Willful Blindness - Luke 6:39-42 - November 13, 2022

 Luke 6:39-42 Willful Blindness

Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter six. Today we are going to look at verses 39-42 and that’s on page 863 in the pew Bibles.

The text for today is a difficult one, at least it is for me because of the role that the Lord has called me to in His church family here. Jesus has some stern warnings here for those who presume to be teachers as well as those who would be students as well as those who claim to be just trying to help.

I don’t have much by way of introduction other than that so let’s just jump into the text.

39 [Jesus] also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.

Let’s pray.

So let’s not dance around this too much, Jesus is really only dealing with one principle here and it’s that of spiritual blindness. That spiritual blindness here comes in three forms because we all know how Jesus loves a three point sermon.

39 …“Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?

So before we get too far we need to understand what spiritual blindness is. 

First and foremost spiritual blindness is blindness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the refusal to apply the truth of the gospel to life, an unwillingness to confess one’s sin and turn away from it and trust in Jesus.

In the context given here, Jesus is not only speaking to the Apostles and other followers but to the Pharisees as well. In Matthew 15:14 Jesus specifically calls the Pharisees blind guides. And He said if the blind lead the blind they will both fall into a pit.

The Pharisees notoriously rejected Jesus’ teaching in order to protect their own influence, power, and control in society. There may not be an official job title of Pharisee in the world today but the attitude of the Pharisee is alive and well.

There are plenty of teachers in the world, plenty of leaders who are spiritually blind, some out of ignorance and some willfully blind. What I mean is that there are some who have never heard the gospel of Jesus and there are others who have heard it and reject it. It seems that most people just prefer to wander in the dark without the light of the gospel of Jesus.

Jesus’ words here about the blind leading the blind is a challenge to both teachers and students, leaders and followers.

It may seem foolish to us that know Jesus that people would willfully reject Him and choose spiritual blindness. It’s also foolish to presume to be a guide if you’re blind.

There are also those who presume to be guides that claim to know Jesus but choose to be blind to His Word and its truth. They stand in pulpits week after week espousing God’s love but reject any kind of standards of behavior based on the Bible. They are willingly and willfully blind to the truth of God’s Word and presume to lead others.

Alistair Begg said, “In order to avoid being a blind teacher we must first place our lives under the divine search light.”

As a friend once said, “All we can do is try and make sure we’re not like that.” And I would add, make sure you don’t follow them either.

It’s foolish to presume to be a guide if you’re blind and it’s even more foolish to blindly follow them.

In the words of Jedi master Obi Wan Kenobi, “Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?”

Jesus words here are a challenge to those who would be guides and teachers about their spiritual blindness but also to those who would be students and followers. This was a warning to the Pharisees and an encouragement to the disciples.

40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.

I used to think these two statements were separate with separate meanings but they are in fact connected. The challenge from Jesus is to choose your teacher wisely.

If the master is blind and falls the student will be no better off.

Time after time people searching for wisdom choose teachers who are blind, and time after time they are disappointed when the teacher falls or is exposed. It’s like Toonces the Driving Cat. Back in the eighties on Saturday Night Live there was a series of sketches called Toonces the Driving Cat. Every time some dummy would get into the car and Toonces would drive and every single time they would drive off a cliff. Every. Single. Time.

It’s the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We see it at work in the world as people chase after teachers that will give them spiritual enlightenment or fulfillment and time after time are disappointed. But it’s just as prevalent in the church because time after time people choose the wrong teacher. We lift up some individual to a place that they don’t belong, we read all their books and we watch all their videos, only to learn that they are in fact human and make some mistake that exposes them and knocks them off that pedestal.

So the challenge to the student is to choose your teacher wisely, don’t choose the wrong teacher, make sure you choose the right teacher, and I’m here to tell you friends, it isn’t me. It isn’t Alistair Begg, or Ray Steadman, or John Calvin, or Martin Luther, JP Lange, or JJ vanOosterzee, It’s Jesus!

