‘LET THE REDEEMED OF THE LORD SAY SO’
Posted by Angella Diehl, Webmaster on December 30, 2020 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: December 30, 2020 from Luke 12:8-12
Theme: Jesus gives instructions for confessing Him before others in this world.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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This morning, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we consider a solemn duty we have from our Lord. It is also a glorious privilege. It’s that we declare to the people of this world our allegiance to Jesus Christ as our Lord, our Savior, our God, and our dearest Friend. It’s that we confess Him before men.
After He was crucified for us and raised for us—just before He ascended back to the Father—He told His gathered disciples,
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Notice that He didn’t say that we may become His witnesses if we wanted to be. He said that we shall be His witnesses. It wouldn’t be by our own power that we would be His witnesses; but that it would be by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. And because this is so, He promised that we would be His witnesses all around the globe—even to the end of the earth. This, then, is a matter of His will. It is not just an offer that is being made to us—to take or to reject as we wish. It is a commission being given to us by the Lord Himself.
But how we conduct ourselves as those who are His witnesses in this world is something that’s up to us. Will we confess Him faithfully and courageously? Or will we freeze up in fear and neglect to fulfill our privileged commission? In this morning’s passage from Luke 12:8-12, we find that the Lord Jesus gives us clear information regarding how we are to confess Him before the people of this world. He said;
“Also I say to you, whoever confesses Me before men, him the Son of Man also will confess before the angels of God. But he who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God. And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven. Now when they bring you to the synagogues and magistrates and authorities, do not worry about how or what you should answer, or what you should say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” (Luke 12:8-12).
Given the seriousness of our Lord’s words—and given the crucial times we’re living in—these are solemn words indeed! But they are also words of privilege and honor and great opportunity—words in which we are promised the help of the Holy Spirit in doing this greatest of all tasks.
May we learn from our Lord’s words, then, to confess Him faithfully in this world!
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Now; consider the context of these words. Our Lord had just been confronted by the Pharisees and scribes because He had cast an unclean spirit out of a man. They were saying that He did this by the power of the devil. And they also began to seek a way to entrap Him to bring further accusations against Him. He had turned away from the Pharisees and Scribes, and was now talking to those who were His followers.
And you’ll notice that, in the translation I’m using, this passage begins with our Lord saying, “Also I say to you …” Some English translations show it, and some do not; but in the original language, there is a clear connection between this passage and the one that comes before it. In the passage just before this one, He told His followers;
“And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him! Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? And not one of them is forgotten before God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:4-7).
Jesus was calling His followers to confess Him before men; and not just merely to men, but sometimes to very hostile men. He Himself was experiencing that hostility right then. We, too, will sometimes experience hostility in identifying with Him. He made this very clear to us in another passage. In John 15, He told His disciples;
“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well; if they followed My word, they will follow yours also” (John 15:18-21).
I find that I need to go back to those words often. They remind me of what I need to expect if I confess Jesus in this world. But because He spoke those words just before He died on the cross for the sins of the world, I also remind myself that the motivation for confessing Him before men is love. I want them to know Him too. And praise God!—often they do get to know Him!
So; look again at His words in this morning’s passage. We find three specific pieces of instruction from our Lord with regard to confessing Him in this world. First, we see that we’re urged to …
1. BE COURAGEOUS BEFORE MEN (vv. 8-9).
In verse 8, He said, “Also I say to you, whoever confesses Me before men, him the Son of Man also will confess before the angels of God.” What a great honor it will be!—to have Jesus confess us as His followers before the glorious angels of God in heaven! He will look to us and will say, “This one who faithfully confessed Me before people—even before hostile people—is someone who belongs to Me. I know them. They are mine forever.” He makes a promise that that’s what He will do if we confess Him.
To ‘confess’ Jesus—which is another way of saying that we acknowledge Him for who He is, and declare openly that we have believed on Him and that we love Him—is an essential part of our salvation. It’s not enough to simply ‘confess’ Him inwardly in the secret place of our heart. We must do that too. But we must also be ready to openly acknowledge Him in this world. We must open our mouths and say so. As it says in Romans 10:9-10;
if you 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 unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9-10).
If we confess Him openly, He will confess us openly. That’s His promise. But He makes another promise in verse 9: “But he who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” If out of fear of men we deny Him—if we become ashamed of our Lord because of the way the people of this world speak of Him; if we, out of fear, keep silent about our relationship with Him, then we will be denied before the angels of God on the great day. What a horrifying loss that would be!
Now; there was someone that we all know and love very well, dear brothers and sisters, who did in fact deny Him before men. It was the apostle Peter. Three times—out of fear of men—he denied His Lord. But we also see that the Lord was gracious to Him, and forgave Him. I believe that there have been many of our Lord’s followers throughout history who have stumbled in fear and have denied Him. But if we admit our failure to Him—and if we begin again to faithfully confess Him—we are forgiven and restored to His favor. I suspect that there will be some of us of whom—on that great day—Jesus will say, “This one—out of fear—denied Me. But this one also admitted their failure; and then, rose up in faithfulness—in spite of the fear—and began again to confess Me. That was very courageous. I died for their failure, and forgave them. And now, I gladly confess them.”
May God help us to no longer look at the temporary moment of the fear of confessing Jesus before men that may tempt us to freeze up in silence. Instead, let’s look ahead to the glorious day when Jesus would confess openly us before the angels of God—and let that be our motivation!
