Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 12:1-12, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 42
- Date: Sunday, December 7, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Knowing We Are Wrong
Well, if you have never been in an argument where you eventually realized you were wrong and kept going, then you’re a more mature person than I am. I don’t do it often, but every once in a while there are those disagreements where you’re just going to keep going rather than back down. And it’s been several years, but the one that always comes to mind, Because Charla and I don’t even disagree all that much. We’re too tired.
But the one that comes to mind is years ago, I think it was back when we were homeschooling still, an argument or disagreement about an issue with grammar. We were dating. Okay, so we weren’t even homeschooling yet. All right.
Then how we even got into it, I don’t know. But it was a grammar thing. At the time, she was an English teacher, And I was a French teacher, primarily, but I had also taught some English, so I knew some things too. And whatever it was, we got into a debate about it.
And after about 30 minutes, I mean, she’s pulling out her books, I’m pulling out mine. And after about 30 minutes, I realized we were both kind of right, but she was more right than I was. But I couldn’t let it go. And only a couple years ago did I finally acknowledge that she was slightly more right than I was.
But we’ve probably all had those moments where I’ve discovered partway through this debate that I’m wrong, but I’m not going to acknowledge it. I’m not going to let it go. Maybe with your spouse, maybe with somebody at work, maybe with a parent, not looking at anybody in particular, maybe with your child. You ever debated something with your child and realized you were wrong?
That’ll hurt. Go ahead and admit it. It’s fine. It hurts, but it’s fine.
What we’re going to look at today in Luke chapter 12 is an example of people knowing that they were wrong and refusing to admit it and continuing to press the point anyway. We’re going to be in Luke chapter 12 this morning. And every year around this time, I have the annual back and forth, pro and con in my mind. At what point do we start Luke 2 and Matthew 2?
At what point in December do we start that? Sometimes we spend the whole month going through those stories. Sometimes we spend a week or two going through those stories. And in our series in Luke chapter 12, we’re not really at a natural dividing point, but since we’re in this season, we’re focused on the coming of Christ.
I figure it’s well within that theme to look at how people responded to the coming of Christ. Because we can learn from their examples, positive and negative. So for a little while longer, we’re going to keep going with our study of Luke, Luke chapter 12.
And we’re going to look at the first 12 verses of the chapter this morning. And And Luke says, 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 leaven 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 heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops.
Whose Opinion Matters Most
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 warn you whom to fear. Fear the one who, after he is killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Trusting the God Who Sees
Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, you are more valuable than many sparrows.
Confessing Christ
And 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.
Rejecting What We Know Is True
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 him.
Trusting God for the Words
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.
The Danger in the Crowd
In this chapter, Jesus is speaking to his disciples, but he’s speaking to them within the hearing of the Pharisees and the others in the crowd. If you’ll notice, verse 1 says, many thousands of people had gathered. There’s an enormous crowd of people that have gathered to hear Jesus speak. You would think that this would be a high point of his ministry.
We looked at that in chapter 11. We saw a very similar statement where Jesus looks out and there’s this enormous crowd. And we think any teacher would be delighted, any Bible teacher would be delighted to have this many people show up for worship. And yet Jesus looks at them and says, we’ve got a problem.
And here is the same thing again. He looks, there are thousands of people there, but he’s not at all concerned by that. He’s concerned with looking at these people who have followed him closely and saying, there’s an example here within this crowd that you need to avoid if you’re going to do the right thing. And we can take from Jesus’ responses what we already know in the back of our minds to be true, but we have to be reminded of.
He does not at any point gauge the success of his ministry by how many people are there, and neither should we. We gauge the success of our ministry by how we are handling the truth that God has revealed, how we respond to it, and how we walk in it. That was his concern back in chapter 11. There are all these people, but they’re not walking in the truth.
Here again in chapter 12, there are thousands of people. But he says there’s a problem among them. It was probably not true of every person in the crowd, but it was present in the crowd, this hypocrisy of the Pharisees that he talks about. Jesus points this out as a major issue.
What Hypocrisy Really Is
And Jesus warns throughout his ministry of hypocrisy numerous times. And we hear that and we think, oh, they’re saying one thing and doing another. Kind of, but there’s more to the story. There are more instances and more kinds of hypocrisy that he confronts, and in this passage, he’s dealing with one very specific kind.
Whether it was behaving one way publicly and behaving one way privately or professing to follow God’s word while secretly they’re swindling people out of their inheritance or whatever they’re doing. All of the things that Jesus condemned as hypocrisy, they all have something in common. And it’s what hypocrisy is. I had to stop and think about all these stories and what is it that hypocrisy, all of it has in common.
