「信じる者を力づけ、真理へと前進させる神」六月第三主日礼拝 宣教 2025年6月15日
ヨハネによる福音書 John 14章16〜17、25〜26節 牧師 河野信一郎
Good morning. Welcome back to our church. I am glad to see you all back despite the bad footing due to the rain. Also so thankful to be able to worship with you this morning. We sincerely welcome all of you who are worshipping online and our guests. The hydrangeas in the church are blooming beautifully, and I hope you will find them comforting and encouraging.
Well, the rainy season started last Tuesday, but when will the rainy season end in Kanto? I was curious, so I looked up the years when Kanto entered the rainy season on June 10, and found that the shortest rainy season was 27 days in 2013 (July 6), the longest was 54 days in 2003 (August 2), and the longest was 62 days in 1998. The following year, in 1999, a young man returned from the U.S. and was called to be the pastor of Okubo Church, and this year marks the 26th year, more than a quarter of a century.
Recently, someone said to me, “It’s been so long, isn’t it?” I am lucky that I have not been told that it has been “too long”, but during this period, a young pastor from US who know nothing about the left and right of Japanese society have made many errors in judgment without deep consideration, and have postponed issues that needed to be addressed. Many people have become numb and have left the church. Those who remain in the church today have had to endure a lot, and I am very sorry for that.
For the past 26 years, we have been working hard together with the members of the church in various projects and challenges, but it seems that we have not been able to bear much good fruit as we had envisioned. Instead of increasing the momentum of the church, it is weakening. Why is it that I feel in my heart that faith, prayer, humility, and faithfulness are lacking in me and in us? Is it because we did not go out and share the gospel? In the midst of all this, Okubo Church celebrated its 60th anniversary this year since its founding. As a pastor, if I could find a hole to hide myself in, I would like to go in there. I am one who prays only for the Lord’s mercy. However, I also wonder if it is His will that we pray and ask for peace and joy instead of asking for mercy.
It is the God of love, the word of the Lord Jesus, and the encouragement of the Holy Spirit that has protected and guided the progress of Okubo Church for the past 60 years. What else could it be? Certainly, we have all worked hard to walk together. But it is God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who have continued to protect and sustain us. When we pray to this Lord God for mercy, He has mercy on us in various ways and gives us the strength to move forward. Have you ever had such an experience? The Lord always walks with us.
Are there any of you who are feeling heavy and full of fatigue in both mind and body? You may feel that your body and mind have become so weak that you cannot move as agilely as in the past, that you have no motivation to do anything, or that you have lost loved ones, friends, and colleagues and are living in a sense of loss. Or perhaps you are struggling to make ends meet and are too busy taking care of yourself to think about others. Or perhaps you wish you could see a different landscape, or find yourself in a completely different environment, or wish you had more money and more time.
What do you think? Are there those who do not know why they are living, learning, or working? Have you lost the meaning, purpose, and joy of life, wondering why you are the only one struggling so much? Are you suffering from a mental slump from which you can’t seem to climb out? You compare yourself with others and become impatient. Sometimes I spend long nights worrying too much about many things. But I am thankful to God that I still have the gift of being able to sleep in four minutes.
Sorry my message is so gloomy from the start, even though the rainy season alone is so annoying. But even people who know God exists and know that God loves them can fall into a slump in their hearts. We can feel anxious, fearful, and troubled. But the important thing for us is to believe in the Lord God and in our Savior Jesus. It is not to know Him as knowledge, but to believe in Him with all our hearts, to look up to Him with all our hearts. To know God and Jesus, after believing, we should take time to read the Bible, pray, meditate, worship, and enjoy time with the Lord. God will give us the strength to move forward when we ask more of Him.
This morning’s Scripture passage is part of what Jesus said to His disciples during His last meal with them the night before He was arrested and crucified. The disciples must have felt anxiety and fear when Jesus suddenly washed their feet after the meal, when He suddenly said that some of them were betraying Him, and when they sensed that things were different from usual. Their faith was also in a kind of slump, as they were competing with each other to see who was the best among the disciples, always thinking only of themselves, so their hearts must have been in a storm at Jesus’ words and actions.
This Gospel of John, Chapter 14, is a good example of Jesus’ words in verse 1, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. And believe in Me.” and verse 27, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid”. Jesus did not command the disciples to “Let not your hearts be troubled! but he teaches his disciples, those who believe in him, how not to be anxious, afraid, or disturbed by whatever may happen to us in the future. That is to believe in God and Jesus and to accept the Holy Spirit into our hearts.
Why is it that the hearts of the disciples and our hearts are so easily disturbed? It is because we lose sight of Jesus. It is because we forget Jesus’ words. It is because we forget that the Lord is with us, and we become anxious because we rely on our own wisdom and strength, our own experience and intuition. Because we are anxious, we try to defend ourselves against God using only our own strength. Knowing us like this, Jesus promises to give us a helper to replace Him so that we can love God, love our neighbors, and love one another.
John 14:16 and 17 says, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you an advocate. The Father will send another Advocate to be with you forever. This one is the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept this Spirit, because it does not want to see or know him. But you know this Spirit. For this Spirit is with you and will be in you.”
What words of promise filled with love and kindness! These words of the Lord Jesus are true. Jesus promised and gave us the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of Truth,” on the day of Pentecost to be with us always and to continue to give us assurance of salvation and peace. This Holy Spirit, the Lord says, can only dwell in the hearts of those who believe in Jesus. In other words, the only way to walk in peace is to believe in Jesus as our Savior and live by receiving the Holy Spirit.
In verse 26, Jesus said, “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have spoken.” What does he mean by “He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have spoken”?
It means that the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, teaches, encourages, and guides us about what God’s will is, how God the Creator and Jesus the Savior wants us to live, and where He wants us to continue walking toward.
What the Lord God and Jesus want for us is for us to live forever in His love, and for the many people who do not yet know that God loves them to encounter Jesus, know His love and forgiveness, turn to Him, and live forever in His love. This is what we are trying to achieve.
In other words, to fill the earth with God’s love and Jesus’ peace. We are to meet people in despair and share Jesus Christ with them so that they may live with the hope that only God can give. We cannot do this work by ourselves. We need God’s power and help.
In other words, this is a joint effort between God and us. We cannot love God, love our neighbors, love one another, or go out and share the gospel of Jesus with the world by ourselves. Therefore, we must humbly continue to ask God for help. We cannot leave the asking to others. Each of us must pray and seek God’s encouragement and blessings with faith and responsibility, and receive the Holy Spirit to proclaim the gospel and form the church. Why? Because that is the promise we made to Jesus when we made the decision to believe in and follow Him as our Savior.
God and Jesus have given us the Holy Spirit to empower those who believe in the Lord and those who depend on Him to advance toward God’s will and truth and toward His Kingdom. Let us rejoice and be thankful that the Holy Spirit has been given to us. Let us praise the Lord. And, filled with the Holy Spirit, let us continue to be built up by God as a community of faith, a family of God, and a church that is the body of Christ, of those who live faithfully serving God and faithfully serving others. Let us remember each other and pray for each other.