Luke 12:1-12

Luke 12:1-12

Good morning sir church, Good morning friends, good morning to those of you, tuning in on the livestream, so good to be with you this morning. Um if I haven’t met you, my name is dan and I am one of the elders here and this morning, we are going to continue looking at the gospel according to luke, so go ahead and turn to chapter 12 of luke, We will read the 1st 12 verses of Chapter 12. While you’re turning there, I just kind of want to set this up for you by saying this as a pastor, it is sometimes hard two acknowledge and to accept the reality that I need Grace when it comes to living out what I preach and God has given me that grace, he saw fit to give me that grace through relationships like my wife, my kids, my close friends and then I served with here at your church when we realize that God has given us that grace to help us to live out the very things that we teach and preach from the pulpit, that is for us, a reminder that we need jesus that were dependent upon jesus and when I see in the faces and in the eyes of those near me, when I fall short of what Jesus has called me to again, I am reminded of God’s grace to me through those relationships and through their words, through them pointing me back to the truth of God’s scripture, so that I can continue to trust in christ, depend upon christ lean on christ for my own sanctification and growth and maturity and never, ever think to myself that I have arrived, that’s where I’m at now, that I have arrived and you know what, that’s normal, we’re not talking about lowering standards or accommodating gross sin and the things that would disqualify an elder, what we’re talking about is being a christian and the daily fight and battle to be like christ, to overcome the various battles that we have to face as christians and I’m thankful for the grace that God has given me and his word through his spirit, but most importantly through those relationships that point me back to him when I get off track, that is good, that is normal, that should be your experience, that’s why we talk about community groups, discipleship groups, that’s why we talk about the gospel, being central to everything that we do, so that that would be your normal experience, that would be normal for you as a single person, that would be normal for you as a married person, that you would, yes, acknowledge that it is normal for my spouse to need jesus and to need to depend upon jesus, just like I need jesus and am depending upon him and his grace, that you would see that it’s normal for you to see that your kids need jesus, for your kids to see that you need jesus and for the both of you would talk that you would talk about, your need for jesus, that would be normal. You know what’s not normal is when we can acknowledge that, when we fail to see that, when we think that we have arrived, that whatever title position or label that I’ve embraced of authority, somehow I have arrived, that’s when we become hypocrites. And there’s a, there’s a lot of that going around, right people that rule over us forget that. So pastor mike talked about that last week. Today, we’re gonna look at this passage where jesus warns his disciples, don’t you become a hypocrite? And in the passage, he says, here are some things that I want to warn you against that might take you down the road to becoming a hypocrite. And as we look at those warnings were gonna see both solutions and gospel comforts to us. I want to talk about all of that this morning without further ado, let me read the passage and then we’ll get into this teaching luke chapter 12, beginning in verse one, it says in the meantime, When so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one, another he began to say to his disciples first be aware of the 11 of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden, that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the house tops. I tell you, my friends do not fear those who kill the body, and after that, have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear. Fear. Him! Who after he has killed has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, Fear him are not five sparrows sold for two pennies, and not one of them is forgotten before God! Why? Even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not You are of more value than many sparrows. 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 blasphemies 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. Let’s pray God! Thank you for your word. I thank you Lord! That your word is truth. I pray God in these moments that we have together, looking at your word and how we are to apply it into our lives God, that you would indeed accomplish exactly what we sing about this morning, causing the darkness to not only tremble, but to flee that the light of your word might shine brightly in our lives in our circumstances, God that we might be your people standing firm on the foundation that you have provided, trusting you, God, God, would you do this this morning through this teaching in jesus name? Amen Amen. So this morning, this passage that I just read to you, jesus is basically saying this is how you avoid becoming a spiritual hypocrite. This is how you avoid it. First thing you do is you avoid being naive about spiritual matters. Don’t be naive. Don’t become prideful about spiritual matters. And then he says, don’t become a compromiser regarding God’s truth. And then lastly, don’t fear, do not fear. But trust in me, trust in me, he says, if you want to avoid being forced and pushed down a path of spiritual hypocrisy, don’t be naive. Don’t give into pride. Don’t compromise on the truth and do not fear. But trust him. So this morning we’re gonna talk about that, we’re gonna talk about trusting him. We’re gonna talk about these warnings and we’re gonna talk about the solution to how we