(Audio version; Music: "Great I Am" and "Oceans" by: WorshipMob)
Introduction
I had a
lengthy on-line discussion with a woman this week, who I’ll call Susan (not her
real name). The initial discussion began when I agreed with a comment that
someone else made saying that abortion was never about choice. Instead, it is
about avoiding the consequences of a choice already made. I merely agreed with
what I believed was a very astute observation. I never expected that it would
begin an extended discussion with Susan who disagreed vehemently with me. Susan
believed that it was unfair that the mother would have to forfeit her life in
order to save her baby. As you can imagine, I was having a hard time tracking
Susan’s train of thought. So I clarified my position that I didn’t expect to
save the baby and kill the mother. My position is that they both deserve to
live. To which Susan clarified her point. What she meant to say is that the
mother may have to forfeit a productive work life. If you had to re-read that,
don’t worry I had to read it a few times myself to believe it. So I said that I
believed the life of a human being was far more important than a productive
work life. I explained that a person is created in the image of God and
objectively defined by God while a productive work life is subjectively defined
by a sinful culture. She responded by inferring that I somehow was saying that
work is sinful. Of course I said nothing of the kind so I asked her to go back
and re-read what I wrote. And that’s when the truth of our conversation
revealed itself because she said, “No, to an atheist like me, nothing matters.”
And there was the real truth behind her worldview where personal satisfaction
and a productive work life, among other things, are more valuable than a human
life.
I’ve
interacted with enough atheists to know that there usually isn’t anything I can
say to get them to change their minds and there’s certainly nothing they can
say to get me to change mine. Nevertheless, I was saddened because her comment
that, “nothing mattered” betrayed a life of hopelessness. So I told her that if
she ever got tired of living a hopeless life where nothing mattered, I would be
happy to talk to her about Jesus Christ who could give her endless hope in this
life and the life to come. Not surprisingly, she rejected my offer because she said
she had no need for belief in “mythology of a baseless dream.” I’m not even
sure what that means. However, her rejection of God explains why she has no
problem with the idea of killing babies. In her depraved mind, if there is no
God then there are no consequences for sinful behavior. I tried one last time
to reason with her and reminded her that if her unbelief is right and my belief
is wrong then my belief costs me nothing. However, if my belief is right and
her unbelief is wrong then her unbelief will cost her everything. To which she
said she rejects any religion based in fear because there is no love. I left it
at that because what she doesn’t realize is that we can’t begin to understand
the depth of God’s love unless we have a biblical understanding of the Fear Of The Lord. As Solomon said, the Fear Of The Lord is the beginning of
knowledge, but those who are morally deficient despise wisdom and discipline
(Prov 1:7). Let’s take a look and see if it is possible to truly love the Lord
unless we make room in our lives for the Fear
Of The Lord.
Subject Text
Luke 12:4-10
4“I tell you, my
friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no
more. 5But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after
the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you,
fear him. 6Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one
of them is forgotten by God. 7Indeed, the very hairs of your head
are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. 8I
tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also
acknowledge him before the angels of God. 9But he who disowns me
before men will be disowned before the angels of God. 10And 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.”
Context
By this
point, the crowds following Jesus were growing increasingly larger with each
miraculous healing and mass feeding. Wherever Jesus went, the crowds would
follow and whenever Jesus spoke, the crowds would listen with wonder and
amazement at the power of His teaching. However, always lurking, always
listening were also the religious leaders; the Pharisees. Realizing their power
and influence over the people was slipping away, the religious leaders
confronted Jesus more often. And every time they questioned or confronted Jesus,
Jesus presented them to the people as a symbol of corruption and unfaithfulness.
The backdrop of our Subject Text is
the increased frequency of clashes between Jesus and the religious leaders. It
is also important to remember that the religious leaders weren’t just
figure-heads, they wielded real power—the power to discipline the people; the
power to sentence those who broke the Law to the punishment required by the Law
including death in the case of blasphemy against God. Remember that the
religious leaders condemned Jesus to death for blasphemy when He claimed divine
equality with God. Jesus knew that those who followed Him would risk the same
charges and the same fate. Consequently, Jesus wanted to make sure in our Subject Text that their fear was oriented
toward God. Jesus didn’t want them to be filled with the fear of people who
could only destroy their bodies. He wanted them to understand that there is a
fate far worse than earthly death.
