Confirmations - Trust and the Resurrection
Matthew 20:17-19
Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”
I want to take a moment to return to one of my previous sermons. Back on the first Sunday of March, I preached about the confirmations God has offered all of us in our pasts which allow us to recognize the promise He has put in front of us. Or, as I put it then: God removes the “what ifs” in your life to confirm His strength to create your “what’s next.”
At the time, I focused on the story of Moses in Exodus 4:1-9, in which God shows Moses signs to confirm His ability to guide Moses to achieving the most incredible liberation for his people. Moses knew his people would be skeptical, and that made him skeptical as well, but God was there to show just what can be achieved when He is behind you.
Here, I’d like to move beyond Moses and further examine this idea by considering perhaps the greatest example of early confirmation leading to great promise. I want to consider the amount of trust required of the apostles to believe in the promise of the resurrection.
We all know that their faith wasn’t always strong. Doubts undeniably crept in, particularly in the darkest hours before Christ returned. Peter denied Him three times, and the others fled and hid when the going got tough. And yet, when He rose again, all (save Thomas) believed in Him immediately.
We often pass over that point in the story. Of course they believed, we think, God was standing right in front of them, offering them salvation. But if we honestly put ourselves in their places, I think we’ll discover a number of us would be more skeptical. So, what made the difference?
The answer, as we saw with Moses, is confirmation. How many miracles had the apostles witnessed? They had seen Christ heal the sick, feed the hungry, bring sight to the blind. God had confirmed His Son over and over to them. He had already changed their lives—and many lives around them—dramatically and repeatedly. He had already saved them. And they had witnessed Him saving others.
All of that gave them enough faith to carry them through witnessing Christ “being mocked and flogged and crucified” and allowed them to see Him with eyes open.
Ask yourself, how many times did you come back from a place you were told you couldn’t come back from? How many illnesses have you and your loved ones overcome? How many jobs have you found when it looked like there weren’t any jobs to get? How many lucky turns and lucky escapes have you been a part of when it looked like you were heading for a dead end?
How many crosses has God removed from your back?
I want you to look back at those moments in your own life and remind yourself just how God has confirmed His favor and love in you over and over. Just as the apostles were ready to accept the resurrection and how that would change their lives, we all have to be ready for the call God makes to each of us. He’s brought you to this moment for a purpose; remember to be bold and trust in where He is taking you next.
