Introduction to Luke 12
As we turn in your Bibles, I want you to turn to Luke chapter 12 this morning. Luke chapter 12.
In this chapter, we see Jesus continuing his warnings to people that are opposed to him. In chapter 11, the Pharisees came after Jesus, accusing him of working for Satan. They knew that Jesus was not working for Satan, but that was their tactic to try to silence him.
And Jesus responded very forcefully to their attacks. He gave them multiple woes at the end of chapter 11, warning them that he knew what they were really up to, exposing their hypocrisy, and challenging them to turn from their hypocrisy.
Now, beginning in chapter 12, as Luke continues his account of the life of Jesus, he shows the aftermath of this confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus was not intimidated, he was not worried about what they might think or what they might say because Jesus knew that his path was leading to Jerusalem. He understood that the Father had sent him to come and die as a sacrifice for the sins of men.
So whatever the Pharisees said, no matter what accusations they may lob, no matter how hard they might try to resist, Jesus was assured that he was doing the will of his father and that men could not stop him.
Jesus Knows the Hidden Heart
But Jesus had something more than that. He also knew the hearts of men. He understood what was in their inner being. He knew their private thoughts and their secret words. There was nothing hidden before Jesus. And because he knew all these things, he continued to warn his opponents and to comfort his disciples.
So beginning in verse 1 of chapter 12, hear these verses with that in mind. 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. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden, that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear of the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear. Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has the authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are allowed. Don't be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows. I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God. 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. When you are brought before the synagogues or before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say."
Amen. As Jesus is traveling on his way to Jerusalem, he's stopping at various points to teach and to work miracles. Throughout this itinerant ministry in Palestine, Jesus is both seeing people respond to his message with faith, but he's also encountering opponents who despise him. The Pharisees had already begun in several chapters earlier to follow Jesus, looking for ways that they could trap him in his words. They were scheming together privately, trying to find some angle that would allow them to silence Jesus.
Jesus was onto them. He knew full well what their mission was, that they were not coming to hear Jesus and reasonably respond to his message. They were coming to hear Jesus so they could trap him in some verbal game that they would use against him. But Jesus was not intimidated. When he was invited in chapter 11 to go to a Pharisee's home for dinner, he didn't say, "Let me think about that." He didn't calculate the risk and say, "What should I say? What should I not say?" Jesus went to that dinner and confronted his host and their guests very directly, saying, "Woe to you, Pharisees, woe to you, teachers of the law." And he did not mince words, calling out their hypocrisy.
Now, in the immediate aftermath of that dinner, we have Jesus who is still being chased by the Pharisees. And it says in verse number 53 of chapter 11, when Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something that he might say. You might imagine that Jesus, who was an honored guest at this dinner, who confronted the host and the other guests, was not well received. That's why it says: after the meal, when they left that house, they were fiercely opposed to him. They were now not only scheming in private, but they were publicly indignant, even angry and frustrated with what Jesus was doing.
Jesus was being authentic by being the Son of God. He was completely sinless. There was no sin in him. And his righteousness was exposing their unrighteousness. Just being in the presence of Jesus made their blood boil because they knew their own sin. They were turning their guilt and shame for their own sin into wrath against the one who could forgive them. They wanted to wait for him, to catch him in some sort of mistake or some sort of misstatement. Yet that would not happen. They would end up falsely accusing Jesus, inviting other men to come and bear false witness against him.
And yet, in this moment, Jesus confronts the Pharisees and the crowds that are gathering, and he continues to teach his disciples. Notice in verse number one of chapter 12, it says, "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." Picture the scene. Jesus has just left someone's house for a dinner. Now there is a crowd that's growing and growing.
And the crowd is whipped into a frenzy to the point that people are not only pushing through each other, but they are trampling over one another to get to Jesus. It's very likely that the Pharisees were responsible for this reaction. That yes, there were multitudes that wanted to see Jesus because they had heard about his miracles. They had heard that he was an authoritative teacher.
But it's also possible that the Pharisees and the scribes, in their anger, had gone out to gather a mob. And this mob that was coming out to come against or come to Jesus was a crowd that was not so much interested in what Jesus had to say as much as they were interested in the spectacle. They were there to see what would happen next. What was going to happen when the Pharisees got their man?
And yet that's not what is going to happen in this context. The Pharisees revealed the depth of their hypocrisy in their response to Jesus. Rather than repent and show any signs of contrition after Jesus warned them and said that he saw their hearts and the traps that they laid for others, they responded with outrage and anger, looking for ways to shame Jesus.
