Sermon Transcript for Cantate, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, AD 2025

Alleluia. Christ is risen.
Grace and Peace be to you from God, our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ.

This Sunday is called Cantate because the beginning of the introit is “Sing to the Lord a new song.” I hope that maybe by the end of the sermon, when you look at a hymn like this, that we were just singing, your first thought wouldn't be, “oh, no, another 10 stanza hymn we have to sing.” But your thought would be, instead, of how this applies to you. That, as Martin Luther beautifully writes here about being caught in besetting sin, being chained by it. Not, even by your own works, being able to get out of it. If you've ever felt like that in your life, if he's experienced the anguish of conscience, and then God comes out of nowhere, simply out of love, and says, Son, let's have compassion, Son, Let's heal them. To think of and meditate on those words - that's the power of singing to the Lord a new song. It's the power through which the Holy Spirit works as he works through the word of God and the Word preached through good hymns as well.

Jesus says in the Gospel lesson today, it is to your advantage that I go away. And we've heard from Jesus many times on this matter, but this goes against our typical way of thinking and the way that the disciples were thinking as well. Why would it be better Jesus, if you went away? Wouldn't it be better to be there with Him in Galilee? Wouldn't it be better to be sitting there with Him in the upper room? Wouldn’t it be better to be like those cartoons, there's a lot of them, when I was a kid, the Christian cartoons where the kids would go back in time, and then they live out the Bible stories and be with Jesus. Wouldn’t that be better than just hearing about it in the Word? And we heard a few weeks ago, Jesus says to Thomas, blessed are those who do not see and yet believe. That it's actually better to be believing the word, to be in our place now than to be where the disciples were.

And Jesus explains it here several chapters before, on the night he was betrayed. He says, “If I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.” That Helper is the Holy Spirit who convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. As Jesus will go he'll go away, He ascends on high. He sends the Holy Spirit who convicts us, convicts our hearts, gives us new hearts, guides us into all truth in the Gospel of Jesus. And as the Father does not do anything with measure. You see so many times in scriptures, He gives without measure. He's like me adding olive oil to a dish. You just you don't measure it. Just keep going. That's how he gives He gives the Holy Spirit to us without measure through his words, so we can receive Jesus, and as we receive Jesus, we also receive the Father. There's no measure, there's no holding back. Jesus must depart, so he can send the helper who will bring us to a closer communion with Him, even than the beloved disciple John leaning on his breast at the Last Supper. We have a closer communion even than that. So let us look at the coming of the helper who delivers us Christ's victory delivers a great comfort in Christ's victory and creates our response.

Today is a day we're still in the Easter season, but we're really looking forward to Pentecost now. We're kind of turning this way now, turning forward to the coming of the Holy Spirit, 50 days after Easter, to the church. We're connecting those two, the resurrection and then the bringing of the Holy Spirit to the church. So we're going to turn today to the Old Testament reading, Isaiah 12, that looks forward to that day. This is the day that he's talking about.

Isaiah says, “In that day, you will say,” and that day he's talking about is Christ's victory day. Now in Isaiah, chapter 11, I'll summarize it. He is talking about this day of great victory that is coming for the Israelites, a day that he says is going to be greater even than the victory over the Egyptians at the Red Sea. If you were at the Easter Vigil, you remember we sang that song of Moses from Exodus chapter 15, when they crossed the Red Sea and then saw Pharaoh and all his armies covered up with water. He said, “I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider, he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.” And now Isaiah sings “for Yah, The Lord is my strength And my song. He also has become my salvation.” And that “Yah, the Lord,” that's Yah Yahweh. It's repeating God's name twice. Some translations would say the Lord God, but it's really God's name twice. It's not just Yahweh. It's yah Yahweh. He's ramping things up. Things are getting even greater than they were when Moses and the people were delivered.

