Luke 6:1-26

Hey guys, this is Josh Transky of Haven City Church.

The following sermon was recorded on March 11th, 2018.

The text we're covering is Luke chapter 6, verses 1 through 26.

Luke 6:1–26

If you have any questions about the church or are interested in following up, you can find out more information at www.baltimorechurch.com.

Okay, Luke chapter 6, verses 1 through 26, says this On the Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat the kernels.

Luke 6:1–26

Some of the Pharisees asked, Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?

Jesus answered them, Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?

He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat, and he also gave some to his companions.

Then Jesus said to them, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shrivelled.

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath.

But Jesus knew what they were thinking, and said to the man with a shriveled hand, Get up and stand in front of everyone.

So he got up and stood there.

Then Jesus said to them, I ask you which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to destroy it.

He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, Stretch out your hand.

He did so, and his hand was completely restored.

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.

One of those days Jesus went out to the mountainside to pray.

He spent all night praying to God, and when morning came he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated as apostles.

Simon, whom he named Peter, his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, the son of Alpheus, Simeon, who was called the zealot, Judas, son of James, Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

He went down with them and stood on a level place.

A large crowd of his disciples were there, and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.

Those troubled by impure spirits were cur cured.

And the people all tried to touch him because power was coming from him and healing them all.

Looking at his disciples, he said, Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you, and they insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.

For that is how they their ancestors treated the prophets.

But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.

Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for this is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

God, as we look at your word, we pray that you would speak to us by your spirit.

As we look into this text, we pray that you would just divinely appoint, just in an encounter with your spirit and this text and our life, that those three elements would come together in this time.

Lord, we pray that you would really speak to us, speak into our lives.

God, we do want to pray for your healing in um Liz over her body.

Bless her, be with her uh this week.

We pray you would bless her doctor's visit and just everything just that pertains to her.

Would you bless her?

And God, we want to pray that you would be with Melinda.

We ask that Jesus, you would work um in the lives of uh the people that she's interacting with that don't know you.

Even uh as she's going into the afternoon over there, in the family time that she has, we pray that God, you would bless her words, that she'd be able to communicate just the story of Baltimore and um just testify of God how you're working in the city.

And uh Lord, we pray um just for um the the people that have come through the Compassion Center this week and the other lives that we're connected with.

Um I think of Albert's sister Lil, we pray that you got it for healing in her life that you would touch her and provide for her.

Um lay your hand upon her, God.

We pray for um just uh Kayla up in uh just up in Pennsylvania, Jesus, that you would work in this gal that's having the surgery and use Kayla in this uh girl's life.

Um we pray for just a really good testimony to come out of this season and that you would use Kayla as a witness for you.

And uh we do pray for Scott's uh wife too, that that uh just with everything going on with his mother-in-law, that there would be healing and Lord, you would strengthen Melinda in that setting, Lord, to just be wise, to speak wise words, to be a peacemaker, Lord, to contribute to just solutions and not problems, just bless her, Jesus, in a powerful way.

And um, yeah.

Oh, and uh yeah, did we pray for Matt?

Lord, heal Matt too, if we didn't pray for him.

Pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, so we're in the middle of the Galilean ministry.

Um, Jesus is in this region, this northern body of water in um in the middle of of Israel.

Uh, this is where Jesus kind of grew up, and he's ministering from synagogue to synagogue.

We've already seen that he's traveling from town to town to preach the message of Jesus.

And um the people that have been following him for us for the last three weeks in the narrative, his last two chapters, is we have the Pharisees and the scribes that are uh perturbed and upset with Jesus for all different types of reasons.

So um again, the message, the big picture here of Luke is that God has a good plan.

And we're gonna see that that's unfolding in the text that that Luke is bringing to the surface in the context of Jesus' story, the fact that God's plan is unfolding, that these are not accidents, that these are not just happenstance, but that God's plan is unfolding through the person of Jesus Christ.

We see God's kingdom invading the world, that the time of the kingdom has come, and Jesus is heralding that.

He's proclaiming it.

And then we see that the message of Jesus is believable.

That's the other thing that Paul is trying to establish.

He wants to say that Jesus is a trustworthy figure.

So whether or not you're a believer looking at this text, when we come into the text, there are some points of reference for us where we can look at this and we can say this experience that is being described in this text correlates with our human experience, our human experience in Baltimore, in Baltimore County, being in this area.

