Sincere Faith: The Fear That Makes Us Fearless
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
We sang the song Come Thou Fount,
It is one of my favorite songs.
The lyrics are a call to God to for help and God’s response.
God’s response even though we are prone to wander.
Raising an ebenezer is raising a stone of Help.
It is a reference to a story found in 1 Sam 7.
12 Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the Lord has helped us.”
It is often the second half of the third verse that really resonates with me.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
I don’t know about you, but I really do feel it.
I know that on my own, I am so inclined to do the opposite of what I know I should do.
So prone to wandering off the path the Lord has set before me.
This is where hypocrisy, from the outside perspective comes in to play.
We’ve all heard people say that Christians are hypocrites, and if you’re like me, it’s probably stung a bit to hear that even if it’s not directed at you.
It’s not pretty, but it’s reality.
We know that Romans 3:23 says we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, so it’s no surprise that we mess up, get it wrong, and totally fail at this whole faith thing.
Where do we find the motivation to keep going, to keep striving towards the goal as Paul encourages us to?
To do as the the final lines of Come Thou Fount say
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.
Jesus addresses this question of motivation in the verses we will cover today.
As Christians, we are to be motivated to love God, and love others because of God’s great care for us.
1 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. 2 Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 3 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. 4 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 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! 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. 7 Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. 8 “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, 9 but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. 10 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. 11 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, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”
Last week we picked back up in Luke chapter 12 with Jesus warning to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
A hypocrite is a person that is creating a public impression that is at different than their real purposes or motivations.
They speak and act one way in public, but another in private.
Change based upon the people they are around.
Jesus warning is that hypocrisy starts small.
Like a small amount of yeast that permeates a whole loaf of dough and causes it to rise.
He is specifically warning against the Pharisees.
These ultra religious men, who for the most part presented the appearance of godliness, but did not follow through in their lives.
There were a few good men among them.
We might think of Nicodemus who came to Jesus in John 3 as one example.
Jesus is warning, don’t strive to be like these men.
They appear godly, but as Jesus says in MT
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.
Last week I shared one way we can battle hypocrisy in our lives is through building deep authentic relationships.
True friendships where we know one another on more than a surface level, and can lift one another up but also call each other out when we are not living or acting as we should.
Those types of relationships take time and intention.
Intention takes motivation.
The greatest motivation to not be a hypocrite is fear of the Lord.
Jesus shares this motivation in verses 4-6.
4 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 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! 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.
I firmly believe, and I am guilty of this myself, that all too often, we fear God too little, and people too much.
The fear of man is something all too prevalent in our Christian lives.
Especially in Western and free nations, it is a psychological fear.
This fear is an anxious need to receive affirmation from those around us.
The fear of man manifests as people-pleasing, compromised values, peer pressure, and a choice not to share our faith.
25 The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.
The fear of man can be a snare when we allow it to influence our decisions.
The fear of man is a snare in that it takes the place of the fear of God in our lives.
Since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10), the fear of man sets us on the road to foolishness.
It also leads us to fear God too little, and love our sin too much.
Here in our passage in Luke, Jesus is specifically referencing here physical death.
Don’t fear someone who can only kill you.
From and earthly, worldly standpoint, death is the worst possible outcome.
There really is nothing worse than death.
What Jesus is pointing out here though, is that death is not the end.
Each and every person has a soul which will continue on for eternity.
Though these bodies are temporary, our soul is eternal.
And we have an eternal destination.
Jesus uses a very vivid word picture here of one of those destinations that does not come across well in our English translations.
The words translated hell in Greek are Hades and Gehenna.
In verse 5, Jesus says to fear him, who after he has killed, has the authority to cast into gehenna.
Gehenna is
Hebrew ge-hinnom, meaning “Valley of [the sons of] Hinnom.”
A transliteration of “Valley of Hinnom” (גֵּי הִנֹּם, gey hinnom), a boundary marker between Judah and Benjamin (Josh 15:8; 18:16).
The end of the valley was where the wilderness began.
The Hinnom Valley had become a place associated not only with the lowest point and the path to the wilderness,
It was known as a place of demonic chaos,
You can read in 2 Kings 16 and 21 how King Ahaz and Manasseh began sacrificing children to Molech there.
The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had condemned this valley as surely as King Josiah had shut it down.
By Jesus time, it became a rejected part of the city that was converted to a burning pit to dump the city’s garbage.
One commentator describes the seen as possibly having been like this -
As you haul your cart of trash down the hill into the valley, you first become aware of the smoke that rises continually from the dump. It is acrid and oily from the burning trash and causes your eyes to water.
But soon, not even the smoke can cover the stench that rises from rotting food and corpses on a hot Middle-Eastern day. The smell is so bad, you struggle not to vomit and retch.
But the smoke in your eyes and the smell in your nostrils are not the worst of it. As you descend down into the pit, it becomes harder to see. The sun turns blood red due to the smoke and there is a constant gloomy haze that surrounds you.
But this is a blessing in disguise, for what you do see is difficult to forget. On your left there is a dead body buzzing with flies.
