In the Gospel of John, you see in chapters 13 through 17, Jesus gives some of the most intimate instruction that he ever gives to his disciples. It is a wealth of guidance for all those who are following Christ. And in John 15, verses 18 through 20, Jesus says these words, if the world hates you, Know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, They will keep yours also. Jesus was very clear from the beginning, you won't necessarily be liked here. You will be misunderstood. You will be hated at times, persecuted because of your connection to me. There was no bait and switch in Jesus's invitation to come and follow me. Jesus was very frank. He was very clear that the road that these 12 men were to follow, and the other disciples as well, was going to be difficult. It was going to be challenging. They would be faced with opposition. Because in our text it might appear, because of the masses, that following Jesus is going to be a breeze. I mean, everybody likes what he has to say. Crowds are coming. Look at his popularity. Look at verse 1 of Luke 12. At this time, after so many thousands of the crowd had gathered together, they were trampling on one another. Jesus brought crowds. Many came as he would go from town to town. People were being healed. Demonic spirits were being dominated by his authority. His preaching was captivating. They were in awe, the text tells us often, of his teaching and his instruction. The people were benefiting from his teaching and his ministry. But you'll notice in our text that Jesus turns his direction towards his men. He turns his direction towards his disciples, even though there are all these crowds, because he wants them to be prepared. He's already told them numerous times in Luke that he is going to Jerusalem. Luke 9.51 tells us he set his face like a flint to Jerusalem. He's telling them that, hey, they are going to try me. They are going to convict me. They are going to kill me. They are going to crucify me. And he even says, brothers, they will do the same to you. He told them in Luke 9 when He sent them out that there would be those who would not receive them. That they would be met with opposition. And what were they to do? They were to shake the dust off of their feet and carry on. In Luke 9.23 He says, If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. Again, Jesus instructing and preparing his men that the ministry he was calling them to was one that would be difficult, one that would require self-denial and even death. So Jesus has been preparing these men from the very beginning, preparing them all along. And Jesus even speaks not only in the text that we looked at several weeks ago when he was speaking to the scholars of the law in Luke 11. You can look there. He's not only speaking in terms of past tense, but he's even speaking prophetically of what is to come. It's going to be more of the same. Remember, he's challenging these scholars of the law who are idolizing the prophets. And he reminds, your ancestors killed them. They didn't like the message that was being preached. And so the people of Israel killed their prophets. They silenced their prophets because they didn't want to hear the message of judgment that was coming from the lips of these prophets. And he said to these scholars of the law, to these Pharisees, and you are the same. You honor these prophets, but you will kill. these prophets. Look at verse 49 of chapter 11. Jesus says this to the scholars of the law, for this reason also the wisdom of God said, I will send to them prophets and apostles and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute so that the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation. They were no different. These would not only kill in the future the apostles, these disciples of Christ, but they'll kill Christ himself. So Jesus, in the midst of all of the fanfare, in the midst of all the crowds, he turns to his disciples and instructs them how to live in a world that is in opposition to them. It doesn't look like it at the moment. But it will be. With the crowds gathered and even overwhelming them, Jesus turns to these men and begins to instruct them. And this morning I want us to note five instructions for standing for Christ during hostile times. We'll actually only look at three of them. We're going to look at the first seven verses this morning, and then we'll look next Lord's Day at the rest of those verses 8 through 12 for a total of five instructions that Jesus gives them for standing for Christ. And in this text, we see standing for Christ unafraid. He wants these men to be unafraid in their standing for Christ. And he gives the first instruction in verses one through three. And I'll just we'll just say this as they're heading. But the instruction is expose secret sins. Don't conceal them. Expose secret sins. Don't conceal them or not conceal them. Look at verse one. Notice what he says to them first. He says, be on your guard for