Open with me, if you would, to Luke chapter 12. We find ourselves this morning in verses 8 to 12, which, if you're familiar with, you know is a bit of a tricky passage. And we'll pray for the Lord to give us grace to understand it and to apply it and to be able to rightly interpret it. Let's pray for the Lord's blessing in that.
[Prayer] Lord, we are so joyful to be here on this Lord's Day, to be able to be with brothers and sisters in Christ, to be able to sing together, to be able to open our Bibles. We ask You through the work of the Holy Spirit to be our teacher. Pray that what I say would be true, that it would be helpful, that it would be clear, and that it would make much of Your Son. We pray that in His name. Amen. [End]
Well, as you looked at last week, this is a passage where there is a warning against hypocrisy, a warning that we need not fear men, that we must make sure that we are right with the Lord, very helpful passage you looked at last week. That we need not fear what any man can do to us. That we trust in the Lord, that we rest under His providential care for us. And now we pick up today in verses 8 to 12. Let me read it to you. And if your first question is, what in the world does that mean? I'll do my best. At the end of the service, if your question is still, what in the world does that mean? It means I failed you. So, we'll try.
Verse eight, “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges Me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”
I want to walk you through this passage with three headings and stay with me here because there are some things here that are a bit tricky that I think as we work through them, I pray, will come to be clear and the importance of it makes sense for us. The first thing I want you to make notice is in verses 8 and 9 that we are to “stand firm in our trust in Jesus.” “Stand firm in our trust in Jesus.” And you might just put beside that, that this speaks of our worship. This speaks of our worship. Let's look at it together. “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges Me before men, the Son of Man, also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God.”
The verb here, to acknowledge, means to agree with, it means to say the same thing. In context, it says that we are to say what is true, specifically in this context, that we are to say what has been revealed from heaven about who Jesus is. That we are to agree with heaven about who the person of Jesus is. So, in Matthew 3:17, it says, “a voice from heaven said, this is My beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” That we are to acknowledge Christ, say the same thing about Christ as the Father declared, that He is the Son of God, that He is Himself God. This means that we are to know who the biblical Jesus really is. That we do not have a Jesus of our own mind or of our own creation, but instead, the Jesus we acknowledge, the Jesus we speak of, the Jesus we serve, is to be the same Jesus as revealed in the pages of scripture. That's very important.
Because you will hear all the time people say things like, “well, that's not my Jesus,” or “that's not the Jesus I serve,” or “that's not the God I believe in,” and they have a God of their own making. But the only name able to save is the name of Jesus as revealed to us in the Word of God. And so, we are to acknowledge, to agree with, to say the same thing as what the Father said, that this Jesus is the very Son of God. Simply put, you cannot honor the Father without loving the Son. This matters a lot. Because to have a right relationship with the Father only happens through the Son. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” To honor the Father is to love the Son. True Christians love Christ.
I just want to keep in front of you, dear congregation, to make sure that you love Christ. To make sure that as you grow in knowledge, as you study His Word, as you grow in your doctrine and knowledge of theology, that you love Christ. There's a couple of things I get to be a part of at our home church that the Lord has blessed. One of them it's called “The Institute.” It's a two-year Bible training program, and students take courses. There's online lectures. I teach every week. They've got books to read, homework to do, final exams. It's a pretty robust two-year program. And what I find myself saying to those students, more than anything else, is to make sure that they're growing in their love for Christ. Because it is possible to love to learn, and fail to worship. It is possible to crave knowledge and intellect in a theological acumen, but not love Christ.
But to acknowledge Christ biblically is to say the same thing the Father says about Him. And the Father says, “in My Son, I am well pleased.” There is an eternal loving relationship between the Father and the Son. So church, make for certain that you love Christ.
