[0:00] Greetings from Crossway Church this morning. I notice some of you who are keen observers have already noticed one thing. I brought my Bible this time. So we're in good shape. For those of you who weren't there last time, I made the cardinal mistake the first time I'd ever done this, so it was very bad timing for this blunder.
[0:21] I left my Bible at home when I drove out here, and I had to borrow another Bible from the church. That's really not something you should do when you're preaching. Now, for those of you who haven't met me yet and I haven't met you, maybe we should be doing an icebreaker.
[0:37] So let's do an icebreaker question. Let's start with one that's really common. Okay, this is one that actually kind of annoys me a little bit. I just don't like this question, but we're going to do it anyway. If you could have dinner with one person in history, who would it be?
[0:52] If you could have dinner with one person in history, who would it be? Now, for those of you who are good little Sunday school keeners, what's the right answer? It's Jesus. Jesus. Yeah, yeah. That's right. Or Moses.
[1:07] But it's Jesus, right? We all think it would be great to have Jesus over for dinner, right? I mean, maybe he'll restock your bread supplies, something like that. But a certain religious leader in Jesus' days, he heard Jesus teach, and he thought, you know what? This guy would be a good guy to have over for dinner.
[1:25] It would be good to bring this guy in for dinner, good to hear him teach. And so what he does is he invites Jesus over for a dinner party, and it quickly becomes the most awkward dinner party in biblical history.
[1:39] It becomes a very awkward situation. So just be warned, if you invite Jesus over for dinner, it might not be a very fun evening. We're going to start with a story of the awkward dinner party in Luke 11, verse 37.
[1:52] So this is Luke 11, verse 37. If you're new to the Bible, if you're unfamiliar with it, Luke is a book in the New Testament of the Bible towards the end. It's one of the longer books in the New Testament, so if you flip around, you'll find it pretty quick.
[2:08] Look for the big number, chapter 11, then look for the little number, verse 37. I'm reading from the English Standard Version translation. Just follow along in your own copy of Scripture or kind of lean over and peek at your neighbors. I promise you they won't mind.
[2:23] So here's the word of the Lord from beginning in Luke 11, verse 37. While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked to dine with him.
[2:36] Now, first of all, the Pharisees are this sect of religious leaders in Israel. The Pharisees are very conservative religious leaders. They're very influential and popular among the people.
[2:47] So the Pharisee asks Jesus to dine with him. So, back in verse 37, he went in and reclined at table. They didn't have chairs, so they kind of just lay on the ground at the table.
[3:01] The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. Now, all the moms out there are like, yes, I would be astonished too if my children didn't wash before dinner.
[3:12] But this is a different sort of thing. This is a ceremonial washing that the Pharisees did. It wasn't required by God, by the law of Moses. This was a tradition that their elders had passed down. They expected everyone to do this, and Jesus didn't do it.
[3:26] Back to the text. And the Lord said to him, Now you Pharisees, cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish. But inside you are full of greed and wickedness.
[3:39] You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.
[3:50] But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.
[4:02] Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues, and greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.
[4:18] Now expressions of woe, those are expressions of deep sorrow, expressions of regret over the character of these religious leaders who are leading the people astray. Now, if you're one of the people sitting at this dinner party, you're thinking this guest is very, very rude.
[4:36] He's insulting his host. And there's this other group of people at this dinner party that the text calls, that Luke calls, lawyers. Now some of you think, yes, that's great, the lawyers get their comeuppance.
[4:48] That's what I've always wanted to hear. But this is a different sort than the lawyers we're familiar with today. These are experts in the law of Moses. These are men who spend their whole lives, their whole career, is dedicated towards studying the law of Moses.
[5:01] And one of these individuals is here. One of the lawyers answered him, teacher, in saying these things, you insult us also.
[5:13] And he said, woe to you lawyers also, for you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.
[5:25] Woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses, and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs.
[5:37] Therefore also the wisdom of God said, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute, so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.
[5:55] Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.
[6:11] Then all the religious leaders said, thank you for the constructive feedback. We will reevaluate our ways and get back to you, Jesus. Verse 53, As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard, and to provoke him to speak about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.
[6:38] 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.
[6:51] 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.
[7:08] This is the word of the Lord. Let's backtrack to verse 53. Let's go back there to the to this crazy aftermath of the dinner party.
[7:23] Oh man, I can't even imagine this situation. Look at how the religious leaders respond. They've decided they are going to have to bring Jesus down. They're going to have to bring down this enemy of theirs.
