Once again, Matthew 10, verses 32 to 33. Let's give our attention now to the Word of God. Therefore, whoever confesses me before men, him I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Holy Scripture and we pray for ears to hear it today. We ask, Father, that you would help us to grasp what we hear today in this passage in Matthew. Lord, we know that we can hear it physically, but not hear it spiritually. not hear it in our hearts, such that we believe it and we respond to it in faith. And so we pray, Lord, that you would work in each and every one of our hearts today through this passage of scripture. I pray for those who are here today who are not saved. They don't know Christ as their Savior. And I ask, Lord, that you would open their heart to the gospel as your word is proclaimed, and that you would save them. Lord, I pray for your people here today and ask that you would cause them to be edified and strengthened, built up in the faith that we might be the disciples of Christ that you want us to be, that we might be a people who is eager to confess our faith in Jesus Christ. We pray all these things in his name. The year was 325, 325 A.D., and one of the most important councils in the history of the church was being held. It was the Council of Nicaea. Now, many things happened at the Council of Nicaea, and it's not my purpose to talk about all those things today, but the one thing I want to mention is who was there at the Council of Nicaea. You know, you had these bishops, leaders of the church, who were assembled together in order to meet together as the church, but there was a particular group of people that they stood in awe of. It was a group of people that they had great respect for, deep respect for. And so someone like Paphnutius, didn't they have great names back then? Paphnutius was someone who came to the council of Nicaea and Paphnutius was missing an eye and his knee was messed up, his body was mutilated. And the reason why Paphnutius had these physical deformities was because he had been tortured in the persecutions that had occurred years before in the Roman Empire. Pathnodius and those like him were known as confessors. They had that special title because they had been brought before the local authorities, the Roman magistrates, and been called to give an account for themselves. And what they did was they boldly confessed that they were Christians, that they believed in Jesus Christ. And because of that, they suffered torture and suffered imprisonment and various other forms of abuse. And so when these men came into the council of Nicaea, they were held in honor, and they were known as the confessors. Now, I stand in awe of things like that. I read things like that, and I say in my heart, without the grace of God, I couldn't do it. And it would only be by the grace of God that I could do that. But in reality, it's not just a special group of people in the church, or a special group of people in the history of the church who are confessors. Every single Christian is a confessor. What's a confessor? It's someone who says, I believe in Jesus Christ. I am loyal to Him. I belong to Him. We come to this next portion here of Matthew chapter 10, and this passage is very simple. It is about confession or denial. Which one of these two things will we do? Will we confess our faith in Christ or will we deny that we know Christ? So we're going to look at these two things today and think about the importance of declaring your faith in Jesus Christ publicly. Of course, first we will begin with confessing Christ, that's in verse 32, and then we'll look at the flip side of that, denying Christ in verse 33. We're here in Matthew chapter 10, and Jesus is instructing his disciples. He's teaching his disciples, and he begins, or the chapter begins here in Matthew 10, with Jesus calling the 12. He calls the 12, and they are identified by name at the beginning of the chapter. And then Jesus gives them a commission. He gives them their mission, what He wants them to do. They are to go out and preach the kingdom of heaven, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, do all of these things in the name of Christ. And then we moved on to talk about the persecution that was going to come to these men because they were Christ's representatives. They were going out as His apostles, that is to say, His sent ones. And so because they were going to go out and represent Jesus, they were going to face all kinds of persecution, all kinds of difficulty on account of the name of Christ. And then for the last couple of weeks, we moved on to verses 26 through 31, where Jesus exhorted them not to be afraid. Don't be afraid in spite of all these things that are going to come upon you. You're going to be brought to trial. You're going to be arrested. You might even be killed on account of your faith. But do not fear these things. Do not fear those who can inflict these things upon you, but be encouraged." And so Jesus gave His apostles encouragement that they were not to be afraid. And so last week we looked at verses 29 through 31 in which Jesus encouraged them by telling them, your father is sovereign. He's in control of everything. He wills the death of every bird. No bird, no sparrow falls to the ground apart from your heavenly Father. Apart from His will, nothing happens. And