HG108a+c Luke 12:1-12, 35-59
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1 Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. 3 What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.
4 “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. 7 Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
8 “I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. 9 But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God. 10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
11 “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.”
35 “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. 37 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. 38 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. 39 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”
41 Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?”
42 The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? 43 It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. 44 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 45 But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. 46 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
47 “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. 48 But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
49 “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
54 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?
57 “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? 58 As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. 59 I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
[NOTE: Luke 12:1-12 Similar to Matthew 10:26-33 covered in sermon HG069-70pt2 as well as in this sermon]
Luke 12:1-13:9 is all one discourse by Jesus with a couple of interruptions on the way. Early on in Jesus’ ministry the crowds following Jesus were eager to find out more about this itinerant minister who went round healing and doing good. The thought then was “perhaps He is the Messiah”.
But what of this crowd around Him now? This was a different crowd. And it was a huge crowd. In English it says many thousands were gathered but the Greek uses its highest number, that is, 10,000 and multiplies it. This means that, at the very least, there were 30,000 people present and this in the day before modern sound equipment, so the crowd pressed in to hear and in so doing trampled each other.
But what was the make up of this crowd? Were these truly seekers of Jesus? Well, this was a different time. In just a few months He would be crucified. This crowd was a religious crowd come to hear the dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees are gaining the upper hand for remember from the last chapter that they were seeking ways to destroy Jesus. The crowd were on the side of the religious rulers.
Then Jesus turns to the disciples. Who are the disciples here? Plainly he is talking to the twelve but also to others who are friendly to Him. A disciple here is not yet necessarily a person who is saved. Disciple simply means ‘learner’. These are people who may have not made up their minds and hearts yet. We have evidence of this in John’s Gospel:
66 From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him.
There are those present who are still on the fence. These are the few rather than the majority. And this explains why He says what He says.
Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees. Be careful of not being contaminated with their teaching, their works and their religion. In the previous chapter they are the unmarked graves making unclean all who pass their way. They are the great pretenders. Everything they do is for a show, everything that they do is please men in order to gain favour and riches.
There is a solution to their hypocrisy for us. We are to do what the religious leaders would not do: We are to honour the Father, honour the Son and honour the Spirit. We see these mentioned one after the other in verses 5, 8 and 10. This passage is one of those great proofs of the Trinity and we are called upon to fear God and to honour Him in His three Persons.
John MacArthur Sermon Archive A Certain Cure for Hypocrisy, Part 1
You cannot honor God without honoring Christ and you cannot honor Christ without honoring the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit points to Christ and Christ shows us the Father. It’s a package. The only way you’ll ever avoid eternal disaster is to honor God, honor Christ, and to honor the Holy Spirit.
Now we are given three reasons to fear God:
The first one: Everything that we do will get exposed. All the secrets are going to come out. Nothing will be hid. Things done where no one else sees, things said between two people, all this will be revealed. God is watching. You are not going to get away with it.
The second reason to fear God rather than people is that the worst anyone can do to you is kill you, no other crime is more heinous. The problem is that death is not the end. God can still cast us into hell. Let us not doubt the reality of hell. Jesus spoke of it often therefore we should take careful note.
The word hell here is Geenna in the Greek. It is important to note for there are at least three words for hell. In this case Gehenna is a literal place on the outskirts of Jerusalem. When King Josiah became King, he was short-lived good king, he cut down all the idols and gods and altars that the former kings and the people had set up and threw them into a deep hole and set fire to it. The same hole that King Ahaz and others had previously sacrificed their children to the god Molech. And Josiah killed all the priests of these gods and so on. You can read about him in 2 Kings 22-23. This is what was written of him in:
25 Now before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses; nor after him did any arise like him.
The point is that this fire with which he burned all these idols etc was still burning in Jesus’ day over 600 years later. This is because the place where he did this became the rubbish tip and the fire did not go out. It later became a symbol for eternal punishment because the smoke from it was still going up in Jesus’ day.
Fear God because God can throw you on the rubbish tip and burn you with an everlasting fire. People can only do so much but God can inflict on us so much more. Why is Jesus saying all this to His disciples? He is trying to get those still on the fence to decide whether they were for Him or against Him.
Then the third reason to fear God is brought to our attention. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Sparrows were the meat of the poor. The poor could buy sparrows to eat. Yet God knows about every sparrow. And the number of hairs on your head are numbered. Note that Jesus is not saying these things for comfort but to convict his hearers. This follows straight on from everything will be exposed and the possibility of being thrown into hell. So, what we are being given here is another reason to fear God: And what is that? God knows everything. He sees every little detail. He knows about the birds and he knows exactly how many hairs are on your head and every head on he planet, almost 8 billion people’s worth. Now some may not have as many hairs but each head has between 100-150 thousand hairs. Who knew, right! God notices everything. He does not need to count He just knows.