[7:37] Now, they adopt an interesting tactic here, don't they? chapter 11, verse 53. As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, lying in wait for him to catch him in something he might say.
[7:58] Now, let's suppose you want to bring someone down. You want to bring down someone who's a threat to you, right? I mean, I know we probably talk a lot about this in your growth groups.
[8:10] Like, how do I bring down someone who's a threat to me? You know, there are several ways that you can do it if you want to, right? You can, first of all, one way you can do it is you can simply spread around rumors.
[8:21] You can spread around gossip. Did you hear what that Jesus guy said? I heard that Jesus said this. You can publicly denounce them in speech and writing. The Pharisees could write an article to, I don't know, the Jerusalem Post or whatever and say, hey, this guy Jesus shouldn't be teaching these things.
[8:38] He's going to bring the Romans down on us. You can try to intimidate this person by threatening them or by threatening someone that they love.
[8:51] And if all else fails, you can just kill them. You can just straight up kill this person. And what's interesting is that throughout the Gospels, throughout the four accounts we have of the life of Jesus, actually all of those things happen to Jesus.
[9:08] His enemies tried out every tactic in the book to bring him down. But in this instance, none of those things are what the Pharisees do. They don't do that this time. I actually think this one's pretty clever.
[9:19] Here's what they decide to do. These really smart, very intelligent men, remember that these guys probably have IQs that are double those of Jesus' disciples.
[9:30] These are very intelligent, very powerful men, and what they're going to do is they're going to pull a little bit of public relations judo. What they're going to do is they're going to use their opponent's momentum against him.
[9:43] So, instead of shutting Jesus up, they're going to press him to speak more. Talk more, Jesus. Keep talking. Yes, keep talking. Keep talking. Keep talking. They're going to ask him questions about controversial issues.
[9:55] They're going to ask him what the answers are. They want Jesus to keep going. And what they're doing is they are laying a trap. They're laying a trap. These religious leaders, they're good students of human nature.
[10:08] They know what people are like. They know the lesson of Proverbs 10, verse 19, which reads, When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.
[10:22] When words are many, transgression is not lacking. And these men have already decided this Jesus is an evil man. This Jesus is a troublemaker. This Jesus is a threat. All we need to do is to get him to multiply his words, to get him to speak more and more.
[10:36] And eventually, what's going to happen is he's going to slip up and he's going to say the wrong thing. And then it'll be all over. And you know it'll be all over because of chapter 12, verse 1.
[10:50] Look at the way that Luke describes the crowds that have gathered to hear Jesus talk. So many thousands of people had gathered together that they were trampling one another.
[11:01] Now, how many of you have seen these beautiful, idyllic paintings of Jesus with his little ring of disciples around him?
[11:12] And he's got like a little child on his knee and he's smiling and maybe he's got his hand... I don't know why Jesus always has his finger up like this, but he always does. He always has his finger up like this with the light beaming off his beautiful face.
[11:23] And all around him are the people seated in neat, polite rows on the ground listening intently to him. It's just this beautiful scene of order. And the reality was this is like a scene from a Seattle Walmart, 5.30 a.m. Black Friday.
[11:38] Okay? This is the reality of the situation. Jesus can't even go into towns a lot of time because thousands of people are coming out. They're following him wherever he goes. Sometimes he tries to get away from them and he can't. They follow him wherever he goes.
[11:50] It's pandemonium. They're all pressing in on him. They're all wanting to hear him say something. They're all wanting to be healed of something. They're all pushing and shoving and trampling each other to get to Jesus.
[12:01] This is a chaotic, this is a volatile situation. And when you've got a crowd this worked up, it's not going to take more than a few wrong words for all of that intense energy to be turned against you.
[12:18] They're trampling each other, but they could very easily be trampling Jesus and his disciples. The religious leaders know that. They are counting on that. They're counting on the mob turning against Jesus when he says the wrong thing.
[12:32] Now, do you think Jesus is unaware of this? No, Jesus absolutely knows exactly what's going on. He knows he's a marked man.
[12:44] He knows the Pharisees want to see through him. He knows. They want to expose him as a fraud. Jesus knows what it's like to have enemies. Jesus knows what it's like to have people who want to see through him, who want to expose him as a fraud.
[13:01] Now, do you know what that feels like? I think some of you do. Some of you can probably name a specific person in your life who seems to be out to get you.
