I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 10. Matthew chapter 10, I want to read the verse of 16 to the end of verse 33. Matthew chapter 10, beginning to read at verse 16. This is the word of God. Hear it with me. Behold, says Jesus, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore, be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But beware of men, for they will 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, for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. Now, brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child, and children will raise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved, When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. For assuredly, I say to you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes. A disciple is not above his teacher nor a servant above his master. It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher and a servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household? Therefore, do not fear them, for there is nothing covered that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known. Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light. And what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin, and not one of them falls to the ground apart from your father's will, but the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows. And now follow the words of our text. 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 I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven. Let me repeat those few words, those two verses. 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 I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven. Thus far the reading of God's holy word. May he add his blessing to the hearing, the reading, and the preaching of his word again this morning. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ gathered here in Salem with me this morning. According to the Bible, In the sphere of religion, there is no such thing as neutrality. We either belong to our father, God, through Jesus Christ, or we belong to our father, Satan. That's a truth that Jesus himself taught us. You see, the Pharisees, if you remember, the Pharisees of his day were rather proud of their commitment, and they were offended when Christ admonished them. They said, indignantly, we have Abraham as our father. And Jesus said, if Abraham was your father, you would do the things of Abraham, but you want to kill me because you are still of your father, Satan. And now in Romans chapter four, Abraham is identified as the father of all believers. So then according to Jesus, all men and all women have either God as father or their father is Satan. There's no other option. There's no such thing as being almost Christian or being a little bit Christian. It's like being pregnant. You either are or you are not. Same is true in the spiritual realm. We are either for or against Christ. Jesus in another place says, clearly, he that is not with me is against me. And that distinction began already in paradise as God said to Adam, our first father, human parents. He says, I will put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And already as youngsters, we learned in our catechism classes, you remember, of the antithesis. You remember that word? Or the line of demarcation, or the distinction between the world and the church. As a result of that fall in the Garden of Eden, God had said, I will put hostility between the world and the church. And ever since the fall, there have been in this world only two kinds of people, those who belong to Christ and those who still belong to Satan. There are only those who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ and those who belong to the world. There's no other kind of person. There are only Christians and non-Christians, nothing else. There is no other category. And try as we might, no neutral territory or common ground can be found between those two entities. And now in our text of this morning, Jesus says to his disciples, if in the face of all the possible and probable dangers you will face, if you continue to boldly profess my name, then you may comfort yourselves knowing that I will also personally confess you personally before my Father who is in heaven. But, says Jesus, The opposite is equally true. If you deny me publicly, then I also will deny you before the Father. Serious business then, this whole matter of confessing Christ. And it is well for Rui and Melanie and for each of us to hear once again just precisely what it means to confess Christ. This morning marks a special day, not only in the Machado family, but also in our entire church family. We've heard Rui and Melanie publicly confess their faith in Christ, and as consequence, they wanted also their children to receive the mark of the covenant in baptism. And now in that context, I want to administer God's word to you this morning, using as my theme, confessing Christ. We want to hear, first of all, the promise, and then we want to consider also the threat or the warning. I have chosen this text particularly for this occasion, but the text is much broader than making that one-time confession before the congregation. The text has great implications, not only for Rui and Melanie, but for us all, for you see, Jesus here connects. Jesus here connects the promise of eternal life to confessing Christ. A public profession of faith is a prerequisite to church membership. And when Jesus