FOUNDATIONS FOR PEACE

May 26-28, 2007
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost
Pastor Tim Smith

Acts 2:1-21
2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. 18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. 19 I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 20 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. 21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ (NIV)

What does this mean? Had we been there on this day, that’s a question we surely would have asked. Had we been there on this day, we would have had in mind that this was already a holiday, a holy day, an Old Testament festival known as the Feast of Weeks,[1] the Feast of the Harvest,[2] the Day of the Firstfruits3 – this was Pentecost,4 the Fiftieth Day, fifty days after the celebration of the Passover. And it would have been on our minds and in our hearts that it was also fifty days to the day that Jesus Christ was sacrificed for our sins on the cross on a hill just over there, on the other side of this City of David.
Had we been there on this day, we would have been praising God for the very first growth of the new growing season. These first tender shoots were cut and brought to God, acknowledging God’s promise that there would more – much more – that would follow. And had we been there on this day, we would have understood what significance there was when God suddenly made three thousand converts[5] to the church on this one day, and we would have understood God’s implied promise that there would be more – many more – converts to come.

Had we been there on this day, gathered together, as our text says, in a house, we would have heard the sound. The sound, “like the blowing of a violent wind,” the tornado-like sound, like the sound I heard as a little boy when I was trapped on the shoulder of a railroad trestle in a downpour when the Milwaukee Road freight train thundered overhead and I thought my world was coming to an end because of that deafening sound.

But despite the sound, the sound that filled the house, that shook the rafters, that shook the windows, that shook the furniture, that shook the very foundations of the house, there was no damage. Had we been there on that day, we might have been stunned that despite the sound, no one’s hair was blowing, no cups were tipped over, no gale tore through the house – just the sound – and then the tongues came. First, tongues of fire.

Had we been there on this day, would we have been reminded of the fire from God in the Old Testament? The Burning Bush, the Pillar of Fire, the Smoking Firepot, the flames that crashed down from heaven and consumed the altar built by Elijah on Mount Carmel showing the difference between the true God in heaven and the figment of Baal in the minds of unbelieving fools?

Had we been there on this day, would we have understood that this fire, coming to rest not in one place alone, but on the heads of all of them was the symbol of the presence of the Holy Spirit, of God himself? As the Apostles stood there, dancing flames like all the flames on the top of a birthday cake separated and traveled across that room, and “came to rest on each of them.”

And we would have been amazed at that, except that there was even more to come. The tongues of flame showed the presence of the Holy Spirit – not just in one place, but everywhere he is needed, all at the same time, doing something different wherever he is, according to the needs of the people there.

And then and there we would have understood something else – we would have understood the gospel in our own language.

That’s because in addition to the tongues of flame, the Apostles suddenly were given the gift. The gift of the tongues or languages of the nations. We understand this to mean that the Apostles were permitted, without taking any classes, to suddenly speak fluently in other languages.

The nations mentioned form a circle all around Jerusalem. The far east, the far north, the deep south, the extreme west – all of these places were represented by the languages the Apostles spoke that day.

What did this mean? What was the miracle of Pentecost?

For those of us who were baptized as infants, faith came at a time when we were very young. We don’t remember details like who was doing the baptizing or what hymn was sung afterward or whether it was raining or snowing or whether the sun was shining. For those of us who were baptized as infants, the miracle of coming to faith does not center around the means through which God achieved it so much as the result God achieved – the glorious fact that we have faith at all. That’s what counts. Not that the means is unimportant – we praise God for the means of grace with which he works.

As with any miracle, the result is the important detail. When we think of this first Christian Pentecost, we tend to focus on the miracle of speaking in unlearned languages – speaking in tongues. But had we been there on this day, we would be all the more stunned by the lasting and much more important miracle that the glossalalia or speaking in tongues brought about: People heard the gospel. People heard about their Savior.

And Peter points us to that truth as the most important thing we should remember about this day. After brushing aside one heckler who thought they were somewhat less than sober, Peter said: What did you expect? This has been coming since Joel talked about it, what, nine hundred years before Jesus’ birth – three thousand years ago for us. But, continued Peter, even more than what you see here will happen in the final days of the world. Certainly the “last days” can be seen in all the years from this first Christian Pentecost until the moment the Lord will come again in Glory, but Peter quotes the prophet Joel who described incredible and terrible wonders: “I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.” And accompanying those things, say Peter and Joel, “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” So why should we be surprised that some smaller gift – like speaking the gospel in foreign tongues – should happen before the very end times?

Martin Luther explained that of the prophecies that foretell things that haven’t yet happened, there are basically three types: The first are the plain prophecies which in clear words proclaimed, for example, that Christ would come into the world and so forth. The second kind is when an image or dream is accompanied by an explanation from a prophet – as when Joseph and Daniel and even Paul had or explained such dreams.

The third, Luther said, is the type mentioned here when Peter quotes Joel, when dreams or visions do not have such an explanation. They are a mute prophecy which has no sure interpretation, and “has not yet come to the fruit which it is to give to Christendom.”[6]
Had we been there on this day, would you and I have been one of the tongues-speakers, or one of the three thousand listeners who were converted, or would might you or I have been that one heckler?