That's what Isaiah says in chapter 11, that the remnant will be brought in from the four corners of the earth. There will be no jealousy between the northern and southern kingdoms, Ephraim and Judah. All their enemies, the Philistines, the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Egyptians themselves, will all be destroyed. And one might think that this is just about a historical thing, like the Israelites returning from exile, but Isaiah is speaking about much more than that, because there was a joy when the people of Judah, the Judeans, they returned from exile and came back. That was a joyful time. But it's not quite what Isaiah is talking about. They weren't victorious, conquering people. They were just a people who were kind of allowed to go home. They weren't even really ruling themselves. They were still under the Persians. So nothing was quite completed there. We look to a greater event in the future.

We look to a bigger event, and he talks about a root of Jesse, who's standing as a signal for the people. Now, what is the root of Jesse? You probably hear that around Christmas a lot. We know that Jesse is David's father. The root of Jesse is the son of David, the one who is descended from David, the one who was promised to David. I will have one who will rule on your throne forever. And he says that root of Jesse will stand as a signal, as a pole up on the pole, bringing all people from all nations to himself. Are you getting the image now we have a son of David lifted up on a pole, and everyone coming and believing in him. I don't know, but something up here kind of looks like that.

This great victory, this great deliverance, this day that Isaiah is talking about is the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This day is greater than when the Israelites crossed over the Red Sea. This is greater than when David brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem with singing. It's greater than the Israelites’ return from exile in Babylon. Christ's victory over sin and death by his crucifixion and resurrection is the greatest victory of all time, one which changed the world, ones which brings us to God and Heaven.

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

This victory that we have from Jesus, we receive it by the work of the Holy Spirit. As Christ says, He will depart and the Helper will give us everything that is his. This victory means that God is now truly our God, though we have sinned against him, we can call him our Father. Isaiah says, “Though you were angry with me, your anger is turned away and you comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid.” It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. Maybe in English class in high school, you read Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, Sinners in the Hands of the Angry God, and that “loathsome spider” that God holds over the flames of hell. We don't fall into the hands of an angry God, because his anger has been turned away from us, even though we have truly hated God and taken him for granted.

We have not loved him as we ought. We have not trusted him first in all things. We have not made him our top priority. We barely muster any effort to pray to him or to praise him, the prophet Zephaniah says in chapter three, “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion, shout O Israel, rejoice and exult with all your heart. O daughter of Jerusalem, the Lord has taken away the judgments against you. He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord is in your midst. You shall never again fear evil.” Think of the deliverance and think, is this you? Do you sing aloud and shout for praise with what God has done for you? Do you consider those words, as we heard in the hymn, of how fast bound in Satan's chains you had laid and God, simply out of compassion, came and freed you? Do you make sure to call on the Lord where he may be found?

You have a wonderful promise here, because Isaiah says “You were angry with me, but your anger has turned away.” Why? Because “God is my salvation.” Our Savior, the one who has rescued us, and the rescue itself is from God. Jesus has saved us and keeps us saved. He has sent the Holy Spirit in order to do this. He has made peace with God by His death, and now, by the Holy Spirit, He gives us faith so that we can believe in him. He changes our hearts so we can hold to that promise, and we trust in God himself for his salvation, so that his anger will be turned away from us. We trust that God Himself, the Son of God, has come to die for us, become our Savior, and keep us in that faith by the Holy Spirit.

So instead of taking Him for granted, let us remember, Yah, the Lord is your strength and your song. When you need strength, as you always do, he is there to depend on. He gives you strength for every day, even without your prayer. He is your song. He is your declaration of what is good. The pop recording industry gives us songs that are just nonsense, but a song is something which is meaningful. A song is something which comes at an important time, and we need to remember that (and not think that we need to be a professional singer to sing a song).

We'll get more to the songs in a minute.

But where do we receive this victory? Where do we receive this assurance? Where do we receive the Holy Spirit? We “draw water from the wells of salvation,” as he says. Remember Jesus with the woman at the well at John chapter four. He said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.” Hopefully, when we hear that like the woman, we say, “Lord, give me that water always.”

