5.19.24 Sunday Drive to Church

[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolfmuller. And this is the Sunday, the Pentecost Sunday drive to church. It's your podcast for Sunday, May 19, the year of our Lord. 20 24, 50 days after Easter today or after the crucifixion? That means it's Pentecost time. Ten days after the ascension of our Lord Jesus, when the disciples were gathered for fear, the Jews, they were gathered in the upper room, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him, just as Jesus promised. And they are not afraid anymore. Out they go. And they're preaching and they're calling people to repentance, and they're full of joy and courage. [00:00:40] This is what we're going to talk about today, the joy of Pentecost. So, looking at the bulletin, we'll start with the collect. It's interesting to me that the collect on one of the theological points of Pentecost, and you will notice this in the hymns and listen. So one of the theological points, one of the questions is, when we pray, ought we to pray to only God the Father, or can we pray to God the Son and God the Holy Spirit? And the answer is that most of our prayers, we take our instructions from Jesus and we pray our father. But that does not, that is not a limit or any sort of anything that would say that we cannot pray to the Son or to the Holy Spirit. In fact, we can pray to all three persons of the Holy Trinity. [00:01:30] And Pentecost answers that question for us clearly in the hymns mostly, can you pray to the Holy Spirit? Listen to the names of the hymns. Come Holy Ghost, creator blessed. It's the opening hymn, the hymn of the day. Come Holy Ghost, God and Lord. [00:01:45] The distribution hymns to God, the Holy Spirit. Let us pray. Creator, spirit, by whose aid Holy Spirit ever dwelling come down, o love divine. So almost every single one of the hymns today is just that, a prayer to the Holy Spirit. Which is why it's a little bit surprising that the collect for Pentecost is not a prayer to the Holy Spirit. I think the prayer of the church will be but a prayer to the Father. [00:02:15] It's a prayer thanking God for giving the spirit on Pentecost and praying that he would give the spirit today. So let's pray that together, o God, on this day you once taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending them the light of your Holy Spirit. [00:02:30] Grant us in our day by the same spirit to have a right understanding in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy consolation through Jesus Christ your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. [00:02:48] Amen. The icon on the front is what's a beautiful painting that shows. It's like a painted on gold foil, which shows the Holy Spirit coming down on the disciples as a dove. [00:03:00] It's kind of a combination of the baptism of Jesus and Pentecost. On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes down as flames of fire. When Jesus was baptized, he came down. The Holy Spirit came down as a dove. Here, this kind of mixes both of those pictures. All right, now I'm into it. I'm into the liturgy. Here we are. It's a high feast, so we're processing and recessing and gospel processing. So. So get ready for that. And we're still going to try to keep doing this thing. Five minutes before the service, we'll have a little pre service prayer and. And a little. A little quiet time for reflection before the service. Thanks for doing that last week. You guys did great. We'll do it again this week. Our entrance psalm is psalm 139, this great psalm of David. The most popular part of psalm 139 is right after our text. So we're just doing the first twelve verses. [00:03:54] Verse 13 is, you formed me in my inward parts. You wove me together in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. My soul knows it right well. My frame wasn't hidden from you when I was made in secret. This is just this beautiful text that shows that the Lord was involved when. When we were in the womb. Anyway, we're not going to sing that part of the psalm. We're going to sing the first part, which is also. I think it's a little bit familiar. You have searched me and know me. [00:04:24] You know, when I sit down and when I rise up, you understand my thoughts from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down. You're intimately acquainted with all my ways, even. This is an amazing thing that the Lord knows what we're going to say even before we say it, even before there's a word on my tongue. Behold, o Lord, you know it all. So this is the. [00:04:44] The Lord's omniscience. That word omniscience comes from omni, which means all, and sienta, which means knowledge. Science. Science. So the Lord is all knowing. And then the next verses seven and following, talk about his omnipresence, that he is everywhere present. [00:05:02] Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I, ascend to heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in the grave, you're there. If I take the wings of the dawn and dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even Austin, Texas, that's my addition. Even there, your hand will leave me. [00:05:19] Darkness is not dark to you. The Lord sees through the night, the day. Nothing's hidden from him. So the Lord is all knowing, and the Lord is everywhere. And this is not only the cause of our praise to God, but also our comfort, because he knows us, and yet he does not despise us, but rather delights in us. He loves us. He cares for us. He comes to us to bless us. God be praised. The Old Testament. [00:05:50] The Old Testament is Ezekiel 37, the first 14 verses, which is the valley of the dry