I sat down to write my message for this morning on Thursday
I had been wrestling with the passage we read today which is full of some
difficult sayings of Jesus. And that day I was blessed by my daily devotions… you
see in Nicky Gumbel’s opening comments, I found a great summary of what Luke is
talking about in the passage we had read to us Luke 12:1-12…
“The
message of Jesus is the most powerful message in the world. It is good news. It
changes lives. It changes cities and cultures. Yet it is also a message that
provokes opposition. God equips you to pass on this message by giving you the
Holy Spirit”.
In this passage Jesus talks of being faithful in the light
of persecution: he talks of overcoming that very human response of fear so we
can walk the cross road following Jesus with courage and trust.
We are working our way through Jesus journey to Jerusalem in
Luke’s Gospel, a journey that takes up the central third of the gospel
narrative (ch 10-19), a Journey narrative that focuses on Jesus teaching on
what it means for us to follow him. Today
we are moving into a new block of teaching, over the past few weeks we’d seen
that Jesus was heading more and more into conflict with the religious and
political leaders of the day and in light of that he calls his disciples and us
to be faithful. He focuses on two things that should encourage us; Seeing
present trials and challenges in light of eternity, and a correct understanding
of the nature of God. We can be faithful because of who God is and that God
will bring his plans and proposes to fulfilment in Jesus Christ.
The passage opens with a temporal link ‘meanwhile’ we’ve
moved on in the narrative to a new situation but it’s not a clean break with
what has gone before. We are told that
there is a great crowd of many thousands, and while the crowd in the earlier
part of Luke’s gospel are always seen as a benign presence, here we are told
they were trampling on one another, it is a bit more threatening. Maybe it was
a bit like the crowds for euro 2016, a mix of the ecstatic and eccentric
Icelanders and their joyful synchronised clapping but also those elements of
Russian and English fans spoiling for a fight. Because in the previous passage
we’ve been told there are elements who think that Jesus is motivated by evil,
others who are demanding that Jesus show them greater and greater signs, and
that the Pharisees and scribes are there questioning and hoovering waiting for
Jesus to slip up so they can pounce. In
Luke’s gospel when there is a crowd Jesus turns to his disciples and teaches
them about true discipleship. Jesus is
aware that the pressure of the crowd can cause us to compromise our faith,
either the pull of popularism, to simply keep on pleasing the crowd or the push
of persecution to appease the crowd. Both
pressures have historically caused the church to compromise their faithfulness
to Jesus and push and pull at our faith: The pull to conform to the standards
and social norms of today and the push against our faith, at least to keep it
to ourselves.
Jesus starts by calling his disciples to be on guard, not
against the unruly crowd, but the unruly tendencies of their own heart; to be
on guard against the yeast of the Pharisees. Yeast was added to dough to make
it rise but in Jewish thinking it was also a metaphor for sin that once it is
entertained can infect the whole mixture or dough. In the passage we looked at last week Jesus
had used a play on words to challenge the Pharisees, he had said they had
missed the love of God and others but loved the good seats in the synagogue and
the respectful greetings in the market place. It all had to do with external
appearance not what was at the heart. Here Jesus sums that up with the word
hypocrisy. It was a mask an act they put on. Jesus calls us to be wholeheartedly
committed to him, that we are to be people of integrity, our outward actions
and reactions, how we live and how we love should be a reflection of what is at
our heart, our external life should be a reflection of our internal life,
regardless of who is watching.
Jesus moves from the pull of popularism to the push of
persecution. He tells his disciples, they are not to fear those who can kill
the body, but rather fear him who can throw you in to hell. Ok relax Jesus
isn’t getting into the old hellfire and brimstone preaching here and neither am
I. firstly Jesus is a realist, he knows what is going to happen to his
followers that they like he will face persecution and death. He tells him in
verse 11 they will be bought before synagogues rulers and authorities, there is
going to be pressure to deny Jesus. Church history is full of persecution and martyrs
and Jesus is saying don’t fear that, even though they can and will kill you,
rather fear God.
