[Machine transcription]
Jesus prays, For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them,
and have come to know in truth that I came from you, and have believed that you sent
me.
I am praying for them.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Amen.
Dear Annabelle, Dylan, Caroline, Immy, and Briley, I bow to make your good confession
before God and the world.
To the family and to the friends of the confirmands and to all the friends of Jesus, grace to
you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Confirmation, we just talked about this in Sunday school, confirmation is not appointed
to us by the Lord Jesus.
It’s not commanded in the Scriptures by the prophets and the apostles.
It is something that the church has made up.
And we say, well, if it’s something that the church made up, why are we doing it?
While confirmation is something that we made up, I’ll tell you it’s not.
And that is the body and blood of Jesus given to His people to eat and drink for the forgiveness
of sins. And the fact that the Lord Jesus warns that we should be ready and well-prepared to take
his body and blood so that we enter into a time of preparation and study before that happens,
into a time of confession to receive the Lord’s mercy so that we know that we’re sinners in need
of his kindness and his love. And also what’s not invented by the church but instituted by Jesus
is the confession of his name. Jesus says these words and we’ll hear them in just a few minutes
in the rite of confirmation, it’s in Matthew chapter 10, Jesus says, whoever confesses
me before the world, I will confess before my father who is in heaven, but whoever denies
me before the world, I’ll deny before my father in heaven.
And in fact, how about this, every time we come to the Lord’s supper, we are making that
good confession.
Now there’s a lot of things that happen at the altar, at the Lord’s table.
The main thing is this, and we cannot forget the main thing.
The main thing is Jesus who says here’s my body, take and eat, here’s my blood, take
and drink.
Why?
For the forgiveness of all of your sins.
That’s the main thing.
It’s his gift.
It’s his mercy.
It’s his kindness.
It’s his love.
It’s his undeserved free grace that he lavishes upon us that we don’t deserve and we can never
deserve and never pay him back for it.
That’s the main thing.
But there’s also something else that happens when we come to the table, and that is that
we, as Paul says, confess his name until he returns.
We in fact proclaim his death and his resurrection.
So that every time, and this is true for all who come, even if it’s your first time to
the altar, if you’ve been coming to the Lord’s Supper for the last 150 years, I’m checking
to see who that would apply to out there.
If you’ve been coming for long, it doesn’t matter.
Every time you come, you are preaching something.
You are preaching that Jesus, who died on the cross for our sins and rose on the third
day and ascended into heaven, that this Jesus is your Jesus.
That His preaching is your faith.
That His promise is your protection.
That His work is your hope.
hope, that His death is your life, that His resurrection is what stands in your conscience,
in your heart, and in your hope.
When you take this bread and the cup, you proclaim His death and His resurrection until
He comes.
You will then stand up, not just you five, but all of you who come to the table today
in the unity of this doctrine and in the fellowship of the Lord’s truth.
earth, you will stand and confess that Christ is crucified, buried, risen on the third day,
ascended to the right hand of the Father, and that He is all of these things for you.”
This is what he’s praying about in the gospel lesson.
It’s a beautiful gospel lesson for Confirmation Sunday.
It’s from John chapter 17, and it’s what’s sometimes called the high priestly prayer
of Jesus.
It happens, here’s the context.
It happens on the night when Jesus was betrayed.
So this is hours before the crucifixion, maybe 12 hours before he’s crucified.
He’s washed the disciples’ feet.
He’s instituted the Lord’s Supper.
He said a little while I’ll be gone, a little while I’ll be back, and then maybe before
they leave to go and pray in the garden or maybe on the way or maybe in the garden.
We’re not 100% sure where it takes place.
Maybe the garden, best guess.
Jesus prays and He doesn’t just pray silently so that God the Father hears Him, He prays
out loud because He wants you to know what He’s praying for, who He’s praying for, and
why He’s praying for you.
And I want to put your attention especially on verse 8.
It’s there in your bulletin.
I’m checking to see if you guys are looking at it down here.
I can see you.
You’re right there in front of me.
In your bulletin, I like it when you sit so close.
I can keep an eye on you guys.