Text Analysis
4“I tell you, my friends, do not
be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5But
I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the
body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Let me just
say that I don’t know how you practice not being afraid of being killed for
your faith. I suppose it is a courage that is developed over a period of time
of constantly living with the possibility of being put to death for your faith
or witnessing the death of those around you for their faith. Fortunately (or
maybe unfortunately), here in America we don’t worry about that sort of
thing—at least not for now. However, I know that some of you in other parts of
the world live every day with the threat of being exposed as followers of
Christ. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure that Jesus didn’t intend for us to invite
death or seek death. The point that Jesus is making in v. 4-5 is that we shouldn’t be silenced in our witness to the world
about the truth of Jesus Christ or discouraged from our duty to live lives of
faithful obedience to Him out of fear of death. For those of you who live this
kind of life and faith daily, I want you to know that I pray for you often that
you will continue to have the strength to remain faithful to the One you have
chosen to follow. I also want you to know that your faithfulness in the face of
the possibility of death is an inspiration and encouragement to me and I’m sure
to many other Christians of what real faithfulness looks like.
I want to
offer a few words of encouragement to Christians around the world who don’t
risk death every day because of your faith in Jesus Christ. It can be
frightening to risk your reputation or your livelihood because of your faith in
Jesus Christ. Christians all around us every day compromise their witness and
faithfulness to Christ for fear they will be ridiculed and rejected by the
culture if they stand up for what they believe. We see it when Christians
accept as normal, harmless, or business as usual, greed, deceit,
over-indulgence, pornography, homosexuality, abortion, or any other sinful
practice all because they don’t want a sinful, self-prioritizing, and
unbelieving culture to call them names or, in some cases, bring legal action
against them that might cost them their livelihood or their freedom. I believe
this too is what Jesus is warning against. Don’t fear those who can control
only those things that are temporal. Instead, we are to fear the One who
controls all things—temporal and eternal.
I want you
to notice something else very important about v. 4-5. Notice that Jesus calls those who follow Him, listen to
Him, and obey Him, “friends.” Jesus isn’t just referring to the disciples. He
was speaking to thousands according to 12:1. And by extension He is referring to
us. This is important on many levels but especially with respect to the point I
want to make in this lesson. Let’s follow Jesus’ theological trajectory. It is
wholly consistent to fear the One who can condemn us to an eternity in hell
while being the One who is so desperately in love with us that He will die for
us so that He doesn’t have to exact that judgment. The One who has the power to
condemn those who reject Him to hell is the same One who calls those who
believe in Him, “friends.”
“Physical
death is a season, perhaps painful and protracted or perhaps instantaneous, but
a season nonetheless, after which physical life is terminated. Nothing in this
experience is deserving of genuine fear. True fear—concerns the fate of life after physical death. It hardly seems
necessary to note that v. 5 assumes the existence of life beyond the grave. By
introducing a final authority beyond earthly life, however short or long that
life may be, Jesus sets human existence in an entirely new perspective. The
purpose of life is not disclosed in the existential Now, but rather by the One who determines its eternal destiny.
The word
‘hell’ in Greek, Gehenna (Heb. Ge-hinnom), signifies the valley south
of Jerusalem that empties into the Kidron Valley, in which Judahites prior to
King Josiah sacrificed their sons and daughters in burned offerings to Baal
Molech on a ‘high-place’ called Topheth. During King Josiah’s reform Topheth
was dismantled, desecrated, and turned into a smoldering rubbish dump as a
lurid reminder of wickedness, suffering and shame. Gehenna was a graphic image
of hell to Jesus’ audience—as near as a stone’s throw from the temple…The
reference to Gehenna attests to God’s ultimate authority over life beyond the
grave.”[1]
6Are not five sparrows sold for two
pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. 7Indeed, the very
hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than
many sparrows.
