"Positive"
Text:
2 Corinthians 1:18-24
Revel, dear Christian, in the
certain knowledge that your sins are forgiven and that heaven's door stands
open, waiting for you to enter the Paradise that has been won and prepared for
you by Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
There is a word in English that we use when the issue is
beyond sure - even beyond certain.
You've known about this word ever since you were a little child. You learned it
from the progression of the questions you were asked: "Are you sure? Are you certain? Are you positive??"
It was one thing to be sure. Another to be certain.
But if you were positive, then there
just was no doubt.
Positive, however, seems to be a bit hard to come by in a
less than certain world – especially when it comes to the future. Stop for just
a moment and try to list even a half dozen future events about which you can be
absolutely positive. The fact is you
probably can't, especially not in a world where tomorrow's sunrise isn't even
guaranteed.
It is in this light that the world views Christianity and
the promises contained therein – as unrealistic and highly questionable.
Unfortunately it is often in this same light that Christians view those same
promises. Let it not be so among us. This morning we will be reminded to look
at not only what we have, but also at what we have been promised. When the Lord
God himself promises, that is the
time to be positive. The text that will guide and instruct us on this Pentecost
morning is found in Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians, the First
Chapter:
NKJ 2 Corinthians
1:18-24
But as God is faithful, our word to you was not Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, who was preached among you by us -- by me, Silvanus, and Timothy -- was
not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. 20
For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the
glory of God through us. 21
Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, 22 who also has sealed us
and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. 23 ¶ Moreover I call God as
witness against my soul, that to spare you I came no more to Corinth. 24 Not that we
have dominion over your faith, but are fellow workers for your joy; for by
faith you stand.
These are God's words. In humble thanksgiving, and desiring
to be filled and instructed by these words we pray, "Sanctify
us through Your truth, O Lord. Your Word is truth." Amen.
We learned as children (and have been reminded often since)
that we can break the 8th Commandment even by telling the truth. We
do so whenever we speak the truth with evil intentions. In every such case we
are acting contrary to the will of our God. It therefore ought not surprise us that we can also fail in our calling as Christian witnesses even though we never
speak that which is untrue. Again, how so? By dwelling on negative truth.
Let me use an example that every parent will readily
understand. Parents recognize what very few children understand: bad stuff
happens. Children are invincible in their own minds. Parents know from
experience that invincibility simply does not exist. With this understanding,
parents have some tough choices to make. How often and concerning how many
dangers should we warn our children? Every parent can sympathize with the
overprotective moms and dads out there. A parent's natural love for his child
makes every parent want to shelter his child from as much pain and danger as
possible. The problem is knowing how much is too much.
Overprotection can easily lead to paranoid and fearful children, but how do we
balance that with the need for prudent precaution?
The same sorts of problems confront pastors and teachers of
the Word of God. Individual Christians often seem to carry about the same
illusion of invulnerability, only with adults it exists in the spiritual realm.
In other words, adults come to realize that they can be physically damaged, but
they often refuse to see that they can also be severely injured spiritually. Much
like the overprotective parent, the temptation for those entrusted with the spiritual
care of souls is to try to identify and protect those that are dear to them
from every possible spiritual danger. The result is that we become so concerned
with what might happen (maybe obsessed is more accurate) that we lose
sight of what has happened and what
our Lord has promised will happen to
every single child of God. Bottom line? Pastors spend
so much time warning their members about all of the spiritual dangers out there
that we often fail to focus on the good things that God has already done for
us, and the great things that he has promised us in the future.
This is the general area to which our text carries us this
morning – the delicate balance between confidence and overconfidence, and the
tragic difference between dead sure
and just plain dead.
