Luke 12:2-3 ESV
“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. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. 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.’”
Leaven (yeast), figuratively speaking, is the spreading influence
of what is typically concealed. It is generally a symbol of the spreading
nature of evil. And hypocrisy is pretending to be someone or something we are
not. It is the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which
one’s own behavior does not conform, does not match up. We are to guard our
hearts against the spreading influence of pretending to be what we are not.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we should be people of
integrity and of honesty and purity. We should be who we say we are, and no
fakery. What we say we should mean. We should not even tell what some people
call “white lies,” which are usually lies they tell people to make them feel
good. But a lie is still a lie no matter what color you give it. Now we don’t
need to be obtuse, just blurting out everything we think. We should be kind,
but still honest.
My family are jokers and teasers. And it is hard not to get
caught up in that when I am with them. But I’ve been working on it for some
time, with the Lord’s help, because I want always to be a person who says what
I mean and who does not say what I don’t mean, even if just in jest. A lot of
people use humor and sarcasm as a way to say what they really mean, to give
hidden messages, but to cloak it with humor. We should not do that.
Lies can be very subtle, and sometimes they are learned as a
way to deal with certain situations, and so if we have been trained in lying or
in cloaking the truth with humor or of giving hidden messages to people, not in
honesty and forthrightness, then we need to seek the Lord’s face, in truth, and
ask for his wisdom and power to break these generational habits and learned
responses to situations so that we now walk with complete integrity.
But this goes way beyond just generational learned responses
to certain situations. This has to do with deliberate and habitual lying and
fakery and pretending to be what and who we are not in order to give people a
false impression, and yes, to cover up hidden and secretive sins, too. We must
guard our hearts and minds against all lying, and all fakery, and all putting
on a performance to make others think something is true that is not true.
And then, when it says here that nothing is now covered that
won’t be revealed, I think of the day and times in which we now live, in the
technology age, to where everything we say, if we own smart phones, in
particular, can be heard by a robot or whatever through our phones. For we can be
talking about something and then on our smart phones, on the internet, we will
immediately receive an ad for what we just said.
As long as we choose to live in this generation of
technology, which I must do to do the work God has called me to do, we have no
such thing anymore as privacy, and yes, our conversations which we speak in
private are, at least in part, being overheard by our electronic devices, and
perhaps even recorded, and thus they could, in reality, be proclaimed where all
can hear. So we should be aware of this and we should guard what we say always.
Luke 12:4-7 ESV
“I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 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! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Now, this sounds like a sudden and drastic change of
subject, and it could be, or it could be tied into the previous section of
verses. For I believe he was telling his disciples not to fear the Pharisees or
their power and influence. And the Pharisees, in general, were party to Jesus
being falsely arrested, given a mock trial, beaten, and then hung on a cross to
die, and Jesus certainly knew this in advance.
But the point is that we are not to fear what other humans
might do to us or say about us. We are to fear God. We are to take our Lord and
his Word seriously and believe what his Word teaches us, and not live as though
he did not say the things that he said. For Jesus said that not everyone who
says to him, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one
DOING the will of the Father who is in heaven (Matthew 7:21-23).
And Jesus said that if anyone would come after him, that he
must deny self, take up his cross daily (daily die to sin and to self) and
follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to our old lives of living in sin and for
self, we will lose them for eternity. But if for the sake of the name of Jesus
we die to sin and to self, and we now live to him and to his righteousness,
then we have eternal life in him (Luke 9:23-26; cf. 1 Peter 2:24; Romans
6:1-23).
So, we need to take this seriously. We cannot just make a
profession of faith in Christ and then assume all our sins are forgiven and we
are on our way to heaven regardless of how we live our lives. For if we walk
according to the flesh, and if sin is our practice, and if righteousness and
obedience to our Lord are not what we practice, we will not inherit eternal life
with God, regardless of what faith we have professed with our lips.
‘Til The Storm Passes By
By Thomas Mosie Lister
In the dark of the midnight have I oft hid my face
While the storm howls above me, and there's no hiding place
'Mid the crash of the thunder, Precious Lord, hear my cry
Keep me safe till the storm passes by
Many times Satan whispered
There is no use to try
For there's no end of sorrow, there's no hope by and by
But I know Thou art with me, and tomorrow I'll rise
Where the storms never darken the skies
Till the storm passes over, till the thunder sounds no more
Till the clouds roll forever from the sky
Hold me fast, let me stand in the hollow of Thy hand
Keep me safe till the storm passes by
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_obOSQoOpQ
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