To Keep You From Falling Away

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. John, chapters 15 and 16.

This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

All right, I remember when I was growing up, Trinity Broadcasting Network. You guys remember

TBN, like the classic versions of it? There was Paul and Jan Crouch. You remember

Jan Crouch, pink hair, white petticoat, crying all the time, mascara running down her face.

Then there was Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. And these were people who were like the premier

Pentecostals. And I remember at the time when I would flip over to TBN for whatever reason, you had to manual.

You remember the days before remote controls, does anyone remember that? And then like the first remote controls, you'd press a button and the dial would go ka -chunk, ka -chunk, ka -chunk, ka -chunk.

You guys remember that? Apparently, there's younger people in the crowd. All right, all of that being said, you'd get over to channel 40, right?

That's where they were in Los Angeles, TBN. And you'd sit there and go, for all their talk of the

Holy Spirit, they really made the Holy Spirit seem really creepy, really kind of spooky.

I'm not sure if I'm really keen on this idea of God, the Holy Spirit, because he might make me fall on the ground and shake uncontrollably.

Or even worse, he might make me write a $1 ,000 check and send it to TBN. It seems like they were always pushing for money, right?

And so even the world made fun of Jan Crouch and Jim and Tammy Faye Baker.

They were caricatures, and they didn't represent anything that even remotely looked normal.

And you're thinking, what is going on here? And so today, as we look at our gospel text and the implications of it, put this together with our previous sermons on the

Holy Spirit from this past couple of weeks, and you're going to note, the Holy Spirit that Christ is describing doesn't sound anything like the

Holy Spirit that shows up on TBN. Good news, I don't intend, via the prophecy or the prophetic work or the unction of the

Holy Spirit, to dye my hair pink anytime soon or wear a petticoat or anything weird like that.

Instead, when Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit, he says this, when the Helper comes, and this is an important function of the

Holy Spirit. The Helper, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth.

And you'll note, the Helper, the Holy Spirit, helps us. One of his major works is to comfort us, and we need comfort.

You'll note that this life is not easy. The Christian life is difficult at its easiest day, because we have within us our own sinful flesh warring against the

Spirit that God has placed in us. We have the world tempting us and the devil constantly harassing and attacking us.

And so, after spending a week of being beaten up by the world, our own sinful flesh, and the devil, it is often easy for us to sit there and go, am

I really a child of God? But here's what

Galatians says, Paul talking about the Holy Spirit, he says, in the same way, we also, when we were children, we were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

Paul, here in Galatians 4, is describing our state before we become Christians. Enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

Now, if you see that phrase, elementary principles of the world, and you ask yourself, what exactly does that mean?

Well, Paul defines it very clearly in Colossians. He says that the elementary principles of the world are the man -made regulations, like, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch.

He says these all have an appearance of holiness or righteousness, but they are powerless to actually produce in us the fruit of the

Spirit. And so, you know, today's version would be something along the lines of, do not drink, do not smoke, do not chew, all right?

And there may be good reasons for you not to drink or smoke or chew, but that's not the substance of the

Christian religion. In fact, if you think that's the substance of it, and that's what defines a

Christian, you're way, way off. And then he goes on to say, but when the fullness of time had come,

God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law. In order to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And so Christ is now invoked here in the gospel, and the gospel is invoked in the sense of its redeeming work, the picture of us being born slaves to sin, death, and the devil under the dominion of darkness, unable to free ourselves or even to come up with even the remotest amount of money necessary to redeem ourselves in order to set us free.

Christ, by His death on the cross, purges us from slavery. He redeems us, we who are under the law, and then we hear that we, our state is no longer slaves to sin, but we are adopted as children of God.

And here's what Paul then says, and because you are sons, God has sent forth the

Spirit of His Son, that's the Holy Spirit, into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

And so the comforting, helping work of the Holy Spirit is to continue to assure us that we are truly adopted children of God, and that we are no longer slaves, but we are children of God, and if we are children of God, that we are heirs through God.

In the same way then, the prophet Ezekiel, in Ezekiel 36, our Old Testament text, again talks about the work of the

Holy Spirit, and he says, I will take you from the nations and I will gather you from the countries and I will bring you into your own land.

I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols

I will cleanse you. And so here Ezekiel is invoking, if you would, all the way back in the

Old Testament, the baptism that we received when we became Christians. That sprinkling of water, or that pouring of water, or that, well, that full immersion of water, the method of how you're baptized doesn't matter.

But God himself has sprinkled us clean with the water and the word and cleansed us from all of our uncleannesses and from our idols.

And then he says this, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit and I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey all of my rules.

You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your

God. And so here Ezekiel is talking about the fact that when we are brought to faith in Christ, God does something miraculous in us.

