Readings: Genesis 11:1-9 | Acts 2:1-21 | John 14:23-31
Text: John 14:23-31
How will you manifest yourself to your own but not the world? By the keeping of the Word of Christ. Many have asked in previous generations how you can tell the difference between Christians and unbelievers. Is it the number of good things they do? Is it their associating with a particular Christian group?
However, today, it’s becoming increasingly clear to contrast between those who remain faithful to Christ and those who are not.
“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.”
Many claim to be church, to belong to Christ and champion His cause. Sadly, they use the words Christ, Jesus, and Church, but deny His Word. Most recently in the news, the United Methodist Church met for their national convention. Some of the major business of the general conference was:
By a vote of 544 to 121, delegates approved a change to the requirements that clergy practice “celibacy” in singleness — an addition made in 1984 that targeted gay candidates for ministry.
By a vote of 474 to 206, delegates approved striking from church law the chargeable offenses “practices declared by The United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teachings, including but not limited to: being a self-avowed practicing homosexual; or conducting ceremonies which celebrate homosexual unions; or performing same-sex wedding ceremonies.”[1]
Earlier this week, I heard a story on the radio where a female reporter was telling her experience of being at that convention. She said that the Methodist church she grew up in would not accept her relationship (a lesbian union). After reporting on the decisions made by the Conference, she reported that many people felt that they had always been there, but were finally “at home” in a church that would accept them.
This is the spirit of this age, to speak in terms of accepting, welcoming, and affirming. But with that warm, fuzzy language, there’s also a blatant denial of the Lord Jesus: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word” The word which says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Matt. 19:5) and “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come…sexual immorality…sensuality…pride… 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:20-23)
What person in the Methodist communion would honestly say they do not love Jesus? But these actions of the national church body have people making a choice: Do they love Jesus or do they love the organization, because the two are going in vastly different directions—the difference between heaven or hell.
The promise from the Lord Jesus is that He and His Father will make their home with those who keep His Word. This is true comfort from above, which outstrips the shallow comfort of self-deceit. One pastor recently compared going against the truth to trying to drive on a flat tire, and insisting that it was not flat. Despite the most impassioned insistence that the tire is fine, the truth will come to bear in the consequences of a bent rim.
On this Feast of Pentecost, we have genuine reason to rejoice in God the Holy Spirit. For, “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.” As I mentioned last Sunday, this is more than a human war of words, fighting with merely earthly tactics. This is a divine power to confirm us in this truth in a world full of lies. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Ps. 23:4) And this is how the Lord bestows this fearlessness to us: “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.”
Your Lord promises to leave you with His peace, and that peace comes from the Holy Spirit working in your hearts and minds. He says not to let our hearts be troubled, or to be afraid. To be honest, we have been both. It scares us how widespread the deceit is, how it tells the itching sinful ears exactly what they want to hear. And we have been deeply, and increasingly troubled as we observe large church bodies fall to the siren song of apostasy—especially when we still have friends and family in those groups. We ask, does that mean my aunt, my friend, is okay with this? And if they’re absolutely not (praise the Lord), what will they do? Where will they go to worship? They likely won’t come to a conservative Lutheran congregation, as it would be like going from the hot tub to the lap pool. But nothing is impossible with God.
Would that this comfort could be complete in this world, but John saw in Revelation, “Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” (Rev. 12:17) This is no difference of opinions; this is spiritual warfare as ancient as the enmity which began in the Garden of Eden. The devil, the unbelieving world, and our sinful flesh all rally around making themselves like God, choosing good for themselves and asking, “Did God actually say?” (Gen. 3:1) On the other side is Jesus with His faithful. But the Evangelist John would later comfort the Church by writing, “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.” (1 John 4:4-5)
The Holy Spirit gives us that check on reality which we so desperately need in the world right now. Rather than look for miraculous and sudden outpourings of difference, what we need is for God the Holy Spirit to “bring to our remembrance” all that Jesus has spoken. We need Him to come with His Father and make His home with us when we are clearly strangers in this world.
Our Lord goes on to affirm, “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, 31 but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.” So be confident, dear saints in Christ, that Satan has no claim on your Master. Neither does He have any claim on you! Certainly you will feel his attacks, and they will sting you—“but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Corinthians 15:57) We may suffer in this world for the sake of our Lord, but the victory has already been won. Jesus sets our hearts straight when He says, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28)
Let me leave you with the reflection of St. Augustine on this Day of Pentecost, where the Spirit’s ministry is unabated and desperately needed:
“Peace,” He said, “I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” It is here we read in the prophet, “Peace upon peace:” peace He leaves with us when going away, His own peace He will give us when He comes in the end. Peace He leaves with us in this world, His own peace He will give us in the world to come. His own peace He leaves with us, and abiding therein we conquer the enemy.” -Augustine, Tractates on John 77.3
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
[1] https://www.umnews.org/en/news/united-methodists-remove-same-sex-wedding-ban
Leave a Reply