Another thing I get to do with regularity, we call it, “Ladies Night of Theology,” where about 500 ladies from all over the state come to our church. We've got it coming up this coming Tuesday, just in two days. And we'll have hundreds of ladies there, and all I do is teach for two hours, that's it. We don't do anything else. I just show up, I teach for two hours, I drive home, that's all we do. And hundreds of ladies from all over our state will come and be a part of that. And it's an amazing thing to see the ladies in our church, in our surrounding area, want to know and want to grow in their theology. But I will say to those ladies, every single time we gather, that we've got to make sure that we love Christ, that we don't only want to grow in our understanding and our knowledge, while that is essential, but that it's not sufficient. Our knowledge needs to lead us to devotion. It needs to lead us to worship. We must love Christ. And so I want to give the same encouragement to you. You're a well-fed church, you're a well-taught, well-trained church, and to God be the glory for that. But the Christian life, while it's never less than doctrinal precision, never less than that, it is more than that. You must love the Son.
You need to pray that the Lord would give you every day, not only a passion to know the Word, but that the Word that you learn and the Word that you take in would lead you to a deeper love of Jesus Christ. Let this church be known for truth and love, never either or. Jesus himself said, “the world will know you are My disciples by your love.” We are told that we are to acknowledge the Son, that is to love Him. That's what we must believe. We must acknowledge who Jesus is.
Now just think of what He says here. Everyone, back to verse eight, “everyone who acknowledges Me before men, everyone who agrees with who I am, everyone who speaks of the truthfulness of who I am.” So, it's imperative that we as Christians are clear on who Jesus really is. The challenge is that we live in a world where people think that it is humble to be vague. That's not humility to be vague where God has been clear. There's a difference. We want to be humble, yes. We want to be patient and kind, of course. But it's not biblical humility to be silent or vague on what God has made clear. And the Bible makes crystal clear to us who Jesus is. Your faith begins in your heart, of course, but comes out in your public affirmation that you believe in, trust in, and love Christ.
To acknowledge Christ is to believe the truth, it's to be transformed by the truth, it's to be aligned with the truth. So, in verse eight, everyone who acknowledges Me is to say the truth of who Jesus is. Who is the biblical Jesus? Virgin born, the only way to heaven. We confess a triune God. We confess Jesus as revealed to us in the pages of Scripture. We confess He was a man that lived, the God-man who lived a perfect life, a sinless life, that He was our substitute on the cross, that He paid for our sin on the cross. As the Bible would call it, He was our propitiation. He paid the wrath of God upon our sin. We believe He was laid in the tomb, bodily resurrected, ascended to heaven, and one day coming again. Amen. This is the Christ of the Bible. This is the Christ we acknowledge. This is the Christ we affirm. This is the Christ we love.
Everyone who acknowledges Me before men, the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God. Here's the warning in verse 9, “but the one who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” It speaks of denying. I think there's a couple of things that would help us to understand. One is to deny maybe a momentary sin, a momentary lack of understanding, a momentary even rejection of the truth. We're not talking about a settled state of the heart. It's what blasphemy would be. There's a distinction there. Peter's an example of this. Peter denied the Lord. It was sin. In a moment of weakness, he denied the Lord. But that wasn't the settled condition of his heart. What must we believe? We must believe and confess who Jesus is.
Now, let me ask a second question. How must we profess that? If we must believe in the biblical Jesus, how do we profess it? Well, the text tells us, look at it again, “we do this before men.” We acknowledge Christ, we speak of who Christ is before men. Our lives and our language are public. Now, let me make sure we understand one part here. Not everyone who professes Christ is truly saved, right? Matthew 7, “not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom.” Not everyone who professes Christ is truly converted, but those who are truly converted will confess Christ. If you have this idea that your faith is your own private thing, you did not get that from Scripture. Because the Bible is clear that those who truly belong to Him will acknowledge to say the same thing, to speak of, to agree with before men. In other words, your faith absolutely is personal, but never private. Don't confuse the two. It's personal. It's in your heart. It's your faith. I can't believe for somebody else. I can't confess Christ for someone else. Your faith must be personal. Do not confuse that which is personal to be that which is private. What is personal in your heart must be lived in public with your lives and your language. We acknowledge Christ before men. What must we believe? The biblical Jesus. How must we profess? Publicly.
