Blessing or a curse; Luke 6:20-26

Many of you are here today for the first time. Perhaps you were just curious about our service. Some of you have been here before a time or two.  And hopefully you are in the process of learning the truth of the gospel and becoming obedient to it.  Some of you have been with us now for a few years, being faithful week in and week out, even coming on Wednesdays for more in depth teaching.  But for those that are here today for the first time, or have perhaps only been here once or twice, you will make a judgment today about what you hear.  You will either embrace this teaching, recognizing through the Holy Spirit that it is the truth of God’s word, or you might dismiss it as foolishness and never return.

And I can only say in my defense and the defense of any preacher of God’s word, that the measure of success cannot be determined in just one sermon.  Because the truth of God’s word cannot be condensed into just one 40 minute message to the satisfaction of everyone or every doctrinal issue.  But truth is established in a regular, consistent pattern of expositional revelation, as the Word is exegeted carefully verse by verse.  And for those that submit themselves to that, there is a great reward as the truth is fully realized.  As Jesus said in John 8, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

So when we look at this passage today, we must realize that Jesus’ sermon is a continuation of that revelation of truth from Jesus.  Even He does not attempt to encapsulate all doctrine and all truth in one message.  But in the mystery of the gospel, Jesus presents enough truth so that those that have hearts attuned to  it can draw closer, but those that have hardened their hearts will fall away.  That is why those students of Christ are called followers, that is disciples, because there is an incumbent need to follow and listen and obey as the truth is progressively revealed.

So those that have come today perhaps hoping to get a shot of worship or just enough religion that will be enough to hold you over for a few weeks, I am afraid you are going to be disappointed.  Those that have come looking for  an emotional experience are probably  going to go away disappointed.  But for those who have come hungering for the truth no matter what and are willing to submit to it, there will be satisfaction, found not in an emotional appeal or entertaining address, but as Jesus said in John 6:63, “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

Today we have come upon one of the most significant passages in the gospel.  Luke has recorded here one of the messages that Jesus Christ preached, which is sometimes referred to as the Sermon on the Plain.  That is distinctive from the Sermon on the Mount which is found in Matthew 5.  While they are very similar, they are also different.  And it is not implausible that as Jesus was traveling through the various cities and countryside of Israel, He preached some of the same material over again and again to different audiences.  And it’s reasonable to think that He expanded or deleted part of His previous message to tailor it to a particular audience.  So I believe this is a totally different message than the Sermon on the Mount, though it has a lot of similar material in it.

But first let’s understand His audience.  Who is Jesus speaking to?  There are three groups of people in Jesus audience that day.  In the preceding verses we saw last week that Jesus called 12 disciples to become His apostles.  They were to become part of His inner circle, to receive special, unique instruction and authority so that they might go out as His personal representatives.  It was  a unique position that would not be duplicated after the apostolic age.  So the first group then is the 12 apostles.  Next, there are the rest of the disciples as we see in verse 17.  These are the  students of Christ that are more or less following Jesus as He travels around and teaches.  They may come and go because of jobs or responsibilities, but for the most part they are seeking to know the truth and are considered disciples.  And there may be dozens to hundreds of them depending on the day.  And finally, there is the multitude, again in verse 17, the great throng of people that had heard that Jesus had come near or heard about a healing or miracle, and they would come out to see Jesus out of curiosity or out of a desire for healing or for free food.

So three groups of people. And I can’t help but make the comparison to the church today.  Our typical congregations can also be divided into three groups.  There is the small group of sold out believer’s who have given everything to serve the Lord through the church that are part of the inner circle, that have grown mature in their faith to the point of becoming leaders, and there is a large group of disciples, intermediate learners who are either in the process of growing up into spiritual maturity, or they are on their way out.  These disciples are either submitting to the truth that is being taught and becoming obedient to the truth, or they are in the process of rejecting the truth, but still hanging around for the moment, who want to define the truth according to their tastes.  As Paul warned in 2Tim. 4:3 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” And we know that later in His ministry, the Bible says that many disciples stopped following Jesus because they couldn’t handle His teaching anymore.  It became too difficult for them to accept.  So the disciples are a large group, but in sort of a flux, some growing closer, and some moving away.  And the final group is that of the multitude, the great throng, those that are curious, that want to try religion, or want to check it out because they think that there is some material benefit to spirituality.  A few of them will move into the realm of disciples.  But the scriptures warn us that only a few will enter that narrow gate into the kingdom of heaven.

As we examine the first part of this message, it may be helpful to understand that Jesus is using a common literary method of teaching that was practiced by the rabbis.  It was a method of contrasting themes as an instrument to teach principles.  And that is what we see Jesus doing here today.  He offers up four blessings and four curses.  If you are like these four things, you are blessed, but if you are like these four things, then you are cursed.  It was a familiar form of teaching for the Jew.

See, the Messiah had been prophesied as being one who would come as Moses had and deliver the Israelites from enslavement. Moses himself prophesied in Duet. 18 that “the Lord your God would raise up a prophet like me from among you, and you shall listen to Him.”  Moses brought the law of God down from the mountain to the Israelites.  Jesus brought the Word of God down from heaven to men.  But remember when the Israelites did not obey but rebelled against Moses, that God allowed them all to die in the wilderness for 40 years?  And after 40 years, Moses stands up in front of the children of Israel and he delivers a message before they enter into the Promised Land.  He gives them a series of blessings and curses.  You will be blessed if you do this.  You will be cursed if you do that.  Moses said in Deut. 30:19  "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them."

So now we see Jesus, who is greater than Moses, not just a prophet, but the Son of God, delivering a new covenant of grace to His people.  Not like the old covenant of law that was given through Moses.  Because as Jesus said in Luke 5, new wine must be kept in new wineskins.  He is talking about a new covenant of grace made possible through His blood which He will shed on the cross for the remission of their sins.  But like Moses, Jesus is making it clear that there will be consequences, in fact cursing for those that reject this Word of God, just as there were consequences to rejecting the law of Moses.  In fact, Hebrews 10:29 says, “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?”

Now as we look at these blessings and curses, some of the newer interpretations have changed the word “blessed” to that of happy.   They think that “blessed” is an old fashioned word.  And I guess it is to some extent.  But that doesn’t mean that we need to throw it out.  I find the word “happy” to be a trite word in today’s vernacular that gives no real insight in to what Jesus was saying.  There is a quote from a song by Switchfoot which says that “Happy is a yuppie word.”  Our culture is obsessed with being happy.  I hear parents all the time express the hope that they just want their kids to be happy.  They don’t care what they do, as long as they are happy.  Unfortunately, that mentality has ruined a generation or two of American young people who have grown up thinking that the world revolves around them, and everyone and everything exists to make them happy.

But the word blessed has a much deeper meaning than that.  It really comes from ancient Hebrew theology that says the supreme purpose of man is realized when he encounters something called the beatific vision.  It’s not just worship by faith of a God we cannot see, but seeing Him face to face.  It’s to have the full communion with God that comes through salvation, unobstructed intimacy with God.  People are searching for this today through all sorts of methods, perhaps not even knowing that what they are really looking for is God.  The urge to climb the tallest mountain, the challenge to ride the biggest wave, or go furthest into outer space as if somehow in these extreme adventures, they hope to encounter God.  You have people trying all sorts of things, from drugs to sex to mystic experiences, trying to find this state of “blessedness”  that only God can provide through His presence with us.

