The following sermon was delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on June 21, 1981. The title is Seize the Opportunity, and the scripture reference is Matthew, chapter 10, verses 24 to 33. 

Do you acknowledge Christ before men? That was a rhetorical question, Priscilla. Thank you.

I know you do. I was asking everybody else. Do we acknowledge Christ before men?

Those are very challenging and at the same time very sobering words that Jesus utters. There's a promise there, and I trust it's one of real comfort to us. If you do acknowledge, if you confess me before men, I surely will acknowledge and confess you before my Father in heaven.

But he doesn't end there. There's also a warning. If you don't, I'll deny you before my Father in heaven.

Now there's lots of levels on which those words might apply to us. I think at the very least, he's anticipating a time when people are going to be literally dragged before the magistrates as he elsewhere spoke about, and on pain of death might be asked, who is Lord? And if you would not bow down and confess Caesar is Lord, you might find yourself being thrown to lions, or crucified, or boiled in oil, or who knows what other horrific punishment might be meted out upon your body.

He says, at such a time, be of good courage. They may harm the body. Don't be afraid of that.

We're talking in a much larger context. We play to an audience of one. We play to a God who holds in His hand not just power over our bodies, but our eternal well-being.

Let's be concerned to please Him rather than those who might be able to afflict our bodies. It's an encouragement and it's a warning. Do you confess Christ before men?

I think that at the very least it would suggest to us what Peter says. Be ready at all times, in all circumstances, to give an answer for the hope within you. Be ready to give an answer for the hope within you.

But you know that suggests two things that may or may not always be true. One, that you have a hope within you. That you have a hope within you.

That you have something inside of you different from people around you. And two, that somehow it's being manifest. Sometimes people say to me, well, I'm not very good at verbal witness.

I don't know how to put it into words. I don't speak well, but I witness with my life. And I say, praise God.

How many people have asked you this week about your life? That's the implication of that. That if my witness is my life, then my life is supposed to be so different from everybody else's around me that folks who brush up against me say, what is it about you?

How come when things are going bad you still are joyful? What is that extra little spiritual motor that you've got going for you? And then comes Peter's admonition, be ready to give an answer for the hope that's within you.

Expect the question that you are living a life of such obvious victory and joy that it's going to provoke people to ask about it and you be ready. Anticipate that question. You be ready to give them an answer that will make an eternal difference for them.

Explain the hope that's within you. Now, if you haven't had a lot of people ask you about it this week, then the rest of the sermon may apply to you. Okay? I think Jesus is being much more vigorous than that. He is not saying, you wait ready to be asked. He's saying, you take the initiative.

You take the initiative. What I tell you in the dark, you utter in the light. What you hear whispered, shout from the housetops.

Nothing that is hidden will not be revealed. Jesus entrusted the success of His gospel to those who heard it from Him and would say it to others. would seize the opportunity to speak a word, in season or out of season, would take advantage of circumstances to say something about Christ, not just wait to be asked.

And I think the challenge becomes a good deal stronger at that point. I wonder how many of us are creatively looking for opportunities to share something about Christ with others. I suspect that there's lots of reasons why we don't do that.

You know, we're afraid of being labeled a fanatic. You know that when people suddenly begin speaking about God, others react. You know, everything was going fine.

Why did you mention that? Or maybe it's even a little bit deeper than that. That we're a little bit concerned that if we begin a conversation, it's going to get out of hand.

People are going to come back at us with comments or questions. They're going to back us into a corner and we don't really have good answers. And so why start something that you can't finish?

I need to say two things about that. One is, it doesn't come easily. Paul said to Timothy, study, study to show yourself a workman approved unto God who doesn't need to be ashamed, who rightly divides the word of truth.

Very few people get it by divine revelation. Most of us have to do our homework. There are answers.

There are good, substantial answers to virtually every question that anybody will ever throw at you. And the challenge is study. Do your homework.

Be ready. Anticipate that there will be some hard questions and find out the answers. So that when the questions come, you can deal with them.

I've done a number of series of lectures on such things, questions non-Christians ask. There are any number of books in the bookstore, and that might get you started. Study to show yourself approved unto God, one who's able to handle those questions.

The other thing is to rely on the promise of Jesus when He said, don't be concerned when they ask you those hard questions. Even if they drag you before magistrates, I will put my words into your mouth. I will give you answers.

if your heart is right. Jesus is never interested primarily in winning an argument anyway. He's interested in winning men and women to Himself.

And it's a matter of our love as it was a matter of His love rather than a matter of our cleverness. Nobody was ever argued into the kingdom of God. But Jesus loved people and went out to them.

