The second word I want to lift up is the word ...

II. Confidence!

Our Lord is always going before us. "Jesus is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see Him there." The fact that He goes before us, preparing the way, gives us great confidence. When the son of William Sloan Coffin, a distinguished American preacher, was killed in an automobile accident, Coffin preached a sermon with this title: My Son Beat Me to the Grave.

How could he preach such a sermon in that context? I can tell you how. He was and is confident in the resurrection. Our Lord goes ahead of us, and promises that we shall see Him there. In fact, we are promised in the Bible that we shall see Him face-to-face. He stands with us and goes ahead of us in our suffering. He has gone before us in death and the Resurrection assures us of victory. If you study the Bible with care, the case can be made that God is a "Go-Ahead-God."

When Moses and the children of Israel faced the trackless waste of the desert wilderness, God went before them by day in a pillar of cloud and by night He stayed among them with a flaming fire.

Through years of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, through good times and exile and wars and calamities of every kind that one can only imagine, God always went before His people wherever they were, whatever their needs, dispatching His prophets among them to tell them the truth and consequences of disobedience.

God had gone before the women rushing to the tomb to roll the stone away. God is always and forever going before us, not only to prepare the way, but to sustain us in the way in which we should walk.

With His resurrection, the mission of the church was about to begin. He had gathered twelve disciples. One of them, the one who betrayed Him, had hung himself by now; another had denied Him with an oath. But now He was risen from the dead and going before His disciples to Galilee, where they were to meet Him. How can we doubt one who is always preparing the way and providing for our every need in life and in the life to come?

One of the most poignant moments I ever experience as a minister is when I stand by a grave side when a veteran of military service is being accorded the final salute. There is a volley of shots and then "Taps" is played. Some months back, a soldier made an unusual request in writing to the military:

"When I die," he wrote, "do not sound taps over my grave, but reveille, the morning call, the summons to rise."3

He could make his request with confidence because he knew our Savior had gone before him, not only in death, but in Resurrection. There is no place that we can go that He has not been, there is no place that we need to go that He has not been before. An unknown poet captured it for me:

The road is rough, dear Lord, I said,

These are stones that hurt me so.

Yes, child, He answered, I understand

For I walked this way long ago...

My burden, Lord, is far too great,

How can I bear it so.

Yes, child, I remember its weight,