You don't have to be a Christian to agree with parts of this passage.

And some of those would be this that there are these judgmental religious people, right?

We can all relate to judgmental religious people, right?

You don't have to be in Jesus' story or to check your brain out at the door to be able to relate to the idea of judgmental religious people.

We see religious people who appear to care more about the rules than they care about the needs right in front of their face, right?

That is a universal experience.

We've seen that type of thing play out all too often.

We see disease and the need for healing, right?

That is a common human experience.

You don't have to be a Christian to be able to relate to that idea.

We see these four uh what we call beatitudes or blessings, and the context for these blessings in verses um 18 through 26 is these difficulties, right?

You have poverty, hunger, weeping, exclusion, insults, and slander, right?

It's not just Christians that face those things, right?

This is a common part of our human experience.

And so as we go through the text, the great thing is that as Jesus is going to convey a completely other world message, as Jesus introduces a new way to be human, at the very same time there's these corresponding points of reality that anybody can relate to in the passage.

It's what challenges us and gives an apologetic for its trustworthiness.

So the first 11 verses, first 11 verses, we see that Jesus is greater than the Sabbath, right?

We have two Sabbath encounters.

Then from verse 12 through 16, Jesus calls the 12 apostles from amongst his disciples.

That's the second big section.

And then the third big section, verses 17 through 26, is the beginning of this sermon that Jesus preaches.

He's teaching his disciples really the value of the kingdom in the midst of difficult circumstances.

So we have three major sections, verses 1 through 11, 12 through 16, and 17 through 26.

Let's talk about the Sabbath.

If if there's anything, if we're done, by the time we're done tonight, my hope is that you've got a good grasp or a good like uh remembering of like what is the Sabbath.

That's one really key thing that we should see this evening.

So if we're gonna look at the Sabbath, there's a lot of different views, right?

In the church today, um amongst the kind of the tribe, the Christian tribe that I've grown up in, um there is not a um strict observance of a Sabbath day, a specific day, right?

That's a modern Christian concept.

For many, many years, the church, especially you think back on the Puritans, they would see Sunday as the church's Sabbath, right?

Which is the first day of the week.

Um it's very interesting, and I'm gonna challenge you right off the bat, as we go through some of just a kind of a broad sweep of the idea of the Sabbath, I'd encourage you to consider this in the context of your own life.

Now, some of my closest friends, when they talk about the Sabbath, they view it as, well, it's all been fulfilled in Jesus, and so I live my place in a state of rest based on what the book of Hebrews says, that Jesus is our Joshua that has taken us into the promised land, and therefore we are to constantly live out a Sabbath life where we just rest in God, right?

We've ceased from our own works because we've been given the righteousness of God.

So there is a camp, there's a Christian camp that kind of doesn't observe any Sabbath day.

It doesn't work out practically in their life uh a whole lot.

It's just more of like, hey man, I'm just chilling in Jesus, right?

That's one camp.

Then you have a full other, like the other camp, which is kind of like um the Amish, you know, or the Mennonites, maybe, who uh would observe much more strict Sabbath day, um where it would practically work itself out in in pretty um strict ways.

So um let's look at how this unfolded.

So in Genesis chapter 2, which is kind of a uh disconcerting break in the text, but chapter 2, verses 2 through 3, um the encounter is wrapped up.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Moses is retelling how the creation story took place, and he says in verse 2, by the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing.

So on the seventh day he rested from all his work, then God blessed the seventh day, made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

So notice right at the beginning that the Sabbath, the seventh day being honored, um was not something that was instituted for Israel first.

This is something that was instituted at creation, right?

So it right up at the beginning, at the at the early stage of uh human history, you have the seventh day being a day of rest.

One writer says this, uh, related to those verses.

In brief, bless, remember God blessed the day.

So the word bless is the language of giving, while declaring that day holy is the language of claiming.

When something is blessed by God, it becomes a vehicle of his generous giving, an expression of his warm concern.

When God declares something holy, he claims it for himself, taking it out of an ordinary circum uh uh circulation, whether it's a place, a day, an animal for a sacrifice, and he declares it as special.

So it's interesting, I've read this so many times.

Like that seventh day, it says that God blessed that day, and he called it holy, right?

So there's this sense in which the Sabbath day was meant for humanity to be a day in which God is generously giving, and it's set aside, it's called holy, so it's set aside as something that is special.

