Who to Fear

[00:00:00] Well, we are now coming up on what is roughly the halfway point in the Gospel of Luke in our series that I’ve entitled “Salvation is Here.” I gave it this title because salvation from our sins in Christ is a very prominent theme in the Book of Luke. In fact, I would argue that it is the central theme around which Luke has written his entire gospel. For example, the incarnation and birth of Jesus is filled with pronouncements of the long-awaited salvation that God has sent. Healing and exorcism, as we’ve seen throughout the book, demonic possession, has shown us over and over that Satan is being overcome by a stronger man. Right? And the stronger man has come into the strong man’s house and tied him up and plundered his goods, taken his people, brought people out of spiritual bondage. Over and over the focus has been on showing us how we can we can be set free in Christ. Salvation has come. But what this means is that the whole world is divided into two groups: those who have been saved by Christ and those who haven’t. And we’re heading into a stretch of the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus teaches a lot about these two groups, specifically the eternal destiny of these two groups. It’s a great relief, it really is, to talk about the hope and the peace of entering into eternity with Christ as our Savior.

[00:01:38] But the other side of that, both biblically and logically, is entering eternity without Christ, without the salvation from our sins that God provides. And without that salvation there is judgment and there is condemnation waiting. Scripture is crystal clear on that point, but we don’t like to talk about it. Generally speaking. We don’t like to talk about it. Judgment. Punishment. Hell. God pouring out his just wrath on sinners who reject him. These are theological truths taught in Scripture, taught by Jesus that have fallen out of favor in our culture. And really, they’ve fallen out of favor within the church. Even Christians who believe these things, and churches who hold to these truths of Scripture as we do here at Calvary, have tended to shy away from these topics because of their unpopularity. And sometimes we avoid the topic of judgment and hell, because we’re afraid of what people will think of us. We’re afraid that people will think that we’re simply fearmongers trying to scare people into believing in God. Sometimes we avoid it out of a sense of evangelism, thinking that Jesus will be more attractive to our non-believing friends if they just hear about the joy and the peace of the gospel and not the consequences of rejecting it. Sometimes we avoid these topics simply because we don’t want to think about them. We don’t want them in our minds. We don’t want to think about the destiny of our unsaved friends and family, and so we’d rather rid our minds of those thoughts.

[00:03:18] Some believers who really love Jesus, actual followers of Christ, have gone so far as to adopt views of God’s judgment and condemnation and eternal punishment that explain it away as something less than or different than what the Bible says. And if you find yourself this morning in any one of those categories I just described, I want to let you know that I’m not surprised. And to a degree, I understand. These are not pleasant topics. But I want to challenge you today and for the next couple of months or so to commit to thinking biblically on these matters. Okay? Just commit in your mind that you’re going to think biblically about these things. The salvation of God that comes by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone is wonderful. But we have to ask the question saved from what? Okay, love talking about being saved by Christ, but saved from what? The good news of salvation in Christ only makes sense in light of the bad news of the sinful state of humanity, a state that continues into eternity for those who reject the good news of Christ. We can’t have a full, biblical, truthful view of the world unless we acknowledge and accept the consequences of pushing Jesus’ salvation away. Today in our passage, Jesus is going to show us two different destinies.

[00:04:57] If you want assurance of eternity with Christ, you will properly fear God and you will stand with Christ in the hardest moments. So, if you have your Bible, you can open up to Luke chapter 12. We’re going to begin in verse four today. I will also have it on the screen. There are two parts to this passage. The first deals with who to fear. The object of our fear. And the second part deals with how this fear plays out when it comes to standing for Christ in this world. So, let’s start by talking about who to fear. “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more 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.” So, these words that you see here on the screen, coming out of the mouth of Jesus Christ himself, may come as something of a shock to you. If you’ve always thought that Jesus only talked about God as a gentle, loving, accepting, and forgiving God. If that’s all you’ve ever heard, if that’s all you’ve ever heard from other people, or read in the Bible before, or heard in a sermon before, then, this would be a bit of a surprise. And that’s an especially popular way of depicting Jesus today, that he was just a real chill guy who talked about peace and love and that picture of Jesus is usually cast against the Old Testament God who was very wrathful and angry.

