Confess & Profess: Living Out Loud for Christ - Jeff Ryan - 3TC Podcast - 5/17/2025

Jeff Ryan emphasizes the importance of acknowledging Jesus as Savior and Lord, both internally through confession and externally through profession. He highlights the need for believers to confess their sins and struggles to God, freeing them from guilt and shame. It's essential that we not live in denial, and sharing one's faith is a necessity, even in hostile environments. 

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Whether young or old, single or married, new to church, or a lifelong attendee, there's a place for you here. We invite you to join us toward a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ. Our goal is to share the passion, power, and presence of Jesus with others. We believe in supporting families through service, education, and loving one another as Jesus loves us, unconditionally.

Transcript

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Welcome to the three timbers podcast. We hope this will encourage and uplift you today. Well, I hope that as you sang that song, you really let those words kind of resonate with you, that you are a child of God. Everybody in here is a child of God. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we are called to be in the presence of our father this morning, collectively. We're called to come into His presence with joy. We're called to come into His presence if we're weary, if we're burdened, we're called to come into His presence, because he allows us to come into His presence. So what we want to do is just prepare our hearts to worship God, to to give him glory, to give him praise, to ask him to speak into our hearts with the struggles and and pain that we carry around with us. So let's take a moment just to kind of take a breath and exhale and pray, and then we'll read our call to worship together. Let's pray. Oh, Holy God, we just, we just want to exhale from the week that was for the week that will be Lord. I pray that we can really just envy ourselves, love ourselves. We just worship you, that all the the titles and tribulation just pass away, that right now we are just your children in your presence, coming to praise you. So Father, I pray that we would do that, that we would praise you and give you our hearts. We ask this in the name of Jesus amen, join me in the call of worship. We will give you thanks with all my heart. I will sing your praise before the heavenly beast. I will bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your constant love and truth you have exalted your name and your promise above everything else. On the day I called you to Answer me, you increase strength within Me, you don't Fall Back Your chase me down. Chase me down. When you come. even when we're not running. towards you, you are running towards us. We praise you that through our everyday, you walk before us. You walk beside us. And Lord, whatever we're going through today, some people in this room are going through amazing, wonderful things, and we know some people in this room, God to push the flow that we're experiencing. And so Father God, we lift you up and worship because we know that when we worship Amen, We cannot Stand. Jesus. You all crucified lay behind the Is his eye projected like a rose trampled on the ground you took the fall. At this point we want to ask the kids to Go with Mr. Garrett as we Take our offering you. What I read the book of Genesis, I one of the things that comes to mind is that the first actual game that was ever played was hide and seek. We hide from God, and he seeks us. And in some ways, we still try to hide, and God will always see, but now we try to hide our sins. We try to hide that we're not a mess. We try to hide that we don't struggle. We try to hide when we talk to other people, I'm doing just fine, and none of us are doing just fine, right? We all have challenges. We all have things we're struggling through, and we need to allow ourselves to confess that to God that we're struggling and that's okay. And we need to be able to confess to God that we are sinners. We are sinful. Our default setting is sin, because there's power when you confess that there's power that you then gain control over the devil who wants to tell you that your value is based on how good you can be, which none of us can be. And so we want to be intentional about freeing ourselves from the guilt and the shame of the struggle of sin, and then read the words of Scripture that set us free from that. And so I want to encourage Let's bow our heads, close our eyes, confess your struggles, your sin, your shame, to God, take it to him, and then leave. Let's pray. Father, you know everything, and before we even confessed our sin, Lord, you knew it, and you forgave us, Father, I pray that whatever struggles we are carrying with us, whatever failures, whatever shame, whatever shortcoming, Lord that makes us feel like we're not good enough, that Lord, we would know we are good enough. We are good enough because you went to the cross to die for our sins, and Lord, I pray that through this confession, that Lord, we would feel a weight lifted off our shoulder, that we would live in freedom of fear, but Lord, we would walk in the light of hope. And I ask this in the name of Jesus, amen. Let's now read the words together that give us that freedom. Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy, friends, I hope that you feel a weight off your shoulder and a joy knowing that you are forgiven, and as we kind of came in this morning, the weather is just tremendous. And as we were setting up this morning, we were watching the weather channel, and they were showing all of the the weather that's happening around the country. And unfortunately, not every place is is as nice as we have in here today. And sometimes we only focus on where we are, the state of Nebraska, but there are 49 other states, and each of them have different weather and different weather patterns. And as much as we like to believe that we are a collection of 50 states, we are actually all living in one state. And that is a state of denial. Every one of us is in a state of denial about something. Some of us are in a state of denial about how old we are. We are living in that state of denial. Some of us are in a state of denial when it comes to how old our kids are getting. We live in that state of denial. Sometimes we live in the state of denial about our health or even how old we look. Some of us live in a state of denial about how much air we have, not me, but there are others that live in that state of denial. So we could live in the state of denial in a lot of ways, but sometimes it gets taken too far, and sometimes we deny other people. Sometimes we deny other people because they hurt us. Sometimes we deny other people because we're embarrassed to say that we know them, we're related to them, or we're associated with them in some form or fashion, because everybody wants to be acknowledged. At the end of the day, everybody wants to be seen and acknowledged and valued. And here's the good news, friends, what the gospel tells us, what Jesus tells us is the whoever's will be acknowledged when they acknowledge God. And so we're going to continue on our sermon series of showing how welcoming the gospel is how welcoming Jesus is as we look at the whoever sayings of Jesus in the gospel. So if you've got your Bibles, and I hope you do or bring up the app on your phone, we're going to be taking a look today at Matthew chapter 10, and I'm only going to read verses 32 and 33 but I'll give context as we go along. But again, Matthew, chapter 10, verses 32 and verses 33 this is Jesus speaking, who says, Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven. So the context, Jesus is commissioning His disciples to go out and to do Kingdom work. He has given them authority to drive out evil spirits from people. He has given them authority to heal people. So Jesus is sending. Jesus is empowering, and that is what the gospel teaches us, that we are a send people empowered by the Holy Spirit. But Jesus was also a realist, and he told them, he says, Don't be surprised in any way if people reject you and reject the message because they rejected me and they rejected my message, just because you are a follower of Christ, we cannot be surprised if people reject the gospel message. But what Jesus was saying to them, which is the same thing that scripture says to us, is we need to live on mission. We need to make sure we know the mission that we are a sick people. We are an empowered people, and we can't be surprised. If that message is rejected. People don't reject us. They actually reject the message. Jesus reminds them, I'm with you. I'm never going to leave you. You don't need to be fearful, because I am God. I'm guiding you. And what we can take out of this context a little bit, and sometimes we forget this, is that you are valuable to God. You are an essential part of God's kingdom, mission to reach the world with the good news of the gospel, you are indispensable in God's plan. You matter to God. You're valuable to God, and that's what Jesus was telling him. Jesus is you're going to go through trials, you're going to go through tribulation. You're going to have moments of fear and doubt and worry. But I'm with you leading up to this, our context tells us that God knows the hairs on our head. That's how valuable. That's how intimately God knows us. But God's sent people. God's empowered people then and now probably are filled with a little bit of concern and fear. So Jesus gives them some encouragement. He says, whatever is covered will be revealed. Don't worry about what things are happening that you can't see. It'll all come out. Sometimes we become so focused on administering justice that we forget it is Jesus who will bring justice to all situations. Nothing is hidden that won't be known. Everything's going to come out when Jesus comes back. We don't have to spend our time and our energy worrying about other people and what may be hidden that will come out. What Jesus said is what is said in the dark needs to be proclaimed