bones. This is one of those great Sunday school stories, and the more imagination you have, the better. That's why the kids love it. And there's this old spiritual dem bones, dem bones, them dry bones. I don't know if you guys know that one, but it comes from this text, because the Lord takes Ezekiel out to this valley, and it was the scene of an ancient battle, and it seems like it was the scene of an ancient defeat, that the Israelites were destroyed in this battle. And they were so utterly destroyed that they weren't even. There weren't even people to bury them. They just. Their corpses were laying out in the open, and they died. And there's just bones everywhere, skeletons of people who were killed in battle. Now it seems like this is happening in a vision, not in reality. The Lord. [00:06:53] It could be a true story, but it seems the hand of the lord was upon me. He brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley. So it seems like this is a vision that the Lord is giving to his ezekiel, and he's in this horrible place. I don't know if you can imagine just yourself being on this battlefield where your people, your nation, has suffered such a profound loss that the skeletons of the soldiers are just lying open. [00:07:25] They've been picked clean by the animals and by the birds, and they've been bleached white in the sun. And there's just. And you're in this full of skeletons, and the Lord is there with Ezekiel and he says, son of man, can these bones live? [00:07:41] And Ezekiel says the right thing, which is, o Lord God. You know, I'm looking at the text here. Can I just point out a detail to you guys? I think this is good to point out whenever you're reading through the Old Testament, you'll notice that sometimes you see the word Lord with all capital letters. And when that happens, what that's an indication of is that underneath it is the divine name Yahweh. I am who I am, yahweh. And so, like verse one says, the hand of the Lord was upon me. That means, the hand of Yahweh was upon me, and he brought me out in the spirit of the spirit of Yahweh and set me down in the middle of the valley. If you see Lord. And it's not all capital letters, that means it's the hebrew word adonai, which means lord. The hebrew word for God, by the way, is Elohim. So whenever you see God, it's Elohim. But every once in a while, you'll notice God with all capital letters, and it is every time with lord. [00:08:45] And that's here in this verse as well. Verse three, I answered, o Lord God. You know, and if you saw that Lord God, you'd say, oh, that means, o adonai, elohim. That would be lord God. Or maybe it's all capital, lord, o yahweh, elohim. But in this case, if you look closely, you'll notice that God is all capital letters and that. So when it says, o Lord God, it's using God for the divine name. In other words, here's the basic rule. Whenever it's all capital letters, it's the divine name. Well, why wouldn't they say lord? Well, it's because when Ezekiel answers the Lord, he says in Hebrew, o yahweh, adonai. Or maybe it's the other way, o adonai, yahweh. And it would be very strange to say, oh, lord, lord. You know, because that would just be strange. So whenever you see God with all capital letters, that's what's going on there. So Ezekiel says, o adonai, yahweh. You know, he said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them, o dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. [00:09:56] So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, behold, there was a sound and rattling, and the bones, can you see it? The bones start to shake, and they're all started bouncing around on each other, and they start to come together, and these bones are kind of shaken together, and they're becoming skeletons. And then the sinews is on them, and then the skin starts to cover them. It's like a. It's gotta be the craziest thing. Ezekiel's looking at all these Bones becoming people, and they're all standing there, and there's skin on them, but there's no breath in them. So they're all alive. Well, they're all put back together, but they're still dead. [00:10:36] And he said to me, prophesy to the breath, son of man. Prophesy and say to the breath. Thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, o breath, and breathe on the slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded. Now, here's another little linguistic thing. The word for breath is the same word for spirit in the Old Testament. The word is ruach, and it can mean breath or it can mean spirit. And so when it says the spirit of the Lord, it says, ruach, yahweh. And here he says, prophesied to the ruach. Prophesied to the spirit. And he prophesied, and these bodies take a breath, and they come back alive. [00:11:14] Amazing. [00:11:16] So he sees this resurrection of this army, and you see what's happening. The Lord is picturing for Ezekiel the power of the word. Because the Lord could have caused this to happen, happen. But he doesn't cause it to happen, apart from the prophesying of Ezekiel. He says to Ezekiel, you tell the breath to go into them. And Ezekiel does it, and the breath goes into him. It's an amazing, amazing story. And then the Lord explains it. He says, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. We're clean cut off. That's what the people are saying. [00:11:50] Therefore prophesy and say to them, thus does the Lord God. Behold, yahweh. Uh, what is that? Yahweh. Adonai. Adonai. Thus says yahweh, Adonai. Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, o my people, and bring you into the land. [00:12:06] I, the Lord, have spoken. I will do it, declares the lord. This is what the lord's word does, and especially in EzEkiel. Remember, EZekiel's the prap of the prophet of the babylonian exile. [00:12:16] He's the one who'S. They're hanging up their harps on the willows of the rivers of Babylon by the river. Remember the old spiritual? This is. [00:12:28] Here's a little story. When I lived in. I lived in FijI, this really remote village, for about three months when I was. I guess it was after my freshman year, of college. We were building this kindergarten, and. [00:12:40] And the people who had this little village where it's kind of a. Like a little tiny little place with a few grass huts. It was like a backpacker hostel kind of place that we had for the summer. Tina Nitoa was the lady who ran it, and she was JehovaH's witness. And she was Always playing these old spirituals. And her favorite one to play was by the rivers of BAbylon. That was Always. Every morning I'd wake up, and she would be singing and playing by the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion. That was the spiritual. And that's that psalm that. That's basically Ezekiel. He's over there by the rivers of Babylon, and they're weeping. How can we sing songs of Zion? They say, sing us a song of Zion. How can we sing songs of Zion? [00:13:37] So that Ezekiel is preaching to the people in exile, and he's saying, you are going to come back to life. That's what the Lord does. And he does it through the word, whoo. Glorious. And then straight into that. [00:13:51] Straight from that into the epistle lesson, which is acts, chapter two, the story of Pentecost. Here's a couple of things to notice, and I think, probably preach on this. I mean, I think so. The sermon tomorrow is mostly going to be about how to rightly understand the work of the spirit. So it'll probably be kind of a combo of all three verses. [00:14:15] But I won't get too much into the story here. I'll probably work on that a little bit. But we'll remember that. Here's the main thing, that every time we see the disciples after the death of Jesus, they are hiding and afraid. [00:14:34] They're in the upper room, and the door's locked for fear of the Jews. A week later, the door's locked for fear of the Jews in the Pentecost. 50 days later, they're in the upper room. They're inside, they're locked up. It seems like they are in hiding, in a way, until the Holy Spirit comes. And now there's this complete reversal. They pour out into the street, and they start preaching in all these different languages that they don't even know. And then they all gather around the people who are there in Jerusalem. Because Pentecost was one of the three feasts where any jewish person who could was required to go to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast. [00:15:13] There was people from all over the world, all these dispersed jewish folks who gathered together, and the apostles start to preach in all these languages that they don't even know, and the people are, we hear the words, the wonderful works of God preached in our own language, and then Peter stands up and preaches this marvelous sermon. They're not drunk. This is the prophecy of Joel two being fulfilled. And you crucified Christ, but God raised him from the dead. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus. And you will receive the promise of the Holy Spirit, this baptism for the forgiveness of sins. And it's for you and for your children and for all who far off. And 5000 are baptized on that day, today, 1991, years ago, 5000 baptized after hearing the preaching of Peter. [00:15:59] So good. So good. So that's the really, the epistle is the main text. Although we'll process for the gospel and read John 15 and 16 from the middle of the service, we've made it convenient for you that you'll be able to listen to the text. You won't have to worry about reading the text by printing last week's gospel lesson in the bulletin. [00:16:22] Although if you're looking at the bulletin tomorrow and, and what I'm reading sounds different, that's what's going on. [00:16:30] It didn't get fixed. But anyway, John 1516 and that's part of this promise of Jesus where he says, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit and he's going to do three things. He's going to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment of sin, because the world has not believed in me of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you'll see me no more of judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. And here's this beautiful work of the Holy Spirit to show us our sins, to show us the forgiveness of sins and the righteousness that comes in Christ, and to show us the victory that the Lord gives us over the world and the devil, which is our faith. You hear that the Holy Spirit will convict the world and you're like, wow, that's bad. Convict. But to convict means to impress on the mind, and it's not bad that we can be convicted of good things. And especially when we hear he'll convict the world of judgment, we think, uh oh, judgment. [00:17:26] But notice what Jesus says. The ruler of this world has been judged. The judgment that the Holy Spirit convicts us of is not our judgment, it's the devil's judgment. Think about that. [00:17:41] The holy part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to convict us, is to impress upon our hearts that the devil has been judged guilty, condemned cast out of the heavenly throne room. [00:17:54] We don't believe it. I mean, I shouldn't say we don't believe it. [00:17:57] We're taught it in the scripture, so we believe it, but we don't. It's hard for us because we don't see it. It looks to us like the devil is