldn’t really look that way for some time, with the disciples in despair over their master’s death). 

We’d asked how it could happen that “Hosanna!—shouters” could so quickly turn to “Crucify Him!—shouters”. There’s an incident in John’s Gospel: Jesus had been saying some things that were difficult for the people to understand. At a certain point, it says, After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him [speaking of a larger group of followers, not the twelve] (6:66). They’d become disillusioned. Jesus wasn’t who they’d thought Him to be, they’d determined.

Well, a number of turbulent things happened on Holy Week. The next thing Matthew records after this Palm Sunday text is Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple (overturning the money-changer’s tables and so forth). It was for good reason, as He explained, but we can imagine it left an impression with people. Shortly after, Matthew mentions again, Jesus’ authority being challenged by the chief priests and elders of the people—the peoples’ religious leaders (the people were seeing that, too). Jesus’ messages had gotten more provocative, with Him saying things like, Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits (Matthew 21:43). He preached stunning law—not only to scribes and Pharisees, but to Jerusalem—to the ones of that generation, telling parables of people being excluded from the kingdom. In the days immediately following this Palm Sunday entrance, the “Hosanna—shouters” were processing a lot of information, taking in a lot of things—things that informed what they later came to think they knew about Jesus, including, for many, the religious leaders’ assertion that He was a fraud.

So, the people had thought Jesus to be the prophet who was to come into the world, but perhaps (for many) more of an earthly leader than a savior from sin. A short time later, many would evidently become convinced to the contrary. Many would become offended by Him, as He’d cautioned John’s disciples not to do (Matthew 11:6).

What all people really need to know about Jesus

Our hymn really does a pretty good job of setting out the important issues. The statement, 

“O Savior meek, pursue Thy road” 

—from the first verse reminds us of St. Luke’s statement about Jesus: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (9:51). Luke meant, He started to bring to completion what His life and ministry had been entirely about—dying on a cross outside of Jerusalem for the world’s sins. We’re reminded also of Jesus’ statement: No one takes [My life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (John 10:18). This goes well with the hymn writer’s poetry in verse 3 as well: 

“The angel armies of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice.”

When we’re talking about what people really need to know about Jesus, the word sacrifice is a must-mention. And along with it, the fact of it being a willing sacrifice. It’s a sacrifice planned in eternity, promised in the Garden of Eden to the first sinners, foreshadowed in Old Testament worship. The innocent blood of this “Lamb of God” stands in the place of every sinner. 

It stands in your’s and my place too. We might say that the Palm Sunday shouters ultimately wanted Jesus to be something other than He was. They wanted more than the Savior meek pursuing His road, than the approaching sacrifice. They wanted a more satisfying existence in this world. They weren’t interested in Jesus if He wasn’t going to be that for them. It was simple worldliness, wasn’t it? It was clinging to this life and this world. Aren’t you guilty of that too? Isn’t that the greatest danger that stands between you and heaven? 

Jesus sure thought so. He talked about it during Holy Week in some of His most well-known parables. He told the Parable of the Wedding Feast in which invited guests chose other interests over the master’s heavenly invitation. He told the parable of the Ten Virgins in which five are focused on being included in the kingdom, and the others haven’t been interested enough to be prepared. Jesus talked about it because every sinner clings to this world and this life, demonstrating even a tendency to choose it over the next life. The devil stands ready with accusations of this for every sinner.

But the One Who rides in our text has silenced those accusations. The devil has no opportunity to make them because One has prioritized God’s kingdom above all else without fail on your behalf. It’s like your clinging to this life and this world over God’s eternal kingdom never happened because the road the meek Savior in our text pursued led to the cross and grave. It led there so that He might (as the hymn writer says):

“Bow [His] head to mortal pain.”

What all people really need to know about Jesus, is that God has forgiven their sins in Him. He has forgiven your sins in Him. You sing Hosanna this morning to the Savior who pursued the cross and grave for you so that in Him you now have eternal life. God be praised. Amen.

