John 16:5-15; James
1:16-21; Isaiah 12:1-6
In the Name of the Father and of the
+ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Sorrow, loss, grief, and pain are
natural, normal, and human. Your Lord Jesus experienced all of these just as
you do. However, your enemy Satan attempts to use these to keep you in your
place, stuck, as it were, in a rut, unable to see beyond your present pain,
robbing you of hope, peace, contentment, and joy, attacking and destroying your
faith. So he did with Jesus’ disciples. Their sorrow, loss, grief, and pain would
not permit them to see beyond their present grief at Jesus’ announcement that
He would soon be leaving them. Seemingly, they could not hear the good news of
His destination, that He was returning to His Father’s right hand in heaven,
and that this would be a good thing for them. And so, they were afraid, they
were hopeless, and they were despondent, and Satan used their sorrow, their loss,
their grief, and their pain to tempt them to unbelief. And, he was successful,
to varying degrees, with all of them. But with one of them, it literally cost
him his life and, potentially, his salvation.
You see, Satan uses your sorrow, your loss,
your grief, and your pain to sidetrack you from your pilgrimage journey back to
Eden, to paradise, to heaven with God. When Jesus first prophesied that He must
suffer and die and be raised again on the third day, way back then, early in
His ministry, His disciples, communally, did not understand, and they said “No!
Never!” Jesus’ leaving them was a stumbling block for them. His suffering and
death scandalized them. After hearing the first part of His prophecy, that He
must suffer and die, their sorrow, their loss, their grief, and their pain
prevented them from hearing the good news that He would rise again on the third
day. Even on the night in which He was betrayed, even when Jesus told Peter
directly that he would deny Him three times that very night, Peter did not
believe that Jesus would rise, none of them did, and he was so overcome with
grief and sorrow, hopelessness, and despair that he went and unwittingly fulfilled
Jesus’ prophecy and denied his Lord, his Master, and his dearest friend three
times before the cock crowed at dawn. Even after His resurrection on the third
day, Thomas refused to believe until he could see and touch Jesus with his own
eyes and hands. Thomas’ sorrow and grief, along with his reason and intellect,
which Satan also uses against you, blinded him to the Truth of Jesus’ Word.
Dear Christian, you are on a journey
through a barren and desolate wilderness. Like the children of Israel before
you, you are an exile journeying to a promised land. Just as Jesus’ kingdom is
not of this world, so this world is not your home. Your First Parents dwelt in
paradise with God. Their sin and rebellion necessitated their, and your, exile.
But Jesus, the Second Adam, has atoned for your sin and has justified you
before God, and has returned to paradise with God as your Redeemer, your Lord, your
Brother, and your Bridegroom, that where He is, you may also be.
Israel was redeemed from Pharaoh’s hell and
was sent into the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. They were
exiled and were taken captive by the Babylonians and the Assyrians before being
restored to their own county. Likewise, today, the Church of Jesus Christ lives
in exile as a stranger in a strange land, having a different language and a
different culture, different values, and different priorities which this world
neither values nor shares nor tolerates. Yet, each of these exiles, each of
these uncomfortable displacements, each of these wilderness pilgrimages are,
and have been, fulfilled in Jesus’ own self-exile from His Father in heaven to make
His way through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, that is this earth and world
and your own human life and experience, that He might redeem you and lead you
forth out of exile in death and hell and into the Promised Land of life
everlasting life with your Holy Triune God.
How to get back to Eden and to God? That
is the question. God answered that question and promised to provide that way
almost immediately after our First Parent’s rebellion and fall. In truth,
according to the inscrutable wisdom of God, He had it all planned all along. He
would send His Son into the world of His own creation as a man to fulfill what
He created man to do and to be from the beginning and to then offer Himself as
the atoning sacrifice for man’s sin and guilt, to die the death man had earned
and merited, and to be raised up and to return to His Father, blazing a trail
for your own resurrection and return to God and heaven, to Eden, and to paradise
restored.