[00:06:40] Let me tell you, if you view Jesus as a peace-loving guru who drives a VW van, sitting on a rock, talking about love, trying to make the world a better place, your view is more shaped by the historical mishandling of the Bible than by the Bible itself. Someone in your past trimmed out the bits of Jesus that they didn’t like. They taught that to you, and now you think that’s who Jesus is. It’s often been said, and it’s said because it’s true. Jesus talks more about God’s judgment, condemnation, and hell than any other person in Scripture. We have more of that in the Gospels than any place else. We get almost all of our understanding of hell, especially directly from Jesus’ teaching. Yes, we get it also from the book of Revelation. We also get it in Paul’s letters, the other letters of the New Testament. We get some Old Testament imagery on it, but the vast majority of what we know about hell comes from Jesus himself. In these two verses we get a warning on fear. First, Jesus tells us who not to fear. And ironically, it’s the very people we would fear the most. People who would want to kill us. Can you think of a category of people that you would fear more than the people who want to kill you? No, there’s not a scarier category out there, is there? Jesus says, don’t fear these people.

[00:08:13] Why? Because they can only kill your body and you’re like, Jesus, that’s the reason I was afraid of them in the first place. What do you want from me here? What are you after? Help me out. Notice he’s talking to his friends. Now last week he was talking to the Pharisees, the religious elite, the scribes. He was talking to people who didn’t like him, they hated him. They wanted to try to kill him. Now he’s talking to his disciples, and Jesus is training his disciples, and he’s training us this morning, and he’s training anybody who’s faithful to him to see this world and this life from God’s perspective. See, from the perspective of the God who created you there is this short life that we’re in right now that we’re living right now, and then there’s eternity. Now, there’s no question that this short life that we’re given is valuable. It’s precious. It’s God given. We shouldn’t be careless with it. It’s an important life. You can lock your doors at night. That’s a wise thing to do. That’s safe. Good. Do that. But God’s perspective, from his perspective, your location in eternity is far more important than your time here in Rochester, Minnesota. It’s far more important.

[00:09:32] So if your only goal is to preserve your life now, to get everybody to be pleased with you now, to avoid any sort of discomfort now, then you’ve got your priorities all messed up. You don’t understand the world from God’s perspective. You’re only seeing it from yours and not from a biblical perspective. We care far too much about what people think of us. We care so much more than we should. We’re afraid of the consequences of living boldly for Christ. Now, I know that we don’t face imminent death from those around us who are against Christ and against Christians right now. I’m thankful for that. We don’t face that. And also, when it comes to making claims about the direction of our society and sort of prognosticating the future and saying, well, this is where our country is headed and all that. I am pretty cautious because the fact is, I don’t know, as the old joke goes, I am not a prophet, the son of a prophet. I work for a nonprofit organization. I don’t know, I don’t know where we’re going. But I do know that the Christ we worship is falling more and more out of favor. That I can see. I can see that. I know that his word is increasingly unaligned with the values of the day. No one is out there waiting to pat you on the back for how faithful you are to Jesus.

[00:11:01] With the exception of maybe some other Christians that we experience in the wild in this world who are also trying to navigate the same policies and peer pressures that we’re facing. So, if I had to guess right now, if ten years from now, it’ll be easier or harder to live for Jesus in Rochester, I would say buckle up. I think it’s going to be harder. It’s going to cost you more. It’s going to cost us more to stand with Jesus. But Jesus says here not to be afraid of people, because the absolute worst thing that they can do is take your life. That’s the worst thing they can do. Instead, fear the one who can take your eternity. I will warn you whom to fear. Jesus doesn’t say, don’t be afraid. He says, I’ll tell you who to be afraid of. You’re probably not used to hearing God described in these terms. Jesus says we need proper fear of God. Now, it is true in some contexts in Scripture, fear of the Lord refers to reverence for the Lord. For instance, Proverbs says, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But here the fear comes with a warning of eternal punishment in hell. And it’s compared with the fear of people who are trying to kill us. It is good and right to have actual fear of the one true God, because his plan for his creation is to punish sinners in eternity for their sin.

[00:12:37] He is righteously angry with this rebellious creation, and he will exact justice on all sin done against him. Notice two very important bits of grammar that we find here in verse five. Have a look at verse five there real quick. After he has killed you see it? The he there is referring to God. God has numbered our days. He’s not waiting around to see what happens to us. Dying isn’t something that gets done to us while God watches. God determines when our time on earth is up. He is the one who kills. And then also notice has authority to cast into hell. The eternal punishment of hell is not simply the passive result of not accepting Christ. It’s God’s active punishment of those who don’t accept Christ. In Romans 12:19 Paul wrote, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.” See, we don’t take vengeance. We’re not told to take revenge on anyone. That’s not our job. We don’t have the authority or the command from God to do that. But you can be sure that God does have that authority, and he will repay every sin exactly what it deserves. So, let me ask you, do you want to stand before people and please people? Are you a people pleaser? You’re hoping everybody will just like you, regardless of what they think of you? Do you love the comfort and ease of this life so much that you’re willing to compromise your faithfulness to the Lord so that you can embrace the values of the day, and then have no fear of the people who have those same values around you.

