The measuring and the witnessing

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

(audio only of tonight’s sermon, no video)

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Sermon for Midweek of Easter 6

Revelation 11:1-14

We have before us the second part of the interlude between the sounding of the sixth and seventh trumpets. In the first part of the interlude we saw that mighty angel standing with one foot on the land and one foot on the sea, holding the little book in his hand. That’s God’s assurance that, in spite of the persecutions and false doctrines that will fill the world, He still reigns over the future and will see to it that His Word is proclaimed in the world.

This second part of the interlude is related. It describes the state of the Church on earth under God’s protection. At the end of the last chapter, John was told by the mighty angel, You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings. As we see tonight, part of John’s prophetic ministry—and the ministry of all who come after him—is to “measure the temple of God.”

Then I was given a reed like a measuring rod. And the angel stood, saying, “Rise and measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there.” This is very much like what the prophet Ezekiel saw in the last nine chapters of his book, a man measuring a city and its temple. That city, with all its dimensions being measured, represented a sacred space, the New Testament Church and God’s perfect plan for it, including His plan to preserve and protect it. That’s what John is seeing here, too, God’s plan to protect and preserve His true Church, His elect, even in the midst of the raging of the Antichrist and the false teachers and all the chaos and corruption going on in the world. The true Church will not fail. The true Church will not crumble. But by the Word of God, the true measuring rod against which all things are measured, by the Word of God that the faithful ministers continue to preach, the elect will be preserved.

But leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the Gentiles. And they will tread the holy city underfoot for forty-two months. The Gentiles—the uncircumcised—were not allowed inside the inner court of the temple in Jerusalem. In John’s figurative vision of the New Testament Church, the Gentiles represent the false church that dwells side by side with the true Church. They represent the hypocrites, the false believers and false teachers who are in the Church, but not of the Church. It’s like Jesus’ parable of the kingdom of heaven being like a dragnet that’s filled with both good fish and bad fish, or like the field where both wheat and weeds are allowed to grow up together, not to be separated until the harvest at the end of the age.

The “Gentiles,” that is, the false members of the outward Christian Church, will tread the holy city underfoot for forty-two months. Forty-two months is the same as three and a half years, the same as the one thousand two hundred and sixty days in the next verse and in other parts of Revelation, and apparently also the same as a time (that’s one year), times (that’s two years), and half a time (half a year) that we see in other places. It seems clear that this number is symbolic of the entire New Testament period, from Christ’s ascension until Judgment Day, or at least close to Judgment Day. And that fits. There have been unbelievers within the visible, outward Christian Church since the beginning, living (and even worshiping) right alongside true believers. They call themselves Christians, but they aren’t penitent. They aren’t believing. And they don’t intend to order their lives according to God’s commandments.

And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.” Now, just as we’re not interpreting the 42 months or the 1,260 days literally, we’re also not interpreting the two witnesses literally, as two specific men. Instead, since they preach for the entire time of the New Testament, we see them as representing the tiny number of faithful preachers of the Gospel at any time over the past 2,000 years. Two witnesses isn’t many, but it’s enough.

These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth. That imagery is drawn from Zechariah chapter 4, after the Jews had returned from captivity in Babylon. At that time, there were literally two men, Zerubbabel the anointed king of the Jews, and Joshua, the anointed high priest, through whom God would see to it that the holy city was rebuilt. They were pictured for Zechariah as two olive trees who supplied the oil for the lampstand that was Israel. Here the faithful preachers sent by Christ are pictured as two olive trees and two lampstands, supplying the oil of God’s Word, and with it, His Holy Spirit, the ones giving light to this dark world.

And if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this manner. Fire from the mouth is clearly a symbol of the Word of God. As God said to the prophet Jeremiah, “Is not My word like a fire?” says the Lord, “And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” The faithful preachers sent by Christ aren’t violent toward those who oppose them. But the word they preach reveals the perversion of sinners. It shows people that their deeds are acceptable before God, and that hurts people and makes them angry, wanting to harm the one who speaks out against them.

