Luke 12:1-7
The words which begin this chapter are very striking when we consider its contents. We are told that “an innumerable multitude of people were gathered together, insomuch that they trode one upon another.” And what does our Lord do? In the hearing of this multitude He delivers warnings against false teachers, and denounces the sins of the times in which he lived unsparingly, unflinchingly, and without partiality. This was true charity. This was doing the work of a physician. This was the pattern which all His ministers were intended to follow. Well would it have been for the church and the world if the ministers of Christ had always spoken out as plainly and faithfully as their Master used to do! Their own lives might have been made more uncomfortable by such a course of action. But they would have saved far more souls.
The first thing that demands our attention in these verses is Christ’s warning against hypocrisy. He says to His disciples, “Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”