We know we live in a life full of uncertainties. We have uncertainties regarding our work or employment. Will the crop fail? Will the stock market crash? Will I be able to get a job and provide myself? Will I have enough superannuation? Will I raise my children right?
We have uncertainties regarding our nearest and dearest relationships. Will my parents get a divorce? With whom shall I live? Will I find a boyfriend or a girlfriend? Will my marriage fail too? Can I live single? Will my kid turn out OK? Will my child continue to suffer as he or she is doing? Will I or someone I live continue to suffer this debilitating sickness or disease? Can I cope with looking after my elderly relative? Can I cope with putting them into a nursing home?
Of course, as we think through this stuff, anxiety and worry and fear is in the mix as part of our motivations.
Sometimes fear mobilizes our action. It is then a very useful emotion. I am afraid that I will fail this exam. So I study. I fear the bush fire is coming. So I get my house ready. Or I fear the bush fire is too big. So I will run. I fear poverty. So I work. I fear poor health. So I eat right, exercise, go to the doctors. I fear the dentist. So I clean my teeth.
Sometimes fear prevents us doing something. I am afraid of rejection. So I won’t ask that girl out. Fear of course is a good reaction to the realities of life. Gravity and Physics are realities of life. And despite what ‘no fear’ T-shirts imply, gravity and physics are important. For example, I’m afraid of falling off the cliff. So I won’t go close to the edge. I’m afraid of getting killed on the road. So I will concentrate, and stick to the speed limit, and keep to my side of the road.
And of course, fear is a motivator in spiritual things. I fear hell. So I will… What? Surely not! Surely that is so old fashioned! Surely you’ve heard the scary stories that older people tell us, about how they went to church, and the priest or minister or nun would warn them about hell. And they would have nightmares about devils and fire.
I fear God, so I will… Is that an appropriate reaction? I often talk about our response to God’s love by way of gratitude, that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for sin. And I say that if anyone believes, they will not perish, but have ever lasting life.
So what is the place of fear of God, and fear of hell, in the Christian life? After all, perfect love casts out all fear, because fear has to do with punishment. Do we relegate fear of God and hell to the, ‘it’s appropriate for non-Christians but not for Christians’ basket.
We come to Luke Chapter 12. You will recall that Jesus is still on his way to Jerusalem to die and rise again. Indeed, in chapter 12, he has this in mind. He talks about his death as a baptism that he must undergo, and he is greatly distressed until it is achieved (EJ 45 2nd paragraph). So that is what is going on for Jesus.
But also, there is the crowd. The crowd is an additional pressure. We read that a crowd of many thousands had gathered and the people were actually trampling one another. We know that Jesus deals with the crowd in various ways. He teaches in parables, to keep the casual enquiry befuddled, but to draw the diligent enquirer to himself. He tries to keep certain miracles secret. Indeed, he commands his disciples to silence about his identity as the Christ. He sometimes withdraws with the disciples.
And in chapter 12, in the midst of the trampling crowd, he starts off by talking to his disciples. He talks to his friends. And he has things, important things, for his disciples to understand. And today, I wish to talk about two of the things that he speaks to the crowd about.
The first thing relates to the revelation of the secrets of our heart. Everything will be made clear in the judgment to come. Now Jesus uses a similar saying that he used in the context of the parables. There, it meant that the meaning of the parables was meant to be clear to his disciples. But now, I think he is speaking of a judgment that is to come. Chapter 12, Second paragraph on page 42:
Jesus began to speak first to his disciples: “Beware of the ‘yeast’ of the Pharisees, which spells hypocrisy. There is nothing that has been concealed that will not in the future be revealed, and nothing secret that will not be made known. So, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the privacy of your home will be proclaimed from the housetops."
There is a time for every judgment, a time for every deed (Ecclesiastes 3:17). And that time is the judgment day. For then God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil (Ecclesiastes 12:14). And on the judgment day, any play acting that we have done will be useless. If we simply play the part of the Christian now, that will be exposed, because God’s judgment will pierce through to the secret things of man (Romans 2:16). For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and there will be a recompense for each of us. And there will be an accounting for the things which we have done through the body, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). At that time, God will bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts (1 Corinthians 4:5).
One of those things which will be brought forward at the judgment is our words. And Jesus’ point is that our pillow talk, our unguarded, off the cuff, comments, will be announced and brought forward on the day of judgment. There is no comment ‘off the record’. The all-knowing God, who is everywhere, has a minute transcript of every word we’ve uttered, and it can and will be brought forward.
There is even no private thought. All of that, too, is recorded and marked down, to be tended as evidence on the great day of judgment. Jesus tells us in Matthew’s Gospel, "But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned." (Matthew 12:36-37 NIV) All will be tended to the great judge, the Lord Jesus Christ, for weighing, for rewarding, for recompense, for gain, and for loss.
I don’t need to know you that well to know that you are like me. You and I have said sinful, stupid, wicked things. Even recently, I bet you have. I have said things, even recently, even today, that makes my face go red at their remembrance. And Jesus has already told us, that a person’s mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. A good person brings out good things from the good treasure of his heart. And an evil person brings forth evil from the evil in his heart.
