Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on September 28, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
You can be taking your Bibles and turning to Luke chapter 12 in the Pew Bible. It’s page 9:24. I just want to comment on three things today. I don’t usually do this, but the first one is we come here to worship on Sundays and to some people singing songs, saying some prayers, hearing the Bible, shaking somebody’s hand and leaving is Christianity. That is not what it means to follow Jesus.
That is religion. Just doing a list of things. True Christianity, truly following God is about fellowship and having a personal relationship with the Lord. So we have a relationship with him that’s personal. But as a church, we are supposed to be a community that has relationships within itself.
That’s what our small groups do. They provide opportunity for you to have relationships, to grow with others, to experience accountability, to pray and to share and just to let your heart out so that you’re serving the Lord together. If you don’t feel like you’re connected to our church, we have all these small groups. They are all wonderful. I encourage you to join one.
And if we don’t have a small group that you think meets your need or doesn’t meet at the right time, let us know and maybe we can put one together. It’s just a matter of having a group of people that say, yeah, we would like to get together for a small group. The other thing about the Freedom Ministry, I’ll just say about Sam, he is a nice person and if you are struggling with anything, you can go to him and not feel judged in any way. He’s the perfect person to be leading the ministry, to feel comfortable with him talking about anything. So I do encourage you, don’t be afraid of talking to Sam about being involved if you need that help.
The third thing is we’re in the nominating process for a new elder. According to our bylaws, the congregation, you were asked months ago to start praying about this. That’s the most important thing, to pray that God leads us. You were asked to make suggestions to the nominating committee and then the nominating committee went through those names and they have presented one to the Elder board and that is Tim Ryan and the Elder board are bringing him forward so that you can begin to pray for him. We’re not going to have a vote of confidence until our October business meeting, but we want to give a chance for you to get to know him better.
So next Sunday he’s going to be sharing his testimony in the church service and he and his wife Darlene will be available in the multi purpose room between services. And up front after the second service, just so you can meet them if you have any questions. For many of us, you already know Tim. He met a pretty, young little blonde girl that brought him to church back when he was a teenager. Then he came to know the Lord here and he got married.
He’s already served as an elder in the past, so if you don’t know him, he’s already been involved quite a bit. But we do want you to get to know him better, especially for those of y’ all that are newer. And we look forward to hearing Tim next week. Tim and Darlene wave at us just so we can see you back there.
We continue today in our Luke series. And chapter 12 really is taking a turn in what Luke is doing to this point. Luke has been providing evidence that Jesus is the Messiah. He’s talked about how he is God in the flesh by his miraculous birth. He speaks and shares about the testimony of God the Father at his baptism.
We’ve heard about his miracles and his healings. He’s demonstrated his authority over nature and demons. He’s resisted the temptations of Satan. His teachings have been profound and more powerful than anyone else’s. His knowledge of things unknown to anyone is apparent, of his omniscience, the fact that he has so many followers at this point that they’re trampling over one another just to be near him, and his superiority over all the other religious leaders.
Luke has proven to us that he is God in flesh. He is the Messiah. And because of that, he deserves your attention and he deserves your allegiance. Luke is saying, follow him, listen to him. And from evidence about who Jesus is now Luke is taking a turn to delve more into Jesus moral teachings.
If you believe he is the Messiah now, this is what he taught about how we are supposed to live. So there’ll be a lot of practical things coming up in the messages that are ahead. Today we’re going to be talking about the fact that life is a stage and all of us are performers. That’s why the question is up there, who is your audience? When you go to work every so many months or years, they give you a performance review.
And whenever you take a test in school, it’s checking on your what? Your performance.
You live your lives performing on the stage of life. And the question is, who is your audience? You only have two options. You’re either performing for people and here’s the big question, or you’re performing for who you’re performing for God.
The Pharisees were hypocrites and actually The Greek word hypocrite. The definition is an actor or a stage player.
And that’s what they were. They were acting and they were putting on an external show. Jesus went over and over this for the applause of who? Of men.
At the end of the message today, the question is, are you like the Pharisees? Are you looking for the applause of men? Or are you living like a true believer and you’re looking for the applause of Jesus Christ? Let’s read in Luke, chapter 12.
Meanwhile, a crowd of many thousands came together so that they were trampling on one another. And he began to say to his disciples, first, be on your guard against the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. There is nothing covered that won’t be uncovered. There is nothing hidden that won’t be made known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light.
And what you have whispered in an ear in private rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops. May we pray. Heavenly Father, once again, we thank you for your word that you have given it to us, that you have preserved it, and that we can read it today and know that it is accurate in relaying to us that how to have a relationship with you and how to live our life in this world. Give us understanding and give us application to our life. And give us power by your spirit to live out what you are desiring from us.