And hypocrisy is a deliberate disconnect between our outward appearance and our internal reality. Now, I can’t point you to a chapter and verse that says that, but that’s the explanation, that’s the definition I’ve come up with by looking at all these biblical accounts. At any point when Jesus talks about hypocrisy, there’s a disconnect between the internal and the external, and that’s what he’s warning about. As a matter of fact, even that word hypocrisy, I discovered this a few years ago, and it was like a light bulb went on.
How did I not ever see that before? That Greek word that we get hypocrisy from is a word that they would have used to describe actors on a stage wearing a mask. So now every time I see those Greek comedy and tragedy masks, the smiley face and the sad face, I think of hypocrisy. Not that all actors are hypocritical, but the word comes from the same place. The idea of putting on a mask to cover up what’s behind it.
A Deliberate Disconnect
But when he’s talking about hypocrisy here, he’s talking about a very specific kind. And I do want to point out that not every time that there’s a disconnect between the internal and external are we behaving hypocritically. I’ve spent enough time talking to people in this room. I know that some of you, for example, this example came to mind as I was thinking about where this line is.
There are some of you who hurt more days than you don’t. And yet you walk in here with a smile on your face and are kind to people. And there is a little bit of a mask, for lack of a better word. Does that mean you’re being hypocritical because you’re not acting how you feel?
No, I don’t think so because there’s a desire in your heart to push through that. And you’re displaying on the outside what you want to be true on the inside. I’ve experienced that a little bit. Back in the spring, some of y’all remember, I was very sick for about a month.
To the point, I thought I’d been poisoned by chemical exposure to cleaning products. I couldn’t get out of bed, nauseated, dizzy all the whole nine yards, and that still comes and goes. There are days I don’t want to be up talking to people. Yet a big part of my job is being up talking to people.
Is that hypocritical? No, because I want to feel well enough to be up and be social with people, and so you push through. What about this? What if you know that this is the right way to live, you know what God’s Word says, and you struggle with it?
For example, what if you struggle with pride or anger, and you would say and you would admit, these things are wrong and I should live this way, but you don’t always live up to it. I don’t think that’s hypocritical either because we would acknowledge these things within me are wrong and what I’m trying to portray outside is what I’m trying to be. There’s a difference between that and the deliberate disconnect that the Pharisees often exhibited that they knew what was right and they knew what was wrong and they didn’t care about actually doing this.
They wanted to do what was wrong and wanted to look like they were doing what was right. And I think that’s where the deliberate disconnect comes in. I wanted to be very careful in that definition because there are times that we know the right thing to do and we just don’t feel it and we do it anyway. I don’t want you to think that you’re being hypocritical when you push through and are obedient to God even on days when you’re not feeling it.
The Leaven of Hypocrisy
So Jesus said to them, beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. What their hypocrisy was at this specific moment had nothing to do with saying one thing and doing another. There were plenty of times that Jesus got after them about that. What they were, what Jesus is talking about at this moment, though, if we look back at chapter 11, has to do with what they knew to be true and what they were admitting to be true.
This is not so much a matter of hypocrisy in their behavior as it was in their beliefs. If you look back at chapter 11, you see that they knew that Jesus was the Messiah. There are times in the Gospels that Jesus confronts them about what they knew to be true and deliberately rejected. As we’ve sang about and talked about already this morning, God made it clear in the Old Testament for those who were looking at it honestly and who were familiar enough with it that there were going to be these signs that would accompany the Messiah.
And Jesus fulfilled each of those signs. Now, I think there were people who legitimately missed that. But we know that among the Pharisees, among the scribes, among people in the Sanhedrin, there were people who recognized who Jesus was but did not want Him to be who He was. They did not want Him to be the Messiah because He wasn’t the kind of Messiah they expected.
And so we get into this situation where, deep down, I know He really is, but I’ll never admit it. And that’s where you get into the situation in chapter 11 where I know that no mere human can do the things that he’s doing. But rather than acknowledge what he says about himself, rather than acknowledge what I know to be true that he’s God, I’m going to come up with some other fanciful explanation because I can’t say it’s not happening. But I have to come up with some other way to explain it.
And that’s where we get, oh, you’re doing these things because you’re in league with the devil. So they were in a situation where they knew he was the Messiah, but they rejected him outwardly as the Messiah. That was their hypocrisy. Our equivalent would be, I know that this is what God’s word says.
I know what the truth is. I know what I’m supposed to be doing. I just don’t care. And so I’m not going to acknowledge it.