Paul describes it in Colossians 2 as our hearts being circumcised by the very hands of Christ.

Here Ezekiel is saying that God replaces our heart of stone, that hard, stubborn, sinful, dead heart that we've inherited from our first parents

Adam and Eve, and he performs heart surgery on us through the gospel and gives us a heart of flesh, a beating heart, a real heart, a living heart, one that desires to obey

God. And you'll note that even here Ezekiel is prophesying long before the day of Pentecost that God will give us his spirit that will then cause us to walk in God's statutes and be careful to obey his rules.

Paul says practically the same thing in Romans chapter 8 when he says, So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit, by the Holy Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

So note Ezekiel says that God will cause his spirit to dwell within us and we will walk in his statutes.

Paul then admonishes us as Christians to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, put to death the deeds of our sinful flesh within us.

This requires us to cry out to God, to believe God, to trust that we have this

Holy Spirit as has been promised in the waters of baptism and that by this power of the

Spirit that we beg for, plead for, ask for, that God will grant us through the

Holy Spirit then the strength necessary to put to death the deeds of our bodies. And he goes on to say,

All then who are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.

And what an interesting picture that is. You think of, you know, some poor slave and a tyrant of a master, right, where he's done something wrong and the only thing he's thinking is, oh,

I'm really going to get it this time. And he's just constantly thinking in fear. But this is not how we are to think of God.

Christ has bled and died for us, redeemed us. We are not slaves. We are children. So we do not have the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear of punishment, fear of God's judgment.

Instead, we have received the spirit of adoption, again the Holy Spirit, as sons by whom now we cry out,

Abba, Father. And the Holy Spirit himself then bears witness with our spirit that we are indeed the children of God.

And if children, then we are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. And then Paul says these important words, provided we suffer with him in order that we also may be glorified with him.

You know, you cannot talk about being a child of God in this life without talking about suffering.

And here again, the words of our Lord in our gospel text make it very clear that the Helper comes to help us, to comfort us, to strengthen us, to give us the power necessary to mortify our sinful flesh, and that the

Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit of truth, not the Spirit of lies. And we also bear witness about Christ because of the mercy and the grace that we have received in him.

And then Jesus goes on to say, all of these things I have said to you in order to keep you from falling away.

Jesus knows exactly how treacherous this world is, this life is, how difficult the life of a

Christian can be. And so he goes on to explain the very persecutions that Christians will suffer in the future.

And by the power of the Holy Spirit, then we can bear up under them because the Helper has been given to us.

And he says this, they will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming whenever whoever kills you will think that he is offering service to God.

Think of it in kind of a modern context here because there are clear examples of the fulfillment of this in the book of Acts.

But in our day and age, there are people that I know very well who, having learned the truth of God's word and confronted pastors or teachers who were teaching falsely, have been driven out of their churches and have had restraining orders issued against them.

And then you think of the hour is coming whenever whoever kills you will think he's offering service to God.

I have one word for you there, Ahula Akbar, right? Yeah, because isn't that the whole basis and premise of jihad?

That God, you're doing a service to Allah by killing the infidel

Christian? This is what we are called to face. This is the difficulty that we are under.

And Christ has told us all of these things ahead of time so that we would not fall away as if something strange or bizarre were happening to us if that should ever come about.

In fact, if we were to just do a quick sampling of the book of Acts and the apostle

Paul's ministry and the sufferings that he was made to go through, let's just do a quick sampling.

Starting at Acts 17, it says these words, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the

Jews. And Paul went in, as it was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the

Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, saying, This Jesus whom I proclaim to you, he is the

Christ. Or you could say he is the Messiah. Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did many of the devout

Greeks, and not a few of the leading women. But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob and set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jackson, seeking to bring them out to the crowd.

Think of it this way. You guys remember the George Floyd riots? Those weren't that long ago, right? That's what was happening, the ancient world's version of it.

There were Jews, having heard the gospel, rejected Jesus, were so incensed with Paul, they couldn't find anything really against him.

So their next best tactic was to create a riot, looting and people discontent, people threatening violence, as a result of, well, rejecting the gospel.

Paul was the one who experienced the exact same persecutions that Jesus told us about in our gospel text.

And it goes on to say, when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, and they were shouting, these men who've turned the world upside down, they've come here.

Jason has received them, and they're all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there's another king, Jesus.

So the people, and the city, and the authorities, they were disturbed when they heard these things. And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

And so the brothers then immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. They had to slink out of town, had to secretly just disappear.

So they head off to Berea, and when they arrived, they did what they normally did. They went into the Jewish synagogue, and now these

Jews, the Bereans, were of a more noble character than those of Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so, which is exactly what the

Thessalonians should have done. But rather than examining the scriptures like the

Bereans, they just rejected what the gospel was outright, not being familiar or taking into consideration the word of God and what it reveals.

