John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
Pentecost
May 19, 2024
Focus: God sends His Spirit to convict the world.
Function: That the hearers be convicted by the truth to repent and trust in Christ alone.
Structure: .
The Promise of the Spirit
Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ,
Last week on Thursday, we celebrated together the coronation festival of our King, Jesus. That’s what Ascension Day is, as Jesus, risen from the dead, ascended to the right hand of the Father on high, and the Father gave Him dominion over all things, all authority in heaven and on earth was given to Him. We celebrate the ascension because it’s the everlasting reign of Jesus Christ as the true and good King over all of this.
Today, we look to celebrate Pentecost, one of the three pilgrimage festivals of God’s Old Testament people. It was originally known as the Feast of Weeks, celebrated 50 days after the first harvest celebration of the year. Over time, it took on the name Pentecost, as that’s the Greek word for the number fifty.
But we’re not celebrating a harvest feast today. At least, not a harvest of barley. Pentecost has taken on a completely new meaning for the Christian Church because of the events of that day, fifty days after Easter, when Jesus rose from the dead. Pentecost is the day that the Lord poured out His Holy Spirit on His Church. Pentecost is the day when the apostles spoke the gospel of Jesus in the miracle of a universal tongue to men from every nation under heaven who had made the pilgrimage for the old festival. Pentecost is the day that the New Testament Church was born, because there was a harvest celebration that day, a harvest of faith, with angels rejoicing, as the response to the preaching of Peter and the apostles was the baptism of three thousand souls.
There is no text in Scripture that I have preached on more often than Peter’s Pentecost sermon. So today, I want to take a different approach, I want to take you backwards, roughly fifty-three days backwards, to the day Jesus prophesied and promised the events of this day. We look to John’s gospel account, where he shares with us the dinner conversations of Jesus and His disciples as they ate the Last Supper in the upper room on Maundy Thursday.
Jesus told His disciples that He was going to ascend. He doesn’t use that word, nor do we really know how the disciples received it. But Jesus made them sorrowful by telling them that He must leave them and return to the Father who sent Him. As a reminder, they thought Jesus was like the judges of the Old Testament, that God had raised up for them a man who would be a military hero, a conquering king who would overthrow their oppressors and bring a time of peace. So when Jesus says He is going away from them, they grieve.
But He encourages them by promising a gift. A gift that doesn’t come unless He goes away. If He stays, they don’t receive it. What gift could be that good? What gift could possibly make it good that their champion was going to leave them? “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you.” Jesus promised the gift of the Helper, the Comforter, The Advocate, the Intercessor, the Paraclete. Jesus promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit.
This text, by the way, is the one you want if you’re talking to a Greek Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, brother or sister in Christ. Many of them believe that the Spirit proceeds only from the Father, not from the Father and the Son. It’s one of the two issues that initially fractured the Church, as the East broke off from the West, the Greek Orthodox from the Roman Catholics. But Jesus here clearly does say that He will send the Spirit, Christ will do it.
And Pentecost then is the day where Jesus keeps His promise. The day when He pours out His Holy Spirit upon the Church. Our brother Luke the evangelist and doctor wrote two books in our New Testament. He wrote The Gospel according to Luke and The Acts of the Apostles. In a way, the gospel account is Luke’s record about the life and ministry of Jesus, His saving work, and Acts is about the work of the Holy Spirit in forming the Church and spreading it across continents, even to the ends of the earth.
As we look to John today, what promises does Jesus make about the Holy Spirit? What does He teach us the works of the Spirit are? “When He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” But, prominently, those convictions are all done by the latter thing, “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.”
It’s fair to say that the primary work of the Holy Spirit that Jesus points us to is teaching. The Spirit’s job is to teach us, and the whole world, what is true. And so He will convict, bring to light, expose, set forth, reprove, correct, discipline, all possible translations there, He will convict the world of three things: sin, righteousness, and judgment. He will expose them. He will bring them to light. He will correct the wayward. He will discipline the faithful.
“Concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me.” This one is arguably the primary work of the Holy Spirit you’ll hear discussed. This is how we normally talk about Him, that it’s the Spirit’s job to create faith in us and then to bring us to repentance. It’s the Spirit’s work to show the world what sin is. The Spirit uses the Law of God to convict, to show us our sins and our need for a Savior. The Spirit works in us to bring about repentance. When you feel guilt because you lied. When you feel sorrow because you were disobedient. When you feel shame because of your prideful attitude. All of these are the work of the Spirit. He is at work in you to turn you, to cause you to repent. The Spirit also uses the Law to bring to light how evil sin is and the destruction that it brings. The Spirit helps people realize that walking in evil ways only destroys, it can’t build up. And so even an unbelieving neighbor can look at our culture and begin to recognize that what they thought was good and would bring pleasure failed them and is bringing misery all around them. That acknowledgment is the Spirit at work, seeking to turn a self-hardened sinner to repentance.
“Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father.” The world thinks itself righteous. Good, right, just. Look around, social justice is all the rage. The rightest person seems to be the one who can shout the loudest. The sinner is constantly seeking to justify himself, us included. We don’t like hearing that we fall short. We don’t like being told that we’re wrong, or that we’ve done something wrong. When it happens, we’re quick to defend ourselves, quick to make up an excuse for why what we did was the right thing in that moment.
And then the words of Paul in Romans 3:10 smack us in the head, “None is righteous, no not one.” Try as we might, we fall short. We can’t do it. We are broken. We aren’t just. True righteousness is found only in God. Jesus is the Righteous One. He is the only One to walk this earth without sin. He kept the Father’s commands perfectly. He loved His Father perfectly. He loved His neighbors perfectly. Without fail. Without evil thought. So if Jesus leaves, how will we know what righteousness looks like? How can Paul conclude his letter to the church in Philippi saying (4:8),
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Jesus is all of these things. And the Spirit teaches us about Him. The Spirit brings us to think of Christ, to praise Christ, to pray to Christ throughout the day, throughout our days. The Spirit does this by the works of the Law, again, showing us our need for a Savior. He does this by His inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, which are written for our learning, which point us to Christ from cover to cover. We see His righteousness, we learn from His righteousness. And we get to taste and see that the Lord is good, as the Spirit brings us to receive His gifts of forgiveness and life again and again in Word and Sacrament.
“Concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” Satan was in charge. Ever since Adam and Eve plunged this creation into darkness by their rebellion against God, the devil has had control. His lies, his temptations as he continued to lead people away from their Creator. But not anymore! Satan is undone! The ruler of this world has been overthrown by Christ’s death and His resurrection. So what now? If the old judge is gone, if the one who was teaching us good and evil, remember his words as he tempted Eve, if he is no longer in authority to teach us good and evil, who will? The Spirit. The Spirit will teach us the judgments of God again, not a broken and twisted judgment, put a perfect judgment. The Spirit will lead us to know and to understand what is good and right. And He does so with the aim that we will not be judged as the devil is. Afterall, Jesus says that the lake of fire was not prepared for man, but for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, God wants to deliver us from evil. He wants to save us.
When Jesus was with His disciples, they didn’t need to know everything. As long as Christ was with them, leading them, they were good to go. Think of a family, of a father with his children. My daughters don’t yet need to know everything about this world. As long as Dad is leading them, as my heavenly Father leads me, there are so many evils they don’t have to think about, and I seek to lead them simply and regularly to what is good, right, and salutary, even if they can’t yet fully understand why.
Jesus had so much more He wanted to teach His disciples, but they could not yet bear it. They couldn’t even wrap their mind around Christ’s passion predictions, that He would die and rise again. Their idea of the Messiah was so warped, their ears so clogged, that they weren’t ready to hear everything Jesus had to teach them. It would take the rattling of the earth on Good Friday as Jesus died, it would take the awe-some (“worthy of fear”) appearance of the risen Christ, it would take His shocking ascension to jar the disciples loose of clinging to their own ideas, and to instead be free to hear the words of Christ. And the Spirit would be here, the Spirit would be with them to tell them. To tell us. To point us to Christ again and again.
In the years to come, many of these same apostles took iron pen to parchment, and inspired by the Holy Spirit gave us the gift of God’s Word, which teaches us daily about who Christ is and what He has done for us. The Spirit continues to work through the Law and the gospel, to convict and to forgive. To bring us to repent, and to rejoice in Christ.
The Spirit takes all that belongs to Jesus, and He declares it to us. The Spirit creates faith in us in the waters of baptism and through the proclamation of the Word of God so that we may be called children of God, a part of the Father’s kingdom. The Spirit teaches us to rightly discern between good and evil. The Spirit convicts us of our sins and points us to the love and forgiveness of Christ for us.
And on the Last Day, the Spirit will take all that belongs to Jesus, and He will share it with us. Christ lives forever, and so will we. Christ reigns as King, and as His Bride we will reign with Him. Christ is preparing a new heaven and a new earth, and we will get to live there forevermore, in His Paradise, caring together for all that is His in the age that is to come.
Amen. Come Lord Jesus!