Then you fast forward a few thousand years in in history, right?

And we get to Mount Sinai, Exodus 20.

And that's where we have Moses has brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.

They are now a people being formed by God to become a nation.

To become a nation, you have to have common people, common uh constitution, and common land.

That's what makes up a nation.

Um, and God's in the process of giving them their constitution.

And so in Exodus 20, verses 10 through 11, we jump right into the middle of the Ten Commandments, where it says, But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

Exodus 20:10–11

On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreign residing in your towns, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he resisted, or he rested, sorry, on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and he made it holy.

So all the way through Genesis, we do not see a Sabbath day observed.

We do see a seven-day week being spoken of in Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

And if we go back in history, just world history, we look at the Babylonians and some of the early, early nations, people groups, we see this seven-day week that you know existed.

But here, God with Moses takes the seventh day and says, Remember that it was the seventh day that God consecrated as a holy day that's to be kept.

So God is codifying and clarifying for the nation of Israel how the Sabbath day is to be honored.

And there's a number of rules that go along with the Sabbath day.

You'll recall that God fed the children of Israel with manna, right?

This bread from heaven.

But on the sixth day, you were to collect two portions, two days worth of bread, because on the seventh day you're not supposed to work and collect any more manna.

The seventh day was to be a day where you're resting.

So this comes up in Nehemiah.

As Nehemiah is rebuilding Jerusalem, he's brought the people back from captivity, back into the city.

Nehemiah observes that people are doing work on the Sabbath day, and he has to correct the people and say, This is not what's supposed to be happening.

You're not, you need to observe the Sabbath day.

Um, if you look at Jeremiah and you look at Isaiah, the prophets say that God is going to judge Israel and ultimately cause them to be in exile, taken out of the promised land and under judgment, because they didn't observe the Sabbath day, because they were not keeping it holy.

So it was a serious part of being a good Jewish person was to observe the seventh day and to not work on it.

Then we get into the New Testament era, right?

Jesus' time, and we see the Pharisees.

By the time we get to the time of the Pharisees, these guys had established at least 39 forms of activity that were not allowed on the Sabbath day.

39 different things you couldn't do, and there were other things that were prescribed that you could do.

Um, they were laid out by millimeter practically of what you could do, what you couldn't do, um, how far you could walk, this far, but not this far.

It was all laid out.

And so these Pharisees both served a role within Israel as religious leaders, and they took that on as an identity, right?

So their pride lay in the fact that they were the religious experts on how to interpret the Sabbath law, right?

Here's what it looks like to do the Sabbath for us.

So Jesus comes along and he blows this up, right?

So here's some of the things.

So Jesus, to Jesus is viewed as a Sabbath breaker.

In John 5.16, if you were to read it, it it I'll paraphrase it.

It says Jesus' actions on the Sabbath were grounds for the Jews wanting to kill Jesus.

They looked at Jesus and they concluded by the end of his ministry that he was a Sabbath breaker.

Like that was the big issue that the Pharisees had with Jesus, is he's a Sabbath breaker.

Now, look, for a nation that spent 70 years in exile in Assyria and Babylon, because you broke the Sabbath, God's already communicated to this nation that God means what he says.

He wants it to be kept holy.

But there was a perversion uh that took place over time of God of wanting to honor the Sabbath day and then turning it into a religious act that um really was only to try to kind of measure uh and and do kind of a religious gamesmanship of who can really keep the Sabbath well.

Uh in John 9, 16, the Pharisees dismissed Jesus because he broke the Sabbath.

There's this interesting kind of um, there's an interesting thing that that goes on.

There's this kind of conversation uh amongst the Pharisees over like, does Jesus really have spiritual authority?

Is he from God or is he not?

And for them, they're like, well, because he's a Sabbath breaker, he can't be from God, right?

That that's like that's why they ultimately rejected Jesus.

It's like because of how he handled the Sabbath.

Now, their specific complaints were this.

So Jesus healed on the Sabbath, he allowed his disciples, like we see in the text here, we see him allowing his uh disciples to eat the grain as they're walking through the field.

These things were a part of those 39 activities that were forbidden.

So Jesus is often engaged in this conversation, and he uses a couple of illustrations to push back.

So in in our text here, he says uh he brings up the example of David.

So David is on the run from Saul, he's been anointed as a future king, he's but he's being pursued by Saul.

