A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on October 19, 2025.
In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows (Luke 12:1–7).[1]
Calling the Pharisees “fools” and the lawyers worse, Jesus did not endear himself to the leaders of the moral majority.[2] It was surely no shock that as a lot they sought “to catch him in something he might say” (Luke 11:54). Of course, they wouldn’t because they couldn’t, leading them eventually to fabricate testimony, illegally try, and falsely convict the sinless Son of God. But knowing what would come did not lead Jesus to dial back his criticism or concern, warning his disciples: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.”
The expression is, of course, metaphorical, drawing from the secret, silent, spreading work of yeast, a metaphor perhaps so good that at first the disciples didn’t get it. They thought he was talking about bread.[3] But here, Jesus is explicit, equating “leaven” with “hypocrisy” (12:1), a word derived from the Greek word for an “actor” (hypocrites), from which we get our English word hypocrite. This is helpful, I think, in understanding Jesus’ warning: Beware of the Pharisees because they are not in reality what they pretend to be. Outwardly, they looked holy but inside they were filthy, “full of greed and wickedness” (11:39). Outwardly, they looked like generous givers but inwardly they neglected “justice and the love of God” (11:42). Outwardly, they looked like models of holiness but inwardly were like “unmarked graves” (11:44), contaminating the unsuspecting with their “leaven.” And so, Jesus warned his disciples, and he warns us too: Beware of hypocrisy.
Beware Hypocrisy
Of course, Jesus was not simply telling us how to recognize hypocrisy but to beware of it and its pervasive nature. Hypocrisy is, as one commentator defines it, “the reality gap between our outward appearance of godliness and the sinner that lives inside.”[4] The wider the gap the worse. In the case of the Pharisees, culturally they had successfully masked the reality of their hearts with the rituals of their religion, performing on Israel’s stage for all to see. And like the actor or actress who struggles to come out of character and return to reality, the Pharisees never took their masks off.
But Jesus’ warning was not to them but us: So pervasive is the leaven of the Pharisees that if we are not careful, we will become Pharisees too. We are all susceptible. We may go to Bible study, even say the right things but not submit to the Word of God in our private thoughts and opinions. We may serve the church with our gifts and talents but not love our brothers and sisters. We may celebrate the sovereignty of God and trumpet the doctrines of grace but worry about every little thing. We may act like we’ve got it all together but never repent of our sins. Some wear the mask of Christianity so well no one would know they do not know the Lord.
But there will come a day, sooner or later, when nothing will be covered but will be revealed, when nothing will be hidden but will be known.[5] We think that our gossiping or complaining goes unheard; we think that our hateful or lustful thoughts are between me, myself, and I; we think that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas; but, Jesus contradicts our hypocrisy, saying, “Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops” (12:3).
Turns out, everyone’s mask eventually comes off. As Moses warned Gad and Reuben, “be sure your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23). It could be today, or it could be the last day. As Solomon concluded, “God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccles. 12:14). There will be no costume party on Judgment Day.
Consider then the folly of hypocrisy for those whose sins have been judged through Christ’s atoning blood: We have nothing to hide, not because we are perfect but forgiven. In Christ, the reality gap between the outward and inward is bridged not with a better performance but inward repentance. Knowing that “the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7), we must be faithful to “confess our sins, [for] he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Remember, it was the tax collector of Jesus’ parable, who cried out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” not the Pharisee, who went to his house justified (Luke 18:13).
Fear Not
And yet, one of the greatest obstacles to authenticity is fear of what others will think of us, how they will respond to us, what they will say about us, what they will do to us. How often do we fear man more than God? But why? What’s the worst they could do? What if other people knew about you what God knows? What would they do? Kill you? Maybe. Let’s not forget that’s what they did to the most innocent man to ever live. So, why not you and me? Shall we put our mask back on?
But what Jesus is helping us understand, in saying, “do not fear those who kill the body” (Luke 12:4), including all the horrible things man is capable of, is that to fear man is to fear the created rather than the Creator, sinister flattery to man but an offense to God. It’s also theologically irrational. Why? Because, there is more to life than this life. Why worry about a mere flesh wound when your soul could be sent to hell? Or, as Jesus put it, “fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (12:5). Heaven and hell are forever, and there is only one Lord over both.