the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. You'll remember that there was discontinuity between the Pharisees' outward lives that looked proper and prepared and religious. But there was discontinuity between their outward lives and their inward lives. Inwardly, they were full of dead men's bones. They were full of wickedness and robbery, the text tells us. They put on a mask, a charade to convince people that they were more righteous than they really were. There was a duplicity, a deception, who they were publicly versus who they were privately. And then the end of chapter 11, Jesus is calling these Pharisees to face the music and And yet we know that they won't. Because what do we read at the very end of chapter 11? And he left them, that being Jesus, there. The scribes and the Pharisees began to be what? Very hostile. And to question him closely on many subjects, plotting to catch him in something he might say. They weren't interested in what he was calling them to. Jesus was saying to face the music, to acknowledge and repent of their hypocrisy. They pretended to be alive spiritually, but inwardly were wicked. And so Jesus now turns his attention to his disciples after this encounter, and he issues a warning. You need to be careful of this. You need to be watchful. You need your eyes wide open concerning the issue of hypocrisy. You need to be concerned on the guard. You need to give heed to the weightiness of duplicity. Because this kind of hypocrisy is dangerous. Dangerous for those who are following in your footsteps, but dangerous for you. For it may be a sign of your own apostasy, that you're not even his. These Pharisees were not just spiritually dead themselves, but they were spiritually dangerous to others. Because this kind of hypocrisy can spread. There's always other victims. Jesus uses that word leaven, yeast, or if you're on that sourdough kick that everyone is on, that's sourdough, right? fermenting component of dough that makes it rise. And the point is that it starts and it begins to spread. It begins to permeate the entire loaf. It begins in one area, one spot, and slowly spreads. So you think of hypocrisy or you think of secret sin that isn't brought to the light. It's left hidden and in the dark. And so what happens? It begins to spread. It begins to expand. And Jesus says, be on the guard for that. Be on the guard for the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Don't hide your sin. Expose it. Come to the light. Levin is actually a great word picture for us as something small and unsuspecting that spreads silently, almost secretly. And it does so slowly over time, but ultimately, It is so pervasive that it overwhelms you. It goes all the way through the entire lump of dough. Paul uses this same kind of imagery in talking about sin and lust and the spread of it. It spreads like a cancer or a disease until it's laid hold of the person completely. Hypocrisy is, of course, defined as simply saying one thing and doing the other, right? We've seen this play out in various contexts. We see, for example, with governing officials, right, during COVID who were telling everyone to mask up and separate while they themselves were dining with their friends, unmasks in these restaurants that were only open for them. That's the definition of hypocrisy, right? You're calling them to do something that you yourself are not doing. But again, repentance needs to begin with the household of God, we have our own scandals, right? Things of hypocrisy that have hit the church, whether it has to do with, you know, misuse of money, or pastors who are preaching and saying one thing and living completely different lives. Those things hit us hard. They strike us. But we know that those things didn't happen overnight, right? It wasn't overnight that a pastor or a leader in the church commits adultery, right? It happens slowly. Choices that are made, excuses that are given, accountability that's not had, right? And over time, it begins to permeate that person until it overtakes them, right? And then it comes out and it comes into the light and it's devastating, right? It's devastating, it hurts that person, it hurts that person's family, it hurts the church and those who it has impacted. And so as humans, we know that there should be continuity between what we say and what we do. And there's nothing like kids to find the hypocrisy in their parents. They notice it so easily, don't they? They know the real you. You might hide it from everyone else, but man, they know the real you. They know the unhinged you. That's often how it is, right? Hypocrisy, you know, you might be able to fool larger groups, right? Those that are acquaintances, neighbors, people within a congregation, but it's very difficult to have that within your own family. I would just say, just as a lesson, Bring that in, take that, you know, your kids see things in you that you probably should notice, right? And use that as an opportunity of the Lord using it to bring