BECAUSE HE LIVES
Christ Sends Us His Spirit
WHAT GOD SAYS WILL HAPPEN, WILL HAPPEN

Welcome to worship today at Morrison Zion Lutheran Church. We exist to glorify God. We have set out to do this by gathering around the Gospel so that we may grow in the Gospel and go to others with this Gospel.

Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ.

Direct us now, O gracious Lord, to hear aright your Holy Word.
Assist your minister to preach, and let the Holy Spirit teach.
Let eternal life be found by all who hear the Gospel sound.  Amen.

“I told you so!”  I was not one who wanted the Packers to draft a wide receiver in the first round, and of course, someone told me “I told you so!  I told you they should have drafted a wide receiver in the first round!”  As parents, we say “I told you so” a lot to our kids.  “If you do this, this will happen” and when that happens, we say “I told you so!”  When someone tells us “I told you so,” most of the time it’s just annoying.  Sometimes when you know you’ve done something wrong and your parents come and talk to you and they say “I told you so,” you’re like “I know.  I know.”  It’s kind of annoying to be reminded that somebody else was right and you were wrong.

But it is also encouraging when your parents or someone says to you, “I know you can do this.  I know you can do this hard thing.”  And when you do the hard thing, they come back and they say, “I told you so.”

Today we celebrate the Festival of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but Peter reminds us that God is basically saying “I told you so!  I told you this would happen.”  What God says will happen, will happen.  That’s the central thought as we look at Acts 2.

What God says will happen, will happen.  Pentecost is just a fancy church word.  It’s a Greek word that means “fifty.”  It’s described as a festival that God gave to the Old Testament people in the Old Testament.  This was their thanksgiving, their grain festival.  All the grain was harvested, so they went down fifty days (that’s where Pentecost comes from) after Passover to return and give thanks to God, who provided for them so bountifully.

Pentecost then turns into a harvest of a different sort, not just a celebration of the grain harvest.  Now it is a harvest of souls, for it is on this day (ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven) that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples, just as God said it would happen.  Christ told us this would happen through the mouth of the prophet Joel.  He said, “Your sons and daughters will prophesy…” ^(Joel 2:28)  When we hear “prophesy,” our cultural ears think “fortune telling,” telling the future.  But when the Bible says “prophesy,” it means “truth telling”—telling the truth about who God is and what He has done and what is your relationship with God.  That is what these disciples were doing on that Pentecost day.  They were proclaiming the truth.  If you read later in Acts 2, we hear Peter tell the people the truth—that this “Jesus was the Christ, was the Messiah, was the Son of God who lived a perfect life and then you guys crucified Him because of your sins, but He rose from the dead to pay for all your sins; and because of this, God now has a happy relationship with you.”  This is what the Christ told us through the prophet Joel—that He is going to pour out the Holy Spirit and Peter reminds us, “Yes, God told you so!  This would happen.  Your young men will dream dreams.  Your old men will see visions.”  We see this in the Book of Acts.  Cornelius has a vision.  Peter has a vision.  But we also see this concept, not just literally someone having a vision, but you and I, through the Holy Spirit, see a reality that isn’t perceived.  We see a truth that is not perceived.

For example, this morning we had a baptism.  We poured water on Malachi’s head.  (Walter is his middle name.  I remembered his middle name—wow!  I can’t even remember my own kids’ middle names.)  We poured water on Malachi’s head.  We spoke some words.  And we saw a reality that wasn’t perceived.  He is now a child of God through the working of the Holy Spirit, through the Word, together with the water.

When we think about what is going to happen for us in the future, in heaven, we see something that isn’t perceived.  We know that it’s there.  We know that we will be there because of what Jesus has done.

God’s Word will be given to all people and through that Word, the Holy Spirit would work.  Christ Jesus Himself promised the disciples that the Holy Spirit was going to come on Pentecost and on Pentecost, it’s done of course.  What God said would happen did happen.

Now the Holy Spirit has some neat markers on that day—the sound of a violent wind.  We can replicate that with our sound system but back then that would have been something—to hear the sound of violent wind but not see anything.  The tongues of fire resting on the disciples’ heads—that’s something you don’t see every day.  But we lose the point if we think the Holy Spirit needs something like this to work.

We have God’s Word.  We have the Sacraments—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  Places where God, in His Word, has promised there the Holy Spirit is at work.  And how often do we say “Yeah, but, can you give me something else, some other evidence that God is really here and really present?”  Sometimes people will say “Let’s have exciting music.”  Or instead of using music in the freedom of the Gospel and to say we can praise God with any style of music, we get caught up in saying music has to be a certain way in order for the Holy Spirit to work.  Whether it is having a band or whether you have drums or whether you have to have How Great Thou Art and Amazing Grace at least once a month, we’re still looking at other things for evidence of the Holy Spirit and His work.  And we are despising the very thing that He says He is and where He is found—in His Word and Sacrament.

But this also comes in through the day-to-day lives of us as we wonder, should I do my devotion today?  Should we do our family devotion today?  Should we come to church on Sunday?  Well, we’ll be okay.  We don’t have to do it today.  We don’t have to do it this week.  We forget that’s where the Holy Spirit is at work—in His Word and in His Sacraments.

As we confess in Luther’s Explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles Creed, which we will in just a few minutes, we say “I believe that I cannot by my own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.  But the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.  In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”  How often you and I despise this Word and these gifts—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—and look for the Holy Spirit elsewhere, but these are where He is found.

What God says will happen, will happen.  When we are opening God’s Word in our homes or when we are opening God’s Word here at Morrison or at Immanuel, God’s Word is at work.  The Holy Spirit is at work, keeping us in the true faith until life everlasting.  That’s His promise.  Isn’t that a glorious promise?  Because we think, you know, God knows everything.  He knows where I was on Sunday morning.  He knows where I was on Monday morning.  He knows what I did or didn’t do and yet He still promises to be in this Word.  He still promises to wash away my sins in a forgiveness of sins that I can taste, in the bread and the wine.  God is still working.  He still gathers His Church.  What God says will happen, will happen.

When Peter is quoting from Joel, he isn’t just talking about Pentecost.  He’s talking about something that is going to happen after Pentecost, the next big event, and that’s the end of the world.  That’s where he talks about the wonders in the sky above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and a rising cloud of smoke.  The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.  Joel is talking about the end of the world and its coming and that’s the next big event.  That will have signs.  People will be gathered in amazement, wondering what is going on here, and you and I will know what is going on here because what God says will happen, will happen.  That is true about the end of the world.

But then it is also true about that very last thing that Peter says.  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord WILL be saved, so all of our personal devotion doesn’t get us into heaven.  All of our coming to church and marking that “x” off of our checklist of things that we did this week isn’t going to get us into heaven—only the working of the Holy Spirit, who leads us to call on Him, only through that.  And He is still working.  He is still healing.  There still is a balm in Gilead so to speak.  The Holy Spirit is still working through that Word.  You are not a lost case.  The Holy Spirit works because what God says will happen, will happen.  Amen.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ^{(Philippians 4:7)} Amen.