St. John 10:11-16

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

Our Old Testament lesson from Ezekiel illustrates all peoples’ spiritual situation. On the surface it looks like the people in the text had gotten what their deeds deserved. God had allowed their enemies to overcome them in their own place, and take them to a far off land against their will. Certainly, He would wash His hands of them, now. That’s what you and I have wanted for people who’ve wronged us, isn’t it; that we turn the page and move on? 

We’re like that; is God? 

It seems like He might be if we read earlier in the book of Ezekiel. God was so angry with His people that He said this:

On account of your unclean lewdness, because I would have cleansed you and you were not cleansed from your uncleanness, you shall not be cleansed anymore till I have satisfied my fury upon you. 14 I am the Lord. I have spoken; it shall come to pass; I will do it. I will not go back; I will not spare; I will not relent; according to your ways and your deeds you will be judged, declares the Lord God” (24:13, 14).

And that seems to make sense to us in a certain way. You do the crime, you do the time. It’s justice. The way God is, it makes sense. The way He made everything to be, it makes sense. We grow up in our parents’ houses with rules. If we break them, there’s a consequence (our parents’ authority is established by God too). We’re warned in Paul’s letter to the Romans, that the government doesn’t bear the sword for nothing. If we do wrong, we should be afraid of that authority (13:4). Sin has consequences. It has wages, the Bible says (Romans 6:23).

Even after that sternness, however, some time later God told His prophet Ezekiel to say to the people:

As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?

I speak to a room full of sinners who have daily broken God’s Commandments (I see one in the mirror too). When we look in our texts for this morning (having come here to know God, and to number ourselves among His people), we want to see what kind of God He is. What we see is that He isn’t the kind who casually turns the page on sinners. What a comfort that is for us. No doubt, you have been troubled over your sins. I invite you to see this morning, the God Who presents Himself as the Good Shepherd.

He’d already been talking about Himself this way in Old Testament times, in the time—even—of the Babylonian Captivity (the 70-year exile of His people from Jerusalem, the time He drove them away by the hand of their enemies). Even as He was issuing the sternest of rebukes (as we read earlier), of condemnations for their waywardness, He was speaking tenderly to the terrified sinners in them, the poor in spirit, who would in some moment regret the evil and return to Him for His mercy. 

Through the prophet Ezekiel’s words, He presents a picture of Himself as the one whose job it is to care for the most helpless of creatures. Like sheep, His people are helpless without Him. They’ve already demonstrated their tendency to do the most self-destructive things. They have wandered away from His protection and His mercy to be counseled according to the wisdom of this world, and to take part in the wickedness that comes along with that counsel. 

And when God (through the prophet) talks about what they need now, He uses the word rescue. He talks about seeking them out, gathering them, bringing them back, binding up their wounds, strengthening them, feeding them, causing them to lie down (in comfort and safety like sheep in a meadow is what that means). And even with that harshness that we heard earlier, with God so angry about their sins that He seems almost to run out of ways to say how angry He is, He comes back around to talking like this, to talking like the shepherd who can’t bear to lose anyone from His flock.

And when Jesus—in our text—wants to demonstrate to His listeners just how much He cares about them, He brings up this same imagery, of Him as the shepherd who cares for His flock. 

The flock isn’t a perfect flock; He knows that. He speaks to a group of sinners who have daily broken God’s Commandments. They share the same sinful nature with those to whom God was speaking through the prophet in our Old Testament lesson. They have wandered away from His protection and His mercy to be counseled according to the wisdom of this world, and to take part in the wickedness that comes along with that counsel. As He speaks to them about laying down His life for the sheep, He isn’t trying to impress them by talking big about something he’ll never really have to carry out. He’s giving the details of a rescue plan fashioned in eternity. He will literally give His life for theirs. St. Peter talks about it in our epistle lesson with it having by that time happened: Christ also suffered for you….He Himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. This Good Shepherd puts Himself in front of the wolf who attacks the flock so that He might be torn to pieces instead of them.

Is God the kind of God who casually turns the page on His people? No. He turns the page on Himself instead. He gives His own life instead. 

