In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 3 Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.

4 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. 7 Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.

8 “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, 9 but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. 10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. 11 And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” (Luke 12:1-12)

Introduction

If you weren’t here last Sunday, I shared that in speaking from Luke 11:37 to 12:12, I would speak of 10 characteristics of hypocrisy that Jesus lays out for us to examine in this text. The first seven were the following: 1) Hypocrites focus on external appearances rather than internal holiness (v. 37-41), 2) Hypocrites have a selective view in their obedience to God (v. 42), 3) Hypocrites crave man’s attention and applause (v. 43), and 4) Hypocrites are spiritually dead without even realizing it (v. 44), 5) Hypocrites impose spiritual burdens on others without grace (v. 45-46), 6) Hypocrites strive to appear righteous (vv. 47-51), 7) Hypocrites hinder and oppose the Gospel (v. 52). So, the 8th characteristic of hypocrisy is that hypocrites destroy the church.

Hypocrites Destroy the Church (v. 1-3)

Let’s read Luke 12:1-3: “In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 3 Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.” Remember that Jesus was having dinner with the Pharisees and lawyers at this time. And while he’s having dinner, people heard about Jesus’ arrival and are coming by the thousands to this house. You can imagine the chaos this must have caused. There were no traffic cops, riot police, organized lines and so people are literally trampling over each other. I’m sure the Pharisees were probably jealous of all of the attention that Jesus was getting.

But Jesus was not wrapped up in the numbers and he cared nothing for the fame, contrary to the Pharisees and lawyers who said and did all that they did for the sake of recognition and out of fear of others’ opinions. Instead, Jesus gives this warning in v. 1, that those who follow Christ should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. Leaven is used to make bread by spreading throughout the dough to make it rise. Paul refers to leaven in 1 Cor 5:6 when he says: “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?”

In other words, hypocrisy has the deadly consequence of not only affecting the hearts of the hypocrite, but it spreads to all who the hypocrite has influenced. How can this happen? Well, the hypocrite like the Pharisee who is unaware and unwilling to admit his hypocrisy, appears righteous. In fact, they can use biblical terms and ideas to influence others and convince others to act in an ungodly manner. For example, a church leader can use biblical ideas like, “The pastor isn’t acting in a manner worthy of his calling,” and then attempt to form a coalition to oust the pastor perhaps based on hypocritical notions, areas where they themselves also are not acting in a manner worthy of their calling. Or consider gossip which can often be graceless. The reality is that if we find someone else sinning against us and then tell others about it, we forget that we too probably have sinned in similar fashion against others. Hypocrisy is like leaven. It spreads quickly because self-righteousness thrives in trying to convince others of your rightness. And thus, it can destroy the church.

The cure to this characteristic of hypocrisy is that it will never work simply because even though we can try to hide what’s really going on in our hearts, one day, all will be revealed. As verses 2-3 tell us, everything we say in public, in gossip, in private against others, will be revealed. Paul also writes in 1 Cor 4:5: “Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.” In other words, parents when you become angry with your child and sin against him or her, and then you become upset and are angered and judge when you see another parent lose their cool, you are a hypocrite. And Jesus says that one day, your sin of losing control over your own child will be shouted from the rooftops. Men, if you are looking at porn when no one is watching, but judging others for their own sins without grace and mercy, one day everyone will know what you have done, including your wives. If you have ever stolen from work or cheated the government, and you condemn others for doing so, then what you have done will also be fully know. If you have criticized others behind their back and yet you have angrily refused to forgive those who have hurt you in the past, you will have every word you have ever said against another in such manner put on public display before everyone else. The reality is that we all sin. And James 5:16 says: “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” The cure of this characteristic is to recognize the consequences of our hypocrisy and then to confess our own sin against others and ask for forgiveness and actually pray for one another. Paul adds similarly in Colossians 3:13 that we are to “bear with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” And Peter reminds us that the fruit of this confession and repentance and forgiveness is God’s mercy to us: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you” (1 Peter 5:6).

