Monday, January 2, 2012

Confessing Or Denying Christ?

I just have to do a post on the sermon from Church yesterday...it was very thought provoking. It comes from Luke 12: 4-12. I ask that you read the passage really quickly, and I'll quote the verses when they become important.

The Passage mainly deals with the idea of Hypocrisy. In this case, Hypocrisy is when you have lived for Christ, but because of some fear you deny Him as being your Lord and Savior (Basically...it definitely goes more in-depth then that...but I'm too lazy to get that far into that piece. I apologize.) Basically, there's two points. Let's start with the first:

I. We Must Beware Of The Sin Of Hypocrisy Because Hypocrites Will Face God's Judgment.

I must say, this selection of text is really interesting. Jesus says some very serious things in here. This Hypocrisy thing occurs as a direct result from fearing the thoughts or actions of man against us if we confess Jesus as our Lord and Savior. As seen from Jesus' speech, there is danger in it...Eternal Judgment from God. But why is this? This happens when we are more fearful of men who can only destroy the body (To us humans the body and our physical well-being seems to be of greater importance, understandably so) then the One who can A. Destroy body anyway B. but can also send you to a place where all Evil is enclosed: Hell.

We can sometimes fear man's judgment more then God's. In our own minds, we bring up the opinions of man more then God's opinions. When we do that, we're throwing our allegiance at men instead of our God, who can really do something about us. We must always take into account of how God will judge us then men will. The judgment of this issue from God is really severe. Even the idea of severity seems a little down-played when trying to express this 'judgment'. This leads us into our Second point:

II. We Must Confess Christ, Even Unto Death, Because We Will Stand Before God For Eternal Judgment.

And I practically already declared that, so let's dig a little bit deeper. I've said we have to confess Jesus. But what does Confessing our Lord and Savior actually MEAN? Is it by words? By actions? Perhaps both? We need to show that through our lives and our words, we openly acknowledge that we follow Jesus Christ. As I already said, in order to confess Christ more effectively, we MUST (I can't stress it enough) take in and fear the judgment of God MORE then we fear the Judgment of man. I've said that several times already...and that only shows how important it is.

So here we have it, Jesus going on about God's Judgment...and that can sound like he's a pretty...mean being. But he switches tracks. Verses 6 through 7 are REALLY comforting. Here they are: "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. "

What is he REALLY getting at here? Well, we must also trust in the loving, providential care of the Father in order to confess Jesus. Two pennies...now that's not much. It shows of how much value five sparrows are...and that's VERY little. But yet, God doesn't forget them. How much more will He not forget you, a creation made in His own image and crafted by His own marvelous hands? Exactly. You are more valuable then sparrows for sure, so you won't be forgotten.

In order to confess Christ as well, we must count on His faithful promises. Jesus makes some promises in the following verses. Read verse 8 to the end of verse 12 again. He says some more interesting things here. It seems like He is hinting at the 'Unpardonable' Sin. What were the Pharisees doing? Well...they were speaking against Jesus. But Jesus said that anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. Okay...so they could be forgiven from that...so that's not necessarily where they have it all wrong. But what do they have wrong, then? Well, in Chapter 11 the Pharisees attribute Jesus' Power to the work of the Devil...now that's a serious matter.

You may be able to speculate that the Holy Spirit of God is where Jesus' Power is. Well, maybe that's not exactly right, because Jesus is God so He is all powerful...and yet, he's also 'Man'. Either way, the Holy Spirit does the tugging of the heart to the right direction. But the Pharisees didn't give in. They didn't let the Holy Spirit bring them to the only one who could actually save them. So maybe you've Denied Christ at some point. Maybe in a fit of anger, you've even spoken out against Him. But He says that He will forgive you for that...but at all times, you have to let the Holy Spirit move you to Him. You must know that you've done wrong, but if you have a heart and you really WANT to come to Him, then I believe you're on the right track. We must also rely on the instruction of the Holy Spirit to confess Christ when we are right there under attack for Our Faith. Also, the way to be ready to Confess Christ under pressure is to start Confessing Him now when you don't have any persecution going on. Well, we may have social 'persecution' today in America, but we don't have any real means of 'persecution' here to worry about...at least for awhile.

I think this is running a bit long. I had more thoughts to communicate (I think, because I always do) it's just a matter of remembering to say them in posts on here...which quite frankly I ALWAYS seem to forget.

On that note, see ya later.

2 comments:

Karyn Payne said...

These are all really good thoughts. This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. I think there is one point you forgot to mention, though.
In the part where it says "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows".-- people can't judge you as extremely as God, but they can't love you as extremely either. Their opnions are of little worth, because you are of little worth to them. So why do we even try to please them?
Also, God doesn't send ANYBODY to Hell. They send themselves. Don't get me wrong, God is definitely One to be feared, I just think that fear gets taken out of context a lot. You don't fear Him because if He's mad at you He will eternally kill you; you fear Him because He has every right not to let you into Heaven if you disown Him. I think that makes sense.
Good job, though. I enjoyed reading this.

Karyn Payne said...

There's something else I forgot to say. When we "confesses" Christ, it's not like we are admitting Him like He's something we have to be ashamed of. I think what we are confessing, indirectly, is that we are sinners are in need of a Savior.