In the sermon titled 'Confessing Our Faith' by Peter Allison, the speaker explores the themes of public confession of faith, the interplay of faith, hope, and love, and the importance of maintaining a good conscience. The sermon begins with an analysis of Paul's public confession of faith before Felix, emphasizing that faith is not a private matter but a public proclamation, as demonstrated by Paul's unwavering testimony despite personal danger. The speaker uses the story of John Allen Chow, a missionary who prepared extensively to bring the gospel to the isolated Sentinelese people, as an illustration of the commitment to public faith. Chow's dedication and preparation, despite the risks and criticisms he faced, underscore the sermon’s message that faith must be actively practiced and proclaimed. The sermon also delves into the theological significance of confession, illustrating how a true confession involves acknowledging all truths of the faith, not just those that are convenient or widely accepted. This is contrasted with the criticisms of public acts of faith and the dangers of a seared conscience. The sermon concludes with a prayer for perseverance in faith and hope, and a call to love God and others, highlighting the essential Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Acts 24. I'd like to just read the Three verses that we will be looking at in Paul's defense before Felix. We looked at the overall defense last week. Verses 10-21, I'd like to read just beginning at verse 14. Paul's confession.

Hear God's word. But this I confess to you, that according to the way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets. I have hope in God which they themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust. This being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men. His testimonies are wonderful.

May our soul keep them. Gracious Father in Heaven, You have caused all of the Scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may learn from them this morning and please sanctify my sinful lips that they may proclaim the riches of Your grace through Jesus Christ. Amen. In our day, we are often told that our faith and religion is a Private matter.

When Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to homosexual fornicators several years ago, many Christians who claimed to agree with her views on homosexual fornication were very critical of her publicly practicing her faith. They were even embarrassed by it. They thought her views on religion should not influence her actions as an officer in the civil government. When John Allen Chow turned 17 in 2008, he became what he called an apprentice to Jesus. And he spent the next decade preparing himself to take the gospel to the Sentinelese people on the North Sentinel Island.

That's a tiny island. It's not even five miles by five miles. It's smaller. It's in the Bay of Bengal, halfway between India and Myanmar. It's one of the least contacted groups of people.

It's one of the last uncontacted groups of people, least known people in the entire world. And they are known for killing anyone that tries to approach their island. Very few people have even attempted to contact them, and of those most never make it back alive. And out of respect for this desire not to be contacted and to be left alone and untouched by the outside world, India, has made it illegal to approach closer than six miles to this island. But every decision that John made in the next decade was in preparation for going to North Sentinel Island and living among these Sentinelese and sharing the Gospel with them.

He had conditioned his body, his mind, and his spirit for that work. And a former student representative from the missions office of ORU, Oral Roberts University, said that he was one of the most prepared missionaries that he had ever met. Mary Ho, an executive leader with All Nations, an organization from which John sought training and support, said, John is actually one of the most well-prepared and intentional missionaries I have ever met. Knowing he wouldn't have hot water on that island, John took cold showers to help his body adapt. He took a linguistics course through Wycliffe Bible translators in the hope that it would help him communicate with these people whose language nobody knew anything about.

He took medical training and became certified as a wilderness EMT, so that he could provide the Sentinelese with basic medical care. He vaccinated himself against all manner of diseases in an effort to protect these people. He underwent laser surgery for his eyes so that he wouldn't have to worry about glasses or keeping his contacts clean. After graduation from college, he worked at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in Northern California. That job provided free housing, wilderness experience, and he found he could live on $30 a week and save the rest of his pay to fund his missionary labors because they provided his housing.

And when he wasn't on call, he read books to help him prepare to come to the island. Missionary biographies, linguistic books, cultural anthropologies to help him understand people groups. He made four scouting trips to the area to better prepare and also to confirm his call to reach these people with the gospel. Because it was illegal to approach this island, he cultivated a social media personality, a persona of being an adventurer, as a cover for his trips to the region. And he posted various experiences, wilderness experiences that he had, such as being bitten with a rattlesnake and treating himself and hiking out himself to get help.

He was very meticulous in his planning, in his sorting, in his resorting of his gear, in deciding how much would fit in the cases that he planned to take to the island. He wrote plans for his first day. He wrote plans for his early goals. And he wrote a contingency plan in case things didn't go well. Plan A was to make contact with the islanders and live among them for as long as it took to learn the language and culture.

