Luke 12:8-12
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Luke’s gospel. Our reading today is chapter
12, verses 8 through 12, which you can find in the Pew Bible
on page 871. As we make our way through Luke’s
gospel, we hear the teaching of Jesus to his disciples about
confessing the name of the Lord Jesus. So we want to give our
attention to the reading and also the preaching of God’s word
here from the pages of scripture, the very word of God. This is
Luke’s gospel, chapter eight, beginning at verse eight. Jesus
says this, and I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men,
the son of man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. But
the one who denies me before men will be denied before the
angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word
against the son of man will be forgiven. But the one who blasphemes
against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. And when they
bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities,
do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what
you should say. For the Holy Spirit will teach
you in that very hour what you ought to say. Pray with me. Lord, our prayer is this, that
you would speak as we come to you to receive the food of your
holy word, that you would take your truth and plant it deep
within us, that you would shape us and fashion us into your likeness
and that the light of Christ might be seen today in our acts
of love and in our deeds of faith. Our prayer, Lord, is that you
would speak, but also that we would hear and receive your word,
not as the word of men, but is the very word of the living God. We make our prayer in the name
of the living word, even Jesus Christ. And it’s in his name
we pray. Amen. What does it mean to confess
Christ? What does it mean to confess
the name of Jesus? Well, I want to tell you today,
it means way more than we probably believe. And it means way more
than the average person on the street believes it to mean. If you walk through any Southern
American town and you look at a person randomly on the street
and say, are you a Christian? The likely answer is yes. In
fact, in the southern United States, you’ll find that about
65 percent of the population in the southeastern United States
believes that they are Christian in their religion. But what does
it mean to really confess Christ? What does it mean to say not
just that that I am a Christian, but I confess the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ? Well, here’s the the nickel answer. Here’s the the CliffsNotes answer. Here’s the what does it mean
to confess Christ for dummies answer, as it were. It means
this. It means you believe the Bible
to be true. It means that what the Bible
says about you is true. What does the Bible say about
you? It says that you’re a sinner and that you are lost and without
hope except for the mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So you believe the Bible to be true. You believe what the Bible
says about you is true. Third thing is you believe what
the Bible says about Jesus is true, that if you confess with
your lips, if you believe with your heart that Jesus is Savior,
you will be saved. You believe the Bible to be true.
You believe what the Bible says about you is true, that you’re
a sinner. But you also believe that what the Bible says about
Jesus, including its exclusive truth claims, that I am the way,
Jesus says, and the truth and the life, that no one comes to
the Father except through me. We believe the Bible. We believe
what the Bible says about us. We believe what the Bible says
about Jesus. But the fourth thing, we believe
what the Bible says a disciple of Christ must be and do. We believe that we are to become
lifelong followers of Jesus. Following his ways, learning
his truths, identifying with his people, living by the spirit
and not the flesh, following the scriptures and not the world,
and Jesus being our Lord, not Satan. We believe that we should
live transformed lives by God’s word, by God’s grace, by God’s
spirit. And as we identify with his people
in the house of worship and in the Christian community, we live
in a way that is on display before the watching world where people
begin to say about you, who are you and where have you come from? Your life. Your speech, your
way of living in this dark and dying world and in the midst
of this crooked and depraved generation is so radically different
from people who are not Christians, not Christ followers, not people
of the scriptures, not people with transformed lives, not people
filled with the Holy Spirit. Your life is so radically different
that people look at you like an alien from another planet.
Well, we remember the language of the Bible. which remember
we believe is true. We remember that we believe what
the Bible says about us to be true, not just that we’re sinners,
but also how we ought to live as disciples. We’re much like
the character in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. We’re not worldly. We’re not jealous of the things
of this earth. Our eyes are on the gates of
heaven and we’re on that path and we diligently seek a home
that is not here but there. And people look at us like we
really are strangers and aliens. We are citizens of heaven. We
are just passing through as sojourners on earth. But dear friends, when
you ask a person in southeastern United States, are you a Christian?
65% will say yes. But you know what the statistics
tell us? That only about 25% of them truly
confess Jesus. Isn’t that very interesting?
