Now, let's turn our attention to the Word of God and see what God Himself would say to us in this passage of Scripture. Under these circumstances, after so many thousands of people had gathered together that they were stepping on one another, He began saying to His disciples, first of all, beware of the eleven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known. Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark will be held in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops. I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will tell you whom to fear. Fear the one who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him. You are not five sparrows sold for two cents, yet not one of them has forgotten before God, indeed the very hairs of your head are all numbered, do not fear. You are more valuable than many sparrows. And I say to you, everyone who confesses Me before men, the Son of Man will confess Him also before the angels of God. And He who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks of word against the Son of Man will be forgiven Him, but He who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven Him. When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about how or what you are to speak in your defense or what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. I suppose you could sum it up by saying the main point is, don't fear man, fear God because if you fear God you have nothing to fear, right? I would sum it up a little differently just for our purposes this morning. Don't be influenced by hypocrites or man, but by the fear of God. And that's what I hope to speak about today as we look at this passage. It's in really three points with kind of a test to follow up with at the end. I'll say just a few things after we look at that test, Lord willing bring home some application. But I want to talk about what influences us today. That's where Jesus starts. And so the first point is has to do with the influence of hypocrisy. We see this in verses one through three where Jesus says under these circumstances, or well Luke tells us, under these circumstances after so many thousands of people had gathered together that they were stepping on one another, he began saying to his disciples, first of all, and here's the point, beware of the love and of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy. What is hypocrisy? Well hypocrisy is in a sense wearing a mask. In fact, it was used as a term for actors who put on the mask and the mask told you who they were acting out. It wasn't who they were, it was someone else. And so this term hypocrisy was used to describe someone who lived a double life. Their private world and their public world were different. It's not that they had to expose everything from their private world to the public, but they weren't to be two different people. They were to be the same person. That's the idea behind hypocrisy. It's when you whisper, when you cover up, when you say in the dark, one thing, but you live in the light in a different way. That's hypocrisy and we see that in verses two and three that it's that way. And Jesus, I believe, is referring specifically to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and it relates to the context that is immediately before us that we didn't read, but looked at a couple weeks ago before Palm Sunday, Luke chapter 11 verses 37 to 52 where he pronounced the woes on the Pharisees and said, you clean the outside of the cup, but inside you're full of deadmen's bones and this kind of language. You need to clean the inside of the cup and then all will be clean. This is the hypocrisy that was going on. And why does Jesus speak about the leaven of hypocrisy? Well, leaven, as you know, is like yeast. It's what causes bread to rise and it is the influence, if you will. I've used the word influence in the message to talk about the way the leaven, the leaven aspect that it's influence, it just takes a little bit and it permeates everything. And so what he's saying here, what he's suggesting is that hypocrisy is one of those sins that is not a small sin and it's isolated and self-contained, but it's like leaven. It's like influence, it permeates, it impacts other people. Another thing to keep in mind when we talk about the influence of hypocrisy is everyone's a hypocrite. It's not a particularly Christian sin, everyone suffers with this believer and unbeliever alike. Whenever we hide, whenever we whisper one thing to one person but with someone else have a different kind of spin on it, if you will, when we have different spins, that's hypocrisy and Christians don't hold the corner on hypocrisy. In fact, when we're living in the light of the truth, we're sometimes accused of being hypocrites because our sin is apparent. Just because your sin is exposed doesn't mean you're a hypocrite because, well, really, how do you become a Christian? I'm a sinner. That's the... Right? Don't you have to start there? I'm a sinner. That's how we enter into the kingdom. That's how we're reconciled with God is by acknowledging our sin. We're saying, the problem on my inside is I'm not right with God. And so that in and of itself is not the problem, but there is something that Jesus is pointing out here, isn't it? He says, beware of the love and of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy. And we've looked at the fact that the Pharisees are the holy ones, the separatists, the ones who profess faith in the extreme. They would be known today, perhaps, as the religious right. And Jesus points out their hypocrisy for a reason because of the influence, because hypocrisy among those who profess faith distorts the way to faith. It hinders people from entering the kingdom of God. Remember, that was one of the indictments of the six woes, the three to the Pharisees and the three to the experts in the Bible law, is that they refused to enter in and they hindered other people. It was their hypocrisy that did this. We'll talk more about this as we