your sin to the light, right? And exposing it so that it's not secret, so that you can take care of it. That term hypocrisy, it comes from the theater where an actor would put on a mask to play a part. He would impersonate. a given character. What they were on stage is not what they or who they were offstage. And so the term came to be used in connection with having a moral standard that they themselves did not line up to or they themselves didn't follow. They didn't adhere to it. The challenging thing about hypocrisy, though, is that it's often we can spot it very clearly in others, but we don't see it in ourselves. That's often the hardest place to notice it, to accept it. We all have a propensity towards seeing vices and things in other people and not seeing them in ourselves. And so there is this warning. Jesus, in instructing these disciples, preparing them, readying these men for hostility and opposition in standing for Christ. He says, listen, you need to beware. You need to be on guard. You need to pay close attention to this area of hypocrisy. And I think he's talking more than just the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. That's true too, that is dangerous, right? The hypocrisy of the Pharisees would spread as a contagion to all who follow them. But Jesus is warning these men that hypocrisy, that this leaven has a way of working unnoticed in all of us. He wants them doing business at home before they think about going and standing before tribunals and standing up for Christ. They need to look at their own character first. Your public life and your private life need to line up. Again, not perfectly. None of us lives perfectly. We all have sin, but what do we do? We come to the light. Right? We deal with the things that are going on in our heart. We should be asking questions like, are we the same people in private that we are in public? Are we the same people at church that we are at home? Are we the same people online that we are in person? Be on guard against the leaven of hypocrisy. Because this leaven works slowly and secretly and silently. And Jesus in the rest of that section there in verses 2 and 3 says, come to the light. It's going to come to the light anyway. It always does. If not in your lifetime, certainly in the day of the Lord. So much better to expose it. Don't conceal it. Don't keep it hidden. And that's the tricky part of Lebanon. The process is quiet, it's incremental, it's not easily detected. We often have little vision of our own hypocrisy unless the spirit or another brother or sister brings that to light. It happens so subtly. We may not even see it. ourselves. I think of the episode where Paul confronts Peter. Remember that? Paul confronts Peter, right? On this rock I will build my church. And I think again, grammatically, textually, he's talking about Peter. That doesn't mean he's the Pope, but he is talking about Peter, right? Peter, that guy. Right? So used of the Lord and Paul has to confront him because of his tendencies to go backwards. Right? His tendencies to view people on being, you know, not doing what they're supposed to in terms of the Jewish law. Right? And so Paul confronts him. He exposes him. Did Peter see that in himself? Perhaps. But the Lord uses Paul to help bring him to the light. So we need this admonition to be on guard, to pay close attention to how easily this leaven can spread and take over. Listen, friends, don't excuse your vices. Come to the light. Don't excuse your anger, or your impatience or your irritability, come to the light. Don't excuse your uncontrolled words, right? These are kind of the respectable sins that we all have, that we need to come to the light. We need to come to repentance, jealousy or envy, discontentment and gratitude. Don't think lightly of your tendency towards worldliness or your lust, whether that be sexual, or whether that be personal, you know, own pride, you want fame, you want acknowledgement, or even possessions. We need to bring all of those kinds of things into the light. Expose them, confess them, ask the Lord to help us to overcome them, to not take them lightly, because again, leaven. It's slow, right? It takes time, but all of a sudden it will overwhelm us. It will control us. Jesus exposes the futility of trying to keep sin hidden. Look at verse 2 and 3. But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known. Accordingly, what you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetop. You can kind of see the language of secrecy, right? Covered up, hidden, dark, whispered, right? And he's saying, hey, This is foolishness. Why? This is folly. Why? Because it's going to be revealed. It's going to be made known. It's going to be brought to the light. It's going to be proclaimed upon the housetops. They're going to find out. You want to be dissuaded from cultivating a secret private life? You want to be dissuaded from cultivating you know, where you've got a life of deception and duplicity. Listen, friends, we