A Different Blessing - Luke 6:20-23 (Derik Fuller) | Different

We're going to be in verses 20 to 23 this morning, Luke chapter

Luke 6 · chapter mention

6, verses 2023. We're going to end up reading

this passage together this morning as a church.

It's been 13 days that I was travelling around Egypt and

Lebanon, and one of the joys was to be able to bring brothers and

sisters in the Middle East. Greetings from their brothers

and sisters here. And I would get up every time

that 9 or 10 times I got to speak and I said, hey, you got

brothers and sisters in Ontario, Canada who love you, who are

cheering you on and who bring greetings.

And so they wanted me to bring back greetings to you.

So it's also my joy today to bring greetings to you from your

brothers and sisters amongst Sudanese refugees, amongst the

Egyptian people, amongst the Druze and the Kurds, in the

Maronites in Lebanon. They want to send their

greetings to you. Do you know there are people

across the world right now who are praying for us this morning

here and for church? Isn't that a neat thing to think

about? Let's read these words together

from Jesus starting at verse 20. Why don't we stand together to

read God's Word together? Read with me.

They're on the screen. If you don't have your Bible

open, you can read along there. Then looking at his disciples,

he said, Blessed are you who are poor because the Kingdom of God

is yours. Blessed are you who are hungry

now because you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now

because you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate

you, when they exclude you, insult you, and slander your

name as evil because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.

Take note, your reward is great in heaven, for this is the way

their ancestors used to treat the prophets.

May God bless the reading of His word.

You can have a seat. If someone came up to you, they

asked you the question, do you want to live a blessed life?

How would you answer that question?

Yes, I would assume most of us in this room or those who are

watching online or if you hear this later, you'd say, yeah, I

want to live a blessed life, sign me up.

But what if they asked you that question and then they wrote,

read those words of Jesus to you?

Would your answer still be yes? I mean, the words that Jesus

speaks here, how he defines blessing, that's not how most of

us define blessing, right? Our definition of blessing is

good job, stable, comfortable, housing, at least a roof over my

head, good friends, peaceful family life.

Our definition of blessing tends to involve words like safety,

stability, comfort, happiness, abundance, success, prosperity.

When we define blessing, when someone come comes up to us and

says would you like to have a blessed life?

Isn't that what our mind goes to?

I mean, those are the type of blessings.

If we're honest, those are the type of blessings that we tend

to count on a day like Thanksgiving.

And yet here Jesus gives us a radically different definition

of what it means to be blessed. Last week, Pastor Kirk started

off our series in this section of Luke chapter 6 that we've

Luke 6 · chapter mention

called different. It's a section of teaching

that's referred to as the Sermon on the Plane.

It's kind of a counterpart to Matthew's Sermon on the Mount.

And what we're going to see over and over and over and over again

as we walk through this over the next number of weeks is that

Jesus is offering to us a very different way of living and

being in the world than anybody else is offering.

We're going to see that if we're really going to be serious about

following Jesus, it's going to require a change of thinking.

It's going to require changes in our priorities.

It's going to require a way of seeing the world differently.

It's going to require changing in the ways in which we interact

with others. It's going to require changing a

whole bunch of definitions that we have absorbed over time.

And, and I'll be honest, I've been super excited about getting

to this series. I I couldn't wait to get to

October because I just think that there is no better time in

my lifetime to do a series like this than right now.

Because what I see you when I engage with people, when I

observe our culture, is that there is very little that people

seem to be able to agree on these days, except for one

thing. Everyone seems to agree that

what we're doing isn't working, that we need something

different. And I believe with all of my

being at the core of my being, that the teaching of Jesus in

this section of Scripture, that it is the different way of

living that we need. Yeah, as we go through this,

you're going to find it's alien, it's foreign.

It sounds so counterintuitive at times.

We're going to read through stuff.

In fact, maybe it's this morning where you're going to encounter

stuff where you're like, that is the last thing on earth that I

want, and yet it's the exact thing on this earth that you

need. See, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe

we have finally come to a point where we've tried everything and

realized that nothing we're going to try on our own is going

to work. Maybe that's where you're at

this morning. I love this quote from GK

Chesterton. He says, you know, the Christian

ideal hasn't been tried and found wanting.