Choose Jesus to be your teacher, listen to His teaching in His Word the Bible.

I’m not telling you to stop listening to other preachers and teachers, but what I am telling you is to read the Word, know the Word, so that when one of those teachers gets it wrong you’ll be able to see it. 

The Word of God is such a gift to us, here we have the very words of God, read it and let Him be your teacher. He is the only guide whose vision is not impaired by sin, whose motives are not selfish, whose desire is for His glory and our good!

40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.

Isn’t that our aim, to be like Jesus?

And Jesus, like any good teacher, sometimes pushes and stretches us to learn and do things that make us uncomfortable so that we grow. These next two verses are proof of that.

41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.

I said at the beginning that the blindness that Jesus refers to in this passage is spiritual blindness, a willful turning of a blind eye to the truth of the gospel. This example of the log and the speck falls under the same category.

First of all, let’s recognize together what a ridiculous picture this is. It is intentionally ridiculous. It looks to stupid in our minds because it really is stupid to act this way… and yet, we do it all the time.

This ridiculous picture of a carrying beam jammed in our eye verses a speck or splinter in our brother’s eye is Jesus’ invitation to introspection. It’s Jesus’ challenge to His disciples to diligently examine ourselves according to His standards.

The reason that many of us go through life with logs stuck in our faces is that we don’t use Jesus’ standards to measure ourselves by, we measure ourselves by other people, and since we can always find people worse off than us or find a problem somebody else has that makes us look and feel better, we continually prop ourselves up as better off than we really are.

Do you know what that is called? Self-righteousness.

The speck we see think we see in our brother or sister’s eye is some moral defect, but the plank in our eye is our own self-righteousness.

Self-righteousness is being willfully blind to the gospel. The truth of the gospel is that we have no righteousness of our own, all we have is moral defect, but we are clothed with Christ’s righteousness through faith in Him and His atoning work on the cross.

So in considering your own plank be honest with yourself, don’t be a hypocrite, don’t pretend to be something that you are not. Why on earth would we think that it’s ok to point out the faults of others when we are so unwilling to deal with our own?

Do you know what the number one reason people give for being unwilling to go to church? They say that the church is full of hypocrites. Who are the only ones that can change that perception? Us! And the best way that we can do that is to purge our eyes from any self-righteous planks!

The Pharisees, in their pride, were willfully blind to the gospel and their need of it, blind guides that led their students into the same pit as them, in their self-righteousness they pointed out the faults of others while ignoring their own darkness. 

Let’s not be like that. 

In humility let us examine ourselves before the Lord and allow the light of His Word and the truth of the gospel to expose the logs in our eyes, to expose our darkness.

5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:5-11

Amen.

Judge Not, Condemn Not, Forgive, Give - Luke 6:37-38 - November 6, 2022

 Luke 6:37-38 Judge Not, Condemn Not, Forgive, Give

Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter six, this morning we are going to look at verse 37 and 38, page 863 in the pew Bibles. Just two verses this morning which is always an indicator that it should be a nice, easy, quick sermon…

We’ve been looking at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount over the last few weeks. Incidentally, it’s called the “Sermon of the Mount,” because it was given by Jesus on the Mount of Olives which overlooks the city of Jerusalem.

The difficulty in preaching through the Sermon on the Mount in little bits like we have been doing is that Jesus didn’t, He gave it all at once. This means that each little bit that we look at must be connected to the little bits that came before it. This is especially true of our text this morning as it is a kind of explanation of the end of the text that we looked at last week.

So let’s read our text, we’ll pray and see what it is that the Father has for us today.

37“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Let’s pray

Have any of you heard these verses before, ever heard anybody say, “Judge not lest ye be judged?”

The phrase, “don’t judge me,” is one of the most misused and abused ideas out there. I don’t think anybody really knows what this means anymore.

