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Grace, mercy, and peace
to you, from God our Father, and our Ascended Lord, Jesus Christ. Let us pray:
“Let the words of my mouth and the
meditation of (our) heart(s) be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, (our) rock
and (our) redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).
In the name of Jesus.
We have heard
three readings this morning, on this Day of Pentecost. Three readings which have put into our ears
the viva vox Christi—the living voice
of Christ—by which the Holy Spirit turns us from ourselves, in repentance and
faith, so that we would see Jesus, and live.
In three readings the Word of God has been spoken to us, so that the
Holy Spirit might deliver it into our hears, and to our minds, and down to our
hearts, where, by pointing us to Jesus, He would plant faith firmly within, so
that we might be a people who forever calls upon the name of the Lord to be
saved. This morning, on this Day of
Pentecost, as we celebrate the work of the Holy Spirit to create and sustain
and even strengthen the faith of all believers who have learned not to trust in
ourselves, but in Christ alone, and as we consider the three readings which
have been placed before us, we find that there is one theme which binds them
all together. And that theme is: The
Name of the Lord.
The first reading
is the well-known story of the Tower of Babel; the story of a people who have
already disregarded the LORD’s command to be fruitful, and multiply, and to fill the earth. Rather than filling the earth, they have
chosen that they know better; they’ll stay in one spot, all together, so they
think. But even more, they’ve begun to
think so highly of themselves that they decide to show God what they think of
Him—and what they think of themselves.
“Come,” they say to themselves, “let us build ourselves a city and a
tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest
we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
In order to
accommodate their obstinant refusal to spread out across the land, they choose
to build a tower so tall that it alone would be big enough to serve as the city
by itself, and all the people could literally be in the same place. Do you see how brazen this is?
The LORD had
commanded them to spread out across the earth—to fill it up. But they would not. They wanted to say all together in one
place. In fact, they are so blinded by
their desire to stay in one place, that they begin to think that their
tower-city will somehow impress God.
They think that their corrupt construction project will actually be able
to reach up to God. They think that by
showing God what they can do, how they know better, and how they’ve been able
to manage a work-around to His Almighty will, they will make a name for
themselves.
But that’s the
problem: they’re trying to make a name for themselves. They’re trying to reach up to God by their
work. They’re trying to impress God by
what they are capable of doing. With
their attempts to build a life for themselves,, they’ve disregarded the life
which the Lord has chosen to give. And
in the process the only name they make for themselves is a name that reveals
their rebellion, and they would end up being scattered anyway as a sign of
God’s wrath and judgment.
Of course, we have
done the same, have we not? Maybe you
don’t try to impress God with your architectural achievements, but you do try
to impress Him nonetheless. Those of you
who have been coming to our Wednesday evening Bible classes have heard and read
about a number of ways we try to reach up to God to impress Him, and to show
him how great we have become. We do it
with our minds. We do it with our ideas. We do it with our morals. We do it with our events and activities. We do it with the next big thing which
promises to deliver success. We do it in
many and various ways. Because we want
to reach up to God, and show Him what we’re capable of. We want to impress him with our work. We want to make sure He knows our name. We want to make a name for ourselves.
And where does
that leave us? It leaves us invisible to
the Lord. It would be hilarious if it
weren’t so sad. All of our attempts to
impress God, and all of our reaching up to God, and all of our wanting to
impress God, and all of our trying to show Him what we’re capable of doing,
amounts to nothing: filthy rags. All of
our attempts to make a name for ourselves fail even to be seen by Him, much
less are impressive to Him.
When those people
of old tried to build a tower to the heavens the LORD God almighty couldn’t
even see it. He had to come down, our of
heaven, to see what they thought was so impressive. Can you picture it? There they are, building their “Tower to the
Heavens,” and they think what they’ve done is so impressive, but when the Lord
looks down upon them, He can’t even see it.
He has to do down to get a look, because what man-kind is capable of,
when it is compared to what the LORD Himself had promised to give, amounts to
nothing.
But there are two
other readings in front of us today. And
so, having learned the foolishness of our attempts to impress God with our
work; having the Holy Spirit remind us through the Tower of Babel of the utter
nonsense of trying to make a name for ourselves, we now turn to the Holy
Gospel, where the Holy Spirit reminds us of the one who is doing both the
building and the naming.
Solomon had
written long ago, maybe even recalling the foolishness of the Tower of Babel,
that, unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain (Psalm
127:1). In John 14, with the Word of
Jesus Christ Himself, we are reminded that those who love Christ, and keep His
Word—that is, those who believe in Him—will come to Him and have their home
with him. In the Father’s house are many
rooms. If it were not so, would Jesus
have told them that He was going to prepare a place for them, and for you? He had spoken these things to them while He
was still with them, but now, Jesus was promising to send the Helper—the Holy
Spirit—who would teach them all things, and keep in front of them everything
that Jesus had said, and taught, and promised.
And that Helper—the Holy Spirit—would be sent by the Father in the name
of Jesus.