[00:14:39] Understand if that’s you, if that’s how you’re motivated, if that’s what you do, if you give up your eternity so that you can have a nicer day today, God says, deal. I will accept that. You can have exactly what you want, but understand what’s waiting for you. Understand what comes next. The writer of Hebrews says it very plainly. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Now, God did not originally design us to be afraid of him. So how do we get rid of this fear? Remember, Jesus is speaking here with his disciples. They would have already been trusting in him like the vast majority of us probably here this morning in this room. They would have heard this warning as an encouragement to stay the course with him even when life gets rough. 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.

[00:16:00] Do you see how at the end Jesus changes what he says about fear? He just got done telling us who to fear, and then he comes and he says, fear not. He told us to be afraid of the one who can cast us into eternal punishment. And now he’s declaring, fear not. What’s the difference? What makes the difference here? Do you remember when you were learning how to drive? For some of us, that was a long time ago. But do you remember when you were learning how to drive a car? Do you remember that time? I know it was a long time back, but do you remember when you were afraid to do it and you feared doing it? Staying in the lines on the road in your lane was frightening, wasn’t it? Oh, I got to stay right here. I got to stay right in these lines here. But then what happens is you slowly relaxed, and you realized that as long as you’re there, as long as you’re in those lines, as long as you’re where you’re supposed to be, you are perfectly safe. And now you barely look at the lines, right? You barely notice that they’re there. But every once in a while, the visibility will drop. The fog will roll in, a storm will come up, and you start looking for those lines.

[00:17:12] You start looking for those lines to assure yourself that you’re safe, that you’re in the right spot, that there’s nothing to fear. That’s what Jesus is doing here with his disciples. Those of us who trust in him, he’s reminding us that if we are trusting in Christ, we are in the right spot, even if it’s not as clear as it was before. If God’s visibility has dropped off for you, understand you are in the right spot. Let me ask you, is life hard for you right now? There’s probably a number of us here this morning for whom life is hard. It’s difficult. You’re going through something terrible. Does it feel like maybe God has forgotten about you? Are you tempted to compromise your commitment to the Lord to make life easier for you in this moment? If you are? Don’t do it. Don’t do it. If you are trusting in Jesus, you are in exactly the right place and there’s nothing to fear. If you’re with Christ. God’s sovereign power and his care extends over all of his creation, right down to the price of sparrows and the falling of hair. What’s happening to you is a surprise to you, but it is not a surprise to God. I know that it came out of left field for you. God is not at all surprised about what you’re going through right now. And while you can’t see the purpose in it right now, God absolutely can.

[00:18:42] Rest assured, he can see the purpose. Life is short. Eternity is long. Stick with Jesus because he’s paid for your sins. He’s already taken the judgment, the condemnation, the punishment. Which means not only is your life valuable and in the hands of God right now, it will continue to be so into eternity because there’s no more hell to pay for those who are in Christ Jesus. Now, once you have this, once you are secure in your assurance that you have Christ, this is reality for you. Once you see your life from God’s perspective and you are clinging to Christ, then you’re ready to act on it. “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God. But the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” Very consistently throughout the New Testament, the test of whether a person actually is faithful to Christ is what they say and do in the presence of other people when faithfulness will cost them. That’s the test. Think of Peter’s denials, right? Remember, Peter denying Jesus three times on the night that Jesus was arrested. This is depicted as such a terrible choice. Such a terrible, shameful failure for Peter. Now, we might look at something like that and go, well, what’s the big deal? He just told a little bit of a lie.

[00:20:18] I mean, who could blame him, right? He might have died right alongside Jesus if he claimed to know Jesus. But it’s not a little lie. It’s not. It’s a window into his heart. And that window showed that Peter was not yet fully committed to Jesus. What’s interesting is once the Holy Spirit came 50 days later at Pentecost, when the Spirit came, every one of those 11 cowering disciples became men who gave their lives for the spread of the gospel. So, here’s the test. Here’s the test for you. If you want to know you are fully committed to Christ and you have no eternal punishment to fear, here’s the question you need to ask yourself. Do you stand with Jesus, speak for Jesus and remain faithful to Jesus in the moments that it will cost you. Are you faithful then? Do you stand for him then when it will cost you? What happens when you’re in a position where speaking the gospel and declaring your commitment to Jesus goes against the flow of the people around you? And this could be as big as losing your job over godless policies. Or it could be as small as being left out socially. If your public witness for Christ is compromised or it’s hidden. You can be sure that the Lord is not sitting back thinking, oh, that’s no big deal.