deal with the temptations that follow these warnings because God wants us, he wants you and me, he wants us to live fiercely faithful lives to him. How do we live fiercely faithful lives to him. We trust him. We meet these temptations and we overcome them by his grace and we walk with him. But I gotta warn you that as we, as we touched on this topic this morning, he’s gonna cut a little close to home. I vote man, preaching it to the first service. I’ve already had to stop and repent myself of some things as I was preparing it, I had to stop and repent myself of some things because this is going to cut pretty close. Mr jesus is telling his disciples, look, man, I’m not going to be with you forever, I’m going to ascend to the throne of heaven and when I leave you here, you’re going to be tempted to become spiritual hypocrites. And you’ve got to avoid that. You’ve got to resist that. You can’t give in to those things. So right away in verse one, he tells them beware of the 11 of the Pharisees. If your king James only guy probably says yeast, right? The yeast of the Pharisees. King James being a translation of the bible for those of you who are that kind of went over your head, I’m gonna be real with you. I’m not a baker. I don’t do very well in the kitchen. I love to barbecue though. Um but I’m not a baker, but here’s what I understand about this passage though, and what he’s saying here, talking about the 11 of the Pharisees. So first of all, this was something that was comin right as you’re baking bread, right? You’re working the levin or the yeast into the dough. And when you start with that doe right, it’s a certain size and you can manipulate it a little bit and shape it in certain ways. But what the yeast and 11 does is that it causes it to rise so that what you’re looking at, the original substance has now expanded and somehow it appears to have multiplied in size and quantity. But that’s not really the case, is it? And so jesus and saying, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and saying, don’t you allow your love for the praises of men to inflate your ego. Don’t you allow your thinking about your importance to cause your pride to inflate to such a level that you forget that you need God, that’s exactly what the Pharisees did. Everybody around them needed God, they didn’t need God. The sacrifices in the temple were for them just ritual. But for the people, they need this, jesus is saying, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, he’s saying, don’t become a proud pharisee loving the praises of man acting self righteous before God and man. That’s what they did and You know what else, you know, building upon that analogy, it’s a little thing that kind of works its way into the dough the 11. It’s a little thing and you start entertaining these little thoughts, these little ideas about yourself and your importance and your significance and it begins to influence whole big, Your entire presence. Now you you walk into the room and that 11 and that yeast of Pride has worked its way into you and now you can’t relate to anyone. They’re beneath you Abraham Kipper. So this spiritual hypocrisy is like a shadow deepest and sharpest, closest to the light. Do you remember staring at your shadow as a little kid? Right? It’s deeper and sharpest closer to the light. The Pharisees, they stood near the light of God’s word, the covenants, the promises, the temple that was symbolic, the presence of God among his people and they were the biggest hypocrites. Pastors can do that, we can live that way and that’s why I’m so thankful for relationships to remind me to humble me college students when you have left the home and taste some independence and being able to tie your own shoe and pay your own bills. You can allow yourself to think now I don’t need any kind of you know, guidance or wisdom from anyone else. You start to dabble into that arena, parents, we can dabble into that Iran always having to be right before our kids never ever wanting our kids to see that we the flaw and then kids, as soon as you learn how to write your name on the paper on a straight line, you become prideful and arrogant mom and dad can’t tell me what to do now and you become a prideful little pharisee. This speaks to all of us. This speaks to all of us. We can be that way about religious things. Oh I was the one a champ back in my day. I memorized so many scriptures. Beware of 11 of the Pharisees. You know what Jesus says though about this thing. This this whole Scenario is he’s talking about the 11 of the Pharisees. He says nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden, that will not be known. Whatever you said in the dark will be heard in the light and whatever you whispered in private rooms will be proclaimed on the house tops every single thing, every single thought deed teaching God will hold us accountable for our example. God will hold us accountable. God’s gonna expose everything. That’s what he says in hebrews four. That’s what his word does. It’s like a double edged sword that it exposes the heart. That’s what he says in Matthew 1236 to every idle word we’ll have to give an account for. And then in Romans 2 16, he says even the secrets of our hearts will be judged on the day of judgment. Prideful Pharisees. They don’t have any sin problem. They’re all good. So we can’t become proud Pharisees, forgetting that we need God justifying ourselves based on the way in which men praise us, justifying ourselves on the little good deeds that we remember doing and saying, look, I’m good and so jesus says, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees that says warning. The solution is this we find it in colossians 3 17, but it’s there in this passage in principle. But here’s the solution. