St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church -- Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Dear brothers and sisters who are united in worship and praise to the true God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
What does the word “hope” mean to you? Does it mean that we would like for something to happen, but we aren’t quite sure it will? Does it sometimes ave the meaning that we don’t think it can happen, but there is an outside chance? Does the word hope often times get mixed up with words like “dreams” or “wishes”? Can’t we all hear ourselves saying phrases like these? “I hope it doesn’t rain on Relay Day!” “I sure hope that I don’t get sick!” “I hope that I never get a serious illness!” “I hope my children turn out to be good when they get older.” “I hope I win $1,000,000 !“ “I sure hope pastor’s sermon is shorter than his last sermon” We hope for many things, but how many of those hopes do you really think will come true, or have our hopes and dreams been dashed to pieces along the rocky cliffs of this sinful world. Hopes and dreams! They seem to be so shaky. Who can truly say that what they have hoped for has come true. If we were truthful, we would have to admit that many of our hopes have fallen short. Our health has not always been good.. The weather has not cooperated. We haven’t won $1,000,000. I think we all get the picture.
But is this what God was talking about, when he used the word “hope” in our text for this morning, a shaky not too sure kind of hope? Today is the Sunday of the Church Year where we specifically worship and adore the true God, the Triune God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Today is the day we call Trinity Sunday. As we worship our Triune God, we will see that our text for this morning shows us the work of all three persons of the Trinity, but even greater than that we will see that the Triune God has promised us an eternal hope. He has promised us a hope that will not fail. In fact, as we think about God’s hope, we see a hope that leads us to be happy and joyful. We see that “[God’s] hope does not disappoint us.” This morning let us meditate under the theme:
Sermon Theme: We Can Rejoice In God’s Eternal Hope
1. Because The Father has justified us
2. Because The Son has redeemed us
3. Because The Holy Spirit has given us faith
Before we even get started, I want you all to do one thing. I want you to set aside your sin-tainted intellect and human reason for the next 20 minutes or so. No, I didn’t say that I want you all to become dumb or act like robots, but I want us to realize that there is no way, this side of heaven, that we can understand the workings of our triune God by using reason or intellect to figure it all out. Truthfully speaking, the only way that we can see our true, Triune God is by our heart of faith, which was given us by the Holy Spirit. We aren’t celebrating Trinity Sunday so that we can figure out and solve the mystery of the Triune God, instead we God-willing will see how wonderful it really is for us to have a God that is willing and able to do all these great things for us.
As we look at the Trinity we find the one God in three persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Triune means --three persons in one God. But how is our God three persons? How can there be three persons and only one God? We can’t really answer those questions, because it is impossible to know exactly why and how the Trinity works, but we can say that without the workings of the three distinct persons in one Godhead we would be lost forever. Let us see first what Paul writes for us this morning concerning the Father, the first person of the Trinity. He is the Father in the truest sense of the word. He cares for his children. He protects his children. He guides his children. He teaches his children. Yet, when we look at the work of God the Father, we can see one word that stands out to describe him. That word is the word “LOVE”. Without the love of the Father, we would never have been saved. We would be lost and condemned in our sins.
That is a thought that needs more attention. God created the perfect world. When he was done creating the world he said everything was good or perfect. Yet we know all to well what brought destruction to God’s perfect world. SIN! The Fall of Adam and Eve. The Fall brought sin into this world and brought the consequences of sin to all people. The consequences of sin is ETERNAL DEATH for all sinners in the fires of hell. That is what every person deserves who has lived on this earth. And lest we think that this judgment is much too intense or horrible, let us remember what it means for us to sin. He means that we are separating ourselves from God. We are saying that we are an enemy of God. We are fighting against God, and God doesn’t take this destruction called sin lightly. He demands that there be a punishment for every one of those sins committed.
What do you think would be a good judgment for all of our condemning sins? That’s much like asking a child, “What punishment do you think you deserve for the wrong you did?” The child may think he deserves something less than what the parent thinks he deserves. In the same way, we many times underestimate the severity of our sins. We may think that our sins aren’t that bad, or that we deserve a lesser punishment than eternal death. But the severe punishment of eternal death that God says we deserve will never be removed. It will always be there staring us in the face, because we deserve it.