We were not there on this day. And it might be easy for each one of us to say, “No, Lord – not in a million years would I have been the one to put that little wine stain on the perfect cloth of this first Christian Pentecost. But if we will claim that we would not have sinned then, how do explain our sins today?

How do we explain away our behavior that seems to cry out “The Holy Spirit doesn’t live in me today!” when God says that he will pour out the Spirit on all people?

Are we bothered by our sins? Are we bothered by our lives that don’t fully embrace our God? I know that we are bothered. Some are bothered by old, old sins that don’t seem to go away. Some are bothered by sins of habit that keep turning up to annoy, like a Blue Jay or a Black Bird that thinks it’s the prince of the backyard cawing you awake every morning.

Some are bothered wondering whether God punishes old sins with present suffering – and the comfort the Bible gives about this question is the comfort the Bible gives to all these things that bother us – the answer to all of our sins. “This is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against him.” (2 Cor. 5:18-19).

The miracle of Pentecost points us to the miracle of the Cross – that God punished his own Son rather that us for our sins. That’s the message preached in the tongues of the nations under the tongues of flame. That’s the message of being reconciled to God, of being filled with the Holy Spirit.

That’s the answer to every one of our sins – they are all covered in Jesus, and from Joel to Peter to us, the message remains the same: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” Amen.

May 12-14, 2007
NEHEMIAH 9:38, 10:30, 11:2
6th Sunday after Easter
Mother’s Day Homily, May 13, 2007.
Pastor Tim Smith

CHILDREN’S DEVOTION — When we think of housekeeping, don’t we normally think of it in two ways? First, there is long-term housekeeping; the things we do over time to manage and maintain the household – paying bills, painting walls, making sure the appliances are working, doing the dishes, washing the clothes, and more importantly, taking care of the people in the household – protecting and loving our children, feeding them, cleaning them, teaching them – and so on and on. But there are those times when we have short-term housekeeping to do – the mad dash to quick pick up the children’s toys or all of dad’s books and papers before a guest comes, or something that breaks down and needs to be fixed, or the hurry and the pressure some people experience when a bill’s deadline arrives. Or especially when a crisis happens to a member or to everyone in our family – we stop everything else to be there for that person, because people are what make a family and a household.

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In the book of Nehemiah, the people make a vow not to neglect the house of God. As we look at certain parts of this vow, we will see that although the physical building is being looked after, much more of what the people say is about the people who make up God’s spiritual house, the Church, and who make this promise:
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NEHEMIAH 9:38; 10:30
9:38 “In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seals to it.” (This is followed by a list of 84 names of people who signed this pledge, and then we continue in chapter ten at verse 30). 10:30 “We promise not to give our daughters in marriage to the peoples around us or take their daughters for our sons. So far, the word of the Lord.

The books of Moses give us a rich perspective on the origins of the Jews, how they were chosen by God and set apart as a special people with the way God brought them out of Egypt and established them in the land of Canaan. There is a similar story at the other end of the Old Testament. The books of the Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi tell us about the return of Judah to Canaan.

One of the problems that had gotten them into trouble in the past was the issue of inter-marriage with people of pagan religions. Now, the first thing they do when pledging not to neglect the house of God is to purify this central part of their lives and their families. They begin by agreeing not permit marriage outside the faith. Before we make any application into our own lives, we need to remember that this was an Old Testament command. We Christians are assured in Galatians that “Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law” (Gal. 3:25). We of course aren’t required by God to marry a spouse who is WELS – but nevertheless we shouldn’t forget that Paul told the Corinthians that a person who marries outside their faith may face special challenges in their life; especially spiritual challenges.

We can’t imagine that this was easy for the people in Nehemiah’s time to do. It broke hearts. There were bawling brides and gloomy grooms whose marriages were annulled and forbidden. The final chapter of Ezra has a terrible list of 110 marriages that were dissolved because of this resolution. The people were serious about the dangers of this sin, and they were serious about their resolve to honor the First Commandment with every part of their lives.

NEHEMIAH 10:31
31 “When the neighboring peoples bring merchandise or grain to sell on the Sab-bath, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on any holy day. Every seventh year we will forgo working the land and will cancel all debts.

The rest of what the people pledged concerns the Third Commandment, and how they would remember the Sabbath Day and respect God’s word and God’s house. They would not insist that an outsider had to keep their commandment – perhaps there is a kind of separation here of church and state – but they themselves agreed not to do business on a Sabbath.

Again, we are free from this kind of requirement, but how will we show our respect for worship and for God’s holy word if we are not forced – and we are not forced – to keep it outwardly? Will we keep it by setting aside time to hear God’s word? Will we set aside time to study and meditate on God’s word? Will we set aside time to review the Small Catechism, to be sure we know and recall that basic summary of our Christian faith? What will we do? Nehemiah continues:

NEHEMIAH 10:32–34
32 “We assume the responsibility for carrying out the commands to give a third of a shekel each year for the service of the house of our God: 33 for the bread set out on the table; for the regular grain offerings and burnt offerings; for the offerings on the Sabbaths, New Moon festivals and appointed feasts; for the holy offerings; for sin offerings to make atonement for Israel; and for all the duties of the house of our God.