These have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire. That imagery points the reader back to the prophet Elijah, who prayed that no rain would fall on Israel for three and a half years, and also to Moses, at whose word Egypt was struck with plagues. Figuratively, it seems to indicate that the faithful preachers of the Gospel will preach God’s judgment on the world, and God will see to it that judgment takes place even during this life against the wicked who oppose the witness of His Church.

When they finish their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them, overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. When they finish their testimony. That won’t happen until close to the end, when the Gospel has been preached in all the world. God knows exactly how far the preaching of His Word will reach, which people are the last ones who need to hear it. But there will come an end to preaching, either an absolute end, so that there are no faithful preachers left, or (and I think this is more likely) a general end, so that there are practically none left—which is basically the situation in the world right now, isn’t it? When that happens, the beast from the bottomless pit will overcome the faithful preachers, if not by physical death, then by silencing them. That beast is either the devil or his servant, the Antichrist, but the beast will come after the faithful preachers through his servants on earth, through the wicked, and especially through the wicked who have infiltrated the outward Christian Church. Already the vast majority of Christian churches ridicule the faithful preachers who proclaim the entirety of God’s Word, who preach against sex outside of marriage and homosexuality, who preach against women serving as pastors of churches, who insist on doctrinal integrity and pure teaching.

Then those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will see their dead bodies three-and-a-half days, and not allow their dead bodies to be put into graves. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth. It really isn’t hard to envision the world rejoicing over the silencing of those who preach God’s Word rightly, is it? Whenever a famous conservative speaker is silenced or shamed, there is maniacal laughter and rejoicing in the world. How much more when the Biblical preachers are silenced, who tormented the wicked with their constant exposing of sin and pointing to Christ! This may well be the world we’re living in right now, when the Christian message has been all but silenced in the world, when society openly mocks and criticizes the Christianity of the past and celebrates its apparent demise.

Now after the three-and-a-half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they ascended to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them. Somehow, God will vindicate His preachers and the witness of His Church. The world will see that God did not actually abandon His people, even though it appeared that they were defeated.

In the same hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. In the earthquake seven thousand people were killed, and the rest were afraid and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe is past. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly. When the Church’s preaching is finished, when the world has spent a brief time rejoicing at the true Church’s apparent demise, when God has vindicated the message of His people in the world, then things will start to fall apart for the apostate church here on this earth, even as the third woe—the eternal condemnation of the wicked in hell—is about to take place.

So what we have in this chapter is a vivid depiction of the opposition believers will face both from the world and from the outward Christian Church which has rejected the Word of God—things that we’re seeing play out before our eyes. At the same time, we see that it’s all under God’s control, and that He still accomplishes His good purposes through the Church’s witness. We’re closer and closer to the end, very possibly already in that short “three and a half day” period at the end of the “three and a half year” period of the New Testament era. But the Lord has measured the true Church and won’t let it be destroyed. So hang on a little longer. Christ is coming soon! Amen.

 

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Witnesses, confessors, and the treatment they can expect

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

There is no audio or video of the service today as a result of our recent break-in and loss of equipment. We apologize for this and hope and pray to have it resolved by Wednesday’s service.

Sermon for Exaudi – Sunday after Ascension

1 Peter 4:7-11  +  John 15:26-16:4

The Paschal candle (standing here in the middle of the chancel) was extinguished during our Ascension Day service on Thursday. It was lit during the Easter season to symbolize Christ’s visible presence with His disciples for those forty days after His resurrection, and now it’s lit no longer, because His disciples saw Him no longer after He ascended into heaven and took charge of the universe invisibly as the crucified and risen One, ruling as King at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

Of course, Jesus has never been visibly present among us here. And yet, here we are, believing in Him, confessing Him, worshiping Him, ready to suffer all things—right?—even death, rather than to deny Him or to fall away from Him. That’s miraculous! That’s the work of the Helper who testified about Jesus, even as His apostles also bore witness.

Jesus prepared His apostles for His departure by promising them the help of this Helper, otherwise known as the Comforter or the Counselor or the Spirit of truth. He promised that the Helper would bear witness about Him, and that they, too, would bear witness. And He also told them in no uncertain terms how it would go for them in the world as they testified. They would be His witnesses, and not only the world, but also the false church would hate them for it. Let’s consider the words of Christ today and see what these words have to do with us.