rescues men and women, when he calls them unto himself out of darkness, when he calls his own out of the world, he gathers them out of the world and puts them in the church for safekeeping. But a careful reading of the text indicates that Christ had much more in mind than a simple one-time public profession of faith. Follow this with me. You know the context of our text. For three years, the disciples had followed Jesus as he taught them the mysteries of the kingdom. And now here, Jesus was preparing them for their calling after he had returned to heaven. He gathers his disciples around himself, and he tells them he's sending them to preach the coming of the kingdom to the lost sheep of Israel. They were to announce that He who was promised of God and proclaimed by the prophets throughout the Old Testament, all of it, that He had come. They were to preach that the Christ of God, the long-awaited Messiah, had come in the flesh. And they were to do so in the face of any and all opposition that they would certainly face. Regardless of the consequences of their message, they were to preach Christ. They were to be His witnesses. They were to bear testimony concerning Him And if you do that, says Christ, then to you is the promise that I will confess your name before the Father. The apostles clearly understood, the disciples clearly understood that this confessing of Christ would be their life's work. And now the emphasis here is indeed on that oral public confession. However, a witness in deeds is also implied here. All of their living, the disciples, all of their living, all of their lives, every waking moment, their lives were to be living epistles. The disciples were to be walking, breathing testimonies, radiating God's glory. Jesus sends them out to the four corners of the earth. and to preach the gospel. But the people needed to not only hear them, but the people also need to be able to see in them that they belong to a different kingdom. It must be obvious to all and sundry that these men had received their marching orders from the king of kings, and that therefore, they marched to a different drummer. In fact, it had to be obvious to the world that these men were so far different from the world that they were not even marching in the same parade with the world. And if you know your Bibles, that's also precisely what we find them doing. They go from place to place, from town to town, heralding the good news and calling people to repent and to believe, and then urging them to imitate their godly lifestyle. And we notice now that our text speaks of confessing before men. Jesus said, "'If you confess My name before Me.'" And so it was, through their preaching, that Christ determined to bring about faith and repentance in the hearts of those given Him by the Father in eternity. We heard a little bit about that this morning. And out they went, out they went. First to their own people, and the Jews, and later, after they had witnessed to their own people, they went out into the world to preach to the Gentiles. And people thought, that's what it means to confess Christ. That's what it means for us today. We too, you and I, we are to confess him before our fellow men, beginning, first of all, with the house of Israel. Our witness, our confession, our witnessing needs to begin in our own homes, in our own families, in our own marriages, in our own relationships with each other and with our children. All that we say, all that we do, in all our relationships, all of it must testify to the Christ who lives in us. How tragic that so often our witness is compromised because our own house is not in order. You know what I mean. The world looks to see if you walk the talk. And so all that we do in our life must be consistent with our confession, especially before our children, for they soon see hypocrisy in us. And people have gone, when you witness before the house of Israel, do not forget our prodigals. Take every opportunity to confess Christ to your wandering sons and daughters or other family members. Witness before those who have been born and raised within the context, perhaps, of the covenant. Witness to those who have once, perhaps, tasted of him, but who have rejected the Christ. That's where Christ sent his disciples first of all. And we too, we may not simply write off our straying family members. We may not write them off as being lost anyway. We must witness to them. And then I urge you then, after witnessing, to pound on heaven's door in prayer. If they refuse to repent, they will ultimately be lost for eternity. But as long as God gives you the life and breath in your daily living and in your speech and your example, witness to your straying family members, and then give God no rest, beg of God in your daily prayers that God would have mercy upon your wandering children or grandchildren, or your unbelieving family members, asking for grace. And who knows what the Lord may yet do? And then finally, after having witnessed to those closest to us, Jesus warns us that after confessing Christ before our own, we may never hide that lamp under a bushel. We may not just keep that good news for ourselves or for our own kind. We are to take that lamp, and we are to fan those flames into a torch and use it to provide light. a light of life in our community and in our world. But that kind of witnessing would not be easy, and Christ acknowledged that. He tells the Twelve that confessing Christ would mean suffering and