[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Abby and Porter,
dear Levi,
and Tino,
where are you Tino?
There you are.
William,
Grace,
where’s Grace?
Charlie,
Taya,
where did Taya go?
Ah, there’s Taya.
Dear Peyton,
dear family and friends of the Comfirmands,
and dear friends of Jesus.
God be praised for the gift of
His Word and the body and
blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Gifts that are meant for you,
not just for today,
but for the entire rest of your lives.
There’s three things I want to say
this morning about confirmation.
I’ve said them all to you before,
but now I have
your undivided attention
because everyone’s looking at you. Number one, maybe most importantly, is what confirmation
is not. You know this. Confirmation is not graduation. We’re not done with anything.
You’ve only just begun. Only just begun. The adventure that is life in this world with
our Lord Jesus Christ keeping us the whole time and blessing us with His name and His
Word. I’ve prayed for you all every time we’ve had class and every day of our class
that you all, that the Holy Spirit would make you all students of the Holy Scriptures, that
you would continue to open your Bibles and read them and study them and ask questions
about them and pester me, I mean, ask me those questions too, and your parents and your friends,
is that you would talk about the Scriptures every day, that you would think about them,
that you would imagine them, that you would pray that the Lord would give you dreams about
the Scriptures, that they would be your constant companion so that you would know that nothing
here is finished. You’ve not learned enough. None of us have learned enough.
I heard that some⦠a grandpa told me that they were confirmed 57 years ago in Kirkâ¦
or in the fellowship hall, right here, and still they’re learning the Scriptures. A whole
lifetime. In fact, I think eternity itself is not enough time to learn the riches of
the Lord’s Word and His kindness to us. So nothing is finished today, only just beginning.
But what then is beginning? I want you to think of confirmation as this. Today, earlier,
when you stood up in front of the congregation, and now in a few minutes when you stand up
again, in front of the congregation, you are entering into a new office, a new vocation,
or a new calling. You are becoming public Christians. You are bearing the name of Jesus
now before the world. Saint Paul says that whenever you take the body and blood of Jesus,
you’re proclaiming His death until He comes. That means that the act of coming forward
to the Lord’s Supper is an act of proclamation, an act of declaration, an act of setting yourself
apart from the world and saying, I’m not of this kingdom. I belong to a different kingdom.
I belong to a different king. I belong to Jesus.
I think in the ancient world this would have been so simple to see because if you visit
like the ruins of an ancient city, you see how people lived and they were just, you know,
right next to each other. And they lived in these apartments and they had shared kitchens
sins, and things like this. And so you knew when someone got up in the morning and they
went out and they walked down to the Zeus Temple, or to the Athena Temple, or to the
Hephaestus Temple and offered their sacrifice there, or if they went and gathered together
with the people who were called Christians and refused to go to the pagan idols. So to
go to church, to go to the altar, to come here where the Lord gathers us together is
to make that public confession, that I am a Christian. But it’s not just here. It is
now everywhere. Jesus has claimed you, and He has not just claimed Sunday morning. He
has claimed everything. He’s claimed your body, your lips, your heart. He’s claimed
your past and your future, and He’s covered it all with His blood. He has you, and now
you stand up and confess this. In a few minutes, you’re all going to stand up here in front
of the Lord’s altar, and I’m going to say, I’m going to read the words of Jesus from
Matthew chapter 10, where Jesus says, whoever confesses Me before the Father, I’ll confess
before⦠confesses Me before the world, I’ll confess before My Father who is in heaven.
So you will have this opportunity to confess the name of Jesus before the world. But I
want you to know, and this is for all of us who have made our confirmation vows, is that
every time you come to take the Lord’s body and blood, you’re making that same confession.
The confession that God the Father created me and still sustains me. The confession that
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has redeemed me and purchased and won me from sin, death
and the devil. The confession that the Holy Spirit has filled me as His temple and that
He creates the church and on the last day He will raise me from the dead. Do you renounce
the devil and all his works and all his ways? Every time, every single one of us comes to
the Lord’s altar, we’re saying, yes, I do. Yes, I renounce Him. Yes, I renounce them.
Do you believe the Bible is God’s true Word? Do you believe the doctrine as you’ve learned
to know it in the small catechism is true according to the Scriptures? Do you intend
to remain faithful to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with your whole life and rather
die than fall away from it? Yes, I do. You all will say it for all of us in a few minutes,
this, but every single one of us says it when we come to the altar. That’s what we mean.
That’s what we confess. That’s what we preach by our presence here, that we belong to this
teaching, to this doctrine, to this Lord who has redeemed us, who’s won us, and rescued
us.
