Luke 12:49-53
It’s been several months since
we have been together in Luke’s gospel. So I remind you that
the section of the gospel we are in is the passage where Jesus
is or the section where Jesus is making his way from his ministry
in Galilee towards Jerusalem, towards his suffering, passion,
his death, his resurrection and ascension and on his way to Jerusalem. As he passes through villages
and towns and gathers crowds or speaks to his disciples alone,
he says all sorts of things, both veiled and crystal clear
about his mission as a savior, about the ways and values of
the kingdom. And so today is just another
one of those moments where Jesus will say some rather radical
things to his hearers, but also to us. So we give our attention
to God’s word, Luke chapter 12, beginning at verse 49. Jesus
says this, I came to cast fire on the earth and would that it
were already kindled. I have a baptism to be baptized
with and how great is my distress until it is accomplished. Do
you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell
you, but rather division. For from now on in one house,
there will be five divided, three against two and two against three.
They will be divided father against son and son against father, mother
against daughter and daughter against mother and mother-in-law
against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. This is the word of the living
God. Let’s pause and pray together. Lord, your word is a light to
our feet, a lamp to our path, so shine brightly in our hearts
the power of your spirit to help us read and hear and see and
understand, and most of all, put into practice in our lives
that which is before us this day. Give us your grace, we pray
in the name of Christ, amen. Some of you likely have senior
moments. Senior moment is something like
this. You’re in one part of the house and you decide you need
to go to the other part of the house to do something. And by
the time you make your way to the other part of the house to
do the something that you thought of in the other room, you’ve
forgotten what the something is and you have a senior moment. You’re on a mission. There’s
something that must be done, but you arrive and you forget. You forget your mission. It doesn’t
take much for that to happen to us, does it? We have these
senior moments rather frequently. We’re human. Yes, we have senior
moments, but we often We often lose interest, don’t we? We’re
a society that is dominated by the gadget, by the phone, the
instant. And so we lose interest very
quickly in what it is we are on a mission to do. Well, not
so the Lord Jesus Christ. With our Savior, there are no
senior moments. With our Savior, there are no
moments of lost interest in the mission that is before him. And as we return to our study
of Luke’s gospel, remind you that Luke set out, Luke the physician,
to write an orderly account of the birth, ministry, death, resurrection,
and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then as he wrote
the book of Acts as well, he sought to write an orderly account
of the ministry of the church through the apostles after the
ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ into heaven. But Jesus has finished
his Galilean ministry where he healed the sick. He cast out
demons. He preached in synagogues. He turned water into wine. He fed 5,000. On a couple of
occasions, he fed many with two fishes and a handful of loaves
of bread and on and on. But we find Jesus now and the
gospel making his way to Jerusalem. He’s on his journey to Jerusalem.
And in chapter 9, verse 51, I can’t recall when we looked at that.
It was probably maybe sometime last year, last fall or so. There’s
this very interesting point where the Word of God says this, when
the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face
to go to Jerusalem. And you’ll remember that Jesus
tempted 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness alone, tempted
by Satan with three great temptations, three shortcuts, if you will.
And Jesus remained resolute to the mission of saving a people
for himself. And so as we arrive in chapter
12, verses 49 to 53, we’re going to see two big picture themes
here. Those big picture themes are
this. Jesus is going to speak of the work of reconciliation,
and then he’s going to speak of the division that is caused
by his work of reconciliation. Now, you may be thinking in your
mind, seem to contradict one another. If Jesus comes to reconcile,
doesn’t that make for peace? Well, maybe most of you in your
Bible will say the heading, not the scriptural heading, but whoever
put your Bible together, mine says, not peace, but division.
And that’s something we’re going to have to wrap our minds around
today. But let’s look first at what
Jesus says as he speaks of his work of reconciliation. mentioned a time or two this
morning now that Jesus, as he’s making his way to Jerusalem,
as he’s making his way through the villages and through the
towns of Israel on his way to Jerusalem, where he will suffer
and die for the sins of his people, he drops little hints. He drops
these statements that if you’re paying attention, you catch them.
But if you’re like some of his disciples, you have to ask like
Peter, Jesus, are you talking to us or to other people? We
are like the disciples sometimes, we don’t get what Jesus is saying.