We also find in this passage another lesson that Jesus teaches us about confessing Him in this world; and that is to …
2. TRUST IN THE RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT OF GOD (v. 10).
Now; you may not see this lesson immediately. But I believe it’s there. In verse 10, Jesus said, “And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven.”
This passage has been misunderstood by many. It has caused folks to fear; and to wonder, “Have I committed the unpardonable sin? Have I, somehow, blasphemed the Holy Spirit?” And here’s where looking carefully at the context really helps us. Clearly, in this passage, the Lord Jesus is speaking to those who are His followers. But if you look at the context carefully, you find that He is not speaking here about those who are His followers. He’s speaking about someone else entirely.
He had just been accused by hard-hearted and unbelieving Pharisees of performing a great miracle in the power of the devil. They had seen Him show to them who He truly was by casting a demon out of a man; but they responded by saying, “He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons”. The Scribes also responded with a hard heart of unbelief. They challenged Him to perform a miracle at their command. And so, it wasn’t to His own followers that Jesus spoke the words of verse 10. It was to those who, in spite of the evidence that they saw, would not become His followers. If you look at other instances in the Gospels when Jesus spoke those words—in Matthew 12 and Mark 3—you find something interesting. You see that He spoke those words directly to the unbelieving accusers. It was a warning intended for them—not to those who were His followers.
If people who lived in those times, and observed Jesus in His humanity, and spoke words against Him personally, those words would be forgiven. But if those same people saw the power of the Holy Spirit clearly at work in and through Him—as these Pharisees and Scribes had done—and yet they’d even still speak against Him, then they were no longer just speaking against Him. They were blaspheming the Holy Spirit who was at work through Him. They were resisting the Holy Spirit’s draw to believe on Jesus. And so long as someone keeps on resisting the Spirit’s draw, they cannot receive forgiveness. This was what the martyr Stephen said to those who sought to stop him from preaching about Jesus in his time. In Acts 7:51, he said;
“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit …” (Acts 7:51).
If you—as a follower of Jesus—are concerned that you have committed the unpardonable sin, then be at peace. The fact that you would be concerned about it at all shows that you are not hard-hearted toward Jesus; and it is proof that you have not committed this sin. But that’s not the point of our Lord’s words. In the words of verse 10, He is showing us that when we confess Jesus before hard-hearted people, and they persistently reject Him and harden their hearts against Him, we’re not the ones that they will have to deal with. It’ll be the righteous Judge of all, who—as it says in verse 5—”has power to cast into hell”.
And this teaches us to trust in the just and righteous Judgment of almighty God—and faithfully confess Jesus without fear of men!
And notice one more thing that our Lord teaches us about confessing Him before men; and that’s that we must …
3. RELY ON THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (vv. 11-12).
He was speaking now of those who are His followers. And in verse 11, He said, “Now when they bring you to the synagogues and magistrates and authorities, do not worry about how or what you should answer, or what you should say …” And before we go any further, just stop and consider what a remarkable thing that was to say. As God in human flesh, He knew that His gospel would spread and be carried forth—even after He Himself had been crucified and raised and ascended to the Father. He knew that His gospel would have such great consequence that His ‘confessing people’ in this world would be taken to places of the highest authority among men. And it was so! Peter spoke the gospel to the rulers and authorities of the Jewish people. Paul was brought into synagogues, and was set before the Sanhedrin to testify. He was even taken before governors and leaders—and even before Caesar himself! Jesus didn’t say, “if they bring you” before such rulers; but rather said, “when they bring you …”!
But notice that He told His followers that, when this happened, they were not to worry ahead of time what to say. They didn’t have to stay up all night before their official hearing, and try to craft a careful defense. Instead, He told them in verse 12, “For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” And so it was also for Peter—who preached on Pentecost to his fellow Jewish kinsmen; and in one day, 3,000 believed and were baptized in the name of Jesus. And then, he spoke again shortly after that; and another 2,000 believed. Paul—when he was called to testify before kings and Roman governors, was able to give powerful testimony of Jesus that couldn’t be argued against.
Now; this isn’t permission for preachers and Bible teachers to quit doing the hard work of preparing their sermons and lessons. Rather, this is speaking specifically of times of testifying of Jesus before hostile men. In 1 Peter 4:13-14, Peter told his brothers and sisters in Christ not to think it strange if they suffer for Jesus’ sake;
but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified (1 Peter 4:13-14).
We may be tempted at times—because of the fear of other people—to be quiet about our Lord. But if we resist that fear, and if—in confident trust in the Spirit’s enabling power—we open our mouths and confess Jesus as our Lord, then those become among the times when we are most anointed and used by the Holy Spirit! He helps us to speak and works mightily through us—perhaps to the salvation of others.
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So; let’s acknowledge that there will be times when we will suffer shame and ridicule in this world for the sake of our Lord. He Himself suffered such treatment. And let’s also acknowledge that, in those times, we may be even tempted to be silent.
But let’s also remember the three things that our Lord teaches us in this passage: that we are to (1) be courageous before men, (2) trust in the righteous judgment of God, and (3) rely on the power of the Holy Spirit. And then; do as it says in Psalm 107:2;
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so … (Psalm 107:2b).
EA