In your Son’s name we pray. Amen. The crowd of many thousands that come together, they were trampling all over one another. Instead of paying attention to them, Jesus hones in on his disciples. And he says, be on your guard against the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
This comes right off chapter 11, where he has just confronted the religious leaders and now he’s warning his disciples, don’t be like them. He’s saying, be on your guard. Don’t be lackadaisical or wimpy about what I’m telling you. Don’t fall asleep in this matter of being on your guard. The word there, when it’s talking about being on your guard, it means to hold your mind or your ear toward someone or something continually.
It was used as a nautical term. It meant to steer the ship in a certain direction. And they couldn’t just steer the ship eight hours a day. What did they have to do? They had to steer that ship 24 hours a day.
And if the pilot of the ship fell asleep, the ship was going to get off course. He had to be Focused. And that’s what Jesus is saying here. You have to work at this. Don’t get tired of guarding yourself against leaven, because it will lead you off.
Course, leaven is what you put into bread or biscuits to make it rise. And it doesn’t take much. There’s a lot of flour and there’s a lot of water. But just that little bit of leaven goes a long way. And leaven in Scripture is a picture of sin.
How it starts out small, but it spreads and it grows and it consumes. Now, in this particular instance, Jesus is talking about hypocrisy being a sin. But what we’re looking at today applies to all types of sin. Whether it’s hypocrisy or whether it’s lust or causing dissension in the church or lying, it’s all like leaven. Now, in regard to the Pharisees hypocrisy, the sin in specific that we’re talking about here, just so you know, it’s living a double life.
It’s not being true to your heart in all situations and with all people. Instead, when you talk to this person, you tell them what you think will please them for their applause. And then when you turn this way, if you need to say the exact opposite to get their applause, you will. And that’s what the Pharisees were doing. They didn’t just stick to the truth.
They were hiding their heart and their intentions from anyone who disagreed with them. But then when they got together with their buddies that thought and felt the same way, then they were open with what was inside of them. A hypocrite says what they think will benefit them personally in every situation instead of just speaking the truth. It’s a conscious insincerity all the time. You’re never being who you are.
And once again, Jesus has just confronted the religious leaders about their hypocrisy, and he’s warning about that in particular. But we have to remember leaven represents all of sin. Just a little bit more about leaven. Rod Mattoon puts it in three phrases here that are just really helpful. So I want to give him credit.
He talks about the silence of leaven, he talks about the spread of leaven, and he talks about the swelling of leaven, or we could say the silence of sin. The spread of sin, the swelling of sin. The silence of leaven is that it’s used in pastries and bakery things. But one of its traits is it can exist without being immediately detected. I mean, you look at a lump of dough and can you go there and pick out the leaven?
You can’t see it. And if you don’t put the leaven in, your bread’s not going to rise. But again, you don’t know that it’s there. So leaven mixed in flour is not known until it does what it produces, its effect, and things start to rise. That’s how hypocrisy is.
That’s how sin is. It can be undetected in your life, or maybe you’ve put it in there and nobody else can see it. But eventually the results of it are going to be made known. The silence is going to become evident.
The second thing is the spread the little bit of leaven in there. Soon it pervades the whole mass. It starts out small, starts out quiet, but it grows quickly. It interacts with everything else in the mixture and changes everything else. And that’s how sin is in our life.
If we leave it undetected, if we leave it unchecked, if we leave it unremoved, soon it’s going to pervade our actions, our behaviors and our feelings. It’s going to influence our choices. And it gets so entwined in us that it becomes a part of our nature.
And the third thing that leaven represents is how it causes pride in people’s lives.
Pharisees and the Sadducees, they were very proud because they again wanted the applause of people. They lived their life so that people would look up to them. And it caused them to be puffed up and to swell. Sin is the same way. People start hiding a sin, they’re ashamed of it.
Then they get used to their sin and they don’t hide it quite so much. And then all of a sudden, they’re proud of their sin. And then the next thing is they want everybody else to say, we agree with what you’re doing is okay. That’s what sin does. It causes people to accept it beyond just that, but they’re proud of it, that they’re involved in it.
But in all this, all the ingredients in a loaf of bread, the number of ingredients doesn’t increase. It just looks bigger than it is. Sin does not give any true value in our life. Let’s go back to the text now. Verse 2.
It says, There is nothing covered that won’t be uncovered, nothing hidden that won’t be made known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light. And what you have whispered in an ear in private rooms will be proclaimed claimed on the housetops. Jesus. Now is pointing to the fact that God is omniscient.
