It's finally here.

Usually when you say this, the people who hear you say it know exactly what you are referring to. But maybe not this time.

What's here? Graduation? Weddings? Vacation? Well, yes, to all of these, but in the life of the church, what we've been waiting for is what is happening today. Pentecost. The last several weeks have been like Advent. Jesus has been talking about sending the Holy Spirit. We've been waiting, and finally it's here.

This is a big deal. Pentecost is the third biggest festival of the Church. We have had festivals for each person of the Trinity. The Father is featured in His gift of a Son on Christmas. The Son is featured at the highest festival of all, Easter. And now the Holy Spirit is featured on Pentecost. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have a Gospel processional, when we traipse out into the center of the pews and read the Gospel lesson.

Instead, unfortunately, the Holy Spirit kind of gets short shrift. His festival falls right near the beginning of summer. Sunday School is already over. Attendance is starting to drop off. We don't make a really big deal out of it--not like we do Christmas and Easter. But shhh! Don't tell the Greeting card companies and the department stores or they'll try to make something out of it, and then we'll be exchanging gifts and giving cards and trying to figure out the real meaning of Pentecost.

Seriously, though, in the past, Pentecost was a really big deal. So, here at Zion, we are going to get to make it a big deal. We are doing that by celebrating both sacraments. Today, it's not just one but two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper. It is in these where God clearly reaches out and gifts us with gifts we desperately need.

Now, it's true, our Lord has done a tremendous work by living a perfectly sinless life Himself and then paying, with His own body and soul, the penalty we deserve, but this treasure would remain hidden and buried if not for the Holy Spirit who brings it to us.

Yes, on our own, as the apostle Paul clearly says, we can't do anything with it. We are enemies of God. Our wills are bent against His. By nature, we want to be our own god, and being rescued doesn't fit that agenda. Uh, allow myself to be rescued. No, that doesn't fit my delusions of divinity. That would mean I would have to rely on someone else. "Thank you for your work God, but I'll do O.K. on my own."

But the Holy Spirit convicts us of our unrighteousness, as Jesus had said. Also, as Jesus had said, "Because men don't believe in me." Absolutely. By nature we don't. Nor do we want to believe what will happen to us if we don't. But the Holy Spirit leads us to see our condition. Then the Holy Spirit presents us Christ who was completely obedient to His Father. He shows us that Christ has done it all for us and then creates the faith that grabs hold of God's message. The hidden treasure is no longer hidden. Faith has been created. We have the Holy Spirit to thank for it.

The first way we celebrate the Holy Spirit's big day is to celebrate the very event where faith is created, especially as we have seen, created in a tiny infant. Ashley is only two weeks old. She can't possibly understand. Yet, the Holy Spirit created faith. It's a miracle and you yourselves, all of you, witnessed it today. Ashley has now been made a part of the body of Christ. She has now been covered with the righteousness of Christ. She is now called a saint, just like all the rest of you believers in Christ. God looks at her as a judge and sees no sin. Earlier this morning, He couldn't even look at her without disgust because of her sinfulness, the sin she was born with, but now He looks at her and sees Jesus. All thanks to the Holy Spirit.

But just as we celebrate the means the Holy Spirit has used to bring Ashley into the church, we also celebrate the means of showing unity in that same Church, the Lord's Supper.

The Holy Spirit is all about unity in the truth. That's the point of the reading of the Tower of Babel. The people scattered. They splintered. All unity was destroyed. But one day it was back again, brought together by the truth of the Gospel. All the nations of the civilized world were represented there in Jerusalem. They were brought together and confessed the same faith. All of us who will commune today confess that same faith. having agreed that the teaching of the apostles is the truth, and that what is taught here at this particular altar is their teaching. By this meal we show this unity.

It is of course more than that, because this is the meal by which the Holy Spirit brings to us the very flesh and blood of Christ, in with and under the bread and wine. This is His life. It is life, life and forgiveness. And so, as I had said, we honor the Holy Spirit on His day by also celebrating the Supper of our Lord, through which He brings life to His people.

As we receive our Lord's body and blood, as we hear the words of forgiveness, as we rejoice that we are His children by His grace, we have the assurance from Jesus that He and His Father will come and make their dwelling in us, again, all this through the Power of the Holy Spirit. Interesting to think about it. A believer's heart, your heart, is their dwelling place. Heaven is His throne; earth is His footstool, but your heart is His dwelling place. He sits on His throne to reign, He rules over the earth, but He lives in your heart.

But be careful with that. Don't look for Him there. Don't you dare. You look into your heart and you won't see what you hope to see. You will not see the Father and the Son dwelling there. Instead, what you will see is sin and death. Make the decision to look into your heart and that is just the thing your sinful nature was looking for to come back to life again. It's just waiting for this. The sinful nature that is killed, drowned with the confession of sins, and that stays drowned with the humble acknowledgment that you are a sinner, is coiled and then sprung when you seek to find God in your heart. Leave it dead. Pay it no attention, and instead look for God where He is to be found, where we see the Holy Spirit working, namely in the means He has developed so that we receive His grace, particularly the Word and the sacraments we have just observed.

I know this is not a popular way of looking at our heart, especially the heart of a Christian, but Jesus says out of the heart proceeds murders, adulteries, theft and all manner of sin.

Speaking for myself, even though I'm a Christian, I still see the signs of these, so it must be coming from my heart. It accounts for why Paul says, "The good I would, I don't, and the evil, I wouldn't, that I keep on doing." Better leave that thing alone, stop looking for the Lord there and simply believe the words Jesus says, and be comforted by them.

The Holy Spirit who creates faith, also convicts us of our sinfulness, and it is best to just let Him keep doing that. In fact, He has another shot of convicting us of our sinfulness with Jesus first words in our text. "If anyone loves me." These don't sound like convicting words, but who can honestly say they love God? If a person is able to successfully convince himself he does, then look a little further at what Jesus says, "He will keep my word."

The most demanding commandment, bar none, is to love. Tell me that I need to help other people as much as I can, to avoid certain words, to not work on the Sabbath, to not drink alcohol, that I can't eat chocolate on Tuesdays or anyday, that I have to pray 3x a day and so on; and I could do all of these. Pile them up even further, and as demanding as they may be, I could still do them. So could you if you really tried. We may not enjoy them, but we could do them, and that's the point. We could do them, but we couldn't change the way we would feel toward doing these. Nor could we love someone that forced us to do them. And yet, God expects us to do something far more demanding, to be love perfectly, affecting our very motives. How could we love Him when He expects us to do something we are totally incapable of doing? Tell me I must love Him and keep His Word, which is to do all this joyfully all the time, and I can't do it.

If we can't, how can you or I have any confidence that He and His Father have made their dwelling in us? Where is our hope? Ahh, here again, the Holy Spirit comes to work. Jesus has done it for us. He has loved completely and perfectly. His love counts for yours. You will love perfectly because He does. Now, you can say, "Yes, I love Jesus and I can keep His Word because Jesus has already done it in my place." As a result, the Father and the Son dwell with me.

What could be better? What we have just briefly observed happened in 3,000 people one day. The Holy Spirit convicted 3,000 people of their sin who then cried out for mercy, finding it in Christ. Today isn't a special day for this. It's what you should expect every Sunday. What makes this special, is that today we spent some time observing the Holy Spirit, the One who makes it happen. And we got to do it on His special day, Pentecost.

AMEN