so if you are persecuted, if you are even put to death, even that does not happen apart from your Father's will. And of how much more value are you than the sparrows? So now we want to move on to verses 32 and 33. And let's think first about the connection. Because verse 32 begins with what word? Look at it. Therefore, Jesus is bringing it to a conclusion here. He is drawing a conclusion, or we might say an application, from what He has just said to His disciples. And so let's think about the connection here. Jesus says, Him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. What has Jesus been talking about? He's been talking about persecution and all the difficulties that are going to come on the apostles. What are the apostles doing as they go out as Jesus' representatives? They're confessing Him. They're speaking about Him. They're preaching Him, proclaiming Him, showing their faith in Him. What are they to do when they're arrested and brought before the authorities? What are they supposed to do then? They're supposed to confess Christ. They're supposed to say, I believe in Jesus. I belong to Jesus. That's why I'm here. I am a Christian. And so you see the connection here that Jesus has been teaching them about persecution, and now he's teaching them what their duty is in the midst of those circumstances. Their responsibility is to confess their faith in and their relationship to Christ. OK. Now, We want to begin, as I said in verse 32, with confessing Christ. Let's start with who this is for. Notice the word whoever. Therefore, whoever. Now we've said that Jesus is talking to his apostles, right? He's talking to the twelve. He's giving them instructions. And there are certain things here that are specific to them. That are relative just to them. But we've also said that this chapter was not just for the original twelve. It's for all believers. It's for the church. Not just in the first century, but in the 21st century as well. And this is one of the places where you can see that. Jesus expands out from just the 12 to whoever, anybody, whoever will do these things can expect to receive something in return. So brothers and sisters, this is for you. This is for me. Yes, this was for Peter, James and John, but it's also for you and your life today. And you can see that in that word, whoever it broadens the scope of things right to you and me now. What we're talking about here in verse 32 is confession. So we need to think about what that is. Now, I've already given it away, and you may already realize what it is from the way I've talked about it, but let's just make sure we understand this word and this idea so we know what it is we're supposed to be doing as we live for Jesus in the world. Now, when we talk about confession, we're not talking about admitting our sins. Okay, that's a different kind of confession. It is related, but we're not talking about that. When we talk about confession, we're talking about making a declaration of faith in or loyalty to someone. So when we confess Christ, we are saying, I believe in Him. Or we might say, I belong to Him. I have a relationship to Jesus Christ. I am loyal to Him. And when we make confession, we are declaring that publicly and verbally. So this is the idea of confession, that we stand up publicly and we say, I believe in Jesus. I belong to Him. Now, the Christian life is a life of confession, is it not? How do you begin the Christian life? You begin it by confessing your faith publicly. Where? How? In baptism, right? You get baptized and that baptism is a public, open before everybody, Confession of your faith in Jesus Christ. When you get baptized in water, what are you saying? You're saying, I believe in Jesus. I hereby repent of my sins and put my faith in Jesus Christ. I belong to Him. That's what you're saying, among other things, when you get baptized. We begin the Christian life with confession. Right? We also continue the Christian life with confession. One more thing before we go on to that. Romans 10, 9 and 10. Listen to Romans 10. Paul says that if you, what, confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes into righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Now, that's a familiar text to us or to many of you. Right. And what is that about? It's about what we do at conversion. We confess our faith in Jesus Christ. We do so publicly and verbally with our lips, with our words, with our mouth. Now, not only that, confession is not just something for conversion. It's not just something for the start of the Christian life. It's for the entirety of the Christian life. It's like faith and repentance, right? What do you do when God convicts you of your sins and draws you to Christ? What do you do? You turn from your sins and you put your faith in Jesus and you stop right there and you don't do that anymore, right? No. You keep on repenting and you keep on believing for the rest of your days until you die and go to be in glory or Jesus comes back. Well, in a similar way, confession is like that. Confession is something we do at the start of the Christian life. And it's an ongoing practice where we are continually saying at every given opportunity, I believe in Jesus. I'm loyal to him. I belong to him. I have excuse me, a saving relationship with him. Now, this confession, as I've already hinted at, needs to be public, it needs to be open. Notice what Jesus says, verse 32, therefore, whoever confesses me where? Before men. This confession, in other words, is to be public. It's to be open. It's to be done before men. Now, the apostles are going to go out and preach, right? And they're going to preach before men. Remember what Jesus said back in verse 27. Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light. What you hear in the air, what? Preach on the housetops. That's preaching before men. That's confessing Christ before men. So this confession that the apostles are to make is to be in front of people. It's to be public. There's another area or place where this confession needs to happen, and it's when they get arrested. It's when they get brought to trial for their Christianity. Look back at verse 17 of this chapter. For they would deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak, for it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak." What are they supposed to do? As they stand before this Roman governor, As they stand before the emperor of the Roman Empire, what are they supposed to do? They're supposed to confess Christ, right? Publicly, before men, they're supposed to stand up and say, I believe in Jesus Christ. I am a Christian. So this confession needs to be public. And the same is true for us. We are meant to confess our faith in Jesus publicly. It is not meant to be something that we hide under a bushel. It is not meant to be something that is private. Now, there is a private aspect to your faith, right? There is a private aspect to your relationship with Jesus Christ, but you're not to hide it in a corner somewhere. And our world today, our American society, and in the West more generally, Europe, for example, People are many times happy if you keep your religion in the closet. It's fine for you to be religious. It's fine for you to believe in Jesus, for now. And what we want you to do is we want to shuffle you off to a corner somewhere and we want you to be quiet. We want you to make your confession of Christ, or whatever it is you believe, something private. Do it in your own head. Do it in your own heart. But that's not Christianity. That's not the way it was meant to be, right? It was meant to be something we publicly proclaim. When we get baptized, and at any given opportunity, we say, I believe in Jesus Christ, and we do it with our mouth. We do it with our lips. We do it with our words. We do it publicly. As I told you last week, I've been reading Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and I didn't put my finger on the exact story for this morning's sermon, but I'll give you the gist. There were some people who were brought before a particular authority, and they were being threatened with torture and imprisonment in their lives themselves. And the people who came before them, these Christians, they just said some very simple words. Very simple words of, it's four words, I am a Christian. That's what they said. And they suffered for that. They suffered for saying that because they publicly proclaimed before the governmental authorities, I'm a Christian and I'm not ashamed to confess that. But as we've talked about here in Matthew chapter 10, we have a problem today, right? Perhaps some of you And perhaps all of us, if put in the right circumstances, we're afraid of going public. We're afraid of being public about our faith in Jesus. Have you ever been in that situation? Where there's some pressure around you to not talk about Christianity, or not talk about the Bible, or not talk about Jesus, and you feel that pressure? And you're like, I know I should probably say something, but I think if I do, maybe I'll get in trouble. Or maybe this situation will go south. Or maybe we'll have a confrontation or something like that. Now I know I'm not the only one who has faced pressure like that. I used to face that pressure at work, working for American Express. Great, you're a Christian, awesome. You believe certain things. OK, some of those things are welcome here. Others of those things, they're not welcome here. Keep that to yourself. What do they want me to do? They wanted me to be quiet. Don't be public about your faith in Jesus Christ. But brothers and sisters, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of the world. Don't be afraid of people. Speak boldly for Jesus. Speak boldly for Christ. Tell people you believe in Him. Tell people you belong to Him. They need to hear that. They need to know that. And you need to do it. Why? Because we profess to be His followers, right? We profess to be those who belong to Him. And if we belong to Him, why do we not speak of Him? And why do we not speak of Him publicly before all men? This is what we are meant to do. The question we must ask ourselves is this. Are we ashamed of Jesus? You say, Pastor, I'm not ashamed of Jesus. But I wonder, in some scenarios, the way I see people talk, I wonder if they are ashamed of Jesus. I wonder if they are ashamed of His Word and they don't want to speak it because they know the consequences that may come. Now, I remember being in middle school It's a long time ago. In middle school, there were certain people that you weren't supposed to be friends with. Not if you wanted to be cool, right? If you wanted to be cool, you needed to be