I’m not going to live that way. It’s a little different from, I’m not going to live that way, but I want to look this way. In this case, we’re saying, I’m not even going to acknowledge outwardly what I know to be true inwardly. And Jesus called this leaven.
He’s comparing it to a lump of dough with yeast in it. Whenever we see that word leaven in the New Testament, we’re talking about yeast. And if you’ve ever baked bread, you know that the yeast doesn’t just stay in part of the loaf. You let it sit there and the yeast is going to permeate.
It moves through. I need to talk with some of the science teachers in the congregation later and try to understand exactly what yeast is and how it moves, just for my own edification. But trying to explain this to young kids, I’ve said yeast are little bugs that live in the bread. We put them in the bread, and they eat the dough, and they burp, and that’s why it gets bigger.
But they move. I never said I was a science teacher, okay? But somehow or another, through methods I don’t understand, the yeast moves throughout the dough, and it gets in everything. That was an issue for them because oftentimes in the Bible, yeast, leaven, it represents sin.
That’s why you couldn’t say, well, we’re going to have half-leavened, half-unleavened bread at the Passover. No, it had to be unleavened because Part of that issue was representing sin. But He calls it leaven because it will permeate. Sin, including hypocrisy, is one of these things that if we leave it unchecked, it is going to spread and is going to corrupt everything.
That’s true in our own lives. We can’t reserve a part of our hearts and say, you know what, I’m going to follow Jesus in every other area, but this one little part, I want to do what I want to do, and I’ve got this pet sin that I’m going to hold on to, and he can have everything else. That may work for a short time, but eventually this little pet sin that we hold and refuse to deal with, it’s going to spread and it’s going to affect our obedience and our dedication to him and everything else. And so we can’t leave the yeast and the dough.
It has to be removed before it corrupts everything. That’s why he’s warning about this hypocrisy. He offers this warning because rejecting what we know to be true is one of the most dangerous things we can do. And you can find this theme repeated throughout the New Testament.
Paul in Romans chapter 1 talks about how doing this can corrupt our minds. Later on in 1 Timothy 4, he talks about how when we do this long enough, our consciences become seared. If you’ve ever burned your finger on an iron, first of all, I can tell you from experience, it’s not smart to check if an iron’s working by touching it. Just spray a little water on there.
You burn your finger on that iron. I don’t care how quickly you think you’re going to burn your finger, and it will hurt really bad. And once it stops hurting really bad, it’s not going to feel like anything for a while because you’ve seared the nerves. And we can get to a point where we reject the truth so long that we no longer are sensitive to it when it’s in front of us.
So it’s a dangerous thing, and that’s why Jesus warns His disciples of this. And then we get to verse 2, and we’ll move through this a little more quickly. I won’t spend as much time on every verse as I did verse 1. But we get to verse 2, and we see that hypocrisy always makes our condition worse.
Jesus moved on to address some of the reasons, I think, why the Pharisees were hypocritical. Some of the things He points out could very well explain why in their minds they wouldn’t want to admit that Jesus was who he claimed to be. Apparently they saw some benefit in their behavior. And we’re not going to behave hypocritically unless we think there’s some benefit in doing so.
Usually that’s, we’re trying to protect something or we’re trying to accomplish something. We’ve got something in mind that we think the hypocritical behavior or belief is going to benefit, but they were mistaken and we’re mistaken. Jesus explains why. Starting in verse two, he says that nothing is covered up that will not be revealed and nothing is hidden that will not be known. Whatever we’ve said in the dark will be heard in the light and whatever we whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.
Nothing Stays Hidden
And Jesus was pointing out that nothing is ever truly hidden. Our sin will find us out. There are certain, when you grow up as a small child in church, There are certain verses that stick with you your entire life, even if they’ve just been paraphrased. And some of those are verses that scare the life out of you, and rightly so.
My mother always taught us, your sin will find you out. And I think that’s a rough paraphrase from Exodus. I looked it up at one point. It’s in there.
I just can’t remember offhand where. I remember the first time I encountered this passage, I was a little kid at church camp, and one of the older boys was doing our cabin devotionals, and he was talking about how every sin we committed was going to be shouted from the housetops. And I had in my mind this image of somebody literally going through Moore, Oklahoma, on the roofs, shouting everything bad that we’ve done. That’ll scare you straight.
That’s not quite what it means. But nothing we do is hidden. Eventually things come to light, and if nothing else, God knows. And that’s the crazy thing about hypocrisy.
We will behave in hypocritical ways, we will talk in hypocritical ways because of how it will look to other people. But God sees all of it, and there’s no hiding the motives from Him. And I’m puzzled even with my own self about why we would try to hide things from people and not be concerned that God sees it. But they thought, for these Pharisees, they thought they could live however they wanted, and no one would be the wiser.