But notice Jesus' response is not to organize the crowd. He doesn't say, "Disciples, let's break up and let's get everybody seated and let's have an orderly meeting where I can deliver a captivating sermon." No, it says Jesus began first to speak to his disciples.
Warning Against Pharisaical Hypocrisy
He cared deeply for these 12 men that he had called to be his closest followers, and he gave them a sober warning to be careful about the religious leaders that were stirring up the crowds. He says in verse 1, "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees," which is hypocrisy. Jesus was making a negative comparison between the Pharisees and yeast, or leaven as it's translated in some of your Bibles. Yeast is something that slowly and irreversibly spreads through a batch of dough and causes the dough to rise.
Jesus was warning his disciples here that the Pharisees and their hypocrisy—that they said one thing and did the opposite—was spreading like yeast through Israel. Their willingness to knowingly say one thing in public and do the exact opposite in private made them hypocrites. Earlier in chapter 8, Jesus had warned his followers to avoid hypocrisy because he said eventually everything will be made known.
But now Jesus calls out the Pharisees who are waiting to catch him, and he revealed to his disciples that he knew that they were deceitful and that they desperately wanted to stop him. The Pharisees craved popularity and influence. They liked having power over the religion of Israel. And Jesus knew their hearts. He knew their wickedness and he understood their hypocrisy. He saw straight through them. He was not fooled by their long robes and their well-kept beards. He was not tricked by their mastery of the law and their rules surrounding the law.
Jesus knew that these men were working in secret with private conspiracies against him. So he told the disciples to be on guard against their schemes. In other words, be proactive. Be aware that they are trying to trap us. After all, Jesus said on the final day of judgment, there will be nothing concealed or hidden. Everything will be revealed and made known.
Verse 2: Every hint of hypocrisy will be clearly seen for what it actually is. The hypocrites will no longer be able to hide behind their hushed secrets, hidden agendas, and pretended masks. All of their double dealings and their double lives will be fully and inescapably exposed.
Jesus says in verse 3, "Even what you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight. And what you have whispered in the ear and the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs." What was confidential between allies will become irreversibly public. What was private between two friends will be published like the news. There will be no amount of spin or damage control that will spare hypocrites from their own lies.
And Jesus is comforting the disciples that even though the crowds are large and people are pushing their way in, they're trampling over one another to get to Jesus. "Have no fear," Jesus is essentially saying, because all of this will eventually come to an end. The hypocrites, for their part, their own words that are said in the dark and that are whispered in each other's ears, verse 3, those same words will testify against them. They'll be judged not only for their hypocrisy, but they'll be judged according to their own double standards. God will condemn these religious hypocrites with their own dishonesty and deceitfulness. Everything that they have said in private will be heard in public.
Ultimately, the hypocrites are actors who are pretending to be the opposite of what they really are. They hope and they pray that no one will discover their intricate layers of deceit and their web of lies. They become increasingly paranoid and desperately trapped in their hypocrisy. They worry who might expose them, who might find them out. And sometimes, like in this case, they attack a righteous person to hide their own sin.
The religious hypocrites stood to lose everything if they were truly known. They were piling upon rules and ceremonies and pretenses just to consolidate their power, not to help people draw closer to God. Jesus had already exposed them for that and warned against it through the woes that he said in chapter 11. But the religious hypocrites were blinded by their own hypocrisy. They had been so steeped in their misdeeds that they probably didn't even recognize them for what they were any longer.
And Jesus is telling his disciples that while they may be able to mislead people in the short term, they will not win in the long term because absolutely nothing is hidden from God. Jesus exposes every secret. And that's my first point this morning. I failed to say it earlier, but Jesus exposes every secret. He shines the light of truth on every lie, and he declares what is right for all to hear. So no matter what the Pharisees may have said against Jesus, no matter what disingenuous questions they may have asked Jesus, he understood what they were really doing. He knew their hearts and he wanted to expose them.
When we think of religious hypocrisy, our minds go in a number of directions. I think it's easy for us to immediately think of worst-case scenarios, such as a pastor who falls from church leadership. Maybe it was a pastor who was on the take, who was stealing money from the church, or a pastor who is involved in an adulterous affair.