And that is exactly what Jesus is offering in this message.  Not some temporary  high where we can’t stop laughing or where we find earthly bliss, but the state of beatific vision, when God reveals Himself to us intimately, to become one with us, and one day to be united forever with Him in a glorified body in the kingdom of heaven.  It’s what we were created for, the supreme goal of man, to be in the presence of His Creator.

So Jesus characterizes four attributes of those who will be blessed, who will enter into the kingdom of heaven, into intimacy with God.  And He starts by saying, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Jesus is not teaching a doctrine of material poverty here, though that might be a consequence of submitting to this principle.  But what Jesus is saying is He is using a word that indicates a beggar, one who is blind and lame and crippled and must beg on the streets for his sustenance.  He is completely unable to fend for himself, and so in his shame, bows his head and lifts up his cup to the passerby, and says, “Please sir, have mercy on me.”

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus adds “poor in spirit.”  And that helps us understand this attribute, that to be accepted in the kingdom of God it is necessary to recognize that you are spiritually bankrupt.  You are helpless to be able to affect your own righteousness, that you are sinful and hopelessly lost.  You have no way to earn your salvation, no way to buy your redemption.  The only hope is to throw yourself at the mercy of God and ask that in His grace He would forgive you and save you.  Jesus says that for those that come to God recognizing their spiritual poverty, He will bless them, and give them entrance into the kingdom of God.

The second blessing is like the first.  Jesus says, “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.”  Again, this isn’t an injunction to fast, but He is talking about spiritual hunger, according to Matthew 5, a hungering after righteousness.  A realization that nothing that the world offers satisfies, and that only through the righteousness provided by Christ’s atonement can we find satisfaction. Jesus said in John 6:51 "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh."   Those who hunger after righteousness, recognizing they have no righteousness of their own, can find satisfaction through Christ.

The third blessing follows the same thought. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.”  Weeping is associated with mourning. Grief produces weeping.  Jesus said in Matt. 5, “"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  And mourning and weeping are symbols of repentance.  A godly sorrow over your sin.  A sorrow so great, that you are willing to turn away from it.  Repentance is not just feeling sorry, but a mourning over your sinfulness, a weeping over your sinfulness which has estranged you from God so that you are lost and condemned.  But Jesus is saying that if such a person comes to the point of recognizing their spiritual poverty and begs for mercy and forgiveness, hungers after righteousness, and weeping over their spiritual condition turns in repentance, then they will have joy in heaven.  They will find comfort in the kingdom of God.

Now the fourth blessing changes gears a little bit.  Having become poor in spirit, hungering after righteousness, and repenting of their sins, the true disciple becomes saved, blessed, transformed through faith by the indwelling Spirit of God.  And then having become saved, the next characteristic is that they will proclaim the good news to others.  But Jesus is warning that the world isn’t going to necessarily applaud you for it.  Vs. 22, "Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man.”

We make a mistake today in the church in trying to dumb down the gospel in hopes that the unsaved will like us and want to join us because we are such cool, likeable people.  The fact is, the world hates the truth because it exposes their sinfulness. Jesus said in John 3:19 "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”  Let me confirm what Jesus said, if you are shining the light of truth in your world, then the world is going to hate you because they love their sin, and your life convicts them of it.

But rather than sitting around wringing your hands over the fact that people don’t like you, Jesus says that is a cause for joy.  My dad used to say you can tell a lot about a man by who are his enemies.  And James said in James 4:4 “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

So in verse 23, Jesus says don’t worry about those that hate you but be glad you are hated for His sake.  You’re in good company.  “"Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets.”  In Acts 5, the Apostles were called in to the authorities and flogged for preaching the gospel.  And it says that “they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.”

Now then quickly let’s look at the contrast of the woes, woe to those who are not of the kingdom of God, woe to those who remain under the curse and condemnation of their sins.   And all of these can be understood  in light of their counterpart.  The first, rather than being poor in spirit, they think they are rich, they think they are religious, and that they have something of merit in themselves.  Vs. 24, “"But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.”  See, Jesus said Matthew 6 that the self righteous were doing their religious works to be seen by men.  That they were hypocrites, which means actors on a stage, acting for the applause of men.  And He said that that applause is their full reward.  So now He is saying the same thing.  You think you are rich, that you are religious, that there is something good in you, that you aren’t such a bad sinner and that God will accept you because you have been such a good person? Jesus says, Woe to you.  You are still under the curse.  You have your comfort right here, don’t expect any in the kingdom.

Building upon that, vs. 25, “"Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry.”  You that are satisfied with your own self righteousness, with your charitable works, with your altruistic deeds that somehow you think makes you better than others, Woe to you.  You are still under the curse of sin.  You have not been fed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ and you will starve without it.

The third; “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.”  Laughing is associated with self sufficiency.  With being happy and content and well fed and well liked and enjoying all that the world can offer.  Listen, the Bible says sin is enjoyable for a little while. But Proverbs 14:12 says,  “There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

And the last woe, vs. 26, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.”  False prophets want to tailor their message to produce popularity.  This is the goal of false prophets.  They want to be popular.  They want to be well liked.  And so they subtract or add to the gospel in order to pander to the pagan.  They stand up in churches today proclaiming all sorts of things people want to hear, promising all sorts of things people want to believe, but they neglect the truth that leads to salvation.  They rarely if ever speak about sin, they don’t preach about the need for repentance, and they never talk about a literal, burning hell for the unrepentant.

God speaking through Jeremiah said in chapter 5:30  "An appalling and horrible thing Has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule on their own authority; And My people love it so!”  I can assure you that people in their natural  sinful nature love a lie more than they love the truth.  People are drawn to a false doctrine like bees to honey.  But it takes a regenerate heart, a broken heart, a hungry heart to be drawn to the truth.

But the false teachers and false preachers are pandering to that desire for their own benefit as well.  And God said in Jeremiah 14:14 "The prophets are prophesying falsehood in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility and the deception of their own minds.”  Jesus says, Woe to those false prophets.  Woe to those people who want to have their ears tickled.  Woe to them.  They are still under the curse of their sin and they will pay the penalty of eternal fire because they have trampled underfoot the Spirit of grace and the precious blood of Jesus Christ which was shed for the forgiveness of our sins.

And that’s where we will end it today.  Because as Jesus said in the previous chapter, He came to earth to save sinners.  Jesus came to earth to suffer and die on the cross for your sins and mine, because being dead in our trespasses and sins we were without hope.  For those who recognize that they are poor in spirit, starving for righteousness, and ready to mourn and weep in repentance for their sins, there is mercy and grace that was purchased for you at Calvary.  But for those who reject the notion that they are in need of saving, that they aren’t really so bad, in fact they are rich in religious works, then you are still under the curse of sin.

The good news is Jesus said in John 3:17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not condemned; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.  But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God."

Listen, the choice is yours.  Confess and repent of your sins, asking God for His mercy and He will save you.  But hold on to your self righteousness, and God will leave you condemned to eternal punishment.  I leave you with Moses statement as we close: "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live.”