look at the text, but that's a big deal to our Lord. There is the influence of the fear of man. We see this in verse four. It's connected to the next point, which is the fear of God. And I suppose you can have both of those slides up, might as well give you the fill in the blanks for both of them at one time because you can see if you look at the outline on page eight, there's a bit of a chiasm that is there. In verse four, looking just at it for a second, it says, I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and afterward, after that have no more they can do. It's talking about the fear of men. Do not fear men because once they've killed your body, there's nothing more they can do. There's kind of an extreme here, isn't there? Hypocrisy, just being a little bit too face, not being the same person on the inside and the outside, seems way different than be afraid of those who they're going to kill you. And he kind of takes that all the way to the end, right? If we think about it in its historical context, he starts to speak immediately to his disciples. I love verse one that way. It's kind of amazing. When it says that there were thousands of people there, remember that villages were small, often just 30, 40 people, you know cities were in the hundreds usually. And so for there to be thousands of people means that people were flocking from all over the place to listen to Jesus. And with people everywhere and stepping on themselves and trying to get close to where they could hear Jesus, Jesus as it were, focuses on his disciples, on the 12. And he knows everyone's listening. And he knows we are listening, he knew it then, he knows it now. And he tells them to beware. And in verse 4 he says, I say to you my friends and it says though he's expanding it a little bit for everyone to think about this, but it says disciples in Luke's history lesson, right? We have the gospel of Luke here. And then after the resurrection of Jesus Christ or after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Luke continues to report about the church and we call it the book of Acts or the book of the Acts of the Apostles. And right after Pentecost, the very next chapter, chapter 3, there's Peter and John going to pray and they perform a miracle and they start preaching the gospel in chapter 4. They're arrested for it and they have to speak before authorities, kind of like it talks about there and verses 8 and following. And Peter's preaching is just as powerful before the religious authorities as it was before the people in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. We get to chapter 12 and James, the Apostle is put to death. Peter's imprisoned after that and set free by God's miracle. Chapter 21 through 28 of the book of Acts also about the Apostle Paul and his being carried off. And so Jesus' words don't be afraid of those who can kill the body are meant to be understood literally for the Apostles. And I think for the disciples we pray again this morning for one in prison and we see it to our day that God's people are in prison. But there is something to the fear of man that is less than death for us, less than a death. It's this influence of man and that's where Ed Welch is probably the best as he defines this and talks about it. And really it's something we need to think about a little bit. We have a fear of being exposed before other people. Our imperfections, our weaknesses, our sins, we find it easy to try and hide those. Whenever we justify ourselves, whenever we try and explain our circumstances so that people will understand I didn't do bad or I'm not bad or whatever it is, we don't want to be judged. We want to be liked, right? These all have to do with this fear of man and there's a danger that's real. I mean it can go all the way to losing our life. But we seem to also struggle with even the fear of exposure or the fear of rejection. Someone who doesn't want to be our friend. Someone who sees what we're really like and says, no grace, we're afraid of that. We're afraid that we'll be judged. We're afraid that we'll cause someone's disapproval or anger or unhappiness. That someone will speak to us, we may lose a friend, we may lose respect. And where the problem is and what Jesus is implying with this influence of hypocrisy, this influence of the fear of man is that we get things out of balance. And we see this danger as bigger than the fear of God. That if we have to choose who we're going to offend, we'll offend God after all these merciful and kind of forgiving, way more than people. So I can sin against him and make people feel good, you know what I'm saying? And so he talks about not only the fear of man, but he talks about the fear of God and this chiasm that you have on the screen now appear, it's a little modified than what's in the bulletin, it's called a chiasm, that's its literary title, it's a teaching device, it's a rhetorical device, as well as kind of used in poetry. But you see, let me just explain it to you a little bit. You see at the top do not be afraid and at the very bottom do not fear, you see they're lined up, that's we could say a or one, if you want, and they're saying something that's very similar, right? And then the next line do not be afraid at the second line, and afterwards have nothing more they can do at some sort of explanation on verses 6 and following, 6 and 7 are not five sparrows. It's another explanation, it's something similar. And then at verse 5, the next kind of indentation in, but I will warn you whom to fear, the thing that parallels that, yes I tell you fear him, there's that indication, I'll tell you who to fear, and then in the middle, the point, right, fear the one who after he has killed has authority to cast into hell. Jesus gives us a little bigger perspective. He gives us a way to consider life, and I want you to see that it's at least consistent with the two great commandments, that we're to love God first and our neighbor second. In fact, I would encourage you to think about it