have plenty of examples contemporarily, right? Man, these things strike us as churches, right? We hear of what happened with Steve Lawson or Ravi Zacharias. Those things are painful and they are a reminder to us all. Sin will not always be hidden. It will not always be in secret. At some point, it will come to the light. It will be exposed. The secrecy, the deception, the whispering, the cover-up, it'll eventually be uncovered. Humans are unable to fully disguise the motivating impulses of their lives. We will inevitably live out what we truly are. what we truly believe. The desires and the intentions of our hearts will eventually come to the light to someone, right? And so there is a foolishness of thinking. Listen, Jesus said it in his own teaching in Luke 6, a tree is recognized by the fruit it bears, right? It's going to be exposed. It's going to be seen. And so it's futile to keep it hidden. Don't hide, don't conceal secret sin, expose it. Listen, you might delete your internet history, keeping it concealed from your spouse or your parent, but one, it won't be concealed forever. And that's true even ultimately. It's not as if you missed the eye of God, that he somehow missed that. What an interesting phrase, what you have whispered in the inner rooms, right? Our most private acts will become public. That's a reversal, isn't it? Listen, you might fix the financials at work or fix the financials with the IRS, but exposure is just around the corner. You know, young person, you maybe used chat GPT for a homework assignment and turned it in as your own. People are doing that. Jack and I once sat in his office, and we were typing out, like, hey, let's do 1 Peter chapter 3. We typed in, like, quotes from Charles Spurgeon. Because it seems like I always have a quote from Spurgeon. I don't this morning, but I usually do. And seriously, chat GPT. You know, it's like, whoa, we never used it. I couldn't do that stuff. That's like preaching someone's other sermon. That just doesn't work for me. But I can see where students, it'd be tempting, right? You think no one will know. Listen, what is concealed eventually gets revealed. We've all had that time with our parents, haven't we? Where we thought we pulled a fast one with them, right? We thought, oh, they'll never know, right? And sometimes it's over the dumbest things. And then it comes to the light and we bear the consequence. Better to come to the light. Better to be honest. Better to be honest before the Lord. Because what was whispered in the secret is reported on the evening news. Isn't that tragic? That is exactly what has happened in some of these public cases. It's sad. It happens every day. But even if it never gets exposed in this present life, and you're able to keep your hypocrisy going, it will be revealed before the Lord on the Day of Judgment. What you are in public will never blind God to what you are in private. That's a sobering reminder. What you are in public will never blind God to what you are in private. Solomon's closing statement in Ecclesiastes 12, 14, for God will bring every work to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. There will be full Disclosure. All will come to the light. Every proud conceit, every petty theft, angry word, abusive blow, lustful fantasy, thought of self-pity, spinning of the truth, whispering of gossip, it will all be exposed. That to me is a motivator for just coming to the light. exposing sin, confessing it, mortifying it, to use an old John Owen term, that Puritan, mortifying it, killing it, being in the battle. to fight against sin. That's all Romans 6 and 7. So if you find yourself tripped up in sin, like it's getting its tangles, its web around you, man, go to Romans 6, 7, and 8, right? Keep going, right? 8, there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Six, seven, eight, it's battle, it's a war, don't give up, keep fighting, beware, be on guard. That's Jesus' first instruction to these guys. Before you can stand for Christ in public, you need to be holy in private. You can't go to battle with the devil's forces out here when you're enjoying the devil's delights in here, right, in our hearts. Again, listen, we can't really decry the moral degeneracy of our own society if we're breaking God's law in our hearts. That's hypocrisy. And Peter says it well. It is time for judgment to begin with the house of God. So let's make sure that we are exposing secret sins, that there is accountability, mutual accountability, that discipleship is truly happening. Now, this does not mean that in order to stand for Jesus, we have to be perfect people. We all recognize that we're flawed people. That's part of the gospel, right? I mean, that's an important part. We all fall short of the glory of God, but there's also a difference between fighting against hypocrisy, trying to mortify and kill it, and the one who isn't. The one who's thrown himself headlong into sin and doesn't see it as he should, instead