A Look Into the Father's Heart

Nothing says Christmas like a water buffalo. For a poor family in Asia, getting a water buffalo is like getting a farm tractor to pull a plow, or getting a milk truck full of delicious milk, or getting a stand at the market to sell cheese.

A water buffalo opens the door for work, food, and income. More importantly, it opens the door to talk about Jesus. And nothing says Christmas better than that. Not key to Kolov, the Russian nightmare.

No, the devil's nightmare. Hear from its time to man up. Challenging men to step into their true manhood. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it.

Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. We now have a special guest who is a marketplace minister, warrior for God, coach. He is part of a ministry called Stewardship Legacy, helping kingdom-minded folks, business owners, individuals steward their wealth and steward their kingdom principles into the next generation. He is Samuel... Samuel, I've got to pronounce your name right. Nicely Ballesteros.

Nicely Ballesteros. I love that. In the Cuban tradition, you take both names, right?

Your mom and your pops. And you were there with us at Wednesday in the Word when we went through Luke 12, 1-7. Yes, I was. So you have the honor of reading the passage for us. Will you please, as we get into this wonderful passage, a pivotal passage in Luke, where Jesus is still ministering across Galilee, heading down toward Jerusalem, but it's heating up and more multitudes are clamoring to him. Go ahead and read the passage, Luke 12, 1-7. Will you, Samuel?

Sure. In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together so that they trampled one another, he began to say to his disciples, first of all, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy, for there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore, whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops. And I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do, but I will show you whom you should fear. Fear him who, after he is killed, has power to cast into hell. Yes, I say to you, fear him.

Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? And not one of them is forgotten before God, but the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows. Wow, so you have a lot in this passage.

Samuel, thanks for reading that. We have the idea of leaven and hypocrisy of the Pharisees that is infectious and will ferment and mess things up big time. We have the idea of God's judgment and hell and what it means to fear God and what we shouldn't be afraid of.

And then we have this intimate look at the Father's heart and his care. So, so much of this passage. Why don't you start us off with a quick, the first question there, my friend. Why would a loving Savior be so hard on the religious leaders?

Great question. And then the passage is Luke 11, 36-53. Last time we talked about these religious leaders who were constantly in battling Jesus at every moment, attacking him, laying in wait, it says in Luke 11, 53, to try to entrap him. The lawyers, the scribes, the Pharisees, one of my Bible school teachers when I was young used to call them the scabs and the parasites. But they were, and Jesus proclaims these six deadly woes on them in chapter 11.

You know, woe are you because your outside's clean but the inside is filthy, you know, and so on and so forth. The hypocrisy, you're making hell hotter, you're taking people right into hell with you. Why would he be so hard on those guys? He's a loving Savior, Samuel, why would he be so hard on these religious guys?

Because they're putting a load on people that they can't even carry themselves. That's something, the hypocrisy, and it comes in the next, ask the next question because it really parlays into our conversation this week in this passage. What is the leaven of the Pharisees and how is it related to hypocrisy? How does just a little leaven or yeast pollute the gospel? Wow, what a question. The leaven of the Pharisees.

Now, Jesus gives us a specific definition or description of it here in this passage in the very first verse there of Luke chapter 12. Leaven's not bad. Let's start with what leaven is. You've cooked before, no doubt, right? And I know there's probably been some delicious Cuban bread made in your household, right?

With your heritage. So, leaven is also known as yeast and it's something that makes bread rise. You don't need a whole lot, do you? That's correct. But you can tell pretty quick if it's got leaven in it. Otherwise, you might be eating a saltine cracker. Right, right. It's very important. You don't want to have that Cubano sandwich, right?

Right. On a cracker. You want it on bread, right?

With a good zing to it and some richness and some moisture and some real palatable flavoring and taste and whatnot. And it's important. So leaven isn't always bad, but in this case, Jesus is likening leaven and yeast to hypocrisy. Something that is infectious. Something that's viral. Something that Samuel gets in and I guess we talked about in the Bible study, how can hypocrisy, a little bit of it pollute the gospel and get in your soul?

You just cover a little sin there in your life, right? A little white lie or you start a pattern. How does it become absolutely infectious and overtake you just like a little yeast takes over a whole loaf? How does that happen? Well, it's just like anything. If you want to poison someone, you don't give them pure poison because they'd spit it out of their mouth.

But if you put just a little bit with a lot of good tasting food, you could get someone that way. And the same way with this leaven here. This leaven is that you can have the gospel and this.

That's right. That was the Galatian heresy. And that's what Paul says in Galatians 5.10.

He says a little leaven leavens the whole lump. And these Judaizers were coming into the church of Galatia. And Paul confronts him in chapter 2. He says, did you receive the Spirit by the deeds of the law or by the hearing of faith?

He has to give them a pointed question. It's not a both and. Salvation is not by faith and by works, right? Samuel is not by grace and by deeds. And the enemy wants to kind of assimilate those two or synthesize those two, doesn't he?