I like to eat my M&Ms by color, yellow, brown, red, orange, blue, green. Don’t judge me. People say stuff like that all the time. Is that what Jesus meant? Can you guess the answer?

If Jesus said, “Judge not, and you will not be judged;” we ought to have a good handle on what He meant by judging so that we can avoid it, right?

We ought also to have a good handle of what Jesus meant in this context by not judging because in John 7:24 he instructs His followers to judge with right judgment, and Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:15 that the spiritual person judges all things. So what did Jesus mean, “Judge not, and you will not be judged,”?

There are at least two things that He didn’t mean. 

He didn’t mean that we are prohibited from the exercise of judgment and justice in the court of law. If you’ve ever had to serve as a juror in a court case, you have been responsible for making a judgment whether a person was innocent or guilty. Jesus is not forbidding us from participating in the justice system.

Jesus also didn’t mean that we are forbidden from forming opinions or being critical of others as if to turn a blind eye to sin. If a brother or sister is stuck in a particular sin, the most unloving thing we could do is to ignore it and let them drown in it.

Matthew 18 is very clear, if your brother or sister sins against you go and show him his fault between you and him alone. Refusing to point out error or discern good from evil in another person’s life is not what Jesus is forbidding here. We are not commanded to set aside good judgment.

What Jesus is forbidding here is the kind of judging that only sees faults, a kind of look at a person that is sharpened by mistrust and not tempered by love or self awareness.

Jesus is telling us, don’t be self-righteous, hypocritical, harsh, and self-exalting. 

We all tend to do this, ok, maybe it’s just me. 

Alistair Begg tells the story, “I said this morning that I have this sin, this is very hard to preach about. The person I was talking too said, ‘I have it too, I just don’t have it as bad as you,’ thus proving that they have it worse than me. Actually not worse than me, I am now worse again because I told the story!”

The kind of judging that Jesus is forbidding is the kind that avoids self examination by highlighting and condemning the faults of others, bitterly seeking out those faults.

I’ve found the Scripture most helpful with combating this attitude is Romans 3:23-24, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…

When I recognize that it’s me that’s bad I climb down off that pedestal, that judgment throne and see that we are all on equal ground.

When we judge others in this way, we wrongly exalt ourselves as if to say, “at least I’m not like them.” But the truth is that we all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, all unworthy of His grace.

In the same way that Jesus commands us not to judge, He also commands us not to condemn. The words are so similar, judgment only sees the faults of others and condemnation declares their guilt and unworthiness of redemption.

But just as we are unqualified to judge others we are also unqualified to condemn them and the reason is the same: we cannot read other people’s hearts.

John Stott said that when we condemn others we “Create the worst possible construction of another person’s motives, we delight to pour cold water on their schemes, and we are ungenerous in response to their mistakes.”

In other words, that person just can’t do right by us no matter how hard they try, no matter how pure their motives are, we just refuse to see anything good in them or in what they are doing. Have you ever experienced that, been guilty of that, or been the recipient of that kind of treatment? This is not the way of Christ!

Jesus commands us to not judge, to not condemn, I say that these are commands because they are in the imperative, He commands us not to judge, not to condemn, but then He commands us to forgive, and to give.

Aren’t these pretty much opposites? Instead of judging others we should forgive them, instead of condemning others we should give them grace.

Again, here is another example of the strength in acknowledging our sinful condition. If we recognize our own sinfulness and unworthiness of God’s forgiveness we will be all the more free to forgive others because we ourselves have been forgiven. 

Jesus told a parable in Matthew 18:23-34,

23 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25 And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, [which is a much smaller amount] and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. 32 Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.

Jesus is telling us here in Luke, “Don’t be like that guy!” We have been forgiven so much, we ought to forgive others. To not forgive is a cold and deliberate choice, and it is a choice to sin.

The last command of Jesus here is to give. I think this is a very misunderstood verse. 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.