The Bereans were the exact opposite. They said, the Apostle Paul, thank you very much for your message, but we're going to check our

Bibles to see if what you're saying is true. And it turns out that it is true, and many of them believed.

The text says many of them believed, and not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.

But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds.

Could you imagine, I mean, how bored do you have to be in your life that you hear that the gospel's being preached in Crookston, and so you head off down the road and you create a riot in order to make sure that gospel doesn't get out, right?

It just doesn't make any sense. But that is how the world operates. They believe that they are acting in righteousness and justice when in fact they are doing evil and they are preventing the word of God from being heard, and forbidding people to actually be forgiven by Christ.

So the brothers then immediately sent Paul off on his way by the sea, but Silas and Timothy, they remained there.

And so we learn that Paul then goes on to the city of Athens. In chapter 18, just a little brief example,

Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia. Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the

Christ was Jesus. But they opposed him and reviled him. And so he shook out his garments and said to them, all right, your blood be on your own heads.

I am innocent. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. If we were to kind of do like a, go back and do a

Gallup poll of Jews at the time who were hearing the Apostle Paul preaching the gospel, it really sounds like more than 50 % of them were saying that he was a crackpot, that he was someone who was dangerous.

He was somebody who was blaspheming and that he was deceiving people and leading them astray.

And at the time, well, that's all it would have taken. Popular opinion is that this is absolutely nuts and something must be done in order to stop him.

But that's not how it works. The truth is the truth. No matter how many people believe it, no matter how many people reject it, the

Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth and what Paul preached was the truth. And then we learn that Paul, having traveled to Jerusalem and warned all along the way on his journey back that chains and imprisonment were in front of him.

It says this, when seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, seeing Paul in the temple, they stirred up the whole crowds and they laid hands on him.

And they cried out, men of Israel, help. This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and even this place.

Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and he's defiled this holy place. That's a flat out slander, if you think about it.

But they had previously seen Trompheus, the Ephesian, with Paul in the city and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.

So then all the city was stirred up and the people ran together. They seized Paul, dragged him out of the temple and at once the gates were shut.

And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune or the cohort that all

Jerusalem was in confusion. He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them.

And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. That's right. Paul was getting a good licking.

He was being beaten. For doing what? He was minding his own business. They still bore him a grudge for preaching that Jesus is the

Christ. So the tribune came, arrested Paul, ordered him to be bound with two chains.

He inquired who he was and what he had done. And some in the crowd were shouting one thing and some another.

And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. And when he came to the steps, he was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowds.

For the mob of the people followed, crying out, away with him, away with him.

Could you imagine being so controversial that any city that you travel to, it's likely to break out in a mob with violence like this?

And this is exactly what Christ said. And then in Acts chapter 23, we learn of a plot by Jews in order to kill, and let me change the word, murder

Paul. When it was day, the Jews had made a plot and they bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor to drink until they had killed, murdered

Paul. There were more than 40 who had made this conspiracy and they went to the chief priest and the elders and said, we have strictly bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food till we have killed

Paul. And these are Jews. These are people of the book. They know full well the commandment says thou shalt not murder.

And yet they bound themselves by an oath, which means they've invoked God. And they basically said,

I swear to God, if we don't kill Paul, we will not eat or drink until we have done so.

I'm supposing they perished, right? I'm supposing they perished, but talk about the wickedness and evil here.

Now therefore, you along with the council, give notice to the tribune, bring him down to you as though you were going to determine his case more exactly.

We're ready to kill him before he comes near. So now the son of Paul's sister heard about their ambush, so he went and entered the barracks and told

Paul. And Paul called one of the centurions and said, take this young man to the tribune for he has something to tell him.

And you'll note that Paul's nephew, well, is successful and at least giving warning regarding the plot.

And this caused the tribune to have Paul leave early under guard. All of this is exactly what

Christ has said. In the day and age in which we live in, we Christians must be prepared that there are people now who for the sake of the new world that's being created will persecute

Christians. They still do it. They'll have you canceled on social media if you dare to say that that trans person is actually the sex that God assigned to them.

If you oppose same -sex marriage, if you say that Jesus is the only way or that there is going to be a day of judgment and salvation is only in Christ, start talking like this and you will be marked as somebody who is subversive, somebody who is evil, somebody who must be stopped.

That's how this goes, how this works. Even I myself have been the subject of quite a big amount of slander.

And all I've done is preach the gospel and the truth of God's word. But more importantly than all of that,

Christ has told us these things so that we would not fall away, but thinking then on the work of the Holy Spirit, the assigned psalm for today is

Psalm 51. And here's what David wrote all those years ago. And here is where we see really the true value of the

Holy Spirit who Christ and the Father have sent to help us, to comfort us, and to, well, create in us a new heart.