James, Jesus’ brother, reflected on this sometime later. He says as he thinks about the things we sometimes say:
We all stumble in many ways. (James 3:2 NIV)
No man can tame the tongue. (James 3:8 NIV)
He observes of the Christians to whom he writes:
Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. (James 3:10 NIV)
So too Paul says:
What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: “There is no-one righteous, not even one… there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:9-10, 12 NIV)
And the first proof of this is our speech:
Their throats are open graves. Their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. (Romans 3:13-14 NIV)
Likewise, the Teacher in Ecclesiastes says:
Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you – for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others. (Ecclesiastes 7:21-22 NIV)
So our first response to Jesus' reminder about the coming judgment on our words must be, 'Father have mercy on us!'. In the words of David, ‘Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you’ (Psalm 143:2). Or in the words of Isaiah: ‘Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips’ (Isaiah 6:5 NIV), and to remember God’s kindness to Isaiah, ‘See, this [hot coal] has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for’ (v. 6). We must remember that Jesus says, that even someone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven for it.
Yes, the sins of our mouth are great. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more (Romans 5:20). We must take the sins of mouth and tongue and lip to the Lord Jesus Christ, who said these things to warn us, but yet who said these things on the way to Jerusalem to die and rise again because we've said the things that we have. Jesus was going to Jerusalem to die for these very sins which he will judge, and we must leave them at the foot of his cross.
But second, our response to Jesus’ reminder of our judgment is to remember, ‘Our words matter’. And we must say with David, ‘I will watch my ways and keep my tongue from sin; I will put a muzzle on my mouth as long as the wicked are in my presence’ (Psalm 39:1 NIV). We must heed Peter’s words, ‘Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech’ (1 Peter 3:10 NIV). And we must remember Paul’s words to the Colossians, ‘But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator’ (Colossians 3:off).
The thing for which Jesus calls us to use mouth, lip, and tongue in Luke chapter 12, is to acknowledge him. Towards the bottom of Essential Jesus page 42.
And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before other people, the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God. But the person who disowns me before other people will be disowned before the angels of God.
My dear friends, of all the good we can do with mouth, lip, and tongue (and there is much), here is the ultimate good we can do. We can use our speech to confess Christ, and acknowledge that we belong to the King. And Jesus promises that he will do the same for us on the great day of judgment. We acknowledge Jesus Christ before people, and he will acknowledge us before angels.
Friends, this requires that we must face our fears. We want to fit into our world. We don’t want to rock the boat. We don’t want to be ‘God botherers’, or ‘fundamentalists’, perhaps the worst religious accusation you can make in the post 9/11 world.
Yet it is Jesus himself who makes our good eternal reception into heaven conditional on our confession of himself. He says ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6). He says, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die’ (John 11:25). He says, ‘I am the gate for the sheep. Whoever enters through me will be saved’. (John 10:9)
And he says to us, ‘acknowledge me’. Here is not the place to be the ‘strong silent type’. There may be a time and place where we should hold our tongue and fade into the wall paper and hope that no one is noticing that we are there. But friends, the time and place for this can never be when we hear questions like: ‘So, are you a Christian, are you? Do you believe in Jesus? Do you say there is another king, do you, one called Jesus?’ And we now that over the last 2000 years, many have lost their lives for acknowledging their allegiance to king Jesus. And still it happens, today, in many parts of the world.
Friends, who of themselves has the strength to stand in the day of testing? Who does not see in themselves weakness and cowardice and sinful fear?
And confronted with such stark choices in the future, it is possible to worry. How will I stand firm? How will I defend myself? Will I be found in the end to fall short, to be a hypocrite, to be found one of those play-actors, who just deceived themselves in their discipleship, and were found to have fallen short at the very last? And so, we might start freaking out. We might become deeply anxious about whether we really are Christian, whether we have what it takes to stand firm in the day of testing, so that we acknowledge Christ before men.
And it is when we feel like this that we must remember Jesus' words to his disciples on his way to Jerusalem. He says two things.
Firstly, page 42, chapter 12 third paragraph:
To you my friends I say, do not fear those who kill the body and afterwards can do nothing more. Let me warn you about whom you should fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Let us realize who to fear. It is not our boss. It is not the school principal or the unsympathetic teacher. It is not the journalists or the newspaper editors. It is not the anger of your wife or husband. It is not the disapproval of your father or the shame of your mother. It is not the muslims, whether the Taliban or Al Quada, or Jamal Islamia, or ISIS, or whatever the latest incarnation becomes. It is not the Chinese, or the Americans, or the Indonesians, or any other foreign power. It is not the banks. It is not the atheists, or the secular humanists, or the communists. It is not the Labor party or the Liberal party, or even the Greens. It is not the Catholics, or any of the other neighbouring churches. It is not the Local Council, or the next door neighbour, or the new minister and his new fangled plans and ideas.
