This message is one of the Times Square
Church pulpit series.
It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times
Square Church in Manhattan, New York City.
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I want to talk to you about confessing
Christ.
Confessing Christ.
If you have your Bibles, and I trust
you do, if you're from Times Square Church,
you do have your Bible.
Matthew 10, please.
Matthew 10, two verses, 32 and 33.
Matthew 10, verses 32 and 33.
Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him
will I confess also before my Father which
is in heaven.
But whosoever shall deny me before men, him
will I also deny before my Father which
is in heaven.
If you have a King James, I'm going
to read it again, verse 32 and 33,
and I want you to read aloud with
me, in the annex and all overflow rooms.
Let's read these verses aloud if you have
the King James.
Read verse 32 with me.
Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him
will I confess also before my Father which
is in heaven.
But whosoever shall deny me before men, him
will I also deny before my Father which
is in heaven.
All right, look this way if you will,
please.
I'm going to attempt to answer two questions
this morning.
First of all, what does it mean to
confess Christ before men?
The second question, what does it mean to
deny Christ before men?
Let's start right off with question number one.
What does it mean to confess Christ before
men?
Whosoever there shall confess me before men, him
will I also confess before my Father which
is in heaven.
Now, the word confess there is more than
just human assent.
I assent to that, I believe that.
It's a covenant, it's an agreement that you
make with Christ.
If you really confess Him, you are coming
into covenant, you are agreeing that you would
represent Him before men.
You would confess Him before men for who
He really is.
All of His might, His power, His personal
care for you, you're confessing that before men.
You make an agreement.
Now, it's not just a prayer.
Lord Jesus, I believe You're the Christ.
The Bible said even the devils believe and
tremble.
It's not just saying, well, I believe in
Jesus.
I don't care, you may not even go
to church and you hear, I don't care
if you're Catholic, Protestant, even Islam, some can
say, well, I believe that there was a
Jesus.
It's not just saying, I believe Jesus was
born into this world to a virgin.
I believe that Jesus lived and did good
and that He died and went to heaven.
He went to His Father.
That's not enough.
Even if you say He was resurrected and
He was God in flesh.
Have you confessed Him before man for who
He really says He is?
Now, if you look closely to what Jesus
really said, He said, whosoever therefore, and that
word therefore means in light of what I've
already said, in light of what I've just
told you, in light of what I've said,
therefore you shall confess Me before men.
What did Jesus just say to them?
If you look at the two verses prior
to that, verses 29 and 30, Jesus said,
are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
One of them shall not fall on the
ground without your father, but the very hairs
of your head are all numbered.
Through you not therefore you are of more
value than many sparrows.
And now we say, therefore, in other words,
in light of what I've just now told
you, I want you to confess Me before
men.
Now, folks, in Eastern times, in Christ's time,
the birds were sold at the shambles and
sold at the marketplaces on long strings.
There'd be long strings of sparrows and other
species of little birds.
Some were on skewers.
And they were sold for just a pittance,
very little money.
They were snared by those who snared birds
and sold very cheaply.
And yet, God is saying here, there's not
one of these birds...
Now, can you think, because this still is
true today.
Even this very day, in marketplaces through Turkey
and all through the Arab world and all
through Palestine, all through many, many nations, these
birds are still, strings of birds hanging in
marketplaces in Haiti.
Everywhere I've been, I've seen it.
And the Lord says, not one of them
to this very day falls to the ground
without the knowledge of the Father.
Now, you think of the millions and millions
and millions of birds on the face of
the earth.
And my God said, I'm making a point.
I want you to know that not one
of them has ever, from the beginning of
time, ever since I created mankind, not a
single bird has fallen to the ground without
my knowledge.
Not one has been killed, snared, cooked, fried.
I'm not trying to be facetious.
I'm telling you, not one bird without the
knowledge of my Father.
And He said, by the way, not only
have I numbered the birds, not only am
I aware of every one that has fallen,
I've numbered every hair on every head on
the face of the planet.
Think of the millions in China.