He spoke to sinners through the prophet Ezekiel in that prophet’s day, to the same sinners through Jesus in His office as prophet in His day. He speaks to the same sinners today, even this very morning in this sanctuary. He speaks to people who are as guilty as any sinners of any time. He speaks to people who must admit their own ears that strain toward the wisdom of this world’s counselors. The people of Ezekiel’s day weren’t some kind of monsters; they were just people. They knew the true God, but also liked a lot of the ideas they were hearing apart from Him. They liked the feeling of being accepted by others who weren’t interested in God. There were so many alternatives, after all. Our first mother Eve was being tempted by the serpent in the same way. 

The people of Ezekiel’s time might not have thought of themselves as being in need of being rescued by God, of being sought out, gathered, bound up, fed, brought back, strengthened (that’s how it often is). They’d been deceived, and were thinking of themselves as enlightened, in a new way of thinking. Meanwhile, from God’s perspective their situation was so dire that the only way to reach them was with the severest discipline aimed at driving at least some of them to the point of repentance.

When you are at that point in consideration of your sins, you are in a very good place. It’s painful. You would rather not have to endure it. But it’s by God’s grace that He has brought you to this humble state. It’s the point at which you rejoice when you hear the words of your Savior in our text: I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He’s the One Who never wandered like you have, never sought any peace or satisfaction or goodness apart from the source of all it—never flirted around with this world’s wisdom and accompanying pursuits, so His perfect life is laid down for your spoiled one. And it suffices.

When you think of your sins that bother you, that make you even question whether God might be at the point of turning the page on you, think of how He presents Himself in these lessons. He is the Good Shepherd who pursues the sheep of His flock—not to harm them in some way, not to punish them—to restore them to His side. He seeks them out that they might be with Him in His eternal kingdom. He lays down His life to remove their guilt—to remove your guilt, to remove the punishment that it brings. He puts it on Himself instead. He forgives your sins. God be praised. Amen.

St. Mark 16:1–8

Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they said to themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?” But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away—for it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go and tell His disciples— and Peter—that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.” And they went out quickly and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Dear Worshippers having come on this Resurrection Day to behold the risen Christ:

A young man in Jesus’ tomb says to the women who’ve come there to finish anointing His body: You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. And then He says something even more important after that. We’re going to talk about 

1. What the women had been hoping to see

2. What they saw

3. Why it’s good that they saw what they saw

What the women had been hoping to see

Occupied is what they’d been hoping to see. Strange as that may seem, that’s what Mary, Mary, and Salome had been hoping to see—Jesus’ tomb occupied. They had a job to do. It was a task of devotion. Three days before, they’d seen the head wagging, heard the mocking of passers-by. They’d beheld for themselves the three hours of mid-day darkness (these things that happened when Jesus was crucified). They’d heard Jesus’ cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? —(and the one He did as He breathed His last—Mark 15:34). They’d heard the moved centurion’s words: Truly this man was the Son of God (Mark 15:39)!” 

We know they’d seen and heard it all, because Mark tells us that in His Gospel account (15:40,41). These women who had followed Him (along with many other women) and provided valued service to Him had seen the end that even most of his closest disciples didn’t see because they’d fled in fear (as prophecy had foretold they would—Zechariah 13:7; Psalm 38:11).

St. Mark carefully tells us that the women had seen Jesus’ life’s end, and then also, that they were there to see what happened with His body. They’d seen Joseph of Arimathea transport Jesus’ corpse to a tomb, against which he had rolled a stone across the entrance. The women had seen enough to know what still needed to be done with Jesus’ body according to customs (there hadn’t been adequate time as the Sabbath approached). They only wondered, now, as they walked along the road, on this third day after His death, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

Consider the profound sadness in their hoping to see an occupied tomb (they hoped the body would be there!). 

It isn’t that they’d hoped He’d die, of course. What one of the disciples said later, sums up what these women were thinking too: We had hoped that He was the one to redeem Israel (24:21). They’d hoped beyond hope that He’d live. They’d hoped none of the things they’d seen happen would happen—Him arrested, beaten, mocked, falsely accused and condemned, crucified, buried. But it had happened. And now, these women had a job to do, a task of devotion. In order to carry it out, occupied is what they were hoping to see—Jesus’ body there in the tomb. They would do it, and then get on with their lives.