running free. So part of the work of the Holy Spirit is convict us that the ruler of this world has been judged, that the devil has no authority over us. [00:18:19] The hymn of the week, come Holy Ghost, God and Lord. I mentioned at the very beginning that the hymns of Pentecost are proving this point, that we can and ought to pray to the Holy Spirit. And we're praying to the Holy Spirit to come to us and to fill us. Notice how many prayers there are, that the Holy Spirit would come to us and would fill our hearts. We're going to really lean into that in the sermon. We have it here in this Luther hymn. It seems like this hymn, come Holy Ghost, God and Lord, that Luther took the first stanza of a hymn, maybe it was a kind of a chant that they would do during a recessional or something, and Luther expanded it into a hymn. So he gets credit for the second and the third stanzas of this three stanza hymn. [00:19:03] It's a prayer that the Holy Spirit would come and pour out on our hearts and our minds all of his blessings. [00:19:10] I think the interesting thing is all of the different names for the Holy Spirit that Luther uses. Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord. Oh, and here's another rabbit trail to trace down, since you guys don't have anything else to do since you're driving to church. [00:19:26] What's the difference between ghost and spirit? [00:19:29] It seems to me there is no difference. Theologically, it is the same person. The Holy Ghost is the Holy Spirit. At some point, I don't know, 50 years ago, we all decided that Holy Ghost sounded old fashioned and that Holy Spirit didn't. They're equally old words. There's not like one is older than the other, but for some reason, Holy Ghost. I don't know why Holy Ghost just sounds older to us, but the words come to us differently because it's the same greek word that first goes into Latin or German and then comes into English. So the greek word, hebrew word is ruach, breath or spirit. The greek word is panoyma, which also means breath or spirit. It can go either way. Panoyma or ruach. Both go into Latin as spiritus and into German as geist. [00:20:26] Heilige geist in German, spiritu sanctu. In Latin. We used to, at hope in Colorado, we used to have a Pentecost banner and it said ss for spiritu sanctu. And some people thought, what is this? The secret police, the ss. So spiritus sanctu. And so normally then if you have a latin hymn, it's translated spiritus comes into English as spirit. And if you have a german hymn, the geist comes into English as ghost. And so that you can kind of look through and see, did the hymn come to us from the latin spirit or did it come to us from the, from the German Ghost? Here, this is Luther Kam Heilige Geist Gottund. What's lord in German? Goodness. Don't tell the soon to be vicar that I don't know that with all your graces now outpoured and look at. Oh, so the names of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost. God, Lord, light, the one who has the church in holy faith. Your church unites this to your praise, o Lord, our God be sung. Come, holy light, guide divine. Come, holy fire, comfort. True. So all these titles for the Holy Spirit are great and they indicate what the Holy Spirit does. [00:21:52] Remember, holy is an adjective for the Spirit, the Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. And the Holy Spirit is the one who makes us holy. [00:22:02] And that's how these adjectives and titles indicate the work of the Holy Spirit. So God and Lord, come holy light. Because he illuminates our own hearts, it helps us to see our own sin and to see the kindness of God. Come, holy fire, he consumes, he works his sanctifying power in us to cultivate a despising of sin and a love for the things that are holy. [00:22:29] So these titles and names of the Holy Spirit indicate the work that the Holy Spirit does in us. That's so beautiful. Ah. And more on that in the sermon. Can't wait to see you in a few minutes. God be praised for his mercy and kindness to us in Bible class. We're going to continue to talk about the conscience. This has been a lot of fun. So we're going to talk about, I think we're going to do a little more work on what hardens the conscience, how the, and how to have a good conscience. We're going to, we got to really talk about that. I want to talk about the difference between a clear conscience and a clean conscience. Two very, very different things. They sound very similar. But part of our sanctification, a huge part of our christian life, is paying attention to our conscience, pursuing a good conscience. And we want to think about that carefully. There's a great line in Martin Luther, and he says the conscience is a small room. There's only room for one to live in there. Most people have the devil in the conscience or maybe Moses in the conscience, but we want to kick everybody out and have just Jesus there. [00:23:32] And so we'll lean into that in Bible class as well. Hope you're able to make it for that. And don't forget, we have our voters meeting. Lunch will be served. So if you're a voter, you can come. If you are not, if you're not sure you're a voter, you can come to the meeting and find out. And if you're a member but you're not a voter, you can sign the constitution and be welcomed into the voters assembly. We meet four times a year to do the work of the church, to get reports from the boards, council, et cetera, et cetera, and to oversee the general work of the church. So if you can make it, that'll be great to see you there as well. All right, that's Sunday. Drive to church for Pentecost Sunday. See you soon. God's peace be with.