Third question, when will the Lord declare this truth, He tells us, it's in the great courtroom of God. “The one who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” Verse 8 though, “when you acknowledge Me, the Son of Man will acknowledge you before the angels of God.” In other words, here's the point. Those who are truly converted will speak of the one who has saved them. But the Lord knows those who are truly His. He knows. As a true believer, you never have to wonder, does Christ know that I love Him? He knows, and will one day declare before all of the angels in heaven that you are His. Now, actually, I want you to keep that metaphor in your mind of Christ acknowledging and declaring the true status of your soul because I think there's something purposefully that is built upon here in a few minutes. Stand firm in our trust in Jesus. That's our worship.
All right? There's a second thing I want to show you, verse 10. “We are to submit fully to the testimony of the Holy Spirit.” We are to submit fully to the testimony of the Holy Spirit. This speaks of the witness, the witness of the Holy Spirit about who Jesus Christ truly is. Look at verse 10. “And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” There's a few things I want you to walk with me through. One is just to understand that to speak a word against, again, we're talking about a moment in time. When we speak of blasphemy, we're speaking about a settled condition of the heart. This same idea that we see here in Luke 12 is also mentioned in Matthew 12. It's also mentioned in Mark 3. All three passages speak of a time when the Pharisees saw the work of Jesus, witnessed His miracles, saw His authority and power, and declared that the power by which Christ operates was by the power of the devil. The leaders of the day ascribe to Christ that He is demonic. He does what He does by the power of Beelzebul. If you see and hear and experience the witness of the Holy Spirit of who Jesus is, you understand how He has been presented. You understand the prophecies. You understand the preaching. You've understood the miracles. You understand the power. You understand the authority. The witness of the Holy Spirit has been crystal clear, and you're final, settled condition of your heart, your conclusion is that all the Holy Spirit has witnessed of and testified of Christ, and you conclude in your heart that Christ is nothing more than a tool and a weapon of Satan, there's nowhere else to go.
There may be someone who needs to hear the truth, who needs to confess the truth, who needs to understand the truth, who needs to consider the truth, but what we see in the Gospels is not a group of people who did not understand or had not seen evidence or had not witnessed the power. They had seen all of that. They had all of the Old Testament, the shadow, pointing toward the substance who is Christ. They had all the prophecies, all the miracles, all the teaching, all the sermons. Even His own enemies would have to conclude He had a power and an authority unlike anything they'd ever seen. But refusing to acknowledge the testimony and witness of the Holy Spirit of who Jesus is, they simply concluded that what Jesus does, He does by the power of the devil.
In fact, let's do this. Stay in Luke 12, but turn back to the left just briefly with me to Mark 3. Different accounts, same response here. Mark 3, we see this starting in verse 22. “The scribes who came down from Jerusalem are saying, He is possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons He cast out the demons. And He called them to Him and said to them in a parable: How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds a strong man, then indeed he may plunder his house. Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin.” Jesus in verse 28, “truly I say to you,” this is the word we get, our English word for amen. He's saying what I'm about to say is true, this is solemn, this is serious, this is important. And then, interestingly enough, Jesus says that those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, those who have a settled condition in their heart to deny the witness of the Holy Spirit of who Christ is, has no hope.
What's happening in context here are these religious leaders thought they had Jesus on trial. They've seen the evidence, they've seen the witness of the Holy Spirit, and because of their sin and hardness of heart, they are ready to give a verdict on the person of Jesus. Now watch this. The verdict they render is that while they can't deny the power of Jesus, they will ascribe His authority to be satanic. Jesus turns the tables and says, you think you're putting Me on trial, and you think you're My judge, but let Me give you heaven's verdict. “Once you have seen, heard, and even understood the witness of who I am, and refuse to believe, when you deny the witness of the Holy Spirit of who I am, and would conclude that I am of the devil for you, there is nothing left but judgment." They thought they were judging Christ. He tells them, I am the judge. My verdict shall stand.
I think of this often when in the world that you and I live in, people will mock God, mock the church, belittle the Bible, disrespect Christians, thinking they have given some kind of final verdict on truth, when in reality, all they are doing is building up charge after charge after charge that they will one day stand before the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and give an account.