It sounds like a promise of blessing doesn’t it, reward for our good deeds and generosity? It sounds that way because it is a promise of reward for giving generously, but it is also a warning that what it is that we give will revisit us.

Far too often prosperity preachers con people out of their “seed money” in order to reap God’s blessing by misusing this verse and others like it. 

While it’s true that the Father will repay us in one form or another in this life or the next for our willingness to give the warning here is to beware of what you give because what you give will be repaid in abundance even if what you give is judgment, condemnation, and unforgiveness.

Is that the kind of thing that you would like given to you, in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, put into your lap? 

Matthew Henry said that, “we must expect to be dealt with ourselves as we deal with others.”

And that’s really the whole point, this little bit of the Sermon on the Mount is connected to the last little bit, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

Alistair Begg said, “If I am prepared to put myself in the other person’s shoes, and if I am prepared honestly to wish for them what I wish for myself, then I will be prepared to replace meanness with generosity, harshness with understanding, and cruelty with kindness.”

37“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. This is the law of love.

Amen.

Jesus Exposits His Own Message, Love Like the Father Loves - Luke 6:27-36 - October 30, 2022

 Luke 6:27-36 Jesus Exposits His Own Message – Love Like the Father Loves

Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke 6:27-36, page 862 in the pew Bibles.

As you may be aware, there are different types of preaching and teaching in the church, two main types really. Topical preaching and expository preaching.

Topical preaching is when the speaker chooses a topic to talk about and finds Scriptures that apply to the topic so that the hearers can learn what the Bible says about a particular subject. A few weeks ago Will preached on the topic of choices and shared verses that pertained to that topic so that we could better understand what the Bible says about making godly choices.

Expository preaching is the mode of preaching that, if you have been here for a while, is the form of preaching that you are used to hearing. In expository preaching the preacher selects a text from Scripture, attempts to discover the original author’s meaning, shares the implications of those principles, and then the general and sometimes specific application of those principles.

This is what I attempt most of the time with the Holy Spirit’s help with an occasional topical sermon sprinkled in mostly around different holidays.

There have been a lot of great expositors through the years, and I quote some of them often, Alistair Begg, Ray Steadman, John Calvin, Martin Luther, but do you know who the best expositor every is?

It’s Jesus. And in our text for today He proves it, He does all the work of expositing for us.

Let’s look at our text and hopefully you’ll see that Jesus is not only the best expositor but the message that He gave us is life changing as well.

27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. 

32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Let’s pray.

Now if you were here last week or listened online you may remember that Jesus had just given the beatitudes, the blessings and the woes, and that’s important to remember because our text starts with a, “but.”

The blessings and woes that Jesus pronounced have a tendency to create a dichotomy, a split between people, those that have the blessings and those that have the woes. It’s natural for us to think this way. What story can you think of that doesn’t have a good guy and a bad guy, a protagonist and an antagonist?

Jesus’ sermon is instructive on how to deal with that rift between people.

Here’s how it breaks down: the message, the meaning, the implications, and the application. This is not how a four point sermon is built, this is a one point sermon.

Here’s the message, verses 27-28.

…Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

It’s as if Jesus is saying, “though I’ve pronounced these woes on certain people, your adversaries, don’t hate them, love them.”

And as much as I like finding deeper, richer meaning in the more complete translation of key words like, “love,” and, “enemies, blessing, curses, and prayer,” the message is all right there on the surface.

…Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

That’s the message, here’s the meaning, verses 29-31.

29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. 

Jesus gives us some examples to illustrate what He meant by love your enemies and do good to those that hate you.

It’s natural to revisit violence with violence. When someone wrongs us we naturally want vengeance, but that is not the way of Christ. The way of Christ is to love regardless of how we are treated, regardless of whether or not that love is returned or reciprocated. 