persecution. It would bring scorn and ridicule. It would bring much opposition, and that ought not to surprise us. Throughout all of church history, Confessing Christ has been met with opposition, hatred, and violence. The blood of the martyrs testified to that. And remember again with me that the martyrs died. The martyrs in history died usually at the hands of those who claimed to be of the Christian church. Most of the 12 disciples died for their faith at the hands of those who claimed to belong to the church, but whose hearts still belong to Satan. Many a true saint of God has died for his faith, and we are to expect the same kind of opposition to our witness even from within. For us today, it may not mean physical torture. However, if you have been given the eyes of discernment to take note of the speed and the scope of the deterioration of the culture in which we live, you will have noticed that it is becoming ever more difficult for us to live as Christians in this world, especially in our nation. the world is becoming increasingly more hostile to the claims of God's word. And you will also have noticed that as it was in the beginning, most of the hostility towards those who witness of the Christ is still frequently coming from within the house of Israel, meaning those who call themselves Christians, but whose heart really still belongs to another. I give you as a small example, the ordination of an openly gay or homosexual bishop in the Episcopalian church some time ago. And the attack from within the church upon those who confessed Christ and objected, and they witnessed against such immoral action, the attack was fierce from within the church. It boggles the mind, but it has always been so. I urge you, especially as parents, to prepare yourselves and your children for the coming times. Already now, we can hear the approaching hoofbeats of the son of perdition. But despite that threat, confess him we must. It's a divine commandment. It's not an option for us. And my dear people of God, in our mind's eye, we can almost see the 12 deeply troubled Jesus commissions them to go out into all the world, and he says, I have sent you out as sheep among the wolves. And he says, the world has hated me, and they will hate you as well. The people of the church had just, the people of the church, mind you, had just crucified Jesus. And now Jesus sends the 12 out to boldly confess his name. How frightened they must have been. Oh, Lord, I can't. Lord, I am afraid. Christ knew their hearts. He knew their fear. And his great love and compassion knew that for the disciples to honor that commandment would bring them sorrow, grief, perhaps even a martyr's death. And therefore, he comforts his disciples with the divine promise, whosoever will acknowledge me, I will acknowledge him as my disciple. And the promise is not limited to them. It applies to all men. and women. That includes us here in Bowmanville this morning. And if we've got to try to capture that thought, it boggles our minds. If we, as insignificant little mortals, if we confess Christ before other mere mortal men and women, then Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who already now is seated at the right hand of his Father on his throne, surrounded by the hosts of heavenly angels, he will confess you and me personally, by name, before the Almighty Creator, the Maker of heaven and earth. Capture that thought with me, if you can, through the eyes of your faith. Try to imagine that scene with me. Jesus Christ, standing before His Father in heaven, as He shows His Father the nail-pierced hands with your name engraven upon them. He shows him his precious blood that he shed to pay for your sins. And on the basis of that atoning sacrifices, he reminds his father that you belong to him and therefore you belong to be in heaven with him. Imagine that openly, publicly before God and publicly before all of the heavenly saints and the angels and the saints who have gone to heaven before you. Christ there in that public forum will declare that you personally by name have confessed his name, and that you are his witness, and that you are his disciple, that you are his own possession. And in that final hour, When the death dew lies cold upon your brow, he will still say, Father, this one is mine. I have purchased him with my blood, my blood shed on Golgotha, and he has confessed my name, and I have prepared a place for him here in heaven so that he can share in my glory forever. Oh, what a day that will be to hear your name echoing and resounding publicly among the hallowed halls of heaven. But there's also another element that we need to capture. Congregation, do you understand? Do you understand why Christ places such great emphasis on our responsibility to witness? Clearly, it's not a matter of minor import. Scripture regards confessing Christ as a vital element in true Christianity. Why is that now? Well, we need to go back. to the beginning. We need to go back to the beginning of history and the beginning of this sermon. Remember that in the introduction, we are reminded that there are only two kingdoms, one of light and one of darkness. You remember from our study of the Bible that all of mankind enters this world as members of the kingdom of darkness. And you know also that God rescues his own from that kingdom and transfers them into the kingdom of light. So God calls people out of the world, calls them into the company of the believers in the church, and