 |
seaster604
The Assurance of
Heaven
Text:
John 10:22-30
Date: The Sixth Sunday of Easter / Confirmation 
5/16/04 crack ad-protect v6.2
On
this Sunday in which we celebrate the Rite of Confirmation for our
four young candidates, I would simply like to draw your attention
to the wonderful relationship we have with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ. As he says in John chapter 10, “My sheep hear my voice,
and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and
they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no
one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand” [John 10:27-29
(ESV)]. You know that Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd and
calls us his sheep. Even today, a shepherd calls his sheep and his
sheep recognize his voice. So notice that hearing the voice of your
Good Shepherd is something that continues forever.
Jesus
says, “My sheep hear my voice.” Notice that he doesn't say, “My
sheep heard my voice.” Jesus' sheep don't just hear his
voice once in the past. They hear it every day.
You
hear Jesus' voice in Holy Baptism. There the Holy Spirit causes
a person to believe in Jesus as Savior. For that's what it means
to hear Jesus' voice, to believe that he is the One who protects
you and forgives you and feeds you and cares for you like a shepherd.
But
for every Christian we continue to hear Jesus' voice again and again.
The Bible will never go out of print, and it will never go out of
style. You know it's Jesus' voice you hear when I or whatever pastor
you may have says, “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And it certainly
is always Christ who says to you “This is my body, this is my blood
for the forgiveness of all your sins.” Hearing your Good Shepherd's
voice is something that continues forever.
Jesus
says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them.” He has known you
every since your Baptism. He knows everything you're feeling, joys
and sorrows, faith and fears. God says through the prophet Jeremiah,
“I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness
and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” [Jeremiah 29:11
(ESV)]. Jesus knows each of his sheep so well that he knows how
he will shape your life in beautiful ways—what our young people
will do after they finish school, whom or if they will marry, whether
they'll have children of their own to bring to confirmation. He
knows you a lot better than you know yourself. And he knows everything
you'll need at each step of that way, so he'll surely be there to
provide it.
“My
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” That's
a pretty amazing thing for Jesus to say when you think about it.
For we all know how often it is that we don't follow him. We stray
into sin constantly, and that's dangerous. But that's why Christ
died for you, to pay for those sins, to wash them away in his blood,
to continually renew you as one of his sheep.
Now
because he has been that faithful to us, we, together with our young
confirmands today, promise to follow Jesus all our life. That's
essentially what the confirmation vows are all about. Nothing is
to get in the way of keeping this vow to follow Christ.
The
last thing Jesus says in our text is the best: “I give them eternal
life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out
of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than
all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.”
No matter what happens in the future, no matter what anybody, including
the devil, will do, nobody can snatch you away from Jesus. The only
one who can cause you to lose your salvation is you yourself. And
that's the reason your Good Shepherd will keep on speaking to you.
When he speaks, he tells you, again and again and again, for all
the years of your life, “I laid down my life for you, and I've taken
it up again to give you eternal life. You are my sheep!”
________________________
The Rev. Allen D. Lunneberg
| |