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord, jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever you do in word or deed everything in the name of the Lord jesus christ, that brings us to our gospel comfort in this passage. All of life for us is about christ. It’s about exalting him. It’s about seeing him glorified. He is our joy and because he is our joy when we have to make tough decisions. When we have to say some things that may be a little tough, we trust him to vindicate us, he will reveal it, he will make it known where we stood, who we served. What we were about christ is our joy and our vindication. We don’t have to hide or pretend that we’re perfect, but we make everything about him. We do everything for him. We try to honor him in all things. So that’s the first warning and then we move on to the second warning. We find in verse four where he says essentially do not fear those who kill the body. The temptation there is to become fearfully faithless, full of fear and without faith fearfully faithless. He says, Don’t fear those who kill the body. Don’t fear what man can do to You don’t fear death. I was thinking about this portion here the passage and I believe it’s the holy spirit that really impressed this upon my heart, helping me to see it, helping me to understand it. Fear changes our values in a split moment, in a place of comfort, in a place where everything is going according to plan. When we feel good, when we feel right about the situation, we know we need to prioritize God, we know that God first, what fear does it comes in and immediately we forget about that overturns the entire value system to the point where we’re only thinking of self self preservation, protect self. We live almost as if we have never moved on beyond junior high. Right? You guys, junior high used to be kind of like this fearful, dreaded experience, right? Where everybody, your body’s changing, you’re not fully an adult, you’re no longer a little kid. You smell funny, people are saying things about you, you’re saying things about other people, your word, you’re gonna get this reputation or that label put upon you. And we say, well that was the junior high and high school years and then we move on later into life as adults and we’re still struggling with those same fears. I shared the story in the first service. It has no application to the message that I got to share this service though. But I had a friend in junior high, he was, he was a good friend, loved him dearly. But he had a straight leg and a bowlegged and so his nickname was straight leg bowlegged. So he was forever known Straight leg bowlegged. Um, those are the things that happened in junior high man. You just, we act like that doesn’t change though. I mean we, we fear that later in life, right? Fear will overturn your value system, it will overturn your value system. It’s not as simple as the chain letter that goes around. You know, if someone walked in here with a gun and put a gun in your head and said, would you deny jesus or die? And you know, passed this on if you will, so that everybody knows that you’re a strong and courageous christian, right? Because you passed this letter on to 10 people, right? You know, you know what, that’s a very real situation for many brothers and sisters in christ in other parts of the world. It’s a very real situation for many of them. I mean, I don’t know what news channels and circuits that you’re listening to, but I hear about it very real situations for us, it is rarely that serious. It’s simply, I don’t want to be labeled a bible thumper. Uh, people are going to reject me because you know, if I say that I’m a christian, they, they’re gonna just think that I’m judgmental and then I’m holier than them. And then we started making up all these little excuses for why we fear man, they might reject me. What if I don’t say the words correctly? Like how hard is it to say, Hey, jesus is Lord, we all gotta trust him, We all got to believe in him, We all got to live for him. That’s not very hard. How do I do that? Whoa, Hey look man, I’m figuring it out, let’s get into this word and let’s try to figure it out together, jesus, It tells us don’t fear scripture, repeatedly reminds us do not fear the only one we are to fear is God. I was told this recently and I was old man, pick up basketball game, young guy, it’s getting a little too physical and I said, hey man, cut that out. He says, man, I don’t fear anybody but God and the old me, you know that the flesh was just like you and the holy spirit was just like, it’s like, okay, you’re about to meet God boy. No, I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Yeah, yeah, I am kidding Proverbs 29, 25 says that the fear of man is a snare, but whoever trusts God is safe if you’re a man brings about a sneer, jesus. Don’t fear man, don’t fear those who can kill the body, but fear the one who has authority over the forever life, our lives on this planet about this long, forever fear the one who has authority over the forever life. And he says in that passage, something that’s not very popular to say in public, but he says fear. The one who can cast into hell, jesus believed in a literal hell, a literal place. Return als judgment and torment you. Just fear that one, especially when he has brought grace so near to you, truth so near to you and has blessed you, even when you didn’t deserve it. Sure that one. So if the warning is do not fear those who kill the body, the solution is only fear the one who has authority over the forever life and the gospel comfort we draw from this is that your heavenly father cares so much for you that he keeps count of the number of hairs on your head and guys like me make it easy for him to count the more hairs I lose, I got a sunroof up there, but don’t be looking so closely at that 3rd Warning is found in verse nine and jesus says Actually begins in verse eight, he says, 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. As