And we want to look at three things today about God’s omniscience, what it means to us. And the first one is that God’s omniscience should produce fear in us.
In regard to all of sin. Jesus is telling us the way to overcome it is think about the character of God. Knowing who God is, knowing what God is, knowing what his character is like. The more and more we understand that, the more it leads us to lead godly lives. Jesus is teaching us that God’s omniscience is a deterrent to our sinning because it should be producing fear in our life.
Because all the things that we do in secret that we think that nobody sees, eventually one day they are going to be made known. And it’s not because we’re going to tattle on each other. It’s because God already knows and he’s going to confront us with those things. Let’s look at Romans, chapter 2, verse 16. It says, on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my Gospel, through Christ Jesus, God is going to judge everyone one day.
And we know of two judgments. The first judgment is, have you placed your faith in Jesus Christ? If you have, you’re going to heaven. If you haven’t placed your faith in Jesus Christ, you’re going to hell. That’s.
That’s the first judgment. If we are believers and followers of Jesus Christ, for us, that judgment happened on the cross. God said, these are the sins, these are the punishment, this is the judgment. And Jesus paid that price on the cross. As believers, we don’t go through that judgment.
Unbelievers will be asked face to face with God one day. You didn’t believe, therefore this is your judgment. That’s not the judgment we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a second judgment. And it’s for believers and for nonbelievers.
It’s the judgment where God is going to look at our lives, he’s going to evaluate them, and he’s either going to correct us or he’s going to give us rewards. That’s the judgment we’re talking about here. And it’s going to involve everything, even the secrets that we have. Paul said in 1st Corinthians 4, don’t judge anything prematurely before the Lord comes. We don’t have to worry about taking care of this.
We don’t have to worry about who will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and reveal the intentions of the heart. That’s what God is going to do, bring it to light. And not just what we did, but he’s going to reveal why we did the things that we did. And it’s going to be surprising to some people because you might do something good, but you have a bad intention about doing it. God’s going to say, you did the right thing the right way.
Or he’s also going to say, you did the right thing for the wrong reasons. Or he might say, on the other hand, you did the wrong thing for the right reasons, because that happens too. But that’s not the way we should go. Or that people just do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. God is going to judge us and the reasons why we did that.
But there’s also a promise here, because it says, and at that time, then praise will come to each one from God. There will be judgment, but there will also be reward. And God’s omniscience should spur us onto obedience because we’re fearful of approaching him that day.
2nd Corinthians 5, 9, 10. Paul said, therefore, whether we are at home or whether we are away, that pretty much covers everything, right? Wherever you are, we make it our aim to be pleasing to God. It’s that idea of aiming the ship continually in the right direction. We make it our aim to be pleasing to him.
And here’s the reason. Because God is omniscient, and we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body. And here it is. Whether it’s good, there’ll be rewards. If it’s bad, there will be no reward.
God’s omniscience should produce fear. What will God actually judge when we stand before him at this time one day? Well, he’s going to judge our actions. Ecclesiastes 12:14 says, For God will bring one or two acts. What does it say?
Every act to judgment, including all the things that we thought nobody ever knew about, all the hidden things, all the good and all the evil. God will judge the our actions. And God will also judge our words. Matthew 12 we read, I tell you that on the day of judgment, people will have to account for some of their careless words. Is that what it says?
Every careless word they speak?
Whenever you’ve said something inappropriate and weren’t thinking about it, that’s a careless word. Whenever you’ve cussed or sworn and let out some type of vulgarity because it just came out of your mouth, you were being careless about it. You can’t Just flippantly say, oh, it doesn’t matter. God says, each and every word that we say is going to be judged one day. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.
God is either going to say your speech was good or your speech was bad. And it’s not in just a general sense. It will be all of the specifics. God will judge our actions. God will judge our words, but he goes beyond that in his omniscience.
It says that he’s going to judge our thoughts. Romans 2. We read their competing thoughts, either accuse or even excuse them. On the day when God judges what people have kept secret, God will judge your actions. What you do is important.
God will judge your words, what you say is important. And God will judge your thoughts. What you are thinking is important. You see why you have to really focus on this? Jesus said, you can’t just let this happen.
You’ve got to be like a person steering a ship and be on course.
God’s omniscience should produce fear in our lives. But there’s also a positive side. It should be a comfort to us. And I want us to go back to Psalm 139, where we learn that God is omniscient.
Psalm 139. 1:6. Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I stand up, you understand my thoughts from far away. You observe my travels and my rest.
You are aware of all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue. You know all about it, Lord, and you have encircled me. You have placed your hand on me. The psalmist says, this wondrous knowledge is it’s beyond me.
