Witnesses to Christ and the church that hates them

Sermon for Exaudi

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.

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, 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.

When the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning. The Spirit of truth is a perfectly reliable witness to testify of Jesus. He was in the beginning with the Father and the Son. 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 itself 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. We are among those blessed ones who have not seen and yet have believed.

But you and I are not, properly speaking, witnesses. At least, not firsthand witnesses. 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 must do, what we have been called upon by God to do, is confess what we 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 about God’s creation, and 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 not. Maybe your confession of the faith has been more hesitant and less than enthusiastic. Perhaps the message you’ve given to those around you isn’t one 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 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 that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. In other places, Jesus warns His people about the hostility they’ll face from the unbelieving world. And immediately, we think of atheists, or maybe we think of the false religions of the world, like Islam. 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 offering God service. 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. Imagine being the first martyr, Stephen, who witnessed to the Lord Jesus by willingly facing death rather than deny Christ. It was the leaders of the church he grew up in who cast the stones that killed him.

Remember that I told you, Jesus tells His apostles. Remember that I warned you, so that you do not stumble, so that you do not imagine that I have abandoned you at that time. 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 should recant or remain silent. I have not been unfaithful to you nor have I misled you, Jesus says. I told you this would happen.

And why would it happen? Because they have not known the Father nor Me. Yes, 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 that 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. Who would have thought eight years ago that the Lutheran synods—Wisconsin and Missouri and the Norwegians—would reject someone for teaching justification by faith alone in Christ Jesus? And that rejection continues to this day. It’s true, at least no one is being killed. But that time could come. 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 signs 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, it must 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 the book of Revelation makes clear, 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.

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.