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WELS “Walking Together”
Sunday
May 4,
2008
Good Shepherd Evangelical Lutheran Church
Sioux Falls, SD
Rev. Norman F. Seeger
Acts 1:8
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit
comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the
earth.”
Acts 1:8
“WITNESSING CHRIST, WE WELS BELIEVERS ARE...”
- Powered by the Holy Spirit
- Guided by the Spirit
Dear disciples of Christ,
Jesus’ mission is successful. Salvation has been won for every soul. Conceived sinless, conceived in the virgin
Mary by the Holy Spirit, Jesus lives a perfect life, “tempted in every way, just as we
are, yet without sin.[HEB
4] Never disobeying his Father’s will with one
selfish thought or one angry word, Jesus lives a faultless life God compassionately
counts as our righteousness. When God graciously
makes his Son responsible for our sins, Jesus innocently dies sin’s death. Enduring hell on his cross, Jesus erases our
guilt because he is sacrificed as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of
the world.”[JN 1] Raised from death to life Easter Sunday to
guarantee us God’s forgiveness, Jesus is ready to ascend into heaven forty days
later as an unqualified success – the conqueror of sin, the destroyer of death,
defeater of the devil -- the one & only Savior for every soul who ever
sinned or ever will sin in our world.
Jesus’ mission of winning forgiveness is finished. Jesus’ commission for his faithful followers
to preach repentance & promise salvation for every sorry soul is just beginning.
What a change of life, what a reversal
of roles this will be for disciples who learned to trust in our Savior while
watching Jesus perform miracles & listening to Jesus preach repentance
& forgiveness. Suddenly, the
spectator will become speakers, the audience will become actors. When Jesus is in heaven, who on earth will
preach God’s truth? Looking into the
future – seeing Peter preach on Pentecost, seeing Paul make many mission
journeys to Asia Minor; seeing WELS believers in our world today -- Jesus tells
us how his Church will work, simply announcing, “You will receive power when the
Holy Spirit comes on you … you will be my witnesses…”
Jesus’ vision of the future is obviously factual. Reading Acts of the Apostles recorded in
Scripture, we see fearless disciples witnessing Christ in ever-expanding
circles. We see saved souls multiplying as
our Savior’s truth is being shared by his believers. Today, Jesus’ vision of the future is still
factual. Focusing on Jesus’ words being
fulfilled among us & our fellow believers in the WELS this morning, I pray
we will be instructed & encouraged to witness our Savior more often when we
realize WELS believers witnessing Christ, like the apostles, are powered by the
Holy Spirit while being guided by the Spirit in our own Jerusalem, in our Judea
& Samaria; to the ends of our earth.
The Holy Spirit’s power is apparent on Pentecost – next
Sunday we will stress the Spirit filling disciples with our Savior’s truth,
enabling them to speak in different languages everyone gathered in Jerusalem is
able to understand so every soul can hear how God sent his Son, Jesus, to
produce salvation by living our righteous life before dying our sin-destroying
death. Today, the Holy Spirit powering
our ministries may not seem as spectacular – no tongues of fire are seen on our
heads, though the sound of a mighty rushing wind is often heard in the Dakotas – but the Spirit is definitely working
in us, for “No one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.”[1 COR 12]
The fact is, we are unable to believe – “No eye has seen, no ear has
heard; no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him…but
God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.”[1 COR 2] If the Holy Spirit
had not worked faith in our hearts, you & I could not confess Jesus as our
Savior – there would be no WELS believers, there would be no Christians of any kind. But the Spirit has not only opened our eyes
to see Jesus redeeming our sins, the Holy Spirit opens our mouths to talk about
the one Savior for every soul.
If a WELS missionary in Japan is preaching Jesus Christ or
if individual Christians like ourselves are talking about God in personal
conversations with our friends, the Holy Spirit is providing the power; the
Holy Spirit is putting our Lord’s words into our mouths, guiding our witness
the same way he guided the apostles preaching on Pentecost & powered
persecuted believers who fled from Jerusalem to talk about Jesus among their
new neighbors in Judea & in Samaria.
With the Spirit empowering us; with the Holy Spirit speaking through us
– the strength of WELS, remember, is pastors & people speaking only what
God has recorded for us to speak in the Scriptures, never adding, subtracting
or modifying God’s Word to mollify man – the Spirit will guide our ministries
to go & to grow wherever he desires.