We live in the cultural Christian South where almost two thirds
of the population say, I’m a Christian, where the statistics tell us
the reality that only about a fourth of those people truly confess
Christ in the way I describe. They believe the Bible to be
true. They believe that what the Bible says about them is
true. They believe that what the Bible says about Jesus, including
his exclusive claim to be the only way of salvation, is true.
And they believe, or we believe, you believe, that the way of
a Christian disciple is laid out for us in Scripture. Now,
there’s a term. that has been thrown around American
Christianity for years. And it’s probably about time
to toss that term. In fact, so many now are tossing
it out the door, but the term is evangelical and it’s rooted
in the Greek word of the New Testament, the euangelion or
the good news. And what is the good news? The
good news is the gospel. It’s the good news that Jesus
Christ has come into the world to save sinners. If the Bible
is true, If what the Bible says about mankind is true, that they’re
dead in their sins and trespasses, and if what the Bible says is
true about Jesus being the only way of salvation, then being
an evangelical or a good news gospel person is a great place
to be. Now this word evangelical meant
something in the 1700s when you had Jonathan Edwards and the
great preachers of the great awakenings where they preached
the unadulterated pure word of God and people by God’s Spirit’s
power got saved. And not only were there mass
conversions but there were mass cultural changes. People lived
and died just as I described to you. They were aliens and
strangers. They looked nothing like the
world as they renounced ungodliness and followed Jesus. That trickled
into the 1800s with continued revival and reformation and even
into the 1900s. But somewhere around the 1950s,
evangelicals quit believing in the word of God. They quit believing
what the word of God said about man, and they definitely quit
believing what the word of God said about Jesus. And we’ve seen
two things come out of these unbeliefs. If you don’t believe
the Bible and you don’t believe what the Bible says about man
and you don’t believe what the Bible says about Jesus, you’ve
thrown evangelical out the door. You’ve thrown good news out the
door. But we’ve seen it come manifest in two ways. The rise
of liberalism in the mainline churches. Do they believe the
Bible? Not for a long time, not for 100 years in the north and
maybe about 50, 60 years here in the south. Do they believe
what the word of God says about man being sinful in need of grace
and mercy Christ? They believe man is inherently
good and he can pull himself or herself up by their bootstraps
and they can save themselves by bettering their lives and
serving others. Do they believe the exclusive
claims of Jesus as laid out in the Bible? No. We’ve seen that
in the rise of liberalism in the mainline churches. But the
other way we’ve seen it, we’ve seen it in the rise of what are
called evangelical churches. And this is now the reason for
throwing that term out the window. We’ve not wanted to offend people
because people don’t like authority anymore. And so a preacher no
longer stands behind a pulpit with his Bible front and center.
Pulpits have been completely removed from modern American
churches. And if there’s anything, it’s a glass stand that’s transparent.
And the preacher or the teacher or whatever the guru calls themselves,
they stand up in front of the people with their hands in their
pocket, never to see a Bible. Hardly is it ever quoted. And
if it is, it’s used poorly to promote what they say. And so
the Bible has been removed. Now, we don’t want to offend
people and discourage them from coming to church. So we definitely
don’t say they’re sinners. We talk about how broken they
are. We talk about how hurt they are and we talk about how their
feelings need to be coddled and affirmed. But we never get to
the gospel because that’s actually bad news. And so the person of
Jesus is not front and center, but self-help. A little advice,
eight steps to have a better life. And so the liberals have
tossed out the Bible, the doctrine of man, the doctrine of Jesus.
