Tomorrow is a BIG day for us!

We welcome Rev. James Cerdenola, the President of the Lutheran Church of the Philippines! LCP is a partner national church body of our church body, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. We have a vital relationship in our shared ministry of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is really a very special treat to welcome such an important world leader and dignitary. We are fortunate to have this relationship with President Cerdenola as it all began when he was "just" a parish pastor and had the opportunity to visit our congregation when we were in Laguna Beach. President Cerdenola will preach in the Divine Service and then teach during Bible Study.

ALSO: we are celebrating The Holy Trinity. Too often folks get the impression that this is just another article of faith, another "doctrine" to be recited so that we can merely identify ourselves as Christians. This truth of God's Word, however, is so much more than that! To know the revelation of God as The Holy Trinity, three distinct persons in the one substance of the Godhead, is to know -- for example -- the significance of God revealed as love in 1st John 4:8. The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son glorifies both in His love for the Father and for the Son. God is love; it flows within Him from person to person. This is not a theoretical thing. His love also flows to you. The Father who loved the Son more than anything sent Him to die for you...this is how much God loves you. Come worship the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity!

ALSO: we celebrate Father's Day. Suffice it to say that we are looking forward to giving a gift to all of our dads tomorrow morning.

Most importantly, we will give the Lord's Supper to hungry sinners desiring to remain in the forgiveness of sins and in the gift of eternal life.

Come hungry and thirsty sinners! Come to the feast of salvation!

In Your Service and To Christ's Glory,

Pastor Espinosa

Tomorrow is The Day of Pentecost when we celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church on the 50th day after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Lord describes the gift of the Holy Spirit as His giving to us His people "Living Water" (John 7:37-39).

Unfortunately, there have been some wacky ideas put forth as to what this means. Our Gospel text from John 7 teaches its meaning and you will be encouraged to know how we know the gift of the Holy Spirit is indeed ours.

Also, tomorrow we will conduct "Farewell And Godspeed To A Church Work Student"...namely for our very own Joshua DeYoung, our church son going off to seminary (Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN). This will be a very special blessing extended to him as he begins his preparation for the pastoral ministry.

Come and receive Christ's gifts tomorrow dear people of God and let us rejoice that in our Lord Jesus Christ our sins are forgiven, we have eternal life, and from our hearts there flows Living Water, the gift of the Holy Spirit is yours.

Here is an excerpt from tomorrow's sermon:

“Rivers of Living Water” (John 7:37-39)

The Day of Pentecost, June 8^th, 2014

Pastor Espinosa

 

 

Introduction: How are we to relate to and understand the gift of the Holy Spirit?

 

1. At the beginning of the 20^th century, just over 100 years ago there was a big Azusa Street revival that occurred right here in Southern California that commenced the modern-day Pentecostal Movement.
2. One had to receive “the gift of the Holy Spirit” to truly be born again.
3. Water-baptism would be insufficient for being truly baptized by the Holy Spirit. That is being baptized with water had to be followed by being baptized with the Holy Spirit. This is actually two-baptism theology.
4. One may know if they’ve received this true outpouring of the Holy Spirit if one was given the gift or ability to “speak in tongues” (that is, a heavenly language produced by the Holy Spirit).

5. We don’t believe in or teach these things as Lutheran Christians.

6. For one thing the one baptism taught in Scripture at Ephesians 4:5 is both a water and Holy Spirit gift. When the water of Holy Baptism was poured out upon you at your baptism, you also received the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is why the Holy Scriptures refer to Holy Baptism as it does [please read with me when I get to the underlined portion]:

 

Titus 3:5: “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”

 1. As for speaking in tongues, we believe that his gift is subservient to the preaching and proclamation of Word of Christ. This why St. Paul said that he would rather speak 5 clear words to instruct others than speak 10,000 words in a strange tongue that could not be received nor understood (1^st Corinthians 14:19). The tongues are all of the various languages used to proclaim the Gospel. And the Lord has indeed gifted His Church to proclaim in many tongues, in many languages, but the goal is always that people receive the clear Good News of salvation in their simple and understandable language!

2. These languages are given precisely for the most important work of the Holy Spirit: to make known the Word of Christ for the sake of saving faith being formed in the hearts of hearers. Thus Christ taught His first disciples in John 16 that the Holy Spirit’s ministry would be to glorify Christ (vs 14) and take what is of Christ and declare it (vs 14 & 15).

3. The whole point is that we are not to look for the working of the Holy Spirit through extraordinary signs and wonders, but through speaking and through words.

 

Part 1: But this is hard for us to accept, our sin makes us want more:

 

1. In our sin, God’s way is insufficient, we want to be amazed.

 

2. After I arrived to a former parish, I asked the question from the leadership what they were expecting from my sermons. One of the older members answered very enthusiastically: “I want you to blow my socks off every Sunday!” Not only did he speak unrealistically, but he also spoke in a fleshly and in a spiritually enthusiastic way. To be fair, however, he was speaking for all Christians in accord with their sinful nature.
3. We live in culture and world of instant gratification, we want to be wowed, impressed, entertained, we want to get a buzz from what is before us; and we use our smart-phones and i-pads to give us a constant flow of stimulation. We want big things from what is before us. Latest surveys reveal that the average American using a smart-phone is on it between 2 ½ to 3 hours a day. And all of the apps and all of the portals are designed to give you a good time; to stimulate.

 

4. My family will sometimes watch “America’s Got Talent” and it is interesting to me that the acts are continually try to push the envelope so to speak. Sometimes you will have dance numbers or dare-devil acts that try to present something that has never been done before or never been seen before. They are plugging into our thirst for something that will delight us…we are all enthusiasts and we want God to touch us in the same way.

 

5. The colossal problem with this, however, is that when we go along with this kind of stimulation-mentality, then we don’t know how to live in the Christian faith:

 

1. We start to judge our faith based on how we feel.
2. We start to rate our faith based on what we do.
3. In other words, we replace the Gospel of Christ with the Law…our “faith” starts to depend on US and it no longer depends on Christ.

 

6. What does this reveal about us? It reveals that we are thirsty people. We are dry inside, very, very dry. In our sin we continue to do the things that we know we ought not do; in our sin we are as I said last Sunday incurvatus in se (curved in on ourselves) and sinful from “head to foot” as in our flesh we hate God and hate His Word. In our sin, we don’t want to hear words, we want to be stimulated. And this is why there are so many religions…we are dying of thirst and we want to be stimulated…we want to feel something because we see in our sin death staring us in the face, eye-to-eye. We are desperately sick in sin and dying of thirst. We want to live, but we don’t know how, but the problem is that we keep insisting that it is up to us to figure it out; it is up to us to save ourselves…someway, somehow…so we keep seeking the stimulation that our thirst demands.

 

Part 2: So God’s solution is water.

In Jesus' Love,

Pastor Espinosa