Sermon Text: 2 Thessalonians 2:13–17
Date: June 11, 2023
Event: Confirmation Sunday
2 Thessalonians 2:13–17 (EHV)
We are always obligated to thank God for you, brothers, loved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning for salvation by the sanctifying work of the Spirit and faith in the truth. 14For this reason he also called you through our gospel so that you would obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 15So then, brothers, stand firm and hold on to the teachings that were passed along to you, either by word of mouth or by a letter from us. 16May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and in his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, 17encourage your hearts and establish you in every good work and word.
May Our Lord Jesus Christ Establish You
Confirmation is about looking forward, building on a foundation, and ensuring that what has come before establishes success for the future. It’s a focus on not just knowledge and learning but on faith and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It’s an important day for the confirmand and family and the congregation at large, but it can serve as a good reminder and a good way to examine the foundation of our own faith life.
Today is certainly different for our family. The personal nature of today is important for all of us, but in my heart and mind that should not overshadow the true purpose of today and what is being expressed: Today we celebrate the growth God has given to a fellow child of his kingdom. Today is a day when we are all able to be reminded of the truths of God’s love that we all value so deeply. Today is a day that, like Alex, we are able to find a renewed appreciation for our Savior’s love and forgiveness.
And so my prayer, our prayers, are really no different than Paul’s prayers for the Thessalonians. For our Second Reading this morning we have the very ending of his second letter to these Christians—save for the very last verse. And in Paul’s prayers for them, we will find our prayers for Alex, all those newly confessing their faith, and all those who have held on to this faith for generations.
The church in the Macedonian city of Thessalonica got off to a really rough start. When Paul first arrived in the city, he followed his normal pattern of going to the Jewish synagogue to proclaim with joy that the long-promised Savior, the Messiah, had arrived. Jesus had accomplished all that God had said he would do! We have the actualization of the forgiveness of sins, no longer left looking ahead to the day when God would follow through on his promises. What a tremendous proclamation to make to those who had been waiting for this day for their whole lives, and for millennia before they were even born.
Luke tells us in the book of Acts that some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great number of God-fearing Greeks and more than a few of the prominent women (Acts 17:4). But, among those who did not believe the message that Paul proclaimed, jealousy boiled over. A mob formed and a riot broke out, looking to seize Paul and try him for supposed crimes against the empire. The animosity burned so hot that the Christians in that city had to shuffle Paul and Silas away in the middle of the night for their protection, and then these enemies followed them to the next city.
It’s in this cauldron that the first Christian church in Thessalonica was born. It’s baffling that anyone was brought to faith at all in this environment—a clear reminder that faith is not a human work, but God’s work through his Word. Paul makes this clear in the opening verse of our Second Reading, the closing of his second letter to the people of this congregation: We are always obligated to thank God for you, brothers, loved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning for salvation by the sanctifying work of the Spirit and faith in the truth. For this reason he also called you through our gospel so that you would obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When Paul says he has an obligation to thank God, let’s not understand that as if it was a hardship or something Paul didn’t want to do. His point is that this work is so amazing that anyone who knew of it simply had to thank God.
And it’s not just that the Thessalonians were such a difficult case. Paul’s words apply to any of us who cling to Jesus as our Savior. That anyone believes in God’s forgiveness is a miracle in the truest sense of the word. Because, by nature, we are at odds with God, by nature we are fighting with God, by nature we are sinners who deserve nothing but hell for our rebellion and sin against God.
And Alex, you know you have a sinful nature working in you. You know it personally from experience and you know it with even more clarity from your study of God’s Word. And I am all too aware that you inherited that sinful nature from Mom and me. You were stuck from the word go, as we all were. Like all people, from conception and birth, you were a child of sin and death and belonged to Satan.
But then, on a day that happened too long ago for you to remember, God claimed you. He used almost laughably simple-looking means—a splash of water from the tap in South Dakota and the name of God spoken over you—to make you his own. At your baptism, just two-and-a-half weeks after you were born, God powerfully brought faith in Jesus into your heart. He washed away your sins and redeemed you through the life and death of Jesus in your place. God loved you and made you his own child, adopted you in his family.
And from that day forward, God has tended to your faith. Through God’s Word at home, in school for a time, and at church, God has formed you and shaped you into the young Christian man that you are today. God chose you and sanctified you that you would obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, that for Jesus’ sake, you would find eternal life with God in heaven.
And Alex, like all of us, is a work in progress. We stress in catechism class that confirmation is not graduation. Confirmation day is not the end of growth in faith; in many ways, it is just the beginning. In just a few minutes, he will add to the tools he has at his disposal for God to increase his faith as he is welcomed to join our congregation for the Lord’s Supper. All of us do well to appreciate these miracles in our lives—the gift of forgiveness and faith to trust that forgiveness. Confirmation Sunday allows all of us to see these gifts in a renewed, fresh light.
The result of that faith—whether we’re thinking in terms of the initial creation of faith or the strengthening of faith that happens as we go along this journey—is a thankful, new life. Paul encouraged the Thessalonians and us along with them: So then, brothers, stand firm and hold on to the teachings that were passed along to you, either by word of mouth or by a letter from us. May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and in his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and establish you in every good work and word.
Knowing, trusting, that Jesus has forgiven all of our sins and given us the free gift of heaven changes the way we want to live. We want to live our lives in thanksgiving to God. We want to hold firmly to the truths that he has given us in his Word. And so, this is the goal for every confirmand, every Christian, that we continue to walk this path of gratitude and joy to our Savior for his goodness to us. We thank God by serving him and serving one another. We seek to love as he has loved us.
We will not always do that perfectly. For as thankful as we are for God’s forgiveness, for as much joy as we have in the faith that God has given, all of us still have that horrendous sinful nature we were born with. While we are on this side of eternity, we will stumble and fall. Temptation will lead us astray, we will give in to those desires that we know we should not, and we will sin and rebel against God—even the God who loves us.
But that love of God does not change. He does not call it quits with us, he doesn’t abandon us, and he doesn’t move on. For every time that you or I come to our God with guilt on our heart, for every time we have a sin to confess, there our God is with the assurance of his complete forgiveness. For every pile of sins we bring to God, those are the sins for which Jesus died. We are not beyond his mercy, his love, or his forgiveness.
That unending, inexhaustible mercy of God is what encourage[s] [our] hearts and establish[es] [us] in every good work and word. Whether today is your confirmation day, or that is a day yet to come, or that was a day long since past, continue to build your foundation and God’s love for us in Jesus. Continue to be established by our God, and rejoice in his love with your work and words. Thanks be to God! Amen.
