Comfort
ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS RISEN! He is risen
indeed! Alleluia!
Once again this
morning, Jesus speaks about the Holy Spirit. This week, Jesus tells you what
the Holy Spirit is all about and why He will come and what He will do. Jesus
calls the Spirit the "Helper" or "Comforter." That's
because the Spirit's job is to give you comfort against sin and death and the
power of the devil. Pay close attention to what Jesus is saying here today,
because it will keep you from despair when the world seeks to destroy you for
being a Christian. These words of Jesus concerning the Spirit's work will
preserve you from all false belief and wrong notions about God and the Spirit.
These words of Jesus teach you that the Holy Spirit brings you true, eternal
comfort by keeping you in Christ against what the devil, the world, and your
sinful nature throw at you.
There are many
people out there who want to talk about God or worship God or have something to
do with God apart from Jesus. That is not the witness of the Holy Spirit.
That's not the faithful witness of the Apostles. Every religion under the sun
is concocted to try to figure that God out, to understand what He wants and
what you have to do to please Him. With that kind of god, you can never be
certain that you’ve done enough. But the Holy Spirit doesn't lead you to that
god. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and, through the preaching of the
Gospel, He bears witness of Jesus who has taken God's wrath upon Himself. The
Spirit points you to and delivers Christ in whom you have forgiveness and life,
in Whom the Father smiles upon you, in Whom the Father no longer counts your
sins against you.
But such a Jesus
doesn't flatter you. Such a Gospel and such a Spirit don't teach you that you have
the power to save yourself. Such a Gospel teaches you to put all your hope and
trust in Christ alone. Such preaching that the Holy Spirit does, such faithful
preaching He delivers through faithful pastors, tells you to go looking for
Jesus nowhere else than in Word and Water and Body and Blood. The Spirit
teaches that you will find Jesus nowhere else. And if there is no Jesus, there
is no forgiveness, or salvation or heavenly Father. That's why Jesus tells the
disciples that they will suffer for His sake. People will throw them out and
kill them and think they are doing God's work! When you've got God all figured
out apart from Jesus, that's what you do: you take down those whose only hope
and trust is in Jesus. It’s why Christians are killed every day all over the
world: religions who deny that Christ is God can't stand the thought that they
cannot save themselves. You only have to tour our little Synod to see that
faithful pastors are being thrown out of their parishes because they will only
teach Jesus and His means of grace. They preach faithfully that there is no
looking for God apart from Jesus and the Spirit is not at work apart from His
Word. So their congregations or the Synod find some reason to stop supporting
them and their families and finally throw them out.
Against such
persecution, against such trouble, against such suffering, the Helper comes to
Comfort you. And the comfort comes not be taking away the suffering but by bearing
witness to Jesus by turning you to what is true: in Baptism you have been
washed clean and made fit for eternal life; in Absolution your sins been
removed from you; in the Supper Christ died for you that you might live and be
free from sin and death. The Spirit and your pastor bear witness of Jesus: they
testify from the font, the pulpit, and the altar, that God smiles upon you in
Christ and has forgiven all your sins. They tell you that, throughout the
suffering of this life, the Lord will guard you and keep you and comfort you
until one day you pass through death and away from this world and its evils to
the eternal kingdom and paradise the Lord Himself has prepared for you.
Brothers and
sisters in Christ, you have the witness of the Spirit, the testimony of the
Apostles, the Word and the holy Gifts, all of which deliver Jesus to you. And
having Jesus, you have far more than the world can ever give. Praise God for
such a faithful and comforting Helper as the Holy Spirit, for He gives you only
true comfort: the comfort of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, your
Savior. ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS RISEN! He is
risen indeed! Alleluia! In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of
the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God
which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
always. Amen.
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