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“He will take what is Mine and declare it to you.”
Alleluia! Jesus Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
᛭ INI ᛭
The Holy Spirit works against Ruler of this world, “the Prince of the power of the air,” as Paul calls him. The Holy Spirit works against the devil. The devil is “the ruler of this world.” He’s at work “in the sons of disobedience,” as Paul also says. So, you’re either a temple of the Holy Spirit or of some other spirit.
So, the world hasn’t gone mad. The world and all unbelievers are under the power and influence of the devil and other demons. They always have been. They always will be until the end of the world. There are sons of God, true Christians, who “walk according to the Spirit,” (Gal 5) and there are “sons of disobedience,” who walk “according to the flesh.” The natural desires of the flesh align with the devil. So, he lures many to walk the broad road to destruction.
The devil and the demons all have their advocates in the world—his messengers, his preachers. He’s also got his rituals, his religious texts, his music, his prophets, his rulers, his kings. He’s also got works he says are good works. As Christians we must not be willfully ignorant of his plans and his lies.
The world and unbelievers are under his power and influence. Christ calls the devil “the ruler of this world.” Yes, only the Triune God has almighty authority. The LORD keeps him on a leash, and yet he roams but only so far. The devil deceives many, delivers delightful and pleasurable things. He attempts to destroy you and your faith. Yet, the devil’s defeated. Christ died, but, since he can’t undo Calvary, the devil fights against the Holy Spirit’s work in your life. The Holy Spirit’s work is this:
THE HOLY SPIRIT MAKES EVERYTHING THAT’S JESUS’ YOURS!
(I. The devil makes everything that isn’t Jesus yours.)
Satan is sneaky! Most Christians don’t seem care. Music, movies, TV Shows, news outlets aren’t just political propaganda machines. They don’t just give a worldly morality. There is a spiritual component to everything! You are what you eat, what you hear, what you watch. You emulate your idols. You follow in their footsteps. You end up thinking, saying, and behaving like them.
Politicians claim to be saviors. Musicians have their masses of followers that mindlessly parrot their songs, which even blaspheme the Lord who bought them! (No innocent fun! “The Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”) Actors, even supposedly Christian ones, portray things contrary to what the Bible says.
Satan promises to give you everything your heart desires! Where a sacrifice of a slightly over an hour on Sunday is too much, but hours upon hours of work or chores or practices or games or doomscrolling is never enough! Satan is after a Christianity where one generation’s Christianity was “be moral and go to church,” the next’s is “be a nice person,” and we’re living through the next. All the while Satan hardens hearts, so we refuse to repent over how each of us has lent him a helping hand…
Satan is a selfish spirit. He works even more selfishness in people’s hearts. Our hearts are already naturally turned inward, so we put our wants, our desires, our pleasure over everyone else. He subjects us to subjectivism so we’re without defense against those who sell and magnify sexual immorality or any other sin contrary to God’s Word. He works in us to be materialists, consumerists, pragmatists. Where we judge everything, even the teachings of the Bible, the teachings of churches based on “is it working for me,” “does it fit my preferences,” “do I like it,” “does it make me feel good”? Rather than saying, “I need to check my Bible about that…” And the icing on the cake? He’ll even lull us into thinking that if someone merely says they’re a Christian, then we agree with it. Sure, we can’t judge a heart, but we can judge words and actions to diagnose the heart. But really the chief spirituality of our age is acedia, apathy, “Yeah, I should but oh well…I’ve got other things to do.”
(Transition.)
The devil declares to you sin. He declares to you unrighteousness. He does this not to have you repent, but to have you try it, to be consumed by it, to live in it. Satan wants Christians to quench the Holy Spirit, to continue to sin against their own conscience, to do the things they know they shouldn’t. They’ll then sin against the Holy Spirit by their continued unbelief. The result is they’re no longer temples of the Holy Spirit, but rather his dwelling place. Even if you do have the Spirit who fights against the devil’s work, well, the devil would have you despair, that is, to focus on the little you do rather than the more the Spirit will do for you and with you and through you.
The Spirit’s the opposite. He declares sin, righteousness, and judgment to work repentance, that you’d trust all that Christ has done. The Holy Spirit creates in you a new heart. He enlivens new desires within you. He doesn’t just give you the desire to do the good. He accomplishes that Good within you. (Phil 2) That’s why the devil doesn’t want you to keep the Holy Spirit. Satan tries to get rid of the Spirit with sinful pleasures but also with good works, which are nothing but sin apart from faith. The Spirit will actually do something with you. He brings Christ to you, and, by dwelling within you,
THE HOLY SPIRIT MAKES EVERYTHING THAT’S JESUS’ YOURS!
