Our Savior Lutheran Church, Grants Pass, OR
Faith Lutheran Church, Medford OR
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Easter 5
Cantaté John 16:5-15 “WHEN HE = THE H.S. COMES”
PRAYER Yes, Good Holy Spirit, speak unceasingly to me and in me! Show me the awful sin of unbelief, but also show me the perfect righteousness of grace, and make me courageous in the struggle of the cross against the condemned Prince of this world. Amen.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father and Christ Jesus, our LORD. [We can STILL say it…] P: He is risen! C: He is risen indeed!! Alleluia!!!
INTRODUCTION Yes. We are still in the Easter Season, but as we progress through the (latter) Sundays in Easter [Jesus and] we start to look ahead to both the next great Festival of the Church and for that matter the next Person of the Trinity. [Jesus says in our text,] “When HE Comes” – the He Jesus is speaking here of is the Holy Spirit, Whom Jesus says He will send for the purpose of judgment. But…
Wait a minute, isn’t Judgment Day the Day of His return in glory when Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats? The Day when Jesus comes to take the believers from this world before its destruction.
Well, yes and no. The day of our Lord’s Second Coming is indeed referred to as Judgment Day. And it should have come as no surprise since our dear Lord Himself said no one was given to know that day or hour.
So, here we are. Nobody has been raptured and Judgment Day has yet to come. …Or has it?
In our Gospel lesson today, in addition to preparing His disciples for His own Ascension and Pentecost, Jesus speaks about judgment. And in speaking about judgment He speaks about it as an ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. And where does this work of the Spirit begin – with speaking in tongues or miraculous healings or the end of all earthly troubles in the lives of believers?
No. Jesus tells His disciples the Holy Spirit Whom He Himself will send
“will convict the world concerning sin … because they do not believe in Me.”
And by the world, Jesus means every last person born of the flesh into this world since Adam and Eve took the world into the curse of sin – even the disciples, even the saints, even you and me. We here Scriptural support of this, our condition:
• The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14
• And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body[a] and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of
mankind. Ephesians 2:1-3 And, finally:
• No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. 1Corinthians 12:3b
No, none of us believes in Jesus of our own free will or power. And that is why Jesus sends the Holy Spirit, because you do not believe on your own and you must be convicted with the world for the sin of unbelief that is the
source of all other sin. It is a sin the Holy Spirit fights in our lives every day as He keeps us in our Baptismal grace by the continuous preaching and teaching of His Word and the regular offering of the Sacrament of Holy Communion in His holy Christian Church, which is how He delivers the righteousness Jesus speaks of next.
Thanks be to God, convicting us of sin is not all our Lord Jesus sends the Spirit to do. The Spirit also comes to “convict the world concerning righteousness … because I go to the Father, and you will see Me no longer.”
We see in these Gospel lessons between the Resurrection of our Lord and His Ascension that He is preparing His disciples and us for these Latter Days in which He will not be seen because He has accomplished everything He came to accomplish – it is finished, He is Risen indeed, and He has been glorified. And this is our righteousness, the righteousness that we cannot know apart from the work of the Holy Spirit to convict us of the truth of Jesus’ perfect righteousness. A righteousness by which we now have an advocate with the Father better than any defense attorney dealing in technicalities.
In his first letter which was to be circulated amongst the various congregations, John the author of our Gospel says, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. [that is, act out of unbelief] But if anyone does sin, [that is when we who have been baptized into faith in Christ have our times of little faith and stumble back into the errors of unbelief] we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:1-2
His righteousness is not just a technicality on which a mistrial is declared. His righteousness has fulfilled every technicality, has dotted every “i” and crossed every “t” of God’s Law, has born the full and eternal punishment of life in the prison of hell with no hope of parole we rightly deserve and He declares us completely free of guilt and released from eternal punishment.
Truly, as the prophet Isaiah foretold, “He [Jesus] was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5
So finally, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to convict the world regarding judgment…because the ruler of this world is judged. He sends His disciples out telling them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven.” Luke 10:18
As we learn from Job, Satan is the accuser who once was free to even come before God and accuse sinners. But now he has been cast out, though he is free for a while in these latter days to roam the earth. And here, now he does his accusing to try to pull us away from our Lord Who has secured us with Him in the Heavenly places.
That is why Jesus sent His Holy Spirit through the Apostles and their testimony to the world, of which you and I are still a part, to convict us of
judgment – that the ruler of this world, that prince the devil has been judged. He has been cast out of heaven. His accusations are false and have no standing with God. And He has been bound and chained by God completely and only by the power of His Holy Word. Having told them He saw Satan’s fall from Heaven, He tells the disciples,
“The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.” 17 The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your Name!”…19 “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven.” Luke 10:16-20
He sends His disciples out with all that is needed to deliver the world from sin and unbelief until He comes again. This He does by sending them out with the Holy Spirit. When He 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.
The “When He Comes…” was not just then, to the Apostles. When He comes is also now and even to the End of the Age. The Holy Spirit still comes to us in the very things that He revealed to Jesus’ Apostles and which they have in turn revealed to us in the Means of Grace delivered in the Church where we still receive Christ’s righteousness and are kept with Him – that is, with His Father in Heaven. Because there, and only there are we are safe from all accusations of sin and of the Evil One.
These Means of Grace are how the Holy Spirit comes with the Gospel of Jesus Christ that casts aside all who would tell you there is still something left for you to do or decide regarding your salvation. There is not. It chases away any who would tell you Jesus speaks privately to you anything He has not also spoken to all of His dearly beloved, Baptized children. The Gospel reveals as liars any false prophet who would claim to have knowledge not revealed in Scripture, such as the day of our Lord’s return in glory. The Holy Spirit has guided the Apostles into all truth, and by their testimony has guided Christ’s Church and us as well into all truth. There is nothing new left for us to discover or accomplish. As Jesus declared from His throne of grace on Calvary, “It is finished” for once and for all and FOR YOU.
He has suffered for the sin of your unbelief. He has died for the sin of your unbelief. He has Risen from the punishment for the sin of your unbelief. And He now is Ascended to the Right Hand of the Father to deliver you from the sin of your unbelief by sending His Holy Spirit here today, and wherever His Word is spoken and given to eat and drink, to forgive you all your sins and give you His eternal Life. … And so, we wait – in eager anticipation. Soon He will return or soon we will go Home. Either way, we will be with Him. IJ’N, Amen.
[Jesus IS] The Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth… SO HELP US, GOD!
In that SAME Jesus’ Name, Amen. SDG