But Jesus is confronting all kinds of hypocrisy, not simply pastors who fail, but Christians who operate in secret or people who operate in secret. God knows the thoughts and the whispers of every person. He knows the thoughts and the whispers of people who criticize their neighbors while living in unconfessed sin themselves. And he knows self-serving hypocrisy that undermines the gospel.
I've heard many a Christian over the years try to use religious language to try to hide that they're just being selfish. On the one hand, they say they want their church to grow, but on the other hand, they don't because they're very comfortable with the way things are. They don't want to make too many changes that would disrupt things because, after all, that would cost something.
I've also sadly known more than one pastor over the years who's gone into a deacons' meeting to be suddenly surprised. And what the surprise is, he learned that the deacons had been meeting without him and they had decided to fire the pastor. In that particular meeting, the pastor walked in, thought it was a normal deacons' meeting, only to learn that it was his last deacons' meeting because he would no longer be employed by the church.
In several of those cases that I'm aware of, they did not fire the pastor for moral failure or for ministerial incompetence. They fired him because he was preaching the gospel and the church was growing. You might think that's crazy, but that is certainly true. And the examples, if I name the names, could embarrass the men. But they were faithful ministers of the gospel. The churches were growing and the deacons stopped it.
On the outside, people in church believed that these men loved Christ and wanted their church to grow. Yet in their secret meetings, these hypocritical men wanted their pastor to preach shorter sermons with relatable stories and moral principles that were not too convicting. They did not like being confronted with the gospel, and they decided to fire the pastor and spread lies about his departure.
There are some tragic stories out there in ministry that I'm alluding to, and yet all of them point back to our capacity to be hypocrites. We can say that we believe Jesus, while on the other hand, deny him with the way that we live.
When we think about in this context, Jesus is confronting religious leaders who say they care about Israel and the purity of the law. And yet those men are using any means necessary, including sinful acts, to try to protect purity. And I'm putting purity in air quotes because that's not what they were protecting. Ultimately, they were trying to protect their own reputations, their own influence, and their own power.
They were much like Diotrephes, who appears later in the New Testament, who loved to be first. The Pharisees wanted to be in control. They wanted other people to see them as blessing Jesus or approving Jesus. And yet, in fact, they were undermining Jesus. They were prepared to confront him, and ultimately, they would make decisions that led to his crucifixion.
Jesus was not fooled. He knew every secret. And in this context, he's preparing his disciples because one day they will confront the Pharisees without him. Because after Jesus' death on the cross, they will have their own challenges from these religious leaders. So Jesus spent this time instructing them, helping them understand that he knew every secret.
The Remedy of Fearing God
And the remedy to hypocrisy is the second thing that I see in this passage. The remedy is that Jesus expects us to fear God. Point number two: Jesus expects us to fear God.
Jesus exposes every secret so we don't have to be hypocrites. And he expects us to fear God because before God all things are known. Since one day Jesus will expose all of our secrets and nothing will remain hidden, he comforts his disciples with the fear of God. He doesn't say we should fear God in the sense that we should be terrified of him, although if we are outside of Christ, we should be terrified of his judgment, and he'll say that. But he's saying we should revere God in such a way that we are thankful for his care for us.
It is the fear of men or the fear of what other people may think about us that allows hypocrisy to spread like yeast through a church. Yet Jesus offers the fear of God as a remedy to the fear of men. When we fear God, then we will stop being hypocrites. That's why I said in my last sermon from the end of chapter 11 that Christians are hypocrites who know we're hypocrites. We're sinners who know that we sin because we fear God and our sin has been dealt with through Christ.
But if we did not know we were hypocrites, and we were simply acting out of the fear of man—doing what we thought would please other people or make us look good in the eyes of the church or the world—then we would have most everything to fear. So, Jesus comforts his followers with this. He says in verse 4: "My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more."
Hypocrites can only threaten us in this life, and they may be able to make our lives miserable. But Jesus warns the crowds, especially the angry Pharisees, to fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. God has the ultimate power and authority to condemn his enemies, including religious hypocrites, with the eternal fires of hell. Jesus used a Greek term for hell that means the place of final punishment. Jesus was not using hell figuratively or as a euphemism for having a bad day. Jesus was warning everyone to fear the one who can cast their souls into eternal torment.
He says, verse 5, "Yes, I tell you to fear him." In other words, don't be afraid of the Pharisees who may threaten you by casting you out of the synagogue. Instead, fear the one who can cast you into the eternal fires of hell.
