Year 1, Day 221: Luke 12

Warning Passages

Let’s look at Luke 12 knowing that this is a chapter with warning after warning.  I don’t like to talk about warning passages as if they apply to other people and not me.  Rather, I find it most profitable to start by looking at warning passages as though they apply to me.  Then – and only when I have removed the whole log from my own eye, which rarely happens – am I ready to point out the speck of dust in the other person’s eye. 

Hypocrite

Jesus begins by warning us about hypocrisy.  In ancient Greek, the word “hypocrite” (ὑπόκρισις – pronounced who-PO-crih-sis) was literally the word that meant “actor.”  Quite literally in the Greek language, if you went to a play you watched a bunch of hypocrites parading around the stage. 

We may have lifted the word hypocrite straight out of the Greek language, but we don’t use it in reference to actors any more.  But when you think about it, we should (although not in a disparaging manner).  An actor is a person who is playing a role that is not truly who they are.  Well, that’s a hypocrite!  Jesus is warning us to not go through life giving a public portrayal of someone who isn’t really the person on the inside.

We get this advice for two reasons.  First, do any of us think we can fool God?  Really?  This leads us straight into the idea presented in the next story.  Don’t fear the people of this world, fear the one who can deal with you after death!  Fear the one who cannot be fooled!  Fear the one that can hand out the punishment that every last one of us deserves!  No, none of us can fool God.  So why bury the true person deep inside?  No, bring the true person out and deal with whoever lives in there – good and bad alike!  Repent, and live genuinely with God!

The second reason to avoid hypocrisy is just as simple to understand.  When we portray something that isn’t real, what claim do we make about the power of God?  We give lip service to His ability to change us … but because we bury the true person inside of us we actually make the claim that we don’t really believe God can change us.  And that’s the message we give to the world when we bury ourselves deep inside.  Hypocrisy – acting done in life rather than on stage – never helps anyone.

So what do we do instead?  When we deal with our hypocrisy we proclaim Christ before our community.  When we confess our sins we admit our faults and acknowledge that God/Jesus/Holy Spirit is the only one that can really deal with who we are.  When we expose ourselves for who we really are, we make the boldest proclamation of all: we rely on God.  When we expose who we are, we declare that we are not capable of saving ourselves and that we desperately need Christ to do it for us.  And as Luke 12:8-12 declares, when we do this we can have confidence that Christ will confess us before the Father.

Faith In Whose Provision?

The next warning deals with covetousness (or greed in general), but it is really rooted in the issue of confessing God.  The wealthy land owner who receives a great harvest looks to store up and amass His wealth.  But where is his faith?  His faith is in wealth, his possessions, and his ability to provide for himself.  Where is it not?  It is not with God.  When we amass wealth, treasure, and possessions we run the risk of denying our very reliance upon God.  No, I’m not saying it is a sin to be wealthy.  But the less we need to depend on God, the less we usually do depend on Him.  It is no sin to have stuff, but having stuff can lead to an abandonment of God.

Faith In Whose Future?

The next warning really talks about the same topic from yet another angle: worrying.  When we worry, we are showing an inherent lack of faith in God’s provision.  What is there to worry about?  Hunger?  So long as we follow God, can God not put us in a place to receive food?  {Or do we want the food on our terms – like the Hebrew people in the wilderness after the Exodus?}  Clothing?  If we follow God will not God provide?  What about death – do we worry about dying?  Is not the grave the gate to eternal life?  What can happen in this world that does not ultimately lead to God?

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying we should go through life unconcerned about the future.  It is good to think ahead to doing the work of God and preparing ourselves to do that work.  But worrying takes that healthy amount of concern and turns it into an unhealthy need to think we have to provide for ourselves.  And when we go that far we forget that it is actually not I who provide anything for myself.  It is God who provides for me.  That is the danger of worrying – we lose focus on who is actually doing the providing.

Warnings Against Carelessness

The fourth section (Luke 12:35-53) warns us against careless behavior.  The servant who is respectable is the one who takes what the master has set before us and does what the master wants done with it.  The disrespectful servant believes that the master is gone for a long time and they can play for a while before getting to work.  Jesus tells us what will happen to each of those servants.

This is precisely why Jesus brings division.  Some people on this earth understand that Jesus brought both judgment and salvation.  Some people want to make salvation a priority in their life.  These people also encourage other people to make salvation a priority in their life.  They know that receiving salvation means putting God’s ways first. 

But there are others out there that are just too interested in putting forth their own agenda before getting to God’s agenda.  This careless self-mongerism will lead them down an unfortunate path of judgment.  But it is this very difference in perspective that causes the division between Christians and the world.  We must not be careless with the time God has given to us.  God’s agenda must take precedence in our life!

Warning Against the Insipid

The last warning in this chapter is against spiritual insipidness.  Flavorless-faith.  Dull-spirituality.  Flat–belief.  Christ confesses that we are smart enough to know how to interpret the weather.  We are also smart enough to interpret right from wrong, and even smart enough to know what a court of law will say about who we are and what we have done. 

Yet so many people are spiritually dull.  So many people take the gift of humanity – a brain that can think and a heart that can care – and fail to use it at all.  We put God off.  We consider His Word dry and boring.  We choose our own ways because they are more tangible.  Christ warns us here to not be spiritually insipid.  Rather, we should take what God has given to us and practice with them, honing our spirit and becoming Christ-like each and every day!

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