Guard Duty Luke 12:1-12

Do you know anyone who is over protective?

We need to be on guard duty

-Chapter 12:1-13:9

Luke 12:1 (ESV)

-in the meantime = around the same time as Jesus left the brunch

-many thousands = myriad = 10,000

-Beware = pay attention to, speaking to the disciples, guard yourselves, you need to protect yourself, against what? false teachers

How are we to guard against false teachers?

Protect Your Spiritual Life

Luke 12:2–3 (ESV)

-leaven = yeast

Deuteronomy 16:3 (ESV)

-haste they left Egypt, leaven also represents sin

Galatians 5:9 (ESV)

1 Corinthians 5:6–8 (ESV)

This is unleavened bread, it has no yeast. This is a packet of yeast, it only takes a little bit of the yeast to swell the bread, once you put the yeast in you cannot take it out

Matthew 16:6 (ESV)

-Everything said, everything taught will not be hidden, it will be exposed, everything you allow to come into your life, every sin, every false teaching, everything contrary to the Word of God

How do you avoid false teaching? How can you be focused on the truth of God’s Word? How can you not be carried away by the enticing words of wolves?

Notice:

Psalm 1:1–2 (ESV)

Fear God

Luke 12:4–7 (ESV)

-Fear God, false teachers, hypocrites do not fear God they fear man

-They live their lives for the outside, what is visible, they live for the power and prestige, the live for the money and even the numbers of people who follow them

-a good question for us to ask: if we were the only ones following the truth of God’s Word would we still follow His truth or would we follow the crowd, would we be persuaded by the numbers?

The reasons we fear God:

1 He will uncover what is hidden v. 3

Ecclesiastes 12:14 (ESV)

-Every sin is judged, every false teacher will be judged

1 Timothy 5:24 (ESV)

2 He has authority to cast hypocrites into hell

3 He knows it all

-sparrow - the poor would eat, one penny was one-sixteenth of a day’s wage, surely God would not care for a sparrow, surely He would forget even the poor man’s food, no, He knows it all even down to the sparrows

-some of us have 20 hairs on our head, but the average human has 100-150,000 hairs

-So fear God and not man, but those who are children of God having nothing to fear notice v. 7

Luke 12:7 (ESV)

-The point: if you already fear the Lord, if you have surrender to Christ as Lord then you have nothing to fear

-And if you do not fear, revere the Lord then what? That leads us to the next reason we stand on guard

Trust in the One Truth of Salvation

Luke 12:8–12 (ESV)

-We must protect ourselves from hypocrisy and false teaching because there is only one truth of salvation

-I hear it more often then I want, but I hear people say well as long as people believe there is a God, wrong!

-Jesus is clear in this: notice with me the process here:

-We have already seen God the Father mentioned, we are to fear Him, now we see the Son and acknowledging the Son, next the Holy Spirit

-And i tell you = this is how you honor God, you must honor Christ, without Christ you cannot honor God, without surrender to Jesus there is no way to the Father

John 14:6 (ESV)

John 5:23 (ESV)

-acknowledge = this is not just a verbal confession, this a life-change acknowledgment, this is a person who has been transformed inwardly

Romans 10:9–10 (ESV)

-This goes back to Luke 9:23 - self denial, following Jesus

-What is this about that whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven? Why the Holy Spirit and not the Son?

1 Corinthians 12:3 (ESV).

-So to honor God, you have to honor the Son, to acknowledge the Son you have to respond to the Holy Spirit. If you deny the Holy Spirit then you deny the Son

-the Holy Spirit reveals our need for the Son to be right with the Father

-Now there are many in our society who claim messages from the Holy Spirit, how do we know they truly are from God?

1 John 4:1–3 (ESV)

Romans 10:17 (ESV)

John 17:17 (ESV)

John 14:26 (ESV)

John 16:13 (ESV).

-The Spirit’s work is consistent with the Word of God, if it is not consistent with God’s Word it is not from God

-blaspheme - to speak against, to slander

-Everyone before their salvation is a blasphemer of Christ

-So why cannot the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit not be forgiven, because the work of the Holy Spirit is the only way for one to come to Christ, if someone continues to deny they cannot be forgiven

-The Holy Spirit will strengthen you

Acts 22:19 (ESV)

-How do we protect ourselves from false teaching, from becoming hypocrites, from following the wrong teachers?

Protect your spiritual life, ensure what is taught is in the Word of God, fear God above man, and trust in the one truth of salvation