Think of the millions on the face of
the earth, and even billions.
And He said, and from the beginning of
time till the time Jesus comes, to the
end of time, every hair is being numbered.
What He's saying, do you understand how detailed
my care is?
Can I convey to you that I care
about the birds, I care about every hair
that falls from your head?
And He said, in light of that, I
want to tell you that you have nothing
to fear.
Why would you fear when I know that
you're worth more than all the birds of
the earth?
If I have taken the time to number
every hair on your head, you think I'm
going to ignore what's happening to you?
You think I'm just going to be passive
when you hurt?
I'm going to turn my back on you
when I don't turn my back on the
birds?
He said, how can you conceive of that?
And what Christ is telling us right here
now, in light of what I have revealed
to you of my heavenly Father's care, His
all-seeing, all-knowing eye, this is what
I want you to confess, that He cares
for me.
There's a psalm saying His eye is on
the sparrow.
I know His eye is on me.
You can say that you believe Christ, you
can even preach Christ, you can worship Christ,
but you have not confessed Him as Christ
before men.
If you're living in fear, if you go
about down in the dumps, helter-skelter, running
around trying to find somebody to help you,
and totally neglecting what Jesus said about His
care for you, you are not confessing Christ.
You have not confessed Christ before men.
You can throw Scriptures at people, you can
stand on the street corner and preach Christ,
believe all the Lord Jesus Christ, but in
your crisis time, in your times of being
overwhelmed, you do not acknowledge that He cares
for you, that He has a purpose in
what happens, whatever He allows.
He has all the mercy and the grace,
and He cares and He sees and He
feels, and He's touched with the feelings of
your infirmities.
And if you turn around as if God
has turned His back on you, and you
say, He doesn't see me, He doesn't care
about me, and you go about with a
long face, and you go about complaining and
murmuring, you have not confessed Christ before the
world, because confessing Christ is in light of
what I've told you, in light of my
care.
You confess me, but I am faithful and
caring to you as an individual.
1 Peter 5.7 says, Casting all your
care upon Him, for He cares for you.
And in the original Greek, it means casting
all your care upon Him, because it matters
to Him about you.
What happens to you, it matters.
Will you stop and think right now about
what you're going through, and remember what God
said?
Whatever you're going through, it matters to me.
It concerns me.
That's the Scripture.
That's the Word of God.
Him will I confess before my Father.
You know what that means?
That on the judgment day, when we stand
before Him, those who have confessed Him, those
who have made true to His testimony, saying,
I know He cares for me, He will
not fail me, whenever I'm going through, He'll
give me the grace and the strength.
God's going to see me through, in speaking
faith, in telling the whole world that my
God is faithful, not only to the birds
and the hares of my head, but to
me as an individual.
He's been faithful.
He's not failed me.
He will not fail me.
The Lord says, I'll take you before the
Father by the hand, is what He's saying.
On that day, I'll take you by the
hand and stand you before my Father's throne,
and I'll confess to my Father.
Father, here is one who confessed me before
men in their hardest trial, in their most
difficult time.
They pronounced to the world that I cared
for them, that I had not abandoned them.
Father, this is one who in their trial
turned to me and confessed me before all
men that I was faithful.
He said, I'll confess you before my Father
in heaven.
Hallelujah.
Question number two.
What does it mean to deny Christ before
men?
Whosoever shall deny me therefore before men, him
will I also deny before my Father which
is in heaven.
Now when we think of someone denying Christ,
we think of Peter.
Here's the man who said to Jesus, though
all men should offend because of Thee, yet
I will never offend you.
Though I should die with You, Jesus, yet
will I not deny Thee?
Likewise said all the disciples.
But this same man denied Him three times
before the rooster crowed the next morning.
And then he began to curse and to
swear, saying, I know not the man.
And the Gnostics can say to that, what
an awful thing that one so close to
this man called the Messiah should deny Him
and turn upon Him.
But folks, we deny Him even in more
tragic ways than Peter.
Peter was thinking of his flesh.
He was thinking of survival, that's all.