friends with a certain group of people, with a certain select group of people. And if you were friends or if you were seen with other people, they would treat you like you had the plague. And so people were ashamed of being associated with those who were poor or with those who were a little weird, those who were a little different. And so if the question got asked, are you friends with so-and-so? The pressure was on, right? The pressure was on to say, oh, no, no, no, I'm not friends with them. Oh, no, I don't even know them. Why did we do that? We did that because we were ashamed. We were ashamed of that particular person. Now, shame on us for acting that way. But it seems sometimes that many professing Christians haven't yet gotten out of middle school yet. And so they're ashamed to own Jesus, to say, yes, I believe in Christ. I believe in the Bible and everything that's in it. But this is not what we're meant to be like. We're meant to confess and do so publicly and not be ashamed of Jesus. Finally, notice who it is we're confessing here. Therefore, whoever confesses me, it's Jesus I'm meant to talk about. It's Jesus I am meant to testify to. I am confessing a person, who he is, what his gospel is about. This all revolves around Jesus. And notice just how important Jesus is in this passage. Whoever confesses me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. Verse 33, but whoever denies me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven. Who can say that except for the Son of God? Who can say that except for the second person in the Trinity? No one can. Only Jesus, being who He is, the God-man, can say such a thing. Your eternal destiny hangs on Christ, on Jesus. You remember at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7, Jesus is the determiner of people's destiny. And you see it again here in Matthew 10. Jesus is the one in charge. You either confess Him or deny Him, and the result will be that He either confesses you or denies you in the presence of God. Do you see it that way? That your eternal destiny is bound up with Jesus Christ. And whether you confess Him or deny Him. Now, in the second part of verse 32, we have a promise. And it's a wonderful promise. In the first portion of the statement, Jesus says, whoever confesses me before men, and this is what the apostles are supposed to do, what we're supposed to do. And now Jesus attaches a promise. Him, I will also confess before my father who is in heaven. If you confess Christ, you will be confessed by him. He will confess you in heaven before His Father. Now let's think about this for a few moments. First of all, note the location here. The confession that the disciples are to make is where? It's here on earth. It's before men. Where is the confession that Jesus will make? It is before the Heavenly Father. It's in the presence of God. It's in heaven itself. Number two, consider the contrast between the audience here. whoever confesses Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father." So we make our confession before human beings drawn from the dust of the earth, and Jesus makes His confession before the Father, before the Maker of heaven and earth. Now, if you thought it was fearful and awesome to stand before men and give testimony to Jesus Christ, particularly if they can harm you in some way, persecute you in some way, doesn't get any more awesome than the presence of the Father. And this is where Jesus will either confess, and as we'll see in a few moments, deny. So this is an awesome thing. Now, who is the one doing the confessing here? Now, in the beginning of the verse, it's us. We're confessing Jesus. We're saying, I believe in Jesus. I belong to Jesus Christ. Now, in the second portion of verse 32, it's Jesus doing the confessing. It's Jesus who is doing the talking and saying, that person belongs to me. And he is speaking about you, about his disciples, about those who belong to him. When I was in boot camp, Right before the end, we had a final inspection and one of my drill instructors was with the company commander and he was walking along and inspecting each person in the platoon. And when he got to me, Sergeant Watson was there with him and Sergeant Watson was telling the captain about the recruits who were becoming Marines and different things about them. And I thought that Sergeant Watson thought I was a worm. scum of the earth. I guess I was, probably, prior to that. But Sergeant Watson had good things to say about me and said that Smiley has come a long way to get to this point. And he basically was proud of me for what I had done and how I had gotten to that particular point. That made my heart soar. at the time, like to be praised by this drill instructor. And that's how we often feel when other people praise us. It makes us feel good, right? We feel good about being praised and acknowledged and things like that. How much greater, how much greater for Jesus to say of us one day, that one is mine, he or she belongs to me. That's awesome, is it not? Apply that to yourself personally. Can you imagine? Can you imagine it? One day, Jesus saying of you, Father, that one is mine. He belongs to me. He confessed me on the earth before men. I now confess Him our relationship before you here in heaven. It doesn't get any better than that, does it? That's an awesome thing. Jesus