But the evangelicals have as well. And both, I think, were
well-meaning in some way, shape or form. But their end results,
disastrous. And so, dear brothers and sisters,
what’s at stake? What’s at stake if we want to
be Bible Christians? Or we want to really be evangelical. What’s at stake if we want to
be a church that truly confesses Christ, all of him and all of
his demands and commands as Lord over the church? What are the
statistics in America tell us? Well, the statistics don’t help
our cause out much. In fact, they can lead you to
a period of state of depression. The statistics regarding the
evangelical church in America say that every decade, the 80s,
the 90s, the 2000s, because the word of God was not upheld, the
doctrine of the sinfulness of man was not proclaimed, and Jesus
as the way of salvation was watered down, both in the mainline liberal
churches and in modern evangelical churches trying to be cute and
pull people in. In both cases, the decline of
the church was 3 percent. But in the last decade, it’s
hitting 12 percent. And they say we’ll grow to 15
to 20 percent in the decade to come. You’re seeing not just
steady decline, but monumental decline. And that’s in what Americans
would call the evangelical church. It’s not what we would define
it as today because it’s strayed. But there is a serious, sharp
decline within evangelicalism. But think about the statistics
for just the church in America in general, or Christianity in
general in America. It used to be that 85% of Americans
said they were Christians. And then it dropped to 81%. And
then it dropped to 73%. Today it’s down to 65%. And so
you’ve seen a 20% decline in the last 20 years of people in
America who say they are Christians. But that decline outside the
church, or outside the evangelical Bible-believing confessing church,
is rapidly going down, down, down. And you couple that with
the rise of atheism. Atheism used to rise by about
a quarter of a percent per year. Now it’s rising by about 3% per
year. So you’ve got the decline of
the church. Decline of Christianity in America, the rise of atheism,
the rise of agnosticism, and the rise of a new category which
is called the nuns. People just say I’m nothing.
I’m not a Christian, I’m not a Muslim, I’m not a Jew, I’m
not a Baptist, I’m not a Presbyterian, I’m not a Methodist, I’m not
an Episcopalian. I’m a nun. I believe nothing. I do nothing. My religion is hanging out at
Starbucks with friends. My religion is bettering my life
through yoga or getting a master’s degree and making more money. You see this worldview all around
us. The statistics are telling us of a rapid decline in the
church and Christianity and a rapid increase in agnosticism, atheism,
and the nuns. And so how does this passage
of scripture today encourage us? What does it tell us about
the need to confess Christ faithfully in this world? What does it tell
us about the future of the church? What does it tell us about the
future of evangelicalism or biblical Christianity, particularly in
the Southeast or in the United States? What does it tell us
about what we face in the years ahead as a Christian person? Jesus is with his disciples and
they are making their way to Jerusalem where Jesus will suffer
and die and pay the ransom for the sins of his people and put
an end to all the Levitical ordinances and sacrifices. He will die for
the once and for all forgiveness of sins. He’ll put an end, the
curtain of the tabernacle, the temple will be torn in two and
Jesus will be the focus. along with preaching and sacraments
for the church in the ages to come. Jesus is with his disciples
on the way for that to happen, though. They’re on their way
to Jerusalem, and we have already seen Jesus meets his antagonist. He meets his detractors. He meets
those who oppose him, mainly the Pharisees. But also, as Israel
is no longer really identifiable as a Yahweh-fearing nation, Because
for several hundred years it’s been in decline because of the
exiles, the small return, and then the overpowerment of the
Roman Empire. You are seeing Jesus not only
up against the Pharisees, but up against a spreading secular
Roman culture. Maybe not unlike where we find
ourselves today and increasingly secularizing even pagan culture. Nevertheless, Jesus tells his
disciples over and over, and he teaches us here in 2020, this
is my kingdom. I am the king. These are the
values of the kingdom. This is the mission of the kingdom. And what Jesus is going to show
us in this passage is there are two courts. Two courts of judgment. One is on earth with man as the
judge. And remember the last study,
if you fear man, well, all they can do is kill you and nothing
else. But there’s a second court, that’s the heavenly court where
God, the Father Almighty is judge, where the angels are witnesses
and Jesus is our advocate or our attorney. And there is a
whole different outcome for when men judge us, they can only put
us to death. But when God judges us, he can not only put us to
death, but he can cast us into hell forever. And so there are
two courts. There are two outcomes. And Jesus
presses with his disciples. He presses with us today three
various serious subjects. The first, those who acknowledge
or deny Jesus. The second, those who blaspheme
the Holy Spirit. And the third, what to do when
you’re put on trial in the courts of men. So let’s pick through
these very briefly. First of all, Jesus speaks about
those who acknowledge and those who deny him. Notice what he
says in verse 8 and verse 9. And I tell you, everyone who
acknowledges me before men, the son of man will also acknowledge
before the angels of God. But the one who denies me before
men will be denied before the angels of God. Jesus puts before his disciples
the critical decision, will you acknowledge Jesus or will you
deny him? Will you acknowledge him as Lord
and master, as savior of sinners as the scripture teaches, or
will you deny him? I mentioned earlier that a person
who confesses Christ believes the Bible to be true. They believe
that what the Bible says about them, namely that they’re sinners
in need of mercy, is true. And that Jesus, as he’s freely
offered in the gospel of the scripture, is the only way of
salvation. And so to acknowledge Christ
is to acknowledge these things. In fact, these things come out
in our membership vows when a person stands before you. And comes
into the membership of our church, they’re asked several questions.