What they saw

Unoccupied is what they saw. Imagine yourself standing on the road with them. You’ve just been discussing the large stone that covers and seals the entrance to the tomb. That wasn’t nothing. Really; How were they going to remove it? Somehow they’d get it open. But you’re with them. And you look up, and…it’s gone. 

It’s what they’d wanted (for the stone to be removed so they could do their job), and now also, considering what they were hoping to find, we might imagine that it’s the source (at least for a moment) of an anxious, sinking feeling. But one might ask them: could things really be any worse than what they’d left a few days before, and what they’d been hoping to find now? Could whatever it meant that the stone was removed be worse than this One they’d hoped would redeem Israel being dead? It just underscores the dismay, the sadness in this whole thing, doesn’t it? 

So, you’re with them. You’ve seen that the sealed stone over the entrance of the tomb has been removed. You go in with them. And it’s evident from the Gospel accounts, that even now, what the women wanted to find there was Jesus’…body. St. John records that Mary Magdalene said to someone she thought was the Gardiner, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”(20:15). 

It’s hard to imagine what they were thinking, isn’t it? They were still so devoted to Jesus. They never devolved into skepticism, concluding Him to be a fraud like the Chief Priests and elders had said (at least we don’t see it). Here’s a stunning thought: Did they think there was certain evil in this world that even God can’t overcome, before which even His anointed one was helpless? Jesus had told a parable about wicked servants killing the son (the heir) so that they could have his inheritance (Matt 21:38). Could it really be true that that could happen, without God being able to do anything about it (imagine the hopelessness in that thought!)? With that in mind, what sadness even in seeing the tomb unoccupied. Whoever had removed the stone, and whatever had happened to the body; it was still just that—the dead body of their Lord.

Occupied is what they’d been hoping to see—the body there, for them to fulfill their task of devotion. Unoccupied is what they saw—the body missing (and even that to their dismay).

Why it’s good that they saw what they saw

Glorified is what the Easter morning sight means. You continue into the tomb with the women, and you see a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right side. They were alarmed. We can understand that, can’t we? St. Matthew says that this one’s appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. The guards trembled like dead men in his presence. He calls him an angel (28:3-5). 

So you, along with these women look to the angel; and he says to you, You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. Well, he was right about that. Everything they’d done and said up to this point indicated that. And what they had in that—in seeking Jesus, who was crucified—was sadness and fear. 

How could He really have been who John the Baptist said He was if He isn’t alive; how could He be the one Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29)? How could He have been who He had said He was if He isn’t alive; how could He be the light of the world who leads His followers to have the light of life (John 8:12)? If He isn’t alive, how could He be the Christ, who proclaims of Himself, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven (Matthew 26:64).” If He isn’t alive those words are every bit as fraudulent and offensive as the High Priest and his court considered them to be. 

One who can’t defeat death for himself can’t defeat it for you. If that’s the case, then, as St. Paul writes: Your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15:17).

The women had been seeking Jesus apart from His Words that He’d said. He hadn’t said it would be important to make sure His body was properly prepared for burial; but 

• He had said that He must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again (Mark 8:31).

• Even one among the Chief Priests and Pharisees—when urging Pilate to place a guard at the tomb and seal it, said: “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise’ (Matt. 27:63).

• He’d said the Son of Man would be three days in the heart of the earth just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the great fish (Matthew 12:40).

• He had said one time: I lay down my life that I may take it up again (John 10:17).

According to His Words, the women (and the disciples) should have been seeking more that one Who was crucified. 

They should have been seeking One Who is risen. 

That’s the next thing the angel told the alarmed women in the tomb: He is risen! He is not here. 

Everything changes with that news, doesn’t it? God is no longer dead. That dread in the thought that perhaps there is evil that even God can’t overcome, before which even His anointed one is helpless, that the Son could be helplessly killed for His inheritance; it isn’t true! Not even the grave that comes to us as sinners can overcome Him. He has authority to lay down His life, and authority to take it up again (John 10:18). 