And He tells us to love them in that same way. And do the best we can to be prepared meet them where they are, but primarily it's a matter of love. That raises a question for me, if we don't take advantage of opportunities, if we're not looking for opportunities to share something of the saving gospel of Jesus with our neighbors or the folks that we work with or people whose lives brush up against our lives, how deep is our love for them?

If it's a matter of love. And we have, we may not be able to articulate it as well as we'd like, but we have the key that unlocks the central most secret of the universe. It could make a difference of eternity.

Heaven or hell in somebody else's life. And we remain silent. How much do we love that person?

How much do we care? I had a friend who perhaps he went overboard in the matter of looking for opportunities he was really kind of a crazy guy but it may illustrate by an extreme example he went into a barber shop up in a little town in Maine one day on the first day of hunting season and of course in a little town like that everybody knows everybody and he walked into town a stranger and everybody was aware of that He was a little tiny guy and he came in in his business suit and everybody else was dressed in their hunting clothes and their red caps and so on. They were carrying their shotguns and whatever else they were using.

And he comes strolling into the barber shop in his little three-piece business suit. And the barber strikes up a conversation. He says, You here on pleasure or business?

And he says, Business. Says, well, what's your business? Says, I'm a hunter.

Says, where's your gun? Hip pocket. Hip pocket.

What are you hunting? You. And he pulls out his pocket testament and started right in.

The barber came to Christ. another time he was flying across country and they were passing over the Great Lakes and the fellow next to him next to the window in the plane had never seen the Great Lakes from the air and he was going absolutely crazy at the awesomeness and the beauty of this and my friend kind of glances out the window and he said, oh, you like that? and the guy said, oh, it's magnificent he says, my father made it and that man came to Christ before the plane landed I don't know if you've noticed it it seems to me that conversations work something like a tennis game somebody has the ball and serves it and the other person returns the serve and they volley for a while and then somebody drops the ball and somebody serves another one you're either returning somebody else's serve or it's your serve and if it's your serve why do we have to confine ourselves to strictly secular topics why not serve the Lord Jesus and see what happens why not look for an opportunity to drop a word drop a comment see whether there might be any kind of receptivity to a serve that introduces the Lord Jesus into the volley.

You might be amazed at how that can happen if you begin to look for it. I drove into a gas station not long ago. I had on my clericals and the attendant came out.

He was very, very bright. He worked out immediately that I was a minister. He said, what are you, some kind of a priest or something?

And I said, yes, yes, as a matter of fact, I am. He said, what are you, a Roman Catholic? No, as a matter of fact, I'm an Episcopalian.

Episcopalian, hi. He said, well, I've always thought they're all basically the same, aren't they? What would you do with a comment like that?

I think it was an inspiration from God. What I said to him was... I said, no, as a matter of fact, they're not.

I think that most Roman Catholics still think they have to earn their way to heaven. Finished pumping the gas? You mean you don't have to earn your way to heaven?

And we were right into it. Karen was in the grocery store not too long ago and happened to overhear a lady who was complaining, just going on and on and on to a friend about her nose. She didn't like her nose and she was complaining about her nose to her friend.

And one of the first Bible verses that Karen ever taught Kathy was, beauty is not important, but a lady who loves the Lord shall be praised. Kathy, as a little tiny girl, was absolutely fascinated with dress-ups, and that was a very hard verse for her to master. And so they overheard this conversation going on and on and on, and finally Karen walks up to this lady and she says, beauty is not important, but a lady who loves the Lord shall be praised.

And Kathy does this, you know. And that led into a series of conversations. The lady's been calling Karen and they've been talking about the gospel and you'd be absolutely amazed.

I don't know where it's going to end. But an opportunity just to say a word and see what's the risk. She might laugh.

She might be offended and stomp off. But maybe she'd be intrigued enough to bite. I will make you fishers of men, said Jesus.

How do you catch fish without bait? Throw out the bait and see if anybody bites. It's lovely when your kids begin quoting verses back to you.

Kathy saw that. There was another occasion when Karen was complaining and worrying about something or other and Kathy says, Mother, in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. I was in Sears Roebuck not too long ago buying a mattress and the clerk went out and he fussed and fussed and fussed and he couldn't find the mattress I wanted and I finally said, would you mind if I took a look?

And he looked at me like this, you know. Go ahead. So I went out and I found the mattress like that and he was really chagrined.