One, do you believe you’re a sinner? Two, do you believe Christ is
the way of salvation? Three, do you believe the Bible,
the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments? are the inherent
and fallible word of God and what they say, what they teach
and what they demand and command are absolutely true. Do you believe
those three things? They’re a little bit out of a
different order than what I stated to you earlier, but the same
content. And if that person affirms that they have confessed Christ.
Now, couldn’t someone confess Christ and profess faith, but
not possess faith? I mean, we could be good car
salesmen, can’t we? We were joking about this in
Sunday school. What’s it going to take for me to put you in
this car today? Well, evangelism in America, particularly in the
last hundred years, has come down to that. Evangelism is something
like this nowadays. You don’t want to go to hell
now, do you? And most of the time, not all the time, the person
says, of course not. And what do we say? Well, you
just say this prayer. And you’re saved. And so it’s easy to confess
Jesus. It’s easy to profess faith. But
has the person really grasped what these things mean? One of
my jobs as a minister is to prepare the congregation to make vows
and to prepare the congregation to keep vows. Yesterday I spent
an hour and a half with Ben and Jennifer, who on June 27th will
stand in front of a church and say, I do. My job, I was telling
them yesterday, is to make sure that when you say I do, that
you will. And you will until death do you
part. Even in American Christianity. Not just outside the church,
but inside the church, we’re seeing divorce rates at north
of 50 percent. And so one of my jobs is to help
people prepare to make and keep their vows. Last week, we baptized
a little one. I think I met at the same restaurant
with the couple that is getting married with the couple that
baptized their baby. And I said, you’re going to make these vows.
You’ve already done it once before. Are you going to teach this child?
As you should be doing with your other, the fear and admonition
of the Lord. And the same is true when someone
prepares for ordination to office or church membership. My job
is to prepare you to make your vows with the full knowledge
of the fine print. and the full knowledge of what
the fine print demands of you. No bait and switch. No what’s
it going to take to get you into heaven when you die business. No, that is the ultimate goal.
No cheap salvation, no cheap offer of the gospel, but a real
deal explanation of who God is, who you are, what you are apart
from Christ and what you can be in Christ. And the way of
Christian living before a holy God, well, it’s serious business
to acknowledge the Lord Jesus. And we want to prepare people
for that acknowledgement. But we also want to warn people,
do not deny Jesus. Do not deny the gospel of salvation. For what is the warning Jesus
gives? He says, if you acknowledge me, I’ll acknowledge you. But
if you deny me, you will be denied before the angels of God. What a serious thing it is to
confess Christ. But what a great offense it is
to deny or to disown him. And so there’s this first section
in verses eight and nine about acknowledging or denying Christ. The second. thing that comes
to us is blasphemy. We find it in verses, well, just
verse 10. And this is a tough subject. And Jesus says, and everyone
who speaks a word against the son of man, he’ll be forgiven. But the one who speaks or blasphemes
against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Now this requires
a little sophisticated explanation. The general call of the gospel
goes out, out, out. We preach Jesus. We preach salvation. We preach sin. We preach hell.
We preach heaven. We preach two ways to live, one
to follow Jesus, one to not follow Jesus. One way leads to salvation. The other leads to damnation.
