Dear Confirmands. Over a dozen years ago, your parents waited with eagerness for your birth. During those nine months of waiting, they thought carefully about what name to give to you. They made sure they had the crib set up and the change table ready to go. Your parents also did plenty of praying for you—praying that you would arrive on time and in good health. Do you suppose they still pray for you? Of course they do! And what do you suppose they pray for? That you would clean up your room? That you would do well in school? We could put them on the spot and ask them. But I won’t. Instead, I’ll share with you what my prayer for you is on your Confirmation Day. I pray that you keep listening to and following Jesus, and that you keep resting in him. My prayer comes from the words of Jesus in our sermon text this morning. Listen carefully to those words.
Our text takes place about three months before Jesus’ crucifixion. For close to three years, Jesus had performed miracles like changing water into wine, feeding the 5,000, healing the blind, the lame, and the sick. He had raised at least two people back to life and would shortly raise Lazarus from the dead. These miracles had not been done in private. Even the religious leaders who remained enemies of Jesus had witnessed many of these feats of power.
In addition to the miracles, Jesus had been teaching in public. The religious leaders had sat in on many of these classes. One had even invited Jesus to his home for dinner and had received a personal lesson in grace when Jesus extended forgiveness to a woman who crashed the banquet. In spite of all this, the religious leaders in our text came up to Jesus as he was walking through the temple in Jerusalem and demanded: “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly!” (John 10:24)
But Jesus had already told them plainly. He had also proven that he was the promised Messiah by the many miracles he had performed. So why were they still asking? Jesus tells us why. “… you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:26)
Confirmands, like the religious leaders in this sermon text, you too have been hearing the voice of Jesus for some time now. You first heard his voice when he called you by name at your baptism. You continued to hear his voice whenever your parents read the Bible to you and brought you to church. In the last couple of years through your confirmation instruction, you have made a serious study of the Bible—like someone pressing their ear to a railroad track to hear the distant rumble of an approaching train. But there’s a difference between hearing and listening, isn’t there? The person who presses their ear to the railroad track, hears the approaching train but then does nothing to get out of the way is asking for trouble!
Which describes your relationship to Jesus and his Word? You have heard, but are you listening to and following Jesus? In a way, you’re in a precarious position. Come Judgment Day, you can’t plead ignorance and say to Jesus: “Oh, I didn’t know what your will was! That’s why I didn’t follow it.” You do know the Lord’s will. You proved it in your answers today during this service and with the answers in your final confirmation exam before today. But sadly, there are many who have gone through confirmation instruction just like you who have gone on to adopt the attitude of the religious leaders in our text. They have strayed from Jesus’s voice. And what’s worse, they may think that they can get away with it by playing dumb.
Such an attitude might be hard for you to imagine right now. You have been so thoroughly plugged into the Lord through your confirmation instruction that you’re on fire for him right now. But our weekly confirmation classes have come to an end. What can you do to ensure that you’ll regularly hear and listen to the voice of your Good Shepherd Jesus? Can you follow a Bible reading routine? Can you commit to and encourage your family to remain regular in worship? You see, it’s not just the voice of Jesus that is vying for your attention. There’s the voice of social media, the voice of your friends, the voice of your own sinful nature that are all distracting you from what is truly important: following Jesus to heaven! That’s why it’s important to note that in our text, Jesus said that his sheep continue to listen to him and continue to follow him.
OK, so is my prayer for you that you behave? Not exactly, because that’s been your parents’ prayer for you from day 1. How has that worked out? Should I ask them? No, I’ll spare you the embarrassment. So I’m glad that Jesus gives me another important item for which to pray—that you would continue to rest in him. Jesus said: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” (John 10:27-29)
So here’s a question that you all can answer. How did you become one of Jesus’s sheep? Did you decide on your own to follow Jesus one day? Is your Confirmation Day today a formal recognition that you are super serious about being a Christian? It might feel that way because in a few minutes you will be taking an oath to follow Jesus so carefully and to the very end that you’d rather die that stop being a Christian. But as you’ve already shared with us in the question-and-answer part of this service, you were all once dead in your sins, unable to put one foot in front of another to follow Jesus. In fact, it was worse than being dead. You, like the rest of us here, at one time in our lives wanted to run away from God, not toward him. So what changed that? Well, the Holy Spirit did. He is the one who brought you to faith in Jesus.
