I want to start today with a little object lesson if I may.
In this dish I have a crumpled piece of newspaper. I am going to set fire to it. See how quickly the flame consumes the paper? I have to drop it back into the dish if I’m going to keep from getting burned, don’t I? Okay, now what has happened? The fire has gone out, hasn’t it? Why? Because it ran out of paper to burn.
Now, in this dish I have another crumpled piece of newspaper. I am going to set fire to this piece of paper, also. This time, however, when the flame gets to the place where it is close to where it will burn me, instead of dropping it back into the dish I am going to drop it on this pile of crumpled newspaper in this cardboard box like this. When I do, what will happen? Let’s see, shall we?
No? Why not? Thank you…you have all looked ahead and have been able to determine together what that one little act of mine would bring about. Because the fire from the first piece of paper will quickly ignite the others and the flame will get very big very fast, it will set the box the papers are in on fire, too. The box will burn and the fire will spread and will get even bigger faster and might get away from me and spread to the carpet and the furniture and the drapes and soon the whole place will be a raging fire, won’t it?
The first fire went out because it didn’t spread. The second would have continued to burn for as long as it continued to spread and set other things on fire. Unstopped, the entire building would soon be engulfed in flames. Under the right conditions we could have the entire city on fire, couldn’t we?
Now you have a little picture of what evangelism is supposed to be like. Remember what John the Baptist said when he was preaching in the wilderness: "As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matthew 3:11).”
Being in contact with the cleansing fire from Jesus Christ is supposed to set us ablaze with love for Him, for the things of heaven, and for the salvation that He has bought for us. It is supposed to consume our thoughts and our emotions. It is supposed to engulf us to the point where we cannot help but share it with everyone we meet.
Like we said last time, we are to be as confident, as excited, and as fervent about sharing our Good News with people as we are about the things in life that excite us most: as excited as we are about our favorite team winning the championship, as we are about talking about how awesome our children are, as we are about the great sale we discovered at our favorite store, or as we are about the promises our future holds because we got that new job or that long-awaited raise or because we have fallen in love.
In our text today we come to the conclusion of the commissioning service Jesus conducted for His disciples. We have seen in studies past that He gave them power and authority the like of which they had seen manifested only in Him. They have been paired up and told what to take with them, what not to take, how to figure out where they were to stay as they went around spreading the Gospel, what to do while they stayed in each village and town they visited, and what to do if they were accepted and what to so if there were rejected. Last time we saw just how vital this mission was for them and is for all of us who have come after them and call ourselves Christians – disciples of Jesus Christ.
"Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven (Matthew 10:32-33).”
So what does “confess” mean in this context? You will recall when we were studying about confession of sin that it meant to acknowledge the truth about our actions or our attitudes and to be in complete agreement with God on the exact nature and character of our sin. In this context it means almost the same thing, except it applies to acknowledging the truth about Jesus Christ and to be in complete agreement with God on the exact nature and character of Jesus Christ and all that He has done, especially as it applies in our own lives, then to verbally acknowledge that truth to the world around us.
How do we do that? By the way we act in every context of life. It’s not just something we do once; it is what we do all the time. Our relationship with Jesus Christ is something that marks and flavors how we think and act and talk and joke and react and give and smile in adversity and find joy in the worst of all trials and find hope for the future that is unmistakable and unshakable. It is not in just a single act; it is in every act.
Where is this confession to take place? “Before men…;” in other words, in front of other people so that it is obvious and unquestionable. It isn’t a matter of making a single declaration and leaving it at that. It is to be something that permeates our entire lives. We are not to be ashamed of anything to do with Jesus Christ and are to be freely open about it all. It is something that we should be able to interject into any conversation if it is what has really transformed our lives.
When someone comments or questions, we are to verbally acknowledge that apart from Him, we can do nothing; that He supplies all of our needs according to His riches in glory; that we were once miserable because we were adrift in life apart from God But that He has saved us from that. There is some truth about who He is, what He has done and our relationship with Him that can be injected into the conversation that is a definite witness to the truth of Jesus Christ in our lives. That is confessing Him before men. It doesn’t have to be loud or rude or obnoxious – quite the contrary. However, it does need to be consistent and steady and genuine.
Think about your first crush. Couldn’t get them out of your mind, could you? Couldn’t resist finding ways to interject their name into just about every conversation, could you? Every conversation seemed to have something in it that made you think of that special someone, didn’t it? Remember being so consumed with those titillating emotions that life seemed more exciting and promising than it ever had?
Are you as in love with Jesus as you were infatuated with that crush, that “love of your life”? Can you not help yourself? Can you not resist bringing up what He has done or is doing in your life or the life of someone you know? Then you are not ashamed of Him or how you feel about Him and you are confessing Him before men, just as He said.