There is no hidden insult here, that somehow being struck on one cheek, the right cheek let’s say, is somehow acceptable, but offering your left cheek was some weird kind of cultural retribution. Jesus isn’t being sneaky here, the meaning is right here on the surface, if someone strikes you on one cheek, offer the other cheek, don’t strike them back.

This is the definition of meekness, it isn’t weakness, it’s self-control. It may be in your power to strike back, it may be in your power to refuse to give up your coat or your shirt or your stuff, but Jesus says, “don’t.” Give to everyone who demands things from you, from the one who takes away your stuff, don’t demand it back. Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.

This is the Golden Rule, treat other people the way you want to be treated, not that they will, and not that we should expect it. We aren’t responsible for the attitudes and response of others, just ourselves and this is what Jesus commands us to do: As you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

That’s what Jesus meant when He said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

So what are the implications of this meaning? What is it that Jesus is trying to say to us? Look at verses 32-34.

32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 

I love that Jesus makes this so clear, it makes the expositors task really easy!

The implication is that the life of a Christ follower is different from those that do not follow Christ, it’s a life marked by love, but not just loving those who love us but loving those that hate us, loving everybody regardless of how they treat us.

The life of following Christ is a life of following His example, He loves those who hate Him, he prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified Him, he continues to bless, and to give, and to love those who may never return that love or turn to Him in faith. He is asking his followers to do the same.

The implication here is that the real blessings are not on this earth, they are not in this life. As the scholar said, “Divine recompense is our reward.”

And therein lies the application, verses 35-36.

35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Loving our enemies, doing good, lending expecting nothing in return will not make us sons of the Most High, only faith in Jesus Christ can do that, but loving our enemies, doing good, and lending expecting nothing in return will prove that we are sons and daughters of the Most High because we will be acting like He does, being kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Two things that we should notice here.

Number one, these are not suggestions from Jesus, this is not just advice about godly living, these are commands, these are imperatives. We MUST love our enemies, we MUST do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. We MUST do good to those who hate us, we MUST bless those that curse us and pray for those who abuse us.

The second thing to notice is that we are to be merciful as He is merciful as His sons and daughters because that is what our Father in heaven is like and that is how He acted towards us.

In His mercy He has spared us from the punishment that is due us because of our sin, in His mercy He paid the debt He did not owe with His own life on the cross, we ought also to show that same mercy to those who wrong us, or hate us, or take from us.

In His mercy He exchanged His life for ours that we could be forgiven through faith in Jesus. And so, we ought also to act in mercy in hopes that the Father will use that mercy to bring many more people to faith in Him.

Amen.

The Present in Light of the Future - Luke 6:17-26 - October 23, 2022

 Luke 6:17-26 The Present in Light of the Future

Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 6, verses 17-26, page 862 in the pew Bibles.

We are going to be looking at what I think we can all agree is Jesus’ most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, at least the first part of Luke’s version of it. Matthew also recorded this sermon in chapters 5-7 on his Gospel.

Before we read the text I have two questions for you to consider, they may seem a little abstract, and I’ll warn you that whatever your first easy guess is is probably wrong so just be prepared.

The first question is: what is it that keeps people out of God’s kingdom?

The second question is: what is it that you personally hate the most?

If you’re super spiritual and giving your best Sunday School answers, you probably think the answer to both questions is the same, and you’re wrong on both counts and you’re a liar or you just didn’t think about it hard enough.

Either way, we’ll get back to those two questions, for now let’s read the text.

17 And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, 18 who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all. 

20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. 22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. 26 “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

Let’s pray

As most of you know, I am a bit of a word nerd. I like to find the key words in a given passage and do the best I can to get at the real meaning of those words and sometimes that means upending some well established and widely accepted ideas about things.

Can you guess the two words that are the keys to understanding this passage? I’d even accept three even though one is not in the actual text of Scripture it’s just a heading. Beatitude, blessed, and woe.

