Preacher: Pastor Tim Redfield
Date: May 19, 2019
Text: Hebrews 10:19-25
What if you died this week? What would happen to you? That is a good question for everyone here to think about. Our confirmands should have an answer because of all the knowledge we worked into them over the last few years. For examination, one of the students said that the body is buried and decays and the soul goes either to heaven or hell. That is exactly what happens at death. Today, our confirmands are making a confession of their faith. They trust in Jesus for eternal life. Today they could confess that they would go to heaven if they died this week. They would go to heaven because of Jesus. But what would happen if they lost the faith that they have today. How can they make sure that the faith they are confessing today is the faith that they will always have? How can they be certain that 20 years from now, they will still be on the path to heaven? Being confirmed in the church is no guarantee that a person will always have faith. Some people lose their faith. As we think about this special day, I want us all to think about this: What happens next? What happens after confirmation?
Part 1: You need to put God first in your lives
Every one of us has a major problem. No matter how much we hear about Jesus, no matter how strong we think we are in our faith, we could all still end up in hell. The devil is trying to destroy our faith every day. The sinful world around us vehemently opposes the truth of God’s Word. Our own sinful nature is trying to lead us away from God. There are many temptations pulling at us. We stumble and fall into sin on a daily basis. If we were left to our own strength, we would be completely without hope. We could not save ourselves. We could not keep ourselves on the path to heaven.
We need the power of Christ. We need the Means of Grace. We need the Gospel message found in God’s Word and in the Sacraments. The Bible is the only place where we find the true path to heaven. There we see that Jesus came and lived the perfect life that we could not live. Jesus died the death that we deserved and then rose triumphantly from the grave. The only way that we can believe this truth is through the power of God working in our hearts. He works in us through the Word and through Baptism. He keeps us strong in the faith through the Lord’s Supper and through time in Worship, devotion, and Bible Study.
We need God’s help if we are going to do what these verses say. Verse 23 said, “Let us hold on firmly to the confession of our hope without wavering.” That can be difficult to do especially when we are met with people and ideas that are in opposition to our Christian faith. What would you do if someone asks you how you can be certain that the Bible is truly God’s Word? Wasn’t it written be human beings that made mistakes? How would you respond to someone that says that it is arrogant to claim that the Christian path to heaven is the only right path? After all, don’t all religions teach a way to be kind to others and a way to receive eternal blessings after this life?
What might you do if someone says that God could not have possibly created the world in six 24 hour days? Hasn’t science proven that evolution is the truth of our universe? Or what might you say if someone claims that the Bible is oppressive toward women and that some of the men who wrote it were misogynists? These are all topics that can be studied in great detail and I don’t have time to dig into all of them this morning. I assure you that the Bible is really without error and truly God’s Word. The path laid out in the Bible is the only path to heaven. God really did create the world in 6 24-hour days. And the Bible is definitely NOT oppressive toward women. These are just examples of the many ways that Satan tries to destroy the truth.
We need to meet together in worship regularly so that our faith is strengthened and we are able to cling to the truth. We don’t want to be deceived and led astray by the false ideas around us. That is why verse 25 said, “Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have the habit of doing.” We need time together in worship so that we can be blessed with a strong faith. It is a third commandment sin if we purposefully avoid time in worship. We might rationalize that it is OK to avoid worship because we know Jesus but the devil knows how to use that against us. He knows how to pollute our minds with false ideas.
Now God understands that there can be legitimate reasons to miss church once in a while. That is not what we are talking about. Sin happens when we get into a pattern of avoiding worship because we feel we have something else to do with our time. This might seem like it is not a big deal but God takes it very seriously when we put something in our lives as a higher priority than our time with him. The section goes on to explain that willful, deliberate sin is basically spitting in the face of God.
Verses 26-27 say, “For if we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the full knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains any sacrifice for sins. 27 Instead, there is a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a raging fire that is going to consume the enemies of God.” Talk about a harsh reality. Deliberate sin is the same as unbelief. The reason for this is that this kind of sin is unrepentant sin. This means that a person is saying by their actions that they don’t need Jesus’ forgiveness for that particular sin. This applies even to sins against the third commandment – that is the main sin mentioned here.
I have met with people who want to cling to their sin. I have met with young men and women who want to cling to their sin of breaking the 6th commandment by living together outside of marriage. They are willfully rejecting God’s plan for marriage. We are not talking about a one-time sin that they repent of and don’t want to commit again. This is a daily sin that they don’t want to give up. Their actions are declaring that their sin is more important to them than God. I hope none of the confirmands fall into unrepentant sin but I know that Satan is going to be working on them and trying to get them to fall.
Part 2: God put you first by sending Jesus
The difficulty in remaining strong in our faith makes me overjoyed that it does not depend on us and our strength. Jesus is the one that keeps us strong. He came and obeyed the law in our place. For all the times that we are impure in our thoughts, words, and actions, he was completely pure. For all the times that we wanted to avoid time in worship, Jesus perfectly worshipped the heavenly Father. We deserve death and suffering because of our sin. He took death and suffering on himself. He sacrificed himself on the cross for our benefit.
Our section reminds us that our confidence comes from Christ. The first verse of the section says that “we have confidence … through the blood of Christ.” Because his blood was shed for us, we have hope. It is such a blessing to look at how the sacraments reminds us of the grace of God. We are washed clean through baptism and we receive his true body and blood in the Lord’s supper. Even though that doesn’t fully make sense to our rational minds, it is amazing to be connected to the same body and blood that were shed on the cross.
The section also reminds us that our time in worship is about encouragement. When I talk to young couples about to get married, I remind them about the importance of worship. If husband and wife want to love each other in the best possible way, they are going to need regular reminders about the greatest love that has ever been shown. We need to recharge our batteries with the love of Christ so that we can show love to others. Time in worship is definitely not about us doing something for God. Time in worship is about him blessing us. He strengthens us. He gives us spiritual food. He gives us rest from the burdens of the sinful world. He blesses us in so many ways.
We also have the encouragement of our fellow Christians. We are not in the fight alone. We have support from our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith. We have a built in support group to help us when we are experiencing grief, suffering, or temptation. We have people who love us because Christ loved them first. We need our time together so that we can all be built up in the faith. Our time with God’s Word helps us to know the truth about salvation. We need to know this truth so that we can resist all the false ideas that try to lead us away.
Conclusion
What happens next is this – confirmands need to stay connected to worship and God’s Word. This isn’t really a command. It is a gospel encouragement. When you stay connected to the Word, God works in your hearts to strengthen your faith. Communicant membership in a church is important because it is a public statement that you believe this church is giving you the truth about the path to salvation. You believe that this is the place where the Gospel is being given to you for the strengthening of your soul. You have examined the Bible and what it says and you believe that this church is teaching you the truth about the Bible. May God continue to bless you as you live in his Word. May God keep you strong in that faith all the way to eternal life.