Jesus is
very careful in vv. 6-7 not to leave
His listeners and by extension all of us with the image of God as some kind of
a cruel dictator whose rule is based in fear. Jesus is very careful to portray
God as loving, caring, and compassionate with the ultimate power to determine
our eternal destiny. God is not some distant being who is entirely unknown and
unknowable who demands strict obedience and exacts harsh judgment on those who
fail to be perfectly obedient. Instead, God became incarnate in the person of
Jesus so that He could be near us and demonstrate His love for us by dying for
us even while we were disobedient sinners just so we could have the opportunity
to spend eternity with Him. For those of us who have put our faith and trust in
Jesus we aren’t in relationship with Him based on the fear of His power over
our eternal destiny even while we fully understand that He wields that power.
Instead, we are in relationship with Jesus based on the love He demonstrated
for us by dying on the cross in our place because of our many sins. Just as God
is aware of all the intricate details of His created order, He has not
forgotten that He created humanity in His own image. He knows every aspect of
your life—the good and the bad. As important as all of creation is, even five
sparrows that are worth only a few pennies, God knows exactly how important you
are; how important I am. That’s why He allowed Himself to be put to death. I
want you to stop and think about that for a moment. God, incarnate in the
person of Jesus, the Creator and Ruler of all the universe, allowed humanity to
humiliate, brutalize, and kill Him as a message to you. Interestingly, that
message is not, “fear me” or “bow before me.” No, the message of the cross is,
“I love you.”
“If God in
his care forgets not even sparrows, five of which can be bought as food in the
marketplace for two pennies, and if he in his knowledge has even numbered the
hairs of a person’s head, how much more care and concern will he in his wisdom
manifest for the disciples and friends of Jesus? If God’s unrestricted
providence extends to such minutiae, will it not be concerned also with the
disciples of the heaven-sent mouthpiece of God? The sayings stress how little
reason there is to be afraid of other human beings in the setting of
persecution and martyrdom. For the disciples’ names already stand written in
heaven.”[2]
8I tell you, whoever acknowledges
me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of
God. 9But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the
angels of God.
Have you
ever wondered about the best way to thank God for your salvation? Mind you, I’m
not asking you how you would pay Him back. That’s not even possible. If you’ve
been reading my lessons for any amount of time then you know that I’m not a
huge fan of words without action to support those words. I don’t believe in
saying “I love you” without the loving actions to support those words. I don’t
believe in saying “I care for you” without the caring actions to support those
words. I don’t believe in saying “thank you” without demonstrating how that thankfulness
shapes my life in my words and deeds. So how do we say “thank you” to Jesus for
making the ultimate sacrifice for us? By having the courage to tell others
about Him, that’s how. When we stand up for the truth that is Jesus Christ in
the face of those who hate us for doing so, we are saying “thank you” with our
actions. And if our salvation isn’t enough, when we reach the final judgment
before Jesus according to vv. 8-9,
we will hear Him brag to all the angels who surround His throne of all the times
we had the courage to stand up in the face of opposition and hatred and
proclaim the salvation message of Jesus Christ. Sadly, however, there will also
be those who when faced with the possibility of being ridiculed or persecuted
for their faith will shrink away and reject what they once said they believed. Unfortunately,
Jesus will bring these people to the attention of angels as well but this time
to reject them in the same way that they once rejected Him. Think about
that—which will you be? Close your eyes for a minute and imagine the scene if
you can with Jesus on His throne surround by countless angels who do nothing
but worship Him non-stop. Can you see yourself fall down before Him when it’s
your turn? Imagine Him raise His nail-scarred hand to silence the angels so He
can say something. Imagine Him step down from His throne and walk down to where
you are face down and pick you up and put His arm around your neck as He stands
beside you. Imagine Him say to the angels, “This is ________________ (fill in
the blank with your name). Let me tell you about the time she told her children
about me. And about the time she told her neighbor about me. And this other
time when she told a co-worker about me even though she knew she would get in
trouble for it. She belongs to me.” Imagine Him turning to you and saying,
“Well done good and faithful servant. Welcome to the rest of your life.”