The depth of Jesus' knowledge and the level of his understanding includes the most minute thing. That's why in verses 6 and 7, he says that his knowledge includes every sparrow that is sold for less than a penny and the total number of hairs on every person's head. If Jesus knows this about worthless sparrows and unnoticed hair follicles, then he knows everything. Luke, in quoting Jesus here, is making it clear that Jesus has complete knowledge. He is all-knowing. There is nothing outside of his gaze. God doesn't lose count of the sparrows. He knows things about you that you don't even know about yourself, such as the hairs on your head.
And yet we are worth more than many sparrows, he says in verse number seven. Hypocrites should fear the one who has authority to throw them into hell. But sinners who confess their sin, he says, do not fear, because the all-knowing God forgives them.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge for those who know God, the author of Proverbs says. But the fear of man will prove to be a snare, he also says. Therefore, whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. The fear of God conquers every human fear. If we truly fear God, if we revere him and hold him high as the authority over our lives, then we need not fear anything else.
Evil men may be able to take our mortal lives, but God can condemn souls to hell for eternity. Since God judges all things and his judgment stands for eternity, we must fear God more than we fear hypocrites who only stand for a short time. God knows everything about us and he says, do not be afraid. We can publicly acknowledge God because God knows who we really are and he loves us. We don't have to cower and say, "Well, if people find out I'm a Christian, if people knew what I really thought." God knows all of those things about us and loves us anyway.
Jesus knows that we naturally fear men and worry what other people may think about us. But he expects us to fear God more than men. Christians have nothing and no one who can threaten us with anything more than death. And death is a real threat. No one wants to die, but God promises eternal life to those who believe in him.
The Fearless Example of Paul
Reflecting on his own life, the Apostle Paul brings this into clear focus. In Galatians 2:20, he said, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me."
The Apostle Paul recognized what Jesus is teaching his disciples here: that to live is Christ and to die is gain. He says as much in Philippians chapter 1, verse 20, when he said, "I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now, as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
The Apostle Paul lived out the reality that Jesus was teaching the disciples in this moment. He lived in a situation where religious hypocrites were trying to catch him. He even called out Peter for his hypocrisy. He was fearless in his commitment to Christ and the gospel, even when he was persecuted and thrown in jail, when he was shamed and reviled for his belief in Jesus.
And yet Paul says that his life has been hidden in Christ's. That his life is Christ living through him and that death to him would be an advantage because he would be found with Christ. The Pharisees could not say any of that. The Pharisees held on to everything that they had. They consolidated their power. They tried to press people to fit into their mold and into their rules.
This is why Jesus was such a threat to them because he was an outlier. He was undoing their rules. And they wanted to stop him, yet Jesus would not be stopped. Jesus says, "Do not be afraid." He reminded his disciples that they could continue even after he would be crucified.
When we understand the fear of God, we can withstand peer pressure. And we don't have to succumb to what other people think. The life that matters most is eternal life. And we should not fear rejection from other people, though it may come. And though that rejection could even include martyrdom, we live for Christ. Later in the book of Acts, Luke described Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian church.
The Courageous Witness of Stephen
And as a man, here's how Luke describes Stephen. He said he was a man full of grace and power from God. But the leaders of the Jewish synagogue forcefully opposed Stephen. They didn't like Stephen because Stephen believed in Christ and supported the work of Jesus as Messiah. They argued with Stephen. They falsely charged him of various things. And it says they secretly persuaded some men to accuse Stephen of blasphemy. All of this is in Acts chapter 6 and 7.
And these same religious leaders stirred people up against Stephen just like they were stirring the crowds up against Jesus. But Stephen feared God more than the Sanhedrin or the crowds. He boldly preached Christ and he implored his listeners to respond to the gospel. But he called them at the end of his sermon stiff-necked people. And why were they stiff-necked? Not because they had a genetic deformity. They were stiff-necked because they were hard-hearted. They rejected the message of Jesus Christ.
And they blamed him for killing the prophet. And Stephen blamed his accusers for killing the prophets and killing Jesus. Their response was not repentance. They didn't say that was the best sermon we've ever heard. The aisles were not filled with people making professions of faith. No, it says the religious leaders had Stephen stoned to death.
But here's Stephen's response. It says, but Stephen full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And while they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord, receive my spirit." Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And then he collapsed in death.
Stephen feared God through death onto eternal life. There was nothing that the Pharisees or the Sadducees could do against Stephen that would take him away from being with God for eternity. Stephen understood this and he preached his sermon fearlessly. It's one of the greatest sermons in the New Testament recorded in Acts chapter 7. And the response to Stephen's sermon was a stoning and not a massive crowd coming to fill the church.