This wasn’t a new tax. Moses had introduced a temple tax in his time. The Israelites had been given gifts from the Persian kings Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes to help rebuild Jerusalem and the temple itself, but they knew that they couldn’t and shouldn’t rely on money like that, especially since strings might be attached to that kind of support in the future, so they set up this pattern to fund the needs of their religion from offerings from the people. And that’s exactly what we do – except that we do not and should not establish a set amount.

Why? Because God wants us to respond out of love, and not with a sense of compulsion. Nehemiah continues:

NEHEMIAH 10:34–39
34 “We—the priests, the Levites and the people—have cast lots to determine when each of our families is to bring to the house of our God at set times each year a contribution of wood to burn on the altar of the LORD our God, as it is written in the Law.
35 “We also assume responsibility for bringing to the house of the LORD each year the firstfruits of our crops and of every fruit tree. 36 “As it is also written in the Law, we will bring the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, of our herds and of our flocks to the house of our God, to the priests ministering there.
37 “Moreover, we will bring to the storerooms of the house of our God, to the priests, the first of our ground meal, of our grain offerings, of the fruit of all our trees and of our new wine and oil. And we will bring a tithe of our crops to the Levites, for it is the Levites who collect the tithes in all the towns where we work. 38 A priest descended from Aaron is to accompany the Levites when they receive the tithes, and the Levites are to bring a tenth of the tithes up to the house of our God, to the storerooms of the treasury. 39 The people of Israel, including the Levites, are to bring their contributions of grain, new wine and oil to the store-rooms where the articles for the sanctuary are kept and where the ministering priests, the gatekeepers and the singers stay.

“We will not neglect the house of our God.”

Now the people sacrifice their time. A lot of the first half of this book is about the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem. This was vital for the survival of the people. But the wall that God set up around his people was even more important: the wall of the Old Testament law.

Before the destruction of the temple, the physical wall had become useless to protect the people, since the spiritual wall was gone. Their lives of faith had cracked, crumbled, and crashed.

Now that God had brought them back from their long exile and captivity, they wanted to show their thanks with their lives, dedicating themselves to do everything God commanded. And in the final two verse of our text, they even prepare to make a complete sacrifice:

NEHEMIAH 11:1–2
11 1 Now the leaders of the people settled in Jerusalem, and the rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of every ten to live in Jerusalem, the holy city, while the remaining nine were to stay in their own towns. 2 The people commended all the men who volunteered to live in Jerusalem. (NIV)

The problem was similar to the problem today in New Orleans. After the disaster struck, people just disappeared. In New Orleans, in addition to those who tragically lost their lives two years ago, there are thousands and maybe tens of thousands of people who simply can’t afford to rebuild and have essentially abandoned their ruined property – which no one else the right to demolish and clean up unless the state ultimately might claim, I suppose, eminent domain or something like it.

In Jerusalem, the city had been destroyed, not for two years, but more than seventy years. Nehemiah, who was a Jew who had risen to a very high government position in Persia, had headed up the wall-rebuilding project, and now he urged the people to do more than just tithe their offering. He urged them to tithe themselves. Ten percent of all people in Judah would be chosen by lot to give up their homes and more into Jerusalem. They would be the ones who would finish the work of cleaning up the city and rebuilding the city walls. And after this was done, some people even volunteered to go with them.

All these things were done to keep God’s house up and running. People changed their lives to do this. Their housekeeping was about more than sweeping and doing dishes; it was about more than paying bills; it was about more than changing the linen. It was about changing lives. It was as if an incredibly important visitor suddenly appeared in the driveway, and with just moments to prepare you fling all the disorganized piles of the day into a closet, and rush all the dirty dishes into the sink and throw a dish towel over them and then realize you have a stain on your clothes which you cover with your hand just as the visitor comes in – and you hope he won’t notice the piles shoved into the closet, or the dirty dishes under the towel, or the stain you’re covering up with your hand – but the visitor is God, and he uncovers everything – piles of guilt, heaps of sinfulness, and he notices every single stain in our lives – even stains we ourselves we’re aware of. And we need to realize that this Divine Visitor in our lives isn’t going to let us cover up these things. He there specifically to uncover them, to point them out, and to tell us that Jesus himself has blasted away all of our sin, the piles, the heaps, the stains, and even the suspicions. They’re all gone in Jesus.

As we set ourselves on a path of taking care of God’s house, we must remember that job #1 is our relationship with God himself, and knowing about the forgiveness we have in Jesus. And then we remember also that the church is really made up of people, not bricks and stained glass, and so we reach out to people – each other, and each to others – with the same undemanding love that God has shown to us.

We will not neglect each other. We will not neglect our own souls and our spiritual well-being. We will not neglect our Synod. We will not neglect the lost souls in the world around us. And maybe in addition to all these things, there are other things we must do, too. But in all of this, we will not neglect the house of our God. Amen.