It is lofty. I am unable to reach it. Let’s go back and think about those words. God just doesn’t casually want to know about us. It says he’s searching us out.
And when Scripture talks about knowing God and him knowing us, it isn’t just a casual, oh, I know that person. That’s a good guy. They dress neat, you know, And I’ve never heard a bad word coming out of the mouth. We’re talking about knowing people intimately and in depth. And God is continually searching to know us.
He knows us when we sit down, and he knows us when I stand up. That pretty much covers everything, I guess. But he knows when we’re lying down, too. I mean, I keep up with my wife, but I don’t count the number of times in the day that she sits down and stands up. But God is so interested in you.
He knows each and every one of those times. He understands our thoughts even when we’re far away from Him.
He’s observing everywhere that I go. You observe my travels, and when I’m not traveling, you’re watching over me when I’m resting. God is aware of everything about us. He knows us all about us. So we see here that God is searching with energy and desire to know Me.
And he’s offering this intimate relationship with us that goes beyond any. Any human intimacy. And if you could think of people in this world that knew everything about all of your life, and they knew every one of your evil thoughts, and they knew every one of your ill feelings toward people, and they knew all of your thoughts of anger. Most people would give up on you if they knew what was going on in your head and in your private life. But God knows all of those things, and he’s still searching you.
And the psalmist says, in spite of all this, you are encircling me, and you’re placing your hands upon me, and this personal relationship that you want to have to me. God’s omniscience brings fear, but it should also be a comfort. We go on to read in verse seven, where can I go to escape your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to heaven, you are there.
And if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I fly on the wings of the dawn and settle down on the western horizon, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will hold onto me. The psalmist is putting together that God is not only omniscient in knowing everything, but he is also what we call omnipresent. He’s everywhere, completely, all the time. And because he knows everything about us, and he’s with us wherever we go, says we can’t run any place to get away from him.
He talks about the highest place and the lowest place, and the farthest to the east and the farthest to the west. And all of these places, wherever we are, God is always there to lead us and, and hold onto us because of his love for us. And even wherever we are, if we are in our stage of rebellious avoidance of God like Jonah was, God did not abandon Jonah. Jonah couldn’t flee far enough from the Lord. God was still there, leading him and holding onto him in the belly of the great fish and brought him out.
We go on to read in verse 11, if I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light around me will be night, even the darkness is not dark to you because the night shines like the day and darkness and light are alike to you. Maybe you’ve not run to the darkness. Maybe you’ve not chosen to sin in darkness. This can be talking about you’re just in a really dark place in your life. You’re in a pit of despair or depression.
God is still there with you in the darkness to bring you comfort. And the knowledge that he knows that about us should bring comfort to our lives. We saw first that God’s omniscience should produce fear. It brings us comfort. But the third thing is that God’s omniscience will result in discipline.
We’re either going to be disciplined at the judgment, but we’re also going to be disciplined in this life because of what God knows about us. And then we go to Hebrews, chapter 12, verses 3 through 11.
For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won’t grow weary and give up in struggling against sin. It’s the same thing. Be on guard, be on task, be at the steering wheel. Don’t grow weary. Don’t give up in your struggle against sin.
And he says, at this point, you’ve not resisted to the point of shedding your blood like Stephenhead or other martyrs. These people are still alive. Verse 5 says, and you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons, my son, do not take the Lord’s discipline lightly or lose heart when you are reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and punishes every son he receives. The emphasis, there is discipline, reproof and discipline and punishment.
This is all discipline. How many of you like to be disciplined? It’s painful. And you can stop and say, well, why does God discipline me? God’s a God of love.
Why? Why would he cause pain in my life? It’s because discipline is a good thing. And discipline should be a source of comfort, knowing that if God disciplines us, it’s not because he hates us, it’s because he what? He loves us.
And discipline is also, according to the text here, a proof of our faith. If we’re not feeling disciplined ever by God, we should stop and think, wow, am I really a believer? Because I never feel any of God’s discipline. If you are not disciplined, Scripture says you are not a child of God. So I asked the question, what does discipline look like?
It can be corporal punishment. It could be physical illness, it could be actually death. That comes up on a believer because they’re being disobedient at The Lord’s Supper, we always emphasize it, says if you come to the table with any sin, Paul said there were some that had died because of that. God can discipline us physically.
Another form of discipline that parents espouse. Today we didn’t so much, but it’s timeout. Put the kid in isolation in the room where they have all their video games and their toys and their music. You know, it’s just terrible punishment. That’s not what we’re talking about.