The call, the cost, and the crowning of discipleship; Luke 6: 12-19

Today we are continuing in our ongoing study of the book of Luke, and we find ourselves at the point where Jesus names certain disciples to become His apostles.  And this is a very significant moment in the ministry of Jesus.  Luke doesn’t tell us exactly when this happens, but he has related events in a specific order, as he said he would in the opening chapter of Luke, in order “that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.”

At this point, Jesus has been preaching the gospel of the kingdom and the need for repentance for about a year or so.  And along the way we have read about Jesus calling Peter, James and John and Matthew or Levi as he was sometimes called.  These men and many others have made up a loose knit group of dozens if not hundreds of followers called disciples.  But at this particular juncture, He is singling out 12 men in particular for a unique ministry, a particular position among the disciples which will be critical in the formation of the church.  He is going to take these 12 men apart, unto Himself, to teach them and empower them to be special representatives of Himself called apostles.

Luke has recorded this incident in this place I think strategically, in order to show a relationship to the passage at the end of chapter 5, where Christ gave a parable about the kingdom of heaven being related to  new wine in new wineskins.  He said then that new wine must be put in new wineskins.  And as we looked at a few weeks ago, He was equating with old wineskins the nationalistic religious system of Judaism that had evolved within Israel, which was a form of religion to be sure, but not a religion that was able to save because it depended upon self righteousness and keeping traditions imposed by men and not God. Judaism evolved out of the old covenant to Abraham and the patriarchs, but the Jews had added to it and subtracted from it, until it had lost all spiritual power, and just become a system of dead works that damned men rather than saved them.  And so He relates Judaism as the old wineskin.  It’s cracked, it’s faulty.  It isn’t able to contain  the gospel.  The gospel will need a new wineskin.

So, Jesus is replacing the old patriarchal/nationalistic system founded upon the 12 tribes of Israel, and instead instituting a new covenant founded upon the 12 apostles.  These common, everyday men, unlearned Galileans, would be the new foundation of this new covenant, and instead of a nation of Israel, He would institute the church as the vehicle by which God would convey His gospel to the world.  Jesus would later rename Simon, the leader of the 12 as Peter, which meant rock, and say that upon this rock He would build His church and the gates of Hell would not prevail against it.

Ephesians 2:20 confirms that in stating that this church is “God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord.”

Now it’s important to see in vs. 13 that Jesus names these selected disciples as apostles. “And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles.”  This designation is important to understand.  There is a misconception in some circles today that apostle is a title of authority that God is still bestowing today.  But the Bible doesn’t teach that.  The first call of God on these men was the call to believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the Son of God.  They became believers.  And then the second call was to leave everything and follow Him.  The second call then is the call to discipleship.  It’s not just to be a student, but to be a follower, a disciple.  And then, when they had left everything and followed Him, He appointed certain ones as apostles, His personal representatives, whom He would commission and give them certain authority and gifts as we see in Luke 9.

Paul establishes this as well in Eph. 4:11 “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.”  And the body of Christ is of course, the church.  God called some disciples to be apostles, some as prophets, and then pastors and teachers, to build up the church and establish the church.  That’s why Paul had to argue in all his letters to establish his apostolic authority in order to silence his critics.  Because apostolic authority is essential for establishing doctrine in accordance to divine revelation.   The apostles were given the authority to speak and act on Jesus behalf.  And God reserves the right to give that authority to those that He chooses and we believe the Bible teaches that the apostolic authority ended with the divinely appointed apostles.  That’s why 1&2 Timothy and Titus set standards in the church for pastors and teachers, but there are none for apostles.  They were a unique commission by the Lord personally for the foundation of the church.

But though we are not all commissioned to be apostles, or even pastors and teachers, we are all called to be disciples. Jesus said, “Go into all the world and make disciples…” Before you can be used in any sort of official capacity for Christ, one must first become a disciple.  And we are going to look at those requirements in just a few minutes.  But first I would like to look at these Apostles in a little more detail, because they are exemplary disciples.  Because of their discipleship, these men were called to an even greater position with Christ.  They were taken into intimacy with Christ that the average person didn’t get to share in. They were to be the leaders and teachers of disciples.  So the first thing I want to look at is their calling.  The calling of discipleship.

Vs. 14 says that Jesus after praying all night, presumably about these men, called these disciples to be apostles;  “Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew his brother; and James and John; and Philip and Bartholomew; and Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot;
Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.”

Not a lot is known about these men.  But a few things are worth pointing out.  First of all, they were commoners, or common men.  They weren’t educated men.  Most of them were fishermen by trade. One had been a hated tax collector.  One a zealot, or a revolutionary, possibly a criminal.  They were common men. None of them were priests, none of them were rabbis, none were rulers or politicians.  They had no special talents or abilities.  In fact, if you were to pick 12 men from the entire nation of Israel to be special ambassadors for the Messiah, you probably wouldn’t even consider these guys.

They were very  common men called for a very uncommon task. Ordinary men that will do extraordinary things by His power. And folks, that gives hope for us, doesn’t it? I’m sure we all remember those pick up games of basketball or baseball or whatever that we played in the neighborhood or in the schoolyard as kids.  The two biggest, or the two best players were team captains, and they would flip to pick up teams.  And I remember how awful it felt to be standing there, waiting to be picked.  And how horrible it felt to be left standing as the last man that no body wanted on their team because you weren’t considered all that talented or you weren’t that well liked.
But Jesus doesn’t pick people for his team based on their appearance, or based on their talent, but He looks at the heart, not the outward appearance.  Jesus calls us, not on the strength of what we are, but on the strength of what He will make of us. Paul said in 1Cor. 1:26 “For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.”

Secondly, let’s look at not only the calling of discipleship, but the cost of discipleship.  The cost of discipleship.  See, there were a lot of people at that time who were hanging around Jesus.  He was very popular at first.  He was extremely popular when He was passing out loaves and fishes, but not so popular when He began to pass out crosses.  Let’s turn for a moment to Luke 14: 25, “Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. "For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' "Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? "Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. "So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. "Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? "It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

Notice in this passage that Jesus says three times that if you don’t do something, you cannot be his disciple.  So what are these three conditions?  Well, number one, He says if you don’t hate your father and mother and family, even to the point of hating your own life, you cannot be His disciple.  Now hate is a pretty strong word, and so the typical reaction is to say that Jesus is exaggerating, or that He is contradicting other times when He says you are to love your wife, or love your enemies, or love your neighbor.  So how do we reconcile this statement?  Well, we need to understand that He is contrasting the love of God to the love of your family or the love of yourself.  And by contrast, He is saying that the love of God must be so consuming, that it makes the love of family seem like hate in comparison.

You remember when the lawyer asked Jesus what was the most important law in the Bible, and Jesus said “you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength?”  Well, He wasn’t kidding.  He wasn’t just exaggerating.  He was serious.  God is a jealous God.  Jesus died on the cross for us, left heaven for us, suffered hell for us, suffered the ignominy of humanity for us, and He demands our love and allegiance for Him alone.  So the first cost of discipleship is to love God supremely.  That’s not an easy task.  Because if you love God supremely, then you will hate, or let go of anything that comes between you and God.