he kind of makes excuses for it. The one who is fighting sin will not deflect his sin when it's called out or seen or excused or explained in a way. He'll confess it, be sorrowful over it, long for change and ask God to assist him. Proverbs 28, 13, whoever conceals his transgression will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy or receive compassion, right? Don't conceal, there's no prosperity in that. And by the way, that's not monetarily, right? It's just saying you're gonna prosper in wise living if you are quick to confess and forsake. and you'll receive the mercy that you need. It's 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We cannot live in darkness and say we're in the light, habitually, continually, but nor can we say we have no sin, and so when we do sin, what do we do? We come to the light. We expose it because we want to We want to fight against it. So if we're to stand for Christ unafraid, we need to be on guard. We need to expose secret sins, not conceal them. We see a second lesson in verses four and five, and it's this. Fear God's judgment, not man's. Fear God's judgments, not man's. Listen, we can't Eliminate fear altogether. It's part of our frailty as fallen creatures living in a vast universe that's ruled by a sovereign God. Our souls were made for eternity. How can we but not fear our own mortality? But Scripture makes clear that there is a wrong fear and there is a right fear. There is a right person to fear and there is a wrong person to fear. And so Jesus simply in this text in verses four and five says, you need to make sure that you're fearing the right person. Make sure that you're assessing accurately the real danger in all of this. Because if you think it's just your life now, that's the worst they can do. Listen to what he says in verse four. Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that, know more that they can do. Jesus is making an argument from the lesser to the greater, and this is the lesser. The worst that man can do to you is end your physical life. That's not so bad. Now I realize that's a hard teaching because we love our bodies and we instinctively protect them, right? Any way that we can. And so we might read and after that, they have no more that they can do. And you think, well, man, that's a lot. They could end my life. That's kind of a lot, Jesus. You're asking me to hold my life, the only life I know, as expendable. The worst they can do to me is end my life, which is the lesser in Jesus's argument. And I realize that's hard to swallow. It would seem self-evident that those who kill the body should be feared. We don't want to die. We want to live. But Jesus dismisses this fear. Notice that Jesus doesn't guarantee his servants' immunity from being killed. Instead, he simply tells them that the killers have no real clout. That's the worst they can do. So don't fear them, because there's more to this life. And again, if you remember Jesus's teaching, there's more to this life than eating and drinking and having and experiencing. Most of us are afraid of physical pain and shudder at the prospect of death. So again, I realize this seems weighty, but remember what he's already told them. If you want to follow me, if you want to come after me, deny yourself, take up your cross, that's an instrument of death, and follow me. Right? Jesus is no bait and switch. He's just giving further instruction. He's just trying to motivate them. He's trying to help them not be afraid. And he's saying, listen, the worst they can do is take your life. That's it. He's putting this life in perspective. The worst that these guys can dish out is physical death. And what you need to know about physical death, even though we fear it, we don't want to go through it, is it's a season. It might be painful. For some, it might even be prolonged. But death is temporary. Nothing in this experience is deserving of genuine fear. Physical death is a brief moment in comparison with eternity. So Jesus says, listen, I want you to stand for me, unafraid, because you fear God more than you do men. Because the worst that they can offer you is death mortally, physically, right? Our real concern ought to be what will happen to us after death. What will happen to us in eternity? How much of our lives are spent in the fear of man? Forget death. We're afraid of being scorned or disliked. We were so controlled and caught up by the fear of man. We care so much about what other people think about us. And I know the teenagers are like, yeah, it's so true. But adults are the same. We're kids growing old. We care far too much about man's opinion of us, of being liked, of being accepted, And Jesus has already said, look, you're not going to be. Sometimes some guys, they're going to hate what you say. They're going to hate me so much that they're going to end your life because they don't want to hear about it. And for many of these men that he's speaking to at this moment, that is the case. And so in our