Luke chapter 12 and verse 8. And it's the Lord Jesus Christ who is speaking and he says, Also I say unto you, whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God. But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven. But when they bring you unto the synagogues and unto magistrates and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say. Amen.

May the Lord bless this reading to us.

In those days, and perhaps several of us, if not all of us, can relate to this in some way, but in those days when works religion dominated our thinking, we used to be assaulted in our consciences by verses like these that we've just read together. Some free will preacher would tell us that unless we were witnessing our faith to others and trying to get them to trust the Lord and make a decision for Christ, then we were falling short of what the Lord required of us by way of confessing him before men. We all had to be apostles, we all had to be preachers, we all had to be witnesses for Christ. And failing to confess him in this way was tantamount to denying him. And if we didn't confess him, we would in turn be denied by him before the angels and his father and even lose our reward in heaven.

Well, thankfully, we've been brought to realise the foolishness and perversity of this works-based nonsense. It isn't our confession that saves us. It is not our evangelistic work rate that influences our reward of glory. And shame on those preachers who threaten young believers in such ways and frighten them with eternal loss for their lack of endeavour and commitment. It is sheer religious blackmail.

On the contrary, we have come, I trust, to appreciate that our standing in Christ is all of Christ and we give thanks to the Lord who is faithful and merciful even when we prove to be unfaithful to him. We confess Christ in what we believe and we exercise faithfulness to his cause by trusting in him according to the doctrine that we have been taught by God. If we believe the gospel of sovereign grace, we confess Christ before men. When we acknowledge Christ and Christ alone to be our only hope in this world and our sole source of spiritual life, we are confessing Christ before men. We are confessing Christ in this world. It is that which is confessing Christ before men. It's nothing to do with how much personal evangelism we do or whether we're good soul winners for Jesus.

These free willers, these works mongers, they've stolen our Bible vocabulary and they've filled it with self-righteous inferences. and made it mean something quite alien in order to lay their heavy yokes on the shoulders of Christ's sheep. Confessing Christ, confessing God's saving gospel is our confession of faith. Not the Westminster Confession, not the 1689 Baptist Confession, or indeed any other man-made rubric, Confessing a confession might get you into a denomination, but it is confessing Christ that brings us into the Church of Christ and identifies us before the angels and before the Father as one of the Lord's people, from the Lord's own lips. And I just want to enlarge upon that a little bit. If a man or a woman does not confess Christ, by which I mean confess and testify to his sovereign, efficacious work of grace in their life, that person can speak all he likes to unbelievers. He can sign whatever he likes or adopt or express whatever confession of faith he chooses. and he will never be confessed by Christ before the angels.

There are plenty of people who have aligned themselves with a particular denomination who have never been united to Christ. It is such of whom Christ speaks when he tells us in Matthew 7, Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven. And the will of the Father is that we trust in his Son.

And furthermore, there are plenty of people who speak about Christ, but again have never known him. Ministers who preach anything other than full redemption, free grace, and the glorious liberty of the children of God, as it is in Christ Jesus, might speak as effusively about Christ as they like, but they don't preach Christ. They don't confess him before men. And such preachers cannot expect their ministries to be honoured in heaven, or to engage the angel's interest, whose great desire, says Peter, is to look into the things of the gospel.

Now, what I am not saying is that believers, therefore, are only passive. Confessing Christ inasmuch as we confess his gospel and trust in him will inevitably have outward effects. I don't think there is such a thing as a secret disciple in the sense of a person who truly believes and yet no one can tell that he's a believer. Every child of God has outward marks of inward grace. Every converted sinner will reveal, will evidence their internal transformation.

It was said of Joseph of Arimathea that he was a disciple of Christ, but secretly for fear of the Jews. Well, whatever that means with respect to Joseph of Arimathea, Joseph of Arimathea certainly did not live as the Jews lived, as the other Pharisees lived. He certainly did not live hypocritically as they did. He certainly did not live deceitfully as they did. If he had fear of the Jews, it didn't last very long. It was Joseph of Arimathea who petitioned Pilate for the body of the Lord Jesus. It was probably even him who took the Lord's body off of the cross, and he buried it in his own tomb. Hardly a secret disciple,

And let me say something more about this Joseph. It was he who first took possession of Christ's body and first tended it with respect. In Matthew 27, we read, when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth. That was Joseph. It wasn't the women. It wasn't the disciples. It was a secret disciple who loved the Lord. And he cared for the body of Jesus at the very first.

a man called Joseph, a Pharisee, a man rich enough to own a garden in Jerusalem in which was a new tomb intended for his own use. Well, he certainly made his confession before men. and how wonderfully did the Lord order every action and every outcome when it was spoken of our Saviour that he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death.