[00:21:40] That’s no big deal. I could see how that would be a hard situation for you. That’s not a you know, don’t worry about that one. That’s not what we’re told in Scripture at all. It’s a very big deal. Jesus is our advocate before God the Father on the day of Judgment. The angels’ presence, as he talks about it here in the passage, paints the picture of a heavenly courtroom scene where the angels are there as witnesses, as God the Father rules. Those people who can have confidence standing with Jesus in that courtroom are the ones who confidently stand with him now in the courtrooms of this world. There’s continuity between this life and eternity. I’ll tell you what church, Jesus isn’t interested in being your personal, private, just inside your heart, little fire insurance God. He’s not interested in that. He never has proposed that. He’s not offering that at all. And if that’s how you treat him, you don’t know him. On the day of judgment, when God pours down his wrath on sin, Jesus, as our advocate, will stand up for us and declare that we are with him and our sins are covered by his shed blood on our behalf. And the assurance that you need to know that he will stand for you then, is that you stand for him now. In the next verse, you can see just how serious this public confession of Jesus is, “everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven.

[00:23:18] But the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” Now, before we get into the meaning of this sentence, I’ll tell you this is one of the more difficult sayings from Jesus in Scripture for us to interpret. Jesus teaches this in three different settings one in Matthew, Mark, and then here in Luke. It’s known as the blasphemy of the spirit. Uh, also sometimes called the unpardonable or unforgivable sin. I have met so many Christians who have wrestled with whether they’ve committed this sin and are therefore beyond God’s forgiveness. As a young Christian myself in my early 20s, I wrestled with this. Did I? Did I commit the sin somehow? Am I beyond God’s forgiveness? Before we jump in, let me just offer you a word of assurance. If you feel anxiety because you might have committed this unforgivable sin by blaspheming the Holy Spirit, you can be sure that the very fact that you’re worried about it means you haven’t. Okay? This is the one time that anxiety is your friend. If you’re concerned about this, you’re fine. No one who commits the sin that Jesus describes here is the least bit concerned about having committed it. Your concern is your proof that you’re not too far gone. Now, let me explain this. The warning is valid. It’s one of the loudest alarms in Scripture, and it cautions against the worst possible spiritual state.

[00:24:55] The differences in interpretation of this verse are slight, but the overall understanding of it is clear enough. And I’ve weighed these out, and this is what I think. The Son of Man here absolutely refers to Jesus himself. We’ve seen that in the book. Jesus calls himself the Son of Man. In your life you might treat Jesus as less than God and even speak about him irreverently before you know him. That’s very possible. In fact, if you became a Christian as an adult, it’s very likely most who come to Christ as adults can remember a time when they didn’t honor Jesus the way they should have. They called him just a man. Or they used his name as a swear word, or they denied his deity or they disparaged his teachings or something along those lines. If you don’t yet know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you know him as something less than that. And you’re probably going to say something that doesn’t glorify him. That’s to be expected, and that is forgivable, Jesus says, But the Holy Spirit is different. See, the Holy Spirit does his work in your heart. He’s the revealer of God’s Word. He convicts of sin. He empowers the church. It’s by the Spirit that the Triune God works here on earth. To blaspheme

[00:26:22] the Holy Spirit is to see the power of God at work, to know the truth, to know the gospel, and then to push it away. To reject that truth. It is a settled determination to reject God and to stand against him, even though you know the truth. Listen to this description from Hebrews 6:4-6. I believe that this is describing in detail the unforgivable sin, “For it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm, and holding him up to contempt.” Now, I don’t have time this morning to fully unpack all that’s there in that passage, but I believe that the writer is detailing a person who is in and around the church community. The Christian community. They’re in and they’re around it. They’re immersed in it. They are seeing they are experiencing the work of the Holy Spirit to some degree. But they’re not regenerate. They’ve not been changed by it. They’re not new life in Christ. Right? They’re not saved. And because this person knows the truth, but then walks away and rejects the truth, he becomes a blasphemer of the Holy Spirit.