But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning. The Spirit of truth is a perfectly reliable witness to testify about Jesus. He was in the beginning with the Father and the Son. It was through His working that Jesus was conceived in the virgin Mary’s womb. The Spirit proceeds from the Father, but is sent from the Father by Jesus, which is why we confess in the Nicene Creed that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

The apostles, too, would make reliable witnesses to Jesus, because, as Jesus says, they were with Him from the beginning, that is, from the beginning of His ministry, from the time just after He was baptized by John the Baptist. That means they saw firsthand His deeds, they heard firsthand His teaching, and, though it hadn’t happened just yet at the time of our Gospel, they would witness firsthand His suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension.

Together, the Holy Spirit and the apostles would bear witness. This is exactly what we see happening throughout the book of Acts. Next Sunday we’ll celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. What happened on that day? The Spirit testified through the miraculous signs of sound, fire, and tongues. And the apostles testified by the Spirit’s power, by telling the crowds what they had seen and learned directly from Jesus.

From that day on, the Spirit’s miraculous signs would accompany the apostles’ preaching. As soon as Peter testified before Cornelius, the Holy Spirit came upon the hearers and they spoke in tongues. Wherever Paul went, he testified, and so did the Holy Spirit through the signs and wonders that Paul performed—signs that Jesus Himself foretold in the Gospel for Ascension that we read this past Thursday. Finally, the writer to the Hebrews also describes the dual witness of apostles and Spirit: The salvation which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will.

Throughout their earthly lives, from the Day of Pentecost onward, the apostles bore witness about Jesus, the Son of God, delivered up for our sins and raised for our justification. And the Spirit bore witness, too, by the signs and gifts He displayed wherever the apostles preached.

The result? Some believed. Some here, some there, throughout the entire world and to this very day. The Church that Jesus promised would be built has been built and is still being built after all this time. That itself is a witness to His truthfulness. And faith is a witness, in a sense, one of those signs of the Holy Spirit, because, as Paul writes, no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

But you and I are not, properly speaking, witnesses. We weren’t with Jesus from the beginning of His ministry. We believe through the testimony of the firsthand witnesses: the apostles and the Holy Spirit. We aren’t in a position to tell people what we’ve seen of Jesus or what we’ve heard directly from Jesus. What we can do, what we have been called upon by God to do, is confess what we have been brought to believe. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

And so we confess. We confess with our creeds. We confess with our hymns. We confess with our liturgy, which itself is a witness to the Church’s faith from days of old. We confess with our church membership. We confess with our church attendance. We confess in our homes with our behavior and with our words. We confess at the workplace with our attitude and with our diligence. We confess in the public square by speaking the truth in love: the truth about who the true God is, and who He isn’t; the truth about God’s creation, about men and women and marriage and family, about God’s salvation in Christ Jesus, and about the coming judgment on the impenitent. We confess the faith without hesitation and without apology.

Or, maybe your confession of the faith has been more hesitant. Maybe the message you’ve given to those around you isn’t the confession of a holy child of the holy God. Maybe it hasn’t been a message of solid, unshakable truth, but that of just another worldling, going along to get along in this sinking ship of a planet. In which case, repent. Remember Jesus, who made the good confession before Pontius Pilate the day after He spoke the words of today’s Gospel. Remember Him and trust in Him for the forgiveness of sins and for the renewed zeal to confess Him boldly, by the power of His Holy Spirit.

But both witnesses and confessors of Christ should be fully aware of what such witnessing and confessing will mean.

Jesus continues with a warning for His apostles, or rather, a very blunt, straightforward prophecy telling His witnesses (and His confessors) what to expect in the world after He ascends into heaven. They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is coming, when whoever kills you will think he is rendering service to God. In other places, Jesus warns His people about the hostility they’ll face from the unbelieving world. But notice here that Jesus warns of the hatred and the threats that would come from what, at that time, was still the Church of God, namely, the Jewish religion. They will put you out of the synagogues. They will kill you, thinking they’re rendering service to God. What was once the only Church, the true Church, would turn into a persecutor of Christians, and in an earthly sense, the persecutors would be successful.