And then he would tell them about the love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. John knew it would take years, maybe decades. He was prepared for that. Plan B was for the possibility that the tribesmen wouldn't welcome him and kill him, just as they had killed two fishermen that drifted ashore by accident a few years earlier. He spoke with other missionaries that had successfully contacted another people group in the Andaman region, which is where this island was.

And he discussed with them what worked and what didn't work, and what the best gifts to bring to these people might be. And he also built this persona, this wilderness adventurer persona, so that if he did disappear, his disappearance would be passed off merely as a lone adventurer that wandered too far from the beaten path and got lost. He didn't want his attempt to reach these people if it failed to hinder other attempts. He didn't want this to be a public thing. He hired fishermen to take him within a couple miles of shore and then planned to kayak to the shore himself.

And he made several visits over a couple days returning out to this fisherman's boat at night. One time he got shot with an arrow that hit his Bible. And the page where the tip of the arrow stopped, that page ends with the first two verses of Isaiah 65. I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me. I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me.

I said, here I am, here I am, to a nation that was not called by my name. I spread out my hands all day to a rebellious people who walked in a way that is not good, following their own devices. Before he made his last approach, he gave his diary to the fishermen. So we have a number of his entries in these last couple days. In his last evening he wrote, God, I don't want to die.

Who will take my place if I do? Why did a little kid have to shoot me today? His high-pitched voice still lingers in my head. Father, forgive him and any of the people on this island who try to kill me. And especially forgive them if they succeed.

Lord, strengthen me as I need Your strength and protection and guidance in all that You give and all that you are. And whoever comes after me to take my place, whether it's tomorrow or another time, please give them a double portion, a double anointing, and bless them mightily." The next day, November 16, 2018, he asked the fishermen to withdraw farther away so as not to intimidate these people by seeing a boat farther offshore. That was the last time he was seen by anyone. When John Allen Chao gave his life to reach these Sentinelese people, we might expect unbelievers to be critical. To believe that if people want to be left alone, Christians shouldn't attempt to bring the Gospel to them.

They should keep the faith to themselves, or to their friends who are willing to listen to it. But sadly, that wasn't the case. There were even Christians who were critical. Scott Hildreth, a professor of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote, quote, There are questions about the wisdom of risking one's life for such a small isolated group of people who clearly want no interference from outsiders. There are also theological questions about the need for a missionary to go to such lengths to evangelize people who have had no previous encounter with the Christian message.

From all accounts, he wrote, Chao's actions demonstrated some serious missiological shortcomings. His zeal for evangelism seems to have clouded his judgment." Well, brothers and sisters, Paul would not have agreed at all. Paul is on trial here before a pagan judge, one who was cruel, capricious, and vindictive in his exercise of authority. Paul was accused by people who not only wanted to kill him, but who had taken active steps, and bold steps, and unlawful steps to do so. So he's before a pagan judge, who's cruel, vindictive, and arbitrary.

He's accused by people who want to kill him and have tried. He's definitely among sharks. And there is no mention of any friends being present at this time. Many commentators have assumed that there were, but none are mentioned. And Paul does specifically mention that later on in his trial before Caesar, all his friends did desert him at the first hearing.

Professor Hildreth would probably have thought Paul's confession of faith in such circumstances was also ill-advised, unnecessary to his defense and potentially putting his life in danger. But on the contrary, Paul makes his confession the centerpiece of his defense. Last week we looked at that defense before Felix in verses 10-21. We saw that Paul is cheerful and patient in the midst of being defamed. He's respectful of authority.

He's truthful without exaggeration, but he doesn't hesitate at all to mount a vigorous and very competent defense. And he employs a number of rhetorical skills in presenting his arguments and in refuting the accusations. But the focus, the heart of his defense, is his confession that we've read in verses 14 to 16. Paul confesses. He says, I confess.

I freely confess. That means to come into agreement with someone or something. We often think about it in relation to confession of sin, which is to come into agreement with God's Word regarding the lack of conformity of our actions to the law of God. But it more generally just means to acknowledge something as true. It's a public proclamation of allegiance.

