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.”