Here's what David says, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love and according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

This is a good prayer. These are words that we're familiar with. And I love the fact that God's mercy has a modifier and the modifier is abundant.

Because the sad truth is that you and I, each and every one of us, we have abundantly sinned against God, but God's mercy is abundant in Christ.

And he prays that God would blot out his transgressions. And that is exactly what we also pray when we confess our sins to God, that God would blot out our transgressions, that he would remember them no more.

To blot out is to erase. In fact, one of the most horrible things that scripture talks about are those who had their names written in the

Lamb's Book of Life, but God had blotted out their names. This is not a fate that we want to happen to any of us.

And so we must pray these words that God would not blot us out, but instead blot out our transgressions.

In Colossians 2, it says so clearly that Christ has taken the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands.

He's torn it out of our books and nailed it to the cross. He's blotted out every one of our transgressions, nailed them to the cross.

David then goes on to continue. He says, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin.

This is clearly a baptismal reference. And he says, I know my transgressions. My sin is ever before me and against you, and you only have

I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words, blameless in your judgment.

A good way to think of these words is to say, God, you are right in condemning me as a sinner.

Have you ever told somebody they were a sinner and they got offended? Are you saying that I'm a sinner?

Yes. That's exactly what Scripture says. And note, the one who has been humbled by the word of God, humbled by the

Holy Spirit, convicted of their sin as Christ says, that's not one who takes offense when told that they are a sinner because that is speaking truth to them.

Instead, like David, they say, yeah, that's right, I have sinned against you. So your words are justified and you are blameless,

God, in your judgments. You are correct in calling me a sinner. And David then confesses what we confessed in our opening confession of sins, that he was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did his mother conceive him.

And he says, behold, you delight in truth in the inward being. Note again how often truth shows up in relation to these themes.

Truth, God, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. He delights in truth, not in lies. He delights in a straightforward, open -ended, there for everyone to see, laid bare truth rather than deceit and scheming and plots.

You delight in truth in the inward being. You teach me wisdom in your secret heart. So please,

God, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

No, David here isn't saying, I need to purge myself with hyssop. I need to clean myself.

No, he begs God to do the cleaning and the purging. Let me hear joy and gladness.

Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins. Blot out all of my iniquities.

And here we get to an interesting part. We sing this in Divine Service setting three every

Sunday. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

But think hard about that word create. This invokes a very important word in Hebrew.

The Hebrew word is bara. You have to roll your R when you say it, bara. You know, it's a little tricky to say it that way.

But if you think about the very first sentence of the Bible in Genesis chapter 1, in Hebrew it says barashit bara, elohim et ha'shamayim v 'et ha 'eretz.

Bara is the word for create. Now here's an interesting fact about the

Hebrew Old Testament. Bara is never used in reference to anything created by a human being.

If a human being builds something or plants something or makes something, those are the verbs used in Hebrew.

Bara is only ever used in relation to God. And you'll note the very first sentence of the

Bible says that in the beginning God bara'd. He created the heavens and the earth. How did he do so?

By speaking it into existence. And so here David, when he says to God, create in me a clean heart,

O God, he is asking God to bara, to create. Because he recognizes that that does not exist within him and he does not have the power to bara.

Only God has that power. So create in me a clean heart, O God, is his prayer.

And is that not exactly what Ezekiel said? That God will take our heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.

Where did he get that heart of flesh from? Well David makes it clear. He bara'd it.

He created it. He spoke it into existence. He gave it to us as his own creation. So the new heart that you have within you by virtue of your baptism into Christ, having been cleansed from all of your sins,

God is the one who created that clean heart within you and he is the one who has then renewed a right spirit within us.

And so with him we pray earnestly, cast me not away from your presence and do not take your

Holy Spirit from me. This is our prayer week after week, day after day and God hears our prayers and he continues to allow his

Holy Spirit to work in us, to give us the strength to mortify our sinful flesh. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and please

God you uphold me with a willing spirit. And God answers these prayers and he does.

He does the very things that he promised. He's the one, Christ is the one who has sent the helper, the

Holy Spirit. He along with the Father have sent the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, the one who comforts us, assures us that we are children of God.

He is the one who created within us a clean heart. He is the one who replaced our heart of stone with a heart of flesh.

When you think about all the things that the Holy Spirit really does do as scripture reveals as Christ has told us, the

Holy Spirit no longer sounds spooky or creepy or weird.

He's not calling you to do anything strange at all and Christ has told us all of these things so that we would not fall away, so that we would keep trusting in him for the forgiveness of our sins.

What a friend we have in Jesus but what a helper we have in the Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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