in the light. In which you hear whisper proclaim from the rooftops. What Jesus is saying is, you've got this great story, you've got this great news. You need to share that with the world we live in, a world that is dying, and we have the cure. The cure is the gospel. The cure is Jesus. So we can't hide that. No one lights a lamp, but hides it under a bushel. When you and I have good news, we share it when somebody we love, who is ill is now better. We share when somebody gets engaged, we share when somebody retires, we share when somebody has a child. We share when somebody gets a new job, we share. We know how to share good news. We need to make sure we share the good news. Jesus says, if God loves the sparrows, just think about how much he loves you. Just think about that for say, every little bird that we see flying around, God created them. God cares for them, and God cares more for you and for me. Jesus says, Don't worry so much about people that can kill the body. Worry about people that can kill the soul. And that's about who is the thing or the person that is shaping you most in life. Is it God, or is it other people? We talked about that in the practicing the way that all of us are formed by something or someone, and if it's not God, then we're being formed into the wrong thing. But if it is God, we're being formed into the right thing. So what's the takeaway from all of this context? I think there are. There are three things that we need to understand from the context leading up to our verse. Number one is that God will bring justice in this world, God will bring ultimate justice as much as we want justice administered Now, ultimately, God will bring that Justice too. God protects when we proclaim, when we proclaim the gospel. God protects us. It's amazing how that happens. We were walking through Target last night and this very energetic young man who was trying to get us to sign up for a phone service, literally, like, jumped out in front of Christy and Levi. I had no idea I was another part of the store. I covered them like, why are they standing in the middle of talking, and this guy was just going crazy trying to sell us on all kinds of things. There was another young man working with him, and they started asking those questions. And when he found out I was a pastor, he said, Can I ask you some questions? He says, How do you know when God is talking to you? And that began this discussion, and the whole time God protected. I wasn't interrupted by anybody else. Nobody in the store stopped. There were no announcements that interrupted. So this young man and I could have this whole conversation about God, because when you proclaim, God protects, and that's what we need to understand. Number three, that God is greater than those who will oppose you. God is greater than those who oppose the gospel, and we know that there are people who oppose the gospel by saying, I don't believe that's real. I don't believe God is real. God is greater than those who oppose us. Now, when Jesus sent them out, just like He sends us out. It's not to read a script like it's not just to kind of go through the motions and read a routine. It's about to actually believe in what you're saying. And that's the most important thing, that if we are going to go out and proclaim Jesus to the whoever's right, whoever believes in Jesus, that we have to believe this right now. Is Jesus Christ your Savior? Is he the one who saved you from your sin? Is he your Savior and your Lord? See if we don't believe that Jesus truly is our Savior, means we don't believe we need saved, which means we don't believe that we sin, or we sin that bad, or our sin isn't that bad. That's living in that state of denial. Our sin is worse than we think, but God is greater than we think. So we have to say Jesus is my Savior. I know I need saved. And if Jesus is my Lord, that means he's in charge of my life. I'm not. And so we believe that Jesus is our Savior and our Lord, then we can go out and we can profess that to a world. But if we don't believe that, then we are denying Christ. We are not acknowledging Jesus as our Savior. We are not acknowledging Jesus as our Lord. And if we don't acknowledge Jesus as our Savior, Lord, what does Jesus say? He will not acknowledge us before the Father. He will not acknowledge us at all. So as I was going through this, I thought the simplest way to say this is the simple way that I understood it. There is a coin and on each. Side, we need to have both of these things if we truly want to be a Christ follower. One side is confession. We need to confess that Jesus is Savior and Lord. The other side is then profess Jesus as Savior and Lord of the world. So confession and profession are the two sides of one point. And if we are a Christ follower, we can say, we can acknowledge Jesus as my Savior and Lord, and we can profess that to the world. And the best way, I think I can explain that is in two people in Scripture. I want you to think about Judas. Judas professed Christ, but he did not confess Christ. Do you see the difference? Judas