Luke 12:1-12

Reinard Bonke.

And he was called by God at a young age to be an evangelist in Africa.

But he grew up in Germany.

And when he was fresh out of Bible school, when he was 20 years old, he was asked to preach for three weeks in an evangelism campaign.

This was by a pastor that he knew in Germany.

He had never preached a sermon before.

He'd only just learned out of Bible school.

And he was worried that he wouldn't have the words to say.

He wouldn't have sermons ready.

He was worried he'd have to say the same thing every day for three weeks.

But he prayed about it and he felt the Holy Spirit prompting him to accept.

So he did so.

And the first day he showed up at the campaign, he walked in the tent.

He didn't know anyone there.

And a woman came up to him who was from the church of the leader who had asked him to join.

And she began complaining to him about the decision that the leader had made.

The leader has chosen a very inexperienced guy to preach for this campaign who's never done it before, and I'm worried that the whole thing is going to fail because of that choice.

And Bonkey, of course, knew it was himself.

He left the tent and he went to his car and he said he cried and he prayed to the Lord and said, Lord, you just don't know how much those words have crushed me of that woman.

And so he was struggling with this fear of man that had been put on him from those words that he'd heard.

Yet the Spirit reminded him when he prayed that he had been called to be an evangelist.

And this is the kind of thing the Lord would have him do the rest of his life, and he would give him the words to say.

And so with that confidence, he trusted the Spirit, and he went into the tent and he preached powerfully for three weeks.

And the Lord used this in a mighty way.

Many people came to Christ during that campaign, and indeed the circus tent that had set up next door to this campaign heard about him and actually asked him to come and preach to the circus crowd one morning before it even started.

And he preached there, and again the Lord used it powerfully.

So this story of Reinhonke early in his life shows how the fear of man can hold us back.

If Bonkey had listened to that woman and been discouraged and stepped away from what the Lord had called him to do, he would have been submitting to the fear of man instead of the fear of God.

And our text today in Luke 12 is all about the fear of man and the fear of God.

In this text, Jesus is going to give a sermon to his disciples on these topics.

So let's read the whole text together.

Luke twelve, verses one through twelve.

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, Beware of the leaven 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 housetops.

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 is killed has authority to cast into hell.

Yes, I tell you, fear him.

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?

And yet 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 heaven, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.

So the immediate context here is that we just left the most awkward dinner party ever.

As Adam preached last week, Jesus went to dinner at a Pharisee's house.

He while he was there, he accused the Pharisees and the scribes of hypocrisy and revealed several things about them that showed the true natures of their hearts, as enemies of God, not worshipers.

He called them greedy and wicked.

He accused them of ignoring God's justice, and he said they were hindering others from coming into God's kingdom.

And this message got around town that Jesus had said this.

The people came out in droves to hear more.

Maybe because they had sensed a sort of falseness in the Pharisees and were interested in hearing more.

Or it could be that they were just eager to watch a conflict.

Whatever the reason for the crowds to be there, thousands had come to see him.

And yet Jesus does not address them, not yet.

Instead, he turns to his disciples, for there is a more important lesson he wants to teach them before the shock of the awkward dinner party wears off.

What does he say?

Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

He pivots off the hypocrisy of the Pharisees that he had pointed out the night before, to addressing his disciples, telling them they were in danger of becoming like them if they weren't careful.

So wait a second.

What does leaven have to do with hypocrisy?

What is Jesus getting at here?

Leaven is simply yeast.

You put a bit of leaven in your dough, and it quickly spreads throughout the whole loaf.

The Bible uses this metaphor often to describe sin and how pervasive it is.

It seems harmless to let a bit of sin into your life.

After all, it's not that much and it doesn't outweigh all the good that you do, right?

Actually, that little bit of sin will spread quickly to your whole life.

The hypocrisy of the Pharisees is that they have a public life that trumpets their own righteousness and good deeds, while in private they live a different sort of life.

They have secrets that they don't want to get out.

This is hypocrisy.

But Jesus reveals that this lifestyle won't work out in the end.

Why?

Look with me in verse two.

Nothing that is covered up 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 housetops.

The things we take great pains to hide are so obvious to God who knows everything.

This reminds me of my kids.

One day I walked into the kitchen, and my three-year-old daughter was chewing something.

She even had crumbs around her mouth and on her hands.

And I asked her, What are you eating?

And she said, Nothing.

I laugh at that, but that illustrates, before God, how we are.

Every single thing we do is known to God in that same way.

And our attempts to hide it are like a toddler.

Not only that, Jesus is also implying something more here, something about Judgment Day.

On that day, everything will be revealed, even if it was never known in this world.

Ecclesiastes ends with this verse.