As long as they look good on the outside, the secret things would be seen and known. And in this context, where we’re talking more about belief, there were probably conversations going on. Is He really? No, He couldn’t be.
Well maybe he but we’ll never admit it publicly those things are going to come to light they weren’t going to be able to hide what they knew to be true and then i’ve gotten ahead of myself a little bit here but once we get to verse four we see that god’s opinion outweighs man’s i say to you my friends do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear. Fear the one who after he is killed has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
So both of these things go hand in hand and they show us something about why the Pharisees were refusing to admit who Jesus was. They thought they could hide the truth. They thought they could suppress the truth. If we just don’t admit it, maybe this all blows over.
Maybe this goes away. Maybe we find something we can entrap him with and we can deal with this and maybe God has a plan B. But here in verses 4 and 5, the way he says to his disciples, don’t be like the Pharisees, you don’t be afraid of what people are going to say or what people are going to do, tells us that the Pharisees were acting because they were afraid of what people were going to say or do. And we can shame them for that, but that’s one of the easiest traps in the world for each of us to fall into.
You get so worried about, what’s somebody going to say if I do this? What’s somebody going to think if I live this way? Folks, nobody’s opinion matters like God’s opinion matters. But they thought, what benefit is there for them?
They thought they could avoid danger, because if you start identifying with Jesus, people are going to be after you. They thought they could avoid being ostracized socially if they just didn’t follow Jesus. But here he makes the case that people can only do so much to us. For them, if you follow me and the counsel brings you forward, they charge you as they’re going to charge me.
We see this with the apostles later on. But if they charge you and they persecute you, okay, they can only kill you once. Why be afraid of them? Instead, fear the one who holds eternity in his hand.
Not that God wants us as his children to live in mortal terror of him, but we get it backwards. We are so concerned with what other people are going to say and how other people are going to react and I may be the chiefest among sinners. When in reality, there is what God wants us to do and if they get mad at us so well, the worst they can do is kill us and they can only do that once. Where we have eternity with the Lord.
It is far better to be right with God and in agreement with Him. By trying to cover their condition, the Pharisees only made matters worse. What they thought was hidden would be exposed, and they would spend their lives trying to please people while ignoring the only One whose judgment ultimately mattered.
Heaven forbid that we fall into the same trap.
When we come to verse 6, Jesus’ tone changes. If you are thinking that this does not sound very uplifting or Christmassy, it gets better—and I do not mean that sarcastically. Jesus begins to explain how valuable His people are to the Father.
Five sparrows were sold for two cents. Birds were cheap. Yet not one of them was forgotten before God.
These little birds that nobody notices, nobody cares about, God notices them. The kids and I were at Atwoods yesterday. We went to buy chicken feed, and they’ve got all these bags of chicken feed. They’ve got bags and bags of bird seed, bird feed.
But they’ve got all of it. I mean, it’s stacked up, and we’re walking through, and we see these two little, they weren’t chickens. I don’t know what they were. Two little birds, the kind that you just see flying around out there.
I sound foolish for not knowing what they are. They’re unimportant little birds flying around in the store, and I thought, we’ve got all this stuff here for birds, and these two little birds here, nobody knows how in the store. Nobody knows probably where they’re hanging out, where they’re living, how they’re eating. They’re not being fed from these big bags.
Nobody cares about these two little birds, but God knows everything about those birds. Those two little insignificant birds. Jesus said, none of these birds fall out of the sky without God noticing. Not one of them is forgotten by God.
And then you look at verse 7, he says, indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, you are more valuable than many sparrows. He said, God knows all those little insignificant birds that nobody ever notices, and you’re more important to him than they are. This is important because some of those listening, including some of his disciples, they were worried.
What happens if we just say, you know what, forget the consequences? What happens if we just say we are all in on following you? What happens if we say we are all in on obedience to you? What happens when the world around us gets mad and goes crazy and comes after us if we acknowledge that you’re the Messiah?
But he’s reassuring them that the God who cares for every one of those sparrows and makes sure they’re fed cares even more about them enough to number every hair on their head. God has every hair on your head numbered. It’s an easier task for some of us than for others. But God knows everything about you.
There’s nothing about you that has escaped his notice. And he loves you anyway. He loved you enough anyway to send his son for you part of the point of this is that we can obey god even in those moments of fear even when when the temptation here is to say i know this is true but i’m just going to hide over here and pretend like it’s not i don’t want to step out and do this scary thing i don’t want to obey god in this area because of what it might cost me. We can obey God if we trust Him, if we trust Him to care for us.