Stephen understood that Jesus knew him better than anyone. Stephen understood the fear of God and it motivated him to preach even when others opposed him. Stephen, though he was not present in Luke chapter 12, understood what Jesus had taught the disciples and what he would ultimately learn and live out unto death for eternal life.
Stephen feared God. Church, we are called to fear God above all other people. We live in a society, in a world that actively opposes Christians, that says we should keep our faith out of the public sphere. The world says it's okay if you believe that privately and keep that to yourself, but don't bring that into policy or into government or into decisions that might affect our community. And there is this ridiculous appeal that Christians must censor themselves. And sadly, some Christians do censor themselves, whether they're feeling peer pressure or whether they just simply, in their own mind, are struggling. But brothers and sisters, I want to challenge us from this passage that we don't have to be afraid.
Encouragement to Publicly Acknowledge Jesus
We can speak boldly the hope of the gospel and we can speak the values of Christianity, and God will guide us and God will protect us. In fact, that's how Jesus ends this passage, or this section, in verses 8 through 12 where he encourages faith in him.
And that's my third point this morning: that Jesus encourages faith in him. While God knows every secret and we can hide nothing from him, we can rightly submit to him and we can believe in him. Jesus encourages his disciples to publicly acknowledge him before others in verse number eight. And when we acknowledge Jesus before others, he says the Son of Man will also acknowledge us before the angels of God. Though we may be condemned before men, and though men may exclude us from their groups or their influence, we stand accepted by God for all of eternity.
Jesus, however, also warns his disciples about rejecting him. He says, whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God. So not only will rejecting Jesus and denying him alienate us from God, it says Jesus will reject us before the angels that we can't even see, angels that we're not even aware of in terms of our experience. Hypocrites can wield incredible power, but Jesus has authority over eternal life. It's much better to put our faith in Jesus than to put our faith in men.
But some might say, "But I can't see Jesus. I don't know that this is real." But God works by his Spirit to convince us of the claims of the gospel, and he guides us according to the Christian life as we follow Christ. Putting our faith in Jesus simply means that we believe that he is the promised Son of God, that he is the savior of all men, that if we confess our sins and forsake them, that Jesus is just and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But now it seems in these verses that Jesus may contradict himself in what he said to the disciples. In verses 8 and 9, he tells believers to openly acknowledge him, but in verse 10, he says, everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. Is this a contradiction? Not at all. Jesus knew men like Peter, one of his disciples, and he knew that Peter would deny him three times on the eve of his crucifixion. But Jesus assured the disciples that he forgives their sins.
Jesus knew that men have the capacity to say things they don't mean, that men in a moment of crisis may compromise. But Jesus also knew the hearts of a true believer just as well as he knew the heart of a hypocrite. And Jesus was assuring the disciples that even if they spoke against him, that they could be forgiven.
But he does go further to identify a sin that cannot be forgiven. He says, anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. The hypocritical Pharisees and the experts in the law were committing this sin. They were rejecting the work of the Spirit of God at that time through the ministry of Jesus. They reviled the Holy Spirit. They went against what he was revealing because they rejected the Son of God, Jesus Christ. They denied the only person who could possibly forgive them of their sin. They were trusting their rules and their self-righteousness. But Jesus wanted his disciples to trust him and his righteousness.
The Bible commands people to confess their sins and believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. But if someone refuses to accept Jesus Christ, their sins cannot and will not be forgiven. The Bible offers no other way of salvation. No amount of good works, no amount of man-made religion can save anyone. Some might say, "Well, that's just what Christians believe. I mean, the Muslims teach something else. The Hindus, yet another. The Mormons have their view." And yet we hold to the authority of scripture. We believe that what Jesus says trumps all human religion and there is no other way of salvation. Unrepentant hypocrites like the Pharisees and the scribes will not be forgiven, and unrepentant sinners like any of us will not be forgiven unless we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
Jesus offers hope for anyone who faces rejection because of their belief in him. When we trust God for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, and when we depend on his Spirit to guide us, we can stand before anyone on earth without fear and without worrying what we might say to defend ourselves. He says at the end of verse 12 that the Holy Spirit will teach us at that time what we should say.