But aren’t we so good at putting something ahead of God and then counting on His love to forgive our selfishness?  However, here Jesus is saying that you cannot be my disciple unless you hate those things that would separate you from loving God completely.  That means if you love God with an all consuming love, you might have to let go of your career goals.  If you love God with an all consuming love you might have to stop dating that boy or girl that isn’t following God.  If you love God you might have to leave your family members that want to keep you in a cold dead church that doesn’t really believe the Bible.  If you love God with an all consuming love you might have to give up some things to be a disciple.  There is a cost.

Number two, Jesus said if you aren’t willing to carry your cross you cannot be my disciple.  Listen folks.  The cross is not a Goth fashion accessory that happens to look cool on a chain around your neck.  The cross is a symbol of death.  First century Christians didn’t need an explanation of a cross.  The Romans would line the highways with crosses, hanging criminals and Christians there for them all to see suffering an agonizing death.

Carrying your cross means dying to your self.  On Wednesday night last week we were looking at 2 Timothy 3, which talks about lovers of self and all the filth and corruption that flows out of our self love.  False Christianity and false religion tells us that we need to learn to love ourselves and believe that God loves us just the way we are.  So there is no need to die to anything.  There is no need for new life in Christ.  But Biblical Christianity tells us that old things need to pass away, and all things become new.  And the only way to do that is to obey Jesus command in Matt. 16:24 "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

True discipleship says that through death you find life. Dying to self is what Romans 12:1 is talking about when it says that our reasonable worship of God is to present our bodies as a living sacrifice.   Dying to self means that you forgive someone rather than harboring a grudge or taking revenge.  Dying to self means that you pick up a Bible and read it, rather than picking up the remote and watching TV.  Dying to self means that you come to church for the sake of others, rather than coming when you feel like it.  Dying to self means that you don’t satisfy your sexual thirst before marriage, but you wait for God’s ordinance of marriage.  Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ, but nevertheless I live.”  Disciples find new life in Christ by dying to the old one.

Thirdly, Jesus says you cannot be his disciple unless you are willing to give up your possessions.  And He gives us two illustrations of this principle.  He describes discipleship as a calculated examination of the cost involved, and having the commitment to follow through.  There are a lot of people that have an impulse to follow Christ, but lack the discipline to follow through.

In Luke 9, a man calls out to Jesus, “Lord, I will follow you wherever you go.”  But Jesus said, “I have no where to lay my head.”  In other words, if you want to follow me, you may have to give up some things.  You have to be willing to suffer for my sake, because I’m headed for the cross.  Listen, there is a cost to following Jesus.  But there is an even greater cost in not following Jesus.  Jesus said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?  What will a man give in exchange for his soul?”  You see, the soul is eternal, and all of you will live some where for eternity.  The option is heaven or hell. Jesus says that to gain heaven, you have to give up your possessions.  You have to give up this world to gain the next.

There is one other thing in that passage I would like to bring out.  The first three cannot’s were negative, what you cannot do and be a disciple.  So let’s look at what Jesus says a disciple must do in vs. 24, and 25.  A disciple is compared to salt.  And Jesus says, a disciple is to be the salt of the earth.  Today we have a negative connotation with salt.  We tend to think of it as something bad for our health.  But actually, salt is necessary for good health.  Just not as much of it as we get in most of our food.

But in that day, salt was a precious commodity.  First, it was actually a form of payment for wages to soldiers and others in some situations.  That’s where the expression comes from of being “worth his salt.”  It was valuable.  And the true disciple is of great value as well.

The second characteristic of salt was that in a day without refrigeration, salt was a preservative.  It kept things from spoiling.  It kept things from corrupting.  It was a preservative.  And that is what Christ is getting at in this parable.  Disciples are to be a preserving influence on the culture.  We are not to become corrupted by the culture, or become relevant to the culture, or influenced by the culture.  But we are to be a preserving influence on the culture;  not by what we say so much, as by what we do.  It’s been said that Christians are to be a living epistle written by God and read by men.

And another characteristic of salt is that it will make you thirsty.  That’s why they load up on salt in foods like popcorn in the theaters.  They want to make you so thirsty that they can sell you a small soda for $8 or some crazy price.  But disciples who are salty should be making others thirsty for the living water.  Our lives should be lived in such a way that others will see Jesus, who was the Living Water, who when one drinks of Him, they will never thirst again.

So Christians are called to discipleship, then they need to count the cost of discipleship, and finally there is the crowning of discipleship.  I sometimes think that I over emphasize the cost of following Christ.  But I really think I must in contrast to the easy believism that is being taught today which is such a diluted gospel that is has lost all it’s power to save or deliver.  There is a real cost in carrying your cross.  The apostles found this out.   Out of the 12 original apostles, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, and Simon the Zealot are eventually crucified like their Master, only Peter asked to be crucified upside down.  James the son of Zebedee, and Matthew are beheaded.  Thomas was burned to death. Matthais  who replaced Judas and the apostle Paul were beheaded.  John seems to be the only one to have escaped death but was exiled on the island of Patmos after being burned in a pot of boiling oil.

But though there is a cost to being a disciple the Bible teaches us that there will be a crowning for those faithful disciples who give everything to follow Jesus.  And that crowning, that exaltation and glory, Paul said in Rom. 8:18 “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Peter asked Jesus one day about that hope in Matt. 19:27 “Then Peter said to Him, "Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?" And Jesus said to them, "Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name's sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life. "But many who are first will be last; and the last, first.”  The Bible says that we will one day receive crowns as judges and rulers sitting on thrones with Christ.  There are worlds and dominions and realms that we cannot imagine that one day God will give to us that have been faithful to Him here on earth.

But there is a warning there as well, that many of those that are first here on earth, will be last in the kingdom of heaven. You might gain the world, but lose your soul.

Listen, God isn’t seeking the talented, the celebrities, the rock stars of this world.  God is seeking the common man, the humble, the hurting the sick. There are no qualified people...none. And so an amazing aspect of God's grace is that He must save sinners, He must sanctify sinners, and then He must work His ministry through the unworthy and the unqualified. It’s very encouraging to see these Twelve because like all the rest of us, they are selected from the unworthy and the unqualified.

God is seeking ordinary men and women who will be His disciples.  The world needs disciples.  Not religious people.  Not church goers.  Not self righteous people.  But disciples.  God is calling you to be a disciple today.  Don’t just stop at the point of being a believer.  But to continue to mature by following Christ in discipleship.  I hope you will say today, I love the Lord with all my heart.  And I want to follow Him completely.  I renounce all that I’ve put before following Jesus.  I have counted the cost and am willing to give up everything for the sake of knowing Jesus and entering in to that intimacy that only discipleship can bring.  And I know that “in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”

Lord of the Sabbath; Luke 6:1-11

When I was a kid growing up, I didn’t have a television in my home.  (They did make televisions back then, I’m not that old)  But when my dad became saved, he kind of went all the way.  He took everything that reminded him of his old way of life and sat it out on the curb for the garbage pickup.  He put his liquor bottles out, his cigarette cartoons out there, his girly magazines out there, and he put the tv out on the curb as well.  He even put a big plastic Santa Claus  out on the curb.  He wanted to start fresh in this new life that he had in Christ and didn’t want anything from the old way of life reminding him or calling him back to the past.

Now that seems kind of extreme today, I know.  But I think a lot of us modern Christians could use a little bit more of that kind of extremism.  There is far too much of trying to see what we can bring with us into the kingdom of heaven, instead of a desire to start fresh a new life in Christ.