It's been found difficult and never tried.

Maybe we're at the point where we're actually ready to do the

hard work of following Jesus, and that would begin to change

everything. And I think part of the reason

that so many of us, including so many people who would claim to

be following Jesus, feel a deep dissatisfaction in their souls

and in this world is because the blessing that we're longing for,

that we're living for, is not the deepest, truest blessing

that we have misunderstood what it really means to be blessed

and where blessing really comes from.

So my question to you this morning is just this.

It's really simple. What if we let Jesus redefine

for us today what it means to really be blessed?

Well, what if we did that? What?

What if we actually took Jesus at his word in this passage of

Scripture? Look at what he says.

Luke 620. He starts off by telling us that

it's the poor who are blessed. Blessed are you who are poor

because the Kingdom of God is yours.

It's the poor who are blessed. That is so upside down to what

everyone and everything in this world has to tell us about what

blessing is about. In this world we define blessing

by wealth. We define blessing by

prosperity, poverty. Being poor is seen as a curse

and Jesus flips this whole thing around.

He says actually poverty doesn't disqualify you from blessing.

In fact, being poor is what positions you to receive the

greatest blessing. Blessed are you who are poor.

Here's what I need you to see this morning.

The Kingdom of God belongs to those and only to those who

understand how deep their need really is.

I told you I I've been gone the last two weeks in Egypt and I

literally got back in yesterday morning, flew overnight, took a

red eye. And I've spent a lot of time

with people who the world has taken no notice of, spent a lot

of time in places of tremendous poverty.

And over and over and over again, I encountered people who

considered themselves to be blessed.

I went to house visits and I used the the word house

generously because many of us in this room, we would struggle to

believe that the places they were living could be considered

a house. And in place after place,

encounter after encounter, I found people who the world

considers poor, who know what it is to truly be rich.

I have people who I found. I encountered people who humbled

me with their joy in the midst of the most difficult of

circumstances. And this is the pattern that you

can see if you're a student of history, if you're a student of

the church, that throughout history and right now in the

world, in this moment, it's the poor who are most likely to

trust in and receive Jesus and receive the greatest blessing

that could ever be received. And it's not just happening over

there. Let me just bring this a little

closer to home. I can show you data right now

that says God is doing a new thing in Canada and in the West,

and he's doing it in the people that most of us in this room

would have assumed we're the least likely people that God

would do something in. He's doing it in Gen.

Z, He's doing it in Gen. Alpha.

And in particular, he's doing it in men, in Gen.

Z, in Gen. Alpha.

And I've been thinking of why is it?

Why are we seeing at a greater rate, especially in places like

England? We're now 22% of young men are

attending church regularly. That's gone from 4% to 22% in

about 9 years. Why?

Because we have a generation of men who've grown up poor.

Poor in male role models, poor in friendships, poor in

understanding what love and intimacy look like in a world

that they have grown up in that's saturated with online

porn. Got a group of men who've grown

up being told to expect less, that they will have less than

the generations that came before them.

We've got a group of young men who have grown up and the most

common word that they've had attached to their masculinity is

toxic. They have known poverty and you

can look and see that they're searching for somebody who would

be a savior, who would show them a better way.

And so some of them have turned to the Andrew Tate's and the

Jordan Peterson's of this world. But a lot of them are realizing

that those so-called saviors don't actually have what

satisfies. Many of them are understanding

that what they deeply need is a is a better mentor, a better

father, a better friend, a better king.

We have a generation of young men who have grown up poor, but

because they've grown up poor, man, they're going to be rich.

Because so many of them are understanding that what they

need most deeply is Jesus and him crucified.

They need to know the God who became poor so that through him

they could inherit all things, the one who died so that they

could live. Going to look more at this next

week, so I'm not going to dwell on this too much, but it is so

hard if you consider yourself rich.

And many of us in this room wouldn't consider ourselves

rich, but we would live as if we're rich.

It is so hard if you feel like you have so much to lose, to

follow a Jesus who calls you to give up everything.

We were like kids. You ever seen a kid who somebody

gives them one of those plastic rings and they think they've got

something real, they think they've got something of value.

So if you offered them a piece of paper that had $100 or $200

or $1000 on it, they think the papers not worth anything.