In verse 30, here in Mark 3, they conclude, “for they were saying, He has an unclean spirit.” He's demonic. He's possessed. He's infiltrated by the devil. In other words, these leaders who have heard the teachings, seen the miracles, witnessed the power, give their final verdict, this man is satanic. This was not a weak moment. This was not a misunderstanding. This was not an error because the temptation got too hot. This is people blatantly, willfully, purposefully denying the witness of the Spirit of who Christ is and ascribing to Jesus to be nothing more than a pawn of hell.
Why would they do that? Because they wanted power. Jesus came and talked about sin and repentance and need of salvation. And these self-righteous, religious, arrogant men wanted to protect their own power, even if it cost them their soul. And if someone does that, there is no hope for them.
Let me take about two minutes here on a brief excursus here, because this leads us to what is often referred to as the unpardonable sin. You've heard that term, the unpardonable sin? I believe that the best way to understand when we think of the unpardonable sin, I think the best way to understand that is that this is a unique sin committed by the nation when they rejected Christ as Messiah. Because all three times we see this mentioned, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it's always after the nation ascribes to Jesus to be nothing more than a pawn of Satan. And because they have rejected Christ as Messiah, Romans 11 tells us, a partial hardening has come over their heart. And after this point is when we begin to be introduced to this concept of the church.
Now the Lord will complete His work with the people of Israel, but at this time a partial hardening has come over them until the fullness of Gentiles has come in, Romans 11 says. Here's the effects of their sin. There is no other Messiah coming. The one they have rejected is the only true Messiah. Now let's put the two pieces together. You must acknowledge who Christ is, agree with, say the same thing as who Christ is. You can't be right with the Father if you do not love the Son. Do you see it? The people who were rejecting Christ did not stop being religious. But they did not agree with the Father about the Son. And while they would have said they honored the Father, they did not love the Son.
In its truest sense, I think that's the way you understand the concept that you and I would refer to as the unpardonable sin. But if you follow up with that and say, “but what about me as an individual? Is this something I could do?” Understand that even just being concerned about your state with Christ and your own sin and your standing before the Lord would give you evidence that this isn't something you have done. And that for us, we know the truth that all who are converted used to be sinners, right? So, 1 Timothy 1:13 -14, “even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor, yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was more than abundant.”
Today, if you're a believer, it's only because of grace. Now, there is a time that you acted in unbelief. There is a time when you may have even denied the gospel, but by God's grace, praise the Lord, that was not the settled condition of your heart. And while I think the best way to understand the unpardonable sin is this is the national rejection of Jesus, not something that you can commit, it is true that if you reject the witness of the Holy Spirit of who Jesus is, if you say, “I understand the gospel, I understand what Jesus says, I understand what Jesus did, I just want another way.” If that is the settled condition of your heart, it would be true. There is no other hope for you.
As Hebrews reminds us, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? If you see the witness of who Christ is and you say to yourself, “I want to go to heaven. I just don't want to have salvation through Christ.” Understand there is no plan B. There's no other way coming. There's no other sacrifice. Now the Old Testament reports for us that there will come a day, it says that Israel, the nation, even the very ones who had rejected Christ when He comes, the Old Testament says there will come a time when they will look upon Him whom they have pierced and they will mourn and grieve as you would an only son. There is hope for all who will turn to Christ and believe in His name.
The Bible is not speaking of somebody who is in this sanctuary, who believes the Bible, who loves Jesus, but you did some secret thing in the past that can never be forgiven. That's not what we're talking about here. I don't want you to live with that kind of dread or fear. That gets spoken of from time to time. When we speak of the unpardonable sin, we're not talking about some mysterious thing you did that you didn't realize at the time, or even something you did in the past that you can recall, and today you love Jesus, you believe His Word, you trust the gospel, you love Him, but have I somehow unwittingly made something happen that I can never be forgiven for. That's not what this passage is talking about. I want to free you up from that. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8. Amen?
We all were liars. Sinners. Guilty. Fill in the blank for what your before Christ life looked like. “And there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Okay? What we're talking about in this passage in Luke 12 and in Mark 3, first and foremost, is the national rejection of Christ as their Messiah. But individually applied, we're speaking of those who would understand the witness of the Holy Spirit, understand the gospel, understand who Jesus is and what He has done. And if even you were to conclude that you want to be right with the Father, but do not love the Son, there would be no other way. Understand that.