Beatitude and blessing are really the same. Beatitude is the Latin word, makarios is the Greek word, blessed is the spiritually acceptable word, but the English word is, happy, the enjoyment of favorable circumstances. That’s important for us to understand if we are to understand Jesus’ meaning in this passage.

The last word, if beatitude and blessed are the first ones, is, woe. You’ve heard this word used before, “Oh, woes is me…” But what does Jesus mean when he pronounces these four woes? 

The Greek word is ouai, which means, a state of intense hardship or distress, disaster, or horror. In the words of Andrei, one of our ski patrol instructors, “it’s really, really bad!”

So let me ask you, honestly, which would you rather be, poor, hungry, sad, and hated, or, rich, full, happy, and well respected?

On the surface, of course, the answer is obvious, we want to be rich, full, happy, and respected.

The people Jesus was speaking to had a definition of blessedness already but it sounded a lot more like what Jesus was saying the woes about. Deuteronomy 28:1-13…

“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. 3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 4 Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 5 Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. 

7 “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. 8 The Lord will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 9 The Lord will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways. 10 And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. 11 And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. 12 The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. 13 And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down,

Rich, full, happy, well respected… That doesn’t sound like what Jesus was saying at all. Well, in truth, it’s exactly what Jesus was saying, the only difference is the number one rule in real estate: location, location, location.

There’s another key word that I didn’t mention that is repeated several times in the second half of our text, that word is, “now.” It’s stated explicitly in two of those woes and implied in the other two.

Woe to you who are rich now, who are full now, who laugh now, who are spoken well of now. Those folks have applied the worldly definition of happiness or blessing and have enjoyed it in the present time at the expense of the future.

Now to be clear, we must not understand Jesus’ pronouncement of blessing on poverty, hunger, sadness, and being hated, as some kind of requirement to enter God’s eternal kingdom, as if to say, “If you’ve got no money, you’re in, if you’re hungry with no prospects of a decent meal, you’re in, you’re afflicted and nobody likes you, welcome to the kingdom! That’s monasticism, that’s what the monks do, but that is not the truth of God’s Word.

Jesus pronounces blessing of happiness on spiritual poverty, spiritual hunger, spiritual sorrow, and hatred for His Name’s sake. 

The key to understanding this passage is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of the earth, our culture demands, wealth, satisfaction, happiness, and respect NOW. The kingdom of God promises those things in the future in God’s eternal kingdom, that’s our hope.

This goes back to one of our two questions in the beginning: what is it that keeps people out of God’s kingdom. You probably guessed sin, but more exactly, it’s pride.

I deserve to be happy, I deserve the best, how I feel is the most important thing, how I feel is what defines my identity, I deserve to live my best life.

That brings us to the second question, what is it that you hate the most, don’t say sin you liar, what we hate the most is the same for everybody, Christian or otherwise, we hate to be told, “no.”

It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were told they could eat from every single tree in the whole garden except one! And in their pride they ate from that tree and mankind was cursed because of it and we all share the same sin, pride.

Jesus is telling us here that taking pride in temporary riches, satisfaction, laughter, and respect, in the end it results in the horror of eternal separation from God.

True happiness is found in denying ourselves, humbly admitting our spiritual poverty, hunger, and sorrowing over our sin, and willingly being rejected by the world because we follow Jesus, because we follow a different way, because the hope of reward is not in this life but waits for us in heaven.

John Calvin wrote, “Happiness is confined to those only who, under the discipline of the cross, have learned to be humble.”

The contrast of the beatitudes and the woes is the contrast between humility and pride, worldly wealth or heavenly riches. Jesus said in Revelation 22,

12 “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” 

14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.

Faith in Jesus is the only way to enter God’s eternal kingdom as symbolized by the washing of those robes, there is no blessing, there is no true eternal happiness without a relationship with Him.

Those of us that have faith in Him must be willing to say no to ourselves now, to live lives that are radically different from the rest of the world, like Jesus lived, humble, gentle, lowly, to the praise of His glorious grace.

Amen.