He gets to um the tabernacle and he's starving.

He's with his men, and he says, Do you have any food?

And the priest says, The only food we have is the showbread that's been offered to God.

And David says, Well, that'll do, right?

And so it's like, well, that's we even know from the story of Samuel that look, you don't want to treat the holy things of God profane.

What happened a few chapters later when they're trying to move the ark up to Jerusalem, right?

The guy reached out his hand and he was struck dead because he touched the ark of God.

Or if we look in just the story of Saul, Saul is offering sacrifices, and by offering sacrifices, uh Samuel says, You're the king.

You're not supposed to be offering sacrifices, you're violating God's law.

And so, but yet David here he eats what is considered holy.

Actually, I even thought of another one, just in Samuel, right?

You have the sons of Eli, Hafni and Phineas, who are taking and they're they're eating the meat before it's been offered, right?

They're violating the meat offering early on.

So there's all kinds of law breaking that takes place in the story of David and and Samuel.

But um David, I guess, when he ate this bread, that was not a violation of the law.

It served a human need.

And so Jesus is using that to bring out this principle that the Sabbath is going to be for man and this uh not the man for Sabbath, which which is over in Mark.

So Jesus brings up the story of David.

He brings up the story of an animal.

If you have an animal and you put him out, and all of a sudden your ox falls into a ditch and he's stuck there.

You don't wait till the Sabbath is over to get him out.

No, you rescue your animal.

Another example that Jesus uses is if you have a son.

This is in John 7, 22.

If you have a son who's born, the law of Moses says you need to have him circumcised and named and dedicated on the eighth day.

And if that eighth day falls on the Sabbath day, then you still need to follow God's law.

And thereby you're breaking the Sabbath day by doing this, you know, taking this journey, going up to the temple, and dedicating your child.

The last example that Jesus uses in another setting is Matthew 12, 5.

He says, the priests.

The priests work, they do their job on the Sabbath day.

So all these examples, Jesus is bringing up and saying, look, you guys have created these 39 different rules on how to keep the Sabbath, but yet we have these examples over here that seem to be in attention with the laws that you've created.

So Jesus is using this to really kind of break the back of their religious nature, right?

They're self-righteous holding on to these laws.

And in Mark 2, 27, Jesus says that the Sabbath was made for man.

It's a blessing.

It's supposed to be a blessing to man.

People are were not created for the Sabbath to bless the Sabbath.

The order of things had gotten turned around.

So here's the big idea.

The law, in its various interpretations, are not a path to earn God's favor, right?

So doing the law or doing the Sabbath day was never intended to be God's path to earn the favor or the righteousness of God, right?

Instead, God instituted the Sabbath to be a blessing for people, right?

It was to serve, it was to be subservient to mankind.

In fact, that's what we see with the law is that the law can be a blessing as it's obeyed for those who are believers in Jesus.

After placing your faith in Christ, we respond in obedience to him, and doing the things that are found in the law like a Sabbath are a blessing rather than a curse.

Jesus is trying to help rescue these Pharisees, right?

Rescue them from their self-righteous robes that they're putting over themselves.

It's funny because we live in a culture now where we used to be, the church used to be the most moral.

We used to be viewed as the most moral people, right?

And the church was always accused of being kind of the ones who were pointing, you know, at other people's wrongs, like where we were kind of critical of society of like, you know, your sexual ethic is wrong, or you know, you shouldn't you shouldn't behave in this way.

And and that was kind of how the church was perceived.

But now we live in a day and age where a new morality has been adopted, and you have kind of like Hollywood, right?

I think tonight is actually a big award show.

Is it the Oscars?

The Oscars are tonight.

And and so that that community, that group, right, that oftentimes represents our culture, those people view themselves as the most moral, and they have moral ideas that they want to communicate to culture, and they oftentimes now play the role of the Pharisee.

It's crazy.

If we it oftentimes the church now is viewed by society as immoral because we do not agree with their moral ethic, especially in the arena of sexuality.

So because we will not allow, um uh because we will not allow gay marriage, we're opposed to that, we are viewed as hateful, um, oppressive, um, and uh that we are the immoral people, right?

And so it's a fascinating thing how uh the the the kind of the tables even within our generation has flipped, where culture is now beginning to look at Christians not as the more moral people, but as kind of the weirdos and immoral people because they do not, because we are um haters, right?

