Exaudi, The Sunday after the
Ascension, 2012
Pastor Gregory L. Jackson
The Hymn # 9 O Day of Rest 1:89
The Confession
of Sins
The Absolution
The Introit p. 16
The Gloria Patri
The Kyrie p. 17
The Gloria in Excelsis
The Salutation and Collect p. 19
The Epistle and Gradual
The
Gospel
Glory be to
Thee, O Lord!
Praise be to Thee, O Christ!
The Nicene Creed p. 22
The Sermon Hymn #195 Christ Jesus Lay 1:46
The Spirit of Truth
The Communion
Hymn # 341 Crown Him 1:70
The Preface p.
24
The Sanctus p. 26
The Lord's Prayer p. 27
The Words of Institution
The Agnus Dei p. 28
The Nunc Dimittis p. 29
The Benediction p. 31
The Hymn #261 Lord Keep Us
Steadfast 1:93
KJV
1 Peter 4:7 But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and
watch unto prayer. 8 And above all things have fervent charity among
yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. 9 Use hospitality
one to another without grudging. 10 As every man hath received the gift, even
so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace
of God. 11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any
man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God
in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and
dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
John 15:26 But when the
Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the
Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: 27 And ye also shall bear witness, because
ye have been with me from the beginning. 16:1 These things have I spoken unto
you, that ye should not be offended. 2
They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever
killeth you will think that he doeth God service. 3 And these things will they do unto you, because they have not
known the Father, nor me. 4 But these
things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I
told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning,
because I was with you.
Prayer
Lord God, heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee, that
through Thy Holy Spirit Thou hast appointed us to bear witness of Thy dear Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ: We beseech Thee, inasmuch as the world cannot endure
such testimony, and persecutes us in every way, grant us courage and comfort,
that we may not be offended because of the cross, but continue steadfastly in
Thy testimony, and be found always among those who know Thee and Thy Son, until
we obtain eternal salvation through the same, Thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Gaost, one true God, world
without end. Amen.
The Spirit of Truth
This is a fine passage to
consider in light of the ascension of Christ. Although the disciples were
trying to grasp all this before the crucifixion, they knew and remembered it
afterwards, especially when Jesus ascended into heaven before their eyes and
sent the Holy Spirit to them, to bring to remembrance all they had seen and
experienced.
In the same way we should
consider this with Christ seated at the right hand of God, triumphant over sin,
death, and Satan in His resurrection and ascension. All the powers marshaled
against Him failed, and the rest of history is just a time of waiting until all
authority and power is finally subdued under His feet.
There is a lot of evidence
of that happening already, in history. No kingdom has lasted and grown forever.
Each one has a rise and a decline. The Eastern Roman Empire is often dated from
Constantine to the fall of Constantinople, 313 AD to 1453 AD, 11 centuries of
Greek, Christian rule. And yet it ended. At one time the nobles ate from solid
gold tables, and a serving dish of solid gold was so heavy that it had to be
moved, suspended from a beam. Although we brag about the wealth of one area or
another, the wealth of Constantinople was beyond belief, with plates of gold
hanging from one gate, a treasury no one dared to rob. And yet it fell into
decline and decay. The power that took the city (the Ottoman Empire) lasted for
a limited time, even though it also spread across Europe.
Later the Ottoman Empire was
called the “sick man of Europe” and collapsed into fragments.
But the Kingdom of Grace
established by Christ has grown and spread throughout the ages. This was
already predicted long before He was born – of the increase of His government
there shall be no end…
KJV Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a
son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall
be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The
Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and peace there
shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order
it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for
ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.
So it is entirely correct to say that Christ rules
over this world now and has all power, though many do not know it.
John 15:26 But when the
Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the
Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
The Holy Spirit always
accompanies the Word. One of our American Lutheran teachers clarified this,
since truth is often mixed with error. The purer the Word, the greater the
power. There is a point where the message itself has no divine content, because
it is designed to appeal to man alone. However, the Gospel is still taught by
faithful liturgies and hymns.
In the Age of Rationalism,
the sermons were about building roads and bridges and getting proper medical
treatment. Rationalistic church bodies hate the Christian faith and persecute
it, yet God continues to work. Those who hate the Christian faith the most will
undermine the text of the Bible first, which undermines the authority of the
Word. They get people used to accepting everything, then get rid of the
historic liturgy and the great hymns of Christianity. Catechism fades away, and
little is left. The last stage of an apostate congregation prepares them to
close or to become honestly Unitarian. Sometimes the switch to honest Left-wing
ideology wakes people up and they realize what they are abandoning.
Thus Paul said there must be
sects and divisions (heresies) to prove what is faithful to God’s Word. The
apostates yell “You are divisive!” over the
divisions they created while begging for tolerance. Once they are in
control, there is no tolerance for the traditionalists of any group.
Bad money drives out good –
in doctrine too. When a denomination goes downhill, they multiply their false
teachers until falsehood looks like the only way.
The Spirit of Truth remains
the teaching of the Word. No human agency can change that.
John 15:27 And ye also
shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.