Luke tells us the angel said to women: “Why do you seek the living among the dead (24:5)? It was as if to say, Don’t you know who this is that you are seeking? 

• He is the one who defeats sin by taking your guilt upon Himself.

• He is the one who defeats the death that your sin has brought, by taking that death upon Himself.

• He is the one who defeats the grave that follows death, making it a transition to eternal life.

There isn’t any more need for sadness or fear, is there? Christ is risen! Your sins are removed.

There isn’t any hope or any joy in a crucified Lord who isn’t risen. He doesn’t demonstrate anything by dying. All of us will do that. We’ll do it because the wages of our sin is death (Romans 6:23). He demonstrates something very important by rising, though. His death goes in a different direction. It doesn’t end in defeat; it ends in victory. 

And that victory isn’t just His; it’s yours too. Your death will go in this same direction because through faith you are connected to Him. He has removed for you the curse of death. You will rise to follow Him. Your faith isn’t in someone who’s dead; it’s in the One Who was dead and is alive again. 

HE IS RISEN! 

[HE IS RISEN INDEED!] 

ALLELUIA! 

Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto everlasting life. Amen.

John 8:46-59 

[Jesus said,] “Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

Whoever is of God hears the words of God. We can hear God’s Words and not hear the Words of God; we can ignore what they really mean (or misinterpret them). There are two great things that God is doing for us with His Word: He 

• Condemns us as sinners; He makes us see we’ve failed to meet the requirements of His Law, and He

• Comforts us with additional news. He has, through a blood sacrifice, met our Law requirements that had condemned us, so that we are free and clear.

That’s what everyone should be hearing who hears God’s Word—the Law and the Gospel. That’s what it is. That’s the message.

You might get hung up on that word: condemn, right? It’s NEGATIVE! It’s another way of saying we deserve hell. Ouch! Could it really be all that serious?

The men in our text certainly had that perspective. The Jews here are really the Scribes and Pharisees from earlier in the chapter. The conversation they have with Jesus gets a little complicated (talking past each other). What’s really important to them is that they’re ancestors of Abraham’s. He’s what comes to their mind first when Jesus says, “…if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” Ah!—they think. Now, we’ve got Him. If there was some way to keep from dying, Abraham would have known it. But he died like everybody else. So much for this wi-i-ize teacher, Jesus.

It was hard for them to accept these certain words of God, the ones that say they’re condemned as sinners. It was hard because they felt safe as Abraham’s descendants. Jesus had said to them one time, Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham (Matthew 3:9). They tended to diminish the significance of their sins, and to figure that God would consider them to be good enough people—especially because Abraham was their forefather. They were refusing to hear the condemnation God wanted them to hear in His Words, for their good.

It’s interesting how Jesus handles that in our text. What He does, is, He gets real about Abraham—not criticizing him—but demonstrating that he’s really just another human being like them. He’s stained by the same sinfulness that everyone else has inherited from Adam and Eve. He doesn’t have any righteousness to lend to them. In fact, the thing that is truly great about Abraham is his acknowledgement that he’s a condemned sinner whose salvation is in the One God has promised—the Messiah or Christ. Jesus says it like this: Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” He was seeing it through faith. He was absolutely convinced that God’s promise of a Savior in his family was real. In that faith, he went to the land God showed him (as talked about in our Old Testament lesson), though there wasn’t anything there in that time to demonstrate the promise’s fulfillment. He simply believed. He trusted in Christ purely on the basis of God’s promise. He was a man who was truly hearing the Words of God.

The people in our text were refusing to hear in God’s Word the condemnation of the Law. And here’s the thing: then the Gospel meant nothing to them (what good is it to be saved if you’re not condemned in the first place? Why’d they need Jesus when they didn’t really think they were that bad of sinners?). 