That was certainly the case with the apostles. Imagine, growing up in the synagogue, hearing the Word of God, now understanding that it was all fulfilled in Christ Jesus, being called to witness to Him, and then being thrown out of the very church in which you were raised and then viciously persecuted by that same church.

Remember that I told you, Jesus tells His apostles. Remember that I warned you, so that you do not stumble, so that you are not hopelessly confused by how your former church could react this way to the Gospel. When the world turns against you, when the church itself turns against you, remember, that is not a sign of God’s displeasure with you, nor is it a sign that you must be wrong because the Church says so.

And why would the Church itself turn against God’s witnesses and confessors? Because they have not known the Father nor Me. But they were lifelong members of the Church! They were leaders in the Church and experts in the Scriptures! It’s true. And yet, Jesus says, they have not known the Father nor Me. Just as it’s possible to be in the world but not of the world, so, too, it’s possible to be in the Church but not of the Church.

You know this happens still today and has been happening for a long time, since before the days of Luther. Godly men confessed the Christian and apostolic faith and were excommunicated by a Christian Church whose hierarchy had fallen away from the truth and no longer knew the Father or Jesus. It happened to Luther and many who followed Him. It happens today in the Roman Church. It happens also among the Lutheran synods. It’s true, no one here in the U.S. is being killed for their confession. But it happens in other parts of the world, and the time will surely come here, too. Already the false church abandons Christians who confess the truth, leaving them for the world to devour.

But when you see these things happening, when you see faithful confessors of the truth berated and abandoned and when you see little churches struggling, remember that these are not signs of our failure. They’re indicators of our faithfulness. Now when I say that, I don’t mean that all suffering is a sign of faithfulness. But when we adhere to God’s Word and suffer for it, then suffering and the cross must follow, and we must expect rejection from the false Church. After all, Jesus told us ahead of time it would be this way. And there is comfort and hope in that!

The greatest hope comes from the fact of Jesus’ ascension and His sitting at the right hand of God. The world and the false church plot against God’s people. But God has set His King on His holy hill of Zion, as it says in Psalm 2. That’s Jesus, who reigns over all things for the good of His Church. As we’re seeing in our study of the book of Revelation, the Church in the last age will appear just about to be devoured by the devil, but it won’t be devoured, because when things look the most bleak, that’s when the ascended Lord Christ will descend once more, to come to our aid, even as He sends His Spirit to come to our aid now.

For now, we give our secondhand witness. We confess. And if we confess faithfully, there will be a false church that hates us. But we know that there is also a true Church that loves us, and more importantly, a God who loves us, a Savior who rules at God’s right hand for us, and a Holy Spirit who dwells with us to strengthen us through the Means of Grace. Keep confessing. And keep trusting. All things are in the powerful hands of our ascended Lord Jesus. Amen.

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We have a Friend in high places

Posted on May 18, 2023 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

(audio only of tonight’s sermon, no video)

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Sermon for the Ascension of Our Lord

Acts 1:1-11  +  Mark 16:14-20

Today we celebrate the day of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, the day He wrapped up His visible, earthly ministry and began His invisible, heavenly one. It’s a day for Christians to breathe a sigh of relief. Because, in spite of all the obstacles we face in this world, in spite of all the wickedness down here, Christ’s ascension reminds us that we have a Friend up there. We have a Friend in high places.

You heard in the Gospel how, on Easter Sunday, Jesus appeared alive to His disciples two days after He died on the cross. His appearance to them began with a rebuke for not believing that He had risen as He said He would. But after that, He issued and then kept repeating a great commission. Every time He appeared to them over the next forty days, He further described the mission He was sending them on. And notice, it wasn’t a mission to make the world a better place. It wasn’t a mission to get involved in the world’s politics or to infiltrate the world’s governments. It was a mission to spread a message.

In tonight’s reading from the book of Acts you heard one of those commissions: You will be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. You heard another commission in Mark’s Gospel: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

So what is “the gospel”? What is the message Jesus sent His apostles to spread? It’s summarized elsewhere as “repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name.”

Now, “repentance” itself can be summarized as the message of creation, sin, and judgment. It’s the message of who God is, how He made the world and all things, how all have sinned and have brought death and every form of trouble into the world, and how God has set a day of judgment, with an eternity of hellfire in store for all who have fallen short of His righteous requirements. That’s the first part of the message.