What happens if we do this? Jesus said that He will be just as proud to declare His connection and attachment to us as we are to declare His connection and attachment to us before men. He will be doing so whenever the enemy brings a charge against us and when we stand personally before the Father and are tasked with answering some very deep and searching questions.
But, what happens if we don’t? If we deny, reject and disavow Him to others, then He will do the same to us. Our denial of Him will be to people; His denial of us will be to Almighty God. What will the result be of His denying any attachment to us when His Father asks about us?
Some don’t like to think about it because Jesus spoke several times very pointedly about the cost to those who are unfaithful in life to what He had called them to and given them to do. Their eternity will be the same as that of those who don’t know Him at all. Several times He speaks of the “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. Those are descriptions of people in deep despair and desperation with no hope of help or of relief from their agony.
I am not telling you this to scare you into evangelism. I am telling you this because this is what the text is teaching us. There isn’t one of us sitting here who isn’t culpable of being slack in this area. Jesus knew the tendency of people to be reluctant to speak an unpopular message against a resistant audience, especially one that wants to “shoot the messenger.”
The thing that marks a true disciple of Jesus Christ is their devotion to Him and His message despite the unpopularity and despite the opposition.
You all know the old Hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers”, right? This old standard was written in the mid-1800’s, and has been a standard in hymnals all across the world for generations. I ran across a modern version of the hymn not long ago. Let me share the updated lyrics:
Backward Christian Soldiers
Backward Christian soldiers, fleeing from the fight,
With the cross of Jesus, nearly out of sight.
Christ our rightful Master, stands against the foe;
Onward into battle, we seem afraid to go.
Chorus:
Backward Christian soldiers, fleeing from the fight,
With the cross of Jesus, nearly out of sight.
Like a might tortoise, moves the Church of God.
Brothers we are treading, where we’ve often trod.
We are much divided, many bodies we,
Having different doctrines, but not much charity.
Chorus:
Backward Christian soldiers, fleeing from the fight,
With the cross of Jesus, nearly out of sight.
Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
But the cross of Jesus hidden does remain.
Gates of Hell should never ‘gainst the Church prevail,
We have Christ’s own promise, but we think it might fail.
Chorus:
Backward Christian soldiers, fleeing from the fight,
With the cross of Jesus, nearly out of sight.
Sit here then ye people, join our sleeping throng;
Blend with ours your voices in a feeble song.
Blessings, ease and comfort ask from Christ the King,
But with our modern thinking, we won’t do a thing.
Chorus:
Backward Christian soldiers, fleeing from the fight,
With the cross of Jesus, nearly out of sight.
Anonymous
Sad to say, this is all too often the case. It isn’t okay with Jesus. That’s what our text today is all about and that’s what our lessons over the past several weeks have been about. We are to get up off our comfortable self-indulgent lives and get about the business of declaring the Gospel of Jesus Christ as if lives depended upon it – because they do!
A story is told about the old-time evangelist Dwight L. Moody, the untrained, unschooled, powerful evangelist who simply committed himself to serving Jesus Christ with his whole heart and his whole life.
When Mr. Moody was in London during one of his famous evangelistic tours, several British clergymen visited him. They wanted to know how and why this poorly educated American was so effective in winning throngs of people to Jesus Christ. Moody took the three men to the window of his hotel room and asked each in turn what he saw. One by one, the men described the people in the park below. Then Moody looked out the window with tears rolling down his cheeks. “What do you see, Mr. Moody?” asked one of the men.
“I see countless thousands of souls that will one day spend eternity in hell if they do not find the Savior.”
Obviously, Dwight L. Moody saw people differently than the average observer does. And because he saw eternal souls where others saw only people strolling in a park, Moody approached life with a different agenda.
This is to be how we see the wave of humanity around us – not as the unimpassioned do but as those who have the mind and heart of Jesus Christ do and always have. I am not saying that every one of us is called to evangelize like Mr. Moody or Billy Graham or Paul the Apostle. However, we need to be willing enough to be in love enough with Jesus Christ to be bold enough to share with anyone and everyone what He has done and is doing in our own lives. We are in the circle of influence that we are in because that is our assigned place of witness and evangelism and ministry.
Jesus isn’t fooling around when He says that He will deny to His Father anyone who denies Him. Think about it for a minute – how many times in just the last week have you had the opportunity to tell someone the truth about what Jesus Christ has done for you or what He is doing for you right now and you didn’t do it and what excuses have you made for your slothfulness?
Sound harsh? How harsh do you think it’s going to be for us if we continue to deny Him and He then denies us to the Father? Pretty harsh, don’t you think? I’m a preacher and I am just as guilty as anyone else is at times. There are times when my attitude prior to an opportunity to witness has been lacking and when that opportunity arises, I am sure that if I open my mouth to share something about the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, all I will meet with is scoffing and derision.