[00:27:55] Here’s what this means in the context of standing for Jesus and speaking for Jesus. There will be times that you fail to represent Jesus. I mean, we’ve all been there. If you follow Jesus for any length of time, you know, there are there are times where you’ve dropped the ball and you’ve not really been a good testimony to Jesus at all. And that’s because people are scary. People are scary. The consequences of opening your mouth can be pretty brutal, especially historically or in parts of the world where if you open your mouth for Jesus, someone will come along and close it for you. Um, the church in the first and second century, for instance, they really wrestled with this. They wrestled with whether people who had recanted of their faith to save themselves from martyrdom, from being thrown to the lions, for instance, should be allowed back into the church. And it’s a legitimate question. But of course, that’s exactly what happened to Peter, right? Peter is a great example of this. He did just that, and he was fully restored by Jesus himself. We can all waver at times when we’re weak. But if what you find, as you look at yourself, if what you find is that you never stand for Christ, that you never suffer for him, that you never speak for him, you know what’s true because you’ve been around it.

[00:29:20] You’ve heard the gospel, you’ve seen the Lord at work in others, but you’ve chosen a settled state against Christ, and you refuse him, you are in serious danger of committing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. That is tantamount to looking God in the face and saying, I don’t want you and I don’t need you. I’m certainly not going to suffer and die for you. It’s the sin of unbelief. A hardened stance against God, from which there is no return and there is no hope of forgiveness. Now, I think it is very significant that nowhere in Scripture are we told to pronounce anybody hopeless. Nowhere in Scripture we are told to pronounce anybody hopeless. We don’t have any examples of anyone committing this sin, though sometimes people try to make the case that Judas Iscariot committed it. It’s a sin that’s committed in the heart. It’s a spiritual sin. And since I can’t read hearts and you can’t read hearts, I don’t count anyone hopeless. We leave that part to God, right? That’s what God does. The part that we can see is what comes out of the heart, the words and the actions. And so, these warnings are fair because we can see those things. So, what do we say? We say, okay, well, I don’t want that. I don’t want to not stand for Christ. What do I say for Christ? How do I stand for Christ when the moment comes? Well, there’s very good news for that

[00:30:52] Jesus tells us, “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. For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” So, God has promised us that if we are willing to stand for Christ, he will give us the words to say when we need them. In those moments God is not sitting back waiting to see what you’re going to come up with, okay? He’s like, oh, this is going to be tough. Let’s see if you’re trained well enough to come up with something here. No, no, no, that’s not how it works at all. He is present in that moment, in that time of need, he will give us precisely what we are to say. We’re there because he wants us there. It’s not an accident we’re in that moment, so there’s no need for us to worry when that moment comes, because we’re precisely where God wants us to be. Do you ever do that thing where you have a conversation with somebody, and then you leave the conversation and then you think, oh, I should have said this, right? It’s usually with an argument. We’re like, oh, I feel like I didn’t win that argument. Or maybe we just tied on it and I could have won if I’d only said these things.

[00:32:02] And you kind of rehearse it in your mind. Boy, I wish I’d have done that differently. You know, it’s not always an argument. Sometimes it’s when you had the chance to share the gospel. I feel this way sometimes. I had the chance to share the gospel with somebody or stand for Christ. And you feel like you didn’t say enough? You weren’t clear. Maybe you didn’t say anything at all. Maybe you feel like you said the wrong thing. Like, oh, I think I might have messed it up somehow. Church here is Jesus’ permission to stop beating yourself up about saying the thing you think you should have said? This is permission here to stop second guessing yourself. Be a faithful, willing, courageous follower of Jesus, and whatever he gives you to say in that moment will be sufficient for glorifying God. That doesn’t mean we don’t prepare. I’m not giving you permission to say, well, I don’t have to do anything now. I’ll just wait and whatever comes out of my mouth, that’s what God wanted.  Alright? We still prepare. It’s important we read the Bible. We need to be Bible readers who can recall Scripture. We need to be able to give a ready defense of our faith. That’s the way Peter put it. So, we should study things like apologetics. God will use all of the preparation too. Plenty of Scripture calls for us to be ready.

[00:33:21] Jesus said that the Word of God is our daily bread. We should be consuming it, shaping our minds and hearts by it. But the point here is to say, when that moment comes, Jesus says, don’t worry. Don’t worry. If you are willing, if you are willing to stand for the Christ who will stand for you on the day of Day of Judgment, having justified you in God’s court, you don’t need to worry about what you’re going to say. The Holy Spirit is going to use you in that moment in a mighty way. I want to close this morning with a little piece of advice that I was given a long time ago, and it has served me well all these years. Whenever you enter a new group of people, okay, maybe you meet someone or you enter into a new group of people for the first time. Find a way early on to let those people know that you are committed to following Jesus. Make it happen early. New school, new job, new club. Whatever it is, if you hide Christ from others for a long period of time, it will be harder to stand for him when the time comes. And let’s be clear, church. Let’s be very, very clear this morning. He didn’t give us the light of the gospel to hide it in the first place, did he? He did not. Let’s pray.