(II. THE HOLY SPIRIT MAKES EVERYTHING THAT’S JESUS’ YOURS!)
You see Satan has been judged. His Kingdom came crashing down at Calvary when Christ established His. There all sins were paid for. All righteousness, goodness, holiness was finished by Jesus. He’s now King, a crucified and raised King!
Everything that’s Jesus is now yours. The Spirit makes it so. All forgiveness, all holiness, whatever is good and pleasing in God’s sight, all the keeping of the Law—it’s all yours. Because you have the Spirit, because you have faith in Jesus, what you do for your kids, your parents, your neighbor is holy and God-pleasing. It’s not because you did so well, but it’s purified by Christ’s forgiveness through faith.
The Holy Spirit makes it all yours through Jesus’ Word and Sacraments. The Spirit fills you up: Christ’s forgiveness, Christ’s death, Christ’s resurrection, Christ’s purity, goodness, and blessing, Christ’s holiness, righteousness, and innocence, Christ’s eternal life! The Spirit gives it all! Again and again He gives! Since there is no limit to Jesus’ forgiveness, purity, holiness, there’s no limit to how much the Spirit gives you! He gives portions of Jesus’ forgiveness, purity, and whatever else, like Joseph gave portions to his full brother Benjamin in Egypt. He gave 5x more to Benjamin than he did to his other 10 brothers.
The Spirit begins giving at Baptism. The Spirit gives again and again through the stories of the Bible, where He tells us all about Jesus. There He also reveals how the world really works, what’s really important. The Spirit uses the Bible to increase in us faith and wisdom and love—same thing with sermons and through Communion, too! But let’s dwell on the Word a bit more.
The Spirit also puts the “song of praise in our mouth,” as the Psalmist puts it. It’s “Sing Sunday.” It so happens that in our church we happen to sing most things! “Do you get anything out of it?” You’re not singing toward you… Most of our services are just singing God’s Word back to Him. He inspired the Psalms, which is the Hymnal of the Bible.
Lutherans have always been known as the singing church. We sing together. We sing to God. We sing to each other. We sing the Bible. Is it practical? No. Never has been! That’s never been the point! When we sing all the things, we’re entering a timeless place, singing things that have been sung for 500 years, 1,500 years, 3,000 years or more, things that are even sung in heaven (like This is the Feast).
It’s a mystery. We sing surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. David signs with us when we sing his Psalms. John the Baptist joins us in the Agnus Dei. We join the Angels around Bethlehem when we sing the Gloria in Excelsis. Our voices blend with the angels, archangels, and everyone in heaven as we sing the Sanctus. Something Jesus sang at Synagogue.
(Conclusion.)
We’re in a mysterious place today. The Spirit’s here delivering everything that’s Christ’s to you. All His forgiveness and righteousness and victory over the devil is yours—Baptism made it so, your Bible, Sermons, and Communion continue to make it so.
So does the liturgy! So does the Introit, the Gradual, the parts of the service! We’re rebelling against a world and society that destroys rituals and pledges and symbols. Peddling only what sells and makes profits. Being here is rebellion against everything the devil’s trying to destroy. Oh, he doesn’t actually care about constitutions, what flags are hung where, or saying the Pledge or singing the national anthem or if you stand or put your hand over your heart and remove your hat when you do… (He might make us care too much about such things…)
No, He wants to destroy the symbols, the Creeds, the songs of the Church. He wants to destroy what we say or sing, what I do up here or you do there, or even how a church is designed. Why? He wants to destroy you, to shipwreck your faith. He wants to you to make decisions without asking, “What’s the Bible say about that?” He wants you to disobey what Jesus commands. He wants you to believe there’s nothing special here. He wants to you to be able to shrug off this place, to believe Jesus isn’t here, to think the Spirit isn’t here for whatever XYZ reason that lands home for you.
But Christ is here for you, for the Spirit is here for you. He’s working on you to continue to make you better, through God’s Word, through the Sacrament. So that you have Christ’s wisdom, forgiveness, righteousness, holiness, and redemption. THE HOLY SPIRIT MAKES EVERYTHING THAT’S JESUS’ YOURS!
Even in the liturgy, which is just God’s Word put to music! Can you get much more Sola Scriptura than that? Let’s not be like the world! Filling ourselves with all sorts of spirits… Paul puts it this way:
“Do not get drunk with wine, for that’s debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, [by] addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs…” (Eph 5:18–19) For, as Paul also says, “[by] singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” we are “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom,” for by “singing psalms and hymns and songs” “the word of Christ dwells in you richly.” (Col 3:16)
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