The disciples and the
witnesses of the resurrection were important in establishing the Christian
Church, because they built it upon Christ. They were with Christ in His public
ministry and during His resurrection appearances. Paul was an exception to the
public ministry but not to the teaching of Christ after the resurrection. The
eleven bore the brunt of the tension during the Passion but also had the
extensive training from being with Christ.
We can conclude that many of
the 500 were those named in the Gospels as being healed or witnessing the
healing of Christ, or who carried the cross for Christ (Simon of Cyrene).
When people conspire to
commit fraud, their stories eventually unravel, sometimes quite quickly. They
always work hard to make themselves look legitimate. Separated, they begin to
contradict one another. In one crime drama, one rats out the other (faked) so
the second one rats out the first. It is all staged so they can see how quickly
the police will work to undermine their dicey story.
But the Bible has separate
witnesses that agree with one another in substance while using different
details, adding and subtracting, sometimes using completely different verbiage.
The skeptics tie themselves in knots finding contradictions, then concede they
cannot explain why their own theories fail.
Luther emphasizes the
absolute authority of the Word in all his writings. The bible is the book that
judges all books. No human authority is above it, because it is the Book of the
Holy Spirit.
With that emphasis is
complete confidence in the truth of the Word and the opposition of unbelievers
when they hear that truth. Jesus comforts His disciples with the concept that
they will have the Spirit from the Son and the Father, but they will face demonic
opposition because of it.
Everything Jesus predicted
came true.
6. This is the
consolation which Christ gives the disciples to strengthen their faith. They
would have need of it in their coming work for him. This promise is a promise
to his whole Church that, after his resurrection and ascension, the word and
teaching of the Holy Spirit shall at all times, so long as Christ sits at the
right hand of the Father, testify through the apostles and their successors,
and that this testimony shall remain in the world, no matter who hears it or
hears it not. For the disciples were not to be concerned as to who did or did
not hear and receive their testimony, but they should know, because it is the
testimony of the Holy Spirit, that he would be present and working with them,
to the end that some might believe. Nor should the world be able to hinder or
prevent this, though it should rage against it with its hatred and persecution.
Yea, even if no person on earth received their teaching, nevertheless the world
should be reproved through the preaching of his Word. He says: The Holy Spirit
will reprove the world, which will thus receive the judgment of its
condemnation because it heard the preaching but nevertheless would not believe
it and therefore has no excuse; as he said afterwards: “If I had not come and
spoken unto them,” and “had not done among them the works which none other did,
they had not had sin.”
The false teachers argue
from their success, even though their success is laughable and temporary. They
do not argue from the Word because they cannot. They often cite their glorious
institutions, the physical manifestations of what they do. Do they have mansions?
The worst false teachers have 20 mansions, all bought with cash? Does that make
the worst of the lot better, for their real estate?
The Word is true whether
anyone believes it or not. The scorn of unbelievers in the visible church comes
from their trust in their endowment funds and real estate, their popularity at
the moment. Jesus said that everything will pass away, “My Word will never pass
away.”
If I wanted to stake my
claim on anything, it would be the eternal Word rather than crumbling real
estate.
16:1 These things have I
spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. 2 They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh,
that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.
Not be offended – If the
disciples had faced opposition without the warnings, they would have said, “This
is a fine fix. We trusted in Him and we are now in a dank prison.” That would
have been cause to blame the Gospel and Christ. But he warned them it would be
bad but blessed by God – and it was. According to tradition, all the disciples
died violently from persecution – except perhaps John. No one knows for sure,
but there are stories recorded from the earliest days about them. As I said before,
there was not much interest in biographies of the saints when they wanted to
teach the Gospel instead.
Now we have the reverse –
everything is about the human founders, even outright fables, but almost no
Gospel, even teaching against faith in the Gospel of Christ.
The ultimate outrage within
religion was realized when people executed the disciples and imagined they were
doing a service to God. This horrible crime was repeated in the Reformation and
afterwards in stories too numerous to list. The first hymn by Luther was prompted by two young men being
burned at the stake for being faithful to the Word – “Flung to the heedless
winds.”
The persecution of the Church
in Jerusalem did two things.
It drove the Christians into
the Roman Empire to spread the Gospel.
It spared the Christians the
horrible slaughter in the siege of Jerusalem, only a few years later.
3 And these things will
they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.
The rage is the result of
the Holy Spirit convicting people of their unbelief. Some think, “This is not
working. They are opposed and filled with a foolish hatred.” But that is
working. Their hardness and blindness is worsened when they reject the Word.
They feel the effect of condemning – the sin of unbelief – but they reject the
Word. As James says, “The demons believe and their hides bristle.”
No matter what their lofty position
might be, they do not know the Father and do not know the Son when they conduct
themselves in a war against the Gospel.
4 But these things have I
told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of
them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with
you.
This is clearly a farewell
sermon. Jesus trained the disciples, step by step, not telling them all the
challenging news until they were ready to hear it.
In the previous sermon
Luther said “faith always grows,” which he illustrated with the examples of the
disciples growing in faith and gladly bearing the cross.
He also said that faith does
a person no good if that person does not endure to the end. This sermon was given
so His disciples would endure and remain steadfast. And so we must also.