I say again, confessing Christ will inevitably have outward effects. We profess the truth of salvation by grace in our heart and with our lips. We worship God in spirit and in truth, in our heart and with our lips. We follow Christ because our hearts are renewed. We seek out the Lord's people and we worship with them. We evidence a thousand new characteristics befitting a new creation because that is what we are. And we may be absolutely confident about this. While we are thus confessing Christ in our heart and with our lips, in that renewed spiritual state, Our Lord Jesus Christ is at the very same time joyfully confessing us before his angels. Our Saviour will never deny his children.

William Cooper wrote concerning Christ's love for us, can a woman's tender care cease towards the child she bear? Yes, she may forgetful be, Yet will I remember thee. The Lord Jesus Christ will never forget his people, and he will never deny his people, because he loves us with an everlasting love. And a mother may forget her child, but Christ will never forget his little ones.

The other lesson that we have in this passage today refers to what is sometimes called the unforgivable sin or blaspheming the Holy Spirit. And I just want to say a couple of things about that. The Lord says, And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven. And here again, I think we need to be careful not to misapply what the Lord says as though one certain sin when committed can never be repented of or confessed and forgiven.

There are men and women who have lived for years without assurance for their soul because they fear that they may have inadvertently committed the unforgivable sin. Well let me say, it is my conviction that there is no sin can be committed by one of the Lord's elect that cannot be washed clean by the precious, powerful and efficacious blood of Jesus Christ. If we seek forgiveness, if we seek cleansing and peace with God in Christ, it is evidence that we have not committed this sin and we shall have peace and the reconciliation that we desire. For Christ has said, all that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

This is, I think, the key. The sin here spoken of was a sin that none of the elect can commit. It was a peculiar sin in a particular time insofar as it related principally to these reprobate Pharisees attributing Christ's work to Satan. Now that is not to say that it cannot be committed at other times. I'm sure it is. However, passages such as Matthew 12 and Mark 3 seem to have particular respect to the attribution of the saving work of the Holy Spirit to the devil, thereby denying the necessity of divine power in the work of conversion and grace.

And if a man continues to resist the ministry of the Holy Spirit and denies that single transformative work of regeneration and the new birth, then it is self-evident that man is not a believer. And while all his sins remain unforgiven in that state, yet it's this sin being the standout crime that is especially highlighted. Anyone who persists in maintaining that a person can find Christ and be saved by their own strength and power, palpably demonstrates that they know nothing of the Holy Ghost's work, either in their own life or in the lives of others. And they reveal that their own sin has not been forgiven.

In this sense the unforgivable sin is not a single time statement or even shall we say a frequently repeated sin but it's a continuous and persistent sin right to the point of death. It says, I need no sacrifice. I need no saviour. I need no new creation. I have the power in myself to meet my maker and stand in my own strength. And the person that commits that sin commits the unforgivable sin. None of Christ's people do that. None who are redeemed think like this. once that efficacious work of grace is begun in them.

Then they come in humility of spirit, in need of an application of Christ's blood, an awareness of that necessity of cleansing in their conscience, and they find the Holy Spirit happy to bestow all that they require.

We speak about the Lord telling his people that when they are brought into the synagogues and before magistrates and powers, that they are to take no thought how or what things they shall answer or what they shall say, for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.

There is some confidence for us. Let us not be concerned that we don't have the right words, that we don't have the right understanding, that we don't have the right means in order to speak forth and testify for the Lord. It is the very Lord in us, it is the person of the Holy Spirit, it is the Spirit of Christ that enables us and brings us to confess him before men.

No believer will ever commit that unforgivable sin and every believer will confess their Lord Jesus Christ before men as they live to his glory and take a stand for the gospel that has brought them into a knowledge of the truth.

May the Lord bless these things to us. Amen. Amen. Thank you.