[13:18] Maybe there's someone who always seems to be probing and examining you, who seems to be waiting to say the wrong thing so they can jump all over you. It's like walking on eggshells around this person.
[13:29] And the reality is, I think that happens to all of us at some point in our life. If you haven't run into this kind of person, you will. And the more faithfully that you and I follow Christ, the more likely we are to rub coworkers, to rub family members the wrong way.
[13:48] The more likely we are to become a target. If this hasn't happened to you, it will. There are people who want to see through you and humiliate you.
[14:01] There are people who want to see through you and humiliate you. And maybe, you know, maybe they're not, like, really aggressive about it. Maybe they're just sitting back and waiting, biding their time, waiting for you to screw up, and then they pounce.
[14:16] This happens. There are people like that. We can't be naive about it. Now, some of you can name a specific person. You know someone in your life like this.
[14:29] But maybe the truth is, for some of you, you feel that way about just about everybody. You're worried that anyone around you, even many of the people, all the other people in this room, maybe they're going to see through you.
[14:42] They're going to see you for who you are, and they're going to expose you as a fraud if they find out what you're really like underneath. Do you ever feel like there's something dirty that you're hiding from other people sitting around you?
[14:58] Do you ever find yourself worrying, what if people find out who I really am? What if people find out what happened to me when I was 13 years old? What if people find out what I said to my kids this morning?
[15:12] What if people find out what I did when I was alone last Friday? Do you ever think those thoughts? I do.
[15:23] I do. I think those. And the word that those thoughts describe is a simple one. It's called shame. It's shame. And you and I are ashamed, and so what we do because we are ashamed is we guard our heart carefully.
[15:40] We put up walls all around us to protect ourselves. and we put on a cheerful face and a happy grin and we come into church on Sunday morning and someone says, how are you doing?
[15:50] And you say, great. With a big fake smile on our face. But in private, we're a different person. When we're alone, we're different people. When you're at home with your family, maybe you're a different person than you are here.
[16:06] A lot of times we live two lives, a public life and a private life, and that's really encouraged in our culture. In a very secularized culture, what happens is there's the public sphere where there's certain things you can't say and do.
[16:17] You don't talk about religion, you don't talk about politics, you don't talk about all these things, and then in private you can do whatever you want, but in the public you have to be a different person. That's heavily reinforced in our culture, and that becomes the way that we run our lives, the private and the public.
[16:35] And Jesus knows this. Jesus knows what you and I are like. He sees right through us. And so what he does is he takes his disciples and he gathers them to him in the middle of this crazy situation.
[16:52] And what he does is he huddles up and put yourself in the shoes of his disciples for a moment here because you've got the Pharisees, you've got these influential, powerful religious leaders who are a lot smarter than you, who are a lot more influential than you, and they've been hounding you.
[17:07] They probably were not just hounding Jesus. I'm sure they were hounding his disciples too. If you can't bring Jesus down, at least show that his followers are frauds. And they're trying to catch you saying the wrong thing.
[17:21] In fact, they are probably in this crowd right now. They're waiting for the right opportunity. And so what Jesus does, he pulls you close to him and he says to you, he speaks to you in an urgent tone of voice, what would you expect him to say?
[17:38] Amen. What's interesting is this is where, when I was preparing the sermon, this is kind of where the sermon went off the rails a little bit because at this point I kind of forgot about Jesus.
[17:55] I kind of jumped into Jesus' teaching and started to go into the study of the word of God here and I started talking about doing a little bit of counseling of all of you out here and it was good.
[18:11] But I forgot about Jesus. Think about what this tells you about Jesus. Look at the tenderness of this. Jesus is in the middle of a crazy situation. The crowds are all over him.
[18:22] It would be easy for him to kind of just get up there on a big rock and start preaching really loud and... But what he does is the very first thing he does in this crazy situation is pulls his disciples to him and he counsels them and he encourages them and he tells them the truth and he tells them the hard truth too.
[18:41] Isn't that amazing? Just the tenderness of Jesus in this and what you'd expect Jesus to say is something like this. If you're me, you'd expect Jesus to say, beware of the Pharisees.
[18:54] Watch out for the Pharisees. Because what you say in secret, they're going to broadcast to the whole world. Now isn't that what you'd expect?
[19:06] Because the way I think about this situation, the biggest threat here is the Pharisees. The biggest threat here is the enemy of Jesus. But Jesus isn't like you and me. He doesn't think that way a lot of times.