We're the people that um have been rejected by the Southern uh Poverty Law Center because we believe in a certain moral code that doesn't agree with theirs.

Okay, so all of that to say, wherever you stand on your your moral, your morals, right, or your ethic ethical code, that code does not give you the righteousness of God, right?

Even if you are the most law-abiding citizen, that will not earn you the kingdom of God.

What gives us the righteousness of God is placing our faith in Jesus Christ, right?

As we trust in Jesus, we find God's righteousness imputed to us, being given to us.

So I'm trusting that we are that that describes us generally as a people, that we're people who have believed in Jesus, we have the righteousness of Jesus attributed to our account.

So now the question is, what do we do with the Sabbath?

What does it mean for us?

For me personally, as I look at at this concept of Sabbath, because it's rooted in the Genesis story at the beginning of creation and not originating in Exodus 20 with the law, I think that it is a principle that applies to us.

So I think that we should be a people that are generally observing some form of Sabbath.

It does not have to be on Saturday like Jews today on the seventh day.

But I think that it is a healthy practice to keep a Sabbath.

So that takes us into the arena of rest.

What does it mean for us to do Sabbath?

Like, what does that practically look like?

I would challenge you.

This literally, as I'm doing this, I had to take a break from my sermon.

I had to go back to my calendar, my ideal, I have, and I have a document, maybe I'll share it with you.

It's like a Mac document, but it's like it's my ideal work week.

Like I blocked out.

Like, here's if I have a good week, like, and this is how my schedule goes, and there's not anything abnormal, here's what it looks like.

And I wanted to make sure that I'm doing this, that I'm I'm putting into my schedule a time that is committed to resting.

And I'll tell you, for me personally, the hardest thing, the hardest spiritual discipline for me is to rest.

I do not rest well.

I I feel like I am like the infant that is trying to learn how to rest well.

I know how to be lazy, I know how to veg out, right?

I know how to waste my time, but to actually rest well, to receive the blessings of God and be renewed in the way that He intended the uh Sabbath to be is still something I feel like I'm learning to do, that I want to do.

But I believe that this is a um, I believe it's a principle uh that we should consider and look at um placing into our life.

Now, why do we uh, unlike the Jews, worship on Sundays and have kind of a holy day on Sundays and not on Saturdays like the Jews?

Well, it's because Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week.

And so that's when the church would gather, celebrating the resurrection day.

So um, whether you consider Sundays your Sabbath day, or you consider like a Friday night into Saturday a Sabbath day, I would encourage you to make it a spiritual discipline in your life that you're looking at how to rest well.

Um, what does that look like to let uh God renew you, like fix you up, repair you, give you strength, energy to speak the gospel into your life, to spiritually renew you.

There's also an act of faith in the idea of a Sabbath.

When we take a break, when we take a break for a day from work, what we're saying is, God, I'm gonna trust you with the things that I'm anxious about that I think should get done.

Um so when I take a break, for me, doing a Sabbath, it means that I'm literally shutting off like my email.

I'm stopping stuff that I'm like, oh, this gotta get done.

No, it doesn't.

I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna trust the Lord that he's gonna do the work in the church, and that uh the church will survive even if I take one day a week and commit to just rest in him.

The next section in the text is this calling of the disciples, right?

So Jesus calls his twelve, and the context for calling the twelve, this is verse twelve through sixteen.

The context is that um Jesus spends all night in prayer.

You'll see that he goes up into a mountain to pray in verse 12, and then he calls these twelve.

And do you see that he calls the twelve from out of his um disciples?

So you have disciples and then you have apostles.

Disciples are the are you we I've already encountered the disciples of John, the disciples of the Pharisees.

These were followers of, adherents of a particular leader.

So Jesus had hundreds of disciples, but out of those hundreds of disciples, he picked twelve that would be apostles.

An apostolos is one who is sent out.

They are people who are pioneers, right?

They are designated pioneers for the gospel.

Now, why does Luke put this here in the context of our story?

It's because the next thing that takes place is that Jesus gives a message to his disciples.

And this message is a message that really lays out the um the paradoxical nature of his kingdom, in how his kingdom is so radically different from uh the world's system.

So the message from verses 20 through 49, so we'll finish off this message next week, but it goes from 20 to 49.

This is the same material you have in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, which is called the what?

Sermon on the Mount, right?

So we have the Sermon on the Mount, 5, 6, and 7.