Jesus faced his enemies head on. Jesus didn't respond to the Pharisees by having secrets and conspiracies against them. Yes, he's teaching his disciples privately in this context, but this private instruction is made public through Luke's gospel and through the ministry that will carry on through his disciples. Jesus faced his enemies knowing that the Pharisees and the scribes hated him, that they were working to silence him, and ultimately they would crucify him.
But he also knew that the disciples would face persecution and death for their own faith in him. So he was preparing the disciples for opposition. He modeled what to do when you were brought before synagogues, rulers, and authorities.
Verse 11: So rather than worry how you will defend yourselves and what you will say, he promised that the Holy Spirit would guide them. On the cross, think of these words that Jesus spoke at the moment of his death. He says, "Not my will, but yours be done." And Stephen, at the time of his martyr's death, when the stones were being hurled at his body, said, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."
The hypocrites do not win. The sinners do not carry the day. The Spirit of God gives grace even to the point of death. We must believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and we must confess him for all to know. There are not secret Christians. There are not people who follow Jesus in a way that is incognito or invisible. We follow Jesus and we stake our eternal life on faith in him.
And that comes at a price. Believing in Jesus means we may be ridiculed. That kids in school may make fun of us or laugh at us, even mocking us and characterizing us. We can face derision at work because we are Christians and because we talk openly about our faith, because we make it known that we attend and participate in church and other Christian activities, that people might marginalize us. They might exclude us from certain projects or certain teams. And in some cases, we may even lose our job because of our faith.
And yet, we don't have to fear the people that try to scare us. Instead, we can put our confidence in Christ because we have been accepted in Christ. And that is the most important acceptance at all.
Yet if you're like me, it's easy to be influenced by other people. I've been in environments when I was much younger. I went to a Christian college and the Christian college had very strict rules about what to wear, what not to wear, strict rules about how men and women should relate to one another, and strict rules about what version of the Bible to read from and which versions they didn't believe were the Bible and all kinds of other things. And in many cases, they intimidated people that disagreed with them. I could tell stories from those days of some students who did disagree with him and got kicked out of college for their disagreement.
And yet none of those things ultimately had authority over anyone. What has the authority is the gospel of Christ. So we must submit to what Jesus says. And as we believe Jesus and we follow him, he will give us the grace that we need in the moment of any confrontation with a hypocrite.
Avoiding Our Own Hypocrisy
What we must also guard against is let's not be the hypocrites ourselves. While we should have the courage to stand up to hypocrites, let's not be double-dealing people who live double lives. Instead, let's be what you see is what you get Christians. I don't mean that we should be Christians who flaunt sin and say, "Well, grace abounds, so it doesn't matter what I do." No, we should fear the Lord, we should be reverent before God, understanding the price of our forgiveness came at the death of His Son, Jesus.
And when we live in the fear of the Lord, it is not only the beginning of wisdom, but it is the way of life. And it will give us eternal life so we live in a way that honors Christ and we publicly declare our faith in Jesus because Jesus knows us and we're accepted in Him. And we can be fearless in our commitment to the gospel.
So let's be a church that stands for Christ and the gospel and that is the hill we die on. There are churches and Christians begging that we would die on other hills. Let's put our flag down for this political cause and that politician. Let's take a stand on this hot topic issue and that hot topic issue. But church, we must be evergreen in our commitment to the gospel. And I say evergreen because a commitment to the gospel goes from generation to generation to generation to generation. This politician or that political cause is ephemeral. But what is eternal is Christ.
So let's stand for Christ. Let's acknowledge Him publicly before people, no matter the price, because we know that we're accepted by Him. Jesus exposes every secret. He expects us to fear Him and He encourages us when we believe in Him. So do you believe in Him? Are you trusting Christ? That would be my prayer for you, and that you would not only trust Him, but that you would live your life in a way that reveals Him.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the power of your word. Thank you that you anticipate the challenges that we feel in our hearts, and that you give the remedy for those. You know that we struggle with hypocrites, not only with hypocrites who put peer pressure on us, but we struggle being hypocrites. And Father, I pray this morning that we would be reminded anew that while you know everything about us, you love us by your grace. And you ask us to exalt you above all, that we would fear you more than we fear any person.
And God, help us to do that. Forgive us for the times when we've allowed other people to unduly influence or lead us astray. And God, help us to stand for the truth of the gospel in a world that hates Christ and your gospel. Help us to stand even when people mock us, ridicule us, marginalize us, take our jobs away, or do other things to us that seem unfair. Help us to remember that you will write the scales in eternity and that you have the power over life and death unto eternal life. So we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.