We tend not to like this idea that we’re condemned. We don’t like seeing ourselves that way. With all the way-worse people around, we have to be ahead in some way, we think. How can God look at me in the same way He looks at…(and then we think of this person and that person). He must be seeing my goodness, isn’t He? I’m a respectable person! We alternatively interpret God’s Words about condemnation. We rearrange them so their bite isn’t quite so painful. God requires that I forgive people? But even He knows that there are some people I’m just not going to be able to forgive. He understands. We have refused to hear in God’s Word the full condemnation of the Law, too, haven’t we? It irritates us to hear about it. We’ve side-stepped it, given it a friendly interpretation for ourselves.

Not truly hearing God’s Words can be done a different way, too. Maybe you have refused to believe for yourself the comfort of the Gospel. You have continued to feel hopelessly condemned for your sins, even though you’ve faithfully and sincerely confessed them, and even though God has spoken to you His forgiveness in Christ. And that’s the way you have refused to hear the Words of God. He has presented Jesus to you, as He does in our text—as the one for Whom Abraham longed, He Who is one with the Father—saying, I AM, like in the Old Testament. He has shown you this Great High Priest from our epistle lesson, the Lamb of God without blemish, Whose blood purifies your conscience, redeeming you from sin and death. But you have refused these Words of God. You have continued to feel the weight of guilt. You have taken no joy in God’s mercy. Then the Gospel is meaningless to you because you have excluded yourself on the basis of not keeping God’s Law. You have refused to hear the comfort that God intends for you in His Words. But there isn’t any further revelation to come. He has already said what you need to hear—that every sin is accounted for in Christ’s sacrifice.

The sins of refusing to hear in God’s Word the Law’s condemnation and the Gospel’s comfort are accounted for in the One Who was made to endure that condemnation’s full weight for every sinner, who Himself perfectly fulfilled its requirements, but upon Whom all of its punishment landed. You can’t justify yourself according your works and the Law; that’s just a deception that leaves you condemned. There isn’t any point in pursuing that. If that’s your plan, then plan on feeling the full weight of God’s wrath and punishment. But if you have recognized the futility of that plan and instead want God’s mercy, it’s available to you in Christ, Who already endured the law’s condemnation for you. 

If you’re hesitant to believe that God could really forgive even your sins, then look upon Christ in our text. Listen to His Words, really hearing them for what they are. Consider the meaning of His statement: if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. Another way of saying it might be: If anyone holds on tightly to the promises about Me—about God’s grace established in Me as the One Who makes real what the Old Testament sacrifices foreshadowed, he will never bear the burden of his or her guilt before God. It has been fully accomplished. 

That’s the message that’s present for you in God’s Word. Nothing more is required of you, because it has been fully accomplished in Christ. Your forgiveness is fully accomplished. God be praised. Amen.

Lent 4/St. John 6:1-15 

After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

What if Jesus had gone about this all differently? Kind of a provocative opening question, isn’t it? What He did in this well-known text, was to provide miraculously, food for the thousands who had gathered, 

• demonstrating Himself to be the prophet who is to come into the world (as the people said at the end),

• demonstrating Himself to be God in human flesh—the One Who can solve any problem.

That’s what He did.

It’s interesting to see Jesus address something like this. He looks up and sees the crowd, and notes (in a way) to His disciples, that people are in need. 

This isn’t the only time that sort of thing is written about Jesus. St. Matthew records that one time, when [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (9:36). Now, on that occasion, He was talking about the crowd’s spiritual situation. He goes on to say to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (9:37,38). He’s talking about preaching the Gospel to bring people to faith so they can be forgiven, and saved. Jesus’ concern for these two different crowds is presented the same way whether it’s an issue of bread for their bodies, or the bread of life that he provides for their souls. It’s important for us to see that here. 

Jesus’ solution to that problem of needing Gospel preachers to reach the lost for Him is interesting too; the solution is, pray earnestly. It isn’t a problem with a human solution; it’s a problem solved only by God.

We’re capable of human solutions of a certain sort. We find out we don’t have any milk to make pancakes (something I happen to like on Saturday mornings), we run to the store and get some. Our child skins her knee on the driveway, we go to the cabinet and get a band-aid. By God’s grace, scientists have found cures for diseases. We’re capable of human solutions of a certain sort. 

