Luke 12:1-12 "Confess Jesus"

If you confess…meaning to tell what is true…if you say that Jesus and Him alone is the Way, Truth, Life…
If you confess not just with your lips but with your life.
If you make that confession before man…Jesus will confess us before the angels of God…
And they…as the Scriptures tell us…will rejoice.
We share Romans 10:9-10 every Sunday…
“That 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.” (Romans 10:9)
And I want you to understand that the key to this verse is believe in your heart!
Because you can confess Jesus with your lips…but your heart could be far from Him.
We know that…it is by grace that we are saved through faith…
It is our faith in Jesus that saves us…not just confessing His name…
Because it’s all about what is in our heart…not what is on our lips.
And it takes faith to verbally confess Jesus…at the time of the writing of the book of Romans…
If a person made a public confession of faith in Jesus…It typically resulted in persecution and would often lead to that person’s death.
At that time, to confess Jesus as Lord…knowing that it could cost you your life to do so…was an indication of true salvation and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Remember it is by grace we are saved through our faith…our belief that Jesus is Lord.
If you were facing death…you would never confess your belief in Jesus with your lips…unless you were already convinced in your heart that He was Lord and Savior.
In Romans 10:10, we read: “For with the heart one believes unto righteousness (you are justified), and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:10)
In the original Greek, this verse carries with it the idea of “confirming” with the mouth what has already taken place in the heart.
Paul would go on to say in Romans 10:
How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? (Romans 10:14)
To call upon the name of Jesus means you already have made up your mind that He is the only Way, the only Truth, and the only Life.
And to make that confession today in America doesn’t cost us anything in comparison to what it cost Christians in Paul’s day…
But it may one day…and the question we may all face one day is… “Are you still willing to confess the name of Jesus when it could cost you your freedom, your job, your family, your life?
So, we need to take stock now and search ourselves to see what our confession of faith is grounded in.
Is it grounded in the Rock Christ Jesus…whom we have committed to following with our whole heart no matter what?
Or is it grounded in a confession made with your lips…a confession that hasn’t caused a change in your heart?
Because when we confess Jesus before men…the evidence of that confession should be seen in our lives.