One of the greatest failures of the Christian Church down
through the ages is that we have failed to communicate to the world around us
that ours is a religion that is, above all else, positive – in both character and promise. We have failed to
disabuse the world of the appalling misconception that Christianity is a dour,
forbidding, and gloomy religion, a religion of "No!" and "Don't"
rather than "Yes!" and
"Done!" We do this whenever
we give the outside world the idea that we are prevented by our religion from
doing a wide variety of things that we would dearly love to do – and certainly
would do if we could get away with it. The fact – the message we need to share
– is that we have been freed from our slavery to sin. Sin no longer dominates
and controls us. We have the means to defeat it, and as a result we are free to
love the will of our God and to walk according to his desires. The world
believes that we are unwilling slaves. We need to show them that we are
grateful, willing servants.
Our text makes short work of any misconception that
Christianity is primarily a religion of prohibition and condemnation. Just
listen to the tone of Paul's inspired words: "For the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, who was preached among you by us... was not Yes and No, but in Him was
Yes. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and
in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us." You have to work
pretty hard to get "dour" or "forbidding" or
"gloomy" out of these words, don't you? What is it, after all, that
these words are telling us? They certainly are not picturing Christianity in
any sort of negative light, are they? Far from it, they breathe of joyful
assurance and confidence concerning that which is and that which is to come.
Why such confidence and assurance? Because these promises are
all based on Jesus Christ – the one man who never fails.
Jesus Christ is the single most positive thing to ever
happen to sinful mankind. Positive because, by his own words,
"God
did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world
through Him might be saved." (John 3:17) Positive
because even now Jesus does not make demands
on us, he makes offers and he makes promises. It was Moses that came with
demands and threats. Moses brought the Law. Jesus came with a different
message. "For the law was given
through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."
(John 1:17)
What does that mean - "grace and truth came through Jesus
Christ"? It certainly does not mean that there was no truth in the
law. The law, however, was certainly not gracious. Grace, remember, is defined
as "God's undeserved love for
sinners." There was no give to the law, no room for error whatsoever.
The Holy Spirit through James said of the law: "For whoever shall keep the
whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all."
(James 2:10) Just think for a moment of the enormity of those words. Imagine
living from birth until the moment of your death and never once sinning – not
once. Then, on your deathbed, one sinful thought flashes across your mind. At
that moment you become guilty of all sins. In that instant you are as guilty
and deserving of death as any murderer, thief, liar, child abuser, or idolater.
That is what it means when we say that there was no give to the law, no room
for error. To sin, even once, was to die. This is the message Moses brought.
What about Jesus, what message did he bring? Our text tells
us:
"...not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. For all the promises of God in Him
are Yes, and in Him Amen." Our text is
here telling us that Jesus carried with him from heaven no threats, no
requirements, no demands. He came to do for us what we
would not and could not do for ourselves – keep perfectly the very law that
demanded perfection of each one of us. Jesus kept that law perfectly every
moment of his life on earth, and then he gave that life on the cross as a
payment for the sum total of all mankind's sins. On the cross he paid for every
last one of them. That is what he announced when from that cross he said, simply
enough, "It is finished!"
Dear Christians that
is our religion. Is there any "no" in anything you see there? Is
there any negativity of any kind? Is there any doubt or uncertainty? Any gloom or despair? How could there be? Jesus left nothing
undone; he left no sin without payment. The battle in no way remains uncertain.
It has been fought and it has already been won for us by Jesus Christ, the Son
of God.
Ah, but in sneaks the devil, whispering his disturbing
half-truths in our ear: "Yes, Jesus
may have won, but will you? Can you, a sinner, really have any confidence about
your eternal future? Don't you know others who once believed as you do, only to
fall away later in life? What makes you think you will be any different? How
can you possibly have any confidence, any certainty that you will not turn away
in the end and die in unbelief?"
The comforting truth here is that our Lord Jesus knows us
better than we know ourselves. He recognizes that each one of us is just as
incapable of keeping ourselves in the faith as we were in bringing ourselves to
faith in the first place. True, we were spiritually dead then and we are not
now, but Psalms 103:13-14 assures us, "As a father pities his children, so
the LORD pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that
we are dust." The same Father who loved us enough to send his own
Son to die for us would never forsake his children. We have been reconciled to
him. Our text offers us only comfort and assurance. There we read, "Now
He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also
has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee."