I was saying, hear the warning here is don’t be ashamed of christ before men, Jonathan Edwards said this, he said, christ is the lamb and the lion of God approach him as the lamb of God and he will be a lion for you defending you but reject him as the lamb of God and he will become a lion against you. And then he quotes some to kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish from the way so don’t be ashamed of christ before men. The temptation to avoid is becoming cowardly compromisers refusing to speak the truth of christ, always apologizing for the word of God for the word of God being too strong, being too sharp, trying to blunt its edges, trying to soften its edges, trying to pull back a little bit on the fact that this is a double edged sword, cowardly compromises. It’s something that we, we kind of get acclimated to. We live in a culture that does not exalt christ, it does not think of prioritizing the glories and majesty of our God. Does not think of holiness as its primary value system, well not according to God’s system. And so we live in this environment and then we get so used to kind of tolerating it or trying to be comfortable in or trying to hold onto our little comfortable position or place in it that we start to shrink back from the truth of christ and those moments we have to speak. So it’s a, it’s a conditioning that takes place. That’s why being in the word and and being around that and sitting under the teaching and preaching of the word. That’s to remind us that we are kingdom people, God’s kingdom people and we don’t exist for the world’s pleasure that we exist for God’s good pleasure. So jesus is saying to his disciples that you’re going to be tempted to deny me to be ashamed of me, to be ashamed of my words and his word for us today is that you and I will be tempted to deny him and to be ashamed of him and be ashamed of his words slowly over time. Courage being eroded. That’s how it happens. I was thinking about a story that was that read in USa today, you can go and look up the article yourself but a swimmer at Penn, born biologically male, competed SML in college was ranked 462 as a swimmer shaming that I can’t swim. I swim like a rock straight to the bottom if you don’t know what that means. Yes. Now identifies as a woman and is the # one ranked swimmer and we look at that because the world does not have God’s value systems, does not understand the word of God and I know what to do, teammates who wants willing to stand in support the guy in this transition. Now frustrated all their life, their training, their dreams, no chance, any kind of success because No one has the courage to say. That’s lunacy, it’s lunacy. It does not make sense. It’s not according to the way God designed us. You know, the reason why people call me dan is because dan is a lot cooler than the name Daniel, the name Daniel man. I needed to learn how to fight right growing up. Sorry, that may not make a whole lot of sense to you, but from the cultural context that came from, I needed to know how to fight with the name Daniel. So I went by dan. There’s a part of me that I didn’t like it that I was named Daniel. Why would my parents named me Daniel. Don’t they see the skin that I’m, that I’m wrapped in right the color of it, right? My all time like dream practical joke is to stand outside of a tanning salon and yell at the top of my voice. Don’t go in there, look what they did to me. Yes, but it makes absolutely no sense for me to be ashamed of that name. And then I became a christian in college and I started to read this bible and I saw, hey, there’s a guy in here named Daniel. He’s a pretty cool dude. I saw what it meant. God, he’s my only judge, I like this name. She’s sin confuses us causes us to push back against God’s ordained way his will for us, it causes us to rebel against it. Sin is separation from God and in that separation there is Brokenness, its Brokenness. And if we allow the Brokenness to inform us on how to move forward, we’re gonna get more and more Brokenness. So we look at this word and we trust God. I’m not going to be ashamed of the fact that he made me a black man. You shouldn’t be ashamed of what God made you. God put his image on us and he has designed the perfect scenario for that image to be maximized. Its in male illness and femaleness. And God understands diversity and unity and he designed it. He is the epitome of diversity and unity. three distinct persons. Father, son and the Holy Spirit one God. So when he says be diverse according to his design. We celebrate where he calls for unity in his design. We celebrated. We don’t rebel against that pattern. But that happens when we become ashamed of this word. We become ashamed of this word. When we compromise this word, when we take a step back from it, that’s old testament stuff that you’re talking about. You always gets me fired up. When people say it’s the words in red that matter. The rest of the bible, okay, that doesn’t really apply. It’s only the words in red and when people say that they only portray their own ignorance. The words in red, that’s narrative. That’s a story. That’s an account luke is given an account Matthew is giving an account Furthermore John in his account and John one says the word became flush, he is the word. And then when we look at the word it says that he chose apostles. Do you know why I chose those apostles to be his mouthpiece to further speak his word while he was in heaven? That’s why I got some I know some brothers, I love them dearly, they tell me to call them apostles, no can do I’m not gonna call you apostle bro, I love you. We’re all apostles were all sent right, we’re all sent. But if we compromise here, if we’re ashamed of what he has said, we live as compromising christians, we start apologizing for the word of God, we start trying to soften