the question we need to consider here in this context is how? How does Christ translate children of wrath into sons and daughters of God? Well, according to our Bibles, God expands the boundaries of his kingdom through the preaching of the gospel. And then all of those who, through that gospel preaching, have themselves been rescued and translated, they are now called to go out into the world to witness to God's goodness. They are to confess his name in order that thousands more may come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. I remember well in one of the churches where I served as an elder before I was ordained, we were calling a new minister. And we flew him in to interview him. And somebody in our consistory asked the man, would you be willing to be a member of our evangelism committee? And the man was shocked. And we were shocked that he was shocked. He said, my task is to preach the gospel of God's grace to your congregation. And then it is your congregation's task, every single one, to become their own evangelization committee. And he says, the only reason we would have an evangelization committee if there's a project that is too large for one person to handle. We called him. He was a tremendous blessing to our congregation. So we are to confess so that thousands more may come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. And that's also what we read up here in our text. The 12 had come to Christ, and now they were to tell others of the Christ. The old soldiers of the cross must enlist new recruits in the service of the master. When Christ left the world, he left orders that his kingdom was to be expanded, was to advance by the witness of those who confessed to love him. Capture this with me. God, in his electing love, has determined before the world even began. I explained some of that this morning to the children. But before the world was even built, precisely God had determined who and how many of them he would call out of a fallen creation. He would call unto himself, but he then determined to call them. He determined to rescue them. He determined to rescue them one by one through gospel witness. It ought not to surprise us then that the Christ lays such importance on the commandment to confess his name before men. Christ determined that he would gather all of the elect out of darkness through the preaching of the church and the witness of the church's members. And to that end now, Christ gathers his disciples around him, commissions them to go into all the world, and he warns them that by testifying in his name, they would show themselves to be disciples of Christ, and Jesus taught them that you will be hated by all men for my name's sake. How frightened these men would have been. And my dear precious people of God, we can identify with some of them, can't you? Unless you are much different from me, then witnessing in an uncomfortable situation intimidates us. Jesus himself went on to teach that such witness would bring sharp division, even between family members. And then by nature, we're inclined to try to avoid the friction by keeping silent. And here and here, Christ warns us that silence, in order to avoid tension or brokenness, is not the Christian thing to do. It's not even the charitable thing to do, for our silence is a denial. And Jesus warns his disciples that although to deny him might bring them peace with their fellow men, a much greater peril would await them in eternity. But just what does it mean to deny Christ? Does it mean to actually deny him verbally as Peter did there Jesus can be denied in many ways. We can deny him by openly declaring that he's not our master. That's what Peter did three times. You know the story. We can go so far as to refuse to believe that he is the Messiah. We can declare him to be a false prophet or an imposter, and we can, by that confession, identify with the Jews of our text, and we can still shout, crucify him. Or we can even, as the Jehovah Witnesses and the Mormons and many other cults do, we can deny that He is actually the Son of God. However, among us, a denial of Christ rarely takes that kind of a form. Among us, it is much more likely that we confess Him as Lord, but our life and our lifestyle contradict our confession. Sometimes it seems that we prefer a Christ who atones for our sin, but does not cramp our life or lifestyle. So many people, even within the church, they want a Christ in whom they can peacefully die, but they don't want him in the way they are to live. Still many of us succumb to the temptation to make an impossible distinction between our confession and the way in which we conduct our life and living, be that in business, in our entertainment that we choose, or even in our relationships with one another, even in our homes, even in our marriages. and congregation, it may not be so among us. We cannot serve two gods, we cannot honor him on Sunday and set him aside on Monday and the other days of the week. That's a denial of Christ. But Christ can also be denied in another way as well. For instance, when Jesus is presented as something less or other than scripture declares him to be, when, for instance, someone presents him only as a God of love and not as a God of judgment, and we fail to repudiate that by witnessing that he is who he says he is, the Christ of God, then by our silence, we will have denied him. and the soul of Christ has been grieved by our failure to confess him. If we publicly hold him