We preach the gospel. And by God’s grace, by his spirit,
Some will hear, some will believe, some will apprehend the mercy
of God and Christ and lay hold of Jesus by faith and receive
and rest in him alone for their salvation. They will join the
church. They will identify with God’s
people that worship God on Sunday. They’ll enter into a discipleship
program and they will day by day grow in grace, Sunday by
Sunday worship and be changed and transformed. But there are
those who hear that general call of the gospel and they deny it. They hear that general call of
the gospel and they put their fist up and say, I want nothing
to do with this Jesus. How dare this word say, I am
so rotten and sinful. How dare this word say that I
need another to save me. For humanism has risen up in
their hearts. Secularism has taught them that
they are good enough and great enough. And they, if they’re
good outweighs their bad, will someday make it to heaven. What does it mean to blaspheme
the spirit? And what is the difference between,
as verse 10 says, speaking a word against the son of man, but blaspheming
against God? The Spirit of God. What does
it mean to deny Christ and be forgiven, but deny the Holy Spirit? And this be, as the Word of God
calls it in other places, the unpardonable sin. First of all, if you’re sitting
here wondering today, Am I in danger of hell for committing
the unpardonable sin? Have I committed this unpardonable
sin? And do I need to be in fear of God’s eternal judgment? Let
me just encourage you by saying, if you are thinking about this,
then you care about God and his ways and you would not want to
offend him. And that’s a good sign. For the
person who blasphemes the Holy Spirit is like a juror who sits
in a courtroom and hears testimony after testimony after testimony.
Or in the biblical language, here’s prophet after prophet
after prophet, preacher after preacher after preacher, teacher
after teacher after teacher, and then get this, the Holy Spirit
confirms and affirms that what every witness says, what every
prophet prophesies, what every teacher teaches, what every preacher
preaches, and you still have it in you to say, no thanks. That is blasphemy of the Holy
Spirit. It’s ultimately and utterly rejecting God, though the witness
of the truth of the scriptures of your sin and Jesus’ way of
salvation has been plainly and clearly put before you. Now,
there are people who barely and rarely hear God’s word. And for
them to hear and reject God’s word, maybe once or twice they
went to church or went to a revival or they got dragged by the ear
to church. And maybe once, twice, three times they didn’t hear,
they heard the word and rejected it. That’s, that’s something,
isn’t it? But what about those of us who
sat in church and sat in the pews or particularly covenant
children who’ve been brought to church by their parents and
over and over in their hearts and their minds, they say, this
Jesus thing is not for me. This is my parents’ faith. Dad
was a Buick man. I’m a Chevrolet man. Times have
changed. We don’t need faith anymore.
These are the 2020s. We’ve got other things, spirituality
of all sorts. I don’t need this old faith of
my parents. I don’t need to believe in some
dead Jew that supposedly rose from the dead and all the rest.
Christianity is a crutch. Isn’t it so much more serious
when we’ve sat under the word, we’ve sat under God’s graces
of a good family who taught us and we’ve sat under the ministry
of the church and we still reject. Dear friends, if you have heard
the voice of the living God and the spirit of the living God
has come to you and said, these words are true, this testimony
comes to you with power and testimony and evidence and you don’t believe,
oh, what a What a great morning Jesus gives. You’ll be denied
before the angels of God. That sin cannot be forgiven.
I want you to think, though, about this from another perspective. You know that when you become
a Christian, you still have remaining sin in you. It’s been pardoned.
It’s been subdued by God’s grace. But we have remaining sin in
us. Paul calls it the flesh in Romans 7. And he says, I know
the thing I ought to do. And that’s the thing I don’t
do. I know the thing I ought not to do. And that’s the very thing
I do. We know that struggle, don’t we? And even greater than
that, we know the struggle that when we are tempted to sin, when
the word of God by the Holy Spirit comes to our mind and says, Kratz,
don’t do that. Smith, don’t do that. It’s wrong. It’s against the scripture. You
know better than the pastor preached on it on Sunday. It was in your
devotional yesterday. You’ve been running back to the
same filth over and over again, and the word and the spirit are
in you because you have sat under the truth of God’s word and you
continue to say to God, just one more. I’ll ask for forgiveness
later. We understand, right, that the
struggle of the Christian life is we deal with remaining sin.
We deal with the world and all it entices. We deal with the
devil and his deception and his temptations. We deal with our
own flesh. And like Paul, our desires from the flesh sometimes
win out over our desires of the spirit. That is not blasphemy. That is not an unpardonable sin.