The second part of the message can be summarized as the message of Christ, the atonement, and the promise of the forgiveness of sins in His name. To be Christ’s witnesses means that the apostles were to spread the message that God had sent His Son into the world, as promised, and that, by His perfect life, His innocent death, and His glorious resurrection, He has made atonement for the world’s sins. And now the Lord Jesus, through His missionaries, holds out the forgiveness of sins to all who believe in Him. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

That’s the message that has reached us all here, nearly 2,000 years after Christ’s ascension. But the mission includes more than just spreading a message, doesn’t it? In another one of Christ’s commissions, the one recorded at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, He put it this way: All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. There’s more than just spreading a message in that commission. There’s a “discipling” involved, a baptizing and an ongoing teaching, a gathering of people together from all nations and within all nations, a shepherding of a flock, a building that is to take place, not necessarily building church buildings or monuments or cathedrals, but the building up of a Church made of livings stones, of people gathered around the apostles’ teaching and the Lord’s Sacraments, of saints who are still living in the world but are no longer of the world.

That’s the mission Christ gave His Church to fulfill in the days and years and centuries ahead. It includes the message as well as the discipling. And then, after repeating and explaining that mission over the course of forty days, He gathered His disciples together on the Mount of Olives, and He was taken up into heaven, Mark says, and He sat down at the right hand of God. But it’s not as if Christ gave His Church that monumental task so that He could be separated from His Church or go away on vacation. No, Christ ascended on high for the very purpose of being present with His Church and helping us to carry out His mission, guaranteeing us success (as God measures success). It’s not a task we can accomplish on our own. But we have a Friend in high places.

You are Peter, Jesus said on another occasion, and on this rock I will build My Church. I will build, He said. Yes, the apostles had to spread the message and baptize and teach. But Jesus says He will be the One actually doing the gathering and the building and the discipling. Behold, He said, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. With us invisibly. With us by His Holy Spirit, whom He sent into the world on Pentecost and has left here with believers as our Helper until the end of the age. With us, to work together with us as we carry out His mission. As we heard at the end of Mark’s Gospel, they went forth and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them, confirming the word with the accompanying signs.

So although Jesus has sat down at the right hand of the Father, our Friend in high places is still with us, working with us. More than that, He is ruling over all things for our good. As St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians and Corinthians, God raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all…For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

Do you have troubles? Do you have uncertainties? Do you have enemies here below? It’ll be all right. You have a Friend in high places, in the highest place of all, ruling over the universe for your good, not yet removing all the wickedness from the world, but managing it so that the gates of Hades can’t prevail against His Church, and so that His people are preserved in faith and kept safe for the day of judgment, when He will remove all the wickedness from the world.

And that brings us to the last comforting truth I’d like you to think about this evening. What is our Friend in high places doing right now, in addition to working with us to carry out His mission and reigning over all things for our good? He told His disciples plainly: In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.

Now, we shouldn’t imagine that Jesus needs time to build and decorate mansions for us, as if the construction work took a long time. But He wants His Christians to picture it that way, to picture Him working for us, getting things ready for us, so that we understand that, even though He has ascended on high, He hasn’t forgotten about us. He won’t forget about us. On the contrary, He has His people on His mind at all times. Everything He does now He does so that you may be with Him in the end and spend eternity with Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, so that, when we see Him coming down again from heaven in the same way they saw Him go up into heaven, we may follow Him where He has gone.

Yes, it pays to have a Friend in high places. If you think about all the ills that plague this present generation—loneliness, disconnection from community, disconnection from God!, purposelessness, the exaltation of sinful man above all things, the destruction of truth and the perversion of everything good—which of those ills isn’t resolved, or at least tempered, by the truth of Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God, and by the mission He gave His Church to carry out as our Friend and Savior reigns on high at the Father’s right hand? Every Christian has peace with God through the risen and reigning Christ. Every Christian has a community throughout the world of people who pray for each other and who care for each other, even though we may not know one another, yet. Every Christian has a purpose, both collective and individual, to further the mission Christ gave His Church, to spread the message, to live as disciples of Christ and as lights in the world. Every Christian has the hope of the new heavens and the new earth, the permanent home of truth and of righteousness. And every Christian has Christ’s assurance that the one who died for you and rose again is with you always, even to the end of the age. Think about these things! Give thanks to God! And rejoice in the One who has called Himself your Friend, who lives and reigns, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, in the highest place of them all! Amen.