Sometimes, the Spirit’s directions are unexpected. In the early 1960’s, WELS congregations were basically located in less
than 20 upper Midwestern states. When we
separated from larger, national Lutheran church bodies who no longer professed
all of God’s inspired truths – when we could not in good conscience refer
moving members to churches who may or may not teach all of God’s truth --
leaders in Home Missions planned to expand to adjoining states one at a time,
with the prayer of being in ‘every state by ’78.’ The Holy Spirit apparently had other
plans. Several members from
congregations in Michigan retired to the same town in Florida. Asking
us to help start a church where they could share the Savior with their new
neighbors, WELS missions in our country jumped from Michigan to Florida.
Setting aside our personal expectations, we followed the Spirit’s lead
to preach Christ in cities scattered across our country & continent as WELS
members moved & many more believers began asking to associate with a synod
faithfully teaching everything Christ has commanded us.
As the Spirit leads us to witness where he wants – like the
Spirit telling Phillip to travel a desert road from Jerusalem to Gaza, where he
encounters the treasurer from Ethiopia – we are sometimes led where no WELS
believer has gone before, which means more than moving into Mississippi as our
50th state. Sometimes the
Holy Spirit moves us outside a personal comfort zone to witness Christ in
places no long-range plans would ever anticipate. Did WELS soldiers involved in Vietnam know what would happen if communists
took control of Laos & began hunting down the Hmong
people who helped rescue American pilots shot down over their territory? God, of course, knew the future, but no man
could know how many Hmong would move to our country. Some in the Twin Cities would be led to
believe in Jesus as our pastors & people faithfully witnessed the
Savior. As the Holy Spirit inspired some
Hmong men to study for our pastoral ministry, we in WELS were led to establish a Pastoral Studies
Institute which trains older men for a second career as a pastor. PSI particularly trains people from other
cultures (Hmong, Vietnamese, Spanish-speaking, African-Americans among them) by
enabling them to learn needed languages; to be taught many college &
Seminary courses while they are still working their current jobs &
providing for their families in their present place. True, it takes longer, but is often more workable
for these men than moving to New Ulm four years for college & spending four
more years at our Seminary in Mequon, WI.
Led by the Spirit in unexpected directions, we graduated four Hmong
brothers from our Seminary last May, four men serving Hmong congregations in
various parts of America while also working with Hmong believers over
in Thailand.
As the Holy Spirit guides our gospel ministries in
unexpected directions, we WELS believers will preach & teach the same truths, but we
may witness Jesus’ message of sin & salvation in different ways than we
have in the past. For example, in Zambia & Malawi, we sent in missionaries fifty years ago
to establish a seminary to prepare pastors who could serve their own countrymen
better than expatriate missionaries might.
As African believers establish their own congregations & synod – the
Lutheran Church of Central Africa, which is in fellowship with us as we
teach the same truths – the Holy Spirit is blessing their witness of Christ
with increasing numbers of believing souls.
In Nepal & Pakistan, on the other hand, we are unable to
send in American missionaries. So, in Nepal, a Scripture Learning Program provided
from a distance is training forty people to proclaim the gospel of Jesus
Christ. In Pakistan, nearly 10,000 people are enrolled in a
Bible correspondence Program.
In China, individual WELS believers desired as English teachers
for their schools are witnessing Christ in personal conversations in their
private lives. In our own country,
‘English as a Second Language’ classes are incorporating the good news about
our Savior to touch souls we may not have touched if we only did ministry the
way we always did ministry in the past.
Our forms of ministry, I pray we realize, do not have to change, but
they may change as the Holy Spirit places new opportunities to witness Christ
in front of our congregations & our synod.
What can never change is what we witness: Jesus is the Christ, put to death to pay our
sins’ penalty, raised to life to guarantee us God’s forgiveness; to assure our
salvation.
Where we witness & the way we witness may change – only
God knows how our future will unfold -- but what we witness will always be the
same: “The wages of our sin is death,
but God’s gift to us is eternal life in our Lord Jesus Christ.”[ROM 6]
The invitation to eternal life we are expected & allowed to extend
to every individual will never waver: “Believe
in the Lord Jesus; you will be saved.”[ACTS 16] Guided by the
Spirit, powered by the Holy Spirit – with the Spirit producing whatever results
he desires through the Word of God we are permitted to preach & teach – I
pray believers at Good Shepherd, with fellow believers throughout the WELS,
will all enjoy the privileged position our Savior places us into as Jesus assures
us again, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you & you
will be my witnesses in Jerusalem; in Judea & Samaria…you will be my
witnesses to the ends of the earth.”
Amen.