And that's why we call the Westminster Declaration of the Faith a confession of faith. It's a public declaration of what we believe. And so Paul publicly acknowledges before this Roman judge and his Jewish accusers that he is a follower of the way. Now to publicly proclaim that he is a follower of the way is to publicly proclaim that he is a disciple of Jesus Christ, because that's what that word referred to. People who followed Jesus Christ, who said he was the way, the truth, and the life.

And so, it's, I think, significant that Paul is doing this public declaration, this confession in the formal legal setting of the court. You see, faith is not a private affair. Jesus said in Matthew 10, 32, whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven." Paul didn't wonder if they wanted to hear this confession or if they were open to it, or if they were willing to listen. He simply made it. Jesus preceded that promise that whoever confesses Me before men, Him I will confess before my Father in heaven." He proceeded that with a therefore, meaning that this promise was a logical consequence of what he had said before that, which was an admonition not to fear men.

Because not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of the Father, and are we not more valuable than a sparrow? Therefore, if not one sparrow falls to the ground, and we're more valuable than a sparrow than Jesus concludes, therefore, whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father." So Paul is acknowledging his allegiance to Jesus Christ in this legal setting. Now, believing in Jesus was not a crime yet under Roman law. Nevertheless, Jesus was somebody that was crucified by the Romans. So he's identifying himself with somebody that was crucified as a criminal, as a common criminal by the Romans.

And even before his crucifixion, the Jews, you remember, were excommunicating anyone who believed in Jesus. And that caused many people to be afraid. Remember the man that was born blind? His parents didn't really want to own him or acknowledge anything about him because they were afraid of being cast out of the synagogue because anybody that confessed Christ was cast out by the Jews. And so in confessing that He follows Christ, He's proclaiming to follow the very person that these people had despised and rejected.

But see, this confession is an essential element of salvation. Romans 10 says, If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes under righteousness, And with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. It's an essential part of our salvation. It's with confession that we become saved.

Secondly, we see that Paul confesses a historic faith. He worships the God of His fathers. And we'll come back to this in a minute when we look at Paul's belief in the written Word. But by putting these two things together, that he worships the God of his fathers and he worships according to the way, he is saying that the way is the true faith of the fathers. And this is another direct challenge to the Jews who also claim to worship the God of their fathers, but consider the way to be a sect.

That word sect is where we get heresy from. To be a sect is to be split off from orthodoxy, from the truth. It's to be divided. They consider the departure from the fathers. And so Paul's confession to follow the way, and that is the way of the fathers, is presenting a clear antithesis to them.

He is specifically confessing what the Jews deny. And I think this is a very important point in confession. If we only confess those truths with which others agree, but not the truths with which they disagree, then we have completely failed to confess the truth. If we only confess the truths that others are in agreement with and are silent about the truths with which they disagree, then we have failed to confess the truth. You see, the difference between saving faith and a heretical sect is often not in the propositional truths that the sect will affirm, but it's in the things that they will not affirm.

So Paul gets right to the heart of the Jews' error with his confession that the way is both the faith of his fathers, the faith that it's according to all that is written in the law and the prophets. You see, today there are people like David Barton who want to claim that Thomas Jefferson as a promoter of the Christian faith, and they point to things like He printed Bibles and handed them out, and he promoted the Bible's morality, but they don't mention that he denied that Jesus was God. So regardless of whatever other truths that he professed to believe that are biblical, He's not a promoter of the Christian faith in any way. Or even more relevant to our day would be Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who's often held up as a Christian martyr for all the wonderful biblical truths that he believed, which he did believe, and he died for. He believed that the Christian faith should not be a private matter.

Very good. He believed the law should be obeyed. Again, very good. That was not something people in his day were saying. He believed that there was a cost to Christian discipleship and that we as believers should be willing to bear it.

But it's what he did not believe that made him apostate. He did not affirm everything that was written in the law and the prophets. He believed the God who is with us is the God who forsakes us, that God is weak and powerless in the world, and that the Bible was broken in a fragile book, and that Christ was not God. He said, quote, after thoroughly reducing the text, he's talking about the Bible, he's talking about the work of higher critics. After thoroughly reducing the text to rubble, the critics depart from the battlefield, leaving behind debris and shavings, their work apparently done.