This ring is worth everything. And we've confused what really

matters for the baubles and trinkets that have no value.

The story in Scripture of a rich young ruler who comes to Jesus.

And he asked him this question, what must I do to be saved?

What must I do to have eternal life?

And Jesus ultimately tells me, he says this, sell everything

and give it to the poor. And he says at the end we see

that he walked away sad because he just felt like Jesus was

asking too much from him. And yet all he had at the end of

the day was nothing. Nothing of any significance,

nothing of any value. And all Jesus was offering him

was everything, but he couldn't see it.

We need to be poor. We need to be poor in spirit to

come to a point where we say, Jesus, everything I have is

yours, because without you, nothing really matters.

And yet if I have Jesus, if I'm a citizen of the Kingdom, if I'm

a citizen of heaven, then no matter what I've given, no

matter what I've sacrificed, it's all worth it because I have

everything. Like I said, I got to stand

numerous times over the past number of weeks in front of

Kurdish refugees, Sudanese refugees, Ethiopian refugees,

and I got to look them in the eyes and tell them this truth

because you know, Jesus, although you feel like you've

got nothing right now, one day you will rule and reign over all

things. You have far more than my

neighbors in Canada who think they have all things, but they

have nothing. It's the poor who are blessed

because they understand the reality that they have nothing

to lose. Then he says this.

It's the hungry who are blessed, he says.

Blessed are you who are hungry now because you'll be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now because you will laugh again.

What's the world's definition of blessing?

Isn't it full stomachs? Isn't it endless, endless

entertainment? Constant happiness?

That's blessing, right? And yet Jesus says that's not

blessing. Blessing is not life that looks

like a never ending cruise. Blessing is not living in a

world where there is endless distraction.

Jesus says no. You want to know what it's like

to be brought blessed. It's the person who has hunger

and sorrow. Hunger and sorrow.

They don't mean that you've missed out on God's blessing.

They point to the fact that you have a, a desire in you, a need

in you, deeper satisfaction and joy that you are looking for the

only God can provide. And so many of us, and I include

myself in this, we just go to the buffet of the world that we

live in and we're looking for the next purchase or the next

thing that we'll watch or the next, whatever that we could

find joy in that would satiate this desire that never seems to

be fulfilled. And it doesn't get fulfilled no

matter how many things we buy, no matter how many possessions

we get, no matter how many wonderful meals we have, because

we have a hunger and thirst and longing that has been placed in

us by the Creator of the universe that wasn't meant to be

filled by those things, but by him.

And Jesus is saying, here's the good thing about hunger.

It lets you know there's something that you need that you

aren't getting. I know that some of you are here

today. You've walked in because that's

where you're at. You're just like, I'm just

hungry. I've been chasing after stuff.

I feel like I've got so much and yet my soul is so dry.

And if the world has you hungry right now, if it feels like

nothing in this world will satisfy, if there's no bobbles

and distractions in in this world anymore that are bringing

you joy, then Jesus is saying, great, you're finally getting it

and you're blessed because you're waking up to the fact

that you're not going to find the thing that's missing out

there. You know, I love weddings, I

really do. I love doing weddings.

I love sitting down with couples who are fresh in love and

everything is joy. They're a blessing to do.

But I've learned over time that funerals are where the real

impact takes place. See, at weddings people are

overcome with what they have, but in the grief of funerals

were overcome with what we long for and what we need.

I think one request that every Jesus follower should put in

their will is this, that the gospel will be preached at my

wedding. I mean, there's no better time

to let people know that this world is at the end of the day

going to end for all of us. But there's better available to

everyone. It's Jesus promises that what

you're missing, He came to fill. We could go about 8-8 days, I

guess. I was sitting in the home of a

young woman in Egypt. She and her family had almost

nothing. And this is one of those homes

where I was time. Like you'd be generous to call

it a home. It was musty.

It was dank. It was basically a storage room

under the stairwell. There's no windows, 4 beds, a

stove. And we came and we delivered

some food. We opened up the word of God,

walked through a passage. And then I said, hey, what can

I, what can I pray for, for you and your family?

And this young woman by the name of Maria looks at me with a

smile on her face and she says, pray that we would know and

depend on Jesus even more. She had nothing.