[19:18] Jesus sees things not from an earthly perspective. He sees things from a heavenly perspective. Jesus, we tend to think of people as really big and God as really small. Jesus thinks the other way around.
[19:30] He tends to think of people as small and God as really big and really powerful. So Jesus isn't worried about the enemy outside. He's not worried about the enemy outside of you.
[19:40] He's worried about the enemy within. He's much more concerned about that. Look at what he tells his disciples in verse 2. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
[19:57] Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. So Jesus doesn't say to be anxious about what your enemies can do to you. What Jesus says is that if you're going to be afraid of anything, and everybody's afraid of something, he says, be afraid of this.
[20:12] Be afraid of this thing called hypocrisy. Be afraid of acting like someone holy and good when you're not. Be afraid of washing the outside of the cup and the dish, but leaving the inside full of greed and wickedness.
[20:30] Because yes, there are people who want to see through you and humiliate you, but the greatest danger is what's hiding in your own heart. The greatest danger is what is hiding in your own heart. The greatest danger is hypocrisy.
[20:45] And Jesus says to be afraid of it because he calls it the leaven of the Pharisees. It's interesting that he calls it the leaven of the Pharisees because there's an irony here.
[20:57] It's the Pharisees, they're the ones trying to get Jesus to speak and expose what's inside of his heart, aren't they? They're convinced that he is the one who is rotten inside. They refuse to think about the fact that they're the ones who are rotten inside.
[21:09] He called them out on that very thing and they didn't even realize it. Do you see the irony here? They're projecting their own problems on Jesus.
[21:19] They're projecting their own sin on Jesus. They're trying to get him to expose his rottenness by talking. But they're the ones who are the hypocrites. And that's why, this is why their reason to trap, their reason that they're trying to trap Jesus, this is why their attempts are never going to succeed.
[21:37] because there is nothing for Jesus to hide. Do you see this? Jesus is speaking to his disciples out of the very depths of his heart.
[21:48] Jesus isn't, you know, trying to beat them up here. He's not trying to be this strict disciplinarian. He's speaking to them. His heart is breaking as he tells his disciples, watch out for this.
[22:01] Beware of this. In their attempts to get him to expose his evil in his heart, he exposes what is so good about him. What is so precious about Jesus. He is on the outside as he is on the inside.
[22:16] He is holy. He is pure. He is spotless from head to toe. From the outside all the way into the core of his being to his heart. I know maybe you weren't raised to believe that.
[22:26] Maybe you're coming into this building this morning not really buying that. You think Jesus is a good man, but he's not perfect. But I tell you what, he is. From head to toe, from outside in, all the way through, he is the perfect son of God, absolutely holy and blameless, and he's showing it right now.
[22:46] And Jesus is concerned because he knows that you and I aren't that way. He knows we're not that way. Because Jesus is the wisest man who ever lived. He just has this incredible piercing insight into the very core of who we are.
[23:02] And Jesus loves us enough that he is going to give us the hard truth. Sometimes Jesus isn't very nice. And the reason Jesus isn't very nice is because he loves us so much. Jesus knows that there is a cancer inside of our hearts.
[23:16] And what doctor will tell someone who's dying of cancer, you're okay? What kind of a hateful, mean doctor would say that? The doctor who loves you is the one who says, you have cancer.
[23:30] And that's what Jesus is telling his disciples. He says, there is hypocrisy. It's the leaven of the Pharisees. And it's just kind of odd that he calls it leaven, isn't it?
[23:45] This baker's yeast, right? I mean, maybe you're thinking Jesus is about to launch into a lesson on bread making, right? He's not, of course. I mean, maybe he could start a baking ministry outreach.
[23:58] He seems to demonstrate that at another point. But a little later in Luke's gospel, in chapter 13, verse 20, Jesus shows us what he means by this picture of leaven, of baker's yeast.
[24:10] And in this situation, Jesus uses it in a positive way. Chapter 13, verse 20, Jesus says, to what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like, like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.
[24:29] So what the woman in this parable is doing is she's taking this little pinch of leaven, this little pinch of baker's yeast, and she's kneading it and working it into this enormous batch of flour.
[24:40] This is 40 liters of flour. So maybe she's doing the baking ministry, I guess. But when you do that, it looks like the yeast is gone. It looks like the leaven is gone.