The word translated “hell” here is the Greek name Gehenna, a transliteration of the Hebrew ge-hinnom, meaning “Valley of Hinnom,” a valley south of Jerusalem where Israelites had once sacrificed their children to the Canaanite god Molech.[6] In response to such God-forsaken shame, the valley became the place for Jerusalem’s waste, where burning garbage and sewage commingled, rendering a repulsive potpourri. In time, its name became a synonym for hell, “where [the] worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48). More than a metaphor, hell is a place of eternal torment and suffering, and God is sovereign over it too.
But Jesus is not teaching us to fear hell but God. No one, even the devil himself, has the authority to cast into hell. Only the Lord God almighty has authority over heaven and hell,[7] which should make us love the gospel of Jesus Christ all the more. He, who has supreme authority overall, gives us not the Gehenna we deserve but what we don’t, eternal life through faith in Christ. And it is this same faith that conquers, and even banishes, fear from the Christian’s heart, directing us to trust that whatever suffering we receive at the hand of man or otherwise is, as Paul describes it, “light momentary affliction . . . preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).
Fear God
Contrasting the fear of man with the fear of God, Jesus was emphatic: “Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:5). But what does it mean to fear God? The answer depends upon your relationship with him. If you do not know him through faith in Christ, then to fear him is terrifying, as judgment awaits. He who has the authority to cast into hell will, and all you will ever know of God is the unquenching fire and eternal torment of his holy justice. As Jonathan Edwards preached,
It is indeed “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31), and yet he “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a fallen rock.”[8]
The writer of Hebrews describes God as “a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29), as the holiness of God burns up, as it were, anything unholy, which is a terrifying thought but for the gospel. Through the atoning death of Christ, God’s justice has been satisfied: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). It is this gospel truth that makes the fear of God different for a Christian. We fear neither man nor the putrid fire of Gehenna, but we fear God, relationally, loving him as our heavenly Father, obeying him as his child, and worshiping him as our God with reverence and awe.
To understand this, consider, for example, Abraham, our father in the faith, who “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3). As a sinner saved by grace and justified as righteous, God tested Abraham, and through it Abraham obeyed, leading God to say, “now I know that you fear God” (Gen. 22:12). A right fear of God then begins with faith that is lived out by trusting God, heeding his Word and obeying it.
Therefore, if we fear God as his children we will trust him likewise. To this point, Jesus used the example of the sacrificial sparrows of temple worship and every hair on our heads: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:6-7). The market value of the sacrificial sparrow was less than a penny, and yet, Jesus tells us, not one is forgotten. Such is God’s providential care over all creation, all the way down to a sparrow. And, according to the Son of God, “you are of more value than many sparrows.” This isn’t empty encouragement. “Consider him,” the writer of Hebrews counsels, “who endured from sinners such hostility against himself” to the point of shedding his own blood (Heb. 12:3). For whom? For you, for me. And it’s not because he’s some distant God who doesn’t know us. He knows every detail, down to the number of our (quickly departing) follicles, and loves us still. “Fear God,” R.C. Sproul says, “but in that fear of God, don’t think that under the gaze of God you are reduced to insignificance. Even though God knows everything about you as a believer, He places a value upon you as His child that is incalculable.”[9]
Let us then take all our earthly fears to the King who conquered death, because “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31). And when we are tempted to fear anyone or anything other than God, let us meditate on this: If “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, . . . will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). Indeed, he has, indeed he will, which means that we have no need to hide behind a mask of hypocrisy or fear what others will think, say, or do. Rather, let us fear God that even in the face of fear we may say, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] Luke 11:37-54
[3] Matt. 16:7
[4] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 644.
[5] Luke 12:2
[6] 2 Chronicles 28:3; 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31; 19:2-6
[7] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 647.
[8] “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/edwards_jonathan/Sermons/
Sinners.cfm.
[9] “Whom to Fear,” Tabletalk, Vol. 47, No. 6 (June 2023): 47.
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