Hypocrites Fear Earthly Consequences More Than Eternal Consequences (v. 4-7)

The ninth characteristic of hypocrisy is that hypocrites fear earthly consequences more than eternal consequences. Jesus says in verses 4-7: “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. 7 Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.” How much do you think the fear of man drives you and motivates you? Does your fear of what your boss thinks about you keep you working diligently? Does your fear of your wife keep you cleaning and cooking and helping out? Does your fear of your friends and their opinion cause you to drink alcohol when you’re not legally allowed to? Does your fear of looking like a failed parent cause you to work your kids harder in activities and education? Oh how we don’t even realize how much we fear man more than God. Jesus tells us just how deadly it is for us to fear man. In fact, He makes it clear that it is perhaps one of the most foolish things we can do, and yet, we do it all the time. Why is it so foolish? Because it makes no sense to fear man who has such limited power over us, than to fear the God who can eternally cast us into hell. Jesus repeats in verse 6, “Fear him!”

Now this text has an assumption. It assumes that God is real and that eternity is real. And so what I am about to say next won’t make sense to you without that assumption, so please keep that assumption in mind when I say, “The absolute worst thing that people can do is kill your body.” (v. 4) For most of our world, that worst thing is the worst thing, hence fear. That’s why people dread death and it dictates our lives (what we consider safe, comfortable, good, evil). But what if the Bible is true. What if the time we live on earth is nothing but a piece of space dust in the midst of the expanse of the universe? And what if you are so consumed by a fear of death over something so infinitesimally small, but trading in an eternity in the process? That trade-off would be utterly foolish. And yet, my friends, isn’t that how we live? In Ed Welch’s book on the fear of man, When People Are Big and God Is Small, he notes:

Today we would be nice and call the Pharisees people-pleasers. We would say they “struggled with peer pressure.” Since all of us are affected by it at one time or another, we are almost sympathetic toward such behavior. But this is the most tragic form of the fear of man. Teenagers are constantly making unwise decisions because of it. Adults, too, look to people for their cues. We wait for others to take initiatives of love. We spend too much time wondering what others may have thought about our outfit or the comment we made in the small group meeting. We see opportunities to testify about Christ, but we avoid them. We are more concerned about looking stupid (a fear of people) than we are about acting sinfully (fear of the Lord). (Ed Welch, When People Are Big and God Is Small, 40)

And my friends, that is the sad reality for so many of us, and probably all of us at one time or another. We are far too concerned about looking stupid in front of people who hold negligible power over us (and it doesn’t matter who that is, boss, parent, government official, fellow students at school, etc.), than the God who can throw us into hell.

So what are these consequences of not fearing God? I wonder sometimes if today’s Christian has made far too little of God’s power, glory, holiness and judgment. We don’t like thinking of God as a God who is to be feared. Instead, God is a grandfather who is on a divine rocking chair, waiting for us to climb on His lap so He can read us Heaven’s Fables. But Jesus is far from the meek and gentle Jesus that we so easily side with in this text. God is the God who controls Hell and who determines who remains there. You see, Satan is not some anti-God who resides in the anti-heaven called Hell. He is a prisoner and fellow sufferer in God’s eternal prison of torment. And only God has authority over Hell and its prisoners. Isn’t this a God who must be feared? If you really believed this to be true, wouldn’t you be more concerned about what God thinks of you than what some person of no ultimate significance thinks of you? Oh how we have truly failed to see what matters most. If we really had such fear, than Proverbs makes sense to us, especially Prov 1:7: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Fearing God and His power will keep us from making foolish choices in life because I will be more concerned about what God thinks when no one is watching than what anyone else thinks.

So the fear of God who can cast us to hell is one great motivation to guard against the hypocrisy of the fear of man. Oh but thank God for verses 6-7 which remind us of God’s Fatherly care that also motivates us to fear God more than man. In fact, by fearing God more than man, Jesus tells us, we can even “Fear not!” And to hammer this point home, he compares God’s care over us to that of 5 sparrows. Sparrows were sold at the marketplace for food for the equivalent of a few cents. Only the poorest of the poor bought sparrows to eat. And so their price highlighted their insignificance. And yet, despite their value and worth, “Not one of them is forgotten by God.” Now if God cares for the most insignificant of creatures, wouldn’t it make sense that God would care that much more for those created in His image, and those He has purchased by His own Son’s blood? Again, in Romans 8:32, Paul proclaims this same reality: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” In fact, God knows us so well and cares for us so deeply that every hair on our head is numbered. We need not fear because we are far more valuable than sparrows.