says in Revelation 3, 5, He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments. And I will not blot out his name from the book of life. Here we go. But I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. That's what you want. That's what you want, brothers and sisters. You want one day for Jesus to speak your name in the presence of God to his Father. You want Christ to confess you. Now, perhaps if you've had some back trouble before, you've had to do some back strengthening exercises. My dad, he used to do bench press in the garage in order to strengthen his back and his back muscles. Well, we need some strengthening of our spiritual back muscles, don't we? We need to strengthen our spiritual backbone. What shall we do it with? Here's something we need to do it with. Right? You say, Pastor Nick, I'm afraid, I'm timid, I'm shy, and I don't do very good at confessing Christ before other people at work or in my family or in my neighborhood. Maybe you're scared about what they'll say or what they'll think or what might happen if you confess your faith in Jesus Christ. Well, let this truth strengthen you. Let it strengthen you today that if you confess Christ before men here on earth, one day you look forward to something awesome. And that awesome thing is that Jesus will confess you before the Father. Let that strengthen you. Let that give you spiritual backbone to be strong and bold and stand up for Christ. And tell other people that you believe in Him. Now there's a negative flip side to this, right? And we see it now in verse 33. Just as we saw with confessing Christ, so we must consider now denying Christ and the consequence of that. Verse 33, but whoever denies me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven. This is what the disciples, the apostles are not supposed to do. They're not supposed to deny Christ. What does that mean? That means they're not to repudiate Him. They're not to reject Him. When they get brought before the Gentile authorities, for example, they're not to chicken out and say, wow, I'm going to get beaten for this. I'm going to be imprisoned for this. I may die for this. No, no, I don't believe in Christ. No, I don't belong to Jesus. I'm not one of those people. I'm not one of those Christians. You read the history of the church in the first 500 years or so, and you read all these stories about the bravery and the courage of the people of God who sacrificed their comfort, their pleasure, and even their lives for Jesus. But unfortunately, there are many, many, many stories of those who did not do that. of those who were pressured and persecuted, and they're brought before the Roman authorities, for example. And the Roman authorities say, you either offer the pinch of incense, make a sacrifice to Caesar, say Caesar is Lord, or we're going to kill you. Simple as that. And so what did they do? They wanted to save their own neck. And so they offered the pinch of incense, or they made the sacrifice. Or they uttered those words, Caesar is Lord, rather than Jesus is Lord. This is what we're talking about here. Repudiating, disowning Jesus publicly before others. That's the idea. Also notice that this applies to anybody and everybody, verse 33, but whoever. So this isn't just for the apostles, it's for you, it's for me, it's for anybody. whoever. In addition, notice that this is also public, whoever denies me before men. So just as the confession was public, so the denial is public. Now, what is the biblical example that you think of that comes to mind when you hear Jesus say this? Yeah, you think of Peter, right? This is exactly what Peter did. So Peter was put in a pressure cooker, right? He got put in the pressure cooker. Jesus said, Satan has desired to sift you like wheat. And that's exactly what happened. Peter was there warming himself by the fire, but he was in the sifter. He was in the devil's sifter. And so what are people coming? They're coming and saying, You're one of that man's disciples. You belong to the Galilean, right? You follow him. Aren't you one of his disciples? And Peter gets these questions from these people, recognizing him. And what does Peter do? Matthew 26, verse 72. But again, he denied. Same word as found here in verse 33. He denied with an oath, I do not know the man. It just sends a chill down my spine when I read that. I mean, I feel the weakness, right? Don't you feel the weakness of Peter? Because you've seen it in your own heart, in your own life. Here's your opportunity to witness for Christ. Here's your opportunity to open your mouth. And what do we do? We chicken out. We chicken out, so we're not much better than Peter, right? Unfortunately. Well, this is what we're talking about when Jesus says, whoever denies me before men, That's what he's talking about, what Peter did, what Peter does later in the Gospel of Matthew. So, I think we should say here that there are different types of denial of Jesus. Certainly, we focused on getting arrested and brought before the authorities and being put on trial. And what you need to do there, you need to say, I'm a Christian. I belong to Jesus Christ. And I'm proud of that fact. But there are other ways to confess and or deny Jesus, right? There are other maybe subtler ways that you might not initially think of. Ways that we end up confessing our faith in