Sermon Audio: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ministrybymail

“But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.”

Grace and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our meditation is based on Jesus’ teaching concerning the Holy Spirit. You will see that though the spirit of the world seems ever to be evolving and encroaching, the Spirit of God remains the unchanging fount of saving truth. Again, the Savior saith: “And when [the Spirit] is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” O Risen Lord, bless Thy Word that we may trust in Thee. Amen.

Anyone I know who has reached the age of ninety, late eighties or above, remarks quite openly and frequently that they simply cannot believe how the world has changed just in their lifetime. They grew up in rural Dakota and might not even have had electricity run into their childhood homes. Now that electricity, through television and computers, blasts at them a very different world than the one they were born into. The constant talk of today, was unheard of less than one hundred years ago.

There’s a word for this change in thought, opinion, and talk over time. Originally a German word, but you’ll find it throughout English literature too. It is the term Zeitgeist or “spirit of the times.” That second syllable, “Geist” means “ghost” or “the non-physical.” Kind of like another word Poltergeist, or noisy ghost, the Zeitgeist can prove equally terrifying. It describes a society’s consciousness, their values and aspirations. And as the times change, oh, how this spirit, the Zeitgeist, proves unstable!

An instability which in our Western world might seem to be accelerating at an unprecedented rate, in upside-down morality, illogical assertions about where this world came from, how this world works, and an ever increasing ignorance of Biblical religion, that which was once taken for granted as required reading. Who here in your brief lifespan, ninety or not, has not wondered aloud, what my grandparents and great-grandparents would say of today were they still alive!

Well, they’d probably say more than we do, because what’s truly terrifying—when you live through it—is how silent we can be. For though it may be as scary as the Poltergeist, the Zeitgeist, not nearly as noisy, sneaks in and possesses the soul unawares. As even how you and I talk begins to subtly shift and morph to keep up with the times. Take for example telling a child to stop acting like a monkey, as if that’s all an unrefined human is or thinking much more lightly of a man and woman living together outside of marriage than we used to, because at least they’re not the same gender. And you just might be surprised, who in your life struggles whether abortion isn’t a better option than some theoretical upbringing or hardship in life.

This is so pervasive, one must wonder, what could possibly be next? There’s always more. To say pedophilia and enforced gender transitions are next is no exaggeration. Such militant immorality is in fact old news, the Zeitgeist of Sodom and Gomorrah, of many a depraved culture from the days of Noah up until today. You don’t hear too much about them in secular history, though, because such failed human experiments tend to collapse in things like fire and flood.

Yet with each slate wiped clean by our God, the spirit of the times can be relied upon to run wild once more. Oh, you might think things are ever ‘getting worse,’ but the Scriptures reveal how it’s always been this bad, ever since our fall into sin. Though the times might seem to change, though the evil becomes more evident to the eye, the plain truth is that what you see is but more sin upon the same old sin.

The Prophet Isaiah described the collective consciousness of his day, a good eight centuries before Christ, as if it were today: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.” And as Solomon concludes “there is no new thing under the sun.”

So, what could be next? Well, maybe we’ll have to face some disaster of our own making, fire, flood, or worse, then again, maybe not, we’re not prophets, for though of the final judgment there is no doubt, until that day, I can’t say, because the Scriptures do not say.

But one thing is for sure. The only reason we do still stand, that we can even discuss these distressing signs of the times today, is so, that by the grace of God, you and I might stop and reflect on the timeless answer to every whim of man, the Son of God become Son of man, who trod an unwavering path in your place, filled not with the Zeitgeist of man, but dem Heiligen Geist, the Holy Ghost, full of grace and truth.

In His public ministry, Jesus was surrounded by the same confusion as we, men fully convinced that the age in which they lived back then had to be the worst. That there was no greater shame than to be ruled by Romans. Even though that’s what their grandparents had thought about the Greeks, and theirs about the Persians before that, when all those invaders were far better options than what their ancestors had suffered carried off by Nebuchadnezzar.