She had a sister who was an invalid in the bed.

She lived with her sister, her brother who her two parents and

her in that one dank little room.

She said, pray that in this place the name of Jesus would be

known. I said, you like, Are you sure

you don't want me to pray for anything else?

She said, if I have Jesus, I have all that I need.

Those were her words. And I thought, could I say that?

Is that how I would respond in that moment?

If your soul is hungry this morning, if your heart is heavy,

you're not going to find it in anything out there, but you will

find it in Jesus Christ. He's the only place where you're

going to find joy and satisfaction that truly

satisfies. Listen.

Scripture tells us the ultimate satisfaction comes when we're

with Him forever. Listen to Revelation 1969.

This is the picture of what waits for everyone who has come

to understand that in Christ we can be satisfied, he said.

Then I heard something like the voice of a vast multitude that

like the sound of cascading waters, like the rumbling of

loud Thunder, saying Hallelujah because of our Lord God as we've

just sang this morning, the almighty rains.

Let's be glad, rejoice and give him glory because the marriage

of the lamb has come and the bride has prepared herself.

This is the wedding that matters.

This is the wedding we want to be a part of.

Says she was given fine linen to wear bright and pure from the

for the fine linen represents the righteous acts of the

Saints. And then he said to me, right,

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage feast of

the lamb because that that marriage feast, you'll never be

hungry again. What type of hunger or grief are

you caring right now that God wants to meet with his future

joy? What do you need to just give up

to Him and recognize that in Christ you have more than you'll

ever need. It's the poor who are blessed,

it's the hungry who are blessed, and it's the rejected who are

blessed. He says it's those who suffer

rejection for Christ's sake that are blessed.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you, when

they insult you, when they slander your name as evil

because of the Son of Man. Here's what you do in that day,

he says. You rejoice in that day.

You leap for joy. Take note, your reward is great

in heaven. I think for many of us, there is

nothing that we're more scared of than rejection.

There's nothing that feels less like blessing than being

rejected. And yet Jesus says rejection for

following him. That's a sign of true blessing.

One of the families that we did a home visit with in Egypt, I'm

going to put a picture up here and throw that up on the screen.

It'll give you a sense of what so many of the streets of Cairo

are like. There are 30 million people in

the greater Cairo area. At least.

They actually don't know how many because because it's taken

in refugees from all over the world.

They're crammed into every nook and cranny.

And we went and we met with one of these families.

And as we were meeting with them and we were asking them what we

could pray for, they said, well, tonight we're going to be kicked

out of our apartment. In fact, two of our kids are out

right now walking the streets trying to see if they could find

us some place to stay. For the 8 of them, they weren't

being kicked out because they didn't have money for rent.

They were being kicked out because their landlord was a

Muslim who had found out that they had become Christians.

Can I just say this to you, Church?

Be careful tossing the word persecution around.

So many of us have no idea the cost that others have paid to

follow Jesus, and we're unwilling to even allow somebody

to make fun of us. We're too worried to share the

gospel because they might not like us anymore.

You got to expect that there are people who aren't going who

aren't going to like you. If you decide to follow Jesus.

You need to expect that and a lot of Christians in the West,

we need to read these verses carefully because even when we

encounter this, you know what I see in so many of us?

I see a lot of victimhood when people insult us and slander us.

See a lot of self pity. I see a lot of people getting

militant about their rights being taken away from them.

What I don't see a lot of is what Jesus calls us to, to

rejoice and leap for joy because we have been counted worthy of

being rejected for the sake of Jesus.

He says rejoice because great is your reward.

Well, we got to climb up into the Great Pyramid on our tourism

day before we flew out. And let me just tell you, if you

go to Egypt, don't. It's it's the hottest,

sweatiest, most crowded little hallway thing that you climb up

into. And then we get out and we've

crawled through this entryway and you stand up into the place

where the Pharaoh was laid to rest, and all there is is a bit

of broken stone. The guy behind me, one of the

pastors I was with, as soon as he popped his head up, he said,

this is it. I say that because there's a lot

of things that are going to cause you suffering in life.

There's a lot of things that are difficult.

There's a lot of things that you'll do that are hard.

A lot of them aren't going to be worth it in the end.