day, you know, in America, we're not dealing with the fear of persecution to that level. Maybe you've gotten side eyes, maybe somebody's yelled at you, they don't want to hear you if you're sharing the gospel, but that's probably worse case. Maybe you've been spat upon, I know some people who have, or people threatened, you know, punches thrown, but not usually. These guys were facing death, but we are afraid of scorn, disappointment. We are far too easily frightened by puny man and their opinions of us. We're afraid to take a moral stand at work because it might cost us our career. or that person that we've been talking to won't talk to us anymore, that person that we like to hang out with. We're afraid to defend our Christian position in a college classroom or in a faculty lounge because we might be ousted, we might be the outcast. Oh, here comes that guy again. We're afraid to challenge our friends when they're going in the wrong spiritual direction because we don't want to be viewed as judgy, right? We don't want to be that guy. We're afraid to talk to strangers about the gospel because we don't want them to think us weird. What weird beliefs you have. Fear impacts our witness and Jesus is putting it in perspective. Fear stifles our evangelism. And for the vast majority of us in this room, death because of our witness for Christ isn't even a legitimate fear. Because it's not going to happen. Much more for these guys. And it could get in that direction. So if death is the worst, that means people not liking you, side eyes, arguing with you, you being the outcast and the stranger. That's even less. It doesn't matter. Our fear of man is misdirected. It's misguided. Instead, Jesus says in verse 5, but I will show you whom to fear. Fear the one who after he is killed has authority to cast into hell. There's only one right and proper fear, and that is, as Proverbs reminds us, and a lot of the wisdom literature, the fear of God. Fear the one who is greater than man, greater than the devil and his minions. Because God can not only inflict death upon you, but he can cast you into hell. He has the authority to inflict eternal misery. And Jesus doesn't stutter here. Notice what he says. Yes, I tell you, fear him. He's putting this in perspective. Proverbs tells us, Job told, if you've read through Job, Job says this as well, but fearing God is the beginning of wisdom. It's folly to spend our lives fearing a lesser authority with less power and less consequence. You might remember when Peter and John in Acts chapter five declared to the religious establishment, we must fear God rather than man. We cannot help but speak of the things which we have seen and which we have heard. We can't. We have to fear God above the fear of man. This very instruction in Luke 12 is likely echoing through their minds. God's authority is greater. Don't fear the one who might be able to imprison you or beat you or even cause your death. Fear the one who's able to judge you ultimately. And so whatever happens to us in service to the Lord by mortal man is of lesser consequence. It's of lesser significance. And why is that the case? Because his judgment is ultimate. Man's judgment is fleeting and failing as man is. God's judgment is ultimate. It's greater. He has the authority, the text tells us, to cast you into hell. And that word hell, in verse 5, it's the the Greek word Gehenna. It's a graphic image that Jesus' audience would know, right? It was a stone's throw from the temple. It was a place that Israel sacrificed their sons and daughters and burnt offerings to Baal and Molech. It's the place where King Josiah, during his reform, tore down the high places of idolatry. He dismantled them. He desecrated them. He turned them into a smoldering rubbish dump. And that served as a reminder of wickedness, of shame. And so Gehenna was a ravine of smoking garbage, and a cursed place of perpetual burning. And it came to be used figuratively to speak of the torments of everlasting fire. Fear the one who has authority to cast you into Gehenna. Of course, we know in Revelation that refers to this as the second death, the ultimate death, not that it ends, but that it continues on, that this is worse than the first one. Jesus says, don't fear man who can only bring about the first death for you. Fear the one who brings about The second death, the greater death. Now, again, I can't think of two more unpopular Christian notions today than fearing God and hell, right? Both of them are out of vogue in our contemporary culture. And yet here you have Jesus teaching this. Jesus spoke more of hell than he ever did of heaven. And so again, I realize that hell is a difficult doctrine. It seems so severe, so despairing. And yet scripture over and over again challenges us to choose life, not death, to flee the wrath that is to come. Hell is real whether we believe it or not. And you don't have to go there because you can run to Christ, right? Don't go there. Fear God. Come into