Of course fear can be understood in two ways, the first is
the crippling fear of being afraid, scared, petrified, it’s the sort of fear
that can cause us to turn away from trusting Jesus Christ can cause us to deny
him. The other fear is the idea of
respect and honour. Jesus here is NOT saying we should be afraid of God because
God’s got the bigger stick, rather our respect for and honour of God should
enables us to be faithful to him, cause in the end he is the one who cares.
This is where our understanding of God’s character comes
into play. Firstly in this passage it is the only place in Luke’s gospel where
he addresses his disciples as my friends, I tell you my friends do not be
afraid… He’s speaking out of love and compassion. But also telling them that
God cares for them. God is not angry or vindictive, God cares. God cares for
the sparrows, that in the market place are a dime a dozen, they are still sold
to be eaten but he cares for them. When I worked at the chapel at Auckland
University I used to sit outside and have my lunch, and sometime just sit out
under the trees and pray, and the sparrows would come round for food or because
they wanted to join in the prayers. At a glance they all looked the same but if
you looked at them they were all unique and different, you had to look for it.
God invests such creative energy into these sparrows uniqueness. He cares for
us so much more. He knows our most intimate detail and need, he even knows how
many hairs are on our head. Ok there is room for a joke here, but I’m not going
to make it… and maybe some of us are just trying to make God’s job a bit
easier… we respect God because God cares
for us.
There is a correlation between what we do in this life and
what happens in eternity. Jesus goes on in typical Jewish though patterns to
repeat what he has said in a negative way in a positive one. He says that if we
acknowledge him before humanity, he will acknowledge us before the angels of
God. There is reward for those who are faithful. If we reject Jesus in front of
people, Jesus will do that before the heavens.
Then we have this really tough saying of Jesus that those
who speak words against the son of man will be forgiven, but anyone who
blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. I think it’s there to
be reassuring, but I know many young people who have in youth group asked about
this unforgiveable sin, worried they might inadvertently commit it. The first thing I always tell them is if you
are even worried about then that’s good proof you haven’t committed it.
Scripture and history show that those who have rejected and
spoken against Jesus have been welcomed back and forgiven. Peter who denied
Jesus three times is reconciled with Jesus after the resurrection. ‘Peter do
you love me, peter do you love me, peter do you love me… He is commissioned to
be an apostle and a shepherd of God’s people. Saul stood at the stoning of
Stephen and held peoples coats, so they could throw stones, he persecuted the
church and yet on the road to Damascus meets the risen Jesus and his life is
transformed he becomes Paul the apostle to the gentiles and writer of much of
our New Testament. I could go on, many of Jesus greatest advocates started out
anti-Jesus. Blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is an ongoing rejection of the
witness of the Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ. Pharaoh in the Old Testament is a
biblical example, when God shows him his power it says that pharaoh hardened
his heart again and again, till finally it says that God hardened pharaoh’s
heart and he would not let the people go. It is encouraging for us because even
if we buckle under pressure we know that the God who cares about us will and
does forgive and restore. One of the big pastoral issues for the early church
when it faced persecution was how they treated those who had buckled under and
when demanded of them sacrificed to the roman emperor as God. Richard wurmbrand
was a Christian leader who was imprisoned for many years and tortured in
communist Romania and he talks of having to deal with meeting fellow prisoners
who had denied the faith or even informed on him and his colleges and then
later fallen foul of the communist regime. Some continued to deny Christ,
others repented and returned.
Finally in the face of persecution, Jesus gives his
disciples great hope, that the God who cares for them and who would pour out
his holy spirit would be there with them and in situations of conflict and
confrontation would give them the words to say. Now one commentator said quite
rightly this is not a passage for teachers and preachers who don’t prepare well
, rather it is when we find ourselves in situation where we are called on to
defend our faith in Jesus Christ. I think the great example in scripture is
Stephen in the book of acts whose response to the Sanhedrin, the religious
court in Jerusalem is a wonder exposition of Israel’s history and how it all
points to Jesus. It says that they could contend against him. The God who cares is the God who gives us his
Spirit to be with us and enable us especially in times when we need that help.
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