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Only Christians have the Father’s ear

Posted on May 14, 2023 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Easter 5 – Rogate

James 1:22-27  +  John 16:23-30

For the third week in a row, our Gospel for the day has taken us back to the night before Jesus died, and with good reason, because it was on that night that Jesus spent a good deal of time preparing His disciples, not only for His suffering, death, and resurrection, but for life on earth after His Ascension, after He would go to the Father. That’s the same era in which you and I live—have always lived. So His words also serve to prepare us for our lives as Christians living in what we might call foreign territory, because the devil is still the prince of this world, and we’re still in danger from him at all times. Jesus assures us in today’s Gospel that, even though we’re surrounded by enemies, we have the ear of God the Father, and more than just the promise that He hears us. We even have the promise that He will grant our requests, when we ask in Jesus’ name. As Jesus explains to His disciples, Christians—and only Christians!—have the Father’s ear.

If you recall from two weeks ago, Jesus had told His disciples some things that they didn’t understand, about how they wouldn’t see Him “for a little while.” And they wanted to ask Him about it, but they were embarrassed or afraid. So He told them that He already knew what they wanted to ask, and then He went on to answer the question they never needed to ask. Our Gospel picks up from there. Jesus says to His disciples, in that day—in that time following My resurrection from the dead and after I have ascended into heaven—you will not ask me any questions. Not only because Jesus would no longer be living among them as He was then, but even more, because they would finally understand that, whether He was in the room with them or not, He already knew all things, including the questions and uncertainties that were in their hearts. They wouldn’t need to ask, we don’t need to ask, because Jesus knows the questions of our hearts and gives us the answers we need, through His Word and by His Spirit, even without hearing our questions. As the disciples said at the end of our Gospel, See, now you are speaking plainly; you are not speaking in riddles. Now we know that you know all things and that you do not need anyone to question you. By this we believe that you came forth from God.

And yet, even though He, as God, doesn’t need to hear our questions, He explains to His disciples that God the Father wants to hear our requests. Truly, truly I tell you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

Now, Jesus’ disciples had been praying to God the Father their whole lives, but never before in the name of Jesus. Let’s talk about what that means.

It means, first of all, to approach God the Father in prayer through faith in Jesus as the beloved Son of God, as the promised Messiah, as the One who gives us access to the Father through His death on the cross. It means to enter the heavenly throne room by walking through the door that is Jesus. If you try to enter by any other door, access will be denied. But if you approach God the Father through the Door He has provided, He will let you in and He will hear you and grant your requests. That’s why only Christians have the Father’s ear.

But to ask God the Father for His help “in the name of Jesus” also means to pray in the same way Jesus prayed. Humbly. Sincerely. With confidence that our Father will hear us, because we’re praying in the name of His beloved Son Jesus, to whom the Father would never deny any good thing. And since the name of Jesus has been placed on us in Holy Baptism, we should be confident that our Father in heaven thinks of each Christian in exactly the same way as He thinks of His only-begotten Son.

Third, praying in Jesus’ name also means praying for the things Jesus has taught us to pray for. Those things are summarized nicely for us in the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. We are to pray for the hallowing or sanctifying of our Father’s name, for the coming of His kingdom, for His will to be done, for our daily bread, for the forgiveness of sins, for help against temptation, for deliverance from evil. Those seven petitions are general enough to leave everything up to God as to how He will grant them, and that’s intentional, because we don’t know the best way for God’s kingdom to come, so we simply pray, Thy kingdom come, and we know that He will grant us His Holy Spirit who brings the kingdom of God to us and to the world. We don’t know all the things that we specifically need each day, and so we simply pray, Give us this day our daily bread, and so on. When we ask our Father for those things, leaving it up to Him to grant them in the time and the way He sees fit, we are praying in the name of Jesus, and we can be absolutely sure that He will grant them.