John chapter 17 verse 8, well, yeah.
Look at what it says.
It says, For I have given them the words that you gave me.
God the Father has given His words to His Son and His Son has now given them to the
Apostles.
That’s why you’ve been studying all these last years.
It’s why you all are coming to church, because the Lord Jesus wants to give to you his word,
and then what do you do with that word?
Three things.
First, you hear it, or you receive it.
Second, you know that it’s true, and third, you believe it.
Look at what it says here.
I have given them the words that you gave me, and one, they have received them, and
And two, have come to know in truth that I came from you.
And three, and they have believed that you sent me.”
It is not enough to hear the word of the Lord, although you have to hear it.
If you don’t hear the Lord’s word, then you can’t know it and believe it.
If I came up to you and I mumbled something, do you believe that?
You would say, wait, Pastor, I don’t know what you said.
You didn’t give me anything to believe.
So, we have to first hear the word of God, but then we have to know that it’s true.
We have to know that what the Lord says in his word is true, and we know it’s true because
God never lies.
We have to know that his death and his resurrection, that all of this for us, and the birth of
Jesus and the life of Jesus and the ascension of Jesus and all the work of the Lord from
the beginning in the Garden of Eden all the way to the end when the Lord brings us to
the new heaven and new earth, that all of these things are in fact true.
That Jesus truly rose from the dead.
That Jesus truly ascended into heaven.
That these are not fables or myths or stories, but actual events that happen.
We have to know that they’re true.
So we have to hear the word of God, we have to know the word of God, but that’s still
not enough.
Because even, remember, the devil hears the word and knows the word, but the problem is
Because the devil doesn’t believe the Word.
And this is the third thing that Jesus says, they have believed that you sent me.
This Word of God is not just, dear saints, for hearing and for knowing, but for believing.
What does that mean?
If you give me a promise, if you tell me something that you’re going to do, the only way I can
keep that promise is by trusting that you will keep it.
Now this is different from a command.
If I give you a command, you don’t keep the command by faith.
You keep the command by action, by doing.
If I said, okay, everybody kick the pew in front of you.
Just don’t, this is an illustration, don’t do this.
If I said, everyone kick the pew in front of you.
No, you would not say, Pastor, I believe you.
That’s not what I gave you, something to believe.
I didn’t give you a promise to believe,
I gave you a command to do, right?
But a promise is the very opposite.
If I told you, hey, there’s a lot of cake left over
and we’re gonna eat some in my office,
you wouldn’t start kicking the pew in front of you.
I gave you something to believe in.
So the word of God comes to you as something to believe,
something to trust, and something to know that it’s true
and it’s not just true for the person next to me,
or the person in front of me, or the person behind me,
or for my brothers and sisters,
or for my parents and grandparents,
that the word is true also for you.
It’s why the Lord Jesus will place his body and his blood
in your mouths today, for all of you,
so that you can know that this promise
is not just for everybody else, but it is also for me.
and when you are numbered among those who hear the word and know the word and
believe the word, listen to what Jesus says, I am praying for them. We are called
to live lives of constant prayer, to come before the Lord and ask him for all the
things that we need, for all the things that he has promised to give, and we try
by the Holy Spirit to pray as often as we can, but here’s the good news, for you
conformants, for all of you baptized, for all of you dear saints, Jesus prays for
you. Hebrews 7 says it like this, He always lives to intercede for you so
that Jesus is pleading your name and your case and His mercy
specifically for each and every one of you before God the Father in heaven.
You then have heard the Word. You’ve received it. You have come to know the
Lord’s Word and you have believed it, that these gifts and these promises of
God are for you. God the Father has created you. God the Son, your Lord Jesus
Christ has redeemed and purchased and won you with his holy precious blood and
God the Holy Spirit fills you to give you faith and the wisdom and the
strength to confess his name before the world and the Lord confirms all of these
gifts in you five today in all of us today may God grant that this would be
our hope and our peace in hearing and knowing and believing the Word of God
and trusting that Jesus prays for us. In the name of Jesus, Amen. And the peace of
God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus
Christ our Lord, Amen.
