[Machine transcription]
Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dear Saints, dear Noah, Micah, Elise, Abbey, and Isaac.
God’s peace be with you as you are brought today into the fellowship of the
Lord’s altar, to His name and to His triumph.
There’s a text in Revelation 12 that brings together all of Christian history.
It’s the vision of Saint Michael removing the devil from heaven, but before that it’s
the vision of the woman who’s pregnant ready to give birth, and the dragon is there ready
to eat the baby as soon as it’s born.
That mother giving birth is the church, that child is Jesus, that dragon is the devil,
and he fails.
The child is caught up to God in his throne, so that Jesus ascends into heaven.
He’s born, he lives, he dies, he’s buried, he’s raised on the third day, and forty days
later he ascends up into heaven, not just for himself, but also for us.
And He brings to that place, to the heavenly throne room, He brings His victory, His cross,
His blood, His triumph, so that that blood testifies before God, before the face of God.
Now that heavenly throne is a courtroom where the devil, the serpent, the dragon is busy
accusing you of your sin.
And you, five conformans, have plenty of sins that the devil can accuse before the throne.
So does everyone else here, by the way.
There’s plenty of evidence for the devil to bring before God the Father to show that we
should be cast from His presence, that we should be thrown out of the heavenly sphere,
that our names should not be written on the book that was mentioned in the Epistle lesson,
that Lamb’s Book of Life, that it should be blotted out of that book, but Jesus comes
into that heavenly throne room with His blood.
That means with your forgiveness, with His victory, and now there is nothing left for
the devil to accuse.
There is no sin that you have ever committed that is not forgiven by the blood of Jesus.
There is no sin that you are committing right at this moment that is not forgiven by the
blood of Jesus.
And there is no sin that you will ever commit that is not covered by the blood of Jesus.
It’s washed away.
The devil, in fact, so thorough is that victory, that preaching of the blood of Jesus, so thorough
is that preaching that there is nothing left for the devil to do.
So, He’s thrown down to earth, and now He’s chasing after us, reminding us of our sin,
but the same blood that testifies in heaven also testifies here on the altar.
The blood that you are about to drink today for the first time, that blood is the blood
that overcomes the devil.
In fact, that’s what it says in Revelation 12.
It says they overcame, that’s talking about you all, it’s talking about all of us, it
It says they overcame the devil with the word of the testimony and the blood of the Lamb,
and they did not love their lives unto death.
You compramands are about to stand up here and say that you don’t love your lives unto
death.
You’re going to say that you’d forsake all, even give up your life rather than fall away
from the faith.
And it’s the same promise that all of us who are confirmed in the Lord’s name have made
before and it’s no light promise. It sets us apart in all of the world as those
who believe in something. It’s an amazing thing to think about that most people
don’t have something that they’re willing to die for. I don’t even think
most people have something that they’re willing to live for, but you have
something that you’re willing to die for, the name of Jesus. But more than that,
they overcame Him. They didn’t love their lives unto death, but they overcame Him
by the Word and the Blood.
I by the way, I might run this by the elders in a couple of weeks.
I think that that’s what we should call the Sunday morning service.
The Word and the Blood, 8 o’clock and 11 o’clock at St. Paul Lutheran Church.
The Word and the Blood, because by the Word and the Blood, the devil is overcome.
By the Word and the Blood, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our own hearts.
us, by the Word and the blood, heaven is opened and a place is prepared for us in eternal
life.
By the Word and the blood, we face all the troubles of this world, all the tribulations
of the world, all the difficulties of this world in the confidence that we are the Lord’s
and that He is ours and that He will bring us through it all.
Jesus says it like this, the last verse of the Gospel reading. He says,
My peace I leave with you. In me, He says, you have peace. In the world, you have
trouble. By the way, this is true. In the world we do have trouble and I want to
say, not just for you conformants, but for all of you, in some ways your trouble has
just begun. If some of you are saying, now Pastor, I’m 87 years old, my troubles have
to be getting close to the end, aren’t they? They’re still coming, these troubles
in the world, and there’s something that happens and I’ve noticed this over and
over that when people come to talk to me, because most of the time they come to talk
to me because they’ve got trouble in this world, because there’s something wrong.
And what happens a lot of times is that we think if we have trouble in the world, that
must mean that God hasn’t been faithful, that God hasn’t been with us, that God hasn’t
delivered us.
But the troubles should show us the other thing.
They should tell us that Jesus tells the truth.
He’s the one that promised us.
In this world you will have tribulation, affliction, difficulty, temptation, stress,
burden, weightiness, fear, trembling, all of it. That’s what belongs in this world.
But Jesus says, to your troubles, He doesn’t say that He’s going to take them
away.
But he says that in the midst of them we can be of good cheer, why?
Because he has overcome the world.
Now this is the main thing, and I want you compramands to remember this especially.
There’s two words, well there’s kind of three words, in the mosaic that’s on the altar there,
you can see three words that are written.
The first two words are abbreviated.
I looked to see how far back I was and I could read it from the 8th pew, so if you’re further
back than the 8th pew, you’re going to have to wait until you come forward to the Lord’s
Supper.
But this is the point, in fact.
I want you conformants and I want all of you, every time you come to the Lord’s Supper,
I want you to read those words on the mosaic.
The first word is the top left-hand corner of the cross and it looks like an I and a
C. It’s two Greek words, Yoda and Sigma.
It’s the first and the last letter of the name Jesus.
On the top right are two other Greek letters.
It looks like an X and a C. It looks like the sign for cross-country, but it’s not.
It’s a chi and again a sigma.
It’s the first and the last letters of Christ.
So across the top of the cross it says Jesus Christ.
Christ, and then along the bottom, four letters, one word, N-I-K-A, nika, which means victor.
It’s the same word in the text in John 16 when Jesus says, I have overcome the world.
I have victory over the world.
I have conquered the world.
It might not seem like it, it might not be obvious to our eyes, but this is the truth
that is testified to us every time we come into the Lord’s house and every time we
go to the altar.
That your sin, which seems like it has overcome you, and that seems like it has overcome your
mind and your conscience and your heart, that that sin is forgiven by Jesus, the Overcomer.
That your sorrow and your distress, which seems like it’s overcome your heart and your
mind and dragged you down, has been overcome by Jesus, who is your joy and your peace.
That your loneliness, that your confusion, that seems like it’s overcome you, has been
overcome by Jesus, who promises that He is with you always, that He will never leave
you or forsake you, that your flesh, which seems like it’s dragging you down to death
and hell, has been overcome by Jesus and on the last day you will be raised with Him.
That the devil, who likes to dance around like he’s won the victory, like he’s in charge,
like He’s running the show, that He has been destroyed by Jesus, bound by Him,
thrown into the bottomless pit. For this reason the Son of God was manifest, that
He might destroy the works of the devil, that Jesus is the victor, and He is the
for you and he proves it by giving you the word and the blood. So the word and
the blood are now yours. They belong to you and you belong to them and by these
things you have the promise, that the world, the devil, even your sins and your sinful
flesh have been overcome by the overcomer, Jesus Christ, the victor.
God be praised.
God be praised that the Holy Spirit has brought the word into your ears and into your hearts
and that he has put them on your lips,
and that God be praised that he will put his own body
and blood on those same lips.
Christ, who does this, does all things well, amen.
And the peace of God that passes all understanding,
guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ,
our Lord, amen.