But as a young boy, not having a TV around meant that I had to find other things to entertain myself with.  And one of the things I did was become an avid reader.  And at one particular point in my boyhood I became enamored with the old Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel series about Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the story of Tarzan, so I won’t go into detail.  But what made me think about Tarzan was the phrase after his name, “Lord of the jungle.”

As I was driving through town the other day with a young man in our church, I pointed out Lord Baltimore Elementary School and he asked me why they called it “Lord” Baltimore.  And it dawned on me that many young people today are unfamiliar with titles of nobility and the concept of Lordship.  I explained that Lord Baltimore was an English nobleman to whom was given the authority to establish and govern the colony of Maryland, which also included Delaware. Lord was his title.  

In the fictional Tarzan novels, Tarzan was actually a nobleman as well, the Earl of Greystroke.  And so the author was achieving a certain play on words by calling Tarzan, who was rightfully an English Lord, the Lord of the Jungle.  Tarzan’s estate had become the jungle, and he was the master of all the beasts of the jungle.

Now in the case of a true English nobleman, a Lord would have been the master of his domain.  He owned all the land.  Everyone that worked and lived in his territory did so by his permission and according to his desire.  He received compensation and  respect and honor from all that he governed.

And I bring this up because  I think so many miss out on the significance of the title of Jesus.  Some people think Jesus had three names, much like we do. They  think that Lord is his first name, Jesus is his middle name and Christ is his last name.  But the fact is that Lord is his title, Jesus is his name, and Christ is a title as well which  means Messiah in the Greek.

But the title that we are going to concern ourselves with today is Lord, and it is found in our text as Jesus says, “the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”  Now there should be no objection of the fact that Jesus is frequently called Lord by his disciples, and that is his proper title.  But there are two ways that the rendering Lord is presented in scripture.  One is as a title of superiority, of nobility, of being master of all his domain, of ownership, of sovereignty.  It is from the Greek word “kyrios”.  And it is a title which is given to God, and here we see Jesus ascribing this title to himself.  

There is another word that is translated LORD, which is usually written in all capital letters in scripture, and this is a transliteration of the personal name of God, Jehovah, which the Jewish scribes would not pronounce and wouldn’t even spell out because they thought it was too holy so it was written as LORD.

But the word “kyrios” or Lord as a title of God is the word we see today in our text, and it indicates nobility, the master of the estate, the sovereign prince, a title of honor and respect that is due to nobility.

Now let’s back up a bit and take this in context with the passage.  Jesus and his disciples are traveling through a field on the Sabbath day, and his disciples are grabbing the heads of grain in their hands as they walk, and rubbing them in their palms, perhaps blowing to remove the chaff and then eating it.  And this was permissible according to the Old Testament law.  God had provided in the law for a man to be able to eat if he was hungry and passing through a neighbors field.  There weren’t too many Wawa’s around then and God in his mercy said that it was permissible to eat of the field you passed through.  Of course, you couldn’t take a sickle and a wheelbarrow in there, but God provided for a man that was hungry.

But if you were here last week then you will remember that the Pharisees were the main exponents of a nationalistic religion that had developed among the Jews which is known as Judaism.  And the Pharisees had taken God’s laws and added to them a lot of man’s traditions, by which they thought they could become righteous.

And in particular, one of the main components of their religion was the observance of the Sabbath.  At the heart of Judaism was the Sabbath observance.  So they had added a lot of restrictions about what you could or couldn’t do on this day.  For instance, according to the Talmud, you were only allowed to travel more than 3000 feet from your home.  You couldn’t carry a burden, because that would be work.  And they decided that a burden could be defined as anything bigger than a fig.  You couldn’t tend to a person’s wounds on the Sabbath unless they were life threatening.  Of course you couldn’t work in your fields or tend to your flock. So when they saw the disciples pulling grain off the stalks as they walked, they considered that reaping, and when they rolled it in their hands, they considered that gleaning, and when they blew off the chaff, they considered that winnowing.  So these Judaisers called out Jesus over these infractions of Judaism and said why do your disciples do what is not lawful?

And Jesus answers them with an illustration from scripture about David, when he and his men were running from King Saul and they became hungry, and he came to the house of God and asked the priest there if he had anything to eat.  And the priest said, no, nothing except the showbread.  Now the showbread was 12 loaves of bread that were kept in the temple for a week, and then changed out on the 7th day for fresh loaves.  But only the priests were allowed to eat the showbread, because it had been consecrated to the Lord.

And David answers the priest, “Well give us the showbread then.”  The priest gave it to them and they were able to eat of the showbread.  And Jesus uses this as an example that the ceremonial laws were able to be set aside for the sake of mercy.  And this is an extremely important principle that Jesus establishes here that will be a hallmark of the new covenant.  These ceremonial laws had been extrapolated into an oppressive burden by the Judaisers that according to Peter in Acts 15, had “placed upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear.”  But Jesus is establishing the principle that the ceremonial laws would be set aside for the sake of mercy.

Because the law was never intended to provide a means to righteousness.  It wasn’t a stepladder to God.  As  Hebrews 9 says,  “both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.”  The ceremonial laws were given as symbols or pictures of future things to come in Christ.  So when Christ appeared, He ushered in a new covenant.  A covenant founded on mercy and grace, because as Heb. 10 says, the old covenant, the Law, since it was only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.”

So what is the purpose of the law then?  What was the purpose of the commandments?  And how are we to see them today in light of the new covenant?  Well, I believe that our text helps us answer these questions in light of Jesus statement to the Pharisees following his example of David, in which He says, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

And what is meant by that statement was the declaration that Jesus was first of all the Creator and He established the Sabbath.  John 1 says that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”  That means that Jesus was with God in the beginning, He was God, He was the Creator, He rested on the seventh day.  It was His day.  He made it, He declared it, He established it.  He is the Lord of the Sabbath.  He is the sovereign that established the Sabbath.  The Sabbath does not define Jesus.  Jesus defines the Sabbath.  And that is what He is telling those self righteous leaders of Judaism that day.  He added in Matthew’s account, that something greater than the temple was here.  The temple was just a picture of Him, as was the Sabbath.

Now when you understand that, then you start to understand the purpose of the Sabbath.  Jesus said in Mark 2, that man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man.  God provided it for man’s restoration.  God provided for man’s peace.  God provided for man’s rest.  It was a gift of God to man.

So when we look at the 10 commandments, we see God’s moral law, and yet in number 4, the law concerning the Sabbath we see a ceremonial law.  And the placement of this ceremonial law of the Sabbath is significant.  And remember, ceremonial laws are what Hebrews 9 we quoted from earlier was talking about.  Washings and sacrifices and offerings and festivals and days which all were symbolic, they were pictures, or shadows of good things to come through Christ Jesus.  So then the Sabbath was a picture or a shadow or symbolic of a good thing to come in Christ Jesus.  Those shadows, Hebrews 10 tells us, can never make a man perfect.  But in Christ Jesus, we are made perfect.  What the shadow could never do, but only point to, Jesus Christ came to do and did through His atonement on the cross.

