Authenticity & Courage – Marks Of Greatness Series

“Authenticity & Courage – Marks of greatness” – Luke 12:1-12

Gladstone Baptist Church – 7/1/07 am

S1 - We all have hidden secrets - OOPS

Show a Video Clip from the Wizard of Oz (The Wizard is caught out and exposed as a fraud. He has put on a mask and fooled everyone, but he is a hypocrite and a pretender)

You know, we are all like the wizard of Oz. We are have secrets in the closet or behind curtains which we try desperately to hide from other people. We think that hiding those secrets makes us great, but Dorothy is right when she says that if the Wizard of Oz was truly great, he would keep his word. Some of the secrets would destroy our reputation. Some would destroy the power we have over other people. Some would possibly even result in our losing our job or our ministry or our friends.

Some of these secrets we have kept for years. The subject of the secret is distant past. For others, the subject of the secret is something very current.

In some respects it is very easy for us to keep secrets from even those closest to us, isn’t it. No one is watching us 24 hours a day. Know one knows our secret thoughts or our secret addictions. No one sees what sites we surf to on the net. No one sees the TV you watch late at night. No one sees the books and magazines you look at in the crib room when no one else is watching you. No one sees how you spend your weekends or your nights.

All of us have some secrets we want to keep to ourselves and most of us believe that we will be successful in taking them to the grave with us. No one will ever know we tell ourselves. But we are kidding ourselves if we think we can keep things hidden for ever. .

In time, everyone will know every sordid detail of our life. We think that no one knows, but we are wrong. God knows. God sees. God hears. And God will reveal them.

S2 - But one day all will be revealed - UGH.

God sees all things. Everything we do, say and think. And Jesus taught that one day everything we have done will be illuminated and revealed for all to see. Does that scare you? To know that the things we have tried so hard to hide will be one day illuminated so all can see them?

If you have your Bibles open, open them with me to Luke 12:1. Before Christmas we spent a few weeks looking at Luke 11. Jesus had been getting popular and crowds were starting to gather to hear him. They wanted to see signs, but Jesus wasn’t on earth to entertain. He was here to call people to repentance and salvation. He was like a light which radiated God’s glory – it was there for all to see. Some people opened their eyes and allowed Christ’s witness to shine into their lives. They were changed and started to shine out God’s light in their own lives. But other people had bad eyes and refused to see the evidence of God in Jesus. In vs 37 of chapter 11, Jesus directly addressed some who had bad eyes – they were a group of Pharisees and a group of Scribes. Some of you might remember the 6 woes we talked about?

- They majored on the minors

- They sought fame and public applause

- They were more of a hindrance to people finding God than a help

- They placed unrealistic demands on people

- They rejected God’s prophets

- They turned simple things into complex mysteries.

Jesus criticised their attitudes and their behaviour and from that point on, they sought an opportunity to destroy him.

Luke turns his attention back to the crowds that were gathering. In Chp 12:1 he says …

Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying, [Jesus was popular and many thousands gathered. The word used here is the word for 10,000 or for an huge crowd too large to count. There were so many people trying to hear and see Jesus, that they were trampling on each other. Have you ever been in a crowd where you were trampling on each other. I used to catch a bus to school in Brisbane and at peak hour, it was just like this. So many people tried to cram onto the train – you would have people stepping on you. That was what it was like for Jesus. But when he spoke, he first addressed those who were his followers – those who claimed to believe in him. And this is what he said …]