But Jesus drops hints of his work of reconciliation and he
uses a couple of words that if you know your Bible reasonably
well, you see what he’s getting at. Now we have the benefit of
knowing the whole Bible, all 66 books. We have the benefit
of living in a time and an era where we have these study Bibles,
we have all these helps. We have Ligonier and table talk
and we can be pretty advanced in our knowledge of the Bible,
our knowledge of the Old Testament, our knowledge of the New Testament
and how all these things fit together. But you can imagine
how confusing Jesus words must have been to his disciples, to
his original hearers. And so as he drops the hint,
he speaks of fire. He speaks of baptism. I came
to cast fire on the earth. And would that it were already
kindled. That would make the evening news,
wouldn’t it? Madman says he’s come to burn the world. Then
there’s verse 50. I have a baptism to be baptized
with and how great is my distress until it is accomplished. Here is Jesus dropping hints
about the work of reconciliation that will soon take place in
Jerusalem. during his passion week. He speaks
of fire, which is a common biblical allusion to judgment. Think back
to Sodom and Gomorrah. What did God do when he wanted
to destroy that ancient city that was known for their immorality
and their lack of hospitality? Did he just run them all off
and put new people in? Fire came down from heaven and
destroyed the place, never to be seen again. What about baptism? We think of baptism as what takes
place at this font or what happens in a pool of water in most churches. What do we mean by baptism? Well,
baptism is also a sort of judgment word in most of the Bible. What
did God do to the wicked world in Noah’s day? when they would
not repent of their sins. Well, he saved a family in an
ark. but he baptized the rest of the
world with water and with judgment. Baptism is often considered to
be something overwhelming, something catastrophic. And so there was
a flood that baptized the wicked in the old days of the old covenant. Or how about the Red Sea? Israel
cried out to God when they were enslaved under Pharaoh in Egypt.
God sent a deliverer, Moses, his helper Aaron spoke for him.
They went through begging Pharaoh to let them go, the plagues,
and finally the last plague on the firstborn, the people go. They run for their lives out
of Egypt and into the wilderness. And just as they came to the
Red Sea, there came Pharaoh and his army and the chariots and
the horses pursuing their lost forced labor party. And what
did God do? He parted the sea. The Israelites
walked across on dry land. And as they stepped across on
dry land, the sea came and overwhelmed or it baptized, it baptized the
Egyptian army in order that they might no longer pursue God’s
people. And so Jesus speaks here of two
words, fire and baptism. Now, how do they relate to him?
Jesus’ mission is to come and cast fire. He wishes it were
already kindled. He looks forward to the judgment
that God will lay out upon mankind. He looks to a baptism and he
is distressed until it is accomplished. Here is a man on a mission. Here’s
the interesting thing, though. Jesus is the one upon whom fire
will fall. Jesus is the one who will be
baptized with the wrath almighty God. How is it that Jesus can
say, I’ve come to reconcile the world and that brings division,
not peace? Well, that’s one thing, isn’t
it? We’ll sort through that one in a minute. But how is it that
Jesus can say, I am excited for the unmitigated, almighty wrath
of God due to sinners to fall upon me? He’s in a sense saying,
I can’t wait to get to Jerusalem. I can’t wait to stay on task
and to see mission accomplished. Jesus has come into the world
and he is distressed. He is distressed and under great
angst until the mission is accomplished. What is Jesus speaking of here?
He’s speaking of his. suffering that he will endure
at the hands of God Almighty. You know, in our day and time,
people have written off atonement. And why have they written off
atonement? Well, because they have written off sin. In the
last hundred years, the church has adopted a position of popular
psychology. You turn on the television. In
fact, I read an article recently, I think I passed it on to the
elders, where during the coronavirus, a man did a test. He listened
to about 30 or 40 different sermons from famous preachers across
America, popular preachers. And most of what he heard was
gospel-less. No gospel, no need for salvation
through faith in Jesus. We’ve turned church and preaching
into how to help you feel better, how to help you have a happy
life, how to help you be fulfilled, how to help you realize your
destiny and all these sorts of things. Well, the main message,
the main thrust of the Word of God being read and preached in
church is to remind people They are sinners in need of grace.
