A Confirmation Sermon: Unconditional Promises are the Best :: Deuteronomy 6:5-6
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
The word for our meditation today comes to us from Brooklyn Fischer’s confirmation verse, Deuteronomy 6:5-6, which reads ... You will love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and all your being, and all your might. And these words that I command you this day will be upon your heart.
Brooklyn, what a great day it is to be reminded of this word! What a great day this is for Zion, and for your husband, Hagan. What a great day this is for the church at large. This is a day the Lord has anointed for you. So let us all rejoice and be glad in it.
I don’t know about the rest of my brothers and sisters in Christ in the room, but I definitely remember my day like this way back in 1978. How can any of us forget? This is a day we are reminded that God has set his Gospel upon our heart.
1.
Brooklyn, because today is your Confirmation Day ... the day you confirm you have the same faith in Christ we all share ... instead of a sermon that you only hear, I have prepared this sermon for you to keep and read. You’ll receive this with the gift I will present to you on behalf of the congregation. Of course, we’ll let everybody else in the room hear most of what I’ve written because it’s good for all of us ... but there is something here for you that I won’t read aloud. That message is specifically from me to you. Later, you’ll know what I mean.
I do hope you’ll keep this and read it over and over, because that’s very much to the point I want to share with you. We always need to hear the Good News of how God saves you ... of how God loves you ... of how God has opened your eyes and ears to hear his Gospel ... the Good News of not only what he has done for you ... but what he continues to do ... and what he will always do for you. Here’s how the Holy Spirit expresses it through Moses:
You will love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and all your being, and all your might. And these words that I command you this day will be upon your heart.
BROOKLYN, THROUGH THESE WORDS OF PROMISE, GOD HAS CONFIRMED HIS LOVE FOR YOU AND MARKED YOU AS ONE OF THE REDEEMED.
We should start by noting that your confirmation verse is both Law and Gospel. Too many people hear only the Law in this verse: Of what you must do ... of how you must live. That isn’t a bad thing. The Law is ... in fact ... good and true. The Law reveals something beautiful about God. Think about it honestly, what in the Law is bad? The Law shows us what love does.
But to be clear, your confirmation verse is even richer in Gospel. It is filled with the promises of Yahweh your God ... the Holy One of Israel who will make you holy, despite your best efforts (Lv 19:2). He is the one who causes you to love him and your neighbor as yourself (Mk 12:31). He is the one who keeps you so close that nothing can separate you from him (Rm 8:38-39). He is the one who will nurture you with his Word and Sacraments, guarding your faith, nurturing your faith, and making you wise unto salvation (2 Tm 3:14-15). He will remember you.
So I pray you will never stop allowing yourself to hear the promises here.
2.
Do you remember the first time you heard God’s word of promise spoken to you?
Brooklyn ... you definitely began hearing the promise contained in these words on September 11, 2011. We know that because that is the day God set you apart by your baptism into Christ. That is the day he anointed you with the Holy Spirit ... the day he opened your eyes and ears to the truth that you will love the One and Only True God with all your heart, mind, and strength ... the day he promised to ensure that nothing can separate you from him ... the day he set these words upon your heart. We like to think that it was our doing. But it wasn’t. It never is. God alone saves, so that no one can boast.
What a joy it is knowing that God has brought you here today to confirm the good work he began in you 11 years ago. Today, he is now opening your mouth so that you ... who believe in your heart that Christ was raised from the dead ... will now also confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord ... the Word made flesh. All who do this will be saved (Rm 10:9-10). And he is opening your eyes so that you can witness him delivering to you forgiveness in the sacraments.
That is what baptism does for us (1 Pet 3:21). This is why infant baptism is so important. God delivers his promises in baptism to all of us who are all vulnerable to sin and death. He saves those who can speak for themselves (Acts 2:39). He speaks for us. He pours out the Holy Spirit upon us who then hears our prayer through our groans. He ensures our baptism abides forever. That’s why most of these people who have gathered with you today are here. They were brought to this font when they were infants, and God gave them a faith like yours. He quite literally enables all of us to love Yahweh with all our heart, being, and might, too.
In baptism, God drowns the sinner in us and raises us into eternal life with him (Rom 3:3-10) so that you will love the Lord always. On account of this gift, he becomes ones with you (Col 2:9-10). Therefore, nothing can separate you from him. These living and active words (Heb 4:12) are making you all wise unto salvation.
3.
Like life in baptism, hearing the word of God’s promise is not a one and done kind of thing. It does require some cooperation.
So remember, today is your confirmation ... not your graduation. It is not the end of your catechetical life. It is yet another new beginning in your life as a Christian. As I reminded you two weeks ago when the elders witnessed the confession I have been hearing now for nearly five months, none of us ever can hear and know God’s word well enough. So don’t stop reading the Bible and studying your catechism. Use both in your home devotions with your family.
And don’t deny yourself the Divine Service, where God’s Word is faithfully proclaimed and the sacraments administered. Here, we remember our baptism isn’t simply an event long ago that marked a change in your life. It is something we immerse ourselves into.
The Old Adam and Eve in us will constantly seek to hide our sin. They will constantly seek to deny our sin. They will try to convince us our babies don’t need God to wash away their sin. They will constantly seek to cast blame upon others.
But God has now enabled you to love him with all your heart, being, and might ... to confess your sin and to believe that his forgiveness is true. And in this way you can then approach the Lord’s supper with confidence and joy in your heart knowing that he has forgiven you, not only by shedding his blood and dying on the cross, but by giving you a meal that nourishes this faith in him you are confessing. Seek the Supper always with joy in your heart, knowing what God does for you in this feast of forgiveness he has prepared for you.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we should always remind ourselves that through these means of grace ... baptism, absolution and the Lord’s Supper, in particular ... you will continue to hear Jesus reiterate his promises to you: You are forgiven. And you will love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and strength through it.
4.
That’s what today’s verse is saying, too. It is most importantly a promise.
Deuteronomy 6:5-6 are verses with active verbs. Listen again to them: You will love the Lord your God ... this will be upon your heart. This is true because as Saint John tells us ... the Lord loved you first. (1 Jn 4:19). And he loved you in this way, he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world may be saved through him (Jn 3:16-17).
Our Lord Jesus is the sinless one who loved without sin. We couldn’t love God or each other (Rom 3:10-18) ... we couldn’t make ourselves holy enough. But God can and does. We couldn’t make enough sacrifices for ourselves. But God can and did. He shed his blood for you. He suffered the consequence of sin for you ... that is, he died for you. Then he rose from the grave for you and ascended into heaven for you ... He did all this so that nothing could separate us from his love for you. And now, because he has paid the debt of our sin, and given us faith to believe this truth, he makes us wise unto salvation as we remember all he has done for us.
5.
So, because he has been faithful to you, I want you to promise that you will love him with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your might. In this vow, you will promise to hold the prophetic and Apostolic Scriptures to be the inspired Word of God and the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from the Bible, as you have learned it from the Small Catechism, to be true and correct. You will vow to live according to the Word of God, and in faith, word, and deed to remain true to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, even to death, rather than fall away from it. It is quite the promise. But don’t worry, God has kept it first.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, remember this every day as you return to your baptism, as you hear his absolution, as you receive the Lord’s Supper. Your sins ... whatever they may be ... have been forgiven on account of Christ. To his glory and our good, in Jesus’ name.