went did all the things. Judas was like, I'm with Jesus and and I'm in the church, and I'm doing all these things. He was professing and saying all the right things, but in his heart, he did not confess that Jesus was his Savior and Lord, and we can do the same thing. We can be all about professing Christ without ever confessing Christ. The other person, I would say, is Paul. Paul really confessed Christ. He understood that he was a sinner. He understood that he was the worst of sinners, and so he confessed Jesus as his Savior and Lord, and then he professed Jesus to the world. Think of it like this. Confession is internal. Profession is external. The external should grow from the internal. Listen to how Paul says it in Romans 10. He says, If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved for as with your heart, that's internal, that you believe and justify, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved, that's external. So it needs to be internal and external. So the question is, okay, if you have confessed Jesus as Savior and Lord, who do you profess that to? One is each other. We need to be talking about what God is doing in our lives, sharing things. So we need to do that with each other. Secondly, those who are inquiring about faith. The young man that I spoke to, he was inquiring about God, and so I spoke to him, you may have people in your life that are inquiring about faith. We need to share that with him, and we need to this is the last one. Is the hard one. We need to be willing to share our faith even with people who are hostile to it. That's hard, that's hard, but remember, God is with us. God will protect us when we proclaim he protects here's here's an elementary way that I understand this, and maybe this will help you. Faith is reciprocal, that when we have faith in Christ, Christ will then acknowledge us before the Father. He'll show his faith in us. Sometimes we say, Well, God, I want you to acknowledge me when I stand before the father one day, but I'll never acknowledge you here. That's not how that works. We need to acknowledge Christ. Discipleship disrupts. Discipleship will disrupt relationships in your life. Discipleship will disrupt your entire life. We need to understand what it means that it can lead to conflict, even in your own family, that when you confess Christ and you profess Christ, that's going to challenge people to reflect upon where they believe. But confession, profession, discipleship. To me, they're all about acknowledging Christ in our life, acknowledging that Jesus is our Savior and our Lord, and acknowledging Jesus is about priorities. It's about priorities. What do priorities reveal? Priorities reveal what we value, what we value in life. We prioritize in our life, with our time, our talent and our treasure. Priorities reveal what we are willing to advocate for. If something is your priority, you will advocate for it. You will speak about it. You will defend it. Priorities about what you will share and what you will support with your time, your talent and your treasure and priorities are about the things that we believe in, and if we put other things ahead of Jesus, then we are in a four. We are denying Jesus. We are not acknowledging Jesus. If Jesus isn't the most important person in our life, the most important person in our family, in our jobs and everything that we do, then that is a form of denying Jesus, not acknowledging him as our Savior and Lord. When we acknowledge Jesus as our Savior Lord, not only does it impact us, but you acknowledging Jesus as Savior, Lord that impacts other people. Other people see your faith. Other people see how God works. And when you and I don't acknowledge Jesus as our Savior, Lord that impacts other people, and they're acknowledging of Jesus as Savior and Lord, I have the privilege to do a wedding this summer, someone who's very close to our family, and I'm very excited about that. It's going to be an outdoor wedding, and it's going to be just beautiful. So I want you to just picture just a beautiful Nebraska wedding outside, maybe near a barn. And I want you to picture kind of what I call those wedding top couples, you know, those couples that just look perfect, like they're out of a gap ad, they should be on top of a wedding cake. And I want you to picture family and friends, and it's a beautiful wedding, and you have two young people, and they they get married, and they say, I do and I love you and it's joyful, and there's dancing, and there's a wonderful celebration. And then I want you to think about maybe the next day or the next week or the next month, when one of the two people in that marriage refuses to acknowledge the other one as their spouse, ignores them, doesn't talk to them, doesn't spend time with them. Can you imagine what that would feel like if you were that spouse that wasn't acknowledged or was ignored or didn't spend any time with it? You could say, wait a minute, we just got married. It was beautiful, it was wonderful. And we danced, we celebrated, and now you won't even acknowledge me. Isn't