And Jesus clarifies later in chapter seven of John, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water. Now this he said about the Spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive for. As yet, the Spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.” That LIVING WATER IS THE HOLY SPIRIT. We come to Him and drink, we come and receive that water in our baptism. We receive that by hearing and believing His Word. We receive that by eating of His body and blood and trusting that this is for our salvation, that we are sinners and need His forgiveness and strength. When we do those things, we are drawing waters from the wells of salvation. We are remembering that his anger is turned away because He is our Savior, that while we were fast bound in Satan's chains, he decided to save us simply out of compassion.

And so as we draw water from the wells of salvation, as Isaiah says that should bring us joy. “With joy, you draw water from the wells of salvation. In that day you will say ‘Praise the Lord, call upon His name, declare His deeds among the people. Make mention that his name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for He has done excellent things. This is known in all the earth. Cry and shout, oh inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst.”

Christ was given for this very purpose, so that on account of him, we may receive forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit. This produces in us new and eternal life what we draw from for the wells of salvation, which gives us His eternal righteousness. The Spirit reveals Christ to us: He sends His Helper so we know about His salvation. He sends His Helper so we can have comfort in his victory, that His anger turns away, and then he leads us to so many of his other gifts: love, peace, prayer, Thanksgiving, chastity, endurance.

And along with that, the response - it says to sing. Songs are for singing at important times (I'm getting back to the singing now). Songs are not just to play on the radio in the background. Songs were created to commemorate important times, to remember things that are important. We remember songs better than we remember just about anything else. So let us sing at important times as the Scripture calls on us to sing, “sing to the Lord a new song.”

When Moses and the Israelites are saved from the Egyptians, they sing a song, and they remember that song and pass it down to their children. When David brings the Ark into the city of Jerusalem, he sings to the Lord a new song, and he passes that down to his children, to the people, to sing. The songs that we have in the Psalms have been passed down to us to sing, to remember what God has done for us, to commemorate the new things that are happening. At every important, most important point in the Old Testament, the people call on God with song, And not just the Old Testament.

When the Virgin Mary knows that she is going to birth the Savior and comes to greet her cousin, Elizabeth she breaks out in the song of the Magnificat. When Zechariah names John the Baptist, he breaks out in song. When Simeon sees the infant Jesus there in the temple, he sings, “Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace” There is no more appropriate way to praise than to sing.

What do we praise the Lord for? He has glorified himself. He has raised himself up to be that signal to the nations. He has brought people to Himself to believe so that the anger of God may be turned away from us. He has magnified his people. For those who believe in Him, He has raised us up, given us his righteousness, given us His Holiness, given us a new heart so we are better than before. All by His grace, all by his gift. And He will be great among us because He is truly good. So, as Isaiah tells us, we call upon his name, we praise his name, sing to his name, we pray to his name, we proclaim him among the peoples, proclaim Him to all. We preach, we write, we talk about Jesus. We exalt Him like the victory for the coronation of a king. This is what flows out of what the Holy Spirit. It does as the helper brings to us Christ's victory.

So as a challenge, I would say either one, maybe the basic one, would be to pay attention to the hymns. Pay attention to the words. Think about how this applies in your life. Think about where you are in this hymn and what Christ has done for you. And maybe, as an extra challenge, learn one hymn this year, a good, strong hymn that tells clearly what Christ has done and how his victory has been given to us. It doesn't have to be 15 stanzas, but that helps (I'm kidding about that). Learn that hymn so that you can hold on to it, to it for strength, so that you can sing to the Lord, so that you have more than the pop ditty or the jingle for the local Chicago carpet companies in your head. If we have these songs in our heads and in our hearts, if we make God our strength, put our confidence Hn him, He will be our strength. He will be our song. Alleluia, Christ is risen. Amen.