There it is: the
name of the LORD—the name of Jesus. It
is that name in which the Holy Spirit was promised to come. And when the Holy Spirit would come, he would
bring peace which passes all understanding, and He would bring it in the name
of Jesus—our Savior!. When the Holy
Spirit would come, he would take all your fears and your troubles, and He would
remove them with the name of Jesus who would be raised victorious from the
grave, and would ascend to reign on High.
When the Holy Spirit would come, all the faithful would love the LORD,
and rejoice in the LORD, and believe in the LORD, for the Helper—the Holy
Spirit—would come in the name of Jesus, and with the name of Jesus He would
continue to build a heavenly home filled with the sons and daughters of God.
He had been given
the name Jesus because He would save His people from their sins with His death
on the cross. And having risen from the
dead, he would ascend to the right hand of the Father, so that the Holy Spirit
might come as the Helper to continue to build the household of faith—a great
city of God from every nation and tribe and people which no one can count. Having completed His work of redemption,
Jesus would go to the Father, and send the Helper—the Holy Spirit, by whose
power all the faithful would no longer seek to make a name for themselves, but
would learn, by faith, to call upon the name of the one who is above all names,
whereby they would be saved.
And that brings us
to Acts, chapter 2, the third of today’s readings. The Day of Pentecost had arrived, and the
twelve disciples were all together in one place, still waiting for Jesus’
promised Helper to be poured out upon them so that they could begin to serve as
apostles and carry the preaching of Christ into all the world. And then it happened. The Helper was sent, and the Holy Spirit
filled those twelve disciples, and by the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit,
they begn to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to do.
And there were
Parthians, and Medes and Elamites and residents of Meopotamia, Judea and
Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phyrigia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of
Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
Cretans and Arabians all in that place.
The scattering of the Tower of Babel, and the confussion of languages
was undone by the hand of God in the sending of the Helper—the Holy Spirit—who
enabled men and women from across the land to hear, in their own languages, the
mighty works of God.
Just as Jesus had
promised, the Holy Spirit had come in His name, and in that miraculous event, He
was teaching all of those people what Jesus had done to accomplish their
salvation. The life of Jesus, which
fulfilled the Law’s demands; the death of Jesus, which took the Father’s wrath;
the resurrection of Jesus which took death’s sting; and the ascension of Jesus,
which proves the Father’s pleasure: these were the mighty works of God being
placed into the mouths of the disciples by the Helper. And so, the Helper—the Holy Spirit—had truly
come in the name of Jesus, for on that day, the Day of Pentecost, those who
would hear the preaching of Jesus would no longer seek to impress God, or to
make a name for themselves; they were given the name which is above all names;
the name by which they would be saved.
And so it is
today, my friends. As sinners who seek
to impress God, and to make names for ourselves; as sinners who fight over
personal preferences, and who seek to one-up each other so that we might gain a
better reputation and our names would be known; as foolish men and women who
try to impress God by what we can accomplish, be it with our mind, or our
morals, or our prosperity, we have made ourselves a divided people. We divide ourselves. But God would seek to make us one—a Holy
Communion of Saints, forgiven by the blood of Jesus and trusting in Him to give
us a name.
And so He
does. Not in miraculous ways as we see
on the day of Pentecost, but in simple ways.
The Helper Comes. The Holy Spirit
comes in the name of Jesus, and He puts before us in the reading of Scripture
the prophecies of Jesus, and the works of Jesus and the teaching of Jesus. And the Holy Spirit comes, and in the
preaching done in the name of Jesus He puts before us the foolishness of the
Gospel; He places before our eyes the cross and the empty tomb and He says that
this is the way the LORD has chosen to build His house. And the Holy Spirit comes through Water and
the Word of Promise, and He washes us clean and plants faith in our hearts, and
daily teaches us to trust in the name that has been placed upon us: the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit comes through the promise
made in Jesus’ name which declares you to be forgiven in the eating and
drinking of His body and blood. And in
it all, the Holy Spirit comes, in the name of Jesus, to build a household of
faith called the holy Christian Church.
And in this Holy
Christian Church, the scattering of sinful people, and the confusion of our
communication, and the divisions caused by our seeking a name for ourselves are
undone in the name of the Lord. The
Tower of Babel is reversed, and by faith in the name of Jesus, people of all
tribes and nations, and languages; and people with all kinds of personal
preferences; and people with all kinds of names, are bound together by the name
of Jesus.
Where people are
trying to impress God with their accomplishments, and are seeking to make a name
for themselves, there will only be division, and competition, and envy, and
jealousy, and the list could go on and on.
But where the name of Jesus is made known, the Holy Spirit takes divided
and sinful people, and binds them together as one, in the name of Jesus, to be
a people that confesses, and believes, and rejoices in the name by which they
have forgiveness, life, and salvation. The
Holy Spirit doesn’t help you reach up to God in order to impress Him. He brings God down to you, in the name of
Jesus, so that you would be gathered by the name, and call upon the name, and
rejoice in the name by which you are saved.
In the name of Jesus the Holy Spirit promises you a home in heaven
forever. In the name of T Jesus. Amen.
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