May 19, 2024 Text:  John 15:26-27; 4b-15

Dear Friends in Christ,

We all have things about us that we don’t want to face.   For me, it is my age.  My whole life I have been the young whippersnapper.  Kindergarten at age 4, high school graduation at 17, the youngest in my class at seminary.  Recently at our joint Ascension Worship with Christ Lutheran one of their members came up to me and asked, “How long have you been here?”  I answered, “25 years.”  She replied, “I still remember when you came, we all thought you were 15.”  I feel great, can still compete athletically, and God pulls the strings of life and laughs, “Lueck, you are going to be a grandpa.”  What?!  All of us have things we don’t want to admit.  It can be hard to handle the truth.

Today we celebrate the coming of the Spirit of truth – the Holy Spirit promised by our Lord.  Are you happy about the Spirit’s appearing?

‘HOW DO YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH?”

Our fear of the truth has pretty much put its meaning up for grabs.  According to apologist Greg Koukl, truth in our age is so nebulous that we are living with our “feet firmly planted in midair,” with nothing absolute in which to ground ourselves.  Truth suffers everywhere.  In our politics, in our education, in our business dealings, in our sports, in our institutions, even in our churches.  It is easy to see in others.  Do we see it in ourselves?

A biblical great had a hard facing the truth.  He was a King.  Went by the name David.  Had an affair with a bathtub beauty named Bathsheba.  Got her pregnant.  Had her husband killed.  Takes this war-widow as one of his wives.  David hopes no one knows – but God does.  Sends in a man on a mission.  Went by the name Nathan.  He tells David a little story and David gets enraged.  David wants justice.

David goes so far as to say, “The man who has done this deserves to die.”  What follows is one of the great dramatic moments in the Bible.  Nathan looks the king in the ye and says, “You are the man!” (2 Sam. 12:5, 7)  Ouch.  The ugly truth has to be faced.  David would repent and write in Psalm 51:3, “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”

The Spirit of truth is not sent purely for us to see the truth in our lives.  The Spirit testifies and points to the Word, revealing that God is truth, Jesus is truth, the Spirit is truth.  God is true to his Word.  The Spirit of truth comes convicting the “world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” (v. 8-9)

We know the long, dark shadow of David’s sin, covers us in darkness.  We like to keep our sins hidden.  We can spin some pretty good yarns to ward off suspicion and keep our reputation.  Whether forced to or confronted, the Spirit pierces our hearts and opens us up to reality.  He comes and says, “You are the man!  You are the woman!”  Not someone from the news channel or the internet or the great evil that is out there.  You.  You have been convicted.  How are you handling that truth?

There is another truth.  We can praise God for this truth.  Jesus promises, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” (v. 26)  God’s Word convicts of sin and judgment, but this same Spirit will also convict us of righteousness.  

The Spirit delivers this righteousness that our Savior has won for us by shedding His blood on the cross.  The Gospel delivers the beautiful truth that, despite our sin, God is for us.  God is true to His Word.  This Jesus died for us, rose for us, reigns for us, prays for us.  “God is faithful and just and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 Jn. 1:9)

I have a hard time facing my age.  The gray hair in the mirror gives it away.  I could try to cover it up with some chemicals, but the gray is always going to be there.  Much like sin.  We can try to hide it, but it is always there.  It isn’t going away until Jesus welcomes us into heaven.  I am probably always going to compete against my age.  It is who God made me to be.  I ask for his help in handling the truth.

What about you?  Where do you need to do some soul searching?  What truth do you have a hard time facing?  Remember this, in God’s household, there is life.  It is the life of Jesus Christ for the death of this world.  When you make the wrong choice, recognize it and repent.  The Spirit gives each of us this beautiful truth:  righteousness in exchange for guilt, forgiveness in exchange for shame, and life in exchange for death.  

The Spirit of the Truth, the Helper has come.  The Father takes what is His and declares it to you.  You can handle it right – Life and Truth?

Amen.    

May 12, 2024 Text:  1 John 5:9-15

Dear Friends in Christ,

About 15 years ago Anthony Esolen wrote this in an article entitled “Nowhere Man.”  “’Behold,’ says the Psalmist, ‘I searched for the place of the wicked man, and he was no more.’  It is the second clause (his place knows him no more) that expresses the greater dread, of a death beyond death.  It is the terrible prospect of a total and unalterable severance – expressed as a loss of place.  How should it be, if one were wiped clean from the memory of earth and heaven and all that dwell therein?  How should it be, not to cease to live, but to have one’s few days of life delivered over – in their essence – to nothingness?”

Western Civilization has succeeded.  It has reduced the Christ to a minor player on the stage of human history.   What has been, what is, and what’s to come will not be altered by Him who sits in the heavens and laughs.  When it comes to Christ and possessing eternal salvation . . .

“EITHER YOU DO OR YOU DON’T”

John writes, “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son.  Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.  Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.” 

Concerning these verses, it has been correctly noted by Mark Jeske:  “People of all cultures are used to hearing human testimony in court and assigning great weight to it.  How much more impact does the Christian message have since God is talking!”  And this insight.  “There is only one truth – God’s truth…Christianity is not one of many philosophies that you can select interesting views and ideas from as though in a cafeteria.”

Well, our text says it, “Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar.”  The hatred may grow in intensity against Christ and the Church, but Paul gives this chilling truth.  “Do be deceived:  God cannot be mocked.  A man reaps what he sows.” (Gal 6:7)

I want to live forever, don’t you?  Not here though.  In heaven, with the Triune God.  The older I get the less I want to put up with the crap of this world.  It all ends eventually at the grave.  But John gets us past the grave when he writes, “And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” Either you do or you don’t.  There is no middle ground in Scripture.  The wages of human sin is always death.  Christ alone enters humanity and offers the alternative.  It’s a gift.  Given to the sinful and undeserving.  God has given to us eternal life in his Son. 

Many of you know George Orwell’s book 1984.  Orwell was a socialist.  In 1940 he wrote of Europe’s rejection of God, and he approved of that.  But listen to how he expressed his approval:  “For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on.  (Like the present pruning going on in America).  And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came.  But unfortunately there had been a little mistake:  the thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all, it was a cesspool full of barbed wire . . . It appears that amputation of the soul isn’t just a simple surgical job, like having your appendix out.  The wound has a tendency to go septic.”

Wow!  Man does reap what he sows.  Either you believe in the Son or you don’t.  You can’t straddle the tree branch.  “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (v. 12)  There are a lot of people around us crashing to the ground who need our prayers.

Friend, you have got to do something with Jesus.  By the power of the Holy Spirit embrace Him.  Or by human might reject Him.  Either hang on to Him or throw Him out.  There is no in-between.  Another way.  A something else.

We are identified with Christ. You sang it with belief, didn’t you?  “The Church’s one foundation Is Jesus Christ her Lord…With his own blood He bought her, And for her life He died.”  He died for our sins and then rose for our eternity.  Christ comes to you and I again and again in the Word and the Sacrament.  He did it all…for us.  We are so identified with Him that it isn’t an issue of either we do or either we don’t know and find comfort in His mercy and eternal life.  It is not “either you do or you don’t” for us.

We do.  Forever.

Amen.