The enemy is happy. Samuel, if we say to God on that day of judgment, well, I'm coming into heaven because it's 99% what you did on the cross and in the gospel, but it's 1%. I contributed my 1%. Why is it we always want to kick that 1% in? Wasn't it about that leaven that appeals to our flesh, Samuel?

How is that? Because it's something that we could say we did. We like taking credit, don't we? We're human doings more than we are human beings, and we like to perform.

Of course, we're taught to perform. If you work hard in school, you get good grades, right? You work hard, honest hours work on honest wage, right?

Honest receipt of that work. But when it comes to the gospel, God's got a different standard, doesn't he? And it says that no one is righteous, no, not one. It says, as one Puritan said, the only thing we bring to our salvation is our sin. And thank God for His grace.

And the hypocrisies were contaminating. Jesus said, freely you have received, freely give. He said, believe on me. Whosoever believes in me shall not perish but everlasting life.

This is life. I am the sun. I am the light of the world. He who looks to me, you'll be saved.

He who believes in me will not walk in darkness. Then these Pharisees come along and say, why aren't your disciples washing their hands? What are you doing away with our customs? Why aren't you keeping the Sabbath? What are you doing eating off of the wheat there? And so on and so forth.

And they contaminate the whole thing, but it's just a little bit of leaven. They say, well, let's sprinkle a little bit of this law back, like in Galatians' case, and throughout the Scriptures there's this attack, and even today, wow, today that is a real attack on the Gospel. Give us this next question, then we may have to put a hash mark on this and come to the final three questions next week, but what's this next question, Samuel? So, how does His light expose hypocrisy and bring things out in the open?

Wow. And that's this little passage, and you read it earlier. There is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore, whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light. And it's interesting, he says, what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops. Hebrew homes, just like our homes today, had little corridors, had secret rooms. Even in the temple, there's catacombs and catacombs of rooms, underground, above ground, where people could go and have these private clandestine meetings, and they're thinking, hey, we've just sworn an oath, we've just agreed to something.

No one else knows about it. Well, the fact is, Samuel, is anything in light of God's light that Jesus brings up here, is there anything that's not hidden from the eyes of God? No. And is there anything that will not be brought out to the light?

No. So Jesus, basically, he calls to God, he brings out the ultimate adjudicator of good and bad, of evil, of darkness and light, evil and good, and that is the light of God. Nothing's going to be hidden. The housetops, it's interesting, that is a great picture that those in that area of Palestine, in that first century, would have gotten that. In that day and age, people went on the rooftop, not just for relief and fresh air and maybe a little bit of the sun. You know, Peter took a nice nap on the rooftop.

Remember that story with him and Cornelius, right? He had that vision. But there's also the idea of the rooftop, it's open. King David got in trouble for having his eyes on someone else's wife who was bathing on a rooftop. See? So the rooftop, it's open, it's exposed, and when you want an audience, go into a little room in your closet or room in your house and talk, no one will hear you.

Go on the rooftop and you will be heard if you want to make some noise, if you want to announce, hey, there's something coming, hey, there's a big event. And so Jesus is saying it will all come out and it really gets intense. Now, next time my friend Samuel is with me, what a blessing he is, he's going to join me again as we talk about what it means to fear God. That is something we hear very little of these days, but it's a concept, it's a reality that can and will change your entire life.

So we're going to come back to Luke 12, the final few verses of this passage, what it means to fear God, and is hell a real place? Why don't we hear much about it anymore? If it's so bad, shouldn't we be warning folks? This is Experience Truth, I'm Stu Everson, and my good friend Samuel is here with us. Samuel, tell everyone about your ministry, Stewardship Legacy, real quick, give us the website for it. I want people to know about your ministry and what all you're doing to serve the Lord.

Sure, so our website is StewardshipLegacy.com, and my email is Samuel at StewardshipLegacy.com. We're a firm that's been around about 35 years, have 10 locations throughout the country, and we help Christian business owners to help push past the ceiling that they may have hit or feeling that they're stuck. We help them get what they want from their business. We help them implement shalom in their company to bring order, kingdom order, into their company so that they can be good stewards and really build their business and scale it in a way that's manageable, more profitable, more fun to run. And then the other thing we do is help them think about the next exciting phase in their life through our business continuation and succession planning.

But it's much more than that, it's also the transfer of their wealth and their wisdom and their vision and legacy to the next generation. That's fantastic. I love this, we just read about how His light exposes all hypocrisy. And it's neat, as believers, every day we open His word, the entrance of your word gives light, gives understanding, Psalm 119 tells us. And His word cuts, and every day we have that light moment, don't we? And are you allowing God into your business, into your heart, into your life, into your marriage, to expose things daily and to apply the gospel, what has been done for you, to daily walk in the reality of that power? Thank you for sharing that. We'll be back next time on Experience Truth, Luke chapter 12, in our journey through the book of Luke.