[24:52] You just put this little pinch of leaven and you knead it into the flour and where did it go? It's hidden. It doesn't look like it's having any influence, but what happens is that as the flour is kneaded, that little pinch of leaven, it works its way through the entire batch and then the yeast spreads, it multiplies, it causes the dough to rise and the whole batch is consumed.
[25:14] That's a good thing when it comes to the kingdom of God. That's a great thing. When it comes to hypocrisy, that's a very bad thing. Jesus calls it the leaven of the Pharisees because what he's saying is that there is evil, there is sin and it might just be a little pinch.
[25:26] We might think of it as just a little pinch inside of us, but that hypocrisy that's hiding inside of my heart and hiding inside of your heart, what happens is that we tried to hide it from people around us.
[25:38] We hope, we think I've got this under control, no need to go and tell this to other people, no need to get help, no need to repent before other people.
[25:49] We hope no one sees it. It's just a little bit of sin. We manage it. We allow it to linger and we keep saying and doing the right things in our public lives, but in our private lives, the evil grows.
[26:01] The thing about hypocrisy that Jesus says is it will not stay under control. It cannot be mastered. It spreads, it grows, it works its way through our entire being and it consumes us and that has happened to the Pharisees.
[26:16] There's a commentator on the Gospel of Luke named Leon Morris and he writes this about what's going on. He says, leaven speaks of a penetration that is slow, insidious and constant.
[26:28] In this case, the leaven is hypocrisy. The practice of saying one thing and doing another eats at the moral life like a canker. So you and I, we cannot manage hypocrisy.
[26:45] We cannot control it. It's going to work its way through our entire system and Jesus, he explains to us why this is so dangerous. This is the love of Christ.
[26:57] Chapter 12, verse 2. 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.
[27:15] Show of hands, who thinks this is good news? Two people here. Wow. That's great. For me, that's not good news.
[27:27] This is terrifying news. What if I said these words, what if I were to go to work tomorrow and to say these words to coworkers as we're sitting there at lunch?
[27:38] By the way, nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. Whatever you've said in the dark is going to be heard in the light. Whatever you whispered in secret, it's going to be proclaimed from the housetops. Are they going to like that?
[27:51] Really, no. Probably not. What if you said them to your unbelieving aunt or uncle? What if you said them to that guy at the gym?
[28:02] Maybe you better not. It looks like he's an NFL linebacker, right? Would you, would they believe that it was a loving thing to say? I'm guessing probably not.
[28:18] What do you think? Is that a loving thing to say? Well, my first instinct when I read this is to be like, oh man, Jesus, oh, oh. Can we tone this down a little bit?
[28:30] I mean, well, 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. Well, maybe Jesus is, maybe he's just talking about a few people.
[28:40] Maybe he thinks only a few people are going to find out about my private life. Only a few people know what I've said in the dark. But then, Jesus doesn't let us off the hook because what he does is he blows it up. He expands on that.
[28:54] He escalates it to the huge proportions. What you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. That's about as close as it came back in those days to being broadcast worldwide.
[29:04] proclaimed on the housetops for everyone to hear. There is no hemming and hawing. There is no way around this.
[29:14] There's no way to water it down. What's going to happen is that one day the Lord God is going to expose all that we've ever said for all of the world to see. If that doesn't happen in this lifetime, for some of us it might.
[29:32] And I want to stop there. Have you ever had that happen to you where something that you meant as a private statement was publicly broadcast and it hurt a lot of people and you regretted it deeply? That's a sneak preview.
[29:46] That's just the tiniest preview of the judgment of God. That's a little bit of the judgment of God slipping into this present age. ... ... This is what's going to happen when we stand before him to be judged by him.
[30:06] Now is your concept of Jesus big enough to handle him saying this? Do we really understand what it means to love people? Are we willing to look at these verses and say these are words of perfect love?
[30:20] Because Jesus, for Jesus they are. He is speaking right out of his heart. He's not speaking this out of a desire to knock people down and to make himself feel better than them. He's saying it because he loves his disciples.
[30:35] He has such a good and loving heart. Please, if all you ever come away from the sermon is this, that Jesus has such a good and loving heart in this way, if all you come away from the sermon is this amazing bigger picture of who Jesus is, that's wonderful.
[30:50] That's all I want. If only our words were the same. Because Jesus says that God is going to expose every word we have ever spoken because just like him, our words also come out of our hearts.
[31:06] What we say in our private lives, it really does reflect what's going on inside of us, doesn't it? I mean, I don't want that to be true. A lot of times I will say something careless and offhand and I'll try to pretend that it's meaningless, but really deep down it does mean something.