Now, you can ask God the Father for other things, too, for things He hasn’t specifically promised to give, as long as you’re not asking for anything that goes against God’s will. You might well ask for healing from a specific illness, or for a certain job to come along, or a certain opportunity. You may well ask for relief from tyranny and oppression. That’s good and well, as long as, whenever you pray for something God hasn’t promised to give, you add the same phrase Jesus added, Not my will, but Your will be done.

Now, what confidence do we have that our Father will hear us and help us when we ask Him for things? First, we have Jesus’ command and promise in today’s Gospel. Ask. There’s the command. And you will receive. There’s the promise.

Not only that, but we Christians have the assurance of the Father’s love for us. In that day you will ask in my name. I am not telling you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God. You know there are different words for “love” in the Greek language. God so “loved the world” in such a way that He gave His only-begotten Son. That’s the love of commitment and devotion and genuine concern for the well-being and happiness of another. But the word Jesus uses here is the “love” of genuinely “liking someone,” the love of friendship, the love of having common likes and common interests. God the Father has called you believers in Christ His beloved friends. He likes you. Why? Because you’re so likable? No, but because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God. If you gave away the most precious thing you had to someone as a gift, because you knew they desperately needed that gift, and the other person looked at that gift and said, “Bah! What kind of gift is this? This thing’s worthless!” You wouldn’t like that person very much. On the other hand, if the person looked at that gift and said, “This is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever given me!” You would appreciate that, wouldn’t you? Because the thing that was so precious to you is now also just as precious to the person you gave it to. So it is with God the Father’s most precious gift of His Son. Your treasuring of Him actually causes God the Father to treasure you.

Now, how is it that you came to treasure Jesus, that you came to view Him as your friend, that you came to believe in Him? Well, that’s the Father’s doing, too. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” Or He said to Peter after he confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father in heaven. So it’s the Father’s doing that we believe in Jesus and love Jesus. And yet the Father still credits that to us, in His grace. He still treats us as His friends, as His allies. We’re on the same side, because we’re on the side of Jesus. And so the Father is committed to hearing our prayers and helping us in every need, because we’re no longer strangers and aliens and enemies of God. No, we’ve been reconciled to God through faith in His Son, and He loves us. He thinks highly of us, all because of Jesus. And so it is that Christians, and only Christians, have the Father’s ear.

You have the ear of God the Father, and a command and invitation to fill His ear with your praise and thanksgiving, with your prayers and requests. Now, as James said in today’s Epistle, don’t just be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word. Don’t just hear that you have God’s ear. Use it! Bring your requests before Him, and not just here in church on Sunday mornings. Think throughout the day about what you need, and what others need, and about all the petitions that Jesus has taught you to make, and make those petitions throughout the day, in Jesus’ name. Things are not safe in this world. We do truly live in enemy territory, the devil’s territory, and there are troubles and temptations on every side. There are so many things we don’t know, so many things we have no control over. But we have been given a powerful tool and a mighty weapon, to ask our God in Jesus’ name, to come to our aid and to deliver us from every evil. No one else in all the world, save for Christians, has been given such a gift. So let’s use it, continually! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

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The mighty angel with the open book

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Easter 4

Revelation 10:1-11

Think back to John’s vision of the seven seals. Between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals, there was a sort of interlude where John saw the 144,000 sealed on earth and then the souls of the saints who were already safely in heaven. Then the seventh seal was opened, taking us to the end of the world and then back to the beginning again with the vision of the seven trumpets.

There’s also an interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets, divided into two parts. We have the first part before us this evening in Revelation 10: The mighty angel with the open book.

I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire. This isn’t one of the seven angels blowing the seven trumpets. It’s “another angel,” a mighty messenger of God, and like many of the details of this book of Revelation, people have written pages and pages giving their explanations for who they think this angel is. In the end, it isn’t the messenger himself who matters as much as what his message is, and clearly this is a divine messenger, not an evil one. Still, there are good reasons to see this as a picture of Christ Himself, the ultimate Angel or Messenger of the Lord. Clothed with a cloud, as Jesus once said He would come again with the clouds. A rainbow on his head, like a halo, like the one that surrounded the throne of God earlier in the book. His face shining like the sun, just as Jesus’ face shone at the transfiguration, and feet like pillars of fire, even as Jesus was pictured earlier having feet of burnished bronze. Whether this angel is meant to be the Lord Christ or to simply to represent Him, His power and glory are obvious. After seeing all the wickedness, false teaching, and destruction that came from the abyss and from the antichrists we talked about last week, seeing that power and glory of this messenger of God gives great comfort to the people of God. The devil and the powers of darkness are not out of God’s control.