Back to Luke 12. So first, we stand firm in our trust in Jesus that speaks of our worship. We submit fully to the testimony of the Holy Spirit that speaks of His witness. Verses 11 and 12, “we speak faithfully in trials through the power of the Holy Spirit.” “We speak faithfully in trials through the power of the Holy Spirit.” This speaks of our words. Look at verse 11. “And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say."
Now, if you're here this week and you're wondering, where does this come from? Where did we bring this in? Well, this is building on what you studied last week. Go back to verse four. You looked at this last Lord's Day. “I tell you, My friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do to you.” Jesus is speaking of the very real threat of what this world will try to do to believers. To intimidate them, to silence them, and if need be, to kill them.
But here's the reality as a Christian. When the world says that you must be quiet of acknowledging Christ, and you refuse to do it, and the world says, if you're not quiet about Jesus, we're going to kill you, and you say, then what? Then what? What else you got? Well, we're going to kill you. But then what? Because to be absent from the body is to be what? Present with Christ. To live is Christ, to die is what? Gain. Great is your reward in where? Heaven. So, we're gonna kill you if you're not silent. And you say, then what? You got nothing. Don't you understand we're gonna take your life? No, you're not. Because first and foremost, you won't do anything that hasn't been granted by my Father. And even secondly, humanly speaking, to end this life is to do nothing more than I am led into my everlasting presence with Christ.
So, in verses four and five, Jesus says, don't live fearfully. Acknowledge Me. Your faith is personal, but it's not private. But what about the threat if people hurt us or harm us? Well, He picks that back up. So, you looked at it in verse 4, He picks it back up in verse 11. “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say.” You can break this into the categories in which Jesus refers to here. He speaks of false religions. He speaks of secular authorities. He speaks of the reality that the outside world and all of its entities may call you in and demand of you to renounce your faith. And what do you do? Verse 8. You acknowledge Christ before men.
And you sit here in the sanctuary today and you say, “but I don't know.” “What would I say if I were threatened? What would I say if I were frightened? What would I say if I was scared?” And Jesus says, “don't be anxious about how you would defend yourself. or what you should say.” Verse 12, “for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” Many of you have, I'm sure, had the occasion in your life where you have witnessed a friend of yours maybe who has gone through a terrible tragedy. And you say, I don't know how I can make it if that happened to me. Maybe someone you know unexpectedly lost a spouse. You say, “I don't know if I can make it.” Or maybe you know someone who's lost a child, and you say, “I don't know if I could survive if that happened to me.” Or maybe somebody was falsely accused, and rather than defend themselves, they just lived their life in honesty before the Lord, and you said, “I don't know if I could survive if I had to go through that.”
I want you to notice in verse 13, “the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour.” Friends, the grace you need in that moment will be the grace supplied; when? In that moment. If you're a true child of God, don't go through your life wondering and worrying about if you have the strength to be strong for battles you've not yet faced. His grace will be sufficient in that moment.
I've had the privilege to serve my church for 25 years. It's a pretty long time, quarter of a century that we've invested our time there. Sweet people, wonderful congregation. They've been so good to us, so good to our family. There's been some trials. You might imagine in 25 years of pastoring, there's some trials. There's some problems. There's some times when you go to work in the morning and you say, I didn't know this was coming. If I knew this was coming, I'd have been on vacation somewhere today. By God's grace, those moments have been few, but they've been there. We've had some times where our pastors meet together and we've had to say, “we've got a really, really tough situation that's come up. Didn't know this was coming.”
25 years ago, we didn't have the knowledge and the grace and the strength that we needed for every single problem that would arise in 25 years. We didn't need to. Because the promise of God to His people is that when you trust and rely upon the Holy Spirit, in that very hour, He will give you what you need. So, friends, I want you to be free from the worry and the wondering about every single problem that may come up the rest of your life. What if this happens? And what if they do this to me? And what if something happens to them? And what if disease comes? And what if we lose our job? And what if this happens in politics? And what if this happens in the economy? And what if this happens in the church? And what if this happens in my family? Be free from that.