Um it could be called like the platform of the kingdom.

You know, when a politician or a political party runs for office, they lay out their platform.

This kind of lays, this could, you know, that that's one of the analogies I've heard for this sermon.

But the account that Luke gives is much more condensed, right?

Matthew spends three chapters on this message, Luke spends um 29 verses on, or or 30 verses on this message.

So Luke's version is condensed, even in the part that we're looking at this evening.

It is a condensed form of uh the Sermon on the Mount.

So when you get a chance, read uh Matthew 5 through 7 this week just to kind of refresh yourself on it.

It's probable that this was the message that Jesus repeated as he moved through various towns of Galilee.

So you recall, Jesus already said to that one group, remember, they're beating on the door, they're like, we want you to stay and keep healing people.

And Jesus is like, No, I've got to go on.

I've got to preach in the next town, I've got to be at the next town.

And so Jesus, he uh is probably not preaching a new sermon in every time, right?

He's saying uh the same sermon, he's delivering a similar message over and over again.

So as the writers of the gospels are recounting Jesus' sermon, it is probable that they're pulling kind of bullet notes from that other people have recorded of these messages.

Now, if you read through this entire thing, it took two minutes.

Do you think Jesus' preaching was a two-minute sermon?

No.

So probably what we have is like a bullet point version of a sermon that could have taken, you know, 50 minutes by Jesus.

If you read the version um Matthew 5 through 7, I believe it takes eight minutes to read Matthew 5 through 7.

Right?

So it's it's highly unlikely that Jesus was preaching sermons that were that short.

These are just the the uh kind of the structure of the sermon, the main points that Jesus was making.

Uh Warren Wearsby, he says this this sermon, and so again, just to refresh your memory, there's these four beatitudes.

Here's the people that are blessed the poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are excluded and um you know cursed at.

Basically, those people are blessed, and then there's these warnings, the woes that follow, which are kind of uh the flip side of the blessings.

So Warren Wearsby says this the sermon is not the gospel, and nobody goes to heaven by following the sermon on the mount, right?

So the things that are here is not necessarily the gospel.

It may have some gospel themes, but it is not the message of salvation.

Dead sinners cannot obey a living God, they must be first born again and receive God's life.

So the little note that Luke puts in the text that says this he spoke to his disciples, his followers, that's a really key thing.

Now, nor is this the constitution of the kingdom of God, Warren Wearsby continues.

God will one day establish on earth the the uh the kingdom that God will one day establish on earth.

The Sermon on the Mount applies to life today.

It describes the kind of godly character we should have as believers in the world.

Certainly, our Lord describes a life, a situation quite unlike that of the glorious kingdom, including hunger, tears, persecution, and false teachers.

So this is not a description of the future reign of God when he's got because when God's reigning on earth, there's not going to be, there's not gonna be tears, right?

There's not gonna be the poverty, there's not gonna be the sorrow that is described here.

So here's Jesus giving a message to his followers that applies to life now as they anticipate the kingdom.

Jesus is saying that there is a blessedness that comes from these difficult circumstances, but these blessings flow to a person who has a relationship with God.

So you look, let's look at just this first one here.

You've got um this idea of the blessed is the person who is poor.

Blessed is the person who um, blessed are you who are poor, because the kingdom of God is yours.

Now, that is not a promise for every poor person, right?

This is something that is uh applicable and it is a is a blessing for a follower of Jesus.

So if you're a person that doesn't yet have a relationship with Jesus, then these um blessings are not for you, right?

The the relationship with God is the context in which this blessed life flows out of.

This is a person Jesus talks about having a relationship with him being the same idea of a of a branch being connected to a vine, right?

So the branch connected into the vine, that's a natural relationship.

The branch is just growing right out of the vine, right?

It didn't it didn't make a uh a choice to grow out of there, it didn't just like hop up onto the branch.

No, the branch is just kind of naturally growing out of the vine, and that's the relationship we have with God.

This is the life that flows from that relationship.

So you have to, but you have to appreciate then the the significance, right?

So some people may say, well, what's the what is the blessing of being a Christian?

What's what's the value of knowing God?

Here it is.

Here it is.

Here's the here's the blessedness of being a Christian.

It's this idea that, hey, you're poor in this life, you're a poor, you're poor in spirit, maybe you're financially poor, you're poor in circumstances.

There's this great quote I put up on Slack that you can look at later that that kind of goes into this.