For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Jesus' point is that his disciples should fear the revealing of their secret sin on judgment day by God, much more than they fear man finding out about it.

When we fear that others will find out about our sin, and thus we hide and continue in our sin, we are in bondage.

We are not free.

And Jesus is about to show his disciples that rightly fearing God frees them to confess Christ without fearing men.

This is my main point today.

Rightly fearing God frees us to confess Christ without fearing men.

So Jesus dives right into it in verse four.

So let's read this again, verses four through seven.

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 is 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.

So in these verses, Jesus repeats the word fear four times, and he begins a pattern that we are going to see through the rest of this passage.

He tells his disciples something not to fear, and then he tells them what they should fear instead.

Don't fear death, fear the Lord who judges.

This is the first point.

Don't fear death, fear the Lord who judges.

Specifically, the first thing he says not to fear is those who kill the body.

This falls right in line with the fear of man that he's trying to warn against.

Many in this world can hurt and kill you.

Do not fear them or physical death.

The reason this is so relevant to the disciples is because Jesus knows what is coming for them.

He is going to face death first, but he knows that his disciples will face death after he leaves them as they go to fulfill the Great Commission all over the world.

We see this all through Acts.

Peter is beaten, thrown in jail, threatened with death.

Paul is shipwrecked and stoned.

Many of the disciples were martyred, and yet none of these things stopped them.

I can imagine that these words of Jesus could have gone through their minds in some of these moments where death was staring them in the face.

Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that, have nothing more that they can do.

I love that last phrase that he says.

It makes it sound like physical death is such a small thing.

All they can do is kill you.

Don't even worry about them.

And he immediately gives us the reason for such a dismissal.

There is something that's much more to be feared, being cast into hell.

And even more than that, the one being who has the power to execute such a judgment.

God.

Yes, I tell you, fear him.

What a statement this is from Jesus.

When I read this, I get a different feeling about God than how I usually feel about him.

I think of being terrified, of being scared of him because of what he can do.

And while that is part of it, I think it's worth unpacking more what the Bible means when it uses the phrase fear of the Lord.

Because it's not only just being afraid.

It's used throughout the Old Testament, and it has a much more rich meaning than that.

Throughout the Psalms and Proverbs, it is said that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom.

Deuteronomy says, to teach your children to fear the Lord, so it is something that can be learned.

The Psalms talk about God's people as those who fear the Lord, so it's also an identity.

I love how Psalm 22 says this.

All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel.

One definition of the fear of the Lord put it this way: it's an emotion in which dread, veneration, and wonder are variously mingled as a profound and humbly fearful reverence inspired by something sacred or mysterious.

The fear of the Lord is a respect, a reverence, and trembling that should permeate our minds and affects all the way in which we think.

And Jesus makes sure to cover this whole range of the fear of God here, because right after he mentions God casting people into hell, he pivots to the other side of it, the reverence and the awe.

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?

And yet not one of them is forgotten before God.

Why even the hairs of your heads are all numbered?

Fear not, you are of more value than many sparrows.

Right after saying to fear God, he comforts them with, Fear not.

The fear of the Lord encompasses being terrified of his power as well as falling on your knees in awe, that that same powerful being loves and cares for you individually, even down to the hairs on your head.

Which of these sides of the fear of the Lord do you need to grow in?

We all tend towards one side or the other.

If I have a right view of God's judgment and power, I tend to follow his law more obediently, but not consider his love and grace.

If I have a right view of God's love and care for me, I tend to revel in his grace more, yet not consider his power and judgment.

I urge you to think and pray about the fear of the Lord this week and ask him to show you which side you need to grow in, how you think of him.

And this isn't just you trying harder to fear the Lord, to come up with a feeling that you manufacture.

This isn't something we can do by trying harder.

It can only come from the Spirit.

I would add this to your prayers this week, weekly, if not daily.

Lord, help me grow in the fear of the Lord.

Help me to see you rightly.

One book I'd recommend to pursue this more is The Holiness of God by R.

C.

Sprohl.

And if you're here today and you don't follow Jesus, let me challenge you with something.

Jesus makes a claim here.

He says that every thought, word, and deed will be revealed on Judgment Day.

And on that day, every single one of us will be responsible for what we've done.

And the standard that God has set is that any violation of his law is worthy of punishment, punishment in hell.

So if you are banking on the fact that the ways you have broken his law don't matter much because you've kept them well hidden, this passage challenges that assumption.

We are all worthy of hell on Judgment Day from our deeds.

But only by accepting Jesus' death on the cross for your sins and giving up to him everything that is hidden, can you escape God's judgment?

Wouldn't you rather give all of that to him who knows all of it already?

I urge you, let fear of God's power to judge push you to accept Jesus' death on your behalf.