And in terms of its content, the biblical picture is smoothed out to correspond to the spirit of its time. Miracle stories are paralleled, and yes, even the person of Jesus himself is stripped, not only of his divine, but of his human splendor, and disappears without any distinguishing marks into the list of rabbis, sages, and religious enthusiasts." He states, there is no historical access to the person of Jesus that would be obligatory for faith. You see, what he refuses to affirm is exactly what Paul does confess. Paul's faith is in the historical Jesus who died on the cross and who rose again. Fourth, Paul's confession here is in objective truth.

It's in everything that is written in the law and the prophets. Paul believes everything that's written in the Scripture. Nothing in the Word of God is excluded. It's all or nothing. His faith, the object of His faith is in God, as He's revealed in the Scriptures.

His faith is in the God of His fathers. What is the God of His fathers? This is the God that created the heavens and the earth. This is the God that promised to Abraham that He would make of him many nations, and that in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. This is the God that promised to Abraham that He would make of him many nations and that in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

This is the God that promised to Jacob that he would go down into Egypt and God would bring him back, his descendants back again. This is the God that did bring Jacob's descendants back again. Through the Red Sea, parting the waters of a thousand foot sea so that they could walk across on dry ground and then drowning the Egyptian army all without them lifting one sword, throwing one spear, shooting one arrow. This is the God that caused the walls of Jericho to fall down flat so that people could walk up into the city and take over hounds that were filled with food from the harvest. This is the God who called things that were not as though they are.

This is the God who told the future and then brought it to pass. This is the God who named Cyrus His servant hundreds of years before Cyrus was born, let alone before He became King. This is the God who prophesied of the Messiah to come with very specific promises about what city He would be born in, what tribe He would be born from. You see, faith is not a leap in the dark. Faith is not believing something apart from evidence.

Faith is believing the God of the fathers who has done all these things. See, this is the challenge to idols. Isaiah 41, let these idols bring forth and show us what will happen. Let them show the former things what they were, that we may consider them and know the latter end of them. Or let them declare to us the things to come.

Show the things that are to come hereafter that we may know that you are gods. This is the challenge that we give to false gods. Show us. Show us the things that were yet to come. They can't.

Only the God of the fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who created the earth can do that. Yes, Isaiah says, do good or evil that we may be dismayed and see it together. Paul is not believing. Paul's faith is not a leap in the dark. It is a belief in the objective reality of the God of the Bible, who's made the heaven and earth, whose works we see all around us, and who has continually, over thousands of years, declared the end from the beginning and told the things that would come to pass, and they did.

Paul believes everything that is written in the law and the prophets. This is the propositional truth. This is what he believes. This is the basis, his warrant for believing. The next verse in verse 15, Paul confesses his hope.

Hope is the helmet of our salvation, which as John Bunyan said, protects us thinking from the despair of the evil one. Psalm 137, oh Israel, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him there is abundant redemption. Now, faith and hope are very closely connected in our salvation. Both are a part of our salvation.

Faith comes by hearing. And hearing by the word of God. Hope comes by experience. Romans 5, verse 3. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character, and character hope.

Faith comes by hearing, hope by experience. Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Faith believes the truth of the Word of God. Hope waits for the fulfilling of it. Faith believes what is in the Bible.

Faith believes what is in the Bible. Hope is for what is in heaven. Paul told the Colossians, Colossians 1, 3, we give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for the saints, because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the Gospel." So we can illustrate it like this. The promises of Scripture are like a cable. The promise of salvation, specifically, in Scripture, is like a cable that stretches between us and the mercy seat in heaven.

It's like a cable that stretches between the ship that is our soul and the anchor of the ship. See, the soul is the ship where our faith is. The hope is the anchor that is at the other end of that cable and which enters into that which is within the veil. Faith lays hold of The promise that is next to us. Faith lays hold of the end that is in the ship.

That's next to us. They are the promises of the Bible. Hope lays hold of the end of the promise that is fastened at the mercy seat. Thus, faith and hope getting hold of both ends of the promise, they carry it safely all away. Faith looks to Christ as dead and buried and ascended.

Hope looks to His second coming. Faith looks to Him for justification. Hope looks for the glory which we don't yet have. Faith fights for the propositional truth of Scripture, the doctrine. Hope fights for the reward.

