Today in the Church year we celebrate the day of Pentecost. Ascended into heaven to the right hand of the Father where we can no longer see Him, Jesus did not leave us as orphans, but sent us the Holy Spirit on this day, just as He promised. But neither has Jesus Himself left us. He is with us in both body and soul. Yet, He comes to us as the Holy Spirit now delivers Him to us through His Word. The ministry of the Holy Spirit, which began on Pentecost Sunday, was that of pointing people to Jesus, crucified and risen from the dead for our salvation. This He does through the Word about Christ. And so, the Holy Spirit’s ministry can be called a Word ministry, a ministry in which not only is the Word about Christ proclaimed but is also connected to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in order to deliver Jesus and the benefits He won for us through His life, death, and resurrection, so that we might live under God’s love now and forever.
For this reason, Jesus draws His disciples’ attention to the keeping of His Word. Once He had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, the Word was the way that Jesus would be and remain with them always, even to the end of the age. Therefore, they were to “keep” this Word. Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my Word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Through the keeping of the Lord’s Word the Holy Spirit delivers both the Father and the Son to us, along with God’s love, that we might remain in that love until the end. It’s important for us to know, then, what it means to “keep” the Lord’s Word.
The best way to describe what “to keep” means here is to consider what you’d do with something you treasured and cherished. And so, the word carries meanings like “to watch over, protect, guard, retain, and preserve.” I have a neighbor across the street who does this with his classic cars. He has three of them, which he is constantly washing, waxing, and fine-tuning. But the only time he ever drives them is when he takes them to and from car shows. Once in a while he’ll rev them up and drive them around the block, but most of the time they just sit in the garage. It reminds me of the way some people keep their Bibles - on display somewhere in the house, but rarely used. Not only that, but unlike my neighbor’s cars, these Bibles aren’t even taken out to be dusted off every now and then.
When the Lord talks about keeping His Word, He is not talking about keeping it in such a way that it’s kept under glass like some priceless china set that’s never used except on special occasions. The Lord wants us to use His Word often. If you were to look at my grandmother’s Bibles you would see that they are well-worn, with pages torn and falling out of them, notes written all over the place, and covers barely clinging to their bindings. My grandmother used her Bible daily. Daily she read from it, pouring over its words, to the point where she could recite whole passages and Psalms from memory.
But keeping the Lord’s Word is more than just reading or hearing it. It, of course, begins with these. You can’t keep the Word if you aren’t taking it in. By the way, the devil knows the Word - even better than we do! He can recite it better than my grandmother could. Keeping the Word, however, involves first and foremost believing it. Apart from faith - faith in the Word of God - it is impossible to please God. Before anything else can be done, we must believe our Lord’s Word. This, of course, cannot be done apart from the aid of the Holy Spirit, who again not only delivers the Word about Christ to us, but also works the faith in our hearts to believe it - something that the devil does not do. Faith clings to the good news that we have a gracious and merciful God for Christ’s sake, who reconciled us to the Father with His blood shed on the cross. Apart from faith in this Gospel, the Word of God is not kept at all.
But subsequent to believing it, this Word is also kept by confessing it - both before God and before others. The Apostle Paul writes, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” Again, just as we cannot do the believing ourselves, so we cannot do the confessing on our own, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. And both of these go together: The faith that believes the Word about Christ confesses that Word. One way we confess that Word is through the creeds. Through the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, we not only say back to God what He has said to us in His Word, but we also tell the world what God says to us in His Word. The Word of Christ is kept when it is both believed and confessed. And there is no middle ground. You either believe and confess it, or you disbelieve and deny it. Those who remain silent about Christ, when asked about the hope that we have in Him, deny Him, being more concerned about themselves than their Savior and His Word.
But now you can see just how much we love Christ. If our love for Him is measured by how good we are at keeping His Word, we love Him very little. We constantly fail to trust in and confess His Word as we should, and thereby we show just how weak our love towards Him really is. Though we say we love Him, there are many times when we doubt and disbelieve His Word and don’t confess it as we should, in some cases even confessing what is false. In the Small Catechism, Luther writes that God’s Name is kept holy “when the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity, and we, as the children of God, also lead a holy life according to it.” By not keeping our Lord’s Word as we should, we have also not kept God’s Name holy. And by not keeping His Name holy, we have failed to love God as we should. For these sins (and many more) we deserve His temporal and eternal punishment and wrath.
But thanks be to God, our salvation doesn’t depend on our love for God, but on His love for us in Christ, who died for us while we were yet sinners, while we were dead in our trespasses and sins and enemies of God. The Apostle John reminds us that it’s not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Apart from His loving us first, we would not be able to love God or keep His Word. But as the Holy Spirit works through the proclamation of that Word He pours God’s love into our hearts, as He delivers Jesus and the forgiveness of sins to us, enabling us now to love Him and keep His Word. And even though our love for God and the keeping of His Word is still weak due to the sin that still dwells within us, for Christ’s sake God does not count it against us, and instead day by day by His Spirit through His Word continues to forgive us our sins, crucify us with Christ, and raise us to new life with Him, conforming us to His image.
The more He does this, the more we will love Him, the more we will keep His Word by believing it and confessing it. Not only that, but we will also keep His Word by doing it, meditating on it, praying and singing it. Again, the Lord wants us to use His Word, not abandon it to some shelf somewhere. We use it by doing it. As Lutheran Christians we confess that our good works and deeds have nothing to do with our salvation. We can’t earn God’s grace and mercy by our own merits, means, or efforts. God is gracious and merciful towards us for Christ’s sake alone on account of His work for us. But now that we have been washed and cleansed of our sins through our Baptism into Christ, having also been clothed with Him and His righteousness there, we now live as God’s children by walking according to His Word by the power of His Spirit. Christians are not only hearers of the Word, but doers of it also. We do His Word, as He does His Word to us.
As a result, Christians also meditate on the Word, pray it and sing it. The Word shouldn’t just go into one ear and out the other. Paul writes, “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” The author of Psalm 119 writes, “I have stored up your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” And Psalm 1 tells us that the righteous man delights in the Law (or the Word) of the LORD and meditates on it day and night. Again, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit we can do none of these things, and would have to despair of our salvation, if it depended upon our love for God. But it does not depend upon us and what we do for God, rather upon Him and what He has done for us in Christ.
You can only love God and keep His Word, because He first loved you and claimed you for Himself in Christ. He now keeps you safely in His hand by means of His Holy Word. Through that Word, the Holy Spirit brought you to faith in Christ, poured God’s love into you, and made your body His temple. In order that you might not fall away into unbelief, He continues to deliver Jesus and the Father’s love to you through that Word, so that you might also love Him and keep His Word. His Word is a treasure far greater and more precious than any amount of gold, precious jewels, fine china, classic cars, or any other collectibles this world can offer, because the Word of God alone delivers Jesus and the eternal life He worked for you on the cross. Guard it as the most valuable possession you have. Let no one take it away from you. But don’t let it just sit on the shelf. Read it in the Bible, and hear it in the service. Trust in it. Do it. Meditate on it. Share it with others. And pray it, all the while asking the Holy Spirit to work these things in you, so that you might love the Lord and keep His Word as the dear child of God that you are now in Christ.
The Lord’s Word is where He has located Himself for you now since His ascension into heaven. Look for Him in the Word, and you will find Him there. Keep the Word with the Spirit’s help, and you have the Lord’s promise that the Father will love you and that both He and Jesus will come to you and make their home with you. Amen.