Giving your whole life to him as your Lord is the only way to be free.

So that was the first point.

Don't fear death, fear the Lord who judges.

And the second point begins in verse eight.

Don't fear man's verdict, confess Christ.

So let's read verses eight through ten.

And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God.

But the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven.

But the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

Jesus talks about acknowledging himself, the Son of God.

To us that word often has a connotation of doing the bare minimum.

Acknowledging someone might be nodding to them as they enter a room, but not bothering to go and talk to them.

I think a better word here might be confess, to confess Christ, to associate yourself with him.

And the audience is key here, before men.

This is something we all face regularly as Christians.

Do we live and talk in such a way that it is clear who we follow?

That Christ is the most important thing in our lives.

Because there is a cost to that.

The cost is rarely death, as Jesus said before, at least not in this country and time, but it is looking foolish or being ridiculed or simply losing the opinion of someone we respect once they find out we are a Christian.

For me, being willing to confess Christ has sometimes been a struggle for me in my life, especially in certain contexts.

At work is one of the hardest for me.

In my head, I thought, I'm here at work to do a good job, to work diligently for God's glory, and to provide for my family.

So that means not getting fired.

So in order to protect my job, I avoid arguments on morals.

I don't mention church or Jesus.

I just go about my job quietly.

But after moving to Denver and getting a new job downtown, I felt God convicting me to make a change, to be more willing to confess him before men and leave the consequences up to him.

It's been hard to change a habit of years, and there's still a tension, we all feel, between doing this respectfully in a workplace.

But for me, this has looked more like being open about my relationship with Jesus, confessing him as the most important relationship in my life.

If that is indeed true, it should come up in casual conversation much more.

When I talk about my weekend, I mention that I went to church.

I tell people that I'm a pastor at a church.

I've been more bold to ask people about their beliefs and have met a handful of other Christians at my job this way.

And we've been able to have a regular meetup where we share scripture and pray for each other.

These are some of the practical ways that I've started to confess Christ more, but it really is a mindset more than anything else.

Is Christ foremost to me?

Do I take joy in confessing him and making his name great?

When I have that mindset at work or at the gym or anywhere else, I find the opportunities to acknowledge him to be much more regular.

And this verse gives us even greater motivation to have that mindset.

The Son of Man will also acknowledge you before the angels of God.

What an amazing picture that is.

When you confess Christ, he is glorified in that, and he boasts in your confession in heaven before the angels.

I just love that picture so much.

It should inspire us to be more bold in our confession of Him every day.

And yet, there have been plenty of moments where the fear of man takes over, and I don't take the opportunity to confess Christ.

We have all done this.

And Jesus again knew that his disciples would face this, and they would, in fact, sometimes fail and deny him.

So let's turn ahead a few chapters in Luke and read from chapter 22, verses 54 through 62.

Then they seized him, this is Jesus, and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house, and Peter was following at a distance.

And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them.

Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light, and looking closely at him, said, This man also was with him.

But he denied it, saying, Woman, I do not know him.

And a little later someone else saw him and said, You also are one of them.

But Peter said, Man, I am not.

And after an interval of about an hour, still another insisted, saying, Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.

But Peter said, Man, I do not know what you are talking about.

And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed.

And the Lord turned and looked at Peter.

And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.

And he went out and wept bitterly.

I bet these words of Jesus went through Peter's mind after this moment.

Instead of confessing his Lord, he had denied him.

Would Jesus deny him now?

Fortunately, we have verse 10.

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven.

Denying Jesus is a sin, yes, and it grieves him, but it is a sin that can be forgiven.

After his resurrection, Jesus addressed the earlier denial of Peter with him.

He met Peter on the beach and asked him three times if Peter loved him.

And Jesus forgave and restored him.

And Peter went on to do mighty things in Jesus' name, facing much worse than the verdict of man that he faced around the fire.

And he stood strong and confessed his Lord.

So, if denying Jesus can be forgiven, then what is Jesus talking about?

Next, when he says, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

This is one of the most hard to understand verses in Luke's gospel, at least for me.

By looking at the other passages in Matthew and Mark, where Jesus says these same words, we gain some additional insight.

In Matthew 12 and Mark 3, Jesus says these words directly after the Pharisees and the scribes had accused him of casting out demons in the name of Beelzebub.

In Luke, this was about a half chapter back, back in chapter 11.

It was part of his response to them when they accused him of that.

So there is clearly some context that attributing the works of the Holy Spirit to Satan is this blasphemy that he's talking about.

But let's go a bit deeper, because this verse can be a source of consternation when we read it.

I remember growing up having a vague idea that if I thought certain words in my head, that might qualify as the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and I might not be forgiven.