God is to be feared. Get the message.
Fear Him for every secret will be exposed.
Fear Him for He can throw us into hell.
Fear Him for He knows everything.
It is in this moment He can see the look of fear on the faces of His disciples. Now, He says, you do not need to be afraid. If you have feared God you do not need to fear anymore.
So, now, you need to be ready for the day of my return, Jesus says in verse 35. Don’t go thinking that because I have not yet returned it does not mean that you should not be ready. Be dressed and ready, Jesus says, for I will come when you do not expect Me. Can I have a show of hands who thinks Jesus is going to return today? Since Jesus’ resurrection around 725,000 days have passed. It could be today. Are we ready? It will be like a flash of lightning, that is how sudden it will be. It will surprise everyone. It could happen now.
Have we come to the place that we have feared God?
Indeed this seems to be the whole point of what Jesus is saying. In verses 58-59 we read that we need to get reconciled before judgement. Reconciled with whom? With God, of course. For we will be dragged to the court for the Judgement Day and if we are there before the Judge and His Great White Throne then all that we should have feared about God will come upon us then. Because, it would appear from this, that if we are dragged before the Judge on that day there is only one conclusion. That we will be imprisoned until the debt to God is paid. And that is jail without parole, for life, for eternity.
There is a remedy to all of this which is found in what Jesus has done for us. This is found in verse 50.
50 I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!
Jesus was in a hurry to get the reason why He came done.
I. H. Marshall says what Jesus was saying is:
The New International Greek Testament Commentary: The Gospel of Luke v. The Coming Crisis 12:49–59
‘How I am totally governed by this until it be finally accomplished!’
Jesus described the impatient misery that drenched his soul. He wanted to get the ordeal over with. The thought of it dominated him—“how distressed I am until it is completed!”
What made the waiting so terrible was that he knew exactly what his baptism entailed. The butchery and prolonged torture were not what distressed him, bad as it is, but rather the necessity of his taking on the raw sewage of our sins—so that he, in effect, become sin itself. (2 Corinthians 5:21).
After having made the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, he said,
27 “Now my soul is troubled. What should I say—Father, save me from this hour? But that is why I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.”
Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
And then in the garden:
42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me—nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
43 Then an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. 44 Being in anguish, he prayed more fervently, and his sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground.
And after becoming sin for us:
46 And Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.” Saying this, he breathed his last.
Preaching the Word: Luke, Vol. 2—That You May Know the Truth Jesus’ Distress
he could not wait to get it done! Jesus charged headlong to the cross. Jesus raced to save us.
My friends, we are given a choice.
The first choice is to ignore Jesus and His claims. Hebrews 2:3 asks us how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation. We have to come to a place of fearing God for the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, righteousness and judgement. And Luke 12, the passage we have read today is to point us to the One who will condemn us if we do not follow Jesus.
The second and only other choice is to truly follow Jesus all the days of our lives in gratefulness for His great sacrifice that can save us from sin, death and hell. It requires that we give our all; nothing less is demanded of us by Jesus Himself as we heard earlier in Luke:
23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it. 25 For what does it benefit someone if he gains the whole world, and yet loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and that of the Father and the holy angels.
In our passage today it also speaks of whether we will publicly acknowledge Jesus before others, and if we do then He will publicly acknowledge us before the angels. This lines up with one of the most famous of Gospel invitational verses:
9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.
The judgement that ought to be feared has been paid in full by Jesus. There is no judgement for those in Christ Jesus. We have already passed from death to life. And the things that we would fear about God in that He can expose us, that He could throw us in hell and that He knows absolutely everything we no longer need to fear for He has forgiven us and wiped the debt clear, Heaven is our home and we have the comfort that He knows all about us and cares for us.
Have you decided? A non-decision is a decision against Jesus. He will come when you are not ready and assign your portion with the unbeliever. But if you have decided for Jesus then you will join with all the saints in glory who have honoured the Father, Son & Holy Spirit forever.
Benediction
Benediction
24 Now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, without blemish and with great joy, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen.
Bibliography
Bibliography
Hughes, R. K. (1998). Luke: that you may know the truth. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
Larson, B., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1983). Luke (Vol. 26). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2014). John MacArthur Sermon Archive. Panorama City, CA: Grace to You.
Marshall, I. H. (1978). The Gospel of Luke: a commentary on the Greek text. Exeter: Paternoster Press.
Exported from Logos Bible Software, 08:23 08 December 2018.