And so we cannot make little of sin if if we are to make much
of the work of redemption. Jesus makes much of it here.
Remember that when God created the world and everything in it,
he made Adam and Eve happy and holy and he promised them everlasting
life as long as they obeyed him perfectly. And the condition
of their obedience was given to them in the second chapter
of Genesis of all the trees of the garden you may eat except
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the day you
eat of that tree, you will surely die. Well, Satan came and tempted
Adam and Eve. The fruit was a delight to their
eyes. Eve took it. She gave some to her husband
who was with her. And they ate, their eyes were
open, they were naked, they were ashamed. They hid from God, but
God came looking. And immediately in the story
of Genesis and the history of redemption, we see God makes
a provision for sin. He cannot overlook it. He cannot
write it off as sin. Well, human foibles or mistakes
or character flaws. No, he sees it for what it really
is. It’s an affront to the holy God of Israel. It’s as one theologian
has so well put it, it’s a cosmic act of treason. And so Jesus
comes to bear the baptism due for us or due to us for our sin. He comes to have the the full
wrath of God placed on him. The Bible speaks of Jesus as
being the sin bearer. He who knew no sin became sin
in order that we might become the righteousness of God. And so Jesus is speaking in strange
language, in strange words, but words we understand if we understand
the whole Bible. His mission was to come and die
on the cross for our sins. His mission was to take on our
sin and to bear it before God so that we might be forgiven
and be declared and considered righteous. Now, I want you to
think about something very practical here. Jesus in this passage is
keenly aware of his mission. It’s to go to Jerusalem and die
for our sins. And he knows the horror of it. He knows that there will be a
fire and a baptism that he cannot bear. In fact, when we get a
little closer to that time in the passages of scripture that
describe Holy Week, where do we find Jesus the night before
his death? We find him in the garden praying.
In fact, begging God, if there is another way, if there’s another
way to redeem this people for our glory and their everlasting
good, oh, can you do it? And that’s not all. We find him
sweating blood droplets. His body is at such a stress
point that his blood, his capillaries have burst inside his body and
sweat is coming out. And so that’s what Jesus is describing
here. He’s describing his future passion. And if he is so keen
on redemption, then this is what I want you to think about and
take home with you. Is he still not keen on redemption
now? He ever lives above to intercede
for us. He’s cheering us on in our walk
with the Lord. But he knows those who do not
yet possess faith. He knows those who do not yet
bow their knee to King Jesus. He knows who we are thinking
about in our evangelism prayers. He knows about our children and
grandchildren or aunts and uncles and cousins and coworkers. He
knows about all those that we know who don’t know him. And
he is still that concerned for salvation to come. Friends, this
is a picture of the savior that we often do not get. We often
get a picture of a savior here in America. He’s a life insurance
policy, isn’t he? You don’t want to go to hell
now, do you? So just say a little prayer and come to Jesus and
all your problems will go away. And when the time comes, when
the roll is called up yonder, you’ll be there. That’s what
we’ve really watered church and gospel down to be, isn’t it?
Doesn’t this show us so much more? Here is a savior facing
the horrors of the wrath of God. And he says, I can’t wait until
this mission is accomplished. And he is our high priest who
sits upon the throne of God. and he is still ministering to
us. So Jesus speaks about his work
of reconciliation. It’s a little strange, isn’t
it? But isn’t it glorious? But the second thing he does
in this passage is he speaks about the division caused by
his work of reconciliation. And I know in your head, you’re
thinking, this can’t be, this is strange. If he reconciles,
all should be well. I know some of you ride around
town and you notice the same things I do. Front license plate,
house divided, right? Duke, Carolina. In that house,
there’s a Dookie and a Tar Heel. Or maybe you live somewhere in
SEC land, and it’s an Auburn and an Alabama household. But
you get the picture. A house divided. You say potato. I say patata, right? The old
song says. Big deal, right? Every day, people
are under the same roof. Oh, they have differences of
opinion. They have differences of opinion,
Duke Carolina, potato, potato, Baptist, Presbyterian, whatever,
doesn’t matter. What is Jesus saying? It’s a
big deal. He says, if you are one of the
reconciled, if you are a Christian and you live in a household with
people who are not Christians, there will not be peace, but
division. And so the most basic societal
unit, the home, the marriage, the family relationship, and
you have to understand, they live very differently than we
do. I’m here today, and much of my family is. We all don’t
live under the same roof. And thank the Lord for that,
right, y’all? I live in a house. My brother lives in a house.
