Thursday Reading: Luke 12:1-5
Key Verse: Luke 12:5
5 But I will warn you of whom you shall fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear Him.
Devotion:
At this stage Jesus was in front of a huge crowd. The original Greek text describes it as a myriad which itself meant ten thousand – or in other words, this was a huge crowd of people gathered together trying to get to Jesus so that they could be blessed/healed/saved; they were falling over each other trying to get close to Him. Have you ever been in a huge crowd before? When you are surrounded by such a huge number of people it is very difficult to do your own thing. Most of the time you just have to go along with what the crowd wants. Jesus sensed this and turned towards His disciples to issue them a warning that was supported by what was going on right in front of them.
His warning was to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. Leaven is a rising agent that is used to make dough rise up. It may start out small but as long as it is warm it starts to puff up the dough, larger and larger. If left too long it will then go off. But in this case Christ was comparing the religion of the Pharisees with the leaven. They had made an art of religion and with it they were ruling the country. Their religion was no longer a relationship with God but a set of rules and regulations that would govern the people, or to put it another way, they left God out of religion and based it on the requirements of man!
Christ brought it up at this point to show the disciples that people get carried away with things when they build them up themselves. Just like being in a crowd of people, if we are surrounded by something that is big and growing we will tend to go along with it just because it is big. He was trying to warn them from getting caught up in religion instead of pursuing their own relationship with God. He ended up by reminding them that the worst any man could do to us was to physically kill us – after that nobody can do anything to us! But God can! That is why we need to fear Him...
Points to Ponder:
Are you scared of people saying things to you?
Do you respect the One who can judge whether you go to heaven or hell?