How should this translate to our lives? It means we should be free of the fear of man because first of all, there are grave consequences in fearing man more than God. Because God has given us everything, and has cared for our every need physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we should not worry about what others think of us. We should not let them dictate who we are, how we dress, how we speak, how we act. If we had a right view of the fear of God and His provision for us, we wouldn’t be afraid to pray in front of co-workers before a meal. Quite the contrary, we’d be proud of the fact that we are our Father’s children. We wouldn’t let rejection from a clique or a group of peers dominate our hearts the way that it does. We wouldn’t care so much that we didn’t get invited to a particular gathering or party. We wouldn’t be staring at the mirror wanting to change our physical appearance through plastic surgery because someone made a comment about a facial feature or a big pimple. We wouldn’t be troubled by the success of other children academically and the (supposed) lack of success of our own. And we wouldn’t be staying up at night wondering if we have enough money for retirement, or dreaming about the house we can’t afford, or living the fantasies of movie stars. Ask yourself, what motivates you in your life? Is it a delight in God and His favor over you or is it your desire to want to prove your worth before others? Are you more concerned about who you are or are you more concerned what God thinks of you and how you can show His love to others? Such questions will help you to see whether you really fear God or fear others, and by doing so reveal your hypocritical characteristic of your fear of earthly consequences more than eternal consequences.

Hypocrites Deny They Know Christ Before Others. (v. 8-12)

And the tenth and final characteristic of hypocrisy is that hypocrites deny they know Christ before others. Jesus declares in verses 8-12: “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, 9 but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. 10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. 11 And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” I know that some of you are reading this text and are scared because there have been times where you have been ashamed of Christ or denied Christ before others. Perhaps you can sympathize with Peter because you too have done the something like the following:

And when he went out to the entrance, another servant girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” 72 And again he denied it with an oath: “I do not know the man.” 73 After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you too are one of them, for your accent betrays you.” 74 Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man.” (Matthew 26:71-74)

Maybe someone has said to you at work: “Hey, aren’t you that religious fanatic who goes to church regularly,” and you responded with nary a word of defense of whisper because of your shame of knowing Christ. Perhaps co-workers or non-Christian friends have defamed the name of Christ or have defamed others in your work who know Christ and you said nothing, maybe even calling curses down on yourself proclaiming, “I do not know the man.” When we were handing our cards for our Easter worship, I went around the neighborhoods in Pleasanton to pass out cards. I had to pray through the whole time because I kept on thinking, “I must look like a cult member.” I could feel the strong temptation to fear man, to actually be ashamed of my Savior. In fact, I tried to give a card to this older Asian woman and she waved me off as if I was trying to rob her. J. C. Ryle describes this fear of man:

The difficulty of confessing Christ is undoubtedly very great. It never was easy at any period. It never will be easy as long as the world stands. It is sure to entail on us laughter, ridicule, contempt, mockery, enmity, and persecution…The world which hated Christ will always hate true Christians. But whether we like it or not, whether it be hard or easy, our course must be clear. In one way or another Christ must be confessed. (Quoted from Phil Ryken, Luke Vol. 1, 651)

But oh my brother and sister, don’t we have such a hypocritical heart that would turn against our Lord so easily? But you do not want to be in that place where you are surrounded by the heavenly host of angels where Jesus denies us before men. How dreadful that will be? There will be no greater moment where you and I will want the approval of another (Jesus and His angels), and instead, we will only receive rejection, ultimate rejection.

