What Gives Us Confidence (Maundy Thursday)

I remember one time in seminary when my classmates and I were invited to an evening party at my professor’s house. It was advertised as casual, so I dressed…casual. I showed up in jeans and a T-shirt, and everyone else came dressed in their fancy pants. Have you ever felt embarrassed? When I was a kid in school, I loathed when it was my turn to read in front of the whole class. Maybe it’s that time when you forgot your line in the school play. Or that moment that your team lost the game because you missed the shot. It doesn’t get easier, does it? As you get older, there’s this lovely invention called imposter syndrome. It’s when you’re in a smart-person college class and you have no idea what’s going on. Or you get the job and feel like you are completely out of your league. Or the church starts calling you “Pastor” and lets you start preaching—gulp! Then there’s shame. That horrible aftertaste of failure. People think less of you. You think less of yourself. You can’t believe you said that thing, did that thing. It feels like it defines you, tattooed on your forehead for all to see. Then there’s the comparison game: when you see who other people are and all the things they somehow have the time to achieve, or how many friends they have, or how important they are, or how good they look.

Whew: now can you imagine standing before God? You’re there, in His holy presence. Like when someone flips on a bright light to wake you up, except times a million. His holiness shines so bright it could kill you. You feel utterly naked and exposed. God can see right through you; He can see every wince-inducing thought you’ve thunk, every embarrassing thing you’ve said, every cringeworthy quirk and failure, every shameful thing you’ve done. How small you feel in His presence!

And yet…“…we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus”. Confidence?! That sounds insane. But that’s exactly what the Holy Spirit says in Hebrews 10:19. Jesus sees you—quirks, cringe, embarrassment, sin and all—and He loves you. He goes to the cross willingly, for you. His cross is the reason for your confidence. Why? Because it’s there that God purposefully forgets your sins. Hebrews 10:17 says, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” In Greek it’s emphatic: “I will never ever remember any longer” your sins. God doesn’t accidently overlook your sins, sweep them under the rug, or explain them away. He sees your sins for all their ugliness. And in Jesus, He decides to forget they ever existed. He forgets them on purpose. He erases each one from your record. He makes your sin irrelevant to your relationship with Him. There’s nothing left to punish. No shame left to hold. No guilt left to wear. No condemnation in Christ.

Hebrews 10:22 says, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” That’s Old Testament language. In the Temple, the faithful were ritually purified with water. Blood from animal sacrifices was sprinkled on them to atone for sin. But what you have on any given Sunday in worship is by far better than all the Old Testament sacrifices and rituals combined. Here, Christ gathers you into His presence and gives you His gifts. When we come here, we approach the presence of God with all our embarrassment and shame and guilt of our sin, so we confess—and wonder of wonders—God absolves you—publicly, externally, out loud—so that your heart hears it and your conscience rests. Then something astonishing happens: God invites you even closer. The Old Testament Temple had a room called the Holy of Holies: it was where God was so present that His holiness was lethal. The High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies once a year, and they would tie a rope around him in case he died while he was in there. But now? Christ tears the curtain. He brings the Holy of Holies to you. And because He died, you don’t die. You’ve been ritually purified with baptismal water and now He sprinkles you holy with His own Blood in the Lord’s Supper. You don’t just enter God’s holy presence—His holy presence enters you. You are what you eat. His holy Body and Blood makes you holy. No more lambs, no more blood on the altar, no more wondering if God’s wrath is appeased. It is. Christ is enough. In the church service, God serves you. It’s why we call it the Divine Service. And it’s where the once-and-for-all sacrifice on the cross is sprinkled into your hands and into your mouth again and again and again. You are forgiven, you are forgiven, you are forgiven. And you’re not alone. You gather with brothers and sisters—some you know, some you don’t. Some are in pews across the world. Some are in glory. The altar becomes a table that stretches into eternity. This Supper doesn’t isolate you; it unites you to Christ and to His body, the Church.

Hebrews 10 says the Holy Spirit bears witness to your confidence in Christ—and it’s a confidence not just in your heart, but ritually, publicly, outside of you. Your reason for confidence is objective: it’s in water, Word, bread and wine. The Lord’s Supper is where you chew on forgiveness, where you swallow the vitamin of the cross, where you join the disciples in the upper room, where you taste resurrection life. When you partake of the Lord’s Supper, you are experiencing nothing less than Heaven on Earth. Every Sunday, Jesus creates a little pocket of Heaven and He invites you into its presence.

You might think you need to bring something. Some devotion. Some spiritual progress. Some inner strength. The only thing you bring is your need. The cross is sufficient for your forgiveness and salvation. Faith is believing that what Jesus did is enough. Faith is believing that despite all your quirks, cringe, and sins, Jesus is more than enough reason for confidence in Heaven and on Earth. So come—come with confidence. Not in yourself, but in Christ who invites you, feeds you, forgives you, and never forgets you…except for your sins. It is here where, every single time, He remembers again to forget your sins forever.