But the word blaspheme is not talking about that.

I think a helpful verse that illustrates this is Revelation 16, 10.

It's talking about angels pouring out bowls of wrath on the earth, on those that have rebelled against God and deserve judgment.

The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire.

They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed, or blasphemed, the name of God who had power over these plagues.

They did not repent and give him glory.

So a key piece of this is that the people on the earth receiving this bowl of wrath knew who it was coming from, from God.

And they knew without a shadow of a doubt, and yet they refused to submit to him.

They did not repent, and they did not give him glory.

Similarly, when we go back to Luke and Matthew and Mark, the response of the Pharisees is one of grasping at straws.

At this point, they've seen and heard enough of Jesus to know that his power is coming from God.

And yet they still refuse to submit.

They turn to the most ridiculous argument to avoid confessing him as they should.

He's casting out those evil spirits by Satan.

In order to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, you must know for sure that the Holy Spirit's power is working, and yet run the other way and deny it.

I would add that it also includes not only conscious rejection, but a persistent, hardened heart against the Spirit's witness.

This is not just a single moment of rejecting the gospel and the Holy Spirit, but a life lived against God without repentance.

It's not just a single sin you commit that can't be forgiven.

It's a life that's lived in unbelief.

And I think that's why Jesus mentions it here.

He is encouraging his disciples and us to confess him and align our lives with his power and work.

Blaspheming the Spirit is the opposite of that.

Don't fear man's verdict, confess Christ.

Jesus ends with another situation that he knew his disciples would face.

In verses eleven and twelve he says this.

Jesus is simply saying here, Don't fear worldly authority.

Trust the Holy Spirit.

He knows that as his disciples go out after his ascension to proclaim the gospel, they will face opposition, not just from ordinary people, but from the rulers and authorities of the world.

The synagogues here represent the Jewish authorities, and the rulers and authorities represent the Gentiles, the Romans, and the government.

From every direction you will be persecuted.

We see this many times in Acts.

In Acts 4, Peter and John were brought before the high priest and cross-examined.

So I'm going to read that story for us.

Acts 4, verses 1 through 12.

Acts 4:1–12

And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed, because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

And they arrested them, and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening.

But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.

On the next day the rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high priestly family.

And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, By what power or by what name did you do this?

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well.

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

What an incredible story.

Under pressure from the most powerful man in Israel, Peter opens his mouth to respond, and it immediately says that he was filled with the Holy Spirit.

And his response to them is an incredible confession of Christ.

The verse right after, it says that they were completely astonished at his answer, knowing him to be uneducated.

What they didn't know was that Peter had a Holy Spirit PhD.

What happens to Peter here is the very thing that Jesus promises in Luke.

That gives me so much confidence that the Holy Spirit will do the same for me and for you when the time comes.

So when we have the opportunity to confess Christ and fear of man causes us to doubt, let us fear God instead.

Do not fear worldly authority, trust the Holy Spirit.

So we've seen how Jesus has warned his disciples against the fear of man in multiple areas that he knew they were going to face, and instead pointed them to the fear of the Lord.

One of the amazing things about the specific things Jesus is telling them to fear is that they actually walk us through the entire Trinity.

Did you catch that?

Fear the Lord's judgment, yet rest in the tender care the Father has for you.

Confess Christ, even as you are confident that he is confessing you in heaven, because he is your representative.

Trust the Holy Spirit.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

These three principles that Jesus talks about here really do sum up the fear of the Lord.

And when Jesus started this sermon, he started with hypocrisy.

And we talked about how hypocrisy is really bondage.

When we fear that our secrets will get out and fear what people will say and think, we are not free.

We are tempted, like the Pharisees, to put on a good face and prove to everyone that we have it together, that we do indeed follow God.

But that facade becomes harder and harder to maintain as long as we keep things in the darkness.

It ends up strangling our witness, our confession of Christ, because of the guilt we carry from keeping those things secret.

Think about what Jesus says in these verses.

Fear God's judgment on sin.

Rest in Christ's work for you, but trust the Spirit to lead you.

Let these things overcome the fear of man in your life, so it can be replaced by the fear of the Lord.

And when fear of man is gone, our boldness to confess Christ can only grow.

Rightly fearing God frees us to confess Christ without fearing men.

Let's pray.

We thank you for sending your son.

We thank you for how you used his words 2,000 years ago to his disciples to prepare them, prepare them for what they would face in the coming years, Lord, as they confess you, as they spread your gospel through all the earth.

I just pray you would use these words, Lord, to impact us, to speak to us today, in a different time and place, but they're just as relevant for your people and for your disciples, Lord.

I pray that fear of man in our hearts would die and be replaced by the fear of the Lord.

In Jesus' name, amen.