But as terrible as rejecting Christ can be and denying Him is, the Lord still forgives such sin. He forgave Peter who denied Him three times. But Jesus tells us that far worse than even denying Christ, the Son of Man, is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which Jesus says will not be forgiven. Now I know many of you have been confused by this text. Perhaps some of you have even believed that you have sinned this sin or have been in fear of committing such a sin. But it seems clear from the context of this text as well as parallel texts in Matthew (12:31-32) and Mark (3:28-30), that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit refers to the person who continuously rejects the work of Christ, which is ultimately a rejection of the work of the Holy Spirit. The person who has had opportunity after opportunity of hearing the Gospel, but still refuses to recognize the saving work of Jesus, and might even shun and scoff such work, and dies in such a state, will have blasphemed the Holy Spirit which Jesus reminds us that there is no forgiveness.

My brothers and sisters, this is a solemn and stern warning for some of you sitting here today. Today is the day that the Lord wants you to hear and confess your sins and turn to Christ as your only hope, your Savior and Lord. Don’t think you will have tomorrow. Don’t rest on your works (what you have done for Jesus in the past). Don’t think that a mere raising of the hand once at a revival meeting as a teen will save you. No, it is your faith in the blood of Christ alone that saves you eternally. It is a humbling of yourself before a Holy and good God who saved you because of His great mercy. Today is the day, or else you risk the blasphemy of the Spirit where there is no longer a forgiveness of sins.

But as terrifying as this work of the Spirit is, of convicting us of sin, it is also the Holy Spirit who frees us to be who we truly are, to be unashamed of our Savior. It is He who teaches us what we should say when we are afraid of others, and when we are tempted to deny that we know Jesus as verses 11-12 remind us. Remember who Jesus was speaking to, the 12 disciples. And they would be dragged off before the religious and civil authorities, unbeknownst to them now. Do you think a ragtag group of fishermen, tax collectors, zealots, and random people would be able to withstand such fear? No way! The only way they could weather the tumult of persecution would be through the power of the Holy Spirit. So the Father has not left us empty-handed and ill-equipped when we speak of Christ to others. And we need not fear that we know too little (though this still means we should prepare and know God’s Word). We have the power of the Holy Spirit who ‘will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.’

When the great reformer Martin Luther stood before the Roman Catholic Diet of Worms, convened to assess his disputations against the church and the Pope, Luther was given an opportunity to recant of his position of justification by faith alone. You have to understand, many had died at the stake for going against the church. So when the examiner asked him, “Will you recant or not?” Luther responded:

Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds and reasoning—and my conscience is captive to the Word of God—then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen. (James M. Kettleson, Luther the Reformer, 161)

Luther realized, when given the option of fearing God or man, denying Christ or denying others, he believed it was unsafe to deny Christ and fear man. And so for the rest of his life, Luther’s life was constantly threatened and he was a fugitive. And yet, the whole Christian church owes him a debt of gratitude for holding steadfast to the Gospel. Luther fought the temptation of hypocrisy, even at the cost of his comfort, his reputation, and his very life and his faith has allowed so many (including me and you) to still cherish the same Gospel.

Conclusion

My dear brothers and sisters, the reality is that we are all hypocrites. We all struggle still with sin, and yet we hold others hostage to their sins while pleading for mercy for our sins. We are constantly riddled with double standards, and there is no way the Lord should have mercy on us simply because we are incredibly hypocritical. But while we were still hypocrites, Christ died for us. While we are busy nailing him to the cross with our lack of mercy, our unforgiveness, our gossip, our pride, and all the while asking for mercy and forgiveness, he stays on that cross to grant us grace. What is the cure to hypocrisy? It’s recognizing that Jesus bore our shame (Heb 12:2) by being shamed on our behalf. And so does it make sense that we are ashamed of Him before others, t hat we let others’ view of us dictate how we act, think, respond? Does it make sense that those who know the incredible love of God through the cross would actually be ashamed of Christ or would hold others to standards that they themselves cannot keep? This is every reason why Christians who cherish the Gospel must be humble, and merciful, and gracious. Or we truly are no better than the Pharisees and lawyers Jesus is confronting in this text. We are no better off than they. My dear brothers and sisters, today is the day. Let’s repent of our sins and cling to the Gospel as our only hope for joy and as the ultimate cure from our hypocritical hearts.