Although Jesus doesn’t talk about the Holy Spirit in our text this morning, he does reaffirm the truth that you didn’t come to him on your own when Jesus says that his heavenly Father gave you to him. Although our sinfulness should have made our heavenly Father stick us into a trash bag bound for the incinerator, he instead picked us up, and handed us to his Son Jesus for a cleansing from our sins.
I recently read a story that powerfully illustrates what it means that Jesus is our savior. The story is related by Chuck Colson who has for years been witnessing to people in prison. Colson recalled visiting a prison in Brazil operated by two Christians. With the exception of two staff members, all of the work at the prison was done by the inmates. Colson went on to explain: “When I visited, I found the inmates smiling—[including] the convicted murder who held the keys and opened the gates to let me in. Wherever I walked, I saw men at peace. I saw clean living places, people working industriously. The walls were decorated with biblical sayings from Psalms and Proverbs. In the course of my tour, my guide escorted me to the notorious prison cell once used for torture. ‘Today,’ he told me, ‘the cell houses only a single inmate.’ As we reached the end of a long concrete corridor and he put the key in the lock, he paused and asked: ‘Are you sure you want to go in?’ ‘Of course!’ I responded impatiently. ‘I’ve been to isolation cells all over the world.’ Slowly he swung open the massive door and I saw the prisoner in that punishment cell: a crucifix, beautifully carved by the inmates—the prisoner Jesus, hanging on a cross. ‘He’s doing time for the rest of us,’ my guide said softly.” (Charles Colson, “Making the World Safe for Religion” 1993, p. 33)
Dear Confirmands, whenever we stray from Jesus, we deserve to be locked away until God can deal with us in his anger. But Jesus has already done your time. God is not angry with you. He has forgiven you.
While I like that story about the prison in Brazil, it also bothered me. Our Lord Jesus is not still doing time for your sins or mine. He’s not locked away in an isolation cell leaving us to fend for ourselves. What was it that Jesus said in our text the Father has done? He gave us to him so that Jesus might hold us—hold us so firmly that nothing can snatch us away from him. And as if that wasn’t enough, Jesus made clear that our heavenly Father also holds us in his hand. Do you get the picture? The one true God is holding you with TWO hands. He’s not some little leaguer who is trying to show off and catch a fly ball with one hand, which he will be sure to drop.
And so as you walk out of church today as confirmands, do not think for a moment that you are on your own. You’re not! We, your fellow communicant members of Mt. Calvary, are here to support and encourage you. But better than that, your God holds you with TWO hands. Continue to rest firmly in this promise. Sure, there will no doubt be challenges that you face—peer pressure, sickness, loneliness, uncertainty of where to go to college, or if you should just get a job after school. But you don’t face any of those problems on your own. Keep listening to and following Jesus so that you don’t get led away by this world and its temptations. And be assured that you are resting in the hands of your heavenly Father who made you, as well as resting in the nail-marked hands of Jesus who saved you. Keep remembering and believing these truths. That’s my prayer for you. Amen.
SERMON NOTES
(pre-sermon warm-up) What is your confirmation verse? If you can’t remember, what Bible verse would you choose to serve as a confirmation verse? How could you use that verse to encourage our confirmands today?
The religious leaders demanded to know whether Jesus was the Messiah or not. Why didn’t Jesus answer their question plainly?
(2 questions) What’s the difference between hearing Jesus and listening to him? In what aspect of your life might you be hearing but not listening to Jesus?
While we pray that our confirmands (and every believer) continue to listen to and follow Jesus, we also pray that they rest in him. How does the prison illustration assure us that we can find rest with Jesus?
The prison illustration may also give us a false impression of what Jesus is up to now. How so?
Why is it comforting to know that both Jesus and our Heavenly Father hold us in their hand?
