Expository Thoughts On Luke – Luke 12:1-7 - John Charles Ryle
WARNINGS AND ENCOURAGEMENTS
The words which begin this chapter are very striking when we consider its contents. We are told that “a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another.” And what does our Lord do? In the hearing of this multitude He delivers warnings against false teachers, and denounces the sins of the times in which he lived unsparingly, unflinchingly, and without partiality. This was true charity. This was doing the work of a physician. This was the pattern which all His ministers were intended to follow. Well would it have been for the church and the world if the ministers of Christ had always spoken out as plainly and faithfully as their Master used to do! Their own lives might have been made more uncomfortable by such a course of action. But they would have saved far more souls.
The first thing that demands our attention in these verses is Christ’s warning against hypocrisy. He says to His disciples, “Beware you of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”
This is a warning of which the importance can never be overrated. It was delivered by our Lord more than once, during His earthly ministry. It was intended to be a standing caution to His whole church in every age, and in every part of the world. It was meant to remind us that the principles of the Pharisees are deeply ingrained in human nature, and that Christians should be always on their guard against them. Pharisaism is a subtle leaven which the natural heart is always ready to receive. It is a leaven which once received into the heart infects the whole character of a man’s Christianity. Of this leaven, says our Lord, in words that should often ring in our ears–of this leaven, beware!
Let us ever nail this caution in our memories, and bind it on our hearts. The plague is about us on every side. The danger is at all times. What is the essence of Romanism, and semi-Romanism, and formalism, and sacrament-worship and church-adorning, and ceremonialism? What is it all but the leaven of the Pharisees under one shape or another? The Pharisees are not extinct. Pharisaism lives still.
If we would not become Pharisees, let us cultivate a ‘heart religion’. Let us realize daily that the God with whom we have to do, looks far below the outward surface of our profession, and that He measures us by the state of our hearts. Let us be real and true in our Christianity. Let us abhor all part-acting, and affectation, and semblance of devotion, put on for public occasions, but not really felt within. It may deceive man, and get us the reputation of being very religious, but it cannot deceive God. “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed.” Whatever we are in religion, let us never wear a cloak or a mask.
The second thing that demands our attention in these verses is Christ’s warning against the fear of man. “Be not afraid,” He says, “of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.” But this is not all. He not only tells us whom we ought not to fear, but of whom we ought to be afraid. “Fear him,” He says, “who after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say unto you, fear him.” The manner in which the lesson is conveyed is very striking and impressive. Twice over the exhortation is enforced. “Fear him,” says our Lord–“yes, I say unto you, fear him.”
The fear of man is one of the greatest obstacles which stand between the soul and heaven. “What will men say of me? What will they think of me? What will they do to me?”–How often these little questions have turned the balance against the soul, and kept men bound hand and foot by sin and the devil! Thousands would never hesitate a moment to storm a breach or face a lion, who dare not face the laughter of relatives, neighbors, and friends. Now if the fear of man has such influence in these times, how much greater must its influence have been in the days when our Lord was upon earth! If it be hard to follow Christ through ridicule and ill-natured words, how much harder must it have been to follow Him through prisons, beatings, scourgings, and violent deaths! All these things our Lord Jesus knew well. No wonder that He cries, “Be not afraid.”
But what is the best remedy against the fear of man? How are we to overcome this powerful feeling, and break the chains which it throws around us? There is no remedy like that which our Lord recommends. We must supplant the fear of man by a higher and more powerful principle–the fear of God. We must look away from those who can only hurt the body to Him who has all dominion over the soul. We must turn our eyes from those who can only injure us in the life that now is, to Him who can condemn us to eternal misery in the life to come. Armed with this mighty principle, we shall not play the coward. Seeing Him that is invisible, we shall find the lesser fear melting away before the greater, and the weaker before the stronger.
“I fear God,” said Colonel Gardiner, “and therefore there is no one else that I need fear.” It was a noble saying of martyred Bishop Hooper, when a Roman Catholic urged him to save his life by recanting at the stake–“Life is sweet and death is bitter. But eternal life is more sweet, and eternal death is more bitter.”
The last thing that demands our attention in these verses, is Christ’s encouragement to persecuted believers. He reminds them of God’s providential care over the least of His creatures–“Not one sparrow is forgotten before God.” He goes on to assure those who the same Fatherly care is engaged on behalf of each one of themselves–“The very hairs of your head are all numbered.” Nothing whatever, whether great or small, can happen to a believer, without God’s ordering and permission.
The providential government of God over everything in this world is a truth of which the Greek and Roman philosophers had no conception. It is a truth which is specially revealed to us in the word of God. Just as the telescope and microscope show us that there is order and design in all the works of God’s hand, from the greatest planet down to the least insect, so does the Bible teach us that there is wisdom, order, and design in all the events of our daily life. There is no such thing as “chance,” “luck,” or “accident” in the Christian’s journey through this world. All is arranged and appointed by God. And all things are “working together” for the believer’s good. (Rom. 8:28.)
Let us seek to have an abiding sense of God’s hand in all that befalls us, if we profess to be believers in Jesus Christ. Let us strive to realize that a Father’s hand is measuring out our daily portion, and that our steps are ordered by Him. A daily practical faith of this kind, is one grand secret of happiness, and a mighty antidote against murmuring and discontent. We should try to feel in the day of trial and disappointment, that all is right and all is well done. We should try to feel on the bed of sickness that there must be a “needs be.” We should say to ourselves, “God could keep away from me these things if He thought fit. But He does not do so, and therefore they must be for my advantage. I will lie still, and bear them patiently. I have ‘an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure.’ (2 Sam. 23:5.) What pleases God shall please me.”
John Charles Ryle