fearing God and living according to his ways. Run from his wrath. That is, if you are outside of Christ, pointed in your direction. That God does judge. He will judge, ultimately. And it is only those who are in Christ who will be saved. It is only those who are in Christ that will experience the new heavens and the new earth. And so again, on this side of eternity, the message is simple. Run to Jesus Christ. Turn from your sin and embrace him as Savior. He experienced the wrath and judgment of God in our place, so run to Him and find mercy and grace. Turn from your sin. Expose it for what it is and run to Christ where you will find mercy. That is a guarantee. You will be met with mercy and grace in your repentance and faith. Jesus says it three times to fear, right? Fearing God. I will show you whom to fear. And then he says, fear the one. And one is an all capital. And then at the very end, I tell you, yes, I tell you, fear him. Jesus wants his men to fear God. He wanted him to fear God so much that they never feared the face of man. And here's the reality, again, none of these men are perfect, these disciples, but according to the New Testament, they boldly preach the gospel all over the ancient world. According to tradition, all of them also died violent deaths, except for John. This was a lesson that they needed to be reminded of, and if you've read church history, Whether you're talking about the early church in the Rome and even beyond, there were these epics, these times of great persecution against the church. Men who died for Christ, who needed to fear God more than they feared man. The fear of man will cause compromise. It often did, because there's examples of that. It will cause us to renounce Christ as we go with the flow of society, longing for acceptance. So as Christians, we need to be careful about what God thinks and what God has revealed versus what man thinks. 1 Peter 2.17, Peter commands us to fear God. The book of Acts describes the church as living in the fear of the Lord. Second Corinthians 7.1 says that we are to purify our lives in the fear of God. So the fear of God is part of the Christian life. Of course, this fear is all shaped by the gospel. Romans 8.1, we don't fear condemnation for those who are in Christ. We don't fear His wrath because we know it's been fully extinguished in Christ, that Christ has bore it, He endured it on our behalf. But even still we fear him as a child would fear their father. We would not be flippant about our sin knowing he is a good father who Hebrews 11 and 12 talk about him disciplining those that he loves, that are his. So if we're going to stand for Christ, we have to resist the lesser desire to be liked by man or to please this world with the greater desire of fearing God and pleasing him. Whose opinion do you ultimately care about? Jesus would say, the opinion you must care about the most is that of God's. His authority, His power, what He can do is far greater than what man can do. May we all be like John Knox, the great Scottish reformer. Knox never backed down from a challenge, spiritual or otherwise. He wielded his sword in battle. He rebuked reigning monarchs. He turned the heart of his nation back to God. And at the end of his life, as his body was being lowered into the ground, the pastor said at his graveside, here lies a man who in his life never feared the face of man. Jesus would say, that's right, fear God's judgment, not man's. There's a third instruction that Jesus gives his disciples in this passage, and it's one of assurance. Notice that he references them as friends as he is speaking to them. Not his foes, his friends. Jesus doesn't end on a note of God's terrible omnipotence, but on his tender care for these men. Let's look at verses six and seven, and we see this instruction, trust God's care, not your own. Trust God's care, not your own. Jesus immediately, having said something strong and difficult to hear, speaks to his friends of the tenderness and the compassion of the Father. Verse six and seven, are not five sparrows sold for two saria, yet not one of them is forgotten before God? Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. And then he says this, do not fear. You are more valuable than many sparrows. There's no contest. contradiction in Jesus's mind between the love of God and the justice of God, the fear of God and the tenderness of God. There's no contradiction between God as Father and God as final judge. The one who has unrivaled authority to condemn is the same one who we need not fear because his omniscience and his compassion surround us like the sparrows of the sky and the hairs on our head. It's in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of persecution that we can be tempted to think that God has forgotten us. We might be tempted to think that God doesn't even care. So Jesus reassures his friends that far from getting ready to throw them into hell, he's watching over them to keep them safe with his sovereign