This passage brings us round to the great event we celebrate
this morning – Pentecost. Pentecost was the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in
full measure upon God's New Testament Church. Surely the Holy Spirit was also
at work in the Old Testament, but at Pentecost his presence flooded the Church
that Jesus Christ had established, and there the Spirit remains, living forever
thereafter in the hearts of his children. The gifts brought by this permanent
indwelling of the Holy Spirit are simply extraordinary. Though this Holy Spirit
was given to us for many reasons, this morning we have been examining one in
particular – revealed to us in our text. The
Holy Spirit was sent into our hearts as a seal or guarantee of the great things
God has done for us. What does our text mean by a "seal" or
"guarantee"? It means that just as God's promise to pour out his
Spirit into our hearts was fulfilled at Pentecost, so now also we can and
should have confidence that since he kept that and every other promise ever
made, every single one of his promises will also be fulfilled. "By
faith we stand," our text assures us, and by the Holy Spirit we
are preserved – the same Holy Spirit who even now lives in every single child
of God.
A loving Savior would never die for us only to abandon us.
His plan from the very start was to send the blessed Comforter to live in our
hearts. This he has done. It is now the Holy Spirit who sustains and preserves
us. We could be in no better hands. While it is true that we still have our Old
Adam with us and therefore possess the frightening power to drive the Holy
Spirit from our hearts, we have not been called to such doubts and fears. We
have won because Jesus, our Champion, has won. The Holy Spirit will continue to
protect and preserve us through the means he has established for this very
purpose – the gospel (in Word and in Sacrament). Feast on that gospel message,
dear Christians. Fill yourselves with the Word, for it is the Bread of Life,
and then search through those Scriptures to discover the many promises there –
sure promises made by a perfectly faithful God. In Christ Jesus we can be positive, which is the very message we
want to share with the world. The debt of sin has been paid. Our passage to
heaven has been earned. What, on earth, could ever be more positive? Amen.
Scripture
Readings and Sunday Bulletin for May 11, 2008
NKJ Numbers 11:24-30 So Moses went out and told the people the
words of the LORD, and he gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people
and placed them around the tabernacle. 25
Then the LORD came down in the cloud, and spoke to him, and took of the Spirit
that was upon him, and placed the same upon the seventy elders;
and it happened, when the Spirit rested upon them, that they prophesied,
although they never did so again.
26 ¶ But two men had remained
in the camp: the name of one was Eldad, and
the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested
upon them. Now they were among those listed, but who had not gone out to
the tabernacle; yet they prophesied in the camp. 27 And a young man ran and told
Moses, and said, "Eldad and Medad
are prophesying in the camp." 28
So Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, one of his choice men,
answered and said, "Moses my lord, forbid them!" 29 Then Moses said to him,
"Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the LORD's
people were prophets and that the LORD would put His Spirit upon
them!" 30 And Moses
returned to the camp, both he and the elders of Israel.
NKJ Acts 2:1-8, 12-18 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they
were all with one accord in one place. 2
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and
it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 Then there appeared to them
divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with
the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them
utterance. 5 ¶ And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from
every nation under heaven. 6
And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together,
and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own
language. 7 Then they were
all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, "Look, are not all these
who speak Galileans? 8
"And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we
were born? 12 So they were
all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "Whatever could this mean?" 13 Others mocking said, "They
are full of new wine." 14 ¶
But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them,
"Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you,
and heed my words. 15
"For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the
third hour of the day. 16
"But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 17 'And it shall come to pass in
the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your
sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your
old men shall dream dreams. 18
And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will
pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy.
NKJ 2 Corinthians 1:18-24 But as God is
faithful, our word to you was not Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, who was preached among you by us -- by me, Silvanus, and Timothy -- was
not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. 20
For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and
in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.
21 Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has
anointed us is God,
22 who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in
our hearts as a guarantee. 23 ¶
Moreover I call God as witness against my soul, that to spare you I came no
more to Corinth. 24
Not that we have dominion over your faith, but are fellow workers for your joy;
for by faith you stand.
