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Grace and mercy be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from the Gospel reading. You may be seated. Their hearts had to have been pounding. They had no idea of what he was speaking. This seeming riddle of seeing him and then not seeing him and then seeing him. And yet this was spoken on the night within a few hours when they would not care whether they saw him or not because they would all scatter. Because the guards would come and take him. So it seems kind of ridiculous that they would actually be fearful, and yet they were. And it also seems ridiculous that Jesus told them what would happen, and they still run away.
Even though he told them what would happen, they, three years prior to this, had begun a great journey in their life. Your journey began at your baptism, and you were made a pupil of the Holy Spirit. Right? And the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father and the Son, makes disciples, absolutely, but he uses three things that Christians have been proclaiming to other Christians for hundreds and hundreds of years. He makes disciples by oratio, by prayer. Not by your prayer, praying for it, and somehow God sprinkles it, but by you praying back to God what he first taught you from the Word. By you asking God to show you, to reveal to you, to guide you.
But the things about which you pray, the Holy Spirit leans very, very strongly toward one kind of thing: spiritual matters. He loves to give guidance. He loves to answer prayer about spiritual matters. You know, the fruits of the Spirit. Right? Not that he is not concerned about earthly matters, for he is, but the Son made it clear in his Lord’s Prayer, did he not? When he gave us those seven requests in the Lord’s Prayer, six of those seven are for spiritual things, and only one is for earthly or material things.
The second thing that the Spirit used is meditatio, which means to meditate, to think upon, to contemplate. To slow down long enough to quiet your mind and sit and think. Not think about, oh, how I have been burdened. Oh, how God has given me the short end of the stick. But to think about the promises that God has given you. To meditate on what they mean for your situation right now in your life. For what you’re going through. For why God has allowed that.
The third thing which this text is all about is tentatio, which means… your struggle. God has shaped you far more in your life not by blessing you with many things, not by giving you great achievements, but God has done more in your life through your struggle. Because we are a very proud and pompous piece of dust in this mighty cosmos. And God knows that. And the only way this dust of your flesh and my flesh is subdued is when we see God’s promise through struggle.
These disciples that Jesus was speaking these truths to were hours away from running away, running away from him. And he tells them, the Spirit will lead you into all truth. So that when they run away and they meditatio on what has just happened, and they oratio to God for what they have done, asking for forgiveness, they have learned through tentatio what God has done through that struggle and their failure. And through how God’s promise has sustained them.
And more importantly, how God’s Holy Spirit has led them into all truth. Truth not about I should take this job or that job. Truth not about whether I should buy this car or that car. Truth not about whether I should buy this house or not. Truth about whose you are. What brought those apostles back to Christ when they had run away and were drowning in their mistake? It was the Holy Spirit. It was not their reason. It was not their strength.
As we confessed in the third article to the Apostles’ Creed, I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in the Lord Jesus or come to Him. But the Holy Spirit has done His work through that word. He has led you into all truth. Jesus told them this before they went through their tentatio. Jesus told them this before they went through their struggle. He forewarned them. Has he not forewarned you? Of course he has.
He’s also forewarned you of this world and what to expect from this world, how it scoffs at and laughs at and considers absurd that which you cling to and will die in. The Lord has told you that. For you or I to expect anything more out of this world, now the question would be asked, who would be crazier? Us to expect so much more from this world than what God has already forewarned us?
He has also forewarned you of what lies within you. The very thing these apostles who ran away from Jesus that night were wrestling with and drowning in. He told them what their flesh is like. It does not have the desires of God. It is the Spirit that gives you the desires of God through that Word. And it is the Spirit that that called these men drowning in their shame and sorrow back to Jesus. As it is the Spirit that’s called you in the midst of your self-pity and sorrow back to Jesus through these promises. Through this truth that he has promised to lead you into at all times.
The example of the child being born to a mother. You ladies have that in spades on us men. If you were blessed to have children, you have that on us men, hands down. Yeah, we wait nine months, but it’s not like you’re waiting nine months. The uncomfortability. And where we have a lot in common is that how that new life changes our life in a remarkable way. Because we’re forced to love something other than ourselves, and we’re forced to love something in a sacrificial way. And that continually smacks up against your flesh and this world. It is truth.
In the midst of that struggle, the Spirit leads you to truth. Not because you can figure it out. Because at three in the morning, when this bundle of joy of humanity screams in your ear for it to be listened unto, you are not thinking, “Whoa, what joy have I!” No! When it goes through puberty, you are not thinking, “Oh, what joy have I.” God told you in advance of this, and isn’t it interesting that we forget? No, he did not give you the details of puberty. He gave you the details of your flesh and this world, which wrestles with those realities.
In advance, he told you. And in advance, as he told these apostles in advance, the Spirit will lead you into all truth. So that in the midst of your tentatio, the midst of your struggle, the midst of your flesh crying out, you are given truth. The difficulty is it does not always come immediately. Or better yet said, it does not penetrate your bonehead immediately.
Remember when you were young before puberty and everything was taken care of for you? You had a wonderful free reign. Your home was safe. Your bed was safe. You had food. And you didn’t think about all the things that your mind thinks about now. In fact, what has happened since then has been your mind continually rising up and trying to dominate yourself and let you think that it is the only way of understanding God rather than God himself communicating to you through that word.
You’ve got to slow down. That’s why that meditatio is so important during tentatio. You’ve got to slow down and be quiet and listen to the word. Not listen to yourself drone on about yourself, but listen to God’s word and promise in his love for you. What pulled those men back again and again was not their strong will, nor their great fiber of character, but the Spirit working through the Word.
What has pulled you back time and time again is not your discipline, but the Spirit working through the Word. We go through a cycle in our life, and He gives us those times of great joy. Sweeter than wine is that. He also gives us times of great tentatio and struggle, and bitter is that. But whether we’re sweet in joy or bitter and struggling, the same Holy Spirit leads you into all truth.
Lord, give me ears to hear again your voice that speaks to me. Help me to shut out the voices of my head in this world that seek to get my attention and not you. For you will always have my best needs at the forefront. And you enable me to forgive and love in spite of me. In spite of me.
In the name of Jesus, who sends us his Holy Spirit. Amen.
Peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
