Lenten Midweek V:
“In Trouble He Will Comfort You”[1]
April 6, 2022
Text: John 16:1-33; LSB 556:9-10
“I
have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world”
(John 16:33; ESV). Jesus never once
promised us that being Christians would make our lives easier. Quite the contrary, here He promises that
being Christians will bring on suffering and troubles. Holy Baptism hangs a giant target on our
backs. Now we are the special objects of
the devil’s attention as he aims his poison darts. Now we are marked for the world’s scorn. “In the world you will have
tribulation," Jesus says. And
you won't have to seek it. It will find
you. Luther says that “holy Christian
people are externally recognized by the holy possession of the sacred
cross. They must endure every kind of
misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil, the
world, and the flesh (as the Lord’s Prayer indicates) by inward sadness,
timidity, fear, outward poverty, contempt, illness, and weakness, in order to
become like their head, Christ. And the
only reason they must suffer is that they steadfastly adhere to Christ and
God’s word, enduring this for the sake of Christ.”[2]
The
first disciples suffered tribulation as they believed and faithfully preached
Christ. They were put out of the
synagogues. They were falsely accused
and despised, arrested, beaten, imprisoned.
The time came when those who killed a disciple of Jesus thought they
were doing a service to God. And they
suffered all of this without the benefit of the Lord’s visible presence, as
they had had it up to this point. Jesus
had gone to the Father by way of the cross.
And though they knew, and had witnessed, His bodily resurrection and
ascension into heaven, now they had to hold fast to Jesus by faith, and not by
sight.
We
also suffer tribulation as we believe and confess Christ. Christianity and the Bible are socially and
politically out of favor. You may find
yourself put out of your preferred social circles, mocked, despised, unfriended
and blocked on the internet, or in real life.
Family and friends may turn their back on you for your faith and
confession. It is entirely possible that
in our lifetime we will learn what it is to suffer real persecution, as the
early Church did, and as so many do today in other countries. And, as we said, the devil is forever
shooting his arrows at us. He knows just
the temptations to use, and when to use them.
He knows just the sorrows, the sicknesses, the misfortunes that will
render us most vulnerable. And we
don’t have the visible presence of Jesus, either. We, too, must see Him by faith, and not with
our earthly eyes. We must know His
presence in another way. By our
ears. By His Word. In the breaking of the bread.
By
His Spirit. Jesus tells us it is to our
advantage that He goes away, by which He means, not that He will no
longer be with us in any real sense, but His death on the cross and His removal
from our earthly sight by His ascension into heaven. It is to our advantage because now He sends
us His Holy Spirit, the Helper, the Comforter, the Counselor, the Paraclete,
literally, the One we call to our side in time of tribulation. The Spirit brings the very presence of Jesus
to us in an even more intimate way than mere earthly sight. If we simply saw Him, well, He would be over
there, or maybe even right here next to us. But the Spirit, sent to us by Father and Son,
first of all puts us into Jesus in Holy Baptism, and Jesus into us
by speaking Him into our ears and hand-feeding His body and blood into our
mouths. In other words, because Jesus
has gone away and sent us His Spirit, we are now actually in Jesus, and
Jesus is in us. Forgiving our
sins. Bespeaking us righteous. Enlivening us. Sanctifying us. Strengthening us to bear up under the holy
cross, and follow Him in the way that leads to everlasting life. Preserving us in His Church and in the one
true faith, come what may.
It
all happens through the Word. The Spirit
comes to us by means of the Word. And by
the preaching of the Word, the Spirit brings us Jesus.. He declares to us the things of Jesus (John 16:14). He glorifies Jesus. He ever and always directs our attention to
Jesus by preaching all that Jesus has received from the Father. We are not to seek God apart from the
Spirit’s preaching in the Word. Luther
says, “Here Christ makes the Holy Spirit a Preacher. He does so to prevent one from gaping toward
heaven in search of Him, as the fluttering spirits and enthusiasts do, and from
divorcing Him from the oral Word of the ministry. One should know and learn that He will be in
and with the Word, and that it will guide us into all truth, in order that we
may believe it, use it as a weapon, be preserved by it against all the lies and
deceptions of the devil, and prevail in all trials and temptations…. The Holy
Spirit wants this truth which He is to impress into our hearts to be so firmly
fixed that reason and all one’s own thoughts and feelings are relegated to the
background. He wants us to adhere solely
to the Word and to regard it as the only truth.
And through this Word alone He governs the Christian Church to the end.”[3]
In
other words, we are not to seek God or His Truth, or measure the presence of
Jesus, by our reason… as in, I find this or that biblical teaching reasonable
or unreasonable, this makes sense or that doesn’t, this sounds like it should
be true and that sounds like it must be false… or by our feelings… as in, that
just doesn’t feel right to me, or that makes me feel really inspired or
fulfilled, or I can really feel the Spirit, or Jesus, or God… or certainly by
whatever the world’s prevailing opinion happens to be at the moment… which is
always changing, relative to the times and to each person, you seeking your
truth, me seeking mine, never admitting universal or objective truth, except
for the truth that there is no truth… These are all forms of what Luther calls
“enthusiasm,” which is any seeking of God and His gifts apart from the revealed
Word in Holy Scripture, and in the Visible Word of the Sacraments.
The
Spirit ties Himself to the Word. He
graciously binds Himself in this way so that we can always know whether it is
God who is speaking, or some other spirit who is not God, and is not holy. And in this way, He guides us into all truth
(v. 13). He convicts the world
concerning sin and righteousness and judgment (v. 8). He brings to our remembrance all that Jesus
has said (14:26). And in this way, He
comfort us, as we bear troubles and afflictions of all kinds. He teaches us always to be true, and into
truth He guides us (LSB 556:9).
In
this way, what Jesus on earth has done and taught guides all our life and
teaching, that is, all the things we do in Jesus’ Name, and all that we confess
of Him, and preach in the Holy Christian Church. In this way, the Kingdom’s work is wrought,
and foes with base alloy, the devil, the world, our sinful nature, are rebuffed
and prevented from destroying our heavenly treasure. In other words, in the end, Jesus wins. He wins us for Himself. He has purchased us by His blood and
death. And He brings us into His
resurrection life.
And
as for tribulations, well, we know they will come. Jesus has promised it. But we also know that, though we have sorrow
now, the Day is coming when we will see the risen Lord Jesus for
ourselves. And then our hearts will
rejoice, “with exultation springing.”
Then no one can take our joy from us.
In fact, it is already so. For
Jesus, who was crucified, has been raised from the dead. And He has sent us His Spirit, who enters
through our ears and takes us residence in our hearts, by the preaching of the
risen Christ. Therefore, we are
comforted.
When
we are trouble and afflicted, we wish that we could see Jesus with our
eyes. But He has given us something
better: His Spirit, who gives us ears to hear the forgiving and life-giving
Word of Jesus Christ. “In the world
you will have tribulation,” Jesus says to you. “But take heart; I have overcome the
world.” In the Name of the Father,
and of the Son X, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
[1] This year’s theme, much of the
material, and the outline for this sermon are taken from John T. Pless, “Dear
Christians, One and All, Rejoice!” https://www.1517.org/articles/dear-christians-one-and-all-rejoice-lent-series-introduction
[2] AE 41:164-65 (Quoted in
Pless).
[3] AE 24:362 (Quoted in Pless).
No comments:
Post a Comment