I don’t
know if it will actually happen that way or not but I’m certain I’d rather have
Jesus commend me for witnessing about Him than condemn me for rejecting Him. “God
sent his Son to die for people worldwide, and salvation is offered to all
people. But individuals still must choose whether or not to accept God’s offer.
Jesus clearly explained that anyone who publicly confesses faith in and
allegiance to him will find that the Son of Man will openly acknowledge that
person in the presence of God’s angels. By contrast, the person who denies any
relationship to Jesus will face denial by Jesus in heaven. These words refer to
those whose lack of allegiance will be revealed under pressure. Most likely,
this does not refer to an incident where lack of courage might cause a believer
not to speak up, but rather to a person who totally rejects Christ and lives a
life of denial. The astounding statement is that each person’s standing before
God is based on his or her relationship with Jesus Christ.”[3]
10And 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.”
If you’ve
ever been confused about v. 10,
you’re not alone. People can say awful things about Jesus and still have an
opportunity to be saved. However, anyone who opposes the Holy Spirit is lost
forever. That is frightening to think about and it has frightened many
Christians throughout the ages who have wondered if it is possible to
accidently blaspheme against the Holy Spirit and be eternally condemned. Well
let me assure you that if you’re worried about it then you’re far removed from
the danger of committing the only unforgiveable sin. Blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit is attributing to Satan the work that the Holy Spirit accomplishes. It
is the persistent rejection of the Holy Spirit’s work in the world and the
ongoing rejection of God Himself. It is an attitude that rejects to the very
end the opportunities to believe in Jesus.
“Jesus
contrasted rejecting the Son of Man and blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.
This appears to place the Spirit in a position superior to that of Jesus. Closer
examination shows, however, that the contrast is not between the Spirit and the
Son. The contrast is between deserting Jesus in his earthly ministry in one
particular situation and rejecting the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in
bringing salvation.
Readers in
Luke’s Gospel could easily read the previous verses and remember some moment in
their personal history when they did not stand up and confess Jesus. They might
then read verse 10 and decide they could never be forgiven. This verse tries to
correct such a feeling. It wants to say that everyone has denied Jesus at some
time. They can be forgiven. Peter could deny Jesus during his trial and still
be forgiven and accepted back. A person who has the Holy Spirit wooing him to
salvation and who constantly rejects him cannot be forgiven. Thus, if you know
the Spirit is inhabiting your life and guiding you, then you know you have not
committed this unforgivable sin.”[4]
Application
I’m no
stranger to fear. I grew up in a home where I was always afraid; afraid every
day of what might happen if I did or said the wrong thing around my dad after
he’d had too much to drink. My relationship with my father was rooted in fear;
fear of what he would do to me if I screwed up in some way. And trust me, he
backed up the fear with his fists or with a belt or with whatever else he
managed to get his hands on. The problem with growing up in that environment is
that fear became ingrained in my worldview. I made decisions rooted in fear for
most of my life. And they were usually the wrong decisions. Interestingly, that
began to change when I finally became a faithful follower of Christ instead of
just a pretend follower of Christ. However, do you want to know something? My
faith in Christ is rooted strictly in love not fear. I love Him because of what
He did for me even while I recognize the awesome power He has over my eternal
destiny. I am motivated to obedience and faithfulness not because I’m afraid of
what might happen if I’m not obedient or faithful. I’m obedient and faithful
because I don’t want to disappoint or hurt the One I love and the One who
demonstrated His love for me on the cross.
[1] James R.
Edwards, The Gospel According to Luke—The
Pillar New Testament Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 2015), p. 365.
[2] Joseph
A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke
X-XXIV—The Anchor Bible, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.,
1985), pp. 957-958.
[3] Bruce
Barton, Philip Comfort, Grant Osborne, Linda K. Taylor, Dave Veerman, Life Application New Testament Commentary,
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), p. 307.
[4] Trent C.
Butler, Luke—Holman New Testament
Commentary, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2000), p. 203.
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