It’s more like go stand in the corner and don’t talk to anybody and don’t be involved. You know, God sometimes puts us in time out and we sense his displeasure and we’re separated from him. But like the parent who’s standing at the door listening, are they really being quiet? That’s how God is. He’s right there.
He’s not left us. But we do sense his discipline. That we feel this separation or this fog that’s between us and him. And it should make you feel uncomfortable. That’s the purpose of it.
But God can also just give us a look of disapproval. You ever give the evil eye to your kids? Straighten up. Mary and I have always been up here on stage. We don’t get to sit with our kids in church.
So when we had four little ones, they sat here on the front row. We couldn’t do time out. We couldn’t do any type of physical discipline. We had to give them the what, the look of disapproval and they would straighten up. God does that.
Sometimes we just realize, oh, I just made a mistake. I’m sorry, God. I remember one time before we had cell phones and I had stayed out probably past midnight and I didn’t call. Now, we didn’t have cell phones then, but my mom did have a mobile phone. It was a 15 foot cord where she could walk around the house.
But there’s a difference. And when I came driving home, my dad was standing at the end of the driveway just looking for me.
I felt terrible. The look of disapproval. He didn’t say one word. But I knew God does that to us sometimes. But it’s because he what?
He loves us. Verse 7. Therefore endure suffering as not just suffering, but as discipline. Because God is dealing with you as sons. That’s because you’re his child.
For what son is there that a father does not discipline? And we’re talking about a good father who’s doing his job. Because a good father will discipline his children. And God is the best father. But the warnings here, if you are without discipline, which all Receive.
And that all is talking about. All believers are going to be disciplined. If you, you’re not experiencing that, it says, then you are illegitimate children and you are not sons. Furthermore, we had human fathers discipline us and we respected them. Shouldn’t we submit even more to the Father of spirits and live?
If you are truly a child of God, because God is omniscient in knowing everything about you, he is going to discipline you. And if you don’t ever sense that discipline, if you’ve never sensed that discipline, you probably have a religion, but you don’t have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 10. For they disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them. Now that’s an interesting thought. Fathers, mothers, they discipline their kids on what seemed good to them. What that means is sometimes we make mistakes and disciplining our kids.
Can any of you agree with me?
Sometimes? Okay, they’re in a fight. Who’s guilty here? She did it, he did it, she did it, he did it. I mean, then we’re left with trying to figure out who is the guilty one here.
And you make a judgment as to who gets the punishment or the timeout or whatever you do. Happened to us quite a few times. And years later, we had all of our adult kids in the car and this discussion came up, dad, you remember when you spanked me for doing such and such? That wasn’t me, that was that child. You made a mistake.
But then that child admitted, well, I really deserved it because I told that child to do it. You know, so there was an instigator and a person doing it. They were both guilty. But we are not perfect in our judgment. But God is.
We never have to question his discipline. He does it, it says, for our benefit. It doesn’t benefit God in any way to discipline us. It’s for Him. And of course, verse 11 says, no, discipline seems enjoyable at the time.
So when you discipline your kids, if they’re not experienced some type of displeasure or pain, it’s not discipline. It’s supposed to be painful, but later on, however, it yields peaceful fruit of righteousness. Because those who have been disciplined, they learn something from it. They are trained by it. And because God knows all of our sins, all of our thoughts, he can discipline us for any of these things.
And we know that he does it perfectly. He does it for our benefit. And we can grow from that if we receive it in the right way.
We go Back to Psalm 139, 23, 34. The Psalmist said, God, you are Omniscient. I’m fearful of you. I’m comforted by you. I know you’re going to discipline me.
You’re perfect in all this. So this is the prayer that after thinking about God’s omniscience, He says, search me, God. Know my heart, test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the everlasting way. If we are living in the light of God’s omniscience, we should be able to go to him and say, please, if I’m not seeing something in my life, point it out to me now.
Get me back on the right path. We take comfort in that. And I told you what the last question would be today. Who is your audience? And you either answer it one way or the other.
You can either say, I’m living to please people, or I am living to please God. That’s your choice today. And it’s not an easy Choice. It’s a 24 7, 360. Is it 64 days in the calendar that we have 65?
I’ve been reading this book on Jewish calendars and all these things, and they all have different numbers of years and I can’t remember anymore. Let’s just read that last thing with me. Let’s all say it together. Who is personalize it? My audience.
Am I living my life to please people or am I living my life to please God? Heavenly Father, we take great comfort and fear and appreciation of you. And knowing your omniscience over all things, we know that we can trust you. We know that you will take care of all things. And we know that you will maintain our relationship with you throughout eternity because you know of no day in the future that any of what you have planned will end.
Help us to think about this and let it change our lives and how we live. In your son’s name we pray. Amen.