He had a little book open in his hand. Now, the word for “book” in Greek is “biblion,” where we get our word “Bible” from. The same word is used for a book, that is, pages that are bound together, and for a scroll that you unroll or roll up. It’s the same word as the scroll that had the seven seals that only the Lamb was worthy to open. This one is called “little,” but it seems to be the very same scroll or book that the Lamb had unsealed, and so it lies open in the angel’s hand. We identified that book as the divine revelation of the things to come for the Christian Church. This is another reason to think that this mighty angel represents Christ.

And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. This must be an angel of colossal size. While it seems like evil and the forces of evil dominate the earth, in reality, they don’t. God does. Christ does. He reigns over the land and over the sea, that is, over the whole earth. All things have been placed under His feet, as the Psalm says.

and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars. We aren’t told what the mighty angel cried out, only that it was loud, like the roar of a lion. We are told, by the same apostle John, what Jesus cried out with a loud voice just before He died: “It is finished!” Like the roar of a mighty lion who had just conquered His foes—conquered them, not for His own benefit, but for the benefit of His Church, of those who believe and are baptized.

When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices. Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them.” When God the Father spoke from heaven toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, St. John writes that the people standing by thought that it had thundered. This may be an answer from God the Father to what God the Son cried out. But John isn’t allowed to write down what the voices said. The message here is simple. There are many things about the future that God knows but that He does not wish for us to know ahead of time. We don’t need to know those hidden things. It’s all right not to know. Trust in the God who does know, and rest in His loving care.

The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised up his hand to heaven and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be delay no longer, but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.

Here the mighty angel takes a solemn oath that “the mystery of God will be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets. What mystery are we talking about? What did God declare to the prophets that must still take place? Well, the prophets prophesied the first coming of the Christ to suffer, die, and rise again. That had already been fulfilled when John saw this vision. But there are several Old Testament prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled. (1) The spread of the Gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth. (2) The coming together of Jews and Gentiles into a new, spiritual Israel, a holy Christian Church. (3) The rising up of unbelievers against believers. And (4) the second coming of Christ to bring judgment against His enemies and to bring His believers into the new heavens and the new earth. All of this must go on until the end. All of this, swears the mighty angel, must soon be “finished,” the same word Jesus cried out from the cross before He died in reference to His work of redemption. Then a second and final “It is finished!” will ring out.

Then the voice which I heard from heaven spoke to me again and said, “Go, take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the earth.” So I went to the angel and said to him, “Give me the little book.” And he said to me, “Take and eat it; and it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.” Then I took the little book out of the angel’s hand and ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth. But when I had eaten it, my stomach became bitter. And he said to me, “You must prophesy again against many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.”

Some things God seals up and doesn’t reveal to us, like what the seven thunders spoke. We don’t need to know that. But other things He does reveal, everything we need to know about the future so that we can make it to the end of the finish line. He gives that to John to “eat,” a picture of John taking in the information God gives Him, and then to prophesy, to preach, to proclaim against many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.

This all goes back to what we said on Sunday when Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come and convict the world, but He will do it through the preaching of the preachers whom Christ sends, like the Apostle John, and all those who hold that the prophetic office. We don’t preach the things God hasn’t revealed. We preach the things He has revealed to us in His Word. It tastes good, sweet as honey, when we take in God’s Word, when we come to understand how His great plan of salvation fits together. But it’s bitter in our stomachs when we realize how much evil the devil and the world will hurl against us, how much suffering and tribulation is predicted for Christians, how hard it is to preach the truth in an age that has fallen in love with lies.

Still, this chapter is a comforting chapter for Christians. It reminds us that God still rules in the midst of all the evil, that He will soon finish all He has promised to do for His Church, and that, in the meantime, His Word will continue to be preached in the world, even as it’s being preached again right now. Amen.

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