But poverty can manifest itself in a lot of ways.

But you're if you're poor, Jesus says, Blessed are you because you have the kingdom of God, right?

So there's a mindset, but there's a reality.

You are poor, but you have the kingdom of God.

Then he goes on into the to the hungry.

If you're hungry, and in Matthew chapter 5, it's those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

If you are hungry, you have just this joy of knowing that you will be filled.

Again, over in the Sermon on the Mount, it's you're filled with this spiritual fruit.

So Jesus is going through and he's laying out just the beauty of what it means to be a person that is a follower of God.

Where the things that are are seemed like just the curses of humanity, the the situations in life that people are running away from.

People are running away from being excluded or from being scorned.

People are want to run away from weeping, right?

Or or being hungry.

And yet Jesus is coming and saying, No, the paradox of God's kingdom is that my kingdom, in my kingdom, you're in a blessed state if that is your life.

He's changing challenging conventional wisdom.

He's challenging conventional wisdom as he goes through this.

I want to close with just Romans 8, 18.

Paul, Paul lived this out, right?

So it may seem to me when I read through this text, it seems abbreviated.

It seems um like wow, kind of mind-blowing, difficult to wrap your head around.

But then that's why I appreciate the church and and Paul and the epistles.

They that kind of live out these concepts.

And in Romans 8 18, Paul says this, I consider that our present sufferings are not worthy comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

There's going to be this future glory that doesn't even compare.

Paul is using the the uh word picture of like the scales of justice.

You know, blind justice, she's holding out the two scales, and on one side you'd put the weight, and on the other side you put whatever you're trying to weigh out.

And Paul says on those scales, on one side is your present suffering, and and excuse me, and then on the other side is the glory that is gonna be revealed in us.

And he says that on that other side, that it's not it's not an equal measurement.

No, when we stick on the other side, the glory that's gonna be revealed in us, the other other side, the suffering, the present suffering, it almost flies off because the glory to be revealed is so weighty.

Uh, it is gonna be so magnificent.

It is not an equal comparison one to the other.

That's what we have, that's the blessing that we have to um anticipate as believers, that we are now maybe suffering in our present situation, right?

And I know in in in our church, our our small little church represents a lot of different circumstances that are very hard.

But but at the same time, we have this future hope, right?

This hope that is laid up for us in heaven, and so now we live out a blessed state in anticipation of that future hope.

So um, good, good, it's a big, uh, big long text here.

I'd encourage you, go back and read in it, read it, marinate on it.

Ask yourself a few questions, right?

So um ask yourself this question about rest.

Like, what does rest look like in your life?

Um, God didn't rest on the seventh day because he was exhausted.

Um, God rested uh as a principle, right?

He he created a seven-day week, but on the sixth day, he on the seventh day, he wasn't like, Whoo, I need a break.

Like God doesn't need a break, right?

So he rested purposefully.

And so just consider in your own life what does it mean?

If Jesus is the Lord, what does it mean for you to um uh live out the idea of Sabbath?

Um and then just the the the Pharisaical nature, right?

Just take that warning to heart.

I I guess still it's stuck in me from when we studied Philippians, just Paul's warning about just how much that that self-righteous judgmental attitude that we see exam uh uh exemplified in the Pharisees here, how much that is like a plague upon the church.

And it's something that Paul has to keep warning about.

Like just like we need to avoid it.

We need to make sure that we are not viewing ourselves as a better people because of some type.

We are a forgiven people, right?

We're a people clothed in the righteousness of Christ, but we are not a better people.

We're not a more moral people.

Maybe remember that as you're watching the Pharisees get their little idols on stage tonight, right?

Maybe they'll have a word for you, a Pharisaical word from the stage in their condemnation.

No, I mean, really consider that this is like a plague.

We are wired.

We are such a people wired to try to please God through our acts.

And what we need to be is we need to be a people that are pleasing God by placing our faith in Him, right?

That's the way that God is pleased.

And if you're suffering, there's a beautiful word here.

But it's just the flip side of the blessings, right?

God has a blessing.

He wants you to be a blessed person, even if your circumstances don't look like a blessed person according to the world.

Not a health and wealth gospel, right?

Not a health and wealth message, right?

You follow Jesus, you're going to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

No, that's not what Jesus is saying.

Yeah, you know, no, no, no, exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Um let me let me make a little recommendation.