up as the only name under heaven and earth which we can be saved, if we identify him as being the only way to God, if we tell men and women that the only way to be saved and go to heaven is by confessing Christ, we will be seen as being unloving, exclusive, nonconformant, And millions will turn their backs to us and ridicule us, Papa, but then the name of Christ has been confessed and honored by us. Peter, but with you, I am deeply troubled with the words of Christ here taught us. Who of us here can say that we have never denied Christ in any way? Who of us can say that our hands are spotlessly clean when it comes to confessing or denying Christ? With the psalmist here, we need to crowd, oh Lord, oh Lord, if you were to mark our sin and our failure, who then, Lord, could stand? But although we need to confess our guilt, congregation, be of good courage. The judgment here pronounced by Christ does not apply to every form of denial of him. there is forgiveness in the cross of Golgotha. Think of Peter. Three times he blatantly denied his Lord for fear of his own life, and yet Christ comforted, forgave him, reinstated him. My dear people, what each of us, young and old, when seriously reflecting on our lives, we must confess that we, too, have in a moment of weakness perhaps fallen into sin and have denied him in one form or another. But when Jesus here issues his solemn warning, he's not speaking of the momentary weaknesses of God's children. Christ is not talking about that moment of weakness. When tempted by the world, the devil, and our own fallen flesh, we fell into temptation and denied Christ. No, Christ is not pointing us to denials which are repented of and which are in fruition. Forgiveness is sought at the cross. Remember with me. that Christ himself wiped the bitter tears of repentance from Peter's eyes and consoled and reinstated him. Now, when Christ here warns of an everlasting denial of salvation, he's speaking to those who deny him in such a way that it gives color to all of their lives and living, since it is a denial born out. of an unbelieving heart. That needs to be understood by us in this context. It is a disowning of Christ by men who have and want no part in Christ. The warning in our text is directed to those who refuse to believe the message they've heard from us and from the Church. Congregation, no greater crime can be imagined than to deny the Christ of God. The enormity of that we cannot even begin to measure or describe, for to deny him is to deny the only one who became poor for our sake. It is to reject the one who, through his poverty, made us rich. To deny him is to deny the one whose naked back was whipped in order that by his stripes we might be healed. To deny him is to deny the Lamb of God who sacrificed his life on Golgotha. To deny Christ is to deny the love of God. which gave himself to us. It's no small matter to deny him, and therefore the warning is so severe and urgent. Think very seriously for a moment and capture the full impact of the words of Jesus. He says here, if we deny him, he will testify against us before the Father. He will then stand as our accuser rather than as our intercessor. He then disowns us. and we have no mediator, we have no savior. God then does not see us as children washed in the blood of the lamb or as children of God through Christ. No, God then sees us as children still belonging to our father, Satan, and heaven's portals will remain closed to you. Great is the reward promised to those who confess him as Lord, but terrifying is the promise to those who deny him. Truly, it's not an insignificant, indifferent, or trivial matter. It's a question of eternal consequence. It's a matter of life and death. Congregation, if you take nothing else home with you this morning from this sermon, remember at least this much. There are only two kingdoms in this world, light and darkness, Christ and Antichrist. All men and women in this world are inhabitants of one of those two kingdoms. There's no neutrality or common ground. It's an either-or situation. The question, therefore, before you this morning now must out of necessity be this. To which kingdom do you belong? To which kingdom do you belong? If you know yourselves to belong to him, Then praise and confess his name before men, resting in the comfort and assurance that Christ will always remember you before his Father. If there is still doubt and uncertainty in your mind, then go to him now, do it yet today. Confess your sin, confess his name, seek his forgiveness. A refusal to do that has the most horrible consequences, for make no mistake, if you do not confess Christ in word and deed, if your life does not reflect the Christ, then Christ is not in you, and you are not in him. come when you will stand before God's throne only to hear Christ say the most terrifying words you will ever hear, away from me, you evildoer. I do not know you. Go to him now. Seek him while he may yet be found. And then with all of God's people, go tell it on the mountains that Jesus Christ is Lord. Lord, it may be the business of us all this morning to ask Him to answer the question, am I a soldier of the cross, a follower of the Lamb? Shall I fear to own His name or His cause or to blush to speak His name? Must I be carried to the skies in flowery beds of ease while others fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas? Father, since I must fight if I would reign, increase my courage, Lord. I'll bear the toil.