They Follow Me (John 10:25-30)
Written by Pastor Fausel   
 Grace, mercy and peace be to you …

As you heard the Gospel for today read … what words or ideas jumped out at you?

Let me read a few of those words of Jesus’ again:

25Jesus answered them, “…27My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29My 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. 30I and the Father are one.”

Now, having heard those words again, what things that Jesus said really jumped out at you?

How about: “I and the Father are one.”?    There are some folks who will tell you that Jesus never claimed to be God.  I don’t know how anyone could come away from this passage and still say that.   The people Jesus was talking to understood that that’s what He was saying, because if we were to read the next verse, we’d read that they picked up rocks to stone Jesus for claiming to be God.

So that’s a pretty important idea or concept … and maybe that’s what caught your ear.

And, here’s another one… Jesus saying:  “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.”

I suppose, if we were to break down all the work that confirmands do in their study of Luther’s Small Catechism … that promise of Jesus about eternal life … and not perishing … would probably sum up the heart of most of that work.  For instance:

The Ten Commandments … we’ve referred to them as a curb, a mirror and a guide.  They’re a curb … to keep our Old Adam, our sinful selves, in check.  They’re a mirror… to show us in the pure and perfect light of God’s will how much we sinners need a savior.  And they’re a guide, to help us make good choices as we live in the forgiveness earned for us by Jesus Christ.   They’re all about eternal life, aren’t they?

The Lord’s Prayer … Jesus’ own what-to-say-and-how-to say-it when it comes to a comprehensive way of coming before our Father in heaven.  A prayer that can only come from our lips because of Jesus suffering, death and resurrection.  And in that prayer is the assurance of the promise of which we heard Jesus speak in the Gospel for today … oneness, through Him, with the Father unto eternal life.

And then there’s the Apostles’ Creed.  What do we hear in that Confession of the Faith other than the biblical truth of why eternal life is ours?  Because of Jesus’ birth, perfect life, sacrifice, death and resurrection … the eternal life won for us on the cross is ours by the power and grace of God working in our hearts through His Holy Spirit

Now, as you know, there are six chief parts to the Catechism, and we have just spoken about three: The Ten Commandment s, The Lords’ Prayer and the Creed.  
Following those three chief parts, we move on to the second three, which are Holy Baptism, Confession and the Office of the Keys, and The Lord’s Supper.

All three of these speak to us about God’s forgiveness of our sins.  All three deal with His means of Grace … namely His Word as it touches our lives and souls through the water of Holy Baptism, the elements of bread and wine, His Body and Blood, in the Lord’s Supper, and in the spoken Word of forgiveness and reconciliation itself.

To what end?   The same promise which Jesus spoke in our Gospel, that we should not perish, be thrown out of God’s presence for eternity, but experience eternal life.

So.  Back to what we said earlier … that promise of Jesus’ in our Gospel reading is really summed up pretty well in all of our catechetical work.  It’s also summed up in those words from John’s Gospel we heard just a couple of weeks ago, as John wrote:

“But these [things] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.”

Now.  As good as all that is… there can be a problem with all of this.  The problem can be that we take all that we’ve just read and said … and come to the conclusion that eternal life is just a matter of right thinking.  Of knowing the right stuff.    

So … if you believe the right doctrines, say the right creed, go to the right church … eternal life is yours.  How can that be a problem?

Well, if we were to look at the context of our Gospel reading, we’d see that Jesus was talking to Pharisees, people who did Bible Study every day.  The problem was … they knew the Scriptures … but they didn’t know God…

They had an intellectual picture of Him, but they didn’t know Him in the way Jesus speaks when He says: “I know my sheep, and my sheep know me.”

And so when we heard those words of Jesus’ in the Gospel for today the words that may have jumped out for you were these:   “My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me.”

Now, this gets to what we’ve been talking about a lot in 8th grade Confirmation this year.   Knowing God … and even Experiencing God.
Having a real, personal, loving relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

The problem we people often have … is that we can fall in love with the promises of God … not the Author of those promises.   I can get all excited about the idea of heaven and eternal life … and I can fall in love with the Bible Passages that speak about God promises … instead of loving the One who made those promises.

Another trap I can fall into is that I can make my service in the church, my doing good deeds, my going to Bible Study, my reading Christian books … substitutes … for having a loving, personal and genuine relationship with God.

We can get very satisfied with ourselves by pursing a whole lot of religious activities … doing religious things … instead of developing a personal, growing relationship with God in Jesus Christ.
 
I’m being a little generous with the syntax here … Truth is: we can make idols out of the substitutes … and we do.  God can get lost in the business of Church.  We can find that our following after Jesus… becomes more important to us than the Person we are following.  

Let that not be so with you, Confirmation Class of 2010.  Nor with the rest of us, either.   And so, to that end, is what the Rite of Confirmation is all about.   Today, the Confirmands are pledging their allegiance with the help of the Holy Spirit to a person … Jesus Christ.  To their Savior who loves them so much that if one of them were the only person on earth, He still would have died on the cross … just for them.

And so, their pledge of faithfulness today isn’t to this building, or to the people who gather in it, or to rituals that are part of our worship.  It’s not a pledge of allegiance to anything here on earth.   But a pledge to God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit… that by His grace, which means with His help, you might remain faithful to Him even unto death.

Because, you know why?  He has pledged to be faithful to you.   Remember what Jesus said, referred to you as His own children;
 “28I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Quite a promise of faithfulness to you, isn’t it?  It’s a promise which reflects His love for you.   And His desire to have that kind a relationship with you now … right now … and on into eternity.

And that’s why Jesus invented the church.  We people didn’t invent it.  God designed it for the purpose of helping us grow in that relationship He desires to have with each of us.

Today, this church, this invention of His, recognizes the accomplishment that His Holy Spirit has brought about in your heart.  This, the Day of Your Confirmation.   

This Day is the day when you will join with your parents at Our Lord’s Table.   When You will receive that special Gift God has given to His Church to help you, and all of us, know the Special love of our Lord.

Jesus says, “No one can snatch you out of His Hand.”  And that you can take to the bank.  There is nothing you can do to make Jesus reject you as His child.  However, He will never force you to Love Him.  You can go off chasing after the idols of this world that will shortly appear on your horizon.  And there will be many of those.

Problem with those idols you’ll find is that they will never fill your soul, as much of them as you are able to acquire.  Because your soul is eternal, and the idols are not.  Your soul was designed to be at peace … only as Jesus Himself fills it.

And that is our prayer for you today.  That from this day forward and for the rest of your life here on earth … Jesus would fill your soul and that You would know His love.

In Him.
Amen.       
 

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