I don't know how much you guys listen to podcasts, but with in the age of our smartphones, there's lots of access to great teaching out there.

And this week, I came across a great podcast, and it's called This Uh This Cultural Moment, I believe.

I put it on my Instagram account.

I'd encourage you to check it out.

Um, so good.

Such it it really um is insightful.

I think they're on like episode four or five.

Um, both pastors I have a lot of respect for, really great um commentary on culture and and where we're at as the church.

But one of the things that was so profound as I was listening to it this week was this idea that we live in a culture that it wants what Jesus describes his kingdom to be.

Right?

Our culture it wants justice, right?

It wants equality, it wants um beauty, right?

We live in a culture that wants the kingdom of God.

The way that God describes it, it wants the kingdom of God.

It just doesn't want the king.

We it's in we live in an age that is anti-authoritarian.

We live in an age that rejects the king of the kingdom.

And there's no way, there's no way for you to really have the kingdom that God describes without the king.

And so I was challenged this week as I was listening to that and I was thinking about just kind of living out the Christian life for just personally, like living out Christianity today in a post-Christian world, that um I want to make sure that I want the king and that the king has a rightful place in my life, that that the authority of Jesus, he's that he's the Lord of the Sabbath, but he's the Lord, right?

He's the Lord of our life, that he's speaking to us.

Um check it out.

I encourage you to listen to it.

I think each episode is like 20 or 30 minutes long.

Um this next Sunday, I'll we'll be back here.

Um but we will all so on Friday night and next Sunday, I'm gonna be so tired.

It's gonna be a great service.

They're always great when I'm really wiped out.

Um but I'm gonna be at a little uh a free uh preaching conference that some of my friends are um leading.

And I think I'm the MC if I can get there on time for it.

But it's it's for guys between the age of 18, guys and gals between the age of 18 and 35.

So it's for young preachers.

Um young preachers and teachers.

And so it's in Southern California, so I'm literally flying out Friday morning, and we'll be coming back on a red eye Sunday morning.

So you can pray for that time.

I think it's like uh they had a maximum space for like 120 um adults, and I think they have like 140, and there's another 40 on a waiting list.

So this really tapped a nerve.

People are excited for this.

So hopefully you can pray that that uh I come back a better preacher and not uh exhausted.

Amen.

All right, let's um let's do what we do regularly.

Let's pray for um our neighborhood and the city in closing.

God, we um thank you for uh your word.

Thank you for this this teaching.

Jesus, you you're you're like, you're so beautiful in who you are.

You're you are um yeah, we're just blessed to sit here and look at you just um you know violating just these religious leaders and just kind of throwing it back in their face.

And we're just we're grateful that you're not about religion, you're about a relationship, that you're not about all these rules, you know, and then and an interpretation of rules, and then kind of being stricter and stricter.

You're you're you've just given us life, and we're so, so grateful for that.

So, Lord, um help us to live by your grace, the new covenant that we talked about last week.

Help us, Lord, we pray that we'd experience just that blessed state this week as we face different trials and circumstances.

That we would just make you the king, the Lord of our life.

Uh, we love you.

And uh Lord, we want to commit our neighborhood to you.

We pray for City Spring Elementary.

Thank you for the staff over there.

God, would you bless them?

Would you work in their life?

Uh, thank you for the new relationships that were made this week.

We pray, Jesus, for you to be magnified in their life.

Lord, make yourself known in the midst of that school.

Lord, I pray for um peace in the classrooms this week.

We pray that the classrooms would be calm.

We pray that there'd be a good learning environment.

Um, Lord, I pray that you would um help increase the uh just attendance of the kids that struggle with attending school, that intent attendance would increase.

Um and Lord, all these just these people who wish the best for these kids.

They may not know you, but they they want the best for these kids.

We just we pray that Lord, you would just work.

You preserve these kids from evil, protect them, God, from evil, protect them from wickedness, protect them from drugs, Lord, protect them from uh theft this week, from vandalism.

Keep them out of out of juvie, Lord.

Lord, wrap them up in like bubble wrap, like just protect them, God.

Put your angels around him.

Lord, have your hand on him.

Lord, we pray for our whole this whole city, Jesus, that you would reign, that you would make yourself known.

Um, we pray that more people would come to know you this week.

And Lord, however you want to use us in that process, we pray that you would do it.

And we ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.