My parents live in a house. And it goes really well that
way. But in Jesus day, they all lived in the same house, the
same compound, right? You got married and guess what?
You didn’t get a lovely apartment somewhere else and get to set
up shop and get out your dishes and Tupperware and all the rest.
No, you lived with the family. And so Jesus is speaking about
a very tight societal unit being split apart by the realities
of the work of his reconciliation through his gospel labors. And we understand this in our
own society, don’t we? Maybe some of you read the newspaper.
There’s not much left in it, I’ll tell you that. But I still
read it. I look at the obituaries. I make
sure I’m still alive. And I read the very little that’s
in the sports page for around here. But I always read the Dear,
it’s not Dear Abby anymore. Who is it? Dear whoever. And just yesterday, dear whatever
her name is. My husband and I don’t go to
church, we’re atheists, but his mother is religious. just described
on and on. She’s after him, you know, go
to church, be religious, be a good little boy like I raised you
to be. We’re tired of hearing it. What should we do? There’s
a religious strife caused by one in a family who is religious
and another isn’t. When I do premarital counseling
for young folks getting married or older folks for that matter,
one of the things we talk about is your differences of religion
and where that really comes to roost is Okay. You get a Baptist
and a Presbyterian, right? And that’s not a bar joke. What
are you going to do with the kid? Are you going to baptize
it? Are you going to dedicate it?
Are you going to wait until the age of accountability or you get into
all sorts of things, right? How are you going to educate
the child? Is the child going to go to a Christian school, a public
school on and on it goes, you have to be equally yoked. The
apostle Paul teaches us in the scriptures, but differences of
religion can divide. Think about outside our own culture
for a moment. Go across the ocean to a faraway
land. Our denomination supports set
seven ministries where the word of God is preached and proclaimed
through satellite television ministry and in very often closed
countries where information, including religious content,
is controlled. A person who is a Muslim by background
and faith can come to faith in Jesus and guess what happens?
Their family says, you’re out. House divided. I don’t know if
any of us have ever come to faith in Jesus in our families, our
moms and dads and brothers and sisters says, I don’t want to
ever see you again. No more Sunday lunches, no more
4th of July, no more Memorial Days, no more beach trips together. It’s just not that way in our
culture, but friends, it is just that way. I have a friend in
ministry who’s been in the country of Chad for several years and
he sends a Friday morning weekly email. And over the last six,
eight months, one of their first convent converts from the Muslim
faith has had guns pointed at his head by his own father. He’s
had guns pointed at his head by mercenaries his father hired
to kill him. And on and on it goes. More people
have come to faith in Jesus. Their families have been threatened.
Their lives have been threatened. And by God’s grace, their lives
have all been spared. But dear friends, some people. experience division far more
than we do. We live in the South. Christianity
is, well, it’s as expected as barbecue and fried chicken and
football on the weekends, isn’t it? It’s not so difficult for
many of us, but Jesus is describing a divide. He’s describing a divide. Why is he describing it? Well,
here’s the reality, and maybe some of you have experienced
this. The gospel changes us. When we become a Christian and
we are in a non-Christian family, all of a sudden we are a new
creation in Christ Jesus. The old is gone, the new has
come. We’re out no longer in the kingdom of darkness, but
we’ve been brought into the marvelous kingdom of light. We live by
the spirit and not the flesh. We sow into eternal life and
not unto death. And on and on, we could speak
of the glories of the Christian life as described in the New
Testament. And our way of life becomes offensive. to others who do not love the
Lord Jesus Christ. And I would imagine there are
some of you, maybe many of you in this room who have family
members who hate the fact that you are Christians. It annoys
them. Why do you do what you do the
way you do it? You’re just a religious fanatic.