Jesus or denying our faith in Jesus. We're here in verse 33 thinking about denial. So let's think about some ways that we might deny Jesus. You're standing around with coworkers who are bad-mouthing Christianity and Christians. What will you do? What will you say? It's a tough one, right? Perhaps you've been there at some point. Oh, these narrow-minded Christians, these bigoted Christians, I just can't believe what they believe. I just can't understand how anybody could think like that. Have you ever been a part of that? Right? And as we spoke about a few weeks ago, What are the Christians doing? We're clamming up. Right? Oh, we don't want to be a meanie. We don't want to create a stir. We don't create a confrontation. We don't want to create a problem. Everybody else is free to say whatever, but we're not. Or so we think. And what are we doing? What are we doing? You ever think about that? What am I doing when I do not speak and I do not speak because I'm ashamed of Jesus or I'm ashamed of his word? In effect, I'm denying him. I'm denying that I belong to him, that I believe in him, that I believe in his word, the Bible. You're at a family gathering. when a relative is ranting about how narrow-minded Christians are for rejecting something in our world today. What do you say? What do you do? There are a number of things that are unpopular today, the number of beliefs that we have as Christians. And we've talked about them before, and I won't do that again today. But you know what they are. And so our temptation is to draw back and be silent. And what you need to do is step forward and speak up. You need to stand up and be counted for Jesus. Don't be ashamed to own Him and His Word. That's what we're supposed to do as disciples. We're supposed to own Christ, not disown Christ. We're supposed to stand up and bravely say, I belong to Jesus, I believe in Him, and I believe in the book, too. It's His book, the Bible. Now, as we saw with confession, So it is with denial. If you confess Christ, you can expect to be confessed by Christ. If you deny Christ, what can you also expect? You can expect to be denied by him. End of the verse, verse 33. Him I will also deny before my father who is in heaven. Boy, that is a chilling statement, isn't it? As we noted before, the denial is on earth. The denial here by Christ is in heaven. The denial is before men. The denial by Christ is before God. The denial is done by you or the person who denies. The denial by in heaven is by Christ of you. The Word of God is filled with wonderful promises of what God will do for the one who repents and believes, right? Peter says, to us are given exceedingly great and precious promises. And the Bible is filled with wonderful promises. And there's an implicit promise here, right? In verse 32, confess me, I'll confess you. It's a wonderful promise. It's a wonderful thing to look forward to. But did you know that the Bible also has negative promises? Did you know that the Bible also promises judgment for those who fail to believe, for those who fail to repent, for those who fail to do what Scripture says? This is one of those negative promises that if you deny, you will be denied. Now, we tend not to like those promises, right? We tend to like the positive ones and we tend to You know, go back to the positive ones time and time again and draw comfort and strength from them. And that's a good thing. Don't misunderstand me. We should do that. We should draw strength and comfort from the promises of God. The positive promises, we might say, in the Bible. But you also need to think about the negative promises, too. And you need to put them out in front of you and say, this is what God says. God says that if I do this, I can expect that. And in this case, if I deny Jesus and I disown him publicly, I can expect to be disowned by him before God himself. I think you can also see the law of sowing and reaping at work here, right? You see the perfect symmetry between these statements that Jesus makes. Sow the seed of confession and reap a confession by Jesus one day before the Father. Sow the seed of denial and reap a harvest of Jesus denying you. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. Now, how wonderful is it? How great is it? to look forward to a time in which Jesus will say your name. In which Jesus will say your name and say, that one's mine. He or she belongs to me. That's awesome. I just can't even picture it, right? I could try, but wow, it would just be awesome. And who's worthy of that? Who among us is worthy for Jesus to stand up before His Father in the heavenly courtroom in that awesome scene in the book of Revelation, right? You read the book of Revelation and you've got God seated on His throne, the angels and the people of God, and it's just awesome. Well, that's the scene. That's the scene of Jesus standing up before the Father and claiming you and saying, that one belongs to me. That's just amazing. But on the flip side of that, it is terrifying. And I hope you find it terrifying to consider the opposite. to consider that one day Jesus would say, I don't know them. Is this not what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount? Lord, Lord, have we not done many wonderful works in your name? And what does Jesus say? I never knew you. Depart from me, you that work iniquity. Well, that