Jesus’ closest disciples reveal themselves to suffer from the in-creeping of the loose morals of their time, as divorce had become so easy to come by in Jewish society, adultery and counter-adultery so quickly self-justified, that on one occasion, Jesus’ disciples wondered out loud whether “if the case of the man be so with his wife, [then maybe] it’s not good to marry” in the first place.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as what went among the Gentiles, but Jesus dispelled that straw-man argument by purposely taking His disciples through Samaria and the crass pagan territory of the Decapolis, regions filled with behaviors that would’ve made Sodom and Gomorrah blush, that they might see His miracles and forgiveness in those heathen lands, and learn how, no respecter of persons, Jesus had come for all who would repent and believe. Thereby Jesus refuted the vilest of unchallenged religious assumptions, the chief Zeitgeist of Jesus’ day, that you could somehow earn God’s favor by your works. Jesus set the record straight, as He does in our Gospel lesson today, concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.

Jesus taught that sin was no subjective standard, no moving target of right and wrong, but that all men were equally guilty before their Creator: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” That “there is none righteous, no, not one” save “He that came down from heaven.” And Jesus taught that the judgment of heaven and earth had been placed in His hands: “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”

This Jesus’ Spirit stood in such contradiction to the spirit of man of any time, that the collective opinion was to put Him to death. There arose a violent frenzy against an innocent man, the likes of which previous generation couldn’t have imagined. And just like us, no one really objected all that vocally. No, most voices in one way or another joined right in, even if by remaining silent.

Certainly in this sense, there was and could be no worse generation than they who nailed the Savior to a tree, but at the same time, no different in essence than this day or any other. Thus, the immovable Rock and Hope for our trying times is none other than the same mercy and grace God showed them on Easter morn, as Peter would proclaim: “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” For Jesus’ resurrection from the dead left the prince of this world eternally judged, and with him, every false spirit throughout every age, every slippery Zeitgeist of man, made a powerless form.

This is what Jesus calls the Spirit of truth, the divine revelation “of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”

Of sin: That God alone, in His holy Ten Commandments, defines right and wrong.

Of righteousness: That Jesus’ death and resurrection alone earn you a righteousness standing before God.

Of judgment: That Jesus, having crushed sin, death, and hell, that He alone may be relied upon to free you from every evil of this age and the next through the forgiveness of sins.

Here is truth. From God is the revelation of Law, Gospel, and the standard of judgment which tears you out of condemnation and into eternal life… faith in Christ alone.

Yes, the Zeitgeist is scary but it always has been. Throughout human history, the spirit of the times has billowed and surged such that each generation has thought itself undoubtedly the worst. But the waves of confusion today, seemingly unthinkable a generation ago, infanticide, animal evolution, gender confusion, these things are nothing new, but the unsurprising pattern of whenever we deviate from God’s Word. What replaces His truth is a lie, the worship of “the creature more than the Creator.” That is what these are.

Perhaps every age tends to think their age is the worst, because every human goes from the innocence of childhood through the rude awakening of what happens outside your parents’ sheltered care, but it also seems this way because the Lord says we are drawn in, that it gets into our heads and sticks there, even if you disagree with it.

Thus, the Scriptures call us to shake it out of our heads: “But avoid foolish questions… for they are unprofitable and vain.” Don’t get caught up, worked up by the spirit of the times, neither be carried to and fro nor away by it. No, Jesus advises, “when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”

Instead of imbibing the kool aid of the Zeitgeist, the Risen Lord invites you to drink deeply of the Holy Ghost. Which means rising above every phantasm of man’s imagination by taking to heart the unchanging truths of Holy Scripture, ever grounded in the everlasting Gospel of you sin forgiven and this world judged: “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” For in the Bible and faithful Bible-preaching, you find an unwavering Spirit imbued with the power to shatter the false spirit of every age and time. This Spirit works faith in the heart as the greatest social consciousness, that your collective opinion might consider Christ’s body and blood is your highest good and all our talk become the world to come.

So, when your spirit grows wearied and confused with the ever-changing times, find strength, resilience, and eternal hope in the Gospel of Christ’s cross and empty tomb, a Spirit for all times, secure and unchanging, a Spirit ever for today. Now the peace that passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

—Pastor Timothy T. Daub

Prince of Peace Lutheran Church
Hecla, SD

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Ministry by Mail is a weekly publication of the Church of the Lutheran Confession. Subscription and staff information may be found online at www.clclutheran.org/ministrybymail.

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the King James Version.