You and I are living in a day of no shame. Evil is being publicly paraded. And it should be clear today that Chirstians have lost the home field advantage – we are the visiting team. There is no place to run and no place to hide. There was a time when you can hide around your religion or in Church. But today we are being called out because the standards have been rejected across the board – education, media, politics, entertainment. It has become crystal clear that whatever remnants of the Christian nation that we had no longer exist and now we’re at the stage where the one entity that was designed to hold the line from this too.
You will now discover that following Jesus Christ is not a walk in the park. The Christian faith is seeking to be silenced. Unless you’re so vague, nobody knows where you stand. So I want to call on us to make the decision to be unapologetic Christians. Because that is what’s needed today.
Do You Confess Jesus?
Matthew 10:32-33 says: “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.”
He brings up the issue of confession. ‘If you confess Me, I’ll confess you. If you deny Me, I will deny you.’ This was not a statement said to Pagans. This was the statement said to His disciples. He’s not talking to non-Christians when He’s talking about confessions and denial. He’s talking to His so-called followers.
There is Guilt in Shame
To confess means to publicly identify with. It is the verbal and visual identification of yourself to be in league with Jesus Christ. In 2 Timothy 1:8, we read: “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God.”
He says, ‘If you confess me before men, I will confess you before my Father’ and ‘Don’t be ashamed of your identification.’ We live in a day of no shame. You see things on television you would never have thought. You see parades that you would never think you would have seen, ‘cause there is no shame. And we don’t hear anybody apologizing. In other words, what they’re saying to everybody else is just because this is the way it is.
Jesus says, ‘I want you to confess me before men, the same way that a married person wears a wedding ring to give visual identification of a relationship and that they’re committed.’ He’s saying, don’t take off your Christian ring when you go to work. Don’t take off your Christian ring when you’re in the neighborhood. Don’t take off your Christian ring when you’re around non-Christians to placate their rejection.
Our Fear Blinds Us
In John 12:42-43, it says: “Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.”
Don’t let your fear of people outpace your fear of the Lord. Some of the Pharisees believed in Him. They got saved, but they didn’t want to be rejected by people. They didn’t want to lose their popularity, they didn’t want to lose their public acceptance. They were on their way to heaven, but they didn’t want to lose acceptance on earth.
Today we live in a world of political Christians – Christians who use politics and rep their Christianity in the flag, rather than in the cross. We live in a day of cultural Christians who rep their Christianity in the subject of race, rather than in the primacy of Christ. We live in a day of convenient Christians, who want to use God for their blessing, but who don’t want to represent Him in the culture unless they’re in Church.
What It Means To Follow Jesus
Matthew 10:24-25 states: “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!
The whole idea of following Christ is to be like Him! It means reflecting how He says, how He feels, because you’re becoming like Him. Jesus sets the standard and we emulate that standard in the culture – the same way He reflected the standard of His Father, we are to reflect the standard of our Savior.