Perhaps you have heard that the first 3 commandments relate to man’s relationship to God, and the commandments from 5 through 10 relate to man’s relationship to man.  Now consider where the law concerning the Sabbath falls.  It is number 4, right between God and man.  Do you see the picture?   Right in the middle between God and man is the mediator between God and man, the God/man Christ Jesus. Just as the scriptures declare in 1Tim. 2:5 “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

So when we understand that Jesus is the mediator between God and man, that He is the bridge between an unreachable God and an unredeemed, sinful man, then we can understand why the Sabbath was given.  It wasn’t given to be some burden that keeps people from relieving hunger or keeps a man from helping another.  But the Sabbath was a picture of the rest and restoration that Jesus would provide for us.  As He said in the last chapter, I have come to save those that are lost.  I have come to heal those that are sick of their sinfulness, who realize that they are sick unto death in their sins.  He came so that we might have rest from our works, trying to keep the law, and failing, unable to achieve righteousness,  to make it possible that we might be reconciled to God.

Even as it says in Hebrews 4:9 “So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.”  Jesus gives us rest, because He established our peace.  He brokered peace between God and man.  He is not only Lord of the Sabbath, but He is Prince of Peace. Sabbath, then, is shalom, and shalom is Sabbath. We have rest because we have peace. We have peace because we have rest. We have both because Jesus is not just Lord of the Sabbath and the Prince of Peace but is also our Sabbath, our Peace.

Now after Jesus’ declaration that He is Lord of the Sabbath and all that means, He then demonstrates His sovereignty on yet another Sabbath.  Jesus entered the synagogue and was teaching, and Luke says there was a man there with a withered hand.  And once again the Pharisees were waiting to see if they could catch him in something so that they could accuse Him.  Their law stated that it wasn’t permissible to heal someone unless it was a life threatening condition.  So this man’s life wasn’t in danger, and they saw their opportunity to accuse Him of being a lawbreaker.

But Jesus knew what they were thinking, and He wasn’t about to run from their trap, but rather is going to use it to expose their corrupt religion.  So in vs. 9, “Jesus said to them, "I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to destroy it?"  And that prompts the question again I asked earlier, what is the purpose of the law?  Is it just to make life miserable, to keep us from enjoying life?  Well, Galatians  3:24 gives us the answer: “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.”

See, the law established God’s standard of righteousness.  And we know that God’s righteousness is good, and is meant for our good.  Sin on the other hand, is death.  It kills, it captivates, it condemns, it burdens, it enslaves.  Romans 3:23 tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Though the law was good, as it established the righteous standard of God, yet by it we were condemned because no one is able to reach that standard of perfection.  So then the law became our tutor, our teacher.  And what did it teach us?  That we could not keep the law, we could not attain to that righteous standard of God, and so we needed a Savior, a substitute, one who would come in our place and keep the law perfectly for us, and then offer himself as a ransom for our penalty so that we might be saved, not by works, but by faith, by the gift of God which we call grace.

So the law was made for good, and therefore it is lawful to do good, to bring about restoration.  Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, is our Savior.  And so He healed the man’s withered hand to demonstrate his purpose, that He came to seek and to save those that were sick, as He spoke of in chapter 4, when He preached in his hometown and read from Isaiah 61, “"THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD."

The question remaining for us today then is not whether we keep the Sabbath week after week, but whether we have obtained the eternal Sabbath rest that has been provided through the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus came to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord, the year of jubilee, speaking of the time written in the law when the captives and slaves were to be set free, when the land was set apart to rest which is a picture of our salvation.  The question today is can you say that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath in your life?  Has He made peace between you and God?  Has He provided the ransom to buy you out of slavery to sin?  Has Jesus become your Lord and Master?  Do you bow your knee to the Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth?  Do you recognize Him as the rightful owner of all that you possess, all your time, talents and treasures?  Do you renounce laws and traditions and ceremonies that only serve to tie and bind up poor souls to serve an empty religion, and instead celebrate the rest that He has provided?

Today we don’t observe the Jewish Sabbath as the Judaisers did.  Today we celebrate the peace and rest that comes through the Lord of the Sabbath, who became our Sabbath rest.  As Jesus described in our passage last week at the end of chapter 5, new wine cannot go in old wineskins.  Christ has ushered in a new covenant, a covenant based on faith in Christ’s finished work, and the grace of God who gives us Christ’s righteousness in exchange for our sins.  This is how you appropriate this rest.

Hebrews 4:1 says,  “Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.” 7.  “He again fixes a certain day, "saying, "TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS."

“So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.” But,  “let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

New wine, new wineskins: Luke 5: 30 -39

As we come to this passage in Luke today in our ongoing study of this book, we must continue to be reminded of the fact that Luke not just writing an autobiography, but He is carefully, deliberately presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And as we said a couple of weeks ago, the gospel is no less than the good news that Christ came to reconcile man with God through the forgiveness of their sins. The gospel is first and foremost, above all else, God’s plan for mankind to be reconciled to Him, to be made righteous through Jesus atonement on the cross as payment for our sins.

 2 Cor. 5:21 so succinctly states the gospel:  “God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”  That’s the gospel in a nutshell. 

So Luke is carefully presenting the gospel through this book.  He has in the first few chapters established that Jesus is no less than God in the flesh, conceived by the Holy Spirit in a young virgin, fully God and fully man.  And then Luke  presented a series of convincing proofs of not only that Christ was divine, but since He was divinity He also had the authority to forgive sins.  We saw a few weeks ago that Jesus said to the paralytic who was lowered through the ceiling in front of Him while He was teaching, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”  And to prove that He had that power Jesus followed that up by saying, “So that you may know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins, I say to you, arise, take up your bed and walk.”  The point being that the physical healing was only an illustration of the more important spiritual healing that Christ had come to earth to accomplish. 

Luke continued the presentation of the gospel by fleshing out the nature of sin in the last couple of chapters;  He presents Jesus healing a leper, who was a living illustration of the depravity of sin and the way it corrupts completely and produces uncleanness which separates us from God.  He records Jesus healing the paralytic who was a picture of man’s helplessness to help himself.  And he shows Jesus delivering a man possessed by a demon as an illustration of God’s ability to free man from the oppressiveness and captivity of sin.  So all along Luke is building this house of doctrine concerning salvation. 

Last week, we saw Luke present yet another foundational principle of the gospel, through the record of the  conversion of Levi, who was also known as Matthew, who became one of the 12 disciples.  And the point Luke presented through that illustration was that having become convicted by your sin, and having realized that you are helpless to change it, and that you are captive to sin’s power over you, that you must repent of it, leaving it all behind, and follow after Christ with all your heart. Jesus said to Levi, “follow Me.” So Levi was an illustration of discipleship.  A proper understanding of the gospel is that one must be willing to leave everything and follow Christ’s teaching.

Now today, we find ourselves looking at another event which I believe Luke includes in his gospel to show another essential component of the gospel, and that is  the uniqueness of the gospel, and it’s incompatibility with any other religion or tradition. In other words, you leave everything and follow Christ.  The gospel can’t be added to anything else.  It requires complete exclusivity. 