It meant something. Just to go back to the picture of the ancient⦠I have in my own
mind Pergamum, ancient Pergamum, which was built on top of the hill, which made everyone
live even closer together. They were all crammed in there, except for⦠except for there was
one open space in the whole place, and it was around this big Zeus temple. It was this big
temple where all the people would go. It means something when you would not go down with
your neighbors to offer the sacrifices to Zeus. Instead, you said that Jesus is Lord, and
that’s what we do today. We stand up and we say that Jesus is Lord. All the other things
or people or whatever’s who want to be the Lord, we say to them, no, my King is Jesus.
My Lord is Jesus. My Savior is Jesus and none other.
Today’s Pentecost, the day when Jesus from His throne poured forth His Holy Spirit into
the hearts of His people, this is why we have dressed the church in red to remind us of
the tongues of fire that stood above the apostles’ heads on that first Pentecost day and they
They preached and all the people heard them preaching in all these different languages,
the wonderful works of God, and they rejoiced over it.
Now this Pentecost gift is the gift of the office, the gift of preaching, but for you
the gift of confessing, of bearing the name of Jesus before the world.
Now this is a heavy responsibility, it’s a hard responsibility, the devil hates it
when you mention the name of Jesus and you confess His name, but the Lord has promised
to be with you. I think almost all of your Confirmation verses say something about strength,
that the Lord is your strength, the Lord is your confidence, the Lord is your refuge,
the Lord is your helper, and this is true. But, and most important of all, the main thing
about today, the main thing about Confirmation, the main thing about being a Christian, the
The main thing about church and everything that goes on in the Lord’s kingdom is not
what you do, but rather what Jesus does.
The main thing about today is not your confession, it’s about Jesus carrying your name before
the Father.
The main thing about today is not that you come to the altar, but that Jesus comes down
to you, and he says to you, here’s my body and here’s my blood. Now, what I do not want
you to think, for you compramands, and this is for everybody, I’m preaching even to myself
here, I do not want you to think that you are worthy to receive such a gift. That you
You say, well, we’ve done our memory work.
Some of you at the last minute.
We’ve done our memory work.
We’ve passed our levels.
We’ve been to class.
We’ve written our statements.
We’ve done our homework.
Now we are worthy to come
to the Lord’s body and blood.
No.
No.
Our worthiness is not in ourselves.
Who is worthy and well prepared?
prepared? Not the one that has done enough? Not the one that has cleansed their life?
Not the one that is free from sin? Not the one that is holy so that the presence of God
is no danger to them? No. Who is worthy and well prepared? The one who simply believes
what the words of Jesus say, this is my body given for you, my blood shed for you for the
forgiveness of all of your sins. In other words, when you come and stand up here at
altar, every single one of you, when you come and stand at the altar, what you’re saying
is that I am a desperate sinner, that I cannot make it on my own, that I do deserve the Lord’s
wrath, His punishment in this world and in the world to come, and that I need, above
everything else, I need the Lord’s mercy, I need the Lord’s kindness, I need the Lord’s
love, I need the Lord’s cleansing, I need His blood that has in it the forgiveness of
all of my sins.
So, we come to the Lord, not as holy, but as sinners in desperate need of His gifts.
You will never be holy enough to stand before the Lord.
You will never be holy enough by your own efforts and by your own works to pass the
judgment day.
Your holiness and mine comes only from the grace of God.
And so you join, you conformants today, join a long line of sinners who need the
forgiveness of sins. A long line of desperate people who need above
everything else the Lord’s help. A long line of lawbreakers, those who are
transgressors of the commandments, who have no hope in life except this, that
Christ Jesus died for sinners.
That means that he died for you.
And his love for you did not stop on the cross, but continued to the grave, and to the resurrection,
and to his ascension, and even now.
Jesus loves you so much that he wants you to have no doubt that you belong to him.
And this then is your assurance.
When the devil comes along and says, how do you know you’re a Christian?
You can say, I was baptized.
When the devil comes along and says, how do you know that your sins are forgiven?
You can say, I ate and drank the body and blood of Jesus, and He told me that it was
for the forgiveness of my sins, and He does not lie, He does not lie, so that He who has
begun this good work in you.
We’ll bring it to completion in his day.
So we gather together in
thankfulness for what Jesus has done.
The one who has done all things well,
that he has brought you into
his family through the water of
holy baptism and that now he feeds and
sustains you with his body and blood and all of
this so that he can live
with you forever in eternal life.
God be praised. Amen.
And the peace of God which
passes all understanding,
guard your hearts and minds
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