I have out the focus on me and not on Jesus Christ. I am so worried about risking my pride being hurt that I risk my relationship with Him being damaged instead. Pretty foolish, wouldn’t you say? Yet, it is something we all do and we need to stop it.
How about those closest to us? Afraid of a little animosity or scorn from people in your family or from friends who really know you and know your past and pshaw at you being a “Christian now”? Can you hear them already, “Oh? Think you’re too good for us now, do you? Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes now, are you? Well, I know all about you, and I’m not buying it for a minute!”
Been there – anyone else? I see your hands. How about now? Still unwilling to have “loved ones” throw your past in your face? How about at work? Prepared to risk scoffing and sneering and being poked fun at or just not taken seriously? Willing to have someone tell you that you don’t have the right to share your faith at work? Do you know that that is not only a lie but it is also a device the world and the devil use to try and silence the faint of heart and the weak in faith? Is it working?
Whom do you believe, then: Jesus Christ or the devil? Do you believe that what you believe is really real? Jesus knows just what you’re facing and why because He has already been there, already faced it, already been through it, and already given you the victory over it! They just want to shut you up – the Gospel is extremely dangerous for the devil and those who serve him. Many serve him without realizing it, yet they serve him nonetheless. Jesus said, "He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters (Matthew 12:30).” That’s about as clear as it gets – there are only two things on the menu.
Jesus has extremely strong words for us in this passage and they are glossed over, skipped, minimized and marginalized way too often by way too many who call themselves preachers and teachers of God’s Word. If you are really His disciple, then let’s preach it and teach it all, shall we? Even the parts that say that Jesus says, “You’ve got it wrong and I hate it.”
Look at what He says in Matthew 10:34-36 where He quotes the Old Testament prophet Micah from Micah 7:6: “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.”
He knew long beforehand just what the Gospel was going to cost people. He experienced it Himself. In Matthew 13:53-58 we have Matthew’s account of when Jesus returned to His hometown of Nazareth and began teaching in the synagogue there. Let’s read the text and see what the response was, shall we?
What do we see here? We see that Jesus faced the kind of contempt and ridicule for His past and His upbringing and His lack as the rest of us face from those who know us. He faced it and had done nothing to deserve it. In our case, many times we may have said something hurtful or had a bad attitude or just been in a foul mood and it causes the credibility of our witness to be in question. He did none of those things and His testimony was doubted more than ours will be and His was rejected without cause or reason other than He didn’t fir the vision they had of what the Messiah was to be.
Now let’s look at Mark 3:20-21. Here we see that His relatives had come to take charge of Him because they heard what He was doing and saying and they were sure that He had lost His mind. Ever had that reaction from someone? Maybe you’ve had someone say they thought you were foolish or brainwashed or believing in fairytales? See, you know what Jesus faced, just as He knows what you face when opportunity for witnessing about Him presents itself.
Big surprise! He has already told us this stuff is going to happen – why the baffled, bewildered, confounded reaction when it does happen? We should consider ourselves blessed and honored! We’ve already seen that "Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:11-12).”
It’s all about perspective. Our focus is to be on Heaven where our reward is sure. Seeking safety and reward here is foolish and out-of-order. What’s more important: the job or the Gospel; the friends or the Gospel; the family or the Gospel; being comfortable or the Gospel; being accepted by others or the Gospel….need I go on?
Jesus goes on to say (10:37-39): "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”
If Jesus Christ is not loved over and above everyone and everything else, then He is not loved at all. Let me say that again: If Jesus Christ is not loved over and above everyone and everything else, then He is not loved at all. Which life do you want – you can have only one: your temporary life here or eternal life with Him? Again, there are only two things on the menu and it is time for you to choose. Pick one, you lose the other – that’s the option.
We are to cheerfully and joyfully pick up and carry whatever pains and afflictions God may ordain in our lives for the sake of righteousness and for the sake of the Gospel, and we are to do so without complaining or grumbling or boasting or reneging on our part of the relationship. Being saved through the covenant of the cross makes us partakers of that cross – it is ours to carry also. Failure or refusal to do so makes us unworthy to be called a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Do you believe that what this book says is true? Do you believe that it is real? Do you believe that what you believe is really real? Then what are you going to do about it?
Jesus goes on (verses 40-41): "He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.”
If a person accepts one of these Twelve disciples of Jesus Christ and accepts their message, they have as well received Jesus Christ Himself. Having done so, they also will receive God Almighty and be accepted into His presence with the same love and recognition that Jesus Christ receives.
If someone in a later time accepts “an inspired speaker” other than one of the Twelve and accepts their message as well, they will “obtain or take hold of” the reward of the preacher opening the Scriptures to him and will be led more fully into understanding the essential and eternal truths of God as well as receiving the same reward that that faithful preacher will receive, which is eternal life with God and His delightful company for all eternity.