In our text we see that our ability to provide solutions has limits. Jesus asks a question of His disciples for which He knows they have no answer: “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” He asks it so that they will struggle. He wants them to see what they can’t do. The answer is the same as it was in that other account (the one about the need of spiritual help for those sheep without a shepherd). The answer, again: pray earnestly. Now, Jesus doesn’t say it like that here; the message ends up being the same though. These humans won’t…work this out somehow. No amount of calculating or arranging will produce an answer. There won’t be a human solution to this; it will have to be from God Himself. In our helplessness, then, we put our trust in Him. We reach out to Him with our concerns and needs. We pray earnestly.

We asked, What if Jesus had gone about this all differently? What if instead of solving the problem like He does, He had instead said, “I can handle this for you. You just need to put me in charge of it, okay? Ask Me to do it, I’ll do it.” But the disciples sort of set that aside, as if any old person had said it. They go on with their calculations, brainstorming, worrying, maybe even plotting and scheming in some sinful way to come up with an answer. Jesus reminds them, “I’m here. I’m willing.” But they set that aside, and keep on with their own strivings. Wouldn’t Jesus have used that as an occasion to condemn their unbelief, like it says He did after His Resurrection, when He appeared to them in the Upper Room (Mark 16:14)? In that situation, too, they’d been reluctant to believe that He could rise from death like witnesses had said He’d done (like He Himself had said He would do). They’d refused to recognize in that weak moment, that He is the all-powerful God, capable of anything!

Now, we know that Jesus did this miracle in our text that demonstrates His divinity. He never put them in the situation of ignoring His help, or anything; He went ahead and did it. But He did want them to wrestle for a moment with the idea that they need to rely on Him in this life (and regarding the things of the next life, for that matter). The Gospel writer John says He asked this question to test them. He wanted them to have it as a matter of instinct that they would turn to Him for all of their needs. 

We float out the hypothetical idea because it puts us into the picture a little more. Jesus is at our disposal like He was at theirs. He’s eager to help us like them. He wants us, as a matter of instinct, to turn to Him for all of our needs. 

Isn’t it true that you and I have neglected to do this as we should? We have had Jesus standing next to us, saying, “I can handle this for you. You just need to put me in charge of it, okay? Ask Me to do it, I’ll do it.” But we set it aside as if any old person had said it. We have gone on with our calculating, brainstorming, worrying, maybe even plotting and scheming in some sinful way to come up with an answer. Jesus reminds us in a text like this, “I’m here. I’m willing.” And isn’t it true that we have neglected to cast our anxieties on Him (1 Pet. 5:7), as He invites us to do?

The devil doesn’t want us doing this; we know that. He’s want us to be thinking things like: 

• How could I have made such a mess of things? I have to get this all sorted out before I even think about bothering God with it. Or maybe:

• How can I go to Him when He knows all things; He knows my thoughts and my deeds? He might even consider me His enemy right now. I certainly don’t deserve His help; I got myself into this trouble.

If those thoughts are your thoughts, consider the one in our text who looks up and sees that crowd and resolves instantly to meet the need of every person in it. And consider that that same person sees you with every one of your needs in this life. The compassion with which He provided food for their bodies, even as in His preaching He saw to the needs of their souls is the same that He directs toward you this morning. He directs it in the form of His Spirit-filled Word that nourishes your faith. It invites you to confess your sins and receive His forgiveness. In an even more concrete way, He invites you to the communion rail to receive from Him the very thing that made atonement for your sins—His true body and blood along with bread and wine. He reminds you there, that you’re Baptized into His death—connected to Him so that His righteousness is considered by God to be your righteousness.

The one Who sees you in the crowd and longs to meet your every need is the one Who became needy for you. The fact that He never neglected to put Himself in the Father’s hands, praying constantly, right up to time of being unjustly arrested and tried before sinners, makes atonement for every shortcoming on your part. Every sin is forgiven in this one Who meets the needs of body and soul. Go to this Savior in confidence with your burdens that He might remove them as promised. He is the one Who can solve any problem. God be praised. Amen.