But suffering for Jesus will never be wasted.

Great is your reward. What risks of rejection might

God be calling you to enter into and embrace for His name?

Who is God calling you to have a conversation with where it's

risky? What stand is Jesus calling you

to take for Him that might cost you if you get the opportunity

to do it? Stand up, because great is your

reward. See, Thanksgiving invites us

into the space where we count our blessings.

But what if this year we didn't just count our comfortable

blessings, we counted the costly ones too.

Because the blessing that Jesus offers, the blessings that he's

talking about here, they aren't just different, they're better.

Because his blessings are the blessings.

These blessings that he's talking about, they're the

blessings that never end. They're the blessings that truly

satisfy. They're the blessings that

always pay off, even when they're hard and even when

they're suffering. So, so this Thanksgiving, let's

let, let's do this. Let's move from counting our

treasures to treasuring the Kingdom.

Let's move from avoiding pain at all costs to trusting God even

in our suffering. Let's move from living for the

approval of others to finding joy and what it means to belong

to Jesus Christ. Maybe you're here today and

you're in that spot. You've been listening to this

and you're like, hey, that's I'm coming in feeling poor or

hungry, weeping with grief. Maybe today you have come here

because you've realized that chasing the world's definition

of blessing has left you feeling empty.

I just want to say Jesus is inviting you into something

better. The the blessing that he's

invited you to is not just comfort with no end.

It's life with no end. It's forgiveness for your sins.

It's a place in His family. It's a future where you'll never

hunger again. It's a future where you'll never

cry again, where rejection leads to eternal reward.

It's possible because Jesus became poor for you and for me.

He went to the cross, taking my sin and your sin and our shame

so that we could receive the riches that He deserves.

And if you would turn to him in faith today, if you would trust

that he is the one who would satisfy your heart and your

soul, if you would say Jesus, you're my treasure, you're my

Lord, you're my savior, then today all of the riches and

blessings belong to you in heaven through Christ Jesus.

When we're poor, when we're hungry, when we're weeping,

we're rejected. Let's rejoice and leap for joy.

I want to finish with two more stories, two stories of how I

saw this work out in people's lives.

The 1st is this. We sat down with a bunch of

chaplains and in Egypt, if you're in jail and you're

wearing red, it means that you have been sentenced to death.

One of the chaplains talked about working with a woman who

was dressed in a red dress, sharing the truth that although

she was headed towards death, life was available to her

through Jesus. And ultimately having her come

to a point where she placed her faith in Christ.

And over the couple years that she stayed in prison, God began

to transform her in radical ways.

She became a blessing to the entire prison.

And on the day when she was being led to her execution, she

looked at those who are weeping and she said don't cry for me,

don't cry for me because Jesus died for me.

Where I'm going, I'm going to live.

When I was in Lebanon, I got to stand up and deliver a message

to a group of prisoners, ex prisoners and their family

members. And one of the men there was a

man who had been falsely imprisoned for 25 years, 25

years he'd spent in prison for a crime that he didn't commit.

You'd think that a man would be bitter, but he had the biggest

smile on his face. And he had the biggest smile on

his face because he said if God had not brought me to a place

where he had stripped me from everything and brought me to

this prison, I would have never heard the gospel.

He took me to prison so he could set me free.

That's what it looks like to understand the true blessings

that Jesus is talking about. To take our eyes off of the

comforts of this world and put it on to the blessings that God

offers to any who would follow him.

Let me pray for us, Father, I'm I am so thankful that you became

poor so that we could become rich through Jesus Christ Jesus.

So easy for us in a place of abundance and prosperity to lose

track of what true blessing looks like.

Even as your followers, even as those who should know better.

It's so easy for us to come to a Thanksgiving like this and be

pitying ourselves, be angry with you because the things of this

world that we long for, we haven't necessarily been given,

got to help us to have a clearer vision of what it truly means to

be blessed in Christ Jesus. Help us to understand how truly

blessed we are. And I pray for anyone who's here

today who has a hunger and a thirst, who feels a deep need

and feels their poverty, that they would come to place their

faith in the one who truly satisfies God.

Give us boldness, give us the strength, be willing to reject

the approval of this world so that we could live for your

praise alone. And pray this in Jesus name,

Amen.