It’s just the way of Christian living. Until we get to heaven,
we will continue to struggle a lifelong, perpetual, unending
war with sin until we’re glorified. That’s not what blasphemy is.
That’s not the unpardonable sin. Paul calls it in some places
quenching the spirit. You hear the truth and you Hose
it down because it’s ruining your social life, right? We know
these struggles. We remember St. Augustine, the
great fourth century, who prayed one time when he was enjoying
life with a mistress. He said, Lord, save me, but not
yet. Having too much fun. Don’t save
me just yet. Let me enjoy this for just a
little while longer. That’s how deceitful sin is. That’s how deceitful the remaining
sin in our hearts. is. We may grieve the Holy Spirit
in our pathway towards heaven, but those who blaspheme, that
cannot be forgiven. And so we must hear and believe
the gospel as it is preached and taught, but also as the Spirit
testifies. There’s a final help Jesus gives,
and you find it in verse 11 and 12. When they bring you before
the synagogues, When they bring you before the rulers, when they
bring you before the authorities, do not be anxious about how you
should defend yourself or what you should say. For the Holy
Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you should say.
I think y’all can tell I’ve read a lot of statistics this week.
And one of the interesting statistics that I did read about evangelism
is this. 70 percent of Christians think
we should evangelize. I don’t know what the other 30%
are thinking. Like, what about the Great Commission being witnesses,
you know, telling about Jesus, he saved us. We want him to save
others. I can’t figure out what those other 30% are doing, thinking
it’s not biblical. But 70% think we should. That’s
good. That’s a high number. But guess
what? Only 8% do it. And you know,
one of the greatest objections, maybe it’s not an objection,
it’s a hindrance. One of the greatest reasons we don’t evangelize,
we’re afraid to. I won’t say it right. I don’t
know enough Bible. I’m not educated like the elders
or I’m new to this Christian faith. Well, these disciples
were too. These were Galilean fishermen. I mean, if these weren’t
uneducated, blue collar people, I don’t know who else was. This
is Peter, fisherman. This is, you know, some of these
guys, they didn’t get out of the eighth grade. And what does
Jesus tell them? You’re going to get hauled in
front of synagogues. You’re going to be judged and
you’re going to have to defend yourself. Don’t worry, the Holy
Spirit will help you. So when your grandchild asks
you, dear grandma, what’s this Jesus stuff you believe? Just
start talking. Your faith and the Holy Spirit’s
help will be good. Or your children asking, Mom,
Dad, what’s this Jesus stuff? Just start talking. The Holy
Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.
But think about some of the other things we’ve said. If you’re
a Christian who’s confessed Christ, you believe the Bible is true,
you believe what the Bible says about you is true, and you believe
what the Bible says about Jesus is true, you’ve got something
to say. And with the Holy Spirit’s help,
you’re going to be fine. And so, dear friends, as we can
see from this passage today, As well as what the statistics
are telling us, there are people who confess Jesus. But the reality
of their confession are two different things. And so let it be said
of each and every one of us today that we confess Christ. the Christ
of the scriptures. We confess our sinfulness and
humility and submission to what God says about us. We affirm
the Bible to be true because we know these things to be true,
but we know there is eternity at stake. For Jesus says, everyone
who acknowledges me, I will also acknowledge before my father
in heaven. Thanks be to God that Jesus has
opened up the way for us to stop denying him and to acknowledge
him through faith in him. Let us pray together. Lord, what
a serious thing it is to deny the Lord Jesus. And Lord, what
a serious thing it is to to profess a weak Jesus, unbiblical
Jesus, unfaithful doctrine of the gospel. Lord, so help us
to sharpen our skills by learning what the Bible says about us,
about Jesus, about the way of salvation, so that we can clearly
and plainly and fully and in a unaltered way offer Jesus as
he is in the gospels. Lord, you don’t need rescuing.
You don’t need apologizing for. You are what you are and you
offer what you offer in the word. So let us put our trust in the
scripture. Let us be true to the scriptures,
faithful to the great commission, and let us be great evangelists. Help us and hear us as we make
our prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen. We want to respond to God’s
goodness and even affirm some of these great truths by using
number 424, all authority and power. Turn there and we’ll stand
and sing together.