ought to send a shudder down your spine. that ought to cause a holy fear in your heart. A holy fear to do what? To confess and not deny. To say, I believe in Jesus rather than repudiating and disowning Him in our words or in our actions. Now, you have to make this personal, brothers and sisters. You can't say to yourself, oh, that'll never happen to me. Now, please don't misunderstand me. If you're a true believer, there's nothing that can change that. Jesus will own you on that final day if you truly belong to him. But you and I both know that not everybody who goes to church is what they say they are. And so it's your responsibility to examine yourself. and see whether or not you're a confessor or a denier. That's really the question, right? Which one are you? Are you a confessor or a denier? If you're a confessor, you have this wonderful promise. If you're a denier, you ought to have fear in your heart today. You ought to have a fear in your heart that one day you'll be denied by Jesus. And you say, Pastor Nick, that is a heavy word. Yes, I know. And I think you ought to let it weigh on you for a little bit, as it has weighed on me this week. And as I read these stories of people in church history who boldly stood up for Jesus and faced some of the worst things, and I sit on my couch and have so many good things, and I just, I wouldn't even want to be mentioned in the same breath as Pafnudius. If Pathnoudios came to church today, I would stand in awe of him. And you say, Pastor Nick, he only did what he did by the grace of God. I know. I know. That's true. Absolutely. And if God wills it and God gives us grace, we do exactly the same thing. And to him be all the glory. Now, there is hope. There's hope for deniers, right? Can you think about I'm speculating here just a little bit. I wonder if maybe these words reverberated in Peter's mind at some point. Right? Because Peter denied. He did the thing that Jesus said here. And so you go later on to the story of Matthew and you see Peter doing that very thing, denying Jesus. I know not the man. But yet there was hope for Peter, right? There was hope for Peter because Jesus had Peter in His hand. Even in the moment of the time of that denial, Jesus and Peter were still connected to one another. The connection was not severed. Did Peter sin? Yes. Did he sin gravely? Yes. But Jesus restored him. So maybe you're here today and you say, Pastor Nick, I have blown it. on more than one occasion, I should have opened my mouth, I should have said, I believe in Jesus, I should have professed my faith in Jesus Christ, but I was ashamed. Is there any hope for you and for me? Yes, there's hope. There's hope because the story of Peter gives us hope. Right? That if there's breath in your body, if you sit here alive and well today, to some degree, there's still a chance. There's a chance to be forgiven for being a denier of Christ, just as Peter was. And there's a chance to become a confessor, to become one of those who boldly stands up and says, I believe in Jesus. Because at the end of the day, there are only two options, right? There's no mushy middle. And a lot of times people want to create a mushy middle, no mushy middles. You confess Jesus, you'll be confessed by Him. You deny Him, you'll be denied by Him. Let that weigh on your hearts today. And pray and ask God to give you grace to be the confessor that He wants you to be. Let's close with this prayer by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Lord, let me never blush to own Thee in all companies. Work in me a bold spirit by Thy Holy Spirit. Let me confess Thy truth, whatever the spirit of the age may be. Uphold Thy church when she is most despised. Obey Thy precepts when they cost most dear. And glory in Thy name when it is most reproached. Let's pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, we are sobered today. By this passage of Scripture, by the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are sobered knowing that there is a promise here that if we deny, we will be denied. And that's only fitting. It's only fitting for those who say, I don't know Jesus. I don't belong to Him and I don't believe in Him. It's only fitting for one day you to say of them, I never knew you. And so I pray, Lord, that you would help us, that you would help us to not be those people, but to be those, in verse 32, those who confess Christ, those who own Him, those who stand up boldly and say, I believe in Jesus, I'm loyal to Him. Oh, Lord, we can't do it in our own strength. You know us, Lord. You know how feeble, how frail we are. You know the spirit is many times willing, but the flesh is so weak. And so we pray, Father, for grace. We pray for grace to be confessors. We pray for grace to be bold, even this very week, and say to others, in the workplace, in our home, in our neighborhoods, wherever we are, say to others boldly and without apology, I believe in Jesus Christ. We pray for your help to do that. I ask Lord for each one of your people today that you would go with them into the various places in life where they will be this week and fill them with your Holy Spirit. Give them encouragement and the help they need to confess faith in Jesus Christ. We pray all these things in His name. Amen. As you leave today, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.