the sharp edges of christ, we back away, we backpedal, we apologize for the truths of scripture, we cannot do that, we can’t do that. You know what we should do, we should love christ more than we love ourselves, we should love our neighbors more than we love ourselves and we should point them to christ, teach them to look to christ as we are looking to christ and we should trust the spirit’s power to work in the hearts of sinners. Just as we’re trusting the spiritual work in our hearts and then we have this comfort from jesus saying that he he will celebrate you in heaven but we also know from luke 15 7 we’ll get to that in in the coming weeks that all of heaven will rejoice when one sinner repents man, Jesus is saying that when we don’t give in and don’t apologize and aren’t ashamed of his word, that there is a big party that we get to enjoy in the forever life. You got to know that that’s worth it. This life about this long forever life, It’s worth it. 4th and final warning, verse 10, jesus gives a warning that for a lot of christians have been fearful that they have committed the sin, he says, and everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. But the one who blasphemies against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. And so the warnings don’t ever blaspheme the Holy Spirit. That’s something that the Pharisees were doing, Matthew 1224, Mark 3 22, attribute this remark from Jesus about blaspheming the Holy Spirit right? Following a scenario where jesus drives out the mute and deaf spirit from the young child. They say that Jesus did it by the Prince of Demons Beelzebub. And so we know that this blaspheming of the Holy Spirit comes down to attributing the secret and powerful work of the Spirit to the devil, contributing christ ministry to the devil, that’s what he’s getting at there. And so for a lot of christians who struggle and wonder have they committed this sin. I try to point them back to those passages where we have a little bit clearer application to that various warning Matthew 12 and and Mark three, it’s when you attribute the work of christ to the devil, but the thing that we need to see though is blaspheming the Holy Spirit is a product of a hard heart, foolish heart towards God. And what we as christians can kind of entertain is our own ability to grieve. The Spirit Ephesians four talks about that grieving the spirit do not grieve. The spirit paul also writes about quenching the Spirit. We do that when we make excuses for our sin. When we justify our sin. When we harbor bitterness and unforgiveness towards our brothers and sisters, when we slander others, we grieve the Holy Spirit, we grieve him. And if you keep living in that state of continuously and perpetually grieving the Holy Spirit, one day you’ll wake up, he’s not gonna be with you. So the solution is to humble yourself before God. It’s always to have a humble posture before God. It’s to recognize that your angst and your, your unforgiveness towards someone or some situation that that’s not something you want to celebrate or or become good friends with, become cozy with. You know that happens sometimes and people who can struggle with with, with anger and wrath and their heart and bitterness, they become comfortable with it, the world says they’re just a negative person, but really in scripture is someone who has who has simply become accustomed and friendly with their feelings of angst bitterness and as christians that can’t be in us because we will quench the spirit. So the solution is to humble ourselves before God and we are to never allow our hearts to become so hardened that we attribute the work of christ to the devil And we have this gospel comfort in John 1613 or it says the Spirit of Truth will guide you into all the truth, that includes how you need to think, feel, act, what you need to do. I will guide you into all the truth about christ, who guide you into all the truth about the word of God, about your salvation, about what it means to be a christian disciple, what it means to be a member of a church, what it means to be one who would preach on christ’s behalf, he will guide you into all of that. As soon as we conclude this morning, talking about living fiercely faithful lives to christ, we need to remember these warnings against hypocrisy, becoming proud, full Pharisees, giving into the fear of man being cowardly compromisers or allowing our hearts to become so accustomed to sin that we grieve and quench the spirit. We want to be aware of these things, avoid these things, We want to cling to the gospel comforts that God has given us, and most importantly, we’re gonna, we’re gonna leave this space, right, we’re gonna leave this room and we’re gonna go back out into the world. We need the Holy Spirit to guide us. That’s where jesus ends this passage by saying, don’t worry about how to defend yourself or what to say when you go out into this world. But trust Spirit, trust the Spirit to give you the words the same to know what to do in that moment. Do you know how that relationship is built to where you can trust the Spirit? His daily meeting with daily submitting to daily seeking him as you read this word and as you’re in prayer, Amen. Amen. Let us pray, father, thank you. Thank you Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for your Spirit. Thank you for your promises. Thank you for your kingdom. God, I thank you that you haven’t called us or taking us Lord from this world. We are in it though, we are not of it and we’re in it to be your representatives, to be your ambassadors. We are in it to be fiercely faithful to you and to you alone. But God, we need you, we need your grace, we need your wisdom, We need your power to be at work. So God, meet us as we commit to submitting ourselves to this word and yield into it. Meet us and strengthen us in jesus name. We pray Amen