[31:21] It does, doesn't it? I want to be able to say that my angry words at work regarding a customer, oh, that's just because I'm having a difficult day, but it's not true.
[31:33] It's because I've got an angry heart. I want to be able to think of the gossip that I shared like it's just a harmless story. We're just kind of poking fun at a friend, but over here, you know, we're just bonding.
[31:45] It's just a bonding time. But no, I have the heart of a gossip. And the Pharisees know that our words reveal who we are.
[31:57] And that's why they want Jesus to talk. And Jesus, you know what Jesus agrees with their principle of the human heart? He says in Luke 6, 43, no tree, good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.
[32:11] For each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good.
[32:22] And the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. So who we are is revealed by our words. Not our public words, but our private words.
[32:36] Who we are is revealed by our words, and who we are inside is revealed by what we say in secret. So when God reveals our secret words, will they not be an accurate assessment of our heart?
[32:46] God knows you. He knows who you are through and through right now. And he knows me, who I am, through and through right now.
[33:02] And so Jesus is not worried that our enemies are going to expose you and me as frauds. He's worried that God is going to be the one who exposes you and me as frauds.
[33:14] Yes, there are people who want to see through you and humiliate you, but the greatest danger is what's hiding in your own heart. So fear God who knows who you are.
[33:26] Fear God who knows who you are. And I want at this point to lay before us there are two possible roads we can go down when we are finished here today.
[33:38] You can go down one of two roads. Everyone in this room can choose one. On the one hand, you and I can fear man because we always are afraid of something or someone. It's part of human nature to fear and that's the way we were made.
[33:52] You can fear other people. We can hide our true selves from them. We can live the life of a hypocrite. And at the end of that road, there's going to be a complete undoing of all of the defenses you've constructed, all the walls you've built up, all the smoke and mirrors that you've placed to hide who you are, all those offensive weapons you have to keep other people from finding out who you are.
[34:13] They're all going to be taken away and stripped from you. There is another path. There is a better road and that is the one that we take when we fear God because this is not the fear, this is not this slavish fear that caused us to hide our face.
[34:29] This is the fear that holds our gaze, that fixes our eyes on the Lord God so we can't even look at anything else because we're so, our eyes are just so fixated on Him in fear and awe and wonder.
[34:44] He outweighs us in power and significance and because you and I fear the God who already sees who we are, we're not afraid anymore to be honest and authentic before other people.
[34:55] Oh, that you could understand that, that the fear of the Lord will liberate you from the fear of other people who will liberate you from this desire to hide yourself and to be in public who you aren't in private.
[35:12] Oh, that you would understand this big, great picture of God because when you go down this road, we repent of our hypocrisy, we repent of our hiding, we turn away from it and we think about this passage of Scripture, we realize just how incredibly kind the Lord God is because He loved you and me, He sent His Son, He sent Jesus Christ to warn us of this.
[35:32] He didn't have to do this. He didn't have to send His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to warn us of this, but He did. And He not only warned us of the danger of sin, but He rescued us from the rebellion, our rebellion against Him.
[35:48] He delivered us from the fear of man that controls us. Jesus gave His life for us. He died on the cross to bear the punishment for our sin. He took that shame on Himself, the shame that you've been hiding, and He bore that shame as He was punished naked on a cross for the whole world to see.
[36:10] And then Jesus rose again to a new and glorious life, a life without sin and shame that He invites you to participate in. And so as we fear the Lord, as we stare into His glory, His blinding glory, and we look at that and we consider all that He has done for us, what's going to happen is it's going to change you.
[36:32] It's going to change you and it's going to change me because as we look at the glory of the Lord, we're transformed from one degree of glory to another and we become what we behold. We become like Him as we see Him.
[36:47] We become holy like He is holy. Our words become pure and wise because He is pure and wise and because our hearts have been changed to be pure and wise and so what comes out of us is good.
[36:58] and we're freed from the power of sin over us. If that's the life that you want to live, I hope and pray that it is. Is that the life you want?
[37:10] If it is, you're in the right place because God has brought you here. He has brought you here this very morning to save you from judgment. He's brought you here to rescue you from shame.
[37:22] If you want someone to pray with you or to talk over this with you after the service about how you're feeling about this, just please feel free. Please absolutely come to me and talk with me about it or come talk to Carl or one of the other elders of the church here.
[37:37] We would love to pray with you over this. Our God and our Father, Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[37:47] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.