And if someone accepts someone whose life is stamped with the character of Christ simply for the sake of that person’s character and kindness, then they will take hold of the reward of having that person pray for them and be willing to help them and extend God’s grace to them when they will not find it anywhere else. The hope is that they will respond to that grace and thus accept Jesus Christ as their own Savior and Lord and then receive that person’s same reward of eternal life and blessedness.
Jesus ends His commissioning service by saying (verse 42): "And whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward."
The “little ones” He refers to here are the Twelve disciples. Remember when Jesus taught in Matthew 25:31-46 that doing a kindness to one of the least of His “brothers” was doing the kindness to him and that, likewise, not extending that simply kindness to someone identified with Him was not extending the kindness to Him either?
It is easy to extend a courtesy to someone just because they have a need – but it is not so easy to extend that same courtesy to someone who is unpopular with others because of their faith. To do so knowing that the ridicule will most likely be shared is something that Jesus Christ will remember on the Day of Judgment because He really is identified with those who follow and serve Him in a real and inseparable way – what one does to a child of God they do to Jesus Christ Himself, whether good or ill. We need to keep this in mind, too, as we interact with others – especially those whom we know to be members of the household of faith.
It is easy for us to look at our jobs or the main activities of our lives and be willing to take whatever we have to to stay there, to stay involved or to stay employed and to suffer long hours or trying times if we have to. It’s all about perspective.
If we have the perspective that this life and all it holds are only temporal and temporary and that what is eternal is what really matters, then what this life has to offer will be virtually meaningless in light of what eternity holds for those of us who are the elect of God and serve Him lovingly and faithfully.
The fact that people are perishing because they do not know Jesus Christ should break our hearts and invade our lives over and over and over again. We should have the same depth of passion for seeing people won to Christ as we do for any other thing that we crave or desire or devote ourselves to – otherwise, we are looking at an eternity that is not as promising as we might believe.
I need to say a few words here about appropriate witnessing.
There are times and places and people where our witnessing for Jesus Christ actually ends up being a poor witness. If I am paid by my employer to do a job and I am investing the time I am being paid for in witnessing to someone instead of doing the work for which I am being paid, then my witness is inappropriate.
It is perfectly acceptable for me to let the person know that I would love to spend some time with them and talk to them, and it need to be at a time and a place when neither of us would be robbing our employer. Many a Christian witness has been destroyed and Christians the world over have gotten a bad rep because of just this type of behavior.
It is not appropriate for a man or a woman to spend up-close and personal time with a member of the opposite sex for very long or over the course of several “meetings” who is not a family member or where the sessions are not professional in nature. Even then there are safeguards which need to be in place. There are too many real, authentic and dangerous dynamics at work in male/female interactions that quite often make the interaction more than just witnessing despite the best of intentions. “Dating evangelism” is bogus and is unbiblical.
The appropriate thing to do is to invite that person to be involved in a conversation with more than just you, to get someone who is the same sex as that person is involved. This keeps the witnessing honest and on-course and alleviates temptations. Otherwise we need to be honest and admit that we aren’t really interested in witnessing but with being with that person. This one area has been the demise of the Christian witness of scores of believers for as long as there has been Christian evangelism.
Along this line is the hanging out in places where sin is pursued in order to “witness”. For me to go out drinking after work with people I work with in order to “witness” is no witness at all. I may from time to time have a soda with them for a few minutes, but delving into the behaviors that I am hoping to get them saved from does nothing to accomplish that – in fact, the opposite is true.
Another inappropriate witness is carrying signs and placards that are hateful and mean and that threaten people with eternal damnation for their sinful choices. There is nowhere where Jesus or the Apostles taught that kind of evangelism or witnessing. We are to speak the truth and to do so in love, out of a real and deep concern for their eternal soul. We are not to be hateful in our approach nor are we to be condemning of a person for their sin. To carry a sign that says, “God Hates You,” or “You Are Going To Burn In Hell,” is not Christian witnessing or evangelism.
That being said, I want all of us to think about the words of Jesus that we have read and studied here today. I want all of us to commit to devoting some personal time each day this week to read this section of Scripture over again. When we do so, we need to ask God to show us where we have gotten it right and where we are lacking. I want all of us to seek His empowering to truly confess our sin and repent of our unfaithfulness and ask Him to change our minds and remotivate our hearts. I want all of us to ask Him to begin right away to build on what He has already done in and through us and use that to build us into the disciples and witnesses that we are meant to be.
And I want all of us right now to commit to seeking His will right here and right now and allow Him to begin transforming us into the living witnesses and true disciples that He died to make us. That is what being a child of God truly is about.
Let’s pray.