power and tender care, as we just sang this morning. Jesus points these men to an object lesson. Five sparrows who aren't really worth much, right? Your version may say two pennies. The LSB decided to give the transliteration Asaria or Assyria. The point is that sparrows are a dime a dozen, right? The point is that they're cheap to purchase them. They're abundant and mostly insignificant. At least to us, we don't really give a whole lot of thought to birds. Some might like bird watching or something, but most of us aren't giving a whole lot of consideration to them. The two asaria, or two pennies, are the smallest copper coin in the Roman economy. It's basically worth about one sixteenth of a denarius. So these birds were worth close to nothing in Rome's economy. And yet Jesus says, not one of them is forgotten before God. He's gonna expand this later on in his teaching. Not one of them is forgotten by God. These cheap, seemingly insignificant birds, yet God never forgets even a single sparrow. He sees them safely hatch from their shells. He scatters the seed that provide their daily food. When they fall to the ground, he knows where they lie. Jesus, again, is arguing from the lesser to the greater. I know if you're a PETA fan, that's upsetting. But yes, humans, in God's economy, have more worth than animals. Right? That's why there is a far greater penalty for killing a human than there is killing an animal. And for in many cases, they're for food. And so I know that's upsetting to some, but the image bearers of God carry greater weight. There's more value to them. And so. Jesus says to them in verse seven, you are more valuable than many sparrows. He's arguing from the lesser to the greater. If these birds are cared for in that way, right, if they're known in that way, how much more you? If God takes such good care of the sparrows, what will he do for us? God knows everything about us. And notice where he goes to the most random thing. I would gather that not one of you knows how many hairs are on your head. And that's you. You don't sit there counting them, right? You have no clue. I think the average person has about 100,000 hair follicles. So some people less, receding hairlines, age. But God knows them all. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. That includes the ones you lost in the shower this morning, right? It's true. The most minute, insignificant, right? I mean he goes from birds, sparrows, not that significant in the grand economy, to like you. And what's most significant to you? Certainly not your hair, right? I know some it's a big deal, but I mean in the grand scheme, the most minutest detail and he knows. Leon Morris, the commentator, helps us see the value of this statement. He says this, quote, the importance of this does not lie in the actual count, but in the fact that God cares enough about his people to know the minutest detail about them. He knows things they do not know about themselves. What a comfort. What a comfort, especially knowing that these men are going to have to make a stand for Christ that will eventually cost them their very lives. He knows more about you than you do. Nothing in our lives is too small for him to notice or so insignificant that it's unworthy of his attention. It's an interesting sequence that we have in the greater context of this passage, right? Jesus instructs them, don't fear man, fear God. Seriously, fear God. And then he says here, fear not. That's an interesting sequence. Don't fear man, fear God. No, I mean it. Fear God, but don't fear. It's only because we fear God, it's only because we have God placed in our minds and our hearts with reverential fear and awe, have Him in a proper perspective that we can then not fear in life. We know this God. We fear Him. We trust Him. We can trust Him with our very lives. This God has promised to complete in us what He began. He has promised to never leave us or forsake us. He has promised to provide. By the way, remember those times He sends His disciples out? He sends them out with nothing. Why? God will provide. God will provide. He wants them to know that. He will always come through. You are infinitely more value than a bunch of sparrows. He knows everything about you. God will come through. You are more valuable than them. The God we revere and we fear is a God who knows us and loves us. He will be with us in times of trouble. He will provide our daily needs. He will give us guidance for the future. What wonderful instruction for these men to stand for Christ, stand for Christ unafraid, Watch your life, expose sin, run to the light. Don't conceal it. Fear God above all. Don't fear man. It's so inconsequential what they can ultimately do to you. Don't fear and trust him. Trust that God will come through. Don't fear in that sense because the same one who we fear is also our Father who provides and knows us. Those are wonderful lessons to help us in our desire to stand for Christ, even in a hostile society.