Charles Stanley used to say, obey God and leave all the consequences to Him. Makes life so much easier if I don’t have to figure out what happens 15 steps down the road, just do what He told me. It’s a struggle for us though because we struggle to trust God in that way. But those who trust God enough to acknowledge him as the Messiah, those who trust Jesus enough, they’re assured a future hope that outweighs any earthly suffering.
That’s what we get in verse 8. No matter what you’re about to go through, how you’re going to be charged, how you’re going to be tried, how you’re going to be treated, I say to you, everyone who confesses me before men, the Son of Man will confess him also before the angels of God. But you can wimp out and try to save yourself. Oh, he’s not the Messiah.
I don’t really know him. He says in verse 9, those people are going to be denied before the angels of God. Now, this verse gets misused to say, oh, if you’re not brave enough to walk down front at the end of the service and publicly confess Jesus as your Savior, then you can’t really be saved. I have been in crusades and church services where I’ve seen that happen.
Oh, you’ve got to stand up right now because he says, if you’re ashamed of me before men, I’ll be ashamed of you. That’s not what he’s talking about. Some of you who may be I’m an introvert too you wouldn’t know it by what I’m doing now but God is amazing at overcoming those things many of you in this room are introverts like I am and you may be the boldest witness in this room in a one on one conversation but would rather die than walk down in front of other people and it has nothing to do with Jesus he’s not saying you have to stand and shout from the housetops. What he’s saying is that when you’re called on to acknowledge whether you believe him or not, you don’t deny him.
So when you’re in that situation, one-on-one, what do you know about Jesus? We don’t deny him because we’re afraid of what people are going to think of us. Those who reject him for earthly gain are not going to have that hope. And the problem was not what they said about Jesus.
The problem in verse 10 tells us, even going back to chapter 11, was that they were denying the work of the Holy Spirit. The people he’s talking about here, they’re not confused. They’re not deceived. These are people who knew that Jesus was the Messiah.
They knew Jesus had been sent by God. They knew the Spirit of God was working through Him, yet they still rejected that truth and attributed His work to the devil because it was the only explanation they could use to avoid admitting who He was.
Jesus said that this would not be forgiven. The issue was not that God arbitrarily drew a line and waited angrily for someone to cross it. These people had become so hard-hearted that, rather than acknowledge God’s work, they accused the One sent to save them from their sins of being in league with Satan.
That is a depth of deliberate hardness that is difficult for us to fathom.
And if they were to that point, they were never, God in his sovereignty and God in his foreknowledge looked at that and knew they were never going to change their minds at that point. That’s why there’s no forgiveness for them. So he’s calling them to be faithful. He’s calling them to acknowledge who he was and why he has come, that he’s not just on earth as an accident of history, but he came to earth, as we talk about at Christmas time, as this tiny baby sent by God, and he came to do this ministry and work these miracles and go to the cross to be our Messiah, to be our Savior, to be our Lord.
And he’s calling us to acknowledge that and be faithful enough to admit it. I feel like that’s the least we can do is admit what he’s done for us. And the immediate question we have is how am I going to give an answer for that? We hear it all the time.
What if somebody asks me something I can’t answer or I don’t know? And he tells us in verse 11, when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, don’t even worry about how you’re going to answer. Because verse 12 says the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. The Spirit, if you just step out and obey God, He’s going to give you everything you need to obey Him and to do it well.
We return to the theme of obeying God and leaving the consequences to Him. Jesus, our Messiah, Savior, and Lord, is worth confessing. He is worth acknowledging.
We may not experience the same cost those first disciples faced, but acknowledging Christ is socially more difficult than it was thirty or fifty years ago. Whatever the cost may be, He remains worthy.
He’s worth acknowledging. We don’t have this disconnect where we say, I know He’s the truth, but I’m not going to acknowledge it publicly because I’m afraid of what it’s going to cost me. He is the truth worth confessing. And if you know Him as your Lord and your Savior and as your Messiah, it’s very important that we don’t deny Him with our actions or with our words.
If you have never followed Jesus or trusted Him as your Savior, perhaps you are hearing for the first time what He has done for you. Or perhaps, for the first time, you understand why what He did matters.
Jesus came as that baby, lived a perfectly sinless life, ministered, performed miracles, and died on the cross as the payment for your sin and mine.
Our sin separates us from a holy God, and we can never do enough to undo what we have done. Because that sin had to be paid for, Jesus took responsibility and died in our place, paying the debt in full. That is why He came.