You avert your eyes, only to see a ragged leper stumbling through the smoke while eating a moldy piece of fruit he has pulled from the trash. Because of his disease he is missing his nose and much of a hand. He looks like a walking dead man.
Horrified, you decide you have traveled far enough into the pit. You dump your trash as quickly as possible before retreating back up the slope toward Jerusalem.
As the smoke recedes and the sun brightens above you, you peer back over your shoulder at where you left your trash, only to see half a dozen destitute people shuffling toward your pile of garbage as fast as their mangled feet will carry them.
They are eager to be among the first to dig through what you have left behind, hoping to find a bit of food or clothing that will get them through another day.
You shudder and pick up your pace to leave the nightmare valley behind and return to the land of the living.
In the days of Jesus, this is what came to mind when someone used the word “Gehenna.”
The term conveyed “a sense of total horror and disgust. … Gehenna was a place of undying worm and irresistible fire, an abhorrent place where crawling maggots and smoldering heat raced each other to consume the putrefying fare served them each day”
Gehenna was not hell, but Jesus used that place as a representation of hell.
It was a place where those who were unfit for society were condemned to.
JI Packer in his Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Hell: The Wicked Will Be Banished into Endless Misery)
He states that -
New Testament teaching about hell is meant to appall us and strike us dumb with horror, assuring us that, as heaven will be better than we could dream, so hell will be worse than we can conceive.
Such are the issues of eternity, which need now to be realistically faced.
Jesus is using this imagery to help us see the futility of what people can really do to us.
And in turn, to have no fear.
The reality is though is that we have many reasons to fear people today.
The world around us is becoming more and more anti Christian every day it seems.
We already have difficult choices to face when it comes to standing up for biblical truth and biblical values.
Even you kids in school find yourselves with difficult choices to make when it comes to friends and relationships at school.
If I stand up for Jesus, my classmates might not talk to me, or want to be around me.
When you find yourself in a situation where others are challenging your commitment to Jesus,
Don’t allow their threats to change or dampen your relationship with Jesus.
One way I have heard it said that as a Christian - in this life, through trials and hardships, this is the closest you will get to hell.
But as an unbeliever - this is the closest they will get to heaven.
Don’t allow them to cause you to disown Christ.
That is the emphasis Jesus gives in verse 8
8 “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God,
Relationships here are temporary, but God and your soul are eternal.
That person that you are with, talking to, needs to hear about Jesus.
What each and every one of us need to do is to learn the true fear that will make us fearless in the face of others.
Why should we be intimidated by people, and the worst they can do is harm us in this life.
This life, while significant, is not the culmination of our existence.
This life is a precursor to all that eternity will be to us.
We must live with an eternal mindset.
Which is the opposite of what the world tells us to do.
The world tells us, you only live once, there is nothing else.
But that is not true.
Your life, your soul is of great value to God.
Each and every person that has been and will be on this planet has an eternal destination.
Each person is valuable to God.
And oh how greatly valued we are to God!
Jesus shows this
6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. 7 Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.
Jesus wants us to have an awareness of how great and holy God is, while also acknowledging how weak, foolish, and prone to sin we are.
To prevent us foolish thoughts, disastrous actions.
This is a reminder I need!
I am sure it is beneficial to you as well.
He reminds us because of how much he truly cares for us.
Jesus uses an example of sparrows.
5 sparrows could be purchased for 2 of the lowest valued coins in Jesus day.
These were animals that the poorest of people could generally afford to purchase for sacrifice to the lord if they had nothing else.
And God recognized these offerings.
Life Application Bible Notes (Chapter 12)
Our true value is God’s estimate of our worth, not our peers’ estimate.
Other people evaluate and categorize us according to how we perform, what we achieve, and how we look.
But God cares for us, as he does for all of his creatures, because we belong to him.
Thus, we can face life without fear; we are very valuable to God
God even knows the hairs on your head, they are all numbered.
For those of us who are thinning, it is not that He has less to count, he knows the hairs that have already fallen out as well!
Verse 7 ends with
English Standard Version Chapter 12
Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.
If you noticed reading through this passage, Jesus says in verse 4, do not fear.
Then in verse 5 fear him.
And in verse 7 fear not.
It almost feels a little schizophrenic.
Are we supposed to be afraid? Not be afraid? What?
It is not meant to be confusing but is rather a call to right fear and right living.
The Bible makes it perfectly clear that there is a kind of fear which is a necessary ingredient to instill in the believer a right living.
Jesus is affirming the fact His father knows more about his children than the children know about themselves.
His care for his children extends to even the tiniest details of life.
Fear God because of how great His love is for you.
Fear God because He knows you better than anyone else.
God knows everything about you as a believer and as His child, He places a value upon you that is incalculable.
Because of that value He bestows upon us, we are to acknowledge Him before other men.
Which we will pick up with next time.
The commentator that I mentioned last time refers to this section as an exhortation to courageous sincerity.
That courage extends to telling others about Jesus.
The final 4 verses of this section Jesus continues this encouragement about not fearing men.