Bismarck,
ND 58501 (701) 223-4885 Cell: (701) 425-5483
Mr. Mark
Johnson, President (222-1855)
Mrs. Eileen McEnroe, Organist
Michael Roehl,
Pastor mjroehl@bis.midco.net
Pentecost Sunday – May 11, 2008
|
The Opening
Prayer by the Pastor
The Opening
Hymn ‑#226- (Verses 1-5) (Red Hymnal)
"Come, Oh Come, Thou Quickening
Spirit"
The Order of Morning Service – Red Hymnal page 15.
The Scripture Lessons: (Printed on the bulletin insert)
The
Old Testament Lesson:
(Numbers 11:24-30) Since
we hear much about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the New Testament Church at Pentecost, some
Christians are surprised to hear that the Spirit was also given to Old
Testament believers. Our first lesson tells of one such occasion in the Old
Testament where some of the Jewish leaders were visited by the Spirit.
The
New Testament Lesson
(Acts 2:1-8, 12-18) This is the account of the event we
celebrate this morning – the special outpouring of the Holy Spirit on
Pentecost. Though the Holy Spirit was obviously also at work in the Old
Testament, He was given to the New Testament Church in a very special way at
Pentecost. Note that the speaking in a different language was a special,
visible sign that proved the visitation of the Spirit. It was not the gift
itself.
The
Confession of Faith ‑
The Nicene Creed (Red Hymnal page 22)
The Pre‑Sermon Hymn ‑#227- (Red Hymnal)
"Come Holy Ghost, in Love"
The Sermon – Text: 2 Corinthians 1:18-24 (Printed on the back of
this bulletin)
"Positive"
"Create
In Me" (The Offertory) – Red Hymnal page 22
The Offering, followed by the Prayers
The Pre-Communion Hymn -#307- (Red Hymnal)
"Draw Nigh and
Take the Body of the Lord"
The
Preparation for Holy Communion (Red Hymnal page 24)
The
Distribution -Hymn #315- (Red Hymnal)
"I
Come, O Savior, to Thy Table"
The Nunc
Dimittis (Red Hymnal page 29)
The Benediction
The Closing
Hymn ‑#644- (Red Hymnal)
"Praise God from Whom All
Blessings Flow"
Silent
Prayer
Attendance ‑ Last Sunday (54) 2008 Average (52)
This Week
at
Today -10:00 a.m. – Worship Service w/ Holy Communion
-11:15 a.m. – Fellowship Hour
Wednesday -6:00
p.m. – Confirmation & Bible History
-7:00 p.m. –
Midweek Bible Study
Next Sunday -8:45 a.m. – Sunday School and Bible Class
-10:00
a.m. – Worship
Service
-11:00
a.m. – Fellowship
Hour
CLC News – Pastor Michael Schierenbeck, former
pastor of Redeemer in Bowdle and current pastor of Faith in Markesan, WI has
announced his resignation for health reasons. He is preparing to undergo stem
cell treatment for a rare form of Leukemia. Please remember him and his family
in your prayers. Also, after months of debilitating pain, Pastor Paul Larson
has undergone successful lower back surgery and is recovering at home. We
remember also Pastor Larson and his wife in our prayers.
Mother's Day - Though every worship service here
at St. Paul is centered on the worship of our Savior-God, it is certainly good
and right to thank our God on this day for His great gifts. Certainly high on
that list is God's gift of faithful, Christian mothers. In this we note especially
that it is not simply giving birth that makes a woman great, it is the humble
service to her God in her calling as mother and wife that does so. Thanks be to God for all of His many blessings.
Various Summer Outing Information – All of the regular CLC summer
outings are planned again this summer, including the CLC Youth Camp, Black
Hills Camping, TVBS, Young Adults Week, Boundary Waters Canoeing Trip, Family
Camping in Missouri, and others. Please see the Pastor for details.