Luke 12:1-12

Jeff Tacklind’s message on Luke 12:1-12

Sermon notes:

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.

Hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform

“Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”  C.S. Lewis

“The surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves.” John Calvin

Phil 3:19
19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.

“God being God offends human pride.” Augustine

Luke 12:4-7

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.

Proverbs 9:10
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”

Matthew 5:29
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

“No one chooses in the abstract to go to hell or even to be the kind of person who belongs there.  But their orientation toward self leads them to become the kind of person for whom away-from-God is the only place for which they are suited.  It is a place they would, in the end, choose for themselves, rather than come to humble themselves before God and accept who he is.  Whether or not God’s will is infinitely flexible, the human will is not.  There are limits beyond which it cannot bend back, cannot turn or repent.” Dallas Willard

Luke 12:8-12
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.”

How Jesus corrects our distortions of reality…