just that way. I should love God first and my neighbor second, so that when we think about the words that come out of our mouth, we're thinking, does this honor God first? It's not that I love God and hate my neighbor, it's that I love God first. And then I'm able to love my neighbor, the way God says, to love my neighbor. There's supposed to be, it's interesting when he talks about fear, and we have to keep in mind that he has, and he is teaching Jewish people as a Jewish rabbi, and if we think about the Old Testament teaching, the idea of the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom is a very well-known concept. The fear of the Lord is you some 20 some odd times, the idea of the fear of God is mentioned, just the word fear and Lord over a hundred times in the Old Testament. This idea that we're to fear God is big, and in the context here, it's more than just reverence in respect. It's obvious. Hey, this guy can send you to hell, but it's more than terror. It's more than, we fear the power of God to destroy us both in this life and the life to come. It's very much connected to the way we fear people, often it's we want their respect, we want their love, we want to honor them. And these are things that should be true about our love for God. The fear of the Lord from the Hebrew mindset, from the Old Testament teaching, is that yes, he's great. He's all powerful. There's a holy terror because of his power and might who brings the earthquakes, who brings the tsunamis, who brings the hurricanes and tornadoes, who strips the forest bare with the breath of his mouth. But there's this holy sense of awe, that is beauty, that is worthiness, to be trusted, to be loved, to be served, and that's what Jesus calls us to. He gives us something too, I might say, of a test in verses 8 through 12, so we can consider for ourselves. So who do I really fear? He says, I say to you, everyone who confesses me before men, the Son of man will confess him also before the angels of God. But he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God, and everyone who speaks a word against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him. But he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven. I'll just stop right there and say the measuring device seems to help us to evaluate who we fear is, do I confess Christ before others? Is Christ such a natural part of my life that he comes up in the conversations? And I think we can look at that and just say, well, he doesn't home, I try and teach my children the Bible or grandchildren, or as the case may be, my spouse, my roommates, but never at school, or never at work, it's not allowed there. And even on my own time, it's just not a natural place. People may think this, that, or the other thing. I would be an indication of private life, public life, and I'm not talking about beaten people over the head with the gospel, and brother, are you saved, and using our employer's time to preach the gospel, I'm talking about living a consistent life. Because if Jesus is our close personal friend, we're going to talk about it. We talk about the things we're thinking about. We talk about the people we're relating to it. That's how we relate us humans. That's what we do. How is your day? Well, I talked to this person, I talked to that person, and we talked about this, and we talked about that. Where's Jesus? That's what he's calling us, too, really. Here's the warning. Look, this hypocrisy, this fear of man issue, it's pervasive. It's the air we breathe. It's the default program that loads up in the morning when I wake up. And it's more like Windows than Mac, and it's got lots of bugs, and so how are you? Do you speak a lot about Christ as just a natural part of your life? The things of God just readily available, because that's who you fear. That's who you worship, that's who you love. If not, I want to suggest to you that you'll be tempted to say, oh, I'm a Christian, I need to speak more about Jesus. And the application is not to go to work tomorrow or school, or wherever it is you're going, and find the first poor soul you can and say, let me tell you about Jesus. The application is to go home today and talk to Jesus, and to wake up in the morning and talk to Jesus, and to think about Jesus during the day, and talk about Him in the night, and be so full of time with Jesus that you can't help but talk about Him. It's a natural part of your life. That's the application. That is what fear of the Lord is. Fear of the Lord is the man who has blessed and meditates on the law a day and night. Fear of the Lord is the one who walks with him, who knows his commandments, who knows that their right entrusts them. He's the one who doesn't live according to how he feels in the moment, or what he sees as the danger. He's the one who lives according to the God who controls all things. She will act on the basis of God in the moment. And there's no worry about what to say if push comes to shove and you're before the authorities, because you're so used to the Holy Spirit's work in your life, showing you the things of God in Scripture, helping you in your prayer life, convicting you of sin, helping you to repent and believe the gospel that the sin is forgiven, that of course the Holy Spirit will speak and you'll know what to say. That's the fear of the Lord. So let me just give you that proposition again. Don't be influenced by hypocrites or man, let be influenced by the fear of the Lord. That's great. Father, thank you for the Scriptures, for their clarity. Lord Jesus, thank you that you demonstrated this wonderfully, that you loved the Father, that you walked with the Father so much that you were always talking about Him. You were always leading to people to Him and you were extremely frustrated with those whose life was a hindrance to the gospel and people moving toward God. Grant us your Spirit, Lord Jesus, that we would remove the hindrances in our lives that would obscure the vision of God. We ask in Jesus' name, oh man.