This is where the love of God the Father becomes so evident. God’s command to punish sin never went away, but God in all his wisdom came up with a plan to have his perfect Son take the punishment for the whole world. God said, I don’t want to see them die, instead I want to see them live. As he states so clearly, “God wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). God also knew that sinful men could never pay for their own sins. Someone who was perfect would have to come, and there was only one qualified person, God’s perfect Son. What kind of love would it take to give your own son up in order to die for someone else? Who sitting here this morning could give up your child to save another person’s life? For instance if you knew someone that was dying and needed a new heart to live, would you be able to give up your child’s heart to save the other person’s life? That would take love. Most likely a greater love than most of us could show! A love that only a truly perfect Father could have. The Father loved us enough to come up with a plan and to follow through with this perfect plan. He loved us so much that that our text tells us “God has poured out his love into our hearts” He loved us so much that “we have been justified” by our heavenly Father which means that God has declared us not guilty of our sins. Just think how much love the Father had to have to say we are not guilty, because the blood of his Son paid in full for our sins. He doesn’t hold a grudge. He sees us as pure and clean children of God.
But God’s perfect plan would have fallen apart, if God’s own Son hadn’t come to this earth to live a perfect life and suffer and die as our Substitute. Remember how we said before that our sins had made us enemies of God. Our sins had closed off our access to God. There was a huge valley between God and us with no bridge to cross over it. Jesus came to take that problem away. He came to bring us peace. All we have to do is look at the countries around us and we can see what it is like to not have peace. The opposite of peace is war, enemies, fighting, and even death. One example of this is the fighting and unrest that is going on in Iraq and Afganhistan and all over the world. Yet our lives before Jesus’ death and resurrection were worse than the unrest of the fighting in the Middle East, and being isolated from God is worse than any bloody war. We were completely separated from our God. We were at war with God. How could this change? How would we find peace with God?
Jesus so willingly came as our text says to accomplish this great task; “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This peace came through the blood of Jesus Christ, and this peace didn’t come without some great suffering and pain. All we need to remember is Jesus crying out from the cross, “My God, My God why have your forsaken me.”(Matthew 27:46) He was suffering the torture of Hell to win peace for us as lost sinners. Every one of our sins hung on that cross with him as he fought the fight against sin, death and the devil. This peace that Jesus won for us has now brought us something wonderful. The barrier of sin has been torn down between God the Father and us, “Through [Jesus] we have gained access into this grace in which we now stand.” There is now a bridge over that valley of sin that once separated us from our Father. We can now say we are standing in the grace of God and have access to our God. All this was accomplished through the work of God’s own Son.
We certainly have reasons to rejoice about all that God has blessed us with. We have an eternal hope promised to us and God’s own Son has paid the payment for that hope, but how do we know about the peace Jesus won for us? That is a very important question that must be answered correctly. The answer is simple; “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” In this verse you see the last key element for our eternal hope. We learn about the peace that Jesus won by the workings of the Holy Spirit. He is like the messenger bringing us the good news of a victory won for us. We hear about the love of God as the Holy Spirit leads us to come to faith.
Faith is the key word here. What is faith? Faith first of all IS NOT a good work! You are not a stronger or better person in God’s eyes, because you have faith. Faith second of all IS NOT something we can find on our own, no matter how hard we pray or dedicate our lives to God. Faith is a GIFT from God to us. As our text says; “God has poured out his love into our hearts.” There is no “I” in that statement. God is the one bringing us his love. He doesn’t tell us that we can get it on our own. The Holy Spirit uses the gospel message of Jesus’ death and resurrection found in God’s Word and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to work faith in us. The message of God’s grace is presented to us by the Holy Spirit, and that message of Jesus’ work on the cross alone works faith in our hearts. We can’t say we contributed one iota to coming to faith or finding faith. God, the Holy Spirit, did all the work though his tools of Word and Sacraments.
This saving faith is now the hand that reaches out and receives all the benefits that Jesus won for us on the cross. Without faith we would not have known that Jesus has given us all these things, such as life and salvation. With faith we can “rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” The Holy Spirit not only has worked faith in our hearts, but also continues to dwell in us, as a reminder of all that God has promised us is true and will happen as promised. As Paul reminds the Corinthians, “God has given us the Holy Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” (2 Cor. 5:5). What a wonderful joy to know that since the Holy Spirit has created faith in our hearts and has told us he now lives in us, we know 100% that our eternal hope is there for us. He is in our hearts as a personal guarantee that all that has been promised from God is true.
What are your hopes and dreams? How many of your hopes and dreams are you sure 100% will come true? There is only one hope that we can be 100% certain of, and that hope is eternal life in heaven. As we have seen from Paul’s words to us this morning, our Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit has made sure that this promise is true and that it is most certainly meant for us. As we witness firsthand this tremendous blessing from God, we can see that we certainly have a reason to be filled with rejoicing as we think about our eternal hope. We have seen the love of the Father in the sending of his one and only Son. We have seen Jesus bring us peace with God by living the perfect life and dying on the cross. We have seen the Holy Spirit work saving faith in our hearts through the gospel found in God‘s Word and the Sacraments. All this is God’s gift to us. Doubt has been erased and has been filled with assurance. Fear has been removed, and has been replaced with joy and happiness. To God be all glory and praise. Amen.