Prayer of the Day: Lord God, Heavenly Father, who through Thy Son did promise us that whatever we ask in His name Thou will give us: We beseech Thee, keep us in Thy Word, and grant us Thy Holy Spirit, that He may govern us according to Thy will; protect us from the power of the devil, from false doctrine and false worship; also defend our lives against all danger; grant us Thy blessing and peace, that we may in all things perceive Thy merciful help, and both now and forever praise and glorify Thee as our gracious Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who lives and reigns with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one true God, world without end. Amen.

Quench not the Spirit.

Grace and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our focus this week of the Easter season is the signs of new life that the good news of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead causes to sprout forth from the believer’s heart. To that end, I offer as the sermon text the Apostle Paul’s counsel to the Thessalonians: “Quench not the Spirit!”

O Risen Lord, bless Thy Word that we may trust in Thee. Amen.

Now that spring has finally sprung across the Dakotas, you can find signs of life sprouting up all around you. But though this spring in particular has been a long-awaited one, the first fruits of any season can catch you by surprise. Volunteer plants pop up in your garden plot which you’re not sure how they got in there. The lawn gets out of control well before you have your mowing equipment in working order. Every cattle rancher knows the scramble of being caught off guard when a full-grown calf arrives way before the season was scheduled to start. How did that happen? Any rancher knows full well how. It just happened when he wasn’t looking.

When it comes to the signs of spiritual life in the Christian heart, the Scriptures describe a similar element of surprise. As Jesus told a curious Nicodemus, the efforts of man can neither suppress nor control the where and how of the Word of the Lord taking root in the heart: “The wind bloweth where it listeth [and thou] canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth… So is everyone that is born of the Spirit.”

And as the Prophet Isaiah declares, it is an impossibility for His Word not to bear fruit: “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven… and maketh the earth bring forth and bud… So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth. It shall not return unto Me void.”

But, carrying the metaphor through, that unavoidable crop which inevitably flows from the seed of the Word is not always what you wanted to grow. Nor is it when you wanted it to grow, for it is not according to the stubborn will of man. Thus, the first fruits of faith can often catch you by surprise.

Examples: When you get the inkling you should really get back into regular Bible reading or renew your family home devotions, but since you’ve given up just days into each previous venture, what good would it do to try again? When it strikes you that what a friend lacking direction in life most obviously needs is Jesus’ Word of life, but you being uncertain how to start the conversation, that unspoken Gospel is stifled before it breaks through the soil. When you know that being reconciled with a neighbor or family member is as simple as first admitting your fault, but convinced it would only fill their heart with pride, you hold your ground.

In all these cases and more, Jesus’ description of His closest friends holds true for us all: “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” This weak flesh’s first instinct, whenever you’re not looking, is to squash them back down.

No rancher tries to shove the baby calf back in the cow because he isn’t quite ready for calving season to begin, yet the sinner does just this with the thoughts and desires the Word of God consistently makes spring forth within and around us.

You might object, “Where is all this amazing new life you’re talking about?” Well, for every volunteer crop we are quick to pluck out of the ground, how could the human eye and reason be trusted to know what would have been a bountiful crop? And when you consider the inner sigh at the thought of the simplest follow-through any holy desire might require of you akin to the dread which accompanies most spring chores—“This lawn will be the death of me”—the real question is how you and I haven’t been tilled back into the ground?

Well, that day is coming soon enough. But the good news concerning all this growth the Lord never fails to provide is that the greatest is yet to come. The final harvest no man can hold back is coming as our Epistle declares: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Given this promise, to raise every soul back up from the dirt of death, it should be no surprise that anything His Spirit brings forth out of spiritual death can catch you off guard. This is, in fact, a theme throughout the four Gospels, that unexpected growth is to be expected.

Take for example, the tax collector Zacchaeus, whose out-of-the-norm behavior climbing up into the sycamore tree catches Jesus’ eye. The rest of the town despises when Jesus is “gone to be a guest with a man that is a sinner.” But on account of Jesus’ follow-through to water and tend this sapling, Zacchaeus’ heart bears fruit no neighbor could have imagined: “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man… I restore him fourfold.”