He quickly repented.
But folks, there's something about this that I've
got to bring to your attention this morning.
The Holy Ghost has really been speaking to
my heart about how we believers deny our
Christ.
Let me tell you how that happens.
First of all, we deny Christ when we
do not trust Him in our overwhelming times.
Now let me speak plainly to you.
I don't know if you have said what
I've said at times when I've been overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed, especially after so many cancers.
There's Gwen, then Debbie, then Bonnie, and then
granddaughter Tiffany.
There came a time when Tiffany and I
was outside the hospital.
Yes, such an overwhelming...
You don't accuse God of anything, but there's
that question, Lord, this is too much.
Have you ever been to that place where
you say, I can't go anymore?
I've had it.
I'm at my wits' end.
I can't carry anymore.
And God, why would you expect me to
carry anymore?
You know, that was the week when I
was feeling so bad, and we had requested
prayer on our mailing list, all of the
United States, for Tiffany.
And one letter that came from a woman
and her husband, and they were so encouraging.
And I told them, listen to this letter,
how encouraging.
But I hadn't got to the bottom of
the letter.
They were just encouraging us.
Because, you know, I was overwhelmed.
We were overwhelmed.
And Gwen was overwhelmed.
She said, I gave cancer to my...
Because the doctor said it was a cluster,
a family cluster, genetic.
She said, I gave it to Debbie, I
gave it to Bonnie, and now I've given
cancer to my granddaughter.
It was overwhelming.
And so, this letter from this couple from
the Midwest, this encouraged us.
And then it said, we know how you
feel.
And I thought, yeah.
I said, our daughter, teenage daughter, and her
friend were kidnapped.
And taken out into some forest.
And my daughter's girlfriend, our daughter's girlfriend escaped.
But our daughter didn't.
And they found her weeks later, mutilated.
Her head cut off.
And here I am, feeling so overwhelmed.
And these people are encouraging me.
And I didn't even have an idea how
they were suffering.
And they told how God had met them
in that hour of need.
And how the Holy Spirit had brought such
peace and calm.
And these people are just witnessing to people.
And there are people around that can't understand.
They said, well, you should be so down
for so long.
They said, well, we do grieve, but the
joy of the Lord has been in our
hearts because of the work of the Holy
Spirit.
But I'm talking to people here that came
to this service saying, I can't go on.
Have just had too much.
Let me tell you what David said.
Could you just turn to Psalm 55?
When David got overwhelmed.
Because this may be what some of you
have been saying.
Psalm 55.
Now folks, if you're not going through an
overwhelming time, God bless you.
But get in line because it comes to
all of us.
Psalm 55, verses 4-8.
My heart is sore pained within me.
The terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Cheerfulness and trembling are calm upon me.
Horror has overwhelmed me.
And I said, oh, that I had wings
like a dove.
Then would I fly away and be at
rest.
Then would I wander far off and remain
in the wilderness.
I would hasten my escape from this windy
storm and tempest.
Look at me please.
That's exactly what some of you said this
very week.
Maybe this very day.
That's maybe how you feel right now.
I can't handle anymore.
I've taken as much as I can take.
This is just absolutely overwhelming me.
I don't know how I can go on.
And you feel just like David did.
I really would like to escape.
Just some quiet.
Get away from all of this and just
be quiet.
I want to get personal on this.
You see, I have no way of knowing
who attends this service this morning.
I don't know who you may be, but
I'm thinking of a pastor's wife.
I don't know who you are.
I'm thinking of other women.
Lord put women in my heart that would
be here this morning in the annex and
all over this building going through the great
struggle and trial of your lifetime.
You're really going through it.
And God spoke to my heart that I
had to bring this Word to you.
You see, you sit here in the service
stifling a cry.
Now, anybody looking at you wouldn't know.
They wouldn't begin to know.
David said, I looked on my right hand
and behold, there was no one there that
knew me or understood me.
And refuge failed me.
And what David is saying, I'm in a
crisis.
I'm in a situation where things look like
there's no hope and there's no escape.