So as we look at our text we find it’s been some time since Levi’s decision to follow Christ, and Levi has arranged to have all his old friends and acquaintances come over to a banquet at his house to meet Jesus.  And as Jesus is in there preaching the gospel to Levi’s old friends, the Pharisees come around and start grumbling to Jesus’ disciples and questioning them, with the purpose of discrediting Jesus.  These Pharisees appear righteous on the surface, but they have rejected the gospel message of Jesus that says that they are sinners in need of forgiveness, and they are actually angry over being called sinners.  So they are trying to discredit Jesus’ message and Jesus himself.

Look at verse 30, “The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus answered and said to them, "It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."

This is in effect Luke’s thesis statement.  Up to now it has been all introduction.  But now Luke presents in Jesus own words the premise of the gospel.  That Jesus Christ came to save sinners.  But those that don’t first of all accept that they are a sinner, helpless and hopelessly unable to accomplish their own salvation, are unable to be healed by the Great Physician of their spiritual, deadly disease of sin.  But for those that do confess and are willing to repent of their sins, Jesus is saying “I am able to save them, and furthermore, I have come to earth to save sinners.” 

Now these Pharisees and scribes were the leaders of a religious order that we call Judaism.  And perhaps that needs a little explanation so that we can fully understand the situation. . Judaism was a nationalistic/religious system of  laws and traditions, with the belief that God was really only the God of the Jews.  They believed in God, and believed in the scriptures, but they added to the scriptures the Talmud and the Mishna, which were immense volumes containing hundreds of extrapolations from the law, and interpretations of those laws which were called rabbinic traditions.  They held to  a nationalistic religion in which they believed that the Messiah would come to resurrect Israel’s monarchy, and establish their way of life over the world. 

These people prided themselves on their goodness and their belief that they were law abiding, God fearing citizens of the greatest nation on the face of the earth, and that God had granted special blessings to their nation. Judaism stressed things like going to church on the Sabbath, publicly giving alms to the synagogue, making big prayers on the street corners so everyone can see them and fasting.  Fasting was required twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays according to the traditions of Judaism.  Yet in the scriptures, God had only required one fast, and that was on the Day of Atonement which was designed to bring people’s attention to their sin, and the need to repent of their sin.  But the fast that the Judastic system called for was a fast of self righteousness.  They put ashes on their foreheads and walked around town in order to make everyone aware of how religious they were.

So look at verse 33; the Pharisees being convicted want to debate now their spirituality with Jesus.  “And they said to Him, "The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers, the disciples of the Pharisees also do the same, but Yours eat and drink." So it must have been either a Monday or a Thursday, and they were fasting according to their tradition, but they see the disciples of Jesus having this feast with  tax gatherers and sinners and they get indignant.  See, they want to contrast their spirituality, their adherence to the laws and traditions of their religion and contrast their self righteousness to that of Jesus and his disciples. They are convinced of their own righteousness from doing all those external things.  But what they fail to realize is that righteousness can only come as a gift from God to the repentant sinner. It cannot be earned or worked for.

And so Jesus answers the obvious part of their question with an illustration, and then we are going to see Him go to the root of their problem in the last few verses of the chapter.  Because Jesus knows that they don’t really want an answer to their question.  What they are trying to do is validate themselves.  So first He answers the superficiality of their question and then He digs deeper and exposes their corruption underneath. 

First His answer to the question why don’t your disciples fast like we do?  Vs.34, “And Jesus said to them, "You cannot make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? "But the days will come; and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days."

Jesus has already addressed these superficial religious acts of Judaism in Matthew 6, the Sermon on the Mount. He said, "When you give alms, don't sound a trumpet before you." They drew attention to themselves as they gave alms. He said the hypocrites do so in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be honored by men. And He says they have their reward. What is it? The applause of men, that's it.

And then in verse 5, "When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners in order to be seen by men." They went out there on the corner going through all of their ritual prayers, making sure everyone sees them, appearing spiritual.  Jesus says they have their reward.

And then down to verse 16, there was the third element of their ostentatious religious practice. "When you fast, don't put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance in order to be seen fasting by men." Monday, this is what they did, they got up, they put on their worse looking clothes, and they didn't comb their hair. And they threw a few ashes on their heads so they'd look pale and gaunt. And they put a gloomy face and they roamed around, "I'm fasting." And Jesus said they have their reward too, it's from men. In verse 17, "If you're going to fast, anoint your head."  That means wash your face, comb your hair so that you may not be seen fasting by men. In other words, if it's real then it's between you and God.  And the God who sees the secrets of the heart will reward you.

Now back in Luke Jesus was using a very familiar example for them of a wedding feast which often lasted for 7 days.  It was a time of celebration, of joy, as the bride and the groom come together and are joined in matrimony.  Everyone there was familiar with Jewish weddings.  They knew that wedding ceremonies were a time to celebrate,  not to fast.  And they also knew, as I alluded to earlier, that fasting was associated with  grief, either grief over your sin, such as on the day of atonement, or grief over a death or impending death.  But fasting was associated with grief. 

Jesus is saying, there is no reason that my disciples, my followers  should be grieving now.  Their sins have been forgiven.  They have repented of their sins and they have been forgiven.  Instead there is rejoicing, because I am the bridegroom that was promised in Isaiah 62:5 which talks about the coming Messiah redeeming His people and which says, “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, So your God will rejoice over you.”  Jesus is actually putting Himself in the place of the bridegroom as  a picture of God rejoicing over his bride.

So that is Jesus answer to their question; He is the bridegroom, and those sinners that are being saved are the bride of Christ.  And that must have been like a knife in the heart of those self righteous Judaisers who would not admit that they needed saving.  The bridegroom was taking another bride, not them.  But now Jesus goes deeper, twisting that knife a little bit to expose the corruption that was at the source of their self righteous indignation.  And Jesus gives three illustrations of the uniqueness of the gospel, and it’s incompatibility with  mixing of any other system. 

Number one, Jesus says in vs. 36, “And He was also telling them a parable: "No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment; otherwise he will both tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old.”  When I was a boy growing up in Eastern North Carolina, my brother and I each got two pairs of jeans a year at the beginning of the school year.  But we didn’t call them jeans in those days, we called them dungarees.  And Mom always got them about 4 inches too long which we rolled up, ‘cause we were growing so fast she wanted to make sure that we didn’t grow out of them before the next year.  The thing is, after about 3 months the knees were worn out.  Today it might be considered fashionable to have holes in our knees, but my Mom would have died if her boys were seen wearing dungarees with the knees worn out.  So she patched them up.  She sowed old material in the knees to make a patch.  And she was a good seamstress, sewed tiny little stitches and tried not to let it show, but it was always apparent that our dungarees had patches.  And it wasn’t cool.  I was embarrassed to wear those pants.  Times have changed today.  I was a hipster and didn’t even know it. 

So the illustration is clear.  But what exactly is Jesus illustrating?  Well, Jesus is referring to the religious system of Judaism, and saying that the gospel is not able to be patched into an old system of works.  The new is going to tear away from the old and at the same time trying to make a patch from the new ruins the new cloth.  They are incompatible.  The second parable is similar but it’s less familiar to us today, it’s saying the same thing but using a different metaphor.  Jesus says in vs. 37; "And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined.  But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.”

The difficulty that I think many of us have understanding this verse and the next is that we are unfamiliar with the ancient winemaking customs of Israel.  I used to work in luxury hotel restaurants, and so I worked with wine makers and served wine, and yet it poses some difficulty for me as well because we don’t have the same understanding of wine today that they had then.  And so I’ve been praying this week for wisdom to understand this passage and what Jesus was saying.  And this is what I believe God revealed to me from the scripture. 