Three years of Jesus’ Words causing such growth so enraged and so intimidated those who refused to look to Jesus for life, that they chose to stomp Jesus into the ground.

But this is why Jesus came. The prophet Isaiah portrayed Jesus as an early shoot no one would have anticipated: “He shall grow up… as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground.”

In appearance no different from any other blade of grass, this Word made flesh would end up being treated no better than anything else we mow down when it refuses to fit our plans: “We hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised… and rejected of men… and we esteemed Him not.”

Now Jesus had taught His disciples it was coming, and repeatedly, that He would suffer, die, and rise again: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

Yet when it happened, it took them by complete surprise. Mass confusion concerning both the what and how. Two disciples headed home to Emmaus. Mary mistook Him for the gardener. The whole lot of them huddled together for fear of what might come next.

But in each case, the Risen Savior embraced whatever seedling of faith He could find. He saw it as a great crop with which to begin His New Testament church. He approaches and equips you with the same gentle care: “A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench.”

In His bitter suffering and death, Jesus took personal accountability for every good thing you’ve done your best to snuff out. He took responsibility in order to restore to you fourfold and more. Those sins and all the rest have been forgiven. He also broke forth from the earth again the third day, so that you’d come to trust His follow-through in all things. Trust that He will tend and keep you as His own up until heaven is yours: “And this is the Father’s will which hath sent Me, that of all which he hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.”

With these words, Jesus promises that just as surely as death could not hold the righteous Son of God, so death cannot hold you. Yes, though the day is coming for each of us to be tilled back into the ground, it’s just a matter of time until you sprout up again. This good news allows you to look your dying day square in the eyes in anticipation of a glorious crop to be revealed: “Every man [shall be raised] in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming.”

Until that day, the Apostle Paul teaches that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth” for that harvest-home. Meaning whatever first fruits the earth continues to give forth each spring, every sign of life which sprouts up out of the dirt is actually reaching up and out as but a small foretaste of the eternal spring to come.

Not only the plant and animal life of the earth, “but ourselves also,” the Apostle continues, “which have the firstfruits of the Spirit.” Each sprig of new life in your heart is a foreshadowing and early indicator of what will be yours in the great resurrection.

Look about with your eyes and you can only be consistently surprised. Look to Scripture, and you’ll find that unexpected growth is to be expected. The element of surprise is solely on account of unbelief.

Now, Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus by night, neither understood where His interest in Jesus had come from, nor what to do with it. And sadly stifled by peer pressure from fellow Pharisees who simply could not accept the Messiah to have grown up as a lowly carpenter’s son from Galilee, Nicodemus would suppress the growth of faith for the next several years. But with the Spirit hard at work, Nicodemus could keep his inner affinity for the Savior suppressed for only so long before it eventually resurfaced to give Jesus a proper burial.

So too, may you give up and give in through repentance and faith, as you come to accept it as futile to hold back the Spirit’s work in your heart as it would be to hold you back from rising out of the dirt at Christ’s return.

You see, as you keep in Word and Sacrament, your heart will continue to sprout with all sorts of first fruits in anticipation of everything you will be in the world to come. Examples: The morning you wake up with a renewed resolve to gladly hear and learn the kind of wisdom found in Scripture alone. The day you walk about and begin to notice glaring opportunities to right your wrongs at every turn. When you just can’t believe who it is standing before you, asking you about church. To all this and more, the Apostle jumps in to advise: “Quench not the Spirit.”

Just as surely as you can’t push the calf back in the cow, don’t squash any early growth your Lord provides. Embrace each as one of the countless tender shoots promised to pop up all around you. Not one of them is any surprise to Him: “Of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.”

May His Spirit strengthen yours to follow through on it all. To receive them as gifts of His grace, spiritual fruits for you to tend and keep, as the kingdom labor specifically given to you.

Yes, they can catch the stubborn heart by surprise, especially when you’re not looking, but Scripture leaves absolutely no question as to how it happened: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”

Now the peace that passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

—Pastor Timothy 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. Sermon archives, and subscription and staff information may be found online at www.clclutheran.org/ministrybymail. Audio Sermons are available at: podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ministrybymail

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