Satan knew that God had a plan, but he
didn’t know the details, the who, the why, the where, the when, or the how. How
did Satan know? The same way that you and I know anything about God and His
will and His ways – from His Word. Satan knew that a “seed from the woman”
would strike his head. But, who? When? How? The answers to those questions
Satan would have to learn, for he is no more privy to the mind and the thoughts
of God than are you or I. Satan learned something about Jesus when he tempted
Him in the wilderness. And, Satan learned something more about Jesus when He
healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons from the possessed, and
forgave sins. Still, Satan never could have guessed what would happen when he
struck Jesus’ heel and sunk his venomous fangs into His flesh upon the cross.
He thought he had won at last. But, he was wrong – dead wrong. For, what Satan
didn’t know and couldn’t see was that Jesus was not merely the Son of God,
which Peter had confessed before Jesus’ crucifixion, but Jesus was God Himself,
which Thomas confessed after Jesus’ resurrection, who willingly laid down His own
innocent life and satisfied the justice of God’s righteousness that had been
transgressed by the sin of humanity. Righteousness had been restored, and Satan
was the tool God used to make it happen. Now Eden and the paradise of heaven stands
open to all who trust in the blood of Jesus and enter therein. That is the
truth! All Satan can do is tell you lies, hoping that you will believe them and
get sidetracked in your journey, and miss out paradise regained and restored.
Sorrow, loss, grief, and pain are natural,
normal, and human. Your Lord Jesus experienced all of these just as you do.
However, Satan attempts to use these gifts of the Lord against you to take your
focus off of your goal, to attack and to destroy your faith. But, do not fear!
Take comfort in this good news: You are not alone. Though you do not see Him,
your Lord Jesus is with you, always, just as He promised. Moreover, He knows
the way of your pilgrimage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, for He
has walked it before you, and He unlocked the gate of death and the grave that
would keep you in so that they have become for you an open portal through which
you may freely pass into His Father’s house, into Eden, into paradise, and the
Promised Land forevermore.
You are not alone. Your Lord Jesus is
with you. He walks with you on your way, He talks with you through His Word and
through prayer, He washes, cleanses, and restores you through Holy Baptism and
Absolution, and He communes with you and comforts you through His Body and
Blood in the Holy Supper. And, He has sent you His Holy Spirit to comfort and to
counsel, to help and to guide you, and to protect and keep you in faith.
Indeed, it was necessary that Jesus ascend to His Father and leave you
physically and visually that He might send to you His Holy Spirit. The Holy
Spirit helps you, comforts you, and keeps you by convicting the world
concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. The Holy Spirit convicts the
world concerning sin because He exposes the fact that “all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be
received by faith.” The Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning righteousness
because “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus.” And, the Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning judgment because
“the ruler of this world is judged.” Satan is defeated. He has no claim on you.
His only weapons are lies and deceptions through which he seeks to deceive you
and make train wreck of your faith.
Thus St. James exhorts you this day, “Do
not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is
from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no
variation or shadow due to change.” Jesus and His Holy Spirit are the good and
perfect gift of God the Father that will never change. Satan will try to
deceive you into believing that this is not true. He will use your sorrow, your
loss, your grief, and your pain to cause you to doubt God’s faithfulness, to
doubt His love for you, to doubt that He is able to help you, and to doubt
whether He exists at all. But the Holy Spirit, the Helper, the Counselor, and the
Comforter will guide you and protect you. Open yourself to Him by making use of
the means through which He works: The Word of God and the Blessed Sacraments.
As you gather regularly with your brothers and sisters in Christ around these
Means of Grace, the Holy Spirit comforts, counsels, guards, protects, and keeps
you in faith, safe from Satan’s attacks and deceptions, and He preserves you in
your pilgrimage back to Eden, the Promised Land, the Paradise of Heaven with
God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit forevermore. Come, now, and draw
water from the wells of salvation, both now and forevermore.
In
the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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