that what we do to God? Everything's wonderful and beautiful when we come to Christ, or when, when God answers a prayer, Yes, God, yes, God, yes, God. And then we don't even acknowledge him, and then we don't spend time with him. Then Jesus says these words, Whoever acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before the Father, whoever, and that's the word that's so powerful, whoever you are, when you acknowledge you need Satan, when you acknowledge that you need somebody else driving the car and not you in your own life, when you acknowledge Jesus as your Savior and you say, Lord, You are the Lord of my life, whoever you will be saved. That's that's, to me, is unbelievable news, because acknowledging Jesus is a radical reorientation of your priorities. So many people get stuck. I don't know what to do. What do I do if you want to have the priority set for your life, acknowledge Jesus as Savior and Lord, and that will be a radical reorientation. And you will know how your day is supposed to go. You will know the path that you are supposed to walk. Too often as Christ followers, we think that we're supposed to be secret agents. I talked last week about how excited I am to go see movies. Mission, impossible, right? Tom Cruise, Ethan Hunt, he's he's a secret agent. Nobody knows who he is. He's a ghost that shouldn't be Christ followers. We aren't secret agents. We're agents of change. Amen, we're called to go out in the world. We are sent people. We are equipped people to go out and to change the world. See, when we acknowledge Christ, He acknowledges us. So what does it mean to be acknowledged by Jesus, not just a Hey, what's up? That's not what that is. Right? When we acknowledge Christ, He acknowledged us. He says, This one belongs to me. They are with me. They are part of me. Means that, and we talked about this over the holidays, that our dirty, filthy rags are taken off and we get this glorious coat of perfection that is Christ. Jesus righteousness becomes your righteousness and your unrighteousness became Jesus unrighteousness on the cross. So when Jesus acknowledges us, he claims us. He says, You belong to me. Whoever, whoever does that. So when you and I stand before God, we will not be seen as our imperfect self, but we will be seen in the perfect way of Jesus. Jesus is pleading our case in the heavenly court right now. Think about that right now. Jesus is pleading. To God on your behalf. It's called intercessory activity, and that's what Jesus is doing right now, and he's always done. Listen to how he speaks in John 17. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in Me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that You have sent me, I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be as one as we are one. And then first, John says this, My dear children, I write to you so that you will not sin, but if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. Jesus is your advocate. When Christy and I did youth ministry many years ago, I remember one particular night we were having youth, and one of the young girls came and she had this t shirt on, and I said, Jesus is my homeboy. I thought that was really cool, because it showed that there's a personal relationship there. Jesus is our advocate. He is pleading our case. And when you think about a resume, our resume is not impressive. Our resume is filled with failures and false starts and sin and stumbles and and setback. But when you have Jesus on your resume that blocks everything else out, that makes everything go away, he is the ultimate reference in a resume filled with sin. Listen to these words from Hebrews. Therefore he is able to save completely whoever come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them, whoever you and I are part of the whoever there's a whole world out there that is filled with whoever that they need to know that when they confess Jesus as Savior and Lord, and profess and as Savior and Lord, they will be saved. But if we choose not to, there are eternal consequences. Listen to this in Matthew seven, Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only though who do the will, only those who do the will of my Father, Who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name, drive out demons and in your name, perform many miracles? Then I will tell them deep plainly I never knew you away from me, you evildoers. I want you to look at that text, if we can leave it up just for a second. Man, all of the things that the people said were about profession, they were not about Confession. They were all outward, external things, but they did not what does Jesus say here? I never knew you. That means there was no personal relationship. That means there was no confession that Jesus was savior and Lord and so as much as Judas, as much as those in this text, and as many people love to say, well, I talk about profess Jesus. Have you confessed Jesus? But we stay silent. Why? I think we stay silent for a couple of reasons. One, I think we're afraid of the the persecution or the ridicule that that we would