https://app.dropwave.io/episode/97c5f1c9-8261-4b18-b40e-6f8726bafd6d/feast-of-pentecost-ad-2025.mp3

++ JESU JUVA ++

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s collect, we prayed that the Holy Spirit would give us a right understanding in all things. The old translation is better: that we would have a right judgment in all things. Right doctrine matters. Wrong doctrine is deadly. Having right doctrine means holding onto the words of Jesus. Sometimes people think that having right doctrine is disconnected from loving Jesus, but Jesus in the beginning of today’s Gospel connects the two. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

If you love Jesus, you will desire to keep and guard His Word. You will desire to have right doctrine. Conversely, if you don’t love God’s Word— if you’re not seeking to order your life around His commandments and trusting His promises, then you can know your love for Him is false. Jesus continues: Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. So we see that loving Jesus and keeping His Word belong together. Really, they are not two things, but one. We desire to love Jesus and to keep His Word.

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of Pentecost, and we focus on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. So today’s sermon will focus especially on having a right understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work. We hear about the Spirit’s work in the Small Catechism — especially the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

What does this mean? I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength 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. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true.

In this Explanation, Luther uses several verbs to describe the Holy Spirit’s work: calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps. These verbs contrast with the idea that one can believe in Jesus Christ as Lord, or come to Him, by one’s own reason and strength. This is what the people in today’s Old Testament want to do.

God had commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, but they had rejected God’s Word. They did not love and trust Him, so they did not keep His Word to fill the earth. They sought their own way and their own means by which to save themselves. God said: “This is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing they propose will be impossible for them.” Short term, it puts everyone under the tyranny of man, but eventually it will also put everyone under the tyranny of the devil. United today under the authority of man, they would reject God and be bound into the devil’s kingdom forever.

God saw it. He knew what they were doing. God loved the people of Babel, so He toppled their idols. He scattered them across the face of the globe so that they would not set their hearts on the name they had built up for themselves. God disperses them as He had commanded them to do, both in the beginning and immediately after the Flood. God wanted the people to go out, to develop into their own distinct families and clans and tribes and nations. In time, God would use this dispersion of people so that His name would be declared across the whole earth.

Another common error today is that of enthusiasm. It’s the idea that God’s primary work is internal. This is the most common error about the Holy Spirit. It’s the idea that I have the Holy Spirit as a personal possession, not a person who is there out of love and by His own choice. Maybe you’ve heard people claim “the Holy Spirit told me” … this or that. Things are attributed to Him that He doesn’t do, without authorization from the Bible. Or people think that if they have the Holy Spirit, they don’t need the Bible.

The Holy Spirit Calls

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is quite simple. He preaches. He does this through the Word of God. Through the Word of God, He calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps — as we hear in the Explanation. I’m going to focus primarily on the first three actions: the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, and enlightens.

The Holy Spirit calls. The initiative lies with Him. You do not call yourself into faith. This means that if you are in the Church, it’s because the Holy Spirit called you here. If God the Holy Spirit is the one who calls, then what He has called you to is something that is HIS idea. The order and structure of your life is to be conformed to His design. Your life is given and ordered by God. Your life in Him and the order of that life are both gifts. That means that justification by grace through faith is not the full extent of the Christian life. It is a primary and chief doctrine, but there is an entire body of doctrine that goes with it.

Yes, the Holy Spirit calls. He calls, as we read in the Explanation, by the Gospel. And this is something you’ll see if you go home today and read Peter’s entire Pentecost sermon. Actually, just read all of Acts chapter 2. In Peter’s sermon and the following conversation, you will find very little that is explicitly about the Holy Spirit. Mostly Peter preaches about the Person and Work of Jesus — that Jesus Christ is true God and true Man who has died to redeem you from sin; that He has risen from the dead; and that He is coming again with judgment against His enemies and to set all things right. Peter preaches the necessity of repentance and faith, which God the Holy Spirit works in your heart. On Pentecost, the people heard God the Holy Spirit call them. This call was heard by the sound of Peter’s voice.

In this account, Peter and the other apostles don’t wonder or worry whether the Holy Spirit will be active. They concern themselves with the preaching of God’s Word. They declare God’s promise about holy Baptism: Peter said to [those who were cut to the heart], “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” Acts 2:38-39 To Peter and the other apostles, the Holy Spirit and His work is no mystery. They can speak the Gospel confidently, trusting that the Holy Spirit will call by this Gospel. They preach and confess boldly because they know and trust God’s Word.

The Holy Spirit Gathers

When the Holy Spirit has called by the Gospel, He gathers those who have been called. He gathers whom He will. He gathers the hardened sinner and the little child.

He always gathers more than one. This is why Jesus can speak of the Christian Church in this way: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Matthew 18:20 The Church can never be reduced to just ‘me and Jesus.’ As we confess in the Explanation, it is me and “the whole Christian Church on earth.” To be gathered is to be brought into and joined to something bigger than you. There is a Body to which you belong. The Church is the Body of Christ. Your belonging to this body is a gift. And the other members of this Body receive your membership as a gift also. That means the fellow members of Christ’s body are to be welcomed and loved.