It is God himself. We are called to fear God. And the fear of God will drive out the fear of these other things. Only a well substantiated fear of God can displace all the fears that otherwise crowd in. And it is this appropriate and well placed foundational fear, that of God, who could justly and rightly cast us away into hell, that can drive out the fear of man and thus enable us to make the good confession. But here, as in all things, we must and will ask for strengthening in the day of testing. As our Lord taught us, ‘lead us not into temptation’. Watch and pray, that you do not fall into temptation.
But secondly, we must remember that God has given his people an advocate and a Counselor. It is not as if we will go to this test unaided. For Jesus promises his disciples, bottom of page 42:
Now, when they bring you before the synagogues, the leaders and the authorities, do not be anxious about how or by what you will defend yourselves, or what you will say. For the Holy Spirit will instruct you in that moment about the things you should say:
Yes, we are told to ‘always be prepared to have an answer for everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have’. Yes, it’s good to have an apostles creed or a two ways to live in the memory banks, some sort of gospel presentation, to fall back on and to use to share the gospel.
But we must not give ourselves to fretting and worrying, and going through all the different permutations. Now, if he says this, I will say this. If the governor asks this, then I can say this.
We have an advocate and a lawyer with us, the Holy Spirit, the Counselor. He will be our representative when we are called to confess Christ before men. And just as the Holy Spirit gave Peter and Stephen and Paul the words to say through the Acts of the Apostles, he will give you and me the words to say, if and when you are ever called to declare your faith before Kings and Princes and the Rich and the Powerful.
Now, Jesus knows about all our other anxieties. Few of us, I think, regularly worry about food and clothes. Even if we have a low income, we have op shops. We have pretty good social security and medicare. We have access to good public schooling for our children. We aren’t in Haiti, we aren’t in Africa, and we aren’t in America. We are in Australia. And life here is pretty good.
But it may be that we are anxious about the things of this life, food, clothing, shelter, for us and our children. Maybe we are overstretched meeting the mortgage repayments. Maybe we’ve bitten off more than we can chew. Maybe we don’t know how the next lot of school fees will be paid. Or there are the braces for the kids’ teeth. Where will they come from? Or maybe things in business aren’t going so well. So we know what it is to worry about money. We might be a bit further up Maslo’s hierarchy of needs, but the distractions and sleeplessness about how you are going to pay the bills is still there.
So we know what it is to worry about money. And here Jesus wants us to put our money worries into perspective. And of the many things we worry about – which have at their base, food, clothing and shelter – Jesus has some things to say. And Jesus demolishes our many worries to set up his one worry.
Notice Jesus is not saying: “Don’t worry about working for food and clothes.” No, Paul says “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” (2 Thess 3:10). We are to keep away from idle brothers. But he says “don’t worry about food and clothes.” Page 43 last paragraph: [After Jesus warns a man about his greedy desire for equality with his brother, and after telling them the parable of the rich fools, whose many barns and huge stockpile couldn’t save his life]:
Then he said to the disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life – what you will eat’ nor about your body – what you will wear.
And then Jesus gives five arguments why his disciples, heading to Jerusalem, should not worry.
First, 'For your life is more than food and your body is more than clothes.' Our lives and bodies are more important than food and clothes. Think about it, if God gives us the most important, our lives and bodies; Won’t he also give us the less important, food and clothes for them'.
Second, If God cares for animals and plants, how much more will he care for his children!
Think of the crows and how they do not sow or harvest nor do they have a storehouse or a barn, and yet God provides for them. How much more valuable you are than birds.
The birds get three square meals. Even the grass is wonderfully dressed by the flowers that just come up untended. Not even King Solomon was dressed with such splendour. And we are of much more value than either the birds or the grass. How much more will God therefore feed and clothe us.
Third, worrying about our life is useless, anyway.
And which of you, by your anxiety, can add a single moment to your life span? So if you cannot achieve such a small thing, why are you anxious about the rest?
How very unproductive our worrying is! Worrying makes our lives shorter, not longer! Worrying about going bald means you loose more hair! God has numbered our days. He knows how long he has given us. So worrying about such things is counter productive.
Fourth, you’re in bad company worrying about food and clothes. Look over your shoulder, see whose there worrying with you. Over the page, top of page 44:
And do not strive after what you will eat and drink, or be worried. For these are the things all the nations of the world strive after.
The nations of the world, the gentiles, in other words, the pagans. who don’t know God: they worry about all this stuff. Aren’t disciples of Jesus supposed to be different from them?
Five, 'and your Father knows that you need them'. God made us. He knows what we need before we even ask him. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He is our Father. He gives us what we need. What Father doesn’t provide for his children? Lets give these worries the boot. Food, clothes, tommorrow. Let those who are perishing run after them. Jesus wants us to worry about something more important. This is our one and only worry, top of page 44:
Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these other things will be given to you as well.
A command with a promise. Don’t run after your greeds, and I’ll give you your needs. Instead, you strive with all your might and energy for God’s kingdom and righteousness. All this and heaven too! Worry about God’s Kingdom. Spend your waking hours in concern for the name of my son Jesus Christ, and the glory of the new world that I will bring in when Jesus Christ returns. Your needs will be looked after. And after a short life of trouble, you will enter into eternal rest and glory.
Let’s pray.
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