He opened up the door where you take the stuff out, you know, the external door there, and I took it out and suddenly the door slammed behind me and I'm on the outside with my mattress and he doesn't know who I am. So I had to go all the way around, come back up the escalator, come find him again, and he says, now what do you want? And I said, well, it occurred to me you might like to be paid.

And he did a double take. He said, I don't think anybody else would have come back. I said, well, let me tell you why I did.

And shared the gospel with him. Are we looking for opportunities to say a word about Jesus? It's so easy to let him go by.

So easy to let him go by. And yet, if you're creative about it, I'll bet you that you will have three or four opportunities to say something in the next 24 hours. One of the most common, let me just suggest this to you.

I guarantee that in the next 24 hours, somebody is going to be complaining about something to you. And what we most of the time do is we say, oh, come on, it's not that bad. Or we say, you think that's bad? Let me tell you what happened to me.

This sermon seems to be applying to some of you. Instead of that, instead of playing that one-upsmanship, try this the next time. Somebody's complaining about who knows what, and you say, have you ever thought about praying about that?

It'll stop him dead in his tracks. I don't know what the answer will be. Again, it may be laughter, it may be scorn, it may be ridicule, or he might say, I never thought of it.

Do you really think it would make a difference? Or he might say, do you mean you pray? You weren't witnessing all that well with your life, you see.

Or he says, do you mean to tell me that there's a God who could answer my prayers? And you'd be right into it. Are we looking actively for opportunity?

You don't have to come on with the lapel-grabbing-cram-it-down-your-throat kind of an approach. But just look for creative opportunities to drop a little comment, drop a little question into the conversation, and see whether or not anybody will bite on the bait. See where it will go.

Be willing to drop it if they're not interested. If they turn you off, that's okay. It's not totally dependent upon you.

God has lots of other fishermen. It may not be the right time. But it might be that God would give to you the privilege of being the one who could lead that friend, that neighbor, that fellow worker, that member of your family to himself.

In this passage, Jesus says three very strong things. Three very important points. He says, number one, the more we identify ourselves with Him, the more likely we're going to be to get the same kind of treatment He got.

Be warned. Be warned. If they call the master of the house Beelzebul, The prince of demons, what do you think they're going to call you?

You identify yourself with Jesus, what do you think they're going to call you? God squad, Jesus freak, Christian mafia fanatic, Jim Jones follower? Of course they will.

They're testing out to see how serious you are about this. Are you going to persist or are you going to be scared off? The more we identify ourselves with Him, the more likely we are to get some ridicule, some reaction.

It may even be worse than that. But so what? The second point is God values you.

God values you. Not a sparrow drops to the ground except with your Father's will. You're more valuable than many sparrows.

Even the hairs on your head are numbered. That's easier for some of us than others. God values you.

He knows every hair on your head. He knows everything about you. Who are you playing to?

To the friend who's ridiculing or to the God who cared enough to send His Son to die for you? And thirdly, and most importantly, what we've already been considering, Those who confess me before men, I will confess before my Father in heaven. My grandfather was dying of cancer, and I knew that he didn't know the Lord.

And I decided that I had to give it a try. I don't know if any of you ever had any trouble witnessing to members of your own family. I find that very difficult.

But I made an appointment with him. I went down to Florida to see him before he died. Sat down in the living room with him and with my grandmother and I said, could I ask you a couple of questions?

I said, if you were to die and God were to ask you why should you come into my heaven, what would you say? He didn't know what to say. I said, could I share with you what the only good and right answer would be?

That Jesus Christ loves you so much that He made a present of eternal life and all you have to do is accept it as a gift. Before I could go any farther, my grandmother said, I want this gift. How about you, Glenn?

And they both came to Christ that day. Would God have reached into their lives and shared that good news had I not made that appointment? I don't know.

what I do know is that because I was willing to take the risk of seizing an opportunity making an opportunity to share Christ with them they're waiting for me when I get there let's bow our heads together Father in heaven and thank You for those who first spoke to us of the Lord Jesus. Lord, we think back. For some of us, that's certainly our parents.

We can't even remember a time when we didn't know about You because our moms and our dads shared You with us. Lord, we'd give You special thanks for our parents on this Father's Day. For others of us, it might have been a church school teacher or a minister who first began to make it clear that You loved us and call us into Your family.

For still others, it was a friend who had the temerity to say something to us at a moment when we were receptive. And Lord, we would thank You for those persons. And we would ask You to give us the courage, the boldness, the love and the concern and the creativity to find, not just wait for, but to find opportunities to confess You before men.

We pray that this day, this week, You'll give to us such a privilege for Your name's sake. Amen.