Paul said a little later to Hephaestus in a couple of chapters, and now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers. To this promise our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to obtain. And for this hope's sake, King Agrippa, I am accused by the Jews. Faith looks through the Word to God in Christ. Hope looks through faith beyond the world to glory.

Faith looks through the word to God in Christ. Hope looks through faith beyond the world to glory. Paul says in Galatians 5, 5, For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. See, faith sets hope to work, and hope sets patience to work. Faith says to hope, look for what is promised.

And hope says to faith, I will look and I do look. Romans 8, 24, for we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. That's hope.

Eagerly waiting for what we don't see. What faith has told us. Eagerly waiting for it with perseverance. Thus faith saves and hope saves. Faith saves by laying hold of God in Christ, and hope saves by prevailing with the soul to suffer all tribulations and troubles and afflictions and adversities that we meet with between now and glory in the world to come.

That's hope. 1 Peter 1, 3 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." And that's why Paul says he hopes in the resurrection, because this is the source of our hope. This hope has begotten in us in a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. Paul confesses, I have hope in God that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust. And that hope enables him to persevere through all of the tribulations.

It enables him to persevere with cheerfulness, with confidence, with boldness, all the tribulations that He encounters between now and glory. And lastly, in verse 16, He says, Because of this, this being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and man." The consequence of this faith and this hope that he has confessed, the consequence, The result of that is that He strives to have a good conscience. A good conscience is not sinlessness. It is a conscience that is not seared, and it's a conscience that is not misinformed. A conscience that works correctly, convicting us when we sin, and not convicting us when we are not in sin.

And so that takes a conscience that is correctly informed. And that takes work. He strives to have this. He strives to it. It's something that takes perseverance and work to get.

It requires that first of all, that we are correctly informed and trained in the Word of God. To be correctly informed, we have to study the Scriptures. If we are ignorant of the law, we could be doing something displeasing to God and be entirely unaware of it. That's an uninformed conscience. Or we could transgress in ignorance and our conscience would never convict us of it because it's uninformed.

Or we could be misinformed so that our conscience accuses us of things that are not transgressions of God's law. The conscience also, though, can be seared. That's a conscience that brings No conviction of transgressions. A seared conscience is like a dead conscience. It's like dead nerves.

You can stab dead nerves and the body feels no pain. You can burn a body with dead nerves and feel nothing. And physically speaking, that's a very dangerous situation to be in, to have dead nerves. There's no warning of danger. You can put your hand on a hot stove.

And if the nerves are dead, you won't know it until you smell burning flesh and then you have to look around for what's burning. Instead of quickly pulling your hand back, it's going to be left on the stove until it's destroyed. That's why it's very dangerous to have dead nerves. In the same way, a seared conscience, a conscience that is dead, is a dangerous spiritual condition to be in. And a seared conscience comes from continually ignoring the conscience, continually violating the conscience and doing what it is accusing us of doing until it becomes dead, seared.

That is, these are all examples of a conscience that is not good, A good conscience, though, convicts us rightly when we err and brings us to repent, and brings us to the cross, and brings us to the blood of Christ, so that our conscience is cleansed then from dead works to serve the true and living God. That's a good conscience. A good conscience is not necessarily a sinless conscience. And so Paul strives, because of his hope and faith, Paul said, I strive always to have a conscience without offense toward God and man. That's essentially love.

We've talked about faith, hope, and this is love. To have a good conscience without offense toward God and man is to be loving. It's to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength. And it is to love our neighbor as our self. You see, and what is this love?

It is obedience to the law. Because this love is the fulfilling of the law. And so what we have here then in this confession is faith, hope, and love. Paul says he strives to love the Lord God and to love men as made in the image of God. So may we not enter eternity with a false conscience, a false hope, or a faith in anything other than the God of the Scriptures.

We want a good conscience, saving faith, and a true hope. May it be so. Heavenly Father, we do thank You that You have cleansed our conscience from dead works, that You have given to us a living hope and saving faith. And we ask, Lord, for your grace to persevere in this. You've said that your will for us is our sanctification.

That more and more our senses might be trained to discern right and wrong, good and evil. That more and more our consciences might be captive to no one but you and to your word. And not the dictates and laws of people. Father, may our hope be in heaven. May our heart and our treasure be there as well.

May you keep us from a false hope and an empty faith and a false assurance in what cannot save. This we ask through Jesus Christ. Amen.