Psalm 68:28 “Thy God hath commanded thy strength: strengthen, O God, that which thou hast wrought for us.”
The principle of confirmation in the Bible
The word ‘confirmation’ comes from the Latin word ‘confirmare’, which means: make firm, strengthen, and establish. It is particularly needed when something begins to shake or waver. It is apt to engender stability where there is fluctuation, and certainty where vacillation is on the rise.
Happily for us, the Scripture attests in many places that God will confirm us time and again, for so is the desire of His heart. The apostle Paul goes as far as to affirm that this divine intervention is an intrinsic part of the gospel, and that Jesus Himself preached it all along. Addressing the Romans he wrote:
Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began” (Rom. 16:25).
Paul obviously believed—on the basis of divine revelations—that God was going to establish him as often as the need may require.
To the Corinthians he declared, “Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God” (2 Corinthians 1:21). And to the Thessalonians he wrote:
And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you, so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints” (1 Thess. 3:12,13).
And again:
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work” (2 Thess. 2:16,17).
And to leave no room for doubts he added, “But the Lord is faithful, who shall establish you, and keep you from evil” (2 Thess. 3:3).
Likewise Peter wrote, “But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you” (1 Peter 5:10). Peter could not have been any clearer.
These few scriptures among others convey a few questions: Is this divine confirmation part of the gospel we preach? If not, why not? And is it part of the gospel we believe? One thing is certain: Jesus and Paul preached and believed it.
God knows our frame
In Psalm 103:13 we read, “As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him”. God pities us because “He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust”(Psalm 103:14). So He is always on the watch to assist us in view to confirm our very heart.
Abraham our example
Abraham, the father of us all, is a perfect example of a human in need of confirmations.
Stephen tells us that “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran” (Acts 7:2,3) and told him, “I will make you a great nation” (Gen. 12:2).
Years later God appeared to him again by the terebinth tree of Moreh and said to him, “To your descendants I will give this land” (Gen. 12:7). This was the second overwhelming experience Abraham had with the God of glory, and it was also the second time the promise was given to him, which declared he would certainly have descendants.
Now think about it. To have God appearing to you once is already mind-blowing, and to hear Him asserting you will have offspring is rather convincing. But this powerful promise came to Abraham twice, and this with an overpowering sight of the divine Majesty.
The third confirmation
Then God spoke to him again after Lot had separated from him:
Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are—northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendant forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered” (Gen. 13:14–16).
This is the third time God tells Abraham he will have descendants. Twice the promise was accompanied with an apparition of God. Nevertheless, as we are about to see, it was not going to be sufficient for Abraham. Soon the visible was going to shake his faith, causing him to wonder what had happened with God’s promise.
The fourth confirmation
Then comes Genesis 15. There we see how Abraham’s faith begins to shake and his expectation vacillate. “Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” (Gen. 15:2). And again, “You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!” (Gen.15:3).
Here Abraham shows himself dubious although the promise had been confirmed thrice in a most overwhelming fashion. God had told him three times he would have descendants, nonetheless it was not sufficient to consolidate Abraham’s faith once for all. Without subsequent confirmations Abraham would have made Eliezer of Damascus his heir. What a blunder this would have been! What a catastrophe!
Happily, God stooped down one more time to establish and strengthen the faith of Abraham.
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.” Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be” (Gen. 15:4,5). And in the 13th verse of the same chapter God tells him, “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.”
“Know certainly”, God told Abraham. This is what a divine confirmation engenders: certainty—a certainty that might be transient, but certainty nevertheless.
The faith of Abraham was kept strong because God faithfully visited him time and again. I suggest Abraham might not have got as far as he did without these repeated confirmations.
Fifth confirmation
Then comes Genesis 17. Here again the Lord is strengthening the faith of Abraham.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.” Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying: “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God” (Gen. 17:1–8).
Paving the way of faith
So we have five confirmations which prepared and helped Abraham to believe the promise; five confirmations strengthening the faith of the one of whom it is written:
And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God” (Rom. 4:19,20)”.
This is the work of God. He alone can keep our faith alive. He alone can visit us in such a way as to establish and confirm that which shakes and fluctuates. Abraham was not weak in faith neither did he waver because God strengthened him recurrently through revelations and reconfirmations.
Let us follow Abraham’s example and give glory to God, for indeed His mercy towards us endures forever.
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