endure if people heard us talk about Jesus. Well, I don't want people to think I'm a bible thumper. I don't want them to think I'm a Jesus freak. Why not? If that's the worst thing that somebody can say about you, I think that's pretty good, but we stay quiet because we care more about what other people think, or people we don't know, than what God thinks. And who's got the real power in life, what somebody in this world thinks of us or what God thinks us. We sang this song this morning. I am a child of God. If you're a child of God, then you know, your father will protect you. If you're a child of God, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks of you, because God loves you. We stay silent because living like the rest of the world is easier. Yeah, I just want to blend in. I don't want to make waves. I don't want people to know anything, so I'll just, I'll just kind of go along with how the world thinks, how the world lives. And we see this honestly so much in the way that we talk, right, taking the Lord's name in vain, here, there and everywhere, right? If we are confessing and professing Jesus, we won't be like the rest of the world. I was with a friend this week who's getting ready for a big European trip. He and his family are going to go. They're going to go to a lot of countries. And one of the things that always brings me comfort on this little bit of international travel that I've done is that in most countries, we have a US Embassy and a US. Embassy is considered sovereign ground, that it's like you're standing in the United States when you go to this embassy. And that gives me great comfort. And I always fear, like, what if I'm in a country that maybe isn't friendly towards Christians, or Philadelphia, things that are very important, and you know, let's say that they start chasing me, and I'm thinking, Oh no, I gotta get somewhere safe, and I'm going to run to the to the embassy, because I know that they'll be there for me and be safe. And as I get there, there's a mob coming. I get up and I tell the guard, hey, I'm a US citizen, and I need protection. I need here. And then he says, I don't know. You know, I don't know who you are. Get out. I'm I'm left to the mob. How would you feel if you were not acknowledged in that moment? But see, when we choose not to acknowledge Jesus, we're left to deal with the mob in his life. But when we acknowledge Jesus as Savior and Lord. He says, Come home, come in. We need to trust Jesus to the point of straining a relationship. We need to trust Jesus to the point of even losing a job. Many have trusted and proclaimed and confess Jesus to the point that they have lost their life. So why can't we say, I want to let people know that I'm a follower of Jesus. Now we can all say, I will confess and confess Jesus right here, right now, in this moment, in this cafeteria, and praise God. That's awesome. Can you do it on Monday. Can you do it on Tuesday? Can you do it on Wednesday? Can you do it in those moments? What's hard? Whoever acknowledges Jesus? Jesus will acknowledge before the Father. That's hard, that takes courage, that takes boldness. I can I don't want you to think that it's easy peasy, because it's not. That's why Jesus tells us count the cost, but we must be willing to do that. And again, I love that Jesus says, whoever, whoever you are, maybe you've drifted from faith. Maybe you haven't been walking in faith. Maybe you feel like you've been going through the motions, whoever if you say, I accept Jesus as my Savior, I accept Jesus as my Lord, and acknowledge that, friends, you will be saved. That is good news that we have to share with others. So whether you are living in a state of denial about your age, about your kids, about your hair, no matter what it may be, don't deny Jesus. Amen as our worship team, come back up. Let me just pray for us, Father. We thank you so much that Lord, you don't deny us. You created us. You formed us on purpose, with a purpose. I pray Lord, that we would not be fearful, but we would be faithful, because, Lord you are with us, that Lord you will never leave us. You will never forsake us. I pray, Lord that if there's somebody right now, whether they are watching, or whether they are here, who says, I want to confess Jesus as Savior and Lord, and I will profess him as Savior and Lord, Lord that you have that pray, this prayer, Father, God, I confess my sin. Jesus, please come into my heart, forgive my sin, be my Savior and be my Lord. I surrender to you and father, whoever just prayed that prayer, whether sitting here or online, Lord, I pray that they would rejoice, because now they are a part of the family of God, the kingdom of God. Lord, they have confessed and now, Lord, you can equip them. You can empower them. You can send them to profess the good news, Lord to the world, that is the mission that you have set your church on, Father, we love you and we thank you for joining us for more information about three timbers, church ministries and services. Visit three timbers.org, we would love for you to join us in person. You.