And they begin to wonder what it is you believe and why it
is you believe it and why you’ve gotten so weird. You may be offensive
to others, but you are no longer offensive to God. And that is
the thing we must keep in mind. Jesus came and he speaks some
words about his work of reconciliation. I’ve come to make you no longer
a stench in the nostrils of almighty God. I’ve come to make you an
aroma pleasing in his sight. But the side effect is this your
non-Christian family or co-workers or whomever. There will be a
division between you. Now, some of you are thinking
we’re in the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke has the beginnings
of Jesus life and has the angels announcement of the birth of
Christ. Peace on earth. and goodwill towards all men.
All right, Jesus, chapter 12, where’s your peace and goodwill?
You’re talking about fire, you’re talking about baptism, you’re
speaking of judgment here, and you’re talking about dividing
families. And we know the realities of
this in our homes. Maybe we have a child who doesn’t
love the Lord the way mom and dad does. We know about it in
our extended families, and we certainly know about the division
among our denominations. It’s why we have eight kinds
of Baptists. There’s way more than that. It’s
why we have 19 kinds of Presbyterians. There’s way more than that. It’s
why we have denominations and different theologies. It’s why
we have different hymnals, different versions of the Bible, because
to each and every one of us, our theology, our belief about
God matters to us, and we’re willing to divide over it. And so we want to be dedicated
Christians. but somehow have a wonderful, peaceful family
as well. And what is Jesus saying? Is
he saying it’s not possible? Well, I think he is. But what
can we take away from other places in scripture that can give us
some encourage and comfort? Well, I have another passage
that’s going to Maybe upset the apple cart a little more. What
does Jesus say when his disciples come to him and say, Oh Jesus,
we know you’re busy making water into wine and whatever else,
but your mother and brothers are here for you. They need to
talk to you. They got a question about the
grocery list. What does Jesus say? My mother and my brothers
are those who hear the word of God and put it into practice
in their lives. Jesus seems to be dividing individuals
who come to faith from their families. But what can be done? How can we be great witnesses?
How can we strive to live in extended families and in situations
with co-workers and others who are not Christians and seek to
bring peace? Well, you got to understand two
things. One is worldviews will never unite. You can either have
a God-centered worldview that Jesus is at the epicenter, or
you can have a godless worldview. Those worldviews will never unite.
And that’s the first thing you’ve got to understand. I may relate
to other people who have not my Christian worldview. That’s
a good thing to do, but it will be hard because they will always
clash. Christianity is not Jesus as a salt and pepper shaker on
your pagan life, right? Christianity is everything from
the inside out. So that’s one thing we’ve got
to get straight in our minds. But can we not, as Christian
people, bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit, speak the truth
in love, keep quiet when sometimes it’s necessary, maybe not speak
of religion and politics at Thanksgiving because it’s wiser not to than
the benefit of or the lack thereof of doing so. And on and on and
on. We can be godly Christian people
in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation, even if
they are our aunts and uncles and cousins and moms and dads
and brothers and sisters. Some of you face this reality.
Others of us have a generally Christian family, and we’ve got
it pretty easy. We’re all Republicans. We’re
all Christians. We’re all from the South. We all like the same
football team. Some of us have it pretty easy.
Others of you don’t. And so we have to square with
the reality that Jesus is speaking of here. But there’s one last
thing you can do. You can pray with all your heart,
with all your soul. You can wear out your knees beside
your bed at night or wherever it is you pray, saying, Lord,
I love what I know about you. I love Jesus. And I have this
clash with my family. I have this clash with my coworkers.
I have this clash with my neighbors or whomever. Let them see the
light of the gospel that has so changed me so that we can
no longer be divided, but together and together for eternity. May
this be our prayer and our way of life. Let’s look to God for
help. Lord, you speak of hard things today and by your spirit
and your grace, we hope to understand them. And we pray that as we
live in families that may be divided over religion, you would
help us to be the bigger person, the more gracious person, the
godly one. Let the fruit of the spirit dwell
in our lives so richly that it oozes out as a fragrance. May
we be careful, cautious, may we be bold to speak the words
of hope, our convictions, Lord, one thing let us never do. Let
us never compromise for the sake of earthly, earthly relationships
and bring shame on our relationship with you, which lasts forever.
What a tough thing to hear today, but you’re the God who is mighty
to save. So do your work. We ask and pray
in Jesus name. Amen.