It’s clear that Jesus is referring to two types of wine in this parable.  He speaks of old wine and new wine.  And if you do a word search in the scriptures of the phrase new wine, you will find that there is a Hebrew word tē·rōshe' which means new wine and there is a different word for wine which is yah'·yin.    Now new wine is used in the OT 37 times, and in almost all examples it is associated with blessings from God and was used to describe the wine offering or tithe that was given back to God as the first fruits from their vineyards as part of a sacrificial offering. 

However the common name for wine is used 237 times, and the majority of times it has the association of drunkenness.  In fact the first time it is used in the Bible it speaks in Genesis 9 of Noah drinking it and becoming drunk.  It was associated with strong drink, with mixed drinks.  And there are many, many admonitions against drunkenness in the scriptures that also speak of drinking wine. 

But one of the problems today is that we have lost much of the distinctions that ancient Jews made concerning wine, and as such theologians have debated for centuries the rightness or wrongness of drinking alcoholic beverages such as wine.  But I don’t want to debate that argument here today.  I would simply point out to you that Jesus is making a distinction between new wine and old wine.  And I would like to suggest based on a lot of research that I and others have done, that He is referring to fermented wine as old wine, and grape juice as new wine.  And the fact that grape juice is referred to in historic Jewish literature as wine is undisputed.  It was the fruit of the vine even as fermented wine was and often it is indistinguishable which it is referring to. 

But there is another Biblical illustration that lends credence to my theory that Jesus is referring to unfermented wine.  And that is the example of unleavened bread at the Passover meal.  In the Passover meal prescribed by God in Exodus, the bread was to be made without leaven.  Leaven was always a picture or a type of sin.  The yeast begins a process of fermentation, which causes the bread to rise. And what happens is that there is corruption which causes the bread to puff up.  So as early as in Exodus, there was a call from God to remove the leaven from their midst.  The apostle Paul also would later say that a little leaven leavens the whole lump, another picture of how a little sin becomes entirely corrupting, and causes pride in our hearts.  So this fermentation process is always a picture of sin.  And I believe that when God called the Jews to bring him the new wine as a sacrifice and offering unto God, as a tithe of their first fruits, it only makes sense that He is asking for an unfermented wine, uncorrupted, which is always described as new wine.

Now if that is the case, then this illustration makes a lot more sense.  Some have said that since wine in old wineskins will ferment, then as the gases expand it causes the wineskin to burst.  And that is true, but wine in a new wineskin will burst as well if left unvented. However it is also true that old, cracked wineskins that have dried out will not hold new wine because as you fill it up, it does not have the elasticity which allows it to expand, and instead breaks and spoils the wine.  New wine demands new wineskins that haven’t grown old and dried  and cracked.

But here is the point that Jesus is making.  The old wineskins are nothing less than the old system of Judaism.  And the new wine is the new work that Jesus is doing through the gospel.  And Jesus is saying that the gospel will not mix with their old system of Judaism.  If you mix new wine and old wine, then you are mixing fermented wine with unfermented wine, and as a result the new wine will become fermented.  It will become corrupted. 

Listen, I see a parallel today between Judaism and modern Christianity.  I might even go so far as to say between Judaism and Evangelical Christianity.  There is a parallel.  Like Judaism we claim we worship the one true God.  Like Judaism, we think that God is really sort of exclusively the god of America.  That He has shed His grace on us.  That as Americans we are privy to a degree of blessings from God that the rest of the world doesn’t fully share in. 

According to a Pew poll that came out on July 3, 2013, 78% of Americans consider themselves Christian.  But what exactly does that mean? How can we square what is happening today in our country with the gospel?  I suggest that it means that we have mixed a little bit of God and instead of the Talmud mixed it with a little bit of the Constitution, and throw in a little bit of the Bible with a little bit of the Bill of Rights instead of the Mishna, and we have mixed all that up in a blender with a little bit of the Power of Positive Thinking, and a little bit of the prosperity doctrine, and a little bit of church membership and a little bit of Catholic ritual and a little bit of charitable works and a little bit of Sunday morning worship and we call it Judeo/Christian values.   And because of these external things,  we think that we are ok with God.  We think that God is going to bless us because we call ourselves American Christians and we have a nationalistic fervor that is not much different than that of the Judaisers.  But the truth is we aren’t any better off than the Pharisees.  The Judaisers were not saved and neither I’m afraid are most so called Christians because they are counting on something other than grace and forgiveness.

Listen, Jesus had mercy on sinners, He came to save sinners, but He railed against the self righteous Pharisees and leaders of Judaism because they thought that they were good people.  They thought that a good God would accept good people if they tried to do good things.  But if that is the case, then what in the world was the God of the Universe doing hanging up there on that cross?  Jesus was proclaiming a salvation that depended totally upon God providing a sacrifice for sin.  The Pharisees were proclaiming a salvation that depended upon their self righteousness.  And I’m afraid that the problem with America today is that we have tried to mix a religion of works and self righteousness with the gospel and it isn’t working.  You can’t add the gospel to a religion of cold dead orthodoxy.  God wants new wine in new wineskins.  God demands new birth resulting in a new creation, all things have become new and old things have passed away.

America today is a wineskin that is ready to explode.  We have mixed and blended and added and subtracted until the gospel has become corrupt and stupefying.  We have called good evil and evil good.  We think that our sin isn’t really sin anymore because some judge said it’s ok now.  And the corruption and the fermentation has reached a breaking point.  Yet almost 80% of Americans say we’re ok.  We call ourselves Christians.  We believe in God.  We think we’re God’s chosen people.   We can expect all these blessings to continue because we are such good people. 

Listen, that is exactly what Jesus is talking about in verse 39, He says “no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, 'The old is good enough.'"  The problem is that we don’t want to turn away from our sins.  The problem is that we aren’t willing to forsake our old way of life.  We like our lives just the way we are.  And we are like the person in the parable.  We have drunk so much of the fermented wine of the world, we have mixed so much of the old with the new, that we don’t want new life.  We are drunk on the excesses of American materialism and blinded by American Idealism. We have become lukewarm like the church of Laodecia in Rev. 3,  to which Jesus says, “Because you say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.”

We are drunk to the point of being in a stupor and don’t realize that God’s judgment will come upon us as well.  Paul warns in 2 Cor. 6:16 “What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE," says the Lord. "AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me," Says the Lord Almighty.”

I’m going to close with another familiar scripture in 2 Chron. 7:14  in which God says,  “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”  You call yourself Christian?  Good.  God says you better humble yourselves, pray, seek Him and turn from your wicked ways.  Listen, confession has two parts, acknowledging your sin, and then being willing to turn from your sin and follow Christ.  God says when you do that, He will hear that prayer of repentance, that cry for mercy, and forgive your sins, and heal you of this deadly disease of sin, and heal this land.  The only sin God cannot forgive, is the sin that isn’t confessed as sin.  Humble yourself today and call upon God and let’s begin revival right here.  The solution for American Christians is a spiritual revolution, not a political one.  And it must begin first in your heart as you humble yourself before God and confess your sins.