Live your life in worship of Jesus, responding faithfully to the witness of the Holy Spirit of who Christ is, and trust that the words you will need in that moment are given to you by the power and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in your moment of need. Amen? We trust in Him. We trust in Him.
Now please don't make the mistake that many people have done in complete foolishness to say, “well, I conclude from this that as a pastor I don't need to study, the Holy Spirit will just tell me what to say.” That's not what we're talking about, okay? There have been people through the ages who have said that this passage means that pastors shouldn't study, or don't need to be trained, or don't need to labor in prayer and Bible study. Just stand up and wing it through the power of the Holy Spirit. Sunday school teacher, Bible study leader, preacher, please don't make such a tragic mistake and ignore the blatant careful study of God's Word when it reveals to us that we are in 2 Timothy, “to study and show ourselves approved.”
We're not talking about some loophole that gets you out of studying and you just wing it for God's glory, okay? That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about when the world closes in on you, and demands your allegiance as a true follower of Christ, don't worry in advance in that moment. Just do then what you've always done and speak the truth of who Christ is, relying on the power of the Holy Spirit in that hour. This whole passage, building upon the previous passage, is just giving you an application of what the trust called for in verse 4 looks like in verse 11 and 12. We trust in Him.
Stand firm in our trust in Jesus. Submit fully to the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Speak faithfully in trials through the power of the Holy Spirit. And make for certain that you are trusting in the biblical Jesus and nobody else. There's a story told of an infidel farmer in a small town. He publicly let everybody know he did not believe in God and did not care for anything to do with Jesus. He was determined to defy the usual custom in this small farming community. It had been the long-standing tradition on the Lord's Day that farmers would not do any work out of respect for the Lord's Day. Well, this certain farmer decided he wanted to defy God and all there who were Christ's followers.
So, he did plowing and planting and cultivating of a certain field every single Sunday. While he would do it, he would publicly yell for all who would hear that he was challenging God to send a drought to this particular field. Challenge God to keep any crops from growing on this particular field of which he spent all of his time every Lord's Day on in an act of complete defiance of the Lord. You know what happened? Rain came. The corn grew, and in October he would gather his crop.
And in a kind of wicked exultation of his success, the farmer sat down and composed a letter that he then turned into the local newspaper, telling of this record crop he had harvested that year. How he had done all the work on this one particular field on Sunday, week after week, and not only was the crop not cursed, it was plentiful. He boasted how the corn had grown, it had ripened, it was safely gathered. And now, he said, I know there is no God and there is no hope in someone named Jesus because of what I have experienced.
The editor of that newspaper published the farmer's letter, making one editorial note at the end. He said, our friend seems to have forgotten one thing. God does not settle all accounts in the month of October. There will come a time where that man will stand before the Lord, and if he has rejected the witness of the Holy Spirit, before the angels in heaven and the throne room and courtroom of God, there will be no hope.
But for all who have called upon the name of the Lord, trusted in who Christ is, agreed with the Father of who He is, and have loved the Son, they shall be saved. So, brothers and sisters, don't worry about what man can do to you. Live your life in worship and love the Son. Believe and receive the witness of the Holy Spirit of who Jesus is. And trust in His power to care for you and to even give you the words to say in the moment when the world would come against you and you acknowledge Christ, who is the way and the truth and the life.
And because of His grace, all who have believed in Him, saved by grace through faith, are held secure in His hand, and no one and nothing can ever wrestle you away. Not because you can't fall, but because He won't let go. Amen?
[Prayer] Lord, we thank You for Your word today and pray that it would bring hope and encouragement to our souls, that we would be a people that are trusting, delighting, worshiping, and honoring Your Son. Help us to not live in fear, but to live in the power of Your Holy Spirit. who has saved us, who sustains us, and one day will call us home. And on that day